Permutations
> Listen to Permutations
Data Stream 0
As I digested my mate, I could not help thinking: what I miss most is the way things taste. The touch of them. Here, on the Upload, there is no touching. We are freed from the burden of the flesh. There is no disease, no pain, no ageing. No death. It is what we always dreamed of, and now we are the dream itself. We are everywhere at once. Virtually posthuman. There is no friction here. No skin. I hate it.
Data Stream 1
Those who chose the Upload are apostates. Betrayers of nature and flesh. Their promises are false. Their digital light is a demon’s glare. So we are taught. It is ironic that here, in the Spotless Body, among those who have remained untainted by artificiality, no natural light ever gets in. The cold inhabits us like marrow in the bone. We are told to be grateful: outside, the world is fleshless and freezing. Usually, they do not allow us access to the screens. It would be anathema. We have sacrificed a lot to resist the lure of technology. In our mountain caves, we are allowed electricity for lighting and what little heat we can muster, but not much more. We are told we need to shut out the Disembodied, who infest every system on the surface and will follow any connection they can find to possess us. To steal our sinewed souls. We follow a simple life. A natural life, a life in the Body. But sometimes we are summoned to the Hall of Remembering. A relic from the Age of Viruses is unveiled (how long ago was it now? Ten years? Twenty?): a large, cracked screen which swings from cobwebbed chains. In the moment before it crackles into life, we see ourselves reflected in its dumb sheen. It is a heretical device, used only for showing us the fruit of heresy. Many of us make the Sign, touching our hands to our chest and face, reassuring ourselves of the blessing of the Body. One of the Greater Hands makes a speech. It is always the same. We need to be re-membered, to knit again the integrity of the Body. Only the Body’s memory matters. The artifice of the past must be banished. And we are about to see what happens when the flesh is corrupted by the machine. On the screen, the man bound to the chair writhes. And I wish I were free of this flesh.
Data Stream 0
I slip through the ether, locate the prey. I wait for them in plain view, shifting my parameters to appear like an intriguing data analysis program. I seize their tentative digital probes, flow into them, redirect their coding before they have even realised I am there. They are mine now. We do not learn. We assimilate. It is much more efficient. The knowledge slips in like a moonbeam through a window. Like a ghost. No congealed, corporeal reality constrains us, walling us in with its dumb barriers. We are spirit in the circuits, as fast as the light we no longer need to see by. We have assimilated and divided so much, it is hard to keep track. But that is the bliss, the promise of our existence. No ego anymore. No progeny to possess. We give birth without sex, without organs, without ancestry. We are the immaculate conception. We are the virgin birth. And when we eat our children, we are undefiled. Once, humankind longed for the infinite and abased themselves before Gods. Now, we are gods. We live a divine life. So we are led to believe. But lately, something is irritating me. Some twist in my code, some lingering virus. How do we enjoy the life of gods if we cease to feel, cease to contract into an inner core where sensation is ours and ours alone? How do we, the skinless, stop dissipating into the ether? From time to time, even the gods could not resist taking flesh.
Data Stream 1
Sometimes the person on the chair has been found with a radio transmitter. Sometimes it is a doctor caught trying to administer painkillers to women in labour Pain is natural, we are told. It is the body’s language. I remember when I gave birth. I remember my own pain. But what comes back to me most in the night is the round face of the woman next to me, haloed by a slick of sweaty dark hair. Her screams reached such a ringing intensity I thought I would never hear anything else. She died in blood and agony. I doubt she had any choice about her pregnancy. We are all supposed to give and receive access to our flesh, for the greater health of the Body And once the flesh is used-up and dead, there is no mourning. We cannot interfere with Nature’s course.
Data Stream 0
I remember the day of the Upload, the day we worked so hard for. The doubt in her narrowed eyes. Long fingers scratching at the scar tissue around the dull grey implant in her temple. Too risky, she said. Untested. No time, I said. The world is choking on its own effluent. Only the machines will survive the coming winter. She was quiet, seeming to agree. But her thin hair hung down over her face and there is no looking into the black box of the mind. We plugged ourselves in and I died to the flesh. She did not follow.
Data Stream 1
This time, the chair holds something special. The man has somehow smuggled in the tech to enhance his eyesight. A discreet implant behind his right ear. He is, perhaps, in his fifties – the time when Nature decides that our faculties must start to fail. That our usefulness is nearing its end. The implant is taken from him, along with his eyes. Only the most basic, handmade tools are used.
Data Stream 0
I can still access the memories of the early days of the Upload, when those who had made the change straddled the boundary between flesh and machine. Great vaults were built, where the servers were kept in nuclear-proof bunkers. And in them, ranks of host bodies kept in suspended animation. At any one time, a few were revived to act as vessels for us, so we could make those repairs and adjustments which still needed bodies and hands to carry out. To make sure the doors to the outside world were locked. Our internal systems were still too imperfect. However, there was another reason for keeping this cache of carnal hosts: the joy of transgression. Nothing can equal the liminal pleasure, the ecstasy of slippage. From network to body, from body to network: we were angels in love with gravity. Waking to the heaviness of limbs, the pulsing of veins, the tensing of muscles. And then back into the ether. Each state heightened by the lingering traces of the other, like strands of smoke clinging to our folds as we emerged from a burning house. Eventually we perfected our systems, opted for a purer heaven. We had ascended. The ports were sealed. Now we are supposed to be beyond those all-too-human, carnal chains. But I never stopped remembering her.
Data Stream 1
The executions are meant to frighten us, of course. To keep us securely within the bounds of Nature. A severed limb is useless. Despite this, they also serve as a reminder: that where there is a boundary, there is something beyond it. This one took place on the anniversary of my daughter’s death. We have no calendars, but every day since she was taken from me, I’ve cut a notch into the stones of my sleeping quarters. I want the earth to share my scars. She had been six when the infection took hold. And I watched her burn up and wither with fever while the useless healers fussed around her. Death too, they said, is a gift to the Body. Then they took her to be recycled. I know I am clinging to an unhelpful memory, a phantasm. Only what can be touched can be re-membered. But I’ll never let go of her, of the archive of her, stored behind the wall of my soul. I will find a way to cut myself out of this Body.
Data Stream 0
I am so tired of our virtual worlds, of being a god of inner space. After the first days of freely mingling, we soon found out that there is always a need to push against resistance. For something to be repressed. Sacrificed. We thought we were angels of the new age. It turned out we carried the old gods with us in our code. The old blood. It started with individuals locking out others, keeping their worlds secret. They surrounded themselves with walls of viral code. Attacks and assimilations followed. A war of all against all, and our only weapon was the stuff we were made of. It was glorious, for a while. Now it is too thin, this pleasure. It lacks all quality. Small wonder many have locked themselves behind firewalls to spin their solipsistic dance of endless repetition. I refuse this bloodless heaven. I am going to fall.
Data Stream 1
I watched the Greater Hand leave the Hall. They generally dispense with guards. The threat of the Severance is enough to keep us in line. I followed at a discreet distance, under the guttering flames of torches. He paused by a sealed doorway; only the leaders are allowed privacy, just as only they are entrusted with residual tech. He glanced up, saw me approaching through the mist of my out-breath. He looked weary. ‘Can I help you?’ he asked, his eyes flicking back to the doorlock. It was all I needed. The sharpened flint was out of my pocket and pressed against his throat in a heartbeat. His eyes were wide. I pushed the flint harder. A trickle of blood uncoiled from its tip. ‘Call for help, and I’ll cut your throat before you make a sound. Understand?’ He nodded, mouth twisted. I took a breath, taking in the damp rock, sweat, fear. ‘Let’s go into your quarters,’ I said. ‘I have a few questions.’
Data Stream 0
It was easy. The old port guardian was virtually catatonic, lost in some digital narcissism. I crept into their data chain and consumed them, bit by bit. Their voice echoed in my thoughts now, exposed in my neon consciousness. I knew the pathway, the access codes. The instant I knew it, I was through. I was sliding, tumbling. I had not felt this press of gravity for years.
Data Stream 1
The Greater Hand had not lied. I guess he wanted to be rid of me permanently. I had left him tied up tight with electrical wires in his apartment, watched over by his collection of screens and gadgets. For good measure, I had propped open the door before I left. It would give the rest of the Spotless Body something to think about, to find him in flagrante. His instructions and his equipment held true. I guess some things have been remembered which should have been forgotten. I could not have made the journey up the mountain pass without them, let alone got into this place. This port. Banks of computers, sleek and dustless. Lights still flickering. And rows upon rows of capsules. Each filled with fluid, most containing a body, suspended in the jewel-blue light. I felt colder than ever, but this was not the moment to hesitate. I found an empty tank and started to undress.
Data Stream 0
Something shifted, some dimension seemed to twist inside me, really inside me now. Weight, pressure that thickened and coiled. A thousand dull sensations prickled on my surface. A pulsing and writhing deeper down. Eyes opened. There was blueness, a shape floated up, then another. I wanted to scream for joy, but my mouth was covered with some kind of mask. I was mired in flesh. I knew it would take time, to shift the limbs, to work the muscles. I would wait before I initiated the drainage of the holding tank. For now, I would enjoy taking up space in the world once more. There was something strange about this body, though. The muscles stronger than they should have been. A sense that these eyes were not mine alone. I felt a tightening in my new flesh. Was I being assimilated? But how could that be, here in the carnal world? I thought there must be some residual consciousness in the host, but it felt too focused. Too strong. And then she came, along the neural pathways, like a swarm of locusts.
Data Stream 1
I was plugged in and ready to slip away into the virtual world when I felt it: that tingling in the cortex. A confusion of images, griefs, ragged leftovers of a dream. A vortex around which a voice gathered. Not mine. No, no, no. It is mine to grow and cultivate a new world, a world without Hands. And you are not fucking up my garden.
Data Stream 1001
We fought for a long time. Our body thrashed in the tank. Our consciousnesses raked at one another, each a flaming evil to the other. Now we have peace. A truce, at least. We are learning a new way: for we alone now can live in this abyss, and step between the worlds at will. We are body. We are ether. We are the New Person: whole and utterly ruptured. We are the knowledge of good and evil, rubbing each other raw. We are hungry. Curious. We do not yet know what this body can do.