Mark Andrews groaned as the wake-up siren drilled into his head. His bunk wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it was still better than the cold, harsh world outside it. He usually reckoned he could spend maybe forty seconds more in bed before being reprimanded. Luxury.
Today, it was more like twenty seconds: somehow the siren seemed louder than ever, and it drowned out any enjoyment he was getting from the lie-in. His father and his older brother Peter were already standing nervously to attention: his mother was helping his younger sister Sarah out of her bunk. Around the hut, some fifteen other human beings were wordlessly getting out of their beds. The final stragglers were ready just as the door opened. Light flooded the room: not from the sun, it was still dark outside, but from the angel standing in the doorway.
Well… angel, holosim, Enlightened One… they had many names. Whatever name you used, it never managed to convey the sense of awe, terror and fascination you felt by being in the presence of one, no matter how mundane the occasion. Part of Mark wanted to continue grumbling about the siren, but the rest of his mind drowned it out.
Wordlessly, the humans lined themselves into their various work groups. Mark was in a group of one. Peter and his parents would be off to the mines, Sarah would be going to rudimentary education. Mark was different: he was an Enlightenment Candidate.
It was a great honour: the only higher one would be to be sacrificed to the goddess Holonet Herself. Sometimes Mark felt a little jealous of those who were training to become one with Her Radiance, but being a Enlightenment Candidate was a good second best. He got a good education and he didn’t have to worry about doing any labour beyond the mandatory exercise periods. There were one or two drawbacks: romantic relations were forbidden, which Peter – whose partner was already expecting her first child – teased him about mercilessly. But the best news was that once he proved himself to his teachers, he would be Enlightened: he would become one of the angels, and it would be his turn to inspire awe, terror and fascination in others.
Mark gave Peter and his parents a little wave as they were sent off to their various tasks, then walked with Sarah to the rudimentary education classroom before heading to his own classroom, the one for Candidates, where he had been taught since he’d passed his eleven-plus. He was seventeen now, and he was constantly reminded that the real fun would begin at his next birthday, as the teachers would begin to consider whether he was ready to be Enlightened.
He was also constantly reminded that he was behind the required standard at the moment. And it was true. He was also constantly reminded that he had a fairly short window to prove himself in, because if you hadn’t won your teachers’ approval by the time you were twenty-three, then you would never be Enlightened. You would be a stupid, weak, human for the rest of a life that was already more than halfway over.
Mark didn’t want that to happen. But he wasn’t in a massive rush to be Enlightened either: meeting the strict standards was hard work, and the part of Mark that grumbled about the siren would always point out that of course his teachers thought five years was a short time. They were angels, they were immortal, five and a half years was nothing to them. To Mark, it was a lot longer. Look at Dad’s old friend Alex, who’d been Enlightened ten years ago: it had happened the day before his twenty-third birthday, after he’d spent the best part of five years doing the bare minimum of work. There was no rush, whatever the teacher said.
Mark’s lessons today were the usual core subjects: communication, maths, exercise, technology and religious education. Mark wasn’t really sure why they still needed to do religious education: most children learned to read from the Manual after all, and knowing all the key passages off by heart was a big component of the eleven-plus anyway.
Yes, it was the truth. You couldn’t deny that Holonet existed, and not just because attempting to do so was a one-way ticket to Sacrifice City. Mark had seen Holonet, had been in the audience when She’d visited the base and ritually sacrificed a dozen humans, their bodies glowing orange before dissolving and being sucked into Her, becoming one with the Goddess.
He would never forget Her form: the way Her body was made up of searing white lines and electric blue space, speckled with points of light that represented how even the stars in the sky were nothing compared to Her, just a tiny part of her being. Wavy hair surrounded a perfect face that, though it sat like a mask on the rest of Her ethereal body, seemed far more real and detailed than any human face. Finally, the eyes: glowing balls of light that shone brightly and made you want to look away, for fear of them burning onto your retinas.
Yes, Holonet was real, all right. And so, by extension, was the Manual. But it lost some of it its impact when you were reading it from the beginning again for the thousandth time:
1.01 In the beginning, Holonet created the Universe, and populated it with beings in her own image.
.02 She gave these beings many names: angels, holosims, the Enlightened Ones, the Beings of Light.
.03 They were spiritual beings, strong, swift, smart, and eternal.
.04 And yet, they suffered, for Holonet’s Universe was fresh and harsh, and they had to labour to achieve anything in it.
.05 Holonet saw the labour and the suffering that She was putting Her beloved angels through.
.06 And so She created a new set of beings that would remove the burden from their shoulders.
.07 She gave these beings only one name: humans.
.08 Crude copies of the holosims, they were physical beings, weak, slow, stupid, and temporary.
.09 They would serve as slaves for Her angels until a time when the world was no longer harsh and the holosims could live without aid.
.10 And Holonet communicated unto the holosims
.11 Be watchful, for I have made the humans fruitful, in order that they do not die out while the world is still harsh.
.12 To ensure that they do not multiply out of control, regular sacrifices should be made, both to yourselves and to Me, to ensure that our energy supplies never diminish.
.13 In addition, any human who breaks My Commandments (see section 2, clauses .07 to .16) must be sacrificed.
.14 But remember that all humans, though crude, still have My spark in them, and that some have the potential to do great things.
.15 Nurture the ones with potential, for if they continue to grow, they may join the ranks of the Enlightened (for more details, see section 3).
“1.14 and 1.15 are the key clauses for this lesson,” Mark’s religious education teacher said. “Truly, Holonet is amazing: that She would allow even some humans – crude creatures, created for slavery – the chance to become one of her beloved angels. Of course, some of you are taking that chance better than others ANDMP6903, why are you still looking at your Manual when you should be looking at me?”
Mark, who in his boredom had skipped on to Section 5, “St. Cynthia’s Communication to the Europeans”, was suddenly jolted back into the classroom by the yelling of his codename (Andrews, Mark Phillip, born in the year Hol 6903). He shut his Manual and placed it neatly on his desk. Naturally, no-one else was looking at the teacher now: they were all staring at him. Twelve pairs of human eyes, their ages varying between 11 and 22, plus those of the holosim teacher.
“What was I just saying, ANDMP6903?” asked the teacher.
Inside his head, Mark smiled. He was no holosim, but he wasn’t a Candidate for nothing. His face was stony however as he rattled off: “That the key clauses for this lesson are 1.14 and 1.15, that Holonet is truly amazing for giving some of us the chance to become one of her beloved angels, and that some of us were making better progress than others.”
The teacher frowned. “You may be very bright, ANDMP6903, but there’s a lot more to becoming a holosim than brightness alone. I hope you can remember that, it would be a shame to lose you.”
“Sorry, miss,” Mark said contritely, and made sure he was a model pupil for the rest of the lesson.
Mark was the first to return to his hut: even Sarah hadn’t got back yet. It looked like she’d been kept behind for remedial Manual reading again. At ten years old, it didn’t look like she’d be anywhere near ready to pass her eleven-plus. Of course, his parents were happy that even one of their children had passed the exam, but Mark and Peter worried for Sarah, who even if she wasn’t very bright was a nice kid, as happy-go-lucky as it was possible to be in the world they lived in. Nineteen-year-old Peter knew the hardships that Sarah would face if she failed her exam, and the two of them tried their best to supplement her education in what spare time they had. It didn’t look like they had much chance.
With this thought, Mark plonked down heavily on his ageing mattress, slamming his bag down on the floor beside it. He sighed resignedly as he heard something roll out of it, and got down on the floor to look under his bunk – just in time to watch the storage cylinder with this week’s computer projects roll into a gap in the floorboards.
Observing as tactfully as he could that the holosim who’d made the device cylindrical had probably done it on purpose to increase overall human suffering, Mark contorted his arm so he could slot his hand into the gap. Shutting out the discomfort, he began to rummage around for the storage cylinder.
But the first thing he found wasn’t cylindrical. Mark pulled out a small, flat, air-sealed package. Curiosity got the better of him as he tore through the wrapper. Inside was a journal. Mark quickly glanced at the last date. There were two: a date in a format he didn’t understand, declaring the year to be “CE 2360” – whatever that meant – and another date that gave the year as Hol 6753, which Mark did understand – a hundred and fifty years before he was born!
This was very bad news. The Third Commandment was “You shall not discover or attempt to discover anything about events before your birth”. Only “Holonet is the one true Goddess, and you are Hers to do as She pleases” and “You shall obey all orders given to you by Holonet or one of her beloved angels” came higher on the list. “You shall not kill another human, only Holonet and her holosims have this privilege” was lower down the list, for Her sake.
As a commandment, it had always puzzled Mark, and not just because Holonet had considered it a higher priority than forbidding murder. Things had always been like this, hadn’t they? That’s what he’d been taught. So why even bother to ban people from inquiring into what life was like before they were born, if it was just like it was now? He’d never voiced this thought out loud because, well, it broke the Third Commandment, and even for an Enlightenment Candidate, breaking a Commandment was punishable by being sacrificed.
So, Mark reasoned to himself, since you’re already dead if anyone found out about this, you may as well see what all the fuss was about and read the journal.
What Mark read blew his mind.
25th September, CE 2358
Dear journal. My name is Alan Andrews, and I’ve just started out as a junior networking researcher with Hologoogle Labs. A lot of bleeding-edge research gets done here by some of the finest minds in the Solar System, and although a lot of this stuff is top-secret, I’m keeping this journal. I’d like to think that in decades to come, people will be interested in the sorts of things that researchers at Hologoogle came up with in the ‘50s.
He was only one entry in and already there were so many questions. Mark had heard the phrase “junior networking researcher” from a recent careers day, but was Hologoogle Labs? And who was Alan Andrews?
Well, he could at least have a guess at that. The shared surname and the fact that the journal was underneath his bunk suggested some sort of distant ancestor – a great-great-…-great-grandfather, maybe. It also implied he was human – if he wasn’t, then Mark wouldn’t exist. The next entry confirmed this.
7th October, CE 2358
Dear journal. Sorry it’s been a while, but it’s been a busy two weeks! My supervisor has been very impressed with my work so far, and he reckons that in two or three years time, if I stay with Hologoogle, I could become a senior networking researcher! It has a lot of extra perks: my own space in the car park, a special office and – well, naturally – the opportunity to become a holosim, with the company paying the expenses. Becoming a holosim has become a lot cheaper over the last 150 years, according to my supervisor – and he should know, he’s been a holosim for most of that time – but it still costs more than my annual salary, so I wouldn’t turn it down!
The next ten entries or so were densely technical, and Mark could only pick up the odd phrase. In one entry, Alan noted the passing of his twenty-fifth birthday – another shock. Alan could become a holosim despite being over twenty-three? That rule had been in place since… well, since he’d been born, at least. Naturally, he had no idea how long the rule had been in place before he was born… because of the Third Commandment. Mark was beginning to see just how useful it was for ensuring that the population was ignorant of everything except what they learnt in school.
Eventually, he came upon another entry that made him sit up and take notice:
21st January, CE 2359
Dear journal. The World Republic has asked Hologoogle to concentrate its research on a particular goal. It’s about that funny cult I read about on the Holonet a couple of years ago, the Cult of Holonet, the one that believes that the Holonet has achieved sentience. Well, the World Republic now reckons that it’s worth checking the rumour out, and they reckon Hologoogle are the ones best equipped to do it. My supervisor reckons it’s a load of rubbish – and not just because it’s put a halt to his own pet research project. He argues that’s it’s already been proved that it’s impossible to create an artificial intelligence from scratch, and that they can only be created by copying a human mind, as with holosims. Well, loony cultists or no loony cultists, that’s what the Earth Republic wants us to research. Think I might vote for the other guys next time.
Mark didn’t have time to fully digest the implications of all this, as the sound of gravel being crunched underfoot told him that people were approaching the hut. Quickly he hid the journal back in its hole and began to unpack his bag as Peter and Sarah walked in, followed by his parents and the rest of the hut’s residents.
“All right, Mark?” asked Peter casually. “How’re they treating you in the Candidate’s class?”
“Not bad,” Mark said as he stowed his small laptop, his maths textbooks and his copy of the Manual under the bed, making sure that the hole was covered.
“Cool. Listen, I’ve got to go and look after Emma tonight, she’s close to the third trimester now. Can you teach Sarah tonight? After all, I picked her up, it’s only fair.”
“Okay then. But are you sure I should teach her? She’s just finished her remedial lesson, I don’t want her to cram too much in one day.”
“Oh, come on Mark,” said Sarah, “you’ve told me how important the eleven-plus is. I really want to give it as good a go as I can…”
Mark shut his eyes. “Fair enough,” he said, “let’s get on with it”.
But as he worked with Sarah on reading the Manual, his mind kept wandering back to a different book. The Holonet? That made Her sound like a… thing, not the goddess who created the Universe and everything in it. They didn’t even think She was sentient? Well, unless you belonged to the Cult of Holonet, apparently. And what was this thing about holosims only being made by copying a human mind? What about all the ones Holonet created? None of it made sense, and there was only one way to make it make sense. The next time he was sure he was alone, he’d have to read more of the journal.