Fantastic Metropolis

1

At age twelve, as the Herschel autognostic probe was still wading across the rubble of the Oort cloud, Carlos Esteves wrote the essay that earned him his eventual fifteen minutes of fame: “A day at the beach in Proxima 4.” Truth be told, it wasn’t just him. Two hundred other children from all over the civilized world—better yet, those from countries that financed the Project—received similar honors: to send a little piece of themselves towards the future, to be able to walk the ground of a new world, and—in Carlos’s case—build an ephemeral sandcastle by the tides of another ocean.

People still lived in the glorious days prior to the twilight of all technology. By then, the hole in the ozone layer covered the entire Australian continent, and melanomata blossomed on anything resembling Caucasian skin. In all honesty, playing at the beach—on sandy shores so polluted they’d induce deadly anaphylactic shock on anyone who laid down on them—had become a thing of the past, part of a tradition now seen only on old videodiscs kept by grandparents going through nostalgia crisis.

Carlos’s essay was a good one, written by him alone and without parental guidance—or so the jury/censor AI determined—and revealed that which could be called a deep artistic sensibility, by describing in minute detail the way the pincers of the exploratory probe would arrange small pebbles and shells—assuming there would be any on Proxima 4—in order to erect a sand building, like a stronghold, so as to show alien civilizations they weren’t facing a simple machine, but a creative conscience capable of producing something larger than the sum of any of its parts.

Carlos accepted his diploma surrounded by the few New Expo aquaria—which still displayed a sad few representatives of Earth’s biosphere—, was applauded by family and teachers, and patted on the back by the President. All good-byes were said, and dressed up in his School uniform with filtering mouthpiece raised so he wouldn’t breathe in the necrotic stench of the Straw Sea, Carlos boarded the MagLev bound for Genève and the Jean Piaget Institute.

The journey through darkness took less than a day, but Carlos had been partially doped with several therapeutic hypnotics and barely noticed it. The train dove into the tunnel outside Lisbon, a tunnel made of vacuum to facilitate inertial acceleration, and crossed Europe almost always underground—thus avoiding any sabotage attempts by the Genetic Front for Racial Unity—eventually resurfacing above the clouds and Fortress Europe into a different fortress—this time an economic one—its access restricted to a chosen few, specialized research personnel and other plutocrats.

The Piaget Institute resembled a bunker, wrapped like an onion in increasingly aggressive layers of tanglewire, micro assault tanks, decapitating frisbees that hummed like swarms of wasps, exploding nanobots, and many more delights a paranoid society loves to surround itself with. True, there were gardens around the bunker, but these were for exclusive use by the untouchables, the immensely rich who promenaded on the cobbled pathways, parasols unfurled and faces covered in protective cream, the cobbles on the ground themselves sheltered by multiple UV filter plates.

But Carlos had been chosen—even if temporarily. He was there at the invite of Microsoft, bearing uniform and suitcase all paid for by the Gates Empire. The translation implant rooted to his left auricle droned on about what sounded like topographic directions in a sweet, maternal voice, only the system was malfunctioning and gave out information in excellent Mandarin instead of Portuguese. The laureate youth wouldn’t allow even that to intimidate him, though. There were more children coming from the mouth of the underground station, children with functioning implants, and wherever one of them went, the rest would surely follow. Carlos took a deep breath of mountain air purer than that of Lisbon and went about following his fellows, ID card held on high so he could show anyone demanding it that he had full right of passage.

 

Phase one of the Project consisted of VR training. Lying in the dark and paralyzed below the cervix, Carlos first piloted the simulation of the arachnid that would explore the coastal areas of Proxima 4. Since no one really knew the precise contexture of those otherworldly shores—the only assurance was that there was water, and oceans—Carlos instead visited the flooded moors of the Netherlands, and learned—under software assistance—to use six legs instead of two, and perform with the operating pincers and scoops in order to build the famous sandcastle in his project. For hours on end, and displaying increasing skill at his work, he built sixteenth-century strongholds beneath the walls of knocked-down dykes near the disemboweled carcasses of ancient oil tankers. He used mud, lumps of tar, strips of seaweed, and small bits of vulcanized rubber. The true nature of the materials didn’t matter. The fundamental thing was being able to choose whatever was at hand.

Once he was done with all the training, and given that the new forms of locomotion and reality perception were now an integral part of his cognitive processes, Carlos proceeded into the testing stage, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of questions, the kind which could only be answered through yes or no, until the monitor AI and the supporting research staff got a well formed picture of his personality makeup, as well as the secret paths of his entire neural roadmap. Finally, inside the CAT cylinder where lights chased one another at the sound of a little Mozart tune played for relaxation, they scanned his brain, one level after the other, until the AI could base upon it a Turing model in all aspects similar to the original.

As for the rectenna implant procedure, Carlos didn’t feel a thing. The truth, however, was that he’d spend the remainder of his days with a semi-proteinic microchip attached to his pre-frontal lobes, an implant which would only be activated–if ever–many, many years from then.

Finally, the Institute’s research staff brought all the children to a nigh-euphoric state of mind by taking them in single file to the screening room where an animated film about the Hershel probe’s journey to Proxima Centauri was showing. Between shouting, clapping and the chewing of liquorous chocolate, they watched the probe pass over the Oort cloud, shuddered in face of so many ice balls that twirled in the ever expanding emptiness of space, and applauded as the electromagnetic grid of the Bussard reactor unfolded and attracted thousands of hydrogen atoms to itself, which then powered the fusion torch and propelled the probe at an apocalyptic acceleration into the stellar chasms. Twenty five trillion miles, explained the narrator in a compassionate voice. A little over 4.29 light-years. A journey to last for years on end. When the signal got back, more likely than not all Project members would be dead. Unless those members were children. Children such as you, o glorious explorers. Children who would one day pick up the signal and experience in person, on the brink of old age, a peerless adventure from their twelve year old counterparts. Happy are those who can wait for a lifetime. Happy are those who, fifty years from now, will stroll in the lush green meadows of a new world, free from illness and death.

“All together now,” shouted an old professor, right from the center of the illuminated stage, connected to a wheelchair where they could see more tubes and circuitry than actual organic parts. “On the right arm of your seats there’s a button. Press it when the green light goes on. In that precise instant, your personalities will be uploaded by laser beam to the probe’s autognostic intelligence. Part of you will therefore contribute to the gestalt memory of the exploration modules. But a small part of that memory, and here’s your true reward, will have a conscience, with decision power and reflexive capabilities. My friends, such tiny experience of a new world, once lived through, will be sent back, first to the satellites in geosynchronous orbit around Proxima 4, then across stellar space, back to Earth and the orbital satellites from which you’ll be able to download your memories. So please do us the favor of staying alive (laughter) for the next fifty years. Be patient and stand by for the most extraordinary experience ever bestowed upon mankind. That of walking on a new world…”

“For how long?” Carlos Esteves asks, arm raised, shouting so he can be heard, in French even, since the semantic translator had decided to momentarily switch to Serbo-Croatian. “For how long will we be able to control the probe?”

“What?” the old Professor checks the audience list and the place where the question came from on his virtual organizer. “Carlos? You want to know if you’ll have enough time to build your sandcastle? Certainly, my son. All the time in the world. I thought you already knew that. Five minutes, right? Good, hey? You can do lots of great things in five minutes… All the time in the world… And now, let’s all press the button at the same time. A-one, and a-two, and a-...

2

Fifty years passed, and Carlos can barely remember he’d sent part of himself on the memory banks of a semi-gnostic probe bound for the fourth planet in the Rigil Kent trinary system. The Project had failed. The research team responsible for it had reached the age of compulsive retirement and been discreetly euthanasiated by the new eugenic policy that protects Europe from a senile and unproductive population. Others, subject to the laws of chaos and entropy, simply died along the way, contaminated by some mutant virus or a prion concealed in the muscle tissue of pigs and chickens. The virtual memories of the Project had been erased, eaten away or destroyed by the electromagnetic pulse bombs of terrorists.

Besides, Carlos Esteves now had different matters to worry about. It’s only a few days till the end of the new century, and he contemplates a sealine fraught with smoke and adorned ships from inside the control cabin of the frigate Gil Eanes. He’s one hundred miles off the southern coast of Algarve, under a hothouse sun on a rust-tinted ocean, part of the vanguard blockade fleet. From high above, surveillance cameras hum like a querulous swarm, sometimes stable, but almost always rushing from one place to the other, few centimeters above the choppy sea. Far ahead, partially concealed beneath the horizon line, a refugee convoy stains the sea red with spilt oil and putrefying corpses. Even at a distance, the stench of death chafes the nostrils of those who walk the decks unprotected. The European fleet faces the dreaded invasion at last. Here’s the weight of the Third World—or what little is left of it—piled up on whatever freighters, fishing ships and oil tankers still operate. Millions of starving, HIV-positive children hidden below the contaminated bulge of the tankers. Millions of warriors sweating blood from every pore, prey to a new strain of Ebola. The Hot Zone shuffles in a final death-rattle, bearing on Paradise. The voices, at once menacing and imploring, sound through the radio. Voices demanding right of passage and an end to the Shengen agreement. Voices claiming to have active nuclear devices with them, old bombs bought from the Emirates, ready to detonate in sequence should a single freighter be torpedoed. Bombs capable of building up a vast tidal wave and destroy the last fishing-banks in existence for good. Voices demanding deliverance, or Fortress Europe’s glorious demise.

But Carlos Esteves doesn’t care. They all bluff for sure. Like his comrades throughout the European fleet, he’s got his finger on the trigger button that activates the torpedoes. Carlos is a good man, a steadfast and obedient officer. He’s got an apartment, a family and a cat to feed. Like millions of other Europeans, he’s not inclined to share his small slice of heaven with anyone else. If the order ever arrives, he will carry it out. Pressing a button was to engage in safe and clean warfare. Death at a distance and the blessing of the abyss as a way to cleanse the world.

Carlos has his finger on the button when a furious migraine mounts all of a sudden. Bewildered, he blinks and shakes his head, fearing the onset of an aneurism, but strangely enough, there are words scrolling behind his retina. Words he thought had been lost forever.

Commlink Open
Downloading from Herschel Probe
5 Minutes and Counting Down
Thank You, Dear User

And in the moment that follows, he’s twelve years old again, has 360-degree stereo vision, six legs, and four operating pincers. There is not one but two stars in the sky, one huge and yellow, the other tiny, white and fulgurant. Here I am, he thinks, at the beach in Proxima 4!

In here the sky is so blue that the arachnid filters polarize in order to avoid permanent damage. To the left, Carlos sees a monumental cliff, arching, ruined by millennial erosion. To the left is an ocean, viscid and thick, covered by a carpet of seaweed that reaches far into the horizon. Beneath the ball-bearing polymer, the whole ground is made of shells, exoskeletons and dismembered ossicles, as if there’s not a single grain of sand in that beach, nothing, except for the fossil remains of a monumental hecatomb. Curious, Carlos rakes the soil with the jointed pincers and removes the topmost layers, but underneath them are still more, a collection of chromatic dregs more and more compressed until they begin to form solid plates. With three of his eyes, Carlos focuses on the images of frenetic and microscopic alien life frozen in sediment. Green, red, blue. The entire beach is a rainbow of gaudy colors, without a single conglomerating substance he could use to build the castle. Carlos knows he’s got little more than five minutes to prove his worth. Five minutes his “self” in a distant future would relive, review, and regard. To work! Carlos aims the arachnid’s head at the ocean and steers towards the water line. Thoraxes and exoskeletons crack under the device’s ball-bearings and track racks. Carlos doesn’t care. The ocean is packed with seaweed, something he could use to glue shells together. Quick, quick, the clock is ticking. High up, a flock of avian creatures heaves itself up in the air, deserting the cliff slopes. The air is filled with shrieks. Those which pass for birds in Proxima 4 don’t chirp. Instead, they stridulate in a wail of sirens. Carlos wonders if the passage of the arachnid is the cause for this much commotion, but soon realizes night had quickly fallen, even though both stars were still positioned at relatively noon. The beach quavers, nervous all of a sudden. The whole ocean recedes. Carlos raises his eyes to a curtain of water which soon becomes a wall. There he is before an immense, rising wave, ever-swelling, blotting out the sky. The wind now blows towards the liquid wall, hauling a handful of the unfortunate avians in its wake. Carlos is powerless, unable to run, escape, get out of there. Three minutes of subjective time still remain in the program, enough to suffer the direct impact of the wave. Even though he’s a kid, he knows he’s in the wrong place at the wrong time. Alpha and Proxima Centauri had entered a junction point, something which only happens once in a million years. The stars’ gravitational fields cause disturbances in both systems. Seasonal tides. Cyclic extinctions. This is one of them.

Carlos forgets all about his project to build a sandcastle in a strange land. Carlos doesn’t want to die now, even though it’s only simulated death. But 4.3 light-years away from Earth, what can he do but wince, clench his fists and shriek in chorus with the birds, shriek until the kinetic energy of the tidal wave disintegrates him against the arching cliff…?

End Download
Systemic Error
Sorry, Dear User

Carlos Esteves awakens on the command cabin floor of the frigate Gil Eanes, his finger pressed against the virtual fire button. The captain shouts orders and counter-orders in his ears. However, Carlos can’t help but curl up and tremble, clench his fists and cast torpedo after torpedo into the muddled waters of the Atlantic.

Such torpedoes have a near-paranoid artificial conscience. Once launched, they refuse to abort. Software glitch or sabotage by the Racial Liberation Front, who knows? One is enough. Refugee freighter down. And a still viable micro nuclear device concealed in the hold. Ignition. The entire sealine lights up, detonating every other bomb.

Carlos rises to his knees, eyes shut against the splendor of light. Light which reminds him of a hundred thousand million Alpha Centaurii.

Fifty years later, Carlos dies the way his virtual double died forty trillion kilometers away.

Killed by a shockwave.

In synchronicity.

---

Translated from the Portuguese by Luís Rodrigues.