Φ

The first time I had a vision, I was in church. It felt like a waking dream, misty images unfolded themselves in my mind. I was twelve and I dreamed that I was married. Of course, I dismissed it as a daydream. My mind had wandered during the sermon, and I had imagined a happy future.

Except that first one, later visions were of small, insignificant events. Even so, I told no one except my brother. He told me to keep my mouth shut. There were cruel punishments for witches. I didn’t want to be killed or banished.

When I finally did get married, it was a realization of the first vision. A week later, I had my second serious vision. I imagined that I had gone out into the desert. I felt sadness, like I was searching for answers. Then, I was kidnapped by the monsters and taken to a place where there was no light. While my wife was in childbirth, I suddenly knew that I could fulfill that vision, so I went out into the desert, alone. And, indeed, I was taken.

They tried to inject me with me poison but I fought against the effects. I was barely conscious when I realized that there were others with me. We were inside a machine that was moving, carrying us somewhere. I could feel the presence of another one like me. So, I tried to communicate. Although my mind was sinking, visions flooded me. They put things under my skin. Bright lights were all around me. I could not move but I could feel my body and my mind changing.

When I finally regained my mind, I felt very different. The monsters, too, had changed. They were like me. We were not quite human, with tiny machines crawling under our white skin. Although I remembered who I was before, there was an empty space in my mind, like I was a child in school again, craving knowledge. And they would soon give me the answers to many of my questions.

The one I sensed inside the machine earlier looked friendly. I wanted to become his friend. But I could see he was unhappy. So, I touched his head, and reached inside his mind. I saw some of his memories, most of which he could no longer see. Amidst the memories, I saw a number, and I exchanged it with my own. I gave him some of my memories, too. And suddenly, he became strong. Every day, I helped him resist the machines that tried to change our minds, even while my own mind was being filled up.

Eventually, his resistance was judged to be a failure and he was sent away. I hoped he would see my wife, my parents, my brother. They would see him and know something of the truth outside their tiny village. Then, they might come looking for me and rescue me. Inside my head, I held the true knowledge of the world. I would return to my village as a messiah. I would reach my hand out and carry them into the future.

So, I studied the history of the world, according to the post-humans, and found that there were many villages like my own. I was heartbroken and, at the same time, I knew I had to continue onward with my quest.

It was not right that a minority of post-humans could control the destiny of the species so easily. Their sense of superiority was painful. But, like my fear of being executed for witchcraft, I remembered my brother’s advice, and kept my mouth shut. They thought I was becoming one of them but, in truth, I was becoming something better than them.

Χ

She had congratulated all of us but I knew she was talking to me. I had finished my integration into this new world. The plan, guided by my visions, was about to be thrust upon them. Their world would change in the blink of an eye. And our species, divorced for so long, would be reunited again.

The change that loomed in my mind was inevitable. They had lost the ability to procreate. A species that could no longer evolve was doomed to extinction. I was just the vessel of change. If I had not carried the message, someone else, sooner or later, would. I knew that to be completely true, especially after reading about the Christchurch Incident. It had been tried before, and the change had been aborted. That tiny city had chosen suicide over change. But this city that I found myself in, was the largest, the biggest. The inhabitants were the first-ranked in the world. Those that led the city were among the first post-humans. They would not be so quick to cancel the oncoming evolution. They had lived a thousand years and would surely not give themselves up to death now.

Professor Jasmine, she would definitely be the one to watch. Perhaps under her warm exterior was the heart of a machine. But she had lived long enough to know that life was valuable. Certainly, she would not throw hers away before the change took root.

But when she had me arrested, I knew that my plan might not go ahead as easily as I had thought. And then they put me in a security cell, in isolation, where I could no longer access the neural net. But even while she was interviewing me, that was the moment that would be engraved in history. They had called it a virus at Christchurch but it was no such thing. It was something like an engram. It was a thought-pattern. It was an idea.

I had studied the Christchurch Incident in detail. I knew that there, it had taken years for the thought to spread. Perhaps the originator there had been desperate. His mind had not been composed well-enough. Perhaps, he had uploaded the thought-pattern too quickly, or it was incomplete.

But while Jasmine was busy questioning me, I readied myself. At her moment of anger, I saw her weakness and began my transmission. It scarcely lasted a second and I’m sure she didn’t notice. I had done well, hopefully. She would be the first to realize my action. She would also be the first to recognize the change. Hopefully, she would realize that I was trying to do good.

Ψ

As I sat in my cell, cut off from the neural network, my head became light. I fell to the floor, closed my eyes, and felt like I would die.

It was a vision. It was the strongest I had ever had. And it wasn’t showing me the future. I was looking at the present. My brother, my cousin, and my friend were in the city. They had come looking for me but instead of rescuing me, they would have to depend on me to save them.

And with a single thought, I reached my mind out of my body and passed through the closed door. The security guards did not look up at me as I passed. I walked, invisible to everyone around me. I traced my memories, and remembered the location of the Induction Center. On the way, I found Jasmine and her father, the Overseer. They, too, were headed toward the Induction Center and couldn’t see me. I was a ghost.

I followed them, and listened to them talk. They talked about me. They talked about the Christchurch Incident. They talked about the world they lived in and how it must be preserved. Her father believed that Christchurch would not be repeated. Jasmine said that the change had already begun.

So she knew what I had done. I wondered what she would do next.

She then said something unexpected. She spoke of the past. She spoke of the world before it had been destroyed. She hoped that humanity would rise up again. Until then, she was a caretaker, a nurse, treating a sick patient. And maybe if Christchurch would happen again, she would abandon the city and return to the villages.

Her father laughed quietly. He said they would do exactly what they had done at Christchurch. They would evacuate the key members of the city, the elders who had lived before the Post Era. They would be immune to the change, as they had been before. She would be among the few who were too valuable to die.

As they entered the Induction Center, I continued to follow them, still fearful at what might happen next. She ordered that my still-unconscious brother and cousin have their minds erased immediately. They would be inducted immediately. The Alpha, who had previously failed induction, would be terminated.

I watched in horror as they carried my brother’s unmoving body into the erasure machine.

Suddenly, myspirit felt like it was being pulled back into my body.

And then, I woke up.

Ω

I was conscious again but I was not in my cell. I was in the Induction Center. I was standing, my legs and arms restrained to the table that I was strapped to. I could see my brother in the erasure machine. My cousin was also there, in the machine next to him. The Alpha was nowhere to be seen but I suspected he was being moved somewhere to be executed.

Jasmine approached me, her eyes burned with anger. She ordered me to undo the damage I had done to the neural network. But behind her rage, I saw desperation. The world that she had so carefully created and her father controlled, was about to transform. And I could not undo the thought-pattern. Already, she said, she could feel the change.

She tried to convince me that I was wrong. Humanity had their time. Now was a different phase of evolution. This was survival of the strongest.

But I argued against her, telling her that our species must be reunited. She knew that I was not the only psychic. She had encountered them before. Her implants and engrams were not compatible with this jump in evolution. She called me an anomaly, a mutant. I laughed and called her the same. To that, she was quiet.

Her father looked at her, dumbfounded, suddenly realizing a truth that he had not seen in a thousand years. She was a psychic. She could see the future.

I urged her to look into the future, and tell me if the post-humans were there. She said that she could only see that they would end, as Christchurch had. I begged her to look beyond the future that she was following. If she could change her actions, it could be a different future. Post-humans and humans could work together.

She smiled at me, called me an idealist and told me that she could see further into the future than I. There would be peace, for a short time. Then, death. Only death. Humans and post-humans would never accept each other. Eventually, the post-humans would die and the humans would return to their savage roots. The planet itself would be destroyed.

But there was already a plan. The post-humans were planning to go into space. Humanity would be left alone on Earth. The radiation that had infected the land was slowly dissipating. In a few hundred years, the Earth would be mostly liveable again. Humanity could keep their damaged planet. The post-humans would find a new world. There, they would evolve, regain the ability to procreate, or die off. She said that she would not take the journey. She would remain on Earth in a village, and die a natural death.

But I had to enter the neural network and undo the damage I had done.

I told her that it was impossible.

Not impossible, she said, if I discarded my body. I would become part of the computer systems, I would become part of the consciousness of the post-humans. I could be the one who would guide them to a brighter future.

I begged her to return my brother and the Alpha to the village. She agreed.

They carried me to the Education Center, connected me to an engram machine, following an experimental procedure designed by Jasmine’s long-gone lover, Jacob. Some of the power was switched to negative and my body was electrocuted as my mind floated into the machine.