IT

 

TANITH LEE

 

Tanith Leewas born in 1947, didn’t learn to read until she was nearly 8, and started to write aged 9. Since becoming a fulltime writer in 1974, she has written some 100 books, about 270 short stories, 4 radio plays, and 2 episodes of Blake’s 7. Her latest publications include the novels To Indigo, L’Amber, and Killing Violets (Immanion), and the short story collection Cold Grey Stones (NewCon Press). She lives on the Sussex Weald with husband, writer/artist John Kaiine, in a house full of books, stained glass, plants and cat fur.

 

 

IT BEGAN—LET me rephrase that: the occurrences began—early in March of 20 (see Ref. File 906 AC).

Calder started to notice what was happening about mid-March, but quite negligently, as one would (and as, indeed, one did), and put it down to the usual incompetence of type-setters, scanners, and/or computers. At this point nobody else referred to it in his hearing, let alone spoke to him in person on the matter. This, of course, was while the—shall we say, for want of a better term—Interference was, or seemed, mostly confined to printed material, i.e. books, magazines, newspapers and journals, circulars, and other paper hardcopy of this sort. The problem entailed merely a constant recurrence of a single word, generally out of place, and having no relation to the surrounding text.

Presently, however, the Interference spread. Calder was himself astonished one morning when, typing up a memo on his personal Securist L.T., what he took for an invading (and unwanted) advert popped up, not to one side but at the centre of the screen. As a rule various security provisos on these machines eradicate the chance of any advertising getting through. The very occasional rogue intruder was thrown out by the latent S and D systems. Calder, having activated the more aggressive S and D response, watched as the Interference duly vanished. He resumed work. Yet ten minutes later, as so many of us have similarly experienced, the interruption reappeared, this time rather larger, and flashing in an annoying and palsied way. Now, too, Calder found he was unable to get rid of it. Accordingly he left the Search and Destroy system active, but otherwise put his memo to bed, filling the remainder of the shift with other duties. The following day, at 10 a.m., on re-awakening the machine, Calder saw that not only had the S and D failed to expunge the intruder, the thing now occupied the entire screen. Nor was it to be ousted.

The Interference comprised, as almost everyone in possession of any sort of up-to-date technology and employing the English language was by now witnessing, the single letters I. and T. in bold black, and caps, on a blank white background. As Calder, and most of us, immediately named it, the word IT.

Professionals summoned to Calder’s machine (and to countless others, the bulk of them being in the UK and the States), were also unable to free up the screen. Until at about 3 p.m.—five hours after its arrival—the word flashed off. A mystery, then. But worse was to come. I hardly need to tell any of you, as the phenomenon persisted, that the word thereafter recurred every morning at approximately 10 a.m., and lasted until approximately three in the afternoon. Or the hour equivalents of these times on the other side of the Atlantic. And elsewhere, wherever English is in use.

By the fourth day of the nuisance, too, IT was appearing in many and various other intrusive situations. No model of TV was exempt from constant interruptions which, although they did not entirely block viewing for a solid five to six hours, manifesting for a minute at a time or less, still recurred continuously, amounting in some cases to over thirty appearances in any given hour, both by day and during the night. Cinemas and view-parkswere not spared either. The loss to business was considerable, and even the sale of DVDs and Blu- or Green-ray also plummeted dramatically, as even pre-recorded movies made in an era prior to current developments soon proved susceptible to what was, by now, called the IT Virus.

Elsewhere, as we know, the word appeared—often very startlingly and frequently, for example flooding out the lights of New York’s Times Square, or the neons of London. Electronic advertisements and public news screens were reduced to lunatic confusion, electric billboards and amusement displays (Tate Modern not excepted) were rendered useless, meaningless.

It was at this point that even battery-driven clocks, watches, landline phones or mobiles, electric ovens, even certain light-fitments, began helplessly to broadcast the—by now—anathematic sign of IT. Soon car headlights joined the increasing mayhem, causing, it has been estimated, at least three thousand minor to major accidents in the London area alone. Not long after, for concordant reasons, trains were withdrawn, shipping docked and all planes grounded. A State of Emergency was declared.

As every one of us doubtless remembers too, by this juncture the whole world was becoming involved. What had been initially identified and labelled as the Western Plague (which certain cross-religious militant fundamentalist factions had flaunted as an undeniable symptom of the justified rage of God) had extended, or more correctly blossomed, throughout the whole European and Middle Eastern landmass, burgeoning next in Russia, India and China consecutively, and so to the farthest East, and the deepest extremities of North and South, from Greenland to Antarctica.

Health issues of course by then were of great concern, since hospital equipment had become dangerously obscured, while such miracle advancements as digital visual, or audial, implants were now rendering their users virtually sightless, or deaf.

Nuclear Power Stations meanwhile had been placed in stasis (Ref. File 907 BD). The defence sites of all major nuclear nations were on permanent Plus Alpha alert.

The world teetered, as has been affirmed, on the brink of an abyss. For all our advancement, our techno-genius and pure ingenuity, to this we had been brought by the solitary, absurd and horrifying word IT.

 

 

AS THE MAJORITY of us are now aware, IT was not how the Infererence was presenting in those regions which did not employ either English or Amerenglish as their prime language; as in, say, Mandarin Chinese, or the elegant tendrils of Arabic script.

Calder was the first person who brought to my attention the fact that only two letters, or their representatives, nevertheless ever made up the sum total of the signature ‘Word.’ What showed here as IT was, in French, DE, and in Maltese RA. Afrikaans had it as AK. The Shona tongue of Zimbabwe as VI. While Russian, if transcribed from the Cyrillic Alphabet, was NO. Only very rarely did individual pairs of such letters form an actually recognizably existing word, such as had happened in English. Some play was subsequently made where the letters produced a word not in the recipient country’s own vernacular, but that of some other country—as with the negative possible of the Russian—NO. Or the Maltese RA, which might seem to connect with the supreme god of the Ancient Egyptians. All such might-be clues were to little avail, demonstrably. None bore fruit. Nor would anything, for some time.

Calder worked tirelessly throughout this phase. He worked too, as many of us now had to, by night, since the obstructed periods continued to obtain between 9.00 or 10.00 in the morning and 2.30 to 4 p.m.—or their comparative timeframes elsewhere on the globe.

By then almost six months had elapsed. England, at least, was in a state of near breakdown (a condition not quite unmirrored abroad). As advised, we kept to the Complex, using the technological facilities here, grateful for the emergency stocks of oil-lighting and candles, dorms, washrooms, and the copious canteen complete with bar; although gradually, inevitably, all rations were running low (even where fridges and freezers were themselves capable of working, the loss of central power both from the National Grid and the in-house generator caused constant shutdowns, as I hardly need remind anyone, I believe). Outside the walls and gates of the Complex, there had been riots across the Capital, and other English cities, as in Wales, throughout the North, and the Republic of Scotland. Ireland’s condition we could not fully judge, as she communicated minimally, and then not at all. Which, it must be admitted, was by now also true of Pan-Europe and the US.

That morning, Calder came to my official room.

“Ma’am,” he said, “I’ve unearthed some information which, as you know under these circumstances, may well be dubious. Even so, I think you should see it. Whether we go further after that, obviously I leave to you.”

The CM, despite flashing IT IT IT, made us strong coffee, and we sat down at the Long Table.

 

 

TO START WITH, Calder explained, he had worked with random theory, putting into his machine a selection of possible reasons for the onslaught of IT, these being logical, or fanciful, or downright off-the-wall (such as the notion that some foreign power had employed highly talented hacker-vandals to introduce a Western worldwide so-called Checkmate Virus, which had then proved too successful, and infected the enemy originator as well). The Analysis of the computer duly returned sober conjectures on everything Calder had mooted. “Some,” he told me, “would make plots for damn good movies.” However, nothing came up in the judgement of the Analysis to show any of the theories to be either properly feasible or ultimately legitimately viable. After this Calder simply tried what is often termed Random Strikes; that is, putting into the computer brain either carefully concocted, or randomly picked word or number sequences (this is rather like throwing dice). From these the computer computed two hundred formulae that might trigger such an effect as the deadly IT. Again, nevertheless, hard Analysis never quite concurred with any of the scenarios, whether narrative or abstract.

During this period, Calder was, as were other suitable personnel, also monitoring, via adjacent machines, the progress of a selection of the multitude of space hardware, and info satellites, which had ceased to function in any understandable manner post the incursion of IT.

“I was just packing up for the shift,” he said. “I mean, it was around 7.30 a.m. and I wasn’t getting, I thought, anywhere fast. I hooked the monitor machines back into the Analysis brain for survey until the IT-cut-out point around 10.00. I was just going out the door when the Analysis code-called me back in.”

Calder returned to the computer, and asked what was wrong.

The computer told him that a series of the numerical Random Strikes had shown a sudden strong compatible with a partial signal, emitting from one of the lost satellites. Until that moment, any of the jumbled signals emanating from these sats had been, or seemed to be, whether in language or numbers, gibberish, even to the computers. Now, coupled to Calder’s established number sequences, some sort of readability might be detected.

All that was superficially evident, outside the Analysis brain, was the expected rubbish. The sat was firstly passing above the French-English Channel, and was telecasting the usual moronic DE DE DE which, entering the space-ceiling of the UK, gave way to the familiar anathema, IT IT IT. As always happened. But the Analysis was at work now.

“It told me, Ma’am, that there were, after all, fragments of a message apparent, caught up behind the single two-letter word.” The Analysis began to prepare a mathematic and direction of what it could now perceive. One aspect of the Random Strike also had, luckily, included the assumption that, against all appearances, the two-letter IT might be a cipher, or even abbreviation of something at least emotively bigger and more complicated.

 

 

THE INITIAL INVESTIGATORY presentations and subsequent results were, it goes without saying, delayed until the next nocturnal, once the daytime IT interference cleared. They began to accumulate rapidly between 6 p.m. and 2.32 a.m., tailing off at 3 a.m. when, to Calder’s horror, the IT recurred unexpectedly out of synch, and began to dominate all the computer screens he had been using. This did not happen anywhere else inside the Complex, nor, so far as reports show, anywhere else not normally afflicted in this time zone, at least in the UK. The Interference also lapsed, fortunately, though not until 7.21 p.m.

These initial presentations were, as one would expect, purely mathematical structures, although the Analysis brain had, for our information, marked the last short formula in each instance as being the direct sibling of the two-letter IT.

As the machines, plus Calder and his trio of human assistants (Ref. File 907 H), started to reassemble the math, definitive evidence was displayed of language. But it was an alien language, unknown, and unrelated to any spoken, sung, written, engraved—or otherwise humanly realised—tongue of the Earth. It could only have originated, it seemed, on some other world, some planet far out across the oceans of space.

(How long Mankind had waited for such a communication—in hope, or in dread. Now, if it had really come to us, what must we expect? Sublime intercession—or invasion, the Vae Victis of a superior race?)

The fine computer-brains of the Complex wrestled dispassionately with this message from beyond the galaxy.

Being capable of translating almost anything, as it had always been claimed they were, they proved their worth. After due care, and agonizing delay, they rendered up to us, initially to Calder and his team, the sheer outcry, the roaring scream of the foreign message which had come from space.

For in cold fact, a message it decidedly was. In the truest sense. For it had been vocalized, not put down at one remove as words on paper, stone, screen. Its own machineries had recorded, and next transmitted it. The only code common to them and to our own world being math, and even this so extremely unlike, it would take a further two and a half months to achieve the full translation, and so to uncover the secret that lay buried there, in the breaking heart of the universe. An unwritten letter from Otherness, meant only, in this instance, for the inhabitants of the Earth. A last will and testament, of a sort, perhaps, one might say. Calder framed it in such a sentiment when, last night, he placed the full transmission, with all its steely verifyers, before me. Before me, who—during the following day—tomorrow—today—must pass on the explanation, and its significance. The News.

 

 

(REF. FILE 913 XZ/ZA) An attempt (at this stage) to reproduce the syntax of the vocal message, when boiled down into plain English, would be a travesty. Suffice to say that it contained elements (as already suggested) any human would recognize as the products of great frustration, pain, guilt, and fear. There were, (one could now scarcely miss them) portions that demonstrated prayer, and blasphemy, to and against some accepted higher ‘Power,’ presumably analogous to our world’s commingled concept of a Life-Force, a multiple pantheon, or God.

The Message itself was perfectly and directly simple, and faultlessly dreadful. One rebutted it at once, and utterly. And yet, it rang so many hollow bells, both of warning and of grieving lament.

It seemed that the world—that was, our world, the Earth—had originally been constructed—made—not by any accidental detonation of cosmic ingredients, nor by any deity or demon, in fact only by the brilliant tinkering of some obscure-by-now-to-us super-race, that had, millennia before, roamed the void, playing at such games as world-creation, just as creative children make model planes or build a prize-winning snowman. This Earth had, it seemed, been then one of trillions so built. Although only of trillions, for there were certainly other worlds which had genuinely formed in the manner that science, in the recent past, ascribed to this one.

The difference, and of course a difference there would have to be, was that all the made worlds the genius super-race had so painstakingly fashioned, were always due, after sufficient gulfs of time had worn away, also to wear away, to become cantankerous, inoperable. At which their unconscionable mechanisms (for such they had, and have, embedded usually deep within their fiery cores), ran down, collapsed, and—it is quickly said—ceased to function. This now, at its due season, was occurring to the Earth.

One will perhaps think of Global Warming, pollution, extremes of earthquake and tsunami, freak weather, the hitherto unforeseen giving way of deep-sea trenches, vast ice-shelves, or the Ozone Layer. All of this, inevitably, always blamed upon Mankind itself. But it would seem, whatever mess we have managed to make, it is now shown to be only a minor contribution to World’s End. Which, as it turns out, has already been pre-programmed, a kind of built-in obsolescence, unmendable and inescapable, whatever virtuous and abstinent paths we might have chosen, or courses of destruction we have wrought. World’s End. Yes, it had already begun, is already happening. Irredeemably. Hopelessly. Whatever we do, or may try to do, our planet, and therefore we ourselves, had—have—a little more than fifteen, though less than twenty, years left to us.

Our alien messenger, our Foreign Correspondent, in his—or her—or its—tortured confession, offers no clue to its location. Let alone any sane reason as to why, beyond its histrionics, it felt bound to pass on to us these tidings of woe. Decidedly it holds out no solution to the tragedy. There is, it seems, no remotest chance of avoidance or rescue. The creature only apologised, begging our forgiveness, and its God’s, and peppering the end of the message with expletives, these projected so violently, and in such (solipsistic perhaps) anguish, that they had corrupted the transmission, punching it full of holes, damaging it to the point that, until last night, it had been inaccessible. Yet, with perhaps the most poignant irony of all, also leaving, by such vehemence, that single remnant, stamped so black, burnt in as if by a brand, and thus able to reach us, and thus, too, incidentally ruining our planet further.

Even as we stood there, Calder and I, and I, I imagine, as drained and pale by then as he, as bereft and bitter and terrified as he; as too, soon enough every thinking animal of the Earth must become (yet locked still in that drab and peculiar box which the condemned are told they must label Denial) even then, “And so,” I said to Calder, deadly calm, as someone in my position has learned to be, “the sheer passion of that very last expletive, the creature’s—shall I call it bad language—this was what acted as the fixative—at least, upon the last two letters of that one last word. Both prior to, and following, its myriad translations into the varied tongues of Earth. That one word. Which in English—” I paused.

Sadly and gravely he answered, “Is a word, when intact, of four letters. A minor swear-word by today’s standards. Perhaps of more letters and considered worse in the language of our alien correspondent. The two English letters left being, of course, I.T.”

Something made me say to him, stonily, “And the letters which precede those two—the word’s beginning:”

Stonily he replied, “In English, S.H.”

I raised my right forefinger to my lips. “Sh...” I said, as we stood on the dying Earth.

Sh...