REBECCA AND THE ALIEN LOVER Rebecca had retained a very precious gift from her father's workshop, and with its help she had been able to survive for two years, undected, in a forest near to one of the largest cities on the continent. Keeping away from people had become essential for her survival. The gift was a biological entity which had been developed as a life- support system for those exploring planets of a terrestrial nature, but Rebecca had needed very quickly after a frenzied mob, incited by fundamentalist religious fanatics had destroyed her father's home, and put most of her family to death by divers cruel methods. The human race did not appear willing to accept genetic engineering at that time. Surveying the arterial road from her erie, Rebecca thanked the powers that be for Zanith, her constant companion. Zanith was at that moment draped over a rotting tree trunk, with one or two of its slimey protuberences absorbing additional nutritional material from the carcass of a small rodent. When Zanith was fully extended, its shape was approximately a circle of about two meters radius, and for most of its area a couple of molecules thick. Zanith had been bred from the fungus family, although it had something similar to a nervous system. Fibers were visible over most of the flat part of its body, while around the perimeter were many complex organs, including pseudopods, a digestive system, and most importantly an array of ganglia which constituted the telepathic organ. The whole organism weighed about two kilograms at that moment, although Rebecca knew that Zanith had been designed to survive for years as a cyst about the size of a matchbox. Zanith's telepathic powers had enabled it to lure small animals and birds to within range of its tendrils, and once this was done the beasts could be anaesthetised or killed, and injected with materials to destroy microbes and any other parasites dangerous to humans. If Rebecca wished, these small victims could even be liquified, giving her a chance to take food as a nutrient broth, although she generally preferred to cook and eat the animals herself; only on a few rare occasions had prudence dictated that fires were risky, and cooking to be forsaken. During the cold winter nights Zanith had made an excellent shelter, although Rebecca usually had to find branches, or the mouth of a cave to complete a structural frame-work from which Zanith could hang. Zanith had protected Rebecca from other things besides the cold winds and the rain. Its telepathic qualities caused most human beings who passed nearby to lose their powers of concentration slightly, so that they observed nothing out of ordinary if Zanith was sat in front of them draped over a cave mouth, or the branches of a tree. Only for Rebecca would the entity make its presence known. Irritating insects were also discouraged by various chemical secretions from Zanith's glands. There had been one unpleasent incident during Rebecca's sojourn in the forest. One summer night she was sleeping a short distance away from Zanith, which she did as often as she could. A couple of gypsies found her, and had had the idea of violating her, but her fear, on realising what was about to occur, had reached into the trance of Zanith. The creature reacted by first stimulating the men to argue with one another, and finally to fight over the first right to Rebecca. The men inflicted such severe injuries on each other that one died. The winner was able to crawl over to the tree where Zanith was stationed, and did not really know what was happening as he felt himself being enveloped by a cold and slimey fabric until firstly his screams, and finally his life were smothered away. Rebecca was distressed, and felt that Zanith had perhaps been motivated as much by pure jealousy, rather than by love, but she was relieved that the men had been prevented from carrying out their original plan. After carrying Zanith over to the second corpse, to supervise the injection of some mysterious toxin into the body, Rebecca moved camp with Zanith that same night and after walking a few kilometers she found another shelter amongst the rocks. Aided by one of Zanith's narcotic secretions she safely spent the next week in hibernation, although her would be assailants were hardly missed, and no-one searched the forest for them. The bodies quickly became mere stains on the ground. * * * * * * Rebecca dreamed. She seemed to be in a desert some-where, and she noticed snow capped mountains to the North. A group of people were gathered around a collection of rocks and boulders, from which a jet of flame emerged. They were speaking Farsee, a language which Rebecca had studied at an early age. The people looked as though they were dressed for a religious ritual, but in fact they were involved in discussion with a man of striking appearence, because his eyes appeared to be a flourescent green colour. He was answering the questions of the people. "How long must we wait ? ", asked an old woman. "Five thousand years", replied the man. "Your people hold this fire to be sacred, and also that disc in the sky which you call the sun. Your people will live in misery and poverty for many hundreds of generations, but eventually you will try once more to reach the heavens. This fire you see before you will become a cause of conflict. It will give power to the artifacts of man. The power of the sun will also be understood. It will be used to destroy a couple of cities, but on the ashes of those cities new structures will be built, and the seeds of a new craft will be sown. Men will shape life in that island country. One of your people will live in that place, and bring a daughter into the world. She is destined to marry no mortal man on earth, because her spouse, or rather spouses, since they are twins, await already in the stars." "Why do you tell us all this ?", asked a young boy. "Because I have some problems with my masters", continued the man. "The people of this world are not easy to organise. They seem to have discovered free will at an early stage of their evolution, and this has caused problems. Many plans have had to be abandoned or postponed since the affair with that original couple: Adam and Eve, I believe, are the names that you have given them. This conflict has been very badly written up, but the essential conclusions are true. Since then other powers have taken an interest, and I represent one of these. My own task is simply to make sure that the prophesy is not forgotten, and also to make sure that no-one misuses the gifts which I bring. I have walked amongst the people of this planet for some years now, and realise that my mission is impossible. Your race is infested with opportunists who will pervert everything for short term personal gain, hence I long ago destroyed what had been entrusted to me. I am reduced to the state of most people in my profession; I can offer you only the following things: firstly a system of writing, so that the memory of your people may span many generations, and ...." "But they already have that in the cities!", cried the boy. "I know, but they have too many systems and dialects. The system I give to you will be accepted when your tribe unites with a few others, brings your hordes out of the hills, and liquidates the priest cult of the plains cities. It seems to be the only solution to my problem. I came in peace, but in the end I must advocate bloodshed and a certain amount of destruction.", continued the stranger. Rebecca could not see exactly what was implied, because she knew that the transition from ideograms to phonetic alphabets had occurred in many places, under different cultural influences. She drifted back to consciousness remembering very much of the desert scene. Still feeling a bit shocked at Zanith's ruthlessness a few days back, she walked off to search for fire-wood, thinking all the time of her universe. It appeared that Zanith was serving some rather direct evidence to make her think that it was a sort of deity, and yet this may be a logical feature of intelligent and motivated behaviour on the part of any being, artificial or natural. In many respects Zanith reminded Rebecca of her father. She often wondered why she had been spared when the rest of her family was murdered, and indeed she had thought of little else since she had entered the forest. She did remember her father having told her that she would marry men from the stars, but she had not been able to obtain any answers to her troubled questions. Before the catastrophe she had noticed that her family was under pressure, and her father had listlessly been drinking himself into a stupor most of the time. He had installed only a few tanks at his house to incubate Zanith from some spores smuggled back from Japan, but he no longer persued his academic interests. His work in the Orient, concerned with the fusion of ideas from cybernetics and genetics to produce artificial life-forms had been well sponsored until he was able to demonstrate the possibilities of a spectacular success, including the chance to eliminate hunger from the world. After the initial experiments yielded some interesting micro-organisms which could turn sugar to paraffin compounds the work came under intense public scrutiny, and the company management eventually admitted that the evidence was fraudulent, acting under unknown pressures. Rebecca had however recognised the signs that entrenched interests did not really want the economic system to be changed as rapidly as the implementation of a new technology could do so, and had worked out a means of hindering her father. The final destruction, once her family had been forced to return to Europe was simply an added insult, but well in keeping with the spirit of vendetta which dominates most human relations when institutions are threatened by the activities of an individual. Exposure to books and television had acquainted Rebecca with the 'Frankenstein' legend, but she had not previously suspected that Zanith might turn against its creators. Finally she decided that she had assembled enough piles of branches to to start thinking of lighting a fire with her rechargeable lighter, for naturally enough Zanith secreted hydro-carbon waxes from the appropriate gland. Once the fire was lit she dragged Zanith over, because the creature also liked to be warm. Rebecca listened to the insect noise, and started to sew up some worn out socks. She was conscious now that Zanith had been trying to shape her mind. The being had certainly kept her from boredom during the last few years. The fact of her family's near extinction was evidence that some of Zanith's propositions were correct: it was necessary to kill, just to eliminate certain sources of danger. Human society has always been full of enemies, to the extent that it was quite often necessary to set up a beaurocracy, or even a special agency to deal with the problem. The choice of the head of the heirarchy,or the percieved source of wisdom was a personal question with a large number of possible different answers, but only a small number would be seen as sensible, or sufficiently conformist to allow the respondent the right to survive. She rembered another of the dreams that she had fathomed out. It had occurred shortly after her escape. She had been walking in a street in a mordern city somewhere. She came across the corpse of a man who had been hacked to pieces. Affiched to the wall was a poster which had been carefully hand-written: "THIS MAN IS A CLASS ENEMY, AND HIS DEATH IS JUSTICE FOR THE PEOPLE. HIS CORPSE IS TO SERVE AN EXAMPLE TO OTHERS. HE HAS PERVERTED THE GOALS OF OUR GLORIOUS STRUGGLE FROM THE STONE AGE. HE IS A PARASITE, BLOATED ON THE BLOOD HE HAS SUCKED, AS AN EXPLOITER OF THE INDUSTRIAL PROLETARIAT. HE IS FUNDAMENTALLY AGAINST PROGRESS, AND HAS PREVIOUSLY SUPPORTED MILITARISM. HE CONFORMED. THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM SUPPRESSED INVENTION. HE CONFORMED. THE RELIGIOUS SYSTEM OPPOSED ABORTION LAW REFORM. HE CONFORMED. THEY TOLD HIM TO BUY SHARES IN GOLD-MINES. HE CONFORMED. WE HATE PEOPLE LIKE THIS. HE IS AGAINST THE SPIRIT OF CHANGE." Clearly some petty landlord had experienced the wrath of righteously grieved tenents, or perhaps the body was a symptom of tribal or business rivalry. The people around her did not seem too concerned, and seemed to regard such things as a daily occurence, in the rather depressing, or perhaps exhilarating social climate. At least the killers seemed confident enough since they had just signed themselves "Street Executions Limited", Chamber of Commerce No. 5678324 . She wondered who they were, but did not know her way around the city so well, and therefore she decided to try speaking to some-one. "Where am I ?" she asked an old woman. "Where do you think you are ?" "I am not sure", and with that the old woman turned and mumbled something about being busy as she crossed the street. Rebecca decided that she had best stick to reading signs, since these contained information. She looked at the other publicity sources that she could see, and they seemed fairly ordinary messages to associate a name with a product. Local theaters and restaurants seemed to be represented, along with som big names that were familiar to her. She walked on until she arrived at a nexus of the city's public transport system. The place was called Zone 54, and the map was endorsed by some firm advertising itself as a cement supplier. The map did contain some further hints. She seemed to be at a point which was on the periphery of some city, because open spaces which seemed to be of un-defined use seemed near by. She was interested in finding out more about the grisly sight which had confronted her on arrival, and she knew she could well start by looking for the chamber of commerce. To do this she decided again on asking some-one, and waited until she saw someone who looked intelligent entering the escalator. She demanded of the youth: "How can I find the chamber of commerce ?" "Business or pleasure ?", was the reply which rather confused Rebecca, but at least the answer was in keeping with what she knew about the place. "I want to investigate a business affair." "That's pleasure", continued the youth. "Business consists of altering the data pertaining to commercial transactions. This zone is well organised in that respect, and in order to interrogate the data you do not even need to go to the chamber of commerce any longer. Next door to their office is an information terminal which has been vandalised. The best place to find one which is undamaged is the social center which is opposite to the police head-quarters marked on the map." "Is vandalism very common here ?" "Those terminals are prone to destruction, since our society passed its laws abolishing secrecy, on the grounds that only the rich and venal who lived on corruption would suffer. Many businessmen with intersets in government hated idea of all their schemes and liaisons being made public, so naturally they pay their retainers money to destroy publically accessible terminals." "Do you know anything about Street Executions Limited ?" "Not much. Politics does not interest me, since it is a hassle, but the only reason that they advertise themselves is that they have naturally been able to consult their own dossier on police files. The chamber of commerce number is just added by a bunch of opportunistic lawyers who once got some publicity for defending some members of the Ulrik Meinhof woman's collective who started the whole thing. You see those buskers over there. They are at least integrated, or at least controlled by agents of society. Each one of them has a business file some where,and the police, rather than moving them on, collect income tax from them about once a month. I actually did that myself for a while, but of course my proceeds hardly payed for my salary. The five percent is a principal, just to let the beggers know that the agencies of our government are fair. Since you are interested, why don't you tell the police that you wish to assess the income of Street Executions Limited. Despite their ideological purity, it is suspected that they run a side-line in blackmail, and any such income is taxed at about sixty-five percent.You could get a handsome comission on what you collect. Rebecca found the idea shocking, but at the same time she realised the logic of taxing every economic activity, whether it is black or white. Since legislation had never been able to stem evil, it seemed expedient to at least try and harvest the profits of crime especially as the borderline between honest business and fraud often seemed very vague. She consulted the map, found the police haedquarters, and entered the cavernous recesses of the public transport system. The crowds seemed to be what one could expect of a prosperous twentieth century city: cosmopolitan, many of whom appeared tired and bored, those who were clearly in a hurry, and ill at ease, and the inevitable lurkers who eyed her rather slim figure. She realised that the place was much like the real world that had destroyed her family. Ignoring any attempts to subvert her she continued to her goal, a station in the center of the city. The trains were clean, and the stations at least seemed fairly open, and well lit. At her destination she found that there was but a short escalator to the surface, and she emerged onto a plaza surrounded by modern skyscrapers. The police head-quarters was easily recognisable by the fleet of passenger carrying vehicles which were parked haphazardly on what must have been prime parking terrain, and on the opposite side of the plaza was a complex of cinemas and shops. She approached the center and found that the shops occupied three of seven possible levels. The upper floors included tennis courts and gymnasia, part of a university faculty, the administration office of a public energy utility, and a section marked 'PUBLIC RECORDS'. She climbed the external stair-case to this level, and entered a room that reminded her o an efficient post-office. There were not too many people about, and she looked for some-one who appeared to be in charge. She noticed a desk under a placard saying that the function of the official was to answer enquiries, but could see no one about. She waited, and after about a minute a man appeared. She asked how she could consult the records, and he told her that she could go immediately to a console which he pointed out to her on the floor plan. Apparently she could use any machine in that row for half an hour, and then she would have to give up her place if some-one else requested it, and all the machines were in use. She walked to one of the designated consoles and pressed a key. "Identity please", responded the machine on its screen. Rebecca noticed that the prompt was repeated in about twelve spoken languages and six dead languages if she guessed correctly. She typed in her first name, and waited apprehensively, because she feared that she would be asked for embarassing details such as her place of residence, salary and occupation and all the rest. Her intuition was correct, although the machine wanted these details for statistical reasons only, and was satisfied with blancs. The next message appeared on the console: TYPE "HELP" IF YOU WISH TO FIND OUT HOW TO USE THIS SYSTEM. Rebecca did that, and she quickly determined the path to the desired chamber of commerce records. The information was scanty, and it is reproduced here. "Street Executions Limited is a name used by an organisation with Marxist-Leninist trends. Two people, Maria Araknis and Joseph Hulme, have been indicted on several charges of conspiracy and murder for actions which took place between 11/85 and 05/87. Their defence lawyers received $10000 from bank account numbers 4530167XS and 280055DT. The names of the current leaders are Bridget, Marian, George and Luther. Consult police files or bank records to clarify, or use the function 'INTEGRATE' to obtain further data. The number of this item is KKH 5678324." Rebecca decided to follow the police files, so she sought the data on Maria Araknis. The report was fairly comprehensive giving details of education, training, psychiatric reports from prison officials, and a whole lot of evidence about her connection with the Ulrik Meinhof Woman's Collective. The data was attributed almost entirely to Maria's interrogation transcript, and Rebecca observed that all the data on police files was carefully linked to the witness or person who stated the alleged facts. The dossier, for want of a better name, occupied several screen images, and it was necessary to read it several times. MARIA'S FATHER BECOMES VICTIM OF THE PURGES Maria was from an Armenian family which had been able to escape the Turkish massacres of the early decades of the century, and her people had settled in France, where her father had become involved in the groups which delight in assassinating Turkish diplomats. Later he had been expelled from the movement, because of his wishes to join forces with some of the Turkish Marxist-Leninist groups. He already realised that fighting a religious cause was merely playing into the hands of fascism. The man abandoned political activity after his marriage, and worked for a while as a sales-man for a multi-national pharmaceutical corporation, which was based in Switzerland. During the further integration of Europe he had collaborated with the government baurocracy in exposing some of the criminal price fixing policies of his employers, but the officials had shown little zeal in acting on the evidence handed to them. One year, when the family was entering Switzerland for the Christmas holiday, the car was stopped at the frontier, and Maria's father was interviewed by customs officials, and arrested. He was taken away without further explanation, and Maria's mother never saw her husband again, for she took poison three weeks later, heart-broken by the turn of affairs. Maria herself drifted around Europe for a few months, living in Berlin for a while, and following her studies in psychology whenever she could. Her father was eventually able to leave prison, on bail, but the persecution continued for he could find no place in which he could settle and do any business. Whenever he tried any financial operations there were immediate allegations of fraud levelled against him from unknown, but influential sources. He died a few years later, a broken man. Motivated by her desire for revenge, Maria eventually succeeded in persuading her boy-friend, Joseph Hulme, to kill his uncle, who was an executive in one of Europe's largest banks. The act was vindicated by E.I.L.A, or the European Integrated Liberation Army, but in jest they had issued further threats to businessmen under the name of Street Executions SARL. Having once tasted blood, the couple hit some motor industry executives, and a couple of men from petro-chemical firms before being arrested for stealing some number-plates from a car in the middle of a city. The computer indicated that some of the crimes for which they had been convicted were not 100% attributable to the couple, despite their confessions. At that time the deductive powers of machines were inadmissable in courts of law, so the process of justice was not impeded by marginal doubts and uncertainties. In fact there was reason to suspect that further conspirators had been protected by the confessions, and that the police in a wish to clear up a case back-log had actually collaborated with the terrorists in finding compliant witnesses. Rebecca decided to use the 'INTEGRATE' facility, to sift through all the available data using certain key-words to narrow the field of enquiry. She demanded everything on file which could implicate members of the police force with the woman's group, and the two bank account numbers, along with the name 'Street Executions'. After sending the last details, the computer's screen went blank for a couple of seconds then issued the text: "A FULL SEARCH SUCH AS YOU REQUESTED WILL TAKE ABOUT FIVE HOURS. ADDITIONALLY YOU MUST GIVE FURTHER DETAILS, SO THAT AN EXTRACT FILE AND WORK-SPACE MAY BE RESERVED FOR YOUR USE. PLEASE RE-IDENTIFY. The screen then displayed the responses that Rebecca had given when she first signed on, indicating that more precision was required for occupation, salary and tax-code. Rebecca again typed blancs, and the system demurred and finally requested a user-number. Rebecca typed a few digits at random, and the machine accepted them, for it issued the message: "AS A FIRST TIME USER, YOUR NUMBER HAS BEEN ALLOCATED AS *REBECCA XX C7H. PLEASE QUOTE THIS WHEN YOU SIGN ON IN FUTURE. SINCE THE PROCESSING OF YOUR REQUEST WILL TAKE SOME TIME YOU MAY PLAY CHESS,GO, OR DAMES. IF YOU GIVE A BANK ACCOUNT NUMBER, THEN YOU COULD PLAY SEVERAL TYPES OF POKER, BLACK-JACK OR BACK-GAMMON. YOU CAN ALSO IMPROVE THE SECURITY OF YOUR WORK- SPACE BY TYPING A FEW LINES OF TEXT, OR POETRY AND LETTING OUR STYLE- EVALUATOR PROGRAM WORK OUT YOUR PERSONAL SIGNATURE FROM TYPING SPEED AND LITERARY HABITS. NO-ONE WITH A DIFFERENT STYLE WOULD THEN BE ALLOWED TO ACCESS YOUR WORK-SPACE. SOME OF THE GAME PROGRAMS ALSO EVALUATE YOUR STRENGTH, AND ALSO OPERATE TO PROTECT YOUR DATA. SOME OF OUR MOST SECURE FILES REQUIRE GRAND-MASTER PERFORMANCE IN SPACE INVADERS FOR EXAMPLE, BUT IT ALWAYS REQUIRES THEIR OWNER FORTY MINUTES TO REACH HIS USUAL TEN-MILLION SCORE, AND HE CANNOT GET HIS FILES WHILE HE IS DRUNK. PERSONALLY I RECOMMEND GO IF YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE GAME. FIRSTLY YOU CAN ACCESS THE SYSTEM THROUGH A TERMINAL THAT HAS NO GRAPHICS MODE,WITH ASYNC OR SYNC PROTOCOL, AND SECONDLY THE PROGRAM CAN IDENTIFY AN INDIVIDUAL'S STYLE IN ABOUT TEN MINUTES, WITH A LOW PROBABILITY OF ERROR. OUR SPACE-INVADORS MAN REQUIRES AN EXPENSIVE GRAPHIC TERMINAL AT ALL TIMES." Rebecca was tempted to give a bank account number, and try gambling to earn some money, but a young girl approached. "It's our turn. I bet you just used the integrate function and you'll have to come back later. Our school is taking an informatic lesson here this morning, so you must try again when we have finished. "Does not your school have its own machines ?" "Of course, but most of the terminal emulator programs on the market are just so much junk, so they still can't hook up to these big data-bases." "Too bad. Let me just write down my ay-see number." The little girl gave Rebecca some paper, and lent her a pen to note down the details of the session. Rebecca left the center, and returned to the street. Once outside she looked around and noticed the youth whom she had approached in Zone 54. He beckoned her, and as she was making up her mind as to whether to follow she became dis-orientated, and on recovering her senses found herself laying on a bed of moss in the forest, with Zanith suspended above her. * * * * * * The message had seemed clear enough: even ultra high speed machines will require time to make exhaustive searches of all the data on file, and the conclusions which can be drawn are only as good as the original source material. It appeared that even the best run societies contained those who by personal greed were acting in a destructive fashion, and therefore had to be excised, or otherwise controlled. The existance of personal liberty had to allow certain violence to occur, and Rebecca felt some sympathy or the group she had tried to investigate. Nevertheless their motives seemed to be based on jealousy of those with economic power, who were in their own turn jealous of their own closely guarded secrets. She wondered how the society was able to protect its own information base from sabotage, and she suspected that Zanith had been trying to demonstrate that a will to survive is an essential feature of intelligence; not only the will to live, but also by consequence, the will to destroy dangerous competition, or even the desire to eat meat, thus regarding other life forms as sub-servient to some ultimate goal. Her own life in the forest had certainly presented problems of a pressing nature; escaping the destruction of her family with few possessions apart from Zanith had forced her to improvise. For the first few months she had done little but sleep and meditate. She remembered very few of her dreams, and took this as part of Zanith's attentions to ease her sorrow. Adequate clothing had to be maintained by a constant repair of what she had worn when she escaped, and this proved to be very embarassing since she felt some need to patch up things including her pants. She had to be pre-occupied by survival, and although Zanith was very capable she still took a pride in doing some things herself. Her dreams now seemed to be full of violence. Why had the strange city such an ambivalent attitude to the state control of personal freedom ? After all, it appeared that 'Street Executions Ltd.' had been able to exist as a quasi-legal entity. The city bosses while loving their public computer system seemed nevertheless to be in good control. She realised of course that much of the public data base was probably mere mythology. After all most of the churches had already installed question and answer sessions, based on computer prompting. For all her struggle to survive in the forest, Zanith appeared to be trying to fill her head with the promises and data of the modern technical world: the world that had of course created Zanith in its vat. Rebecca's father had enjoyed access to a good work-shop for a while: a French chateau near to the Swiss border of course. The out-buildings and cellers proved to be good working ground, and some financiers had briefly supported the project, in the hope of getting space in the chateau, since the whole deal had been put up by one of those Middle-Eastern banks which had sprung up after the last political conflagration in Syria. As a consequence Zanith's vat had been luxurious. Not the hospital laboratory of some demented physician, but the pampered surroundings o a chateau had been Zanith's nurture. Zanith was essentially a mould, or creature without chlorophyll, but in terms of artiicial life-forms the best as yet produced. Because Zanith had been designed simply as a life support system to help humans to survive in a possibly hostile environment on other planets, not as yet visited by man, the product, or that is all that Zanith could claim to be, was held to be un-marketable on earth, and so had graduated to being the protector of a homeless girl in a marginal zone. Eight months of incubation had been all that could be afforded. The spores had taken several forms, but a certain amount of genetic programming had been carried out by ultra-specific silicon-carbon substitution matrices. Few people had bothered to look into the vat, because the electronic read-out devices had been able to show a much better picture of how the project was going. A fully automated manuacturing plant had simply been bought of the shelf from a Taiwanese trading company moving Japanese electronics. A couple of bio-chemists had been hired to get the sensors to monitor the conditions of the breeding tank, and connect the system to a fairly ordinary computer [not so easy - explain later ]. Most of the staff had been recruited from those who could be grabbed before they entered university. There were many very young people working at the chateau during the height of its activity. Most of the had some numerate abilities, but all that was really required was to watch the monitor screens, and log either what they saw, or what they felt. Rebecca was very dubious about this juvenile conditioning, but her father had insisted that the influence of any-one over the age of sixteen might be positively detrimental to the development of Zanith's psyche. In that time there were of course many joking references to the mistakes made by the good doctor Frankenstein. "These kids have some great ideas; it is only they that have the courage to charge the riot-police or set fire to the buses", her father con-fided one day. "They simply have an ultra-logical viewpoint, and I believe that it is essential that Zanith knows this generation of star-children, even if a certain amount of despair has to be imparted. They feel as if they belong to a dying era, as indeed they are, unless our race pays more attention to such men as Gandhi, Carl Sagan, and others who wish for a peaceful exploration and exploitation of the universe. They are borne by parents whose wealth makes possible the dream of inter-stellar travel, but whose lunatic stupidity makes the nightmare of assured mutual destruction more and more probable. I fear that my efforts may make the pinnacle of this stage of human civilisation and that later on all but the most material of creations will be forgotten in the following dark ages of superstition and barbarity. "The men who wish for us to go back to the stone age are all to evident: remark the strength of this 'Darwin' versus 'Bible' controversy, which has crippled the number-one world power in science. At least I have the practical tools with which to work, even if my theory is a bit weak. I am simply aware of the significance of the ancient writings a bit more than most. The alchemist's quest seems to take on a more precise meaning if one simply translates desire to love the creator to being identical to the creator. We humans, as creators of Zanith and its race, must be loved, but from our own rather lamentable examples of love towards our own creator, we must be ashamed, and hopeful for a rather radical change in the 'creator to created' dialogue." On finishing his discourse Rebecca's father wandered off to another part of the chateau, muttering that he needed to check out the enzyme tanks, but Rebecca knew by now that he was simply going to find another bottle of gin or vodka. She did not really care because she had got plenty of work to do: the translation of Abdullah Kerim's thesis from Arabic to French would take some time. Rebecca had taken care of Kerim's written material. Kerim's work was to be entitled 'A CALCULUS OF LOVE AND HATE', and Rebecca thought some of the material might later be suitable for programming the emotions of robots. * * * * * * Kerim had disappeared from Rebecca's life. He had found a job for an embassy with an islamic fundamentalist regime as a sort of factotum. He was not really a permanent employee, but a sort of contractor and translator. The job was not demanding, so he was able to spend most of the time with his new wife. Kerim's notes had been built up during the course of his wanderings in Europe. He had already tried many crafts and trades, including that of pimp. It was during this time that he had become interested in video systems, because selling films in a shop seemed better work than hustling a living on the streets, and the winters of northern Europe were cold. He had picked up new languages rapidly; too quickly perhaps, because he often became involved in arguments with his employers once he understood enough about the business, and eventually despised their stupidity to the point of quitting the job. The last argument had been about the addition of promotional material to the pornographic films and video tapes which were so common at the time. In the country in which he had been working were some hundreds of different religions, and some of their advocates had asked for him to arrange the editing of material prepared by them into the movies. Kerim had seen this request favourably, because as a great admirer of abstract art he knew that the patterns offered by the group did contain some very ancient symbols. The trouble was that one of the clients who had bought a doctored films had been a highly placed member of the country's police force, and although his speciality was vice and narcotics he had found himself drafted to a group responsible for throwing some squatters out of a house. The man disgraced himself by having some of the youths arrested, then instead of having them driven to the prison, he had simply used a mixture of bribery and blackmail to get them taken to his own spacious home. He also had a police vehicle sent out to gather the worthwile possessions of his guests from their old abode. Although the group consisted of men and women, there was no attempt to exploit them sexually, and the commissar, for that was his rank, said that he would give them all jobs to look after his house. He had edited the crucial glyphs and motives from the video tape which he had acquired and there were video screens installed in most of the rooms of his house. To his young guests he claimed that these images were an excellent anti-dote to the mental vampires which were haunting the world at that time. He also told his guests that they would not want while they were in his house. Things were alright for a few days, but some of the other policemen who worked for the commissar raised complaints about irregularities, and the city managers being worried about the potential losses to be suffered by a profitable trade had the commissar reassigned to a large budget scheme to teach children road safety, while trying to find out who had distributed the video tapes. Kerim was given a substantial sum of money, and told to quit the country quickly. None of his other clients had been affected this way by the material, and since he had been abruptly separated from the only person who could give any details of the affair, Kerim had to work out the causes and effects for himself. He had chosen a strange method. Instead of trying to support himself, he had taken a dismal room in one of the more slummy quarters in one of the big cities of a neighbouring island, and spent much time seeking out students there who spoke his own language. He had not enrolled in any classes, and he seemed to avoid day time, only putting himself out to arrive at the students' gathering places in the evening when he would play interminable card games, until he and all his friends were thrown out, when they would go off and try and continue their gaming in some-one's lodgings. To any impartial observer he seemed just a time waster, but in the nights he was accumulating piles of notes, in his own language, on gossip and speculation which he had heard. He did not drink a lot of alcohol, for he had had enough of that when he first came to Europe. The town seemed much quieter than the one that he had left, although there were much more evident signs of poverty. Politically, the young people seemed rather apathetic, and many failed utterly to see the big picture. Europe was beginning again to see movements which were dedicated towards eliminating the last vestiges of decency in that society in the name of 'decency'. The other Arab students at the university were generally a well heeled bunch. Many were there on lavish scholarships from the rich Gulf Sheikhdoms. Some had already taken more than one higher degree, usually in the United States. There were many engineers, but few scientists. Those who seemed to know most were always palestinians. Yasser 'Know It All', Arafat had set the pace for his tribe. And there was little contact between the different arabs. The town had a yemeni community, palestinians, saudis, and also jews, for nowadays many jews feel themselves middle eastern people. Perhaps religion would join them together, but no. The town had many different mosques. There was a special 'yuppie mosque' just by the university. This was financed by the gulf states for specially for their students so that they would not need to get tainted with other ideas. Maybe the koran was too dangerous a book to read alone. Each mosque needed its own 'ittahad' team. The Khaled Siddiqi, or the Al Wahhabi. The 'Salman Rushdie Affaire' polarised the situation. The University Union passed a motion condemning the man and his publishers. That showed a lot for the apathy of the students. A small faction of I.F. hijacked the whole institution. The politics of poverty Kerim thought. If these elite institutions can so easily be manipulated by a small and single minded minority then we will get Islamic states all over the place. They are all copying Lenin as much as anyone else. Cliques within the Umma, and these people are remaking history. The moslem must aim to occupy a high position in society so as to impress people of the true faith, but at the same time he must not sink to the same level of excessive zeal in propogating the faith as American religious broadcasting. This meant a great deal of choice. He knew that Allah's will was most often thwarted by those who spoke for 'Allah'. The prophet peace be upon him was OK, but Umar, Ali, and all those bullshitters who compiled hundreds of thousands of hadiths were mere unenlightened mortals with no cause to try to improve their fellows. Freeze them in time with the ancient rites of ablution and prayers five times a day. What fossils. Any way, their previous lives may have very bad. Perhaps they had been pigs ? A Buddhist thought that a glutton may be reborn as a pig for many generations. Is that my father, re-incarnated as an animal ? There is not much in the Koran against re-incarnation. Heaven and hell are connected by windows. Were not the video images the pictures of hell. After all people can sit around in heaven, reminiscing about their contemporaries in this life, and they can indeed peer into the nether world, and find out who is being punished. The lists are publicly printed on al Youm al Qayumm. This type of information order is heavily suppressed until then. Of course the evil ones want to keep things secret, and even burn books which disagree with them. It was always so. Re-incarnation and Dharma were well understood by Kerim and some of his contemporaries. The holy book demanded searching. The world was decaying, and the command to see the decay was to be taken literally. The movements of Kerim had been his own Hijra. Also the Long March of Mao Dse Dong. He had tried to swap cultures. There were some hills and valleys near to the town, and at times Kerim was able to visit the countryside and find a quiet place to meditate on the apparent failings of those around him. That country did appear to contain people with the mentality of serpents, and how often they said 'Yes' when they meant 'No'. It was good to be away from such people, and he had experienced great relief in his excursions. Since he had enough to eat, and a place in which to sleep, he had lost interest in money. The tapes which he watched seemed also to have affected him slightly, since he made no attempt to resume his old profession. There was not much nightlife in that town, except for those in their own homes. He tried to find out a little about the history of that place. There had been no major internal wars for some time, although the city did contain one or two smallish monuments to testify to the fact that it had lost some of its men during two episodes in the last century. The surrounding villages showed this fact more clearly, because the monuments were more prominent. The places of worship were also surrounded by gardens containing stones on which were inscribed the names and ages of the dead, and sometimes the cause of death. Kerim found that the social distinctions which divided the classes of that country were well reflected in these monuments. The largest were erected not to the heros of the battlefields, but to those who had made the engines of war and conquest for indeed the country had once enjoyed an empire which encircled the globe. There were also indications of epidemics in the past which had carried off many of the population. The current epidemic seemed to be idleness. There were gangs of youths that just hung around in a street all day with very little to do. Some-times they attacked old people like packs of dogs around a dying beast. The motive was often un-apparent, since the victims never seemed to be rich enough to justify theft. Just weak. (The stupid guy had got himself arrested in Paris during one of the many fracas that took place that year as part of the chronic confrontation between the 'Autonomes' and the 'Forces d'Ordre'. He had been in the wrong place when some-one had thrown a paving stone, so the court had demanded an exemplary sentence. Kerim had been buying books at the time, but a culprit had to be produced, and being an Arab in Paris at the time suited him for the role.) KERIM 1992 version The man had found a job for an embassy with an islamic fundamentalist regime as a sort of factotum. He was not really a permanent employee, but a sort of contractor and translator. The job was not demanding, so he was able to spend most of the time with his wife.