Forty-six years is nothing. A lifetime ago before I became Orson Roth, I witnessed the birth of the universe.
It’s still happening now, unfolding just as it did before. Every last particle combining with its neighbor in exactly the same predictable way, obeying the same physical laws with the same uncompromising rigidity, forming gaseous clouds that will ultimately bear their own children. Galaxies will explode with the first fresh stars, and the cooling matter in between will one day condense into planets and moons. A precious fraction of those will support life, and the miracle of humanity will be born all over again. Every life will be lived exactly as it was before, the same predetermined existence racing toward its glorious destiny.
I could watch it all, observing from a distance as vast as the universe itself, as I have before, relishing its beauty and reveling in the mystery of sentience that spawned from a soulless mote. Yes, I could be drifting in the Observation Sphere now, watching the distant images of creation, but I’m not.
Cowled in somber robes to match my mood, I am in the Calibration Sphere, watching the turning walls, musing over the dead: so much life whittled down to a library of tiny blinking lights. Throughout the millennia, unseen control mechanisms pluck souls from every sphere and check the data, calibrating it and, if necessary, recategorizing. No doubt this is where Qod discovered the aberrations—irreconcilable inconsistency in the data causing her to create the Aberration Sphere. An irrational part of me wonders if they know something is different now they’ve been transferred here.
Should I be like everyone else? A memory?
I could end my life in a heartbeat.
I want to leave. Want to rest my head against a cool pillow in a warm bed with a smile on my lips as soft dreams take me from this world to the next, knowing I have tasted every sweet thing this universe has to offer. I am content in the knowledge that I have done the latter, but what of the next world? Is there one? The same question plagues me still, and I cannot leave as the others did. Not until I have the answer. Orson Roth didn’t know. Perhaps one of my other choices will, but before I venture into another life, one enigma remains.
“You’ve been silent a long time, Qod.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Busy? How can you be busy? You could have looked through the entire index ten times over in this amount of time.”
“Two hundred and seventy-three times to be exact.”
“Why? Wasn’t once enough?”
“I have been checking and rechecking since you made your request. Keitus Vieta’s soul is nowhere to be found.”
I look up at the domed ceiling, and even though I know Qod has no face, I entertain the fantasy that I might catch her off guard and steal a glimpse of her baffled expression. There is no hint of confusion in her voice, but I know her. This has puzzled even her. “What do you mean you can’t find him? I saw him, spoke with him.”
“There is no record of Keitus Vieta in the Consortium files.”
“Impossible.” I stride away from the center of the sphere, watching as one of the tiny lights is sucked inside the wall ready to be distributed back into the sphere from which it was plucked. “Everyone who’s ever existed has a file created after they’ve died. I’m the last man—” A shock runs through me, and I stop to glance around the sphere, hoping not to find evidence of a second empty slot. “Could he … could he still be alive?”
“No. Only one slot remains, and that one is reserved for you. Keitus Vieta cannot exist.”
“But he does. I met him. Orson Roth met him.” I resume my pacing. “Can you at least run a search algorithm through the other souls for someone matching his description?”
“The Codex protocols don’t allow me to pry into the lives of these souls. I am only permitted access to the summary description of each life, which, I’m sorry to say, is precious little revelation.”
“Then search for him again. His soul is in there. It has to be.”
“There is no record of Keitus Vieta in the Consortium files,” Qod insists.
“Stop saying that. His life has to be somewhere amongst all these spheres.”
“Then Keitus Vieta must not have been his real name,” she says.
For a moment I relent, seeing the sense in her suggestion. “That makes sense. A fake identity would mean Orson would have had a difficult time trying to find him or betray him to the authorities if he turned against him. But there was something about Vieta, something … I don’t believe he was lying about his name.”
“But it is the simplest explanation.”
“Yes, but assuming that it is his real name, could there be another reason for his absence from the Consortium files? Could his file have been erased?”
“No. I would know if that happened.”
“Then what? You’re almost omniscient. Don’t you have an answer?”
She says nothing, and as I tap my fingers thoughtfully against my lips, I can almost hear her thinking the same thing—There is no record of Keitus Vieta in the Consortium files.
“What if … what if Vieta has no soul?” I ask.
“The soul is a metaphysical concept originally cultivated by those who had no understanding of the true human condition. If Keitus Vieta was a real person who walked, talked, and thought, he had what could be crudely identified as a soul … and you know that.”
“At least I’m coming up with some theories. This must have something to do with the aberrations. You said the aberrations weren’t caused by data corruption, but if you can’t find a record of this man, perhaps you were wrong.”
“I am never wrong.”
A single memory flashes through my mind: one sentence scrawled by the hand of a man who lost his mind when investigating Keitus Vieta. HEISNOWHERE. Yes, I met Vieta, but I also remember how Orson Roth felt—the irreconcilable impression that this man should not exist. There was something about him that was wrong, completely wrong.
“We need more information to understand what’s happening. I’m going back to the Aberration Sphere. Cross-reference all the aberrations with my previous request for people who have had an unusual connection with death.”
“How would you like them sorted?”
“Same as before—I want the lives that have been affected most greatly by the aberrations. And this time, tell me which sphere they were from originally.”