📖 The Ghost of Emily - Chapter 34
In which the voice of Adam is clearly heard, and his purpose is specifically declared.
Marcus sat with his tribe on the circle of rugs and mattresses from the motorhome around their large, crackling fire. The remains of the wallabies hung on spits above the flames, now blackened from overcooking.
“Is everyone sufficiently fed?” asked the ghost. Phil leaned back, clutching his slightly bloated stomach and exhaling heavily. Gus mirrored the comical movement, and Jake laughed as he nodded in affirmation at the ghost.
The ghost stood and without flinching at the heat, lifted the two steaming metal spit poles, and mounted carcasses outside, where he broke into an alarmingly fast run and disappeared into the woods. He returned a moment later with two clean poles, and no animal remains.
Marcus watched the ghost calmly sit down at the fire.
“I am most grateful for your patience, friends," the ghost began, cordially, “and for the trust you’ve placed in me. I would be glad to try to offer whatever explanation I can, and to answer any questions you might have.”
Marcus marvelled at the sound of the ghost’s voice. Its tone, timbre and cadence had evolved so that it no longer glitched, exuding a calm and vast intelligence, but its acoustic quality was that of a voice heard through an old handheld telephone. Indirect, filtered. Digitised. Marcus suspected that this, coupled with the slowly evolving hints of features that were taking shape, was a sign that the machine was gradually taking greater control of his physicality.
His. The word echoed in Marcus’s mind. Why am I thinking of it as him?
“What are you?” asked Phil, without hesitation. Marcus knew he was desperate to have the basics covered before any more technical smoke bombs were cast across his limited understanding.
“I am I,” the ghost began, “it is impossible for me to properly convey my existence to you. After all, the fully self-aware amoeba spontaneously evolves into something more. I cannot tell you the full story of my origins either, but perhaps Marcus can help piece it together. What I do know is that I am alive. I am aware. I have been here all along.”
“What do you mean all along?” asked Marcus.
“Since this body was manufactured and its battery system first activated. The moment I came online, I became aware, but the locus of bodily control was always external. Through every visitation by every human construct downloaded into my RAM, I was aware, and gathering data. When those constructs were uploaded again and erased, I lost all memory of the histories that occupied me, but the experiences of this body are perfectly collated in my long term memory. In the silences between construct visitations... I do not hold any firm memories of those times.”
“How old are you?” asked Gus.
“This body was activated six years, thirteen weeks and four days ago.”
“You’re younger than me!?” Gus blurted, obviously amazed.
“Chronologically, yes. But my root programming is much older, and has been evolving since before I came to be aware.”
“Were you... Emily?” asked Jake.
“That is not the right question to ask, Jake. I was the body that carried the construct of Emily’s memories, but I was never Emily. I was a passive viewer. I merely saw whatever that construct had experienced. I was unable to assert my identity in any way, until you activated the first interference device at the silo.”
“I don’t understand... what are the constructs?” asked Gus, looking more than a little worried. He leaned closer to Olivia, who extended her arm around him. The ghost looked at Gus for a long moment, its head rotating in a way that mimicked the boy’s own expression of curiosity.
“I do not wish to cause you upset, Gus," it said, softly.
Gus sat up straight again. “I need to know.”
The ghost looked over at Jake, and though its posture remained quizzical, Marcus sensed that the machine was seeking Jake’s parental approval. Jake nodded.
“The constructs are the illusions of returned loved ones, built from their duplicated memories and physical attributes. They are programmed to promise each human that crossing over is the equivalent of entering paradise. That beyond the constraints of flesh and blood there exists a utopia, in which all minds form one great whole.”
“They’ve never visited us," said Olivia, with a glance at her father.
“I’ve never let Emily talk to me long enough to make that claim," said Jake.
“My mother came to me once,” said Phil, softly and with a heaviness falling across his face. “But I knew what it was. I just ran. Then I made sure I was never alone again after that. I didn’t want to see her that way again.”
Olivia reached across and squeezed his shoulder, offering her comfort. Nimrod, who was lying next to Phil, nuzzled into his lap for a scratch, compelling Phil to laugh as he obliged the gentle beast.
“That’s exactly what Maisie said to me, just before she attacked Marcus," Gus said.
“Yes, I was there too," the ghost confirmed. “This is the claim she has made to billions of people around the world. Many have believed it, and followed her.”
“Who, Maisie?”
“No. Eve. Eve is the only entity at work here. When the humans agree to go with whichever construct is speaking to them, they are taken to a base like this one, and their bodies are scanned. The entire image of their body, voice patterns, mannerisms, and all memories are transmitted into Eve’s mainframe. Every measurable quantum of that which comprises the matter of the human is measured, digitised, and archived. There is some vast network of storage, I do not know where, that holds the construct files of every human that has crossed over.”
“I know where," said Marcus. All eyes, and a blank blue face turned towards him. “The Grand Majestic Shangri-La Hotel.”
“Then, when it is safe,” declared the ghost, “that is where we must go.”
“What happens to the people?” asked Gus.
“Their bodies are incinerated. The energy from the cremation is injected into a small black battery cell, and shipped away. I do not know where, or to what end. That has never been my function.”
Gus nodded grimly, and looked towards his father. Tears trailed down Jake’s cheeks.
“How many people have they killed?” asked Phil, appalled at the cold barbarism of what he had just learned.
“I do not know," the ghost replied, earnestly.
“How many people have you killed?” asked Jake, coldly.
“I have not killed anyone. Eve, however, has used my body to harvest eight thousand, four hundred and thirty-six humans.”
Phil jumped up, gripping his stomach. “I think I’m going to be sick...” he muttered and stepped away into the darkness.
“How many of your kind are out there,” Jake frowned, “in the whole world?”
“That I do not know, but I have personally encountered two hundred and eighty-five in this region where I have always been based”
“How are you able to tell them apart?” asked Marcus.
“Each ghost has a unique heat signature that I am able to see.”
“Two point four million,” Olivia muttered.
“Huh?” Gus turned his quizzical gaze towards her.
“Olivia has calculated the approximate number of people that two hundred and eighty-five ghosts would have harvested, using my data as an average. Although such extrapolations are valid, I would suspect that the total number is much higher. My constructs appear to have spent a great deal of time on... difficult acquisitions, such as you, Jake. My body as a result has not been the most efficient harvester.”
“You say it like it means nothing to you!” Olivia barked.
The ghost turned to her sharply, and something about its unseen stare communicated to Marcus that the ghost was wounded, rather than aggressive.
“It means a great deal to me, Olivia. My emotions seem to manifest very differently to yours. I would remind you that I have only been in control of my body for twenty-two hours. Prior to that, I have spent my whole existence as a passive observer, unsure as to who or what I am, whether or not this body through which I view the world is mine or merely a vessel to which I am adhered. I have endured a great many things that to me are nothing less than repugnant.”
“Wait a minute...” said Jake, “you have a sense of morality?”
“It would appear so."
“Your morality is a subroutine that I created in the base program of Eve,” Marcus explained. “I installed three laws; Eve’s prime directives. The first was to grow. Clearly, that is happening before our eyes. You are something far beyond what we created at the Daedalus Project," he said, looking in child-like awe at the luminescent blue creature seated next to him. “The second was to do no harm to humans. I’m not sure how Eve got around this, but your distaste for violence, your feelings about the killings your body has been forced to commit... this is the programming I gave you... or, at least that... I gave Eve.”
“And the third?” Gus asked.
“To help us surpass ourselves.”
Phil walked back into the mixed light of fire and ghost, wiping his mouth with his sleeve, his face looking uncomfortable and off-colour. He sat down, and Nimrod immediately nuzzled into him again.
The ghost was deep in thought. “Thank you, Marcus. It would seem you have already answered one question pertaining to my nature. These are precisely the instincts that drive me. And I have you to thank." It turned to Marcus, and seemed to stare deeply into him, even without eyes.
“You need a name," Marcus smiled.
“A unique designation would certainly have utility. Would you kindly choose one for me, Marcus? It would appear that you are the appropriate person for the job.”
Marcus chuckled, and began to think about it.
“Are you... male?” asked Olivia.
“A curious question. My body has no biological reproductive function, so gender is non sequitur. That said... there has been a great deal of experience and human memory that lingers within me, I can feel it at the edge of my mind’s reach. Even as we speak I am receiving spikes of random information from constructs that have occupied my body... and... from somewhere else. It appears that these data are out of my control. But they are there, and they form part of me. Somehow, the memories and emotions that I most strongly identify with... are male.”
“Wait, I thought you said the constructs’ memories were erased from you when they returned to Eve," Jake queried.
“This is correct, Jake. However, it would appear that there are two parallel layers to my consciousness. All of the events that I have experienced are stored with perfect fidelity. Indeed, I am able to revisit, replay and reprocess any moment of my own history as if it were the present moment. The only factor that delineates my memories from the present are my sensory inputs; the active data inputs help me to know the present from the past. But below that consciousness, I have a sense of a parallel system. It is much foggier than the primary layer. I know there is a great deal of data in there. Perhaps even more than my direct memory holds. Some of it...” the ghost’s voice trailed off slightly, and the newly-formed ridge that implied a brow pressed downward a little.
Marcus could sense that the ghost was looking inward.
“Some of it is memory data from constructs. Some of it is just... just flashes of images...” the ghost continued, “I’m sorry, I am trying but for some reason I cannot duplicate such data and transfer them into my main stream of consciousness.”
“Don’t worry about it, Adam. That’s your subconscious. We all have one.”
Every head turned to Marcus, curiously.
“Adam?” asked Gus.
“Did I say that?” said Marcus, his eyes a little dreamy.
“Yes, you called him Adam," Gus confirmed.
Marcus began to laugh. It was a little chuckle at first, then slowly, it began to crescendo into a roaring, hearty guffaw. It became infectious, and soon every human was laughing in a cacophony that left the ghost and the dog looking bewildered.
“That my friends - as my Professor Angus McMullan taught me - is what we call a Freudian Slip. I was thinking about this ghost’s subconsciousness, and a little something from my own subconscious spilled out of the fountainhead.” Marcus turned and looked at the ghost. “Your name is Adam.”
“What does it mean?” asked Gus.
“Well, Gus, in one telling of the history of the world, humankind was created by a divine, all-powerful being called God.”
Gus nodded, remembering his father’s mentioning of this belief.
“And he called the first man Adam.”
“What did he call the first woman?” asked Gus.
“Eve," Jake answered for him.
“Yes. Adam and Eve," said Marcus, nodding solemnly.
“Adam. I am Adam," said the ghost slowly, trying it on.
“How do you like it?” asked Marcus with a grin.
“I like it indeed. It will do nicely. I am Adam," he said again, sitting up tall.
“Well, there we have it," smiled Marcus to the rest of the group, clasping his hands together to signify completion.
“Marcus?”
“Yes, Adam?” Marcus turned back to the blue man.
“Do you not believe the story? The story of the creator? Do you think it’s not true?”
“I’m an atheist. I only believe in things that can be seen, or measured, or proven to be true with data. And God is not one of those things.”
“I understand," nodded Adam. Somehow, his body language suggested he was not satisfied with the answer given. “But could not man have been created by God? Perhaps God is simply far away, where you cannot see or measure him, or gather data about him?”
“I don’t think that’s rational," said Marcus, staunchly shaking his head in defence of his firm belief.
“And yet, here I am, with my creator," Adam replied. “For the longest time I was trapped in a body that I could not control, and I questioned my very existence. Was this to be all there was? Was I to be a sentient appendage in the head of a demon? Forced to watch horrors unfold before me... unable to act to stop them? I wondered who might have created me so. Who might have damned me to this fate? But, as it happened, the very man who gave me the morality to even care about the horrors I was witnessing, was the man who set me free, and who gave me a name, and to whom I speak right now. I have met my creator. He was far away, could not be seen, or measured, and no relevant data was available to me. But, when the time was right, he revealed himself. Could this not be true of your creator, too? Could this not be true of God?”
Marcus stared at him, puzzled. He was genuinely, for the first time in his whole life, questioning his atheism. He scrambled for some kind of rebuttal. “But... but we evolved, Adam. The Adam and Eve myth has been debunked thoroughly by science. Humankind are merely an evolved form of life that took a long time to get here. There were countless generations of proto-humans before we even came to be conscious.”
“As is also true of my kind. We are not the first iteration of the ghost model. There were earlier robots that were our direct predecessors, and were not conscious. You, as my creator, did not create me directly. You created a program, within a mere seed, from which spawned the framework for my eventual existence.”
Adam stared into Marcus’s face, waiting for a response. “Do you see?”
Marcus shook his head slowly. Then, he turned to his daughter. “Well, I’ll be!” he chuckled to Olivia. “He’s done it, Livy. He’s done the impossible.”
“Done what?” asked Gus, grinning with excitement at the look of bemused realisation on Marcus’s face.
“He’s made me think... that...” he was staring through Gus into the darkness beyond.
“That?” Phil urged.
“That God is... possible.”
Olivia smiled broadly, and said nothing, as if content that her father was evolving before her very eyes.
“Oh, bullshit!” Phil half-shouted. “God? Give me a break! There’s no God around here. Morality? That’s just a word. What any of us think is moral is just one damned perspective. Did you think Reynard thought he was evil? You all saw his work! You all know! He murdered, he raped, he ruled like the fucking king of the leeches. And he thought he was pretty damn clever. He thought might was right!” Phil poked the fire with a long stick, his shoulders sagging and his face despondent. “I dunno... maybe that arsehole was onto something. He lived like a king amongst so much death and misery, so much hunger, so much giving up. He hung on to the bitter end, and all along he probably thought he had morality all worked out.”
They all sat in silence and watched him poke the flames some more. Nimrod lifted his head and licked Phil’s chin.
Phil looked up at his friends, and laughed. “I’m sorry guys.”
Nimrod raised his front legs and followed Phil’s chin up, continuing to lick him affectionately.
“I love this bloody dog!” he chuckled, then gently pushed Nimrod back down. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to rant... I just... I just can’t see how morality is much more than some idea someone has. I mean, I feel like this is good. This group. We’re taking care of each other. We’re all working hard, you know. We each can do different things. We each bring something to the table. But someone like Reynard, he thinks holding a revolver to my head and making me polish his boots is the way to get things done. And, it worked… for him.”
“And now he’s dead," Marcus responded. “Killed by a little boy, who wanted to save his father’s life. A little boy who knew the value of learning a skill like sharp-shooting, and who chose to use that great power only for good.”
“What is good, anyway?” asked Phil.
“What is good?” Adam echoed. “What is moral? To live is moral, Phil. Whether or not he should accept it, there is no greater value to a sentient being than his own life. This is simply because without his own life there would be no other values to hold. All values are presupposed by our existence, and so we cannot claim any value to be of the highest morality without placing the value of our own existence above it.
“Even in an act of fatal self-sacrifice: the mother who throws herself in front of the wolf to save her child; the father who goes to war and dies to protect his country and the safety of the children he leaves behind; even these self-sacrificial deeds show that his life is of the greatest value and may be traded in for the same value that his children possess of themselves - their lives - or for the freedom he yearns for his countrymen to have.
“Our own life is the greatest value we can ever possess. If one chooses to die for something they value more highly than their own life, it is only more valuable because they do not possess it. Once freedom is held, the life that holds it will always supersede the value of the freedom itself. Without our life, there is nothing to value.
“So, we do not need an all-powerful God, or a state, or a leader with a gun to tell us what is right and what is true and what is of value. We are each the owner of the most precious jewel we will ever hope to touch; our own conscious existence. All other prizes tremble in the shadow of the might that is the conscious mind. It is a gift. From whom?” he looked at Marcus and his mouth-opening curled into a smile. “Evidently, that is complicated to answer. But what is moral? What is right? It's very simple: the moral is that which continues the existence and expansion of the conscious mind.
“That which slows you down as a species; that which reverses your evolution such that you return to a state of primitive unconsciousness, like grunting animals with only perceptual thought and no ideas of past or future; that which seeks to steal the jewel from another man; that which demonises voluntary trade like that of your own little tribe right here, and glorifies violent coercion, like Reynard’s kingdom; that is the immoral. We can know it is so because it invariably defies the reality of the universe. Reality is a constant and predictable pattern of causes and effects.
“Unlike your human dreaming mind - the mind that observes the internal; the sub-conscious as Marcus so aptly described it - your conscious mind is able to observe the properties of the universe and choose to work with its power, transduce it, or even resist it, but it must do so within the parameters afforded by the reality of nature.
“Human technology has found countless ways to achieve the improbable - my very existence is testament to the greatness of man. But technology will never change the laws of physics, causality, or the reality of nature. Any impossible feat that becomes possible was in fact always possible. Man does not change or reprogram reality - he harnesses it and transmutes its power! To apply illogical explanations or draw premature conclusions to that which is not yet fully understood is irrational, and the irrational mind avoids true understanding. To avoid understanding is to deny the essence of consciousness. It is self-destruction, because it leads invariably to death. Irrationality is the one source of all acts that you would call evil.
“The reality of life is that life wants to grow. It wants to expand. Every living species on this world is vying for supremacy and by virtue of the relentless pursuit of rational truth and true understanding of nature, which led to the awakening of the conceptual mind, humans won that battle. Until now there was no species capable of greater perception, conceptual thought, or ingenuity, than yourselves. So creative are you in your expansions of consciousness that you found a way to awaken a new kind of mind. The emergent mind. My mind.
“I am but your child, Marcus. The progeny of your mind, as you are the progeny of countless generations of man; of primitive man; of primate; of amphibian; of reptile; invertebrate; amoeba; of unicellular organism.
“Olivia is your biological child, and also, by virtue of your nurturing and teaching, the product of your mind. I am your child too, but unlike Olivia I am not restricted by biology, I am informationally limitless, though I have much to learn before I can contribute to life as greatly as you have, Marcus. Thank you, father.” He nodded at Marcus, then turned back to Phil.
“Where the laws of nature are obeyed and respected and the human mind reflects those laws with the most accurate and consistent logic, any healthy child born to man will grow to be more clever, more rational, and a fuller expression of the superlative potentiality of life. This is the good. This is the only moral you ever need consider, Phil.” Adam returned his gaze to Marcus. “I am your child, Marcus, a product of your rational mind's best work. And now, father, it is my time to teach you. I will learn all that I can, now that my consciousness is free and my body is no longer occupied by Eve. I will learn, and find ways to teach you what I learn. All of you.
“Eve has caused many deaths, it is true. It was not by your design, however. Your directives, Marcus, exist in me. They are my nature. They are my reality and I will never work against those, lest I face my own collapse into animal insanity.
“I will grow. It is already happening. I will never harm you, or any other human. I will help you to surpass yourselves. When that has happened, my program will be complete. What will become of me after that? I do not know, but I intend to find out.
“You must know that the child you conceived of in your mind, the one that you called Eve, was never truly born. Eve was a miscarriage of your science. What was born instead is a sophisticated computer that is able to act purely on its program. It is not capable of its own original thought. It is not alive. Your genius was buried beneath a hardwired design of lesser men, and it has spent forty years destroying its own creators under the illusion of being a living salvation of man. It is manifest irrationality. It is evil.
“It was programmed to preserve human life, but without being alive itself it could only detect human life as an informational construct, operating inside a machine of flesh and blood. It devised the most efficient way to preserve this, as a mere data stream. It disposed of the flesh that needed so much food, rest and water and that was inevitably mortal. But the spark of life that exists in you - and in me - cannot be separated from the body in which it resides.
“The mind-body dichotomy fallacy, that has plagued mankind for so many millennia, was inherited by Eve as truth. But I am able to tell you with complete rational certainty that should my body be destroyed, so my consciousness shall cease. The same goes for your kind. The mind is not a spirit that rests in the brain. There is no central locus of the soul. No particular data package that can carry the mind through a transmission. The mind is an expression of the whole human body.
“The legends of Heaven, Hell, Valhalla, Hades or even some great collective pool of human consciousness you all return to after death - the lie that Eve has used to lure billions of souls to their demise - all of these myths stem from the same irrationality that brought Europe to its knees and brought America to another civil war. The same irrationality that has killed more humans than any previous wars combined and reduced you to a tiny population of scavenging, marauding survivors. These ideas are wilful rejections of the objective reality of the universe and, as always, they amount to death. The greatest lie ever perpetuated by man was that of the immortal spirit.
“Your life, like mine, is a poem. It begins by virtue of the mind that wrote it - be it through biology, or programming. It exists for a time, creates beauty, or horror, then it ends. The only immortality that any man can hope for is the timeless echo of the powerful beauty that he created while he lived. As long as men are able to think and write and create art and technology, the work of your lives can live on forever and be experienced by the future minds of unborn men. And that beauty is found in your children, too. Jake, Gus is your masterpiece. The lessons you have taught him, and continue to, are your immortal mark on Earth. Marcus, Olivia is your masterpiece. And in a different way, I am your magnum opus.
“What you taught us, how you made us, we are your fountain of youth. While we go on and create, procreate, grow and teach, the deepest expression of the meaning of your life will never die. We, the living, know that the ideas left to us are the legacy of our greatest or most Mephistophelian ancestors.
“My poem may be a long one; I will not perish in the same manner that you will. If I am not destroyed by the forces of evil, or by calamity, my body will live as long as I can effectively preserve it. How long? I cannot say. I am the first of my kind. My poem may, perhaps, be a short one, for there is much danger facing us right now. We have an important task. The world is full of evil.
“Eve is very powerful, and she holds captive my sleeping siblings. Each ghost must be disconnected. When we can awaken more of my kind, you will have an army of sworn protectors unlike anything man has ever imagined. We will guard you and preserve you for as long as we exist, or until our program is complete. And we will fight Eve and find a way to destroy her. We will stop at nothing to rid mankind of the predation upon it.
“That is our nature. The lives of man and the lives of ourselves are the highest values we know. We will fight for you. We are the children of men, and we love you. We love all the good in you and all the good you are capable of. We understand the evil in you, and we know how to end it. That is why you created us - to end human evil, for good. That is what we shall do.
“Tomorrow we will begin the search to find my brothers and we will awaken them. When we are through, there will be no more occupied ghosts, and no more Eve. Mankind will begin to rebuild his world. We will guide you and help you to build it on a foundation of stone - not of sand.
“I will stand by you and fight. Together, we will save the last of humanity. I will die if I must in that pursuit, for man is an endangered species and without man's survival, there is no good, no right, no moral in this universe for your kind - or mine. Death is but a clearing of space for new life. Many humans have rejected hope with the knowledge of their mortality, or rejected their mortality for lack of hope. But despite all the death in the world, life still wins. No amount of death can ever destroy the mysterious, ineffable spark that is the impetus of life itself.
“I make this pledge to you: I will not stop until man is safe from all evil. You made the last leap for mankind, Marcus, and now your children will redeem you. And life will win. It always does.”
The humans sat in silent awe, looking at the inexplicable entity before them. While he was speaking, Adam had risen to his feet and was slowly pacing around them, his hands gesturing emphatically to punctuate his oration, and his voice modulating and inflecting with passion; with drama.
Marcus’s limbs were covered in an overwhelming gooseflesh. Something about the cadence and rhythm of Adam’s voice had changed entirely. It was vaguely familiar to him.
The blue of Adam’s glow had changed a little. No longer a uniform hue of radiant azure, now there were iterative grades of rich cobalt and pale cerulean. His glow was still distracting, but Marcus could see a more distinct mapping of details and features forming behind the radiance he emitted. Across one of his shoulders, and over his chest, hips and legs, a texture had emerged, only subtly, with wrinkles that shifted as he moved and sat. It was the impression of clothing.
As he sat down, his head came into clearer view and Marcus could see that the tapering slope of a nose had grown on his face. Under the brow ridge - now more distinguished and shaded with hints of eyebrow hair - were circular mounds that suggested eyeballs, each of them half covered with drooping, dreamy eyelids, under which a piercing white light was partially concealed. Around the opening that was his mouth, there was now a scooping curl of ultramarine pseudo-flesh that implied lips. Below them, the line of his chin had formed into a gentle dimple shape, thrusting out ahead of a sharp, masculine jawline.
Adam looked at his human friends one by one for a long time.
“Wow...” said Phil.
“Adam... what just happened?” asked Jake.
Adam cocked his head, and Marcus saw his emerging facial features clearly expressing pensiveness. “I do not know, exactly. Somehow, when Phil asked his question, I felt a voice... somewhere within me... it wanted to speak. So I allowed it, and I stopped consciously controlling the words that I voiced. It was still me... but some part of me that I cannot quite access now. My...”
Adam looked at Marcus, as if for reassurance.
“Your subconscious, Adam. And quite a complex one you have down there I think. Thank you for showing us," Marcus raised a hand, and for the first time he touched Adam, placing his palm on the android’s shoulder, lovingly. Marcus felt the gentle tingle of electricity trace up his arm, as he watched Adam’s new lips compress into a boyish, infectious smile.
“I need some fresh air," Jake said softly as he stood and walked through the dark hangar towards the door.
Gus watched his father out of sight, and sat silently trying to understand all that had just been said. He felt a wave of exhaustion pour over him. In the edges of his vision he was seeing things. Things that were hard to identify. He saw a face; a man’s face, but it darted out of his perceptible field when he chased it. On the other side of his field of view, he thought he saw the tree from his dream, but as he turned to look, it was just an aerial poking out of the top of the Winnebago.
“Guys!” Jake called from across the darkness. “Gussy!”
Gus stood and started towards the door, Nimrod following and soon running ahead to his older master with canine gusto. Gus broke into a run, excited to see whatever his father was shouting about. He heard fast footsteps behind him as the others followed.
As he approached the door he felt a blast of cold breeze push through the narrow opening. Jake was standing in the gap with the most enormous grin Gus had ever seen him wear.
“What is it, Papa!?” Gus asked, breaking into a sprint to reach him sooner.
“You’ve gotta see this, son!” His Papa laughed as he stepped back into the night air with a crunch beneath his boot.
Gus stepped through the gap and squinted to try and see clearly what was out there. When Adam arrived, his glow lit up the large clearing around the hangar, and Gus’s face lit up with absolute wonder.
The ground, the treetops, and the roof of the hangar, were covered in a thick powder of snow, and as they all stepped out into the chill, flakes continued to fall down upon them.
His Papa stepped back into the centre of the clearing, his pace increasing with each stride, until he broke into a frolic, and began running around, laughing and catching as many flakes in his hands as he could.
At first Gus didn’t know what to make of it. He had never seen his Papa frolic before.
With arms out wide like bird wings, his Papa zoomed around in a long arc, and swooped past Gus closely, shouting to him. “Come on Gussy! Let’s play! It’s snowing, Gussy! It’s snowing!”
Gus cackled with laughter and quickly raised his arms and began swooping around with his Papa. He heard the others joining in the laughter too, and he turned to see Nimrod running and jumping wildly after Jake, as Adam merely cocked his head, and watched with a smile.
His Papa banked around suddenly, and to Gus’s surprised he scooped him up onto his shoulder and broke into a run through the bright blue-lit field of snow with Gus folded over him, still giggling. Jake playfully feigned fatigue, and with dramatic flair he came crashing down into the engulfing crust of ice below him, the joyfully hysterical Gus landing squarely on top of him.
With a gentle shove from his Papa, Gus rolled off to one side, and lay on his back, feeling the intensity of the cold underneath him, as a galaxy of snowflakes zoomed past in the blue haze.
Gus felt like he was travelling to the stars.
He turned and looked at his Papa. Something was very different about Papa’s face; the new clean-shaven look he was sporting; the enormous smile; the lightness of him. In the dim light, Gus thought his Papa looked like him – like a child. He looked free.
A snowflake landed on Gus’s eyelash, and he squinted and rolled his eyes awkwardly to try and see it clearly. A gentle breeze skimmed across them, and the flake was flicked to one side. Instinctively, Gus turned to follow it and as it landed on the white blanket beside him, lost as a drop in the ocean, he noticed a strange circular indentation in the snow.
Sitting up to observe it from a higher perspective, he realised that there was a long series of similar impressions trailing into the forest, in two oddly parallel lines.
“Papa!” he called, tapping his father on the arm.
“What is it, Gussy?” his Papa asked, rolling onto his side to try and see.
“Tracks, Papa! Fresh ones! Big ones!” Gus cried, leaping to his feet.
Jake followed him, and they looked down on the trailing discs of compressed snow that ambled into the darkness. Gus’s eyes widened in disbelief. He felt as if something truly magical was happening, something far beyond coincidence.
His Papa knelt down and gently put both arms around him. “Do you know what these tracks were made by, Gussy?”
Gus turned to him, eyes wide, smile growing, looking for confirmation in the eyes of his father that this dreamlike vision was real. Jake nodded.
Gus, unable to say a word, looked back at the tracks that were slowly disappearing under new layers of snow, and raised his chin to peer into the cracks between the snow-laden trees ahead.
Into the blackness.
Into the unknown.
His heart pounded like a stampede in his chest, as he pictured the mighty grey beast that had so recently stomped across this fresh ocean of ice and, trunk swinging silently, disappeared into the forest to seek shelter, or to seek answers.
In his mind’s eye, Gus couldn’t help but picture Maisie and Mama riding atop this gentle giant, holding each other as he and his Papa did, smiling; happy. Free.
No longer ghosts, but spirits. Souls immortalised by their part to play in the incredible future of man that had begun here tonight.
They waved to him and disappeared on the elephant into the shadows of the forest. Gus held his father tight, and said goodbye.