The Revelations by Erik Hoel (e ink ebook reader txt) 📕

an infinite unstoppable laugh track sounding off all throughout the universe, and, unable to bear the jeering weight of its consequences, Atif had dived headfirst into that bright light just to erase from his mind the idea that had colonized it with omnivorous intent.

Kierk knows he is letting his imagination run wild but it feels good to even be proposing an explanation that made sense to him—what if, for instance, Atif had discovered some perfect theory that implied consciousness was entirely useless, epiphenomenal, that it never did anything at all but always occurred after the fact. That our selves really were just meat marionettes jerked about on atomic strings . . . Or that this “I” has never truly felt anything, thought anything, but instead has always just passively watched feelings and thoughts play out . . . Or that each day an entirely new consciousness is birthed into existence, a golem, etched only with inherited memories, and that each night our consciousness goes unknowingly to its death, so that the span of our lives are macabre shows, oblivious massacres, sick jokes . . . Or maybe something even darker, unimaginable to anyone who hadn’t made the breakthrough yet. Spiraling out now, Kierk thinks that perhaps this could explain not just Atif’s death but also perhaps the Fermi Paradox: that the galaxy, where life has had ten billion years to develop on the billions of planets orbiting in habitable zones, and the entire span of which would take only a few million years to fully colonize from any given starting point . . . was lifeless. And that maybe the mystery of consciousness was the great and final filter, a cosmic pitcher plant eventually winnowing out all the civilizations that figure it out. Implying that every civilization of conscious beings, after solving the mystery of themselves, recoils in total horror and wipes itself out, tearing itself apart in nihilism, reactionary politics, fundamentalism, barbarism, and self-loathing.

Aggressive self-lobotomization.

FRIDAY

Kierk wakes up from a dream of bodies. Carmen naked before him and then a fast-forwarding to that grinding underneath, the writhing, everything opening and the penetration and envelopment, her legs wrapped around him . . . So that on waking he rolls onto a taut bladder pressing from within and an erection now trapped uncomfortably underneath him.

Eventually he has to hurry down Broadway, late.

Approaching the CNS something catches his eye—a police cruiser and ambulance parked in front of the building, the alternating red and blue lights faded to almost nothing in the glare. Kierk begins to jog up, crossing the street during a break in the traffic, but as he gets close to the blinking ambulance, it, like a beast startled from sleep, pulls away from the curb.

“Hey!” Kierk cries, but it drives unhurriedly away down the cobblestone street toward the park. Despite being only a block off busy Broadway the street is a simmering quiet except for the bouncing and receding ambulance.

He turns to the still cop car but he can’t see inside the tinted windows. From a few feet away he stares at it for a while, his face scrunched up in the brightness, the car a dense machine radiating heat—he’s expecting it to jump into motion as well, or at least for a window to roll down. Finally, he walks up and knocks with one knuckle on the black driver’s-side window. When there’s no response he leans over and peers in, cupping his hands around his face, to only a dim and empty interior and the outline of a secured shotgun. The lights continue to blink in silence.

The CNS appears calm enough on the inside, although the security guard isn’t there to swipe Kierk’s card as usual. When he gets to the lab, he immediately heads over to Carmen’s sitting form. Coming up behind her, Kierk realizes that Carmen’s monitor is filled with information about how to create a psychological profile of a serial killer. FBI profiles, articles, and Wikipedia pages proliferate. In the mirror of the screen he sees her notice his reflection. Her face morphs to a smile, her eyes dancing to his.

He points. “Why?”

“Did you know that male serial killers generally kill for sex, but female serial killers kill for money?”

“I did not.”

“So a tenure-track position is basically a lot of money, and health insurance, and job security, and social standing—”

“Except Jessica is not a serial killer, and also accounted for because Mike took her home,” Kierk says sharply.

“I know!” Carmen says defensively. “It’s not like I was accusing her. Besides, that’s not why I’ve been reading about this, exactly. Listen, we need to go somewhere private.”

“What was that ambulance doing outside? Who got—”

Carmen nods excitedly. “I’ll tell you but I need somewhere private.”

He eyes her. “Actually, Carmen, I’m sorry I asked. I don’t have time for this right now.”

“What’s the matter with you? What’s going on?”

“Nothing. I’m just busy.”

“This is important.”

“Fine. Alright? Fine.”

Carmen, confused, leads him out of the lab and into the side room down the corridor. It’s the same room where Atif, Carmen, and he had first talked about their joint project weeks ago.

“What’s going on with you?”

“What is it that you wanted to tell me?” he says brusquely.

Hurt, Carmen lowers her voice. “Okay, whatever, I don’t know what’s wrong with you but this morning outside the CNS this homeless guy was yelling—”

“What was he saying?”

“Listen! He was shouting at everyone entering the CNS. Screaming about how we had taken his friends, that we were kidnapping people. So I asked him. And it took a little while to get it coherent, but the gist of it was that, last night, a friend of his was taken into this building, in here.”

“Into the CNS?”

“Yeah, he was saying that they were taking the homeless. That everyone knew it too. That they took them at night.”

“ Really.”

“Listen, and then he said that afterward they’re different.” Carmen has gotten incredibly serious. “Kierk, he said that they had been lobotomized.”

“He probably just saw the sign ‘Center for Neural