The Marriage of the Living Dark

A trail of smoke

Hannem lay on the slab, barely conscious now. It was four days since he’d been “infected” and he had suffered a slow and painful deterioration. He had been blind these last two days and as his nervous system slowly rotted, so the natural functions of his body had switched down, one after another. Coming into the lab, Ben paused, wrinkling his nose in disgust at the sickly, stale stench that wafted across.

He walked over and stood beside the slab. Hannem was naked, and in the dim light from the wall lamps his flesh looked so pale it was almost grey. He no longer seemed real, more like a clay model, moulded to resemble a man. Yes, day we are, Ben thought, noting the sheen of sweat that covered the skin wherever he looked; flesh puppets, dancing on glistening strings of nudeopeptides.

And when the dance was done the spirit fled, leaving a rotting hulk, a wreck upon the ebbing tide of time.

Ben stared at the creature’s massive, bony skull, wondering what yet remained of that vast and powerful intellect he had witnessed; whether some tiny flicker of awareness yet remained. Or was this all? This putrid mimicry of life? Machines. Machines of flesh and blood, of bone and nerve and sinew, the whole thing animated by a force that utterly defied analysis. A force that came and went and left no explanation for its existence, other than the fact that it had once been and was no more.

The fact of death.Ben smiled at the thought Death worried some people, yet when the force that animated him finally left his corporeal frame, then he was happy to know that he would be broken down and used again, his atoms eternally recycled, until the universe ran down.

And that was, in essence, why he could not understand his sister’s anger; why he felt he had more in common with DeVore and his love of eternal process - of the long view - than in her petty vision of the individual. For, after all, what did it matter if mankind did die out? Would the universe be diminished by man’s passing? Not at all. For a finer, better creature would evolve in time. And that too would have its day before it died and was replaced. For that was how things worked, ad infinitum, until the great game ended.

Death. That was all there was when it came down to it Death. Death before and death after. And in between, the bright, flickering illusion of life.

He stared at the body a moment longer then turned away. There were no answers here, only patterns of force, holding out briefly against dissolution. Or until Newton’s second law prevailed.

Ben smiled. Yes, in the end, entropy was all.

“Howard?”

DeVore looked up from the wet M board, his eyes distant.

“Howard, you’ve a visitor.”

As Emtu moved aside, Ben stepped forward, but seeing the abstracted look on DeVore’s face, he hesitated. “Look, if you’re busy, I’ll come back” “No,” DeVore said, dismissing the woman with a nod, then looking back at Ben. “In fact, sit down. You play, don’t you?”

“Chess is my game, but yes ... I can play if I’m pushed.”

“Then take black. We’re into the endgame.”

Ben nodded, as if he understood, then sat, taking in the pattern of the board at a glance. “Whose turn is it?”