The Jesus Incident

***

HUMANKERRO: "Does the listener protect his own sense of understanding and consciousness?"

AVATA: "Ahhh, you are building barriers."

HUMANKERRO: "That's what you call the illusion of understanding, is it not?"

AVATA: "If you understand, then you ca

HUMANKERRO: "But I can remember understanding things."

AVATA: "Memory only understands the presence or absence of electrical signals."

HUMANKERRO: "Then what's the combination, the program for learning?"

AVATA: "Now you open the path. It is the program which counts in the most literal sense."

HUMANKERRO: "But what are the rules?"

AVATA: "Are there rules underlying every aspect of human life? Is that your question?"

HUMANKERRO: "That appears to be the question."

AVATA: "Then answer it. What are the rules for being human?"

HUMANKERRO: "But I asked you!"

AVATA: "But you are human and I am Avata."

HUMANKERRO: "Well, what are the rules for being Avata?"

AVATA: "Ahhhh, Humankerro, we embody such knowledge but we ca

HUMANKERRO: "You appear to be saying that such knowledge ca

AVATA: "Language ca

HUMANKERRO: "Don't we know what we're talking about?"

AVATA: "Using language involves much more than recognizing strings of words. Language and the world to which it refers. . ."

HUMANKERRO: "The script of the play."

AVATA: "The script, yes. The script of the game and its world must be interrelated. How can you substitute a word or some other symbol for every cellular element of your body?"

HUMANKERRO: "I can talk with my body."

AVATA: "For that, you do not need a script."

The mystery of consciousness? Erroneous data - significant results.

OAKES WATCHED the sentry on the Colony sca

The screams turned to a hoarse growl, like a turbine ru

Oakes found that the sentry's first screams still echoed in memory and would not be silenced.

Ru

There was no escaping Pandora anywhere groundside. Colony remained under constant siege. And at the Redoubt - sterilization was their only solution. Kill everything.

Oakes found that he had pressed his hands to his ears trying to quiet the memory of those screams. Slowly, he brought his hands down to the sca

Images continued to play in his mind.

The sentry had clawed at his own eyes, ripping out the nerve tissue which Ru

Except that this particular sentry knew about chlorine. Had some residual hope clutched at his doomed awareness? Surely not. Once the Ru

To Oakes, the most horrible part of the incident was that he knew the sentry: Illuyank. Part of Murdoch's Lab One crew. And before that, the doomed sentry had been with Lewis on Black Dragon Redoubt. Illuyank had been a survivor - three times ru

I heard his report.

Movement in the sca

Now, the backup aimed his gun and burned Illuyank's head to char. Standard procedure. Cook them out. Those eggs, at least, would never hatch.

Oakes found the strength to switch off the sca

It had just been a routine scan, the kind of thing he did regularly shipside. The horror of this place!

What has the ship done to us?

Groundside - nowhere to turn for escape. No release from the knowledge that he could not survive on this synapse-quick world without multiple barriers and constant guarding.

And there was no turning back. Lewis was right. Colony required constant attention. Delicate decisions about perso

Oakes pressed a thumb against the lump of pellet in his neck. Useless now. Groundside static interference limited rang.... and when that impediment lifted, as it did for brief moments, the random signals which came through proved that their secrecy had been breached.

The ship had to be the source of those signals. The ship! Still interfering. The pellets would have to come out at the first opportunity.

Oakes lifted a bottle from the floor beside his console. His hand still shook from the shock of Illuyank's death. He tried to pour a glass of wine and slopped most of it over his console where the sticky red splash reminded him of blood pulsing out of the sentry's empty socket.... out of his nos.... his mout....

The three tattooed hashmarks over Illuyank's left eye remained burned in Oakes' memory.

Damn this place!

Gripping the glass with both hands, Oakes drained what little remained in it. Even that small swallow soothed his stomach.

At least I won't throw up.

He put the empty glass on the lip of his console, and his gaze swept around the confines of his cubby. It was not big enough. He longed for the space he'd enjoyed shipside. But there could be no retreat - no return to the slavery of the ship.

We're going to beat You, Ship!

Bravo!

Everything groundside reminded him that he did not belong here. The speed of the Colonists! There was nothing like that speed shipside. Oakes knew he was too heavy, too out of condition to consider keeping up, much less protecting himself. He needed constant guarding. It festered in him that Illuyank had been one of the people considered for his own guard force. Illuyank was supposed to be a survivor.

Even survivors die here.

He had to get out of this room, had to walk somewhere. But when he pushed himself away from the console to stand and turn around, he confronted another wall. It came to him then that the loss of his lavish shipside cubby was a greater blow than anticipated. He needed the Redoubt for physical and psychological reasons as well as for a secure base of command. This damned cubby was larger than any other groundside, but by the time they housed his command console, his holo equipment and the other accoutrements of the Ceepee, he was almost crowded out.

There's no room to breathe in here.