13
Monotony. Jay could only think of this one word, so repeated over and over to himself that even the word itself slowed down and stretched itself into a long, drawn out single syllable, part of a new language for the bored.
For one whose life was in danger, whose brother was missing, who was literally trapped in a forgotten arm of the old military industrial complex, with food to eat, with some entertainment, with books to read, and completely ignorant of his own wrongdoings, he still felt an unexplainable detachment that he wasn’t indeed sure was of the healthy sort. For someone normally accustomed to being reclusive, he found it strange that all he could feel was boredom, not fear or anxiety, not curiosity, just the monotony of the passing of the days.
Six days since they arrived. He tried at first to make the time go quickly, reading books he had brought with him, talking with everyone he could, even spending hours watching the camera Odin had installed in the living quarters of the library. He hoped Blake might appear most of all, but another part of him sought clarification, to catch sight of the people Odin had told them about but that he had never seen for himself.
Then he devoted his time to the people whose space he shared. He spoke with Gus and found him kind but ultimately closed-mouthed; the big man's face looked like a hero's chiseled from stone, immoveable and tough, but not harsh or cruel and when spoken to he often managed to crack a small smile so long as Jay did not ask him obtrusive questions. Nkiruka was a very different story. She still would not speak to him. She carried herself above him, or so it seemed to him.
He threw down the book he was unsuccessfully trying to read and chucked his legs over the end of the lower bunk in the room that he and Billy shared. He was not particularly hungry, nor particularly thirsty or tired, but he decided to make his way to the mess hall anyway, for some coffee and a snack. Faraji passed him on his way down the stairs and the young boy waved at him but quickly turned his face downward before he could start a conversation.
That boy, he thought, is remarkable. He and Billy were fast becoming friends even though Billy was some five years his senior. Jay had not interacted with the boy much, and had never talked with him alone, but for all he could tell Faraji was smart, athletic, accepting, and an almost unbelievably quick study. He told Billy the day before that he had been without even a broken scrap of electronics his entire life growing up in the outskirts, but already he was using complex programs, not just on Billy's computer, but on Odin's. It seemed even the old man, who himself was such a virtuoso with computers, had noticed the boy's prodigious talents and was seeking to give him an education.
This, Jay knew, was a source of jealousy for Billy, who for his entire life had loved computers and loved to explore the ever expanding boundaries they created for human beings. But for whatever reason, Odin disallowed others, even Faraji's mother from being present for much of the lessons; only, once three days prior, had Billy managed to argue his way into the room. Billy had told his brother of the fantastic experience afterwards:
After devoting the better part of an entire afternoon to doggedly following the old man’s steps, Odin finally granted the boy access to his laboratory. Odin entered with him but Faraji was already sitting in a chair on one side of the room. The room itself was unlike the familiar dinge of the complex outside it. It blazed with an almost infernal glory and lit mayhem that Billy found impossible to understand because of the sheer volume and incredible complexity. And there was his friend Faraji, sitting, adorned with an electrical crown attached to his head, eyes wide open and darting through empty air, piercing through something that wasn't really there; he was conscious, alert even, but his senses were completely immersed in what he was doing, whatever it was; the boy seemed caught in a state that could have been either hyper-lucid or dreaming with eyes wide open.
The lesson did not last long for Billy before it became obvious that, for some reason, Odin was unwilling to endorse his tutelage with the same enthusiasm. He showed the boy a few tantalizing applications of the room’s technology—the grid linked to the internet of things, the inside of the Villas, real time Net traffic all over the world, even peering over some of the cyber security bulwarks of the worlds biggest government’s and business conglomerates—but after only an hour he insisted Billy leave, and the boy begrudgingly started to go. As a new movement in the corner of the room caught his eye, he stopped. A small portal had opened in the corner of the room. And though Billy hadn't seen it before, it was roughly the size of a cat door. It slid open and a big raven stepped a scaly foot through onto one of the table tops.
Billy was overcome with curiosity and, ignoring Odin's orders to leave, ran over to the thing. He reached out to run a hand over it’s back as it stood there on the table, docile, like a well trained pet. He was expecting the soft and forgiving touch of feathers, but was shocked to find that bird was hard as metal. He inspected it further. Each feather was long and thin, but not a feather at all. Billy was flabbergasted. He looked at Odin, who was on the far side of the room, tattered jacket swaying from a gentle breeze that came from the open portal; the old man returned his gaze, expressionless, and motioned for him to be gone. Faraji took no notice, absorbed in cyberspace like a traveller lost in a forest.
Billy had taken one last look at the artificial raven before exiting the room. He looked into the bird's eyes. As it looked back at him he saw its mechanical pupil contract and dilate, retract and expand again. They held a spark behind them like something very much alive. He later told Jay he thought the animal, or animus, or whatever it should be called was super intelligent; he wasn't sure how he knew but, certainly, it was intelligent.
"Huginn," Odin explained, "is that one's name," as he was walking over to shut the door behind Billy.
Another gust. A second of the creatures entered the room and took a position next to the other.
"Muninn," Odin said. "Perhaps you'll see more of them another day."
He shut the door, leaving Billy alone in the corridor, speechless, dumbfounded, and oddly exhilarated.
Jay finished his cup of coffee and crumpet without much relish; the coffee was instant and the dried milk had not fully dissolved regardless of how long he stirred it. The crumpet had not defrosted well and looked sick with an unknown leprosy. Jay wasn't sure why, but he finished both doggedly and stood up. He thought he might try and have a chat with Faraji and set about finding the boy.
He believed the story, every word, for two reasons: his trust for his brother and the probability of it all. Artificial animals were nothing new, just uncommon and almost impossibly expensive these days. What was Odin doing with two of them, and how did he have the means to acquire such exotic and incredible pets? And what did he use them for? Jay wondered at the intelligence Billy was so sure about: were they just simple programs meant to follow the orders of their master or were they AI? He knew Odin would not tell him.
He left the grey metal table and benches, riveted to the ground like inside the cafeteria of a submarine. The stairs from the mess to the apartments were steep and constructed of the same bleak materials as the room below. Jay trudged upward and then through a long hall from either side of which extended all of their rooms.
Even upon stepping on the top stair Jay heard Faraji and his mother's voices from a behind a cracked door. The floor was hard and loud and without really knowing why Jay made an effort to muffle his footsteps and crept surreptitiously towards the opening and half closed his eyes and twice opened his ears.
They were having an argument. Nkiruka's voice ruptured the air with passion and anger:
" . . . is not natural to be around such a person and doing such things!" Nkiruka cried angrily to her son. "Your father kept you away from such a life for so long and now you turn your back on us! This man is no hero to us. He is a wizard of his own making, and you should stay away from him. He will trick you. He will show you power, trick you with what you could be and he will make you into the monsters that chase us. I don't want you to learn from him any longer!"
Faraji, with equal fire:
There is nothing evil in cyberspace."
"What do you know of it? The creatures that inhabit that land are no better than the spirits and devils of our old tales. They will haunt you to no end if you show yourself to them."
Things are not like that! He is showing me how to control all of it. Things that I never dreamed. One day, I might even be able to fight them . . ."
"Fight them? Never, Faraji. The moment you fight, they have won and you are lost."
"How do you know? Odin says perhaps one day I could. He's the strangest old man I've ever seen but I believe him. He saved us."
"He is too cold to trust."
"Why do you think the way you do? Why are we being chased, tell me why, so I can understand all of this!"
Book II
The modern hero . . . cannot, indeed must not, wait
for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized
avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding . . . It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And
so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal—carries the cross
of the redeemer—not in the bright moments of his tribe's great
victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.
Joseph Campbell