THE PEOPLE IN THE BOX: VII
A man without features watched from a parked car as Ethan Demme went out for a walk. This was in a wealthy suburb, where hedges and wrought iron gates girded rows of streetlights and manicured elms. The man had been surveilling Demme since Sunday night, when a note from his handler affirmed a split in the Order. An operation had been compromised, the Magi exposed, and so the duties of their foremost courier were needed. And now there he was: a man in the shadows who everyone said looked like a default creature, strange if only for the lack of distinguishing features, a man scattered across the past and future of human evolution. His name was Simon Ward.
He had studied Demme’s routine, which included a nightly jog in his headphones. He had studied his home, a colonial revival vacant for most hours of the day. He had listened to interviews where Demme was introduced as the founder and CEO of Logos, a $33 billion biotech firm in hot water with everyone who mattered. And he had turned up the volume when the host listed off the grievances: slow growth, wary investors, weary consumers, a faithless board, a decline in active users on Ontickr, the never-ending PR disaster of the protests at Logos HQ. The universe, a radio host said, seemed out to swallow this man who had singlehandedly delivered Ontic testing to the masses. But would his grip on the company hold for long? Stay tuned to fine out.
Now he was alone, fading into a procession of streetlights whose heads bowed in solemn aureolas. His voice spoke through the tinny speakers of a black Dodge Dart, waxing poetic in language not often used by tech executives, the driver of the vehicle, Simon Ward, following along with his eyes.
The radio host did not mince words: “With a plummeting stock price, an antitrust probe on the horizon, and declining interest in consciousness mapping, can we expect Ethan Demme to be CEO of Logos a year from now?”
“I’m no soothsayer,” Demme said, “but if God allows it, I will prevail over a Logos whose trouble is behind it.”
“I’ve interviewed a lot of tech CEOs, and not many are so public about their belief in God.”
“I don’t believe in God.”
“But allusions to God are all over your marketing. In other conversations I’ve heard you quote Genesis, compare Somatics to pre-Adamites, a mythological people from before the time of Adam and Eve.”
“All that's to say I believe in the power of stories. I believe the stories we tell—whether it’s Sumerian cuneiform or an ad on your phone—are like compression algorithms. They compress meaning into verbal traditions that can be passed from generation to generation. The better the story, the better the algorithm. But it’s never lossless. Every time you unpack a story—through ritual or discussion or criticism or whatever—a little bit gets lost. After so many years of packing and unpacking, it no longer resembles the original message.”
“Is that why we have secret societies? Monolithic intelligence agencies? To monitor what’s being said?”
“Maybe. The great myth about intelligence agencies is that they keep secrets. They don’t keep secrets—they traffic in them, distributing them to those deemed NTK. The U.S. intelligence apparatus is a great big logistics company and we’re the suppliers. The only difference is it doesn’t operate in a free market. People are addicted to their phones, tech companies are forced to hand over their data, and the state hoovers up everything.”
“And yet,” the host continued. “Your company is one of the most secretive on Earth, known to go to extreme lengths to protect its intellectual property. Rumors abound of spies in your ranks and double agents in your competitors. Press leaks hint of research into holographic projection, four-valued logic gates, psychic encryption, Somatic genetics, dream mapping. Nothing confirmed, only rumored. What is Logos hiding?”
“Nothing the public isn’t hiding from itself,” Demme answered.
“What does that mean?
“Somatics. The unminded ones. The pre-Adamites. They’re all behavior, no consciousness. A way for the universe to protect itself.”
“Why would the universe need to protect itself?”
“The same reason every creation myth begins with a flood: to rid the earth of man, rid it of sin and pride. For the Maya, it was a race of wooden people who were smarter than the gods. For the Vedics, it was Manu, lone survivor of Vishnu’s flood, whose name is cognate with ‘man’ and ‘think.’ For the Israelites, it was what God said to Noah: all the flesh in which there is the breath of life. Three stories with the same idea: the divine source of all light reaching down to snuff out its earthly creatures, of chaos attempting to reabsorb this strange, low-entropy aberration known as consciousness. The Somatics are agents of the void, of oblivion, chaos. And for that they must be cured. That is our mission here on earth. To cure Somaticism.”
“And what’s the cure?”
“Stay tuned to find out.”
Simon Ward killed the engine. The street was empty, Demme’s house lit only by the lights of a colonial portico. A dog barked in the distance. Crickets chattered. Dressed in black, Simon stole along the side of the house and reappeared in the backyard, probing windows for an entry. He found one, pried it open with a crowbar, slinked inside and shut the window and took a seat at a dining room table with a view of the front door. He removed a suppressed revolver from his side, cocked the hammer, and placed it on the table.
The moon appeared in the window, casting lunar-light shapes along the floor.
When Demme returned from his jog he was yelling at someone through his earbuds. Simon watched in silence from the dark as Demme moved through the kitchen, telling a voice on the other end to “keep up if you want the story.” The call ended. He started making a smoothie. Bananas and strawberries and powdery confections. After a moment, Ward broke the silence with a question: “Is it in the DNA?”
Demme yelped and jumped back, strawberries and earbuds scattering on the floor. He saw the suppressed revolver on the table, looked at the front door.
“I would not do that.”
“What do you want?”
“Somaticism. Is it in the DNA?”
“Who are you?”
“Do not ask a question you already know the answer to. You are not stupid, Ethan.”
“You need to leave.”
“Thierry Marin sent me.”
Sliced bananas on a bamboo cutting board. Wet strawberries weeping on porcelain tile. The moon in its black saddle. Each man held perfectly still.
“You may have a god complex, Mr. Demme, but there are those above even you. Thierry Marin is one of them, and he has some questions: Is there a material nature to Somaticism?”
Demme softened his stance. “He wouldn’t send a dog to find that out. He would just ask me. Why didn’t he?”
“You will not answer his summons.”
“And why should I? That business with the shipping container in Maine is his mess,” Demme said. “I refuse to clean it up.”
“Your Orrery. Your business.”
“The Orrery is not even close to complete.”
“Your technology. Your business.”
“Not my problem. Not anymore.”
“Answer the question. Is it in the DNA?”
“Of course it’s in the DNA!” Demme said. “Everything’s in the DNA! Everything is in polymers and gluons and quarks and Fourier transforms and tables and chairs and genes that make you sneeze in the sunlight!”
“And you have the data to prove it?”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“More complicated than data?”
Demme sighed. “How do you expect me to explain the state of the art to some legionnaire? I need time.”
“Have you learned what makes a miracle?”
A baffled aura. The growing dark. So much to clean. “What?”
“Ever the genius to play dumb before the man he believes to be dumber. We shall see.” The man without features stood and gripped the revolver, its suppressor reaching past his knee. He had one curious trait: a tattoo on his neck in the shape of an S. “Your only job is to answer my questions, so listen to me carefully: Have you learned what makes a miracle?”
Demme was silent. A crack of moonlight lit one side of his face, revealing gray. He saw the tattoo on his inquisitor's neck and a look of recognition fell over him, then he lowered himself to the floor and sat cross-legged in the dark. “You don’t even know what you’re asking. You’re just some parrot parroting the words of your master in exchange for crackers. What’s your cracker, Simon? What did he offer you?”
“Do not make me ask again.”
Demme looked up at Ward, tears forming in his eyes. “Such a colossal failure,” he said. “There will never be another one like him, and without him, the light is gone forever.”
Simon Ward appeared satisfied with this answer. The violence that followed was observed by no one.