The Erased, page 4
“Exactly,” I tried to fight out, but my jaw was really starting to hurt. “Being studied. How should I know... you’re not one of them?”
The Professor responded quickly: “Truth be told, son, we’ve come in contact with a few of them ourselves. But the ones that they send in to infiltrate, well, they’re never really sure what they’re after. What their purpose is.”
Block was singing again. I don’t recognize the lyrics. Something about “day-glo.”
“What kind... you... run into?” I asked.
“Let’s just say, be wary of any woman who shows an interest in you around here,” the Professor exclaims, while tapping his nose. “I believe our dear degenerate friend here has been taken in some seven or eight times. And still hasn’t learned.”
“Oh come on, Prof, don’t tell me you haven’t had a taste of the digital love?” Block says, then goes right back on singing.
“Heh,” he almost giggles. “Once or twice, Anthony, once or twice.” He turns back to me, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jumpsuit – he looks like he’s missing a cigarette, chomping his lower lip – “The point is this, son. Something happened to me a few years ago, and something you said brought it all up in my mind. Enough so that I started pouring over my memories, looking for the reason that it seemed so important. It was about my friend, William…”
“The superman,” I struggled to say.
“Yes, the superman, as you say. I guess you must’ve overheard one of my stories.”
I nodded. I didn’t say that the only thing I’d ever seen with the sort of strength and invulnerability that Dunn displayed was an android. As a matter of fact, I was sure that if I were to look in the archives at NMAC, I’d probably find a file a mile long regarding a missing android by the name of William Dunn.
But maybe that’s for me to know. Maybe if my jaw were stronger, I would’ve told him that’s how he could probably have accounted for dear old William. I remember hearing him say, at some point, that ‘he simply appeared, and I had to account for him.’
Leave it to the android technician to account for the unaccountable.
“So how about you give us the basics, kid?” Block asked. He was eyeing a woman across the mess hall. She had a pretty, round face with a pale complexion and short black hair. It looked like the interest was mutual.
“How do I know... I can trust you?”
“You don’t,” the Professor responded. “But things are looking hopeless enough as it is, right? Like Block said, we’re not getting out of here. What did they do to you? They beat you so bad that your jaw was clamped shut. It didn’t just break itself, did it?”
“Good point,” I say.
“So what can you tell us?” Block asked again. “Why are you here?” Even though he was questioning me, I could see his interests lay elsewhere. Specifically with the woman across the mess hall.
“Don’t know. Married, have a daughter. Just average. From Pittsburgh. Worked for NMAC.” I was speaking almost exclusively in two word phrases. Trying to keep the exertion to a minimum.
“You make them?” The Professor asks, interested.
I try to tell them I’m only the last part of the chain. Other people build the robots, the androids, I just imprint its mind. I run macros that create memory templates. I don’t even write the damn code, most of my job is automated. I tell them how my position was mostly no different than any other job in the field of information technology. Just, instead of building computers or software, I created people.
“And let me guess,” Block retorts, turning to face me. It looked like the woman was being escorted from the room by an Orderly, along with another group. “Now they’ve got you working on one.”
I nodded.
“That doesn’t really tell us anything. Unless they nabbed you because you worked in this field.”
“That wouldn’t make much sense either. There must be an administrator on campus,” the Professor explained to his friend.
“Guys,” I almost yell at them. “I think... here... they’re ALL androids.”
“Well that would explain a lot, wouldn’t it?” The Professor looked at Block, and then back to me. “I can’t believe we never recognized that.”
“You guys are putting me on.” I say, despite the strain.
Block smirks. “That obvious?”
“Let me ask,” I respond, a question pressing heavy against my heart. They each perk up just a little bit. “Either of you know who Erik Kaplan is?”
Tags: The Professor, Block, androids
CONFIDENTIAL
From: Transcript Excerpt, File 2296723396
INTERNAL USE ONLY
The following is a transcript from Home recorder #751. Timestamp 06:05:0039:18:07 to 06:05:0039:18:22. Field notes, Bureau of Enemy Study File 2296723396: Three distinguishable male voices are heard, discussing erased historical figures, erased literature, and erased philosophies. Certain sections have been reconstructed to the best of our audio transcribers’ abilities. Heavy discussion of such topics are typical of the erased as they feel nostalgia for what once was and feel that such erasure is somehow unjust. In the following transcript, you’ll note a philosophical discussion of what appears to be three different viewpoints that are representative of several major theories on the motivational drives of those who become erased. You’ll notice the immediate worldview of Male #1 and the opposition he faces from Male #2. However, pay particular attention to Male #3, and the discussion of his work in relation to Home.
Male #1: ...certainly don't believe in God. But I...believe in Fate.
Male #2: ...way you describe it, Anthony, sounds more like Apophenia to me.
Male #3: What's that?
Male #2: Seeing patterns where none exist.
Male #1: Listen. Events occur in a person's life that can only occur one way to produce the person that experiences them. Nee-cha (sp?) said, 'if my life were to recur, then it could only recur in identical fashion.'
Male #3: Who’s Nee-cha?
[muffled laughter]
Male #1: ...look back and find that there's one incident in your youth that, like that first domino, started you on a certain... from which you can’t remove yourself.
Male #2: 'Poor sort of memory that only works backwards,' said the Red Queen to Alice.
Male #1: You ever watch Citizen Kane, Prof?
Male #2: Yeah... seen it. Always thought the sled was a bit of a humbug. Didn’t really mean anything. As it burned, it wasn’t all that terrible of a tragedy. He could’ve changed the person that he was at any time, but refused to.
Male #1: ...completely disagree. That sled... something that happens to all of us. ...event in childhood... we had no control... [inaudible] set us on our paths; that first domino.
Male #2: You think what you want, Anthony. I’ve seen too many [expletive deleted] things in my life to think one event sets a person in motion.
Male #1: What is it that you think, Professor?
Male #2: It’s not just one, it’s a series of events. You always have the option to get off the path you’re on. You can become someone else. Separates us from the apes.
Male #1: How about you, seven seven?
Male #3: Ian.
Male #1: What’s that?
Male #3: Name. Ian.
Male #1: Cool. Reminds me of an erased band.
Male #3: Band?
Male #1: Yeah. Musical group. Y’know, a band.
Male #3: Who?
Male #1: Joy Division. Lead singer was named Ian.
Male #2: Our own little human jukebox. Block’s like the human repository for erased songs and music.
Male #3: My wife, she... [inaudible]
Male #2: You were married, Ian?
Male #3: Yeah. They took her.
Male #2: What was her name?
Male #3: Does it matter?
Male #1: Why you working so hard on the android?
[audible grunt]
Male #3: Need to work on something. Preoccupy mind. Need to create.
Male #2: I know what you mean, and I agree whole-heartedly. I’m a writer, Ian, you know that? Used to be a reporter. There’s something good in it... that need to create. There’s something in the human condition, and we need to be striving toward something. They take us out of our element, throw us in here, and suddenly there’s nothing to strive toward anymore. All of us know that we’re not getting out of here. So, these administrators here, that we can’t see or hear... and that are studying us... They devised ways for us to continue striving toward whatever it is we’re after. [inaudible]... Faith is hard for people like us. To keep striving, to be rewarded.
Male #1: Where’s the reward here, Prof? We’re trapped. Mice in cages.
Male #2: I’ve heard your story enough times to understand, Anthony. Belief is tough for you especially, but you still hold out that hope for a good fate. You might tell me, ‘mice in cages,‘ and you might even believe it.
Male #3: Why so tough?
Male #1: [inaudible]... truths. Certain absolutes that need to be adhered to, this much is true. What’s most true about humans is the darkness, the depths of their depravity. I found that out a long, long time ago. So it’s really no wonder, Prof, that I’ve been intimate with gynoids, or real ladies, or whatever, since being here. Only because I need to indulge it more than others. Because it’s where I feel truth. Anyway, I think it’s about time I took my medicine.
Male #3: Medicine?
Male #1: [inaudible]... something I’ve had to deal with for [inaudible]... years or so.
Male #2: [inaudible]... seen it happen. Pretty terrifying sight... [inaudible]... only because you don’t know what to... [inaudible]...
-- End Transcript --
7. the idiot (34)
“Take the trigger, Anthony,” the man said to me. His name was Bobby, but very few people knew that. Everybody in the world knew who he was, but no one could find him. That was the fascination; this man hijacked nearly every media outlet in the United States, co-opting the Knowledgebase itself. I was the one who followed the trail, hunted him down – who wanted to tell him face-to-face, “There is no reason, Bobby,” and “Go ahead and pull the trigger. Let’s see what happens.”
There’s no way I can really tell you what the trigger was. I’ve heard so many things in the years since. It’d been referred to as the “Dead Hand” device by the media, the government, and Bobby. The thing had come into his possession accidentally, from a wanted Russian spy by the name of Rogozhin -- Bobby noted this was an alias. He fed the name into a search engine and found it actully belonged to a devilish character in a book by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He found the book, entitled The Idiot, (which actually inspired the title of an album by Iggy Pop a little over a century after it was written).
Bobby had epilepsy. The irony of the situation was not lost on me when he told me he could black out at any time and seize with his finger on the trigger. The Idiot was about an epileptic man who sunk slowly into insanity by facing society with a high level of naiveté.
Iggy Pop’s The Idiot was the last album Ian Curtis listened to before he hanged himself. He was the lead singer of a Manchester, UK band named Joy Division. Would you be surprised if I told you that I know a man named Ian here at the Home? Just another happy coincidence of fate. Like me and the Professor both serving in the U.S. Air Force, out of southern California. I’m from the desert out there, but my family moved away to D.C. when I was young. Going into the Air Force, maybe what I really wanted to do was kill myself, and figured what easier way than to join the American armed forces. Especially at the helm of hell’s aircraft.
Ian Curtis was epileptic too. As was Dostoyevsky himself. Just another happy coincidence of fate.
It was hard to believe everything that Bobby told me, but he did show me his copy of the Dostoyevsky book. It haunted him, he told me. The real life Rogozhin’s apartment mirrored that in the novel. A happy accident led him to this Rogozhin in the first place. This man, this awkward Russian, after meeting Bobby, mailed him this box just before he was killed. Bobby had just been a tourist in St. Petersburg, the setting of that damn novel.
Rogozhin sent Bobby instructions for the Dead Hand. He noted what the trigger really was.
I’d seen Dr. Strangelove enough times to actually put faith in Bobby’s story. Scientists developed a lot of fucked up things during the Cold War. There was stress put on building it better than the guy on the other side of the curtain, bigger and more powerful. The most powerful destructive device in the world, the power to end it all, was not supposed to be in the hands of an epileptic prone to blackouts. Perhaps Rogozhin enjoyed the irony himself, which is why he went through with sending it to Bobby.
I was 24 years old when I met Bobby. He must’ve been 33 or so. He was prematurely gray – plenty of ashy to white hair peppered throughout what was supposed to be short and black. He was only slightly overweight – he had sweat stains on his blue button down shirt, and wore a blue striped tie; he said he was “expecting someone today,” but he wasn’t sure who. He wanted to look nice.
In the videos he’d sent out, whether anyone took them seriously or not, he didn’t appear as haunted as he did when I met him. He looked a little crazy, yes, but not nearly as haunted. I think he’d only actually finished a paperback copy of The Idiot moments before I knocked on his door. And how I found him was a story in and of itself.
“You take it, Anthony Block,” he repeated to me.
“Most people just call me Block,” I told him. He handed me the box that I’d coveted for that very special week in my life. It was a week since he’d challenged the world in one of his videos; challenged everyone to give him a reason not to push it. There was rioting on the outside, there was military hunting for this man. FBI, CIA, Secret Service. Homeland Security. The OSS had been created that week. He’d checked into a hotel under an assumed name before this happened, stayed off the grid, paid for everything in cash six months prior. Days after he purchased his copy of The Idiot. The only people who could lead them all in his direction were ex-girlfriends, few and far between.
Just the fact that so many people were trying to hunt him down lent credence to his story. They gained intelligence on the Dead Hand device that Bobby mentioned in his video communiqués to the world. The insane, rambling viral videos themselves felt like they belonged to some doomed philosopher who really wanted to cut to the quick for everyone on the face of the earth.
Even without the haunted look, he made me think he must’ve been a sunny guy, day-to-day. He had a nice smile and sharp gray eyes. “Block, you need to make the decision. I thought I was strong enough to do it, I thought I knew all the reasons. But you… You know, man, you know the answer. You have the courage. I’m just a guy a stupid Russian ran into. It fell into his hands due to stupidity, same way it fell into mine. But you, I’m sure it’s your destiny. Judge of all the world. ‘Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?’” he asked.
All the words I wanted to hear; needed to hear. I told him, “You do have courage, Bobby. You challenged all the earth to do right.”
“I never wanted it. Never. I hid that box in a closet, same as Rogozhin did. Not wanting to deal with it, not having the fortitude. Just thinking about it, Block, just thinking about it makes me want to puke,” he said to me.
I didn’t know how it worked; I just believed that it did. That the fate of the world was in my hand for one fleeting instant. An angry kid, frustrated that the world wasn’t what I was hoping when I left college.
But poor Bobby, he was terrified. Would you laugh if I told you Bobby was put to death? That the General who caught him lived right down the street from me? That, in fact, I used to take my dog for a walk down the street, and that dog used to shit all over that General’s lawn?
No, you probably wouldn’t laugh. I didn’t. Watching his execution on television, hearing the words “You made the wrong choice, YOU MADE THE WRONG…” cut off by the shutting door of the gas chamber. He went into an epileptic fit and died before the gas was even released. Pure panic as he faced either eternal damnation, the judge of all the world, or absolute nothingness. The only thing they found in his cell was a copy of The Idiot that he lifted from the prison library.
They called it treason. And really, the only reason they called it such was because he had the audacity to air his grievance to the world, and ask them to make the decision. It was like a coin toss – the coin itself doesn’t make the decision, the decision is made by the person flipping the coin, by the meaning we attach to it. Like a Rorschach test.
