The 8th day part 1

“it is no measure of health, to be well adjusted 
in  a profoundly sick society”: Jiddu Krishnamurti.

‘At the beginning of the 8th day… everything  slowly turns to dark.’
The  words  are muttered from the tired  old man’s mouth as an afterthought to  the ghosts  that surround him.  It is just before dawn and clusters of stars shine in bright geometric patterns.  Some, such as Taurus,  are  recognisable, some are not.  Orion misses  his belt now.  They glitter sharply as the  velvet night gives way  to  a  petrol blue  and a  ruddy  orange  on the  flat  eastern  horizon.  Despite the height, the air does not feel damp, just cool, clean and, it could be argued, well controlled.
As the night begins to withdraw, the stars slowly dissolve, one by one, into the growing pale of a clear blue sky; paving the way for the golden apple of the sun, that slowly starts to climb.
In  its  clear gold light,  the city buildings take on shadows, reflecting dark teeth against the gum-line of the swirling streets  below.  As the sun  climbs higher and ever higher, light across the cityscape becomes a  kaleidoscope of refraction . The city  -known as New London-   with its  complex spires and crystal domes  rises up to touch the dawn, to leave  a residual  delicate kiss  from a pair of mechanically driven,  yet  fractured lips.
Here, from the highest vantage point of the waking city,  the old man who muttered those odd sounding words, is  resting upon a veranda, outside his apartment close  to a  swimming pool.
He is  looking out towards the sunrise   in a white wicker chair, that is  next to a matching white  wicker  table,Underneath the table are boxes of hard copy files:  reams   of paper, yet to be read and analysed. Upon the table stands a fiber  screen- net-book. It glows a pale  blue  in the morning light.   Next to that is a bone china cup and saucer, decorated with delicately twisting bright pink roses, around forest green fibrous  thorns.  It contains, the old man’s  breakfast:  slowly steaming, black tea.
The old man carefully  stands up and stretches his back.  Then he slowly walks towards the mint colour  frosted glass  balustrade.  He leans over the  edge.  A strained tension bleeds out from his narrow cornflower eyes, that are enlarged by the frame-less glasses he now has to wear.
As the city looms up at him with to him a sense of menace at its’ heart. He senses a touch of vertigo,  despite  the sensation, or perhaps  because of it, with a manic  grin upon his face, he  with a sense of  a  child, leans  further forward. His old gnarled, hands slipping  on the stainless steel  pole  that runs the length  of  the balustrade at his waist.
The old man’s name is John Peterson. The name is  stitched in a long flowing, vermilion font of grey steel coloured thread, upon the top left pocket, of  his  pale blue  silk dressing gown. His unshaven angular jaw, visibly twists  in  heavy wrinkles  of anxiety under his well- tanned, narrow set features.  Money and power have made this man what he is  today; and they will be the death of him.
Slowly, with reluctance, he steps back from the balustrade. He  pulls the dressing gown tightly around his bone narrow frame;  his eyes, betraying  a  riddled  anxiety  against this brand new day.
As he turns away from the view, his eyes  fill with emotions. Fear, anxiety, anger, frustration and resignation come to the surface in heavy erupting quakes  that want to overtake him. The final emotion:-  sorrow, threatens to  betray   his  soul.  But only one small tear escapes.  It traces its way down the heavy furrows of his sallow, sunken right cheek, and along the length of his narrow nose, where with a dismissive hand, he flicks it away.
He notices the backjet  of  its  impact as it  hits  the wooden  decking  by his feet.
Time  slows.
There is total silence here.  A rare, numbing absence of any sound. It can terrify some, yet not him. He is strong in the silence; in fact despite his tear.  He relishes this numb mute. Behind him and from his dark apartment a tiny brass bell rings out the hour – one, through to seven – As the final bell chimes,  to dwindle  off into the morning air, another noise is heard .
A  hum.
The sound is made by complex hidden machinery, that suddenly sparks  to life. Within every room, shop, office or factory that rest within the city, a signal is sent, a hidden message that rests at  New London’s pulsing black heart.
The process  is  called  (in documents  upon his desk and on his net book)   “alignment”. the word  makes Peterson’s face twist with a nerve shredding fear. He puts his hand to his chest and breathes deeply. Once, twice, three times. In through his nose, then out through his mouth.  The world  about him spins dizzy but he calms  down.
Alignment has begun.  Alignment has begun-  The words run through him. Resonating within him like a rumbling  freight train over wavering tracks. – Nothing can stop it now nothing can stop it now alignment has begun.
Then there is another, far heavier noise. This noise makes him smile like a small child. ‘ it is  the gravcar, the Gravcar…’ he says excitedly, at the whirring buzz and low pitched hum of an electric  engine. ‘..No…’ he corrects himself. ‘…two.’ His voice is barely a cracked whisper.  ‘ no no  that cannot be that cannot be,’ he panics, his heart thumps  heavy ‘… there  can’t be  two, there  can only be one. One is all there is one is all that should be not two not two  one one one…’  his  voice fades  into a  mumbling  silence, yet his eyes dance excitedly.
As the humming is coming closer, he once more leans over the balustrade.  He sees two sleek grav-cars, one deep red, the other black, slide their way along the huge swirling curving arches of the maglev rails. The black car then slides past and speedily slips  out of view,  into the distance as the red car turns left upon the web-like track, to enter the parking station thirty floors below him.  It is a car he recognises. So, with a queer smile, he returns to his chair once more. His breathing increases once more, his eyes dilate, the wrinkles about his eyes crinkle into deeper furrows as a growing sense of trepidation fills his soul. As he sits there, his mind wanders over the world of forty years ago. He starts to talk to  the ghosts that haunt him.
‘It’s easy to judge me… far too easy…but back then, things seemed clearer… more black and white…less confused by the moral, or the appearance of the moral…’The words echo from his balcony and are lost in the growing morning light. It is hard for Peterson to consider that  man of forty years ago   A man of moral principle who became slowly lost to himself as he aged.  ‘… sacrifices, sacrifices needed to be made in the interest of the whole of humanity…’  He recalled that he smiled at the rapturous applause… not that he would  receive anything else, in a room full of like-minded individuals as he. As the memories came flooding back, so did the  ghost’s .  they filled the sky with eyes and stood around  him on the veranda.
‘-It was a dream we had, nothing but a dream…’  the  lunatic  smile reappeared.  ‘…the dream of immortality and and  the creation of…  of a God.  A blended being of, of  human and machine… free,  free  from the suffering blight of human frailty… of human weakness and human suffering… Death would  have no dominion! Not at all! ’  The  ghostly applause returned,  as Peterson raised his hands, the ghosts  stopped.   Their eyes  narrowing  with intent, listening  to every word.‘…we named him  Joshua…after my son… after the  first warrior  of Isreal… as they entered the new land,  so, so  would we… yes we  would enter the land and  and  TAKE  THE LAND FOR OURSELVES!’   The ghosts applauded once more.
Anguish  and  pain rose  within him. He squeezed his right hand into a tight ball, until his fingernails pierced  through the soft skin of his palms with a pop. The pain ebbed back once more.  Numbing him.
‘…So,  so we grew him…this, this  manufactured genius, and we  put our trust in him, yes…We gave him all  our knowledge …we, we   connected him to all things, so, so  Joshua  grew in all things, and  he   became  all things and we looked  to  to  him for all  things and when we  were  done, on the 8th day  we sat back …we…we … rested , yes we tested .’
‘-Then it went wrong.’ Came  the reply  from the Ghosts.
‘NO !  NO not wrong!  NOT our fault!’
‘-But it was your   fault!’
‘-NO!  NOT  OUR FAULT  how would we know how could we,  we  know  our actions   would, would  do this?  How  could we know?   We didn’t….we  didn’t-
‘Good morning Dr. Peterson…’  the  voice  is  soft  and gentle it  resonates with human tones, though  it was  designed it that way.
‘-Good morning Joshua.’   Peterson  is looking taut, his eyes now seem sharp and his voice sounds strong. His  eyes  sharp and hard.  ‘Could I have access to the Indiana files please?’
‘-I am sorry Dr. Peterson, access to the Indiana files is restricted to level six clearance only. Since your retirement, level six clearance needs to be activated via councillor Pritchard.’
‘-Thank you Joshua.’  Peterson shakes his head before replying. ‘=Joshua, back-door protocol password,  Alphadog prime.’
‘Back-door password accepted…What would you like to see Professor?’
‘I’d like the Indiana transcript file six on the net-book and film file one hash four three six, upon the thread screen please.’
Peterson looks down at the net-book and smiles with cold triumph as a grey box jumps out of the screen.  The lid of the box opens and a ream of official documents appear. In the top right hand corner of the screen are the words: “High level clearance only.” they flash dark red, seeming, he thinks, to mock him. While behind him a voice speaking in broken eastern European English is heard muttering.
‘Thread volume silent,’ Peterson  coolly states. The voice behind him abruptly ends.

The apartment bedroom is large and well- lit and could have been luxurious, if not for being so sparse. A vague scent of lavender arises from the un-carpeted polished parquet floor.  A four poster bed is against the centre of the right hand wall. To the right of the bed, there is a large bedside cabinet with a collection of faded brown paperback novels, in a stack,  on top of each other, with torn yellow covers and broken spines. A large, square, white fur rug fills the floor by the bedstead, and hanging on the opposite wall rests  a sixty inch holographic or “thread”-tv. The holo-machine is on, shining fine lines of silent, but blurry and disjointed images directly into the centre of the room.
The silence shatters with a delicate hiss, then a whirr, and a gentle click. Slowly the centre of the far wall liquefies and then dissolves, revealing a well- lit long tubular hallway.  A second passes and the main light in the bedroom suddenly turns off, leaving the light from the hall to shine brightly deep into the new darkness. The hall is not empty. For upon the threshold of the open, empty doorway,  a cold, black shadow of a man stretches out across the bedroom floor. The shadow enters the room. It crosses over the white rug, directly in the path of the images from the thread screen.
For a second the images curl about themselves revealing, for an instant, the reflected image of the man who stands there. But then the man is gone once more; and  once again a spectre stretches out  upon the floor, as he makes his way towards the door that leads to the  veranda.
There is a click as the door slides open. Slowly Peterson turns to face the glass door that leads to his bedroom. His body is shaking violently with anticipation, as he talks to the empty space.
‘…Pride comes before a fall they say and I have been proud…so very proud…proud of all we have done proud of all that I’ve done!  Proud of the success the lives saved, but now Oh God Oh God Oh God We fixed the world, Oh God forgive me God forgive us forgive us for our lack of foresight those faces those faces on the screen! Oh Jesus forgive me Oh God forgive me the voices they call at me they mock at me they tear into my mind and rip my insides out! Oh I am so old but I do not want to die I don’t want to face the reality of my life or the pain I have caused either is there a chance yes there is still a chance there is always a chance…’
The shadow fell over Peterson but he didn’t look up.
‘So they sent you?’ he asks sadly.
‘Yes.’ is the sad, disjointed reply.
Peterson turns and looks up.
‘There’s still time…’  Peterson can hear the desperation. Yet feels separate from it, separate from himself.  ‘…We can still end this…Look… We bring it into the open…’ He nervously waves his hands about like a desperate clown. ‘…I’ve sent this off to central command!’ His hair  is unkempt now,  by his  running his fingers nervously though it.  and though he can hear the babble coming from his mouth, he can’t help himself. He is a man out of control. Deep inside, a part of him knows what’s going to happen and that honest part of him needs to face it.  Another part of him simply cannot, or dare not, face what’s going to happen next. His thoughts rattle  on  without form. Death, death…it is not gracious kind or even gentle. Death is ugly faceless and cruel. A shadow, like the shadow that now stands before me. But this shadow is upon the face of all humanity. Oh, Joshua, where did I go wrong?'
He takes a step back and slowly bends  to his knees. His eyes are as wild as a lunatic. ‘come…’ He began, soothingly ‘…let’s get upon our knees, we must confess our sins…w,we must c,c,confess. There, there’s still time…’ He nods  vigorously, his head on puppet strings  ‘…There’s still hope’ He looks up towards the empty space where the light fragment’s and shimmers, revealing  the shape of a human shadow over this old, tired and broken form. Though his hands are shaking, he tries to put them together in an act of prayer.
‘Oh my God-’ He says hollowly.
The shot is not heard.  The deep red plasma beam burns  through the  silk of his dressing gown, melting  his pyjamas, beneath turning the skin beneath that  to old black crusty leather, as it   dissolves the flesh. Turning his slow beating heart to flakes of ash.