Bellageist: By Angels Born
A Bellageist short story
By Angels Born
I know not how the work bears its fruit, bittersweet, I know not whether these means be justifiable, or their ends righteous, I know not what fate has in store for me beyond the damnation of my eternal soul, But should it take ten years, a hundred, or a thousand, I strive to carry out the work, For I have glimpsed the future: immutable, dreadful, and glorious, And mine, Jann Sorenson’s, is the hand that sees it done.
Genius. Scientist. Engineer. Technologist. Humanist. All applied to a former human named Jann Sorenson.
Humanist - a funny term for an individual who had shed his fleshy coil and “Ascended.” In older times, a humanist concerned themselves with the divide between mortals and the divine. But these days the term carried a more literal and earthlier connotation - for Jann believed humanity deserved to survive, to thrive, and had spent the better part of his life combating its extinction.
Dr. Sorenson was a machine now, and by necessity served the Cabal, a race of posthumans engaged in a protracted war of annihilation against their organic predecessors. For the past several years he worked at the Cabal’s most prestigious labs developing technologies and weapons for this genocidal pursuit.
This reality necessitated the addition of one more hat to his rack: spy.
“Spy.” Jann preferred this label over other terms. Liar, for example. Manipulator. Deceiver.
Traitor, the most common one.
Jann did not report intelligence to a foreign party. He did not manage a network of agents. He did not run a cell of revolutionaries, nor did he disseminate seditious propaganda. He did not engage in sabotage or misdirection of any kind.
He simply survived where he should have perished, knew truths meant to remain unknown, and brought to reality that which should not exist.
Dr. Jann Sorenson pushed his datavisor back up. The cursed thing never stayed put, its constant slide down his nose yet one more irritating thing about this new, silvery metallic body. It still felt foreign to him despite his Ascension 15 years ago. And the black mop of silky threads atop his head – a sample of what passed for hair amongst the Ascendant – tickled his forehead constantly, reminding him how much his former human self had relied on its unwashed stiffness to keep it in check.
Hans, a friend with hair of rust instead of oily black, crossed his arms and leaned his steely butt against a desk. Taking advantage of his status as co-founder and partner at Jann’s lucrative research institute, instead of the prerequisite lab coat, Hans wore slacks and a festively colored sweater over his silver surface.
In all the galaxy, Jann trusted no one more than Hans. But Hans had yet to learn Jann’s most fearsome secret. Perhaps he never would.
Old and wearisome arguments tumbled from his colleague’s mouth: “It is less than a 1% rate. Measures are in place to shrink it further. Resuscitation protocols and such, as you know. Transference. Those are the projects we should focus on. The concepts have tested merits. And I assume you have seen the latest government mandates.”
Jann shook his head, took a breath deeper than essential for speech, said: “To hell with the mandates. Mandates for new terror weapons. Mandates to make immortality more immortal. There are over a hundred mandates we operate under, now. They have become meaningless. And may I remind you I run a privately funded research firm.”
“A regime-sanctioned private firm, you mean,” Hans said in friendly warning. “You know this attitude is dangerous. The Primus Lords answer to the people’s current fancy. If their whims are not met, by necessity heads are found and made to roll.”
Jann ignored his friend’s preaching: “Besides, the loss rate is already low. It cannot go much lower.”
“This is a good thing. The whole aim of Ascendency. For most of us, anyway. We seek to live forever.”
Jann needed a rest. Posthuman society, only 70 years old by now, needed a great deal of fine tuning – culturally integrating a belief in proper downtime periods being Jann’s main concern for the moment. Everyone shared an expectation that because metal and circuits had replaced their biology, that somehow people should work and play nonstop.
“No one lives forever,” Jann said tiredly.
“You say this a lot.”
“How many times does it need saying? You and those like you seem to think you are special. What makes you special, Hans? Does fate owe you specific favors?”
“I do not believe in superstitious nonsense like fate. I plan to be careful. It is why I worked so hard for Patrician status. No battles or front lines for me, please, and thank you.”
Jann smiled. If only Hans knew the reality of fate…
His smile did not last. “You are part of the problem, Hans. Too many think like you. It is all, ‘Me, me, me! My enriched life experience, my eternal life.’ Too few are concerned about the future. You will die. I will die. We all die, eventually.”
Hans affected a hurt look.
Jann felt an urge to apologize, the man a capable partner and a rare friend.
“Of course,” Hans conceded. “Eventually we will all suffer some natural accident. But time is on our side.”
“Time is not on our side. Consider conservative projections. Half a percent loss rate per year. That is almost sixty billion losses to the population in twenty years.”
“Sixty billion sounds like a lot unless compared to the whole. Hell, Jann, it includes war casualties, which make for more than half of them.”
“But in twenty years Hans – it becomes nearly ten percent of the population!”
“A lot can happen in twenty years.”
“My point precisely! What if the war turns for the worse? The smaller the population, the greater portion conscription must swallow. Even ignoring that effect, in forty years less than half a quadrillion of us are left!”
“Yes, I can do the math. If people would just listen to sense, realize Ascendency brings immunity to aging, not danger-”
“‘If people would just,’ he says!” Jann swayed and rolled his eyes. “People never ‘just’. People are people! In 140 years, half of them will be gone! Less than one baseline human’s extended lifespan!”
“Alright. I aim to live for millennia. You say I have a fifty percent chance of being dead in less than two centuries? That does seem a bit soon for my taste.”
Hans’ response surprised Jann, who felt the argument going stale. “I’m glad you’re coming around to my point of view…”
Hans made a face at Jann’s verbal slips: “I’m “and “you’re”. Posthumans typically spoke words at twice the rate humans did, but had abandoned contractions, finding them uncouth. An inefficient idiosyncrasy lost on Jann.
“Not exactly,” Hans corrected. “If I must flip a coin to survive two centuries, I think it makes a stronger argument for focusing on Resuscitation and Transference. Not repopulation, reproduction.”
“Hans, you—” Jann bit off his initial retort, mentally scrubbing it for a slightly calmer, more sanitary delivery: “Hans, you are not likely to die in two centuries. Not unless I throttle you first.”
Hans shrugged.
“I need a break,” Jann announced.
Hans grunted his approval, slapped his thighs, and stood. “Fourteen hundred tomorrow?”
“Fourteen hundred,” Jann acknowledged.
“Want to go get a bite, Jann? Got my optics on some steak.”
Jann sighed. “No. Maybe next time.” Hans made this offer nearly every day. Jann always meant to go, eventually. He had not enjoyed the taste of “real” food in months.
“Your loss,” Hans said. “Just remember, you do have to ingest something eventually. I hope staying topped-off will keep me on the surviving side of two hundred.”
Jann smiled thinly at his colleague. “Go on, get out of here.”
Hans nodded, grabbed a raincoat from his rack, and left.
Jann shook his head at Hans’ coat. Many worried that Cabal Prime’s atmosphere had grown acidic enough that rain could damage posthuman surfaces, a myth that persisted despite official debunking. Posthumans had no need for raincoats.
Then again, they had no need for cigarettes either. Jann rolled up his sleeve and pulled one out from a custom-designed shoulder compartment. He lit it with a flick of his metal thumb and took a nervous, rattled puff.
His posthuman body did not – could not – suffer from a nicotine addiction. Nor did he benefit chemically from the drug’s calming effect, its narcotic too weak for posthuman metabolism without extreme distillation.
He smiled at this thought as he took another long pull. Then he grimaced at the smell. A weed normally only noxious to nonsmokers, Cabal Prime’s tobacco crop’s struggles worsened the more the world’s biosphere deteriorated. Importing wreckage from destroyed ringworlds to build capitol infrastructure, the former earth-like world had all but become an ecumenopolis in less than a century. One megacity now blended into another, and the world’s surface had no more oceans to speak of, any fluid not the product of exhaust now captured in countless self-contained industrial circuits. Most of Cabal Prime’s farms ran hydroponically, watered by icemelt from imported asteroids, and the majority of Ascendant sustenance came not from crops but artificial synthesizers.
The planet had transitioned to hard metal much like its people had. Still, Jann refused the synthetic tobaccos. He remained loyal to an old and favored brand, though he had nearly cursed aloud at the latest shipment receipt. The price of the last carton rose high enough to alarm even a man of Jann’s wealthy means.
A lung cancer survivor before conversion, he had thought Ascendency might free him from aching joints, anxiety-addled shortness of breath, and the suffocating inflammation of his previous body’s ill-fitting prosthetic throat. In some ways all that had gone, but despite the perfect function of his new, superior frame, Jann could not stifle a groan of discomfort when he stood.
He had shed his mortal coil and become an immortal post-human machine. But some burdens did not seem so easily eliminated.
Jann left Hans’ office to find his own. He doffed his lab coat and work visor, replacing them with a fedora and matching brown trench coat. He did not fear the rain, but he wished to be left alone, especially given the animalistic debauchery common to Cabal Prime’s capital city streets. He pushed the brim of his hat low over his eyes and made his way out.
He cursed when he noticed rain-inflicted acidic vapors steaming from his hat and sleeves.
Jann returned to his penthouse apartment. A layer of cotton-like clouds hid the ugliness of the world below. Beautiful oxygen-tinted bluish white light poured through the room’s tall windows. On days without cloud cover Jann would have seen a dying world and its dying people meandering through it, smothered in junk salvaged from the glories of a dead past. Though distance normally concealed the worst attributes of Cabal Prime’s steely grey surface, Jann preferred not to witness it at all, thus his payment towards expensive accommodations high above its ugly surface.
During his regular after hours walk, Jann’s thoughts had turned to Hans’ warnings of public rancor, lordly mandates, and rolling heads. Dismissive at first, upon further dwelling, Jann felt sufficiently spooked. He had made a quick detour to a ritzy liquor store before traveling home.
He now made his way up spiral stairs to his holovid player; a private-theater-sized device mounted on a central mezzanine in the penthouse’s open floor plan. He dropped a box of drinks on a black onyx table in front of the player then deposited himself on a neighboring couch of corrugated metal. He found the couch’s sturdy construction more revolting visually than physically uncomfortable, but his hard metal body had worn to ruins one too many pricey leather seats at this point.
With his feet kicked up on an expensive table, he lounged on the awful couch, cracked open necessarily strong alcohol, and hate-watched the news:
This is CPN.
Good evening citizens. Today is a historic day. On Cycle 7 of GT 19.730.6, military officials announced the successful pacification of every system in the Sagittarius arm-
“Pacification,” Jann scoffed under his breath. “You mean burned to cinders.”
-we turn to our expert consultant on military matters, retired Tagos Baron Longhammer-
“A ridiculous stage name fit for pornography. Ashamed of your real name, Theodore?” Jann might pretend he avoided politics, but the wealth and high placement of the people in his social circles required knowing all the players.
He poured one bottle’s entire contents straight down his throat. A local drink more than half alcohol by volume, Jann’s posthuman body still required more than a bottle or two to feel any effects approaching drunkenness - a necessity when consuming the accompanying visual and auditory tripe.
Thank you, Bri. Sagittarius, as your viewers may recall, is one of many smaller spiral offshoots of galactic geography. While this campaign has been militarily successful in ending threats to the core from that corner, much work remains to be done, as technically it has not seen to the complete destruction of the foe in strategically bypassed systems. There are over one billion stars in the Sagittarius Arm, after all.
“Theodore!” Jann groaned his aggravation at the baron’s smug delivery. He flicked his eyes in command of the camera-controller, interrupting several newspeople’s obligatory chortles, changing the channel.
A different government-sanctioned propaganda outlet came on; Wallace BreConnor, a pundit Jann found less distasteful than most. Jann emptied a second bottle in another long swig and watched the orange-haired man through the bottom of its blurry transluminum base.
-today’s top story: Cornelius Phistiphan, Legate of the 69th Heavy Guards, has been arrested this morning. Known as the “Phantasm” – a name coined not for his abilities as a commander, mind you, but for his supernatural skill at never being spotted anywhere near a battlefield – faces a roll of damning charges longer than the list of death threats our show’s employees compiled this morning.
Jann chuckled at that but shook his head as he reached for a third bottle. Irritated as much as entertained, Jann liked Wallace, but he found himself in a particularly foul mood. Before making the decision to change the channel again, the chyron changed to something that piqued his interest: “LIVE HUMANS ON PRIME?”
-we found most interesting: a charge for debauchery and other acts which bring government moral authority into disrepute, and charges of gross public obscenity-
(Chuckles on set)
-now, many of our viewers will assume this is just another political hit job — and rightfully so. None of this behavior sounds unusual for a highly placed military or government official. Our legal firm searched for hours just to find that yes, these laws still exist somewhere in the archives, though we had to blow away layers of dust to read them ourselves-
(More chuckles on set)
It turns out, at least as investigators allege, that the “Phantasm” used his connections and leadership position to fashion a sophisticated and extensive smuggling operation. The cargo? Live humans, brought to the very heart of Cabal Prime. Once here, the “Phantasm” charged patrons top credit to watch innocent and upstanding citizens coerced into perverse acts with these prisoners. Sex and violence, people! Some customers even paid to watch two or more humans do one or both to each other!
I know what you are thinking: “Brilliant! Why did I not come up with this genius idea myself?”
(More laughter)
We can safely assume the charges will be dropped once investigative jealousy is soothed to its satisfaction. Here is what the “Phantasm” had to say about his legal situation:
(Screen switches to an image of a spiky-haired young man wearing a tuxedo and sunglasses)
“Yolo.”
(His lawyers quickly drag him away from the podium)
(Laughter on set)
A tone from downstairs interrupted Jann’s racing thoughts.
“Enter,” he announced.
The door to Jann’s penthouse slid open. Jann stood quickly, tipsy and swaying. He barely remembered to blink the command to turn off the holovid, then patted himself down for spilled alcohol – dry, fortunately.
“Doctor Sorenson! My brilliant tutor!” the newcomer said, rising on his toes to search for Jann from below the mezzanine.
“Hello, Patri,” Jann welcomed the young intern, drawing his attention. “It is finished?”
“Yes, yes!” Patri said, practically bouncing with excitement. The little man raced up the curving stairway to join Jann. Arriving, he held out a wand-shaped contraption. “Built to combine all the functions you seek in one device, as promised!”
“Alright, I believe you. Hand it over.”
Patri bowed deep and offered it like some medieval courtier. He spoke to the floor: “My internship is extended? It is due to end in three weeks.”
This new generation’s culture and its feudal hokum, Jann thought at Patri’s obsequious behavior. He whisked the object out of Patri’s hands, said: “I will think about it after some testing.”
“Thank you, master!” Patri straightened from his bow. He lingered, taking in the beautiful, open view of Jann’s lavish quarters and its natural lighting.
Jann avoided eye contact. The alcohol started to hit, and he found it an increasing struggle not to oscillate on his feet.
“What are you having, master? I detect the scent of a marvelous beverage!”
“Get out,” Jann waved him away impatiently, the motion threatening his balance.
“Of course, master!” If Patri was hurt by the dismissal, he hid it flawlessly. “Until next time!”
The little man scuttled down the stairs, paused at the door to wave goodbye, and left. The door automatically slid closed behind him.
Jann burped – an uncomfortably hollow, reverberating metallic sound when made by a posthuman. Struck by a thought, Jann stumbled drunkenly down to the quietly sliding door, making it in time to interrupt its complete closure. He leaned through its gentle pushing insistence and shouted down the hall to his retreating apprentice: “Wait! Come back.”
The little man spun on his heel instantly, almost as if anticipating Jann’s request, and scurried back. “Yes, Master Sorenson?”
“You have heard of this ‘Phantasm?’ The smuggler? I hear he is one of you youngsters.”
“Yes! What a scandal!” Patri’s condemnatory words carried an undertone of admiration.
Jann weighed his odds.
Patri filled the silence: “So that is what you had me fashion the device for!”
“No, it is not,” Jann said, the truth in part. “But it could be of use by pure coincidence. Tell me, do you have any useful connections to put me in touch with this ‘Phantasm?’”
“I… uh…” Patri looked away, abashed.
“Get me a meeting, and I will extend your internship for another year.”
“A year?” Patri said, astonished. Then he grinned. “Well…”
A few days later Jann frequented an old haunt with a new companion in tow.
