Black Wings Of Cthulhu: Volume Two Part 17

DESPITE ALL THIS, I TRIED TO ABANDON THE FIGURE there. I tried at first to leave it in the filing cabinets, but they were locked. I tried to place it somewhere on the desk where it would not be immediately apparent, but when I hid it beneath a paper it made a strange and noticeable mound, and when I left it exposed it was more noticeable still. Finally I stretched on my toes and placed it on the top edge of the window's lintel, balancing it there, where, with a little luck, it might go for a time unnoticed.

I MIGHT HAVE LEFT THEN, MIGHT HAVE FLED THAT establishment of incarceration without seeing my aunt, but it was at that moment, with my having had just enough time to return to the chair on the proper side of the desk, that the director entered. When he did, I began to understand the full extent of my deception.

He was a slender, thin man, of sallow complexion, wearing spindly round gla.s.ses. He greeted me by name, said it was nice to see me again. And yes, I realized, I had seen him before, had spoken to him in fact many times-how could I have forgotten? I could even remember his name. Or could at least remember enough to know that his name was not Wilc.o.x.

HOW I MANAGED TO GET THROUGH THE FIRST MINUTES of that conversation without him realizing how troubled I was, I still cannot say. Perhaps it was simply enough, once again, to fear what might happen to me if I showed any hint of derangement in a facility whose only purpose and specialty was to restrain the insane. Perhaps the doctor did notice my distress and had the kindness not to comment on it, or simply thought it might have to do with whatever I had come to discuss with him about my aunt.

We discussed my aunt, how she was doing, how she was responding to treatment. He confessed to me, after unlocking one of the filing cabinets with a key and removing a thick file with her name on its tab, that she was not responding at all, that she seemed increasingly in her own private world. This I knew, having seen her fairly recently. I was only trying to stall while I gathered myself.

We discussed her situation for a moment, then I thanked him and confessed to him that I was satisfied they were doing the best they could for her. Our conversation moved on to more general topics and flindered away until at last I announced that I hated to run off but I really should be seeing my aunt. I stood up and so did he. At the door, however, I couldn't resist asking about Henry.

"Henry?" he said.

"Yes," I said. "A patient here. I wonder how he's doing."

His brow furrowed. "Normally I discuss the patients only with their family members," he said.

"I perfectly understand," I said. "Say no more."

"But in this case I'm confused," he said. "I am certain we don't have a patient named Henry."

I WAS TEMPTED TO LEAVE THEN, AND IF I DID NOT IT was because, my paranoid tendencies acting up again, I felt that it would seem suspicious if I did not visit my aunt first.

And so I went and saw her. As usual, she was in her own world, living forty, or maybe fifty years in the past, as if she were a child. We sat cross-legged on the floor, she poured me tea from an imaginary teapot, she babbled at me. I responded when necessary, imagining the whole time my walk back out of the mental hospital, wondering if I would make it to the exit and freedom before they guessed I was mad.

But I am not mad, I told myself. It was only that unholy figurine that made me feel so.

And then, leaning back against the wall, I let one hand slide into my jacket pocket and there my fingers found, once again, somehow with me again, the clay figurine.

I IMAGINE YOU WILL JUDGE ME HARSHLY FOR WHAT I did next, but I did not know what else to do. I was desperate. For a moment I held the figure in my hand within my pocket, wondering if I could crush it into powder there, though knowing already how useless such an effort would be.

And then an awful inspiration struck me. I removed my closed fist from my pocket and held it out before me.

My aunt stopped what she was doing, regarded my fist with wide eyes.

"What do you have?" she asked.

I feigned for her my best smile. "A present," I said.

"A present!" she said, and her eyes lit up and she began to find it difficult to sit still. "And who is it for?"

"Who do you suppose it's for?" I asked.

"Me," she said, and pointed to her temple as if her finger were a gun.

"That's right," I said, and opened my palm. "It's a present for you."

THE WHOLE WAY OUT OF THE ASYLUM I FELT EYES ON my back. I felt something judging me, something weighing and a.s.sessing my actions and finding them wanting. But had I not rid myself of the idol or figurine or whatever it is, I would have gone mad-and indeed may still be a little mad already. It was evil, inhuman. As for my aunt, I cannot bear to see her again. I will never go back.

Since my aunt accepted it, the statue has not returned to me. The dreams too have faded, though I now have nightmares of a different sort, from the last moments I spent in the company of my aunt.

Those last moments are these: My aunt took the figure from me and immediately began rocking it back and forth and singing to it as if it were a baby, as if it were her baby. This wouldn't bother me-she is, after all, mad-and I probably could have steeled myself to bear visiting her except for the fact of what she sang.

For she sang not words but strange barks and shrieks with a peculiar unearthly cadence to them, as if she were speaking a language not meant to be uttered by a human throat.

Correlated Discontents RICK DAKAN.

Rick Dakan is a longtime Lovecraft-obsessive and a longtime professional writer, but has only recently gotten to do both at the same time. In addition to his newest novel, The Cult of Cthulhu: A Novel of Lovecraftian Obsession (Arcane Wisdom, 2012), he is the author of the Geek Mafia trilogy, the serialized novel Rage Quit, and numerous game-related pieces dating back to 1995.

"MR. JANNOWITZ, WHOSE IDEA WAS IT TO USE LOVECRAFT for your test case?"

"I was the one who suggested using the letters of H. P. Lovecraft. I was in Dr. Mason's office at the University. Dr. Mason, as usual, was at his computer, talking to but not looking at me. He said, 'I'm not familiar,' his gaze never leaving the screen as he typed the name into Google. 'A horror writer... I don't think so.'

"'Not his stories,' I said. I glanced at the talking points I'd typed on my phone's notepad app. I didn't want to fumble my arguments up again. 'His letters. He wrote thousands and thousands of them.'

"Dr. Mason responded with more typing. It was the only sound he liked in his office besides his own voice. He'd paid for the soundproof panels himself when both the department and the university had balked at the idea. He'd covered over the built-in bookshelves and his window in the process, leaving just the ceiling fluorescents, the battered oak desk, three chairs, and four flat screens. I knew from experience that a thousand people could gather for an African drum world cultures festival on the quad just outside and we wouldn't hear a thing at the desk.

"I let Dr. Mason scan the screen in front of him, a click, some typing, the faint noise of a mouse wheel turning. I shifted in the chair, also special-bought. Solid metal coated in foam and stain-resistant blue fabric. No creaking joints or squeaking leather.

"'Only a fraction has been digitized,' he said. 'Who else?'

"I took encouragement from my prepared notes and said, 'But it's all in print now. Volume 25 of the Collected Letters just came out last month.' He was reading something on the screen, probably his e-mail, but I knew he'd both heard and understood me. I also knew he was waiting for my point, so I went off notes and added, 'I could scan them in,' and then held my breath.

"'That would take at least three weeks,' he said, glancing over to the screen on his right where the latest build was compiling. It showed 32% complete.

"'I could bring in some undergrads. We could do it in a week.' I exhaled the words in a rush, which probably would have sounded panicked to Dr. Mason if he'd been paying me his full attention.

"He glanced up at me, his left eye squinting just a fraction. The pale light from the screen casting his dark complexion in stark chiaroscuro relief. 'Why have you already made up your mind?' he asked.

"I had prepared an answer for this question. I knew that Mason didn't care about why I thought Lovecraft was the perfect choice. He wanted my a.s.sessment of the neurological processes that had led me to rule out other options. I glanced at my talking points and said, 'My estranged brother introduced me to Lovecraft when I was a child, before we drifted apart. I a.s.sociate Lovecraft with better times and I'm already familiar with him. Therefore, I'm personally interested in his letters and learning more about him.' I knew this wasn't exactly what Dr. Mason was looking for, but I wanted him to know it anyway. He just kept looking at me, probably guessing my motivation. A last glance at my notes and then I gave him what he wanted. 'The repeated exposure, combined with my basic human need for resolution, combined with familiarity with the subject, all come together to bias me toward the solution I've already decided is best and discount other options of equal or greater merit. Also, Lovecraft wrote about monsters, which is cool.'

"The corners of Dr. Mason's lips curved ever so slightly up into a smile, but his eyes lit up. 'Coolness is not an insignificant factor,' he said and then nodded to me.

"His smile lit up my own eyes and seeped down into a wide grin of my own. 'I'll log into interlibrary loan and put in some requests,' I said, as if I hadn't already done just that, closing my laptop and slipping out without another word."

"AND A MONTH LATER YOU BEGAN. DO YOU REMEMBER the first successful test session?"

"Yes. I remember Dr. Mason's voice over the intercom in the test lab. I was in the pilot's chair, complaining that the words were too fast. He told me to relax my eyes and to stop trying to guess what word was coming next. The words sped up, until I couldn't think ahead of them. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"The thirty-inch screen in front of me was the only source of light in the room, an off-white background with large, bold Times New Roman words taking over the screen one at a time before being replaced a fraction of a second later by their successors. I started speed-reading my way aloud through the sentence: 'LANGUAGE VOCABULARY IDEAS IMAGERY EVERYTHING SUCc.u.mBED TO MY ONE INTENSE PURPOSE OF THINKING AND DREAMING MYSELF BACK INTO THE WORLD OF PERIWIGS AND LONG S'S WHICH FOR SOME ODD REASON SEEMED TO ME THE NORMAL WORLD.'

"'I believe the double letter "s" is meant to be the plural, not the hiss of a snake.' I hadn't sussed out the unfamiliar word and so had just said, 'essss.'

"'Sorry,' I said, blinking rapidly to moisten my eyes. 'Also, there's no punctuation, which confuses me, I think.'

"'Revision 3.8 will have punctuation, intonation, and so on. Your voice is still very stilted.'

"'I'm still not used to it,' I said, trying not to sound defensive. I did not want Carrie or Gene to take my place in the chair, and I knew Dr. Mason wouldn't hesitate to make the switch if he thought they could do a better job. I had been practicing on my own, but I'd stopped sharing my lab notes and personal log with the others. They could learn my tricks after I'd mastered them and secured my place as the first revenant pilot. 'I just need more practice.'

"There were thirty or forty seconds of silence from the observation room. I imagined Dr. Mason cogitating away on the problem. 'Ms. Thomas and Mr. Keller are also well-versed with the current software version. We'll need to develop a training system to get new hosts up to speed at some point, but that would be a waste of our time right now,' he said, thinking about my fate out loud, as was his habit. Just a few moments more silence, and then, 'Try again.'

"Thank G.o.d, I whispered to myself and sank back down into the web of biofeedback and physical monitoring devices attached to my head, chest, and right arm. I'd tensed up considerably and went through my breathing and relaxation exercises to relax my body and clear my mind.

"'We'll move right into the Q and A,' Dr. Mason's far off voice instructed through the intercom. 'Starting with the Autobiography Query Set A.'

"I could visualize Dr. Mason and Gene sitting in the control room on the other side of that intercom. The room's chaos must drive Dr. Mason crazy, although he'd never mentioned it. I'd posted a pic of it to Facebook and my friend Jacob had called it 'The Cyber Cephalopod,' which was somehow both a Cthulhu and an obscure Brady Bunch reference. The s.p.a.ce beneath the desk was a riot of open-cased computers, data cables, power strips, and rack s.p.a.ce for memory. It had ended up being cheaper to have a different computer for every piece of monitoring equipment, plus backups, plus the control gear, and it all added up to an even dozen. On the desktop, that flow of bits only translated into six screens, four of which were there mostly to monitor the monitoring machines that showed an aggregate of my brain activity, its different sections going from faded gray to bright blue as my neurons reacted to stimuli. The other was the Revenant Interface, the ever-changing control panel that bridged Lovecraft's letters and my mind. It seemed like a lot, but it was like a cheap laptop compared to the eleven IBM super-computers two floors below us that housed the actual language processing skills for our Mr. Lovecraft.

"'Ready,' came Dr. Mason's voice over the intercom. I opened my eyes and saw nothing but the screen, heard nothing but his voice.

"'Tell me one of your fondest childhood memories.'

"There was a few microseconds delay, and then I had two options, one of which was an out-of-context sentence about Lovecraft's mother that didn't seem fond or unhappy, but the other seemed dead-on. I read aloud, 'When I was very small, my kingdom was the lot next to my birthplace, 454 Angell Street. When I was between four and five, the coachman built me an immense summer-house all mine own. All this magnificence was my very own, to do with as I liked!' I gave the end of the sentence a tonal goose, mimicking remembered fondness. It was certainly my voice, but it also didn't sound anything like me. The reading was still stilted, but I had felt the rhythm of the language.

"But I didn't have time to second-guess myself, as Dr. Mason was already asking me another question. 'Tell me something else that makes you happy.' I was surprised at this request, since it required a level of contextual a.n.a.lysis of language that would strain the limits of the software to deal with concepts rather than just looking up facts.

"The words came a little faster this time. Dr. Mason had sped them up without telling me, and I only had one second to choose between the options Lovecraft offered. The choice seemed easy this time. 'I love kitties, gawd bless their little whiskers, and I don't give a d.a.m.n whether they or we are superior or inferior! They're confounded pretty, and that's all we know and all we need to know!' In truth I'm intensely allergic to cats, but the words poured out of my mouth before my brain could quite make sense of them. The sentiments I honestly found a little off-putting, but any discomfort was entirely subsumed by my sense of excitement at losing myself in the process of channeling the dead man's thoughts.

"'What about the opposite feelings. What is something that upsets you?'

"The words flashed up on the screen, and it was again an easy choice as I skimmed the options, focusing in on key words. One response was about gentlemen not eating bananas in public, which was kind of funny, but what I said instead seemed to much more directly address Dr. Mason's question. 'As for this flabby talk of an "Americanism" which opposes all racial discrimination-that is simply G.o.d d.a.m.ned bull-s.h.i.t!'

"'A controversial man, your friend Lovecraft,' Mason commented through the intercom. I was a little mortified about what I'd just said, but also thrilled, because it so clearly wasn't me doing the talking, it was Lovecraft. Before I could muster an excuse for the dead author's century-old nastiness, he said, 'Let's continue. I've booked a live demonstration in Portland in seven weeks. No turning back now.'

"An hour later, I was allowed to unstrap myself from the pilot's seat, blinking and rubbing my eyes, trying to slow my breathing. The mental exertion of keeping up with the rapid-fire questions and even more rapid decision-making about what to read had exhausted me. It was like taking the GRE with a chess clock on every question-constant mental strain. For me it felt like a chaotic, almost random-guess endeavor, and I hadn't really been able to track the conversation between Lovecraft and Dr. Mason. I was sure it had been quite incoherent. But in fact it was anything but.

"I downloaded a copy of the session's audio file and listened to it as I trudged my way across campus and back to my studio apartment. It's always a little disorienting to hear one's own voice played back, but listening to my voice parroting another's words packed an order of magnitude more weirdness. It was like listening to a radio play performed by a twin brother I never had-it all sounded familiar and new at the same time. Moreover, it sounded like a conversation. Occasionally stilted and with a few odd pauses and off emphases, but something a naive listener would hear and think to be a real, if odd, discussion between two men, no computers involved."

"NOW LET'S TALK ABOUT THE PORTLAND EVENT. HOW would you characterize it?"

"It was the first time everything really clicked into place."

"Even though others have called it 'a disaster'?"

"It depends on your perspective, I suppose."

"Explain what you mean."

"It was early on a Sunday morning, and the crowd inside the old Portland movie theater was smaller even than I'd predicted. I was glad Dr. Mason didn't seem to mind, although with him it was hard to tell what he really thought. A webcam let me see the room, but none of them could see me back in the lab. Instead, a 3D model of H. P. Lovecraft's head projected onto the screen did a rough job of mimicking my expressions. He/I blinked down at the audience with his giant, pixelated eyes. 'Ready when you are, Dr. Mason.'

"The audience looked interested at least, even if there were only eleven of them. They seemed largely alert, a squad of thirty- and forty-something men and two women. Most of the audience had black T-shirts with some mix of Lovecraft, Cthulhu, Miskatonic University, and tentacles on them, the most common of which was for the very H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival they were all currently attending. One plump woman was dressed in a tan three-piece suit that put me in mind of a Victorian Egyptologist. Her pith helmet sat on the seat beside her. She had a small tablet computer in her lap, fingers poised above its virtual keyboard as she looked up at me, her expression mild and expectant.

"Dr. Mason stood behind a lectern set up in front of the screen and went through some bland thanks and introductions, explaining what the Revenant Project was all about (the name got some laughs, which I knew Dr. Mason would question me about when I got back to the University), but his jargon-laden techn.o.babble wasn't as clear as it might have been. Finally, though, he summed it up well: 'The revenant's ability to synthesize everything that Mr. Lovecraft ever wrote far exceeds the ability of even the most diligent literary scholar. The program, with its perfect recall, has all the facts at hand in a way no one has since the living subject died in 1937.'

"The Egyptologist-looking woman raised her hand and asked, 'So is it a computer program or an avatar for a person?'

"'It's both,' he replied, voice flat and short in a way most people would take offense at if they didn't know him. 'The head is obviously an avatar and Mr. Jannowitz is the user. But the program tells him what to say, which answers to give to your questions.'

"'If the program answers the questions, what is the user there for? Just to read the answers with human inflections?' she asked, typing one-handed on her tablet while looking at me on the screen.

"'Good question. The inflections are a piece of it, but more important is to choose context. The Revenant software can guess at context and meaning based on its a.n.a.lysis of the grammar and syntax. It then presents the operator with options, and the user chooses the right context.'

"'So is Mr. Jannowitz choosing which answers to give? Or is the Lovecraft program?' she asked. It looked like she'd typed everything Dr. Mason had said. I wondered if she was a court reporter by day or something.

"'Both of them together. It's a kind of symbiosis. The words are all Mr. Lovecraft's. The user provides contextual decisions without choosing the content. I must emphasize that it all happens very fast. The user doesn't have the time to edit or choose-he's there to react and input the kind of data that voice-to-text and grammar software is bad at figuring out. Although it's learning, getting better all the time.' He waited for her to finish typing what he'd said, a delay of just a second or two. Everyone was watching either me or her or looking back and forth. 'Shall we get started?'

"She nodded and there were affirmative murmurs from the rest of the small audience. Dr. Mason asked, 'Who has a question for Mr. Lovecraft?' A light went on in the lower left corner of my display, indicating that my microphone was now live.

"'What was your first story published in Weird Tales?' someone from the crowd asked. I couldn't tell who over the webcam, couldn't even hear the question very well, but Dr. Mason repeated it in a clear voice that Lovecraft's voice-to-text a.n.a.lysis translated perfectly. Two answers presented themselves; one said, '1) My first amateur publication...,' the other said, '2) My first story in Weird...' I tapped the '2' b.u.t.ton on the keypad and giant white Times New Roman letters filled the screen, appearing one word at a time.

"'My first publication in Weird Tales was "Dagon," in October, 1923.' Weeks of practice made my voice sound informed and maybe a little haughty, and Dr. Mason's voice synthesizer was doing the rest, adding in a very light Providence accent with just the barest hint of affected English accent to cla.s.s things up. Lovecraft kept going, though, adding context to the simple detail. 'I like Weird Tales very much,' we said. 'Most of the stories, of course, are more or less commercial-or should I say conventional?-in technique, but they all have an enjoyable angle.'

"'Does your critique of Weird Tales apply to your own early stories, like "Dagon" and "Erich Zann" as well?' came an unasked for follow-up from the same person.

"'Of my products, my favorites are "The Colour out of s.p.a.ce" and "The Music of Erich Zann." It is now clear to me that any actual literary merit I have is confined to tales of dream-life, strange shadow, and cosmic "outsideness," notwithstanding a keen interest in many other departments of life and a professional practice of general prose and verse revision. Why this is so, I have not the least idea.'

"The crowd seemed to perk up on the other side of the camera, chuckling at Lovecraft's self-a.s.sessment. Later I'd look at some of the Twitter posts from someone in the audience, and he used words like 'amazing' and 'super-cool.' More questions came, and we answered easy inquiries as to my birthday and family and my favorite books. The question about how old I was befuddled me, but Lovecraft had no problem, and I found myself accurately claiming to be over a hundred years of age. Asked about the wonderful new world of the Internet, I said, 'I can't get interested in it-it doesn't even bore me enough to take my mind off other boredoms,' which drew another good laugh. I wasn't sure how Lovecraft had come up with that response, but we all knew it was perfect.

"The next question, from a thin, lanky man with long red hair tied back in a ponytail, threw me for a total loop. 'Are you alive?' he asked. Lovecraft offered me the option of giving his date of death, but it suggested that a more erudite response was the preferred reply, and so I went with it. 'My body died in 1937, but wandering energy always has a detectable form. If it doesn't take the form of waves or electron-streams, it becomes matter itself; and the absence of matter or any other detectable energy-form indicates not the presence of spirit, but the absence of anything whatever.' The audience ate it up, and someone even clapped a few times.

"As we answered fast, the questions came faster, an unconscious agreement amongst everyone in the room to try and push Lovecraft to his limits. I scarcely had time to register the questions as they came in, and the display presented such obvious choices that, with many questions, I found myself finished saying it before I knew exactly what had happened.