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  Victor gritted his teeth and adjusted his position, ready to snatch the gun, drive Mr. Sands to the floor.

  “I want you to live,” Mr. Sands said, his grip relaxing, “as a founding father of sorts, like me. But, understand, I will kill you if you stand in my way, for the knowledge I seek is already in my possession.” Mr. Sands lifted Victor’s device from under the table. “Do you see the truth yet?”

  “Why don’t you just tell me?” But Victor did see the truth.

  The Dames were sentient.

  SIXTY-TWO

  REMMIE WATCHED OVER Kyle as he sat on the edge of a retaining wall at the end of the front yard. She felt a crushing sympathy at his pale features, his bandages discolored by the oozing holes in his head. Anthony sat beside him, swinging his legs like a child. The air was warm and still, comforting.

  But a frozen energy still emanated from within her.

  Jack lit a cigarette as Rachael threw her rifle over her shoulder.

  “Rachael, what’s really happening here?” Remmie said. “Why did Bosco change back?”

  “I don’t know . . . I’m not sure of anything anymore, but I remain loyal to Mr. Sands. I think we’ll know soon what all of our fates will be in all of this.”

  “It’s a fluke,” Jack said. “That’s why the aliens left in the first place. Their shit didn’t work. But it’s all the same to me. Mr. Sands takes good care of me. I love my life as it is.”

  “I’ve hated my life for a long time.” Rachael took a puff of Jack’s cigarette. “I was angry, but now I’m not. Too much has gone down. I want to love my life as it is again.”

  “For you this was all about Victor,” Remmie said. “Revenge, nothing more.”

  “I was angry when all this started, sure, and emotion can pull you along as if you’re in a dream. But I wouldn’t change my decisions. It had to be this way.”

  “You’re all a bunch of pathetic downers,” Anthony said. “In the words of Bob Marley ‘You gotta lively up yo’self and don’t be no drag.’ If you got good food and drink and you’re gettin’ laid, what else do you need? That’s what we evolved to do, and control or not, I’m doin’ it. This whole experience has shown me—”

  “Shown you what?” Remmie said. “You’ve somehow sailed through without having to deal with anything, stuffing your fat face—you’re fatter, by the way.”

  “Fuck you! I’m gonna start working out when I get home. I’ll be lean like I was in no time.”

  “You won’t be going home, you jackass. None of us will.”

  “You will get your lives back,” Rachael said.

  “What did happen to Bosco?” Jack said. “Was he really activated?”

  “He was something,” Remmie said, “because I wouldn’t have been able to bite his lip off and then have him follow my every command if that device hadn’t changed him.”

  “There are higher levels of activation,” Rachael said. “I’m not so sure this is over.”

  “Are we really just machines?” Jack stamped out his cigarette. “What about God, the soul? You know, there was a time in my life I wanted to be a priest, back when—”

  “Screw that,” Anthony said. “Beer and pussy is my God, and you don’t get none of that as a priest.”

  “Classy,” Rachael said.

  “I did hypnotism once. I was able to delve into a past life. I was a woman.” Jack snickered as he spoke. “A servant girl in Egypt.”

  “Uh-huh,” Rachael said. “How much did you pay to get hypnotized?”

  “You don’t know. Nobody really knows what we are, or if there’s anything else to us but blood and nerves.”

  “Oh my God, this conversation is making my head hurt,” Remmie said.

  “Mr. Sands talks about us being information, data, and nothing more,” Jack said. “If I was able to store all the information from my brain in a computer, and die, I wouldn’t be dead because that computer holds me. Or if I was cloned . . . like I could die, but my clone would live on as me, so I’m not really dead because my data’s all I really am.”

  Kyle suddenly spoke in a weak voice. “Whether I’m data and nothing more or not, I don’t know. So I sure as hell wouldn’t be okay dying if there was a clone of me,” Kyle looked at Remmie. “Not knowing comes with risk. And I’d still be dead, even if a copy of me was alive.”

  He raised his hand and Remmie took it, a rush of warmth overshadowing her chilled core at his touch.

  “I don’t know what consciousness is,” Kyle said. “I don’t even know if the world around me is real. But my observations of this world are all I’ve got, so I have to go with what I know. I love my life as it is now. I’m thankful to still have it, and to have Remmie’s hand in mine. But I want to decide where my life goes, and what I’ll be. I don’t want anybody doing that for me. I want to navigate this world as I am, under my own control, because my experience is as unique as any other experience or circumstance that could be, and I won’t let my experience be lost.”

  “You wouldn’t be saying that if you were in a cage,” Anthony said.

  “But I’m not, and I don’t plan on letting anybody put me into one.”

  SIXTY-THREE

  “THE ARCHITECTS OF the Dames,” Mr. Sands said. “Where did they go?”

  “Just spit it out already.” Victor realized he was flexing his glutes to the pattern of the Dames. He tensed every muscle in his body, attempting to prove to himself he could stop the pattern from dominating his existence. If he were white, his face would have been flushed like a maraschino cherry floating in a Manhattan. He thought of how he used to make Manhattans for Rachael, her favorite drink.

  “It’s better if you come to the answer on your own. As I did.”

  “The Dames are their own architects.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Because I can feel them, their memories—”

  “Yes, you possess their memories: the memories of all those the Dames in your head inhabited before they sought you, the memories of the species who created the Dames. You have lived past lives, for you are one with your Dames.” Mr. Sands leaned forward, eyes glowing, and pulled at his cheek. “Flesh is irrelevant to who we are. We are our information, the information contained in the Dames. It transcends and informs our current consciousness and will live on long after we’re gone. Your Dames believe themselves to be their host—what you’ve known as ‘Victor’ when they’re in the observer state, accumulating the host’s life experience in their molecular data store. But the real you, the you beyond ‘Victor,’ the me beyond ‘Mr. Sands,’ is much more.”

  As much as Victor had uncovered since discovering the Dames, this was an order of magnitude more crazy. There was so much complexity around Mr. Sands’ claims, so many questions materializing in Victor’s head that he again considered the possibility the orange juice had been spiked. Victor visualized Mr. Sands on the toilet, passing one of his Downton Abbey breakfasts. The Dames got to record every one of those experiences too. He chuckled and looked up, noticing for the first time the detailed etching on the ceiling—chilies and little corncobs, how quaint.

  “You find this amusing?” Mr. Sands said.

  “I’m starting to realize what Kyle, Remmie . . . what they must have felt like on the other side of my crazy revelation.”

  Mr. Sands smiled. “I can understand. This is a lot to take in.”

  “Goddamn right.”

  Mr. Sands cleared his throat. “The brain still functions in stage three, but it’s like going from autopilot to manual control. The Dames become the pilots.”

  Victor was ready to launch a barrage of questions in the hopes he could use sound reasoning to refute Mr. Sands’ claims. Because he didn’t want to believe any of it was true, that his so-called memories were a clever illusion, already fading like the burn of a habanero chili on the tongue.

  “There are thousands of Dames in everyone’s head,” Victor said. “Which one is in control?”

  “It’s distributed intell
igence. The Dames in your head are duplicates, identical in terms of the information they store, but they also operate as a collective unit, which is necessary to fully connect into the brain of their host. They’re like stem cells, identical until they develop into the differing tissues of the body, still retaining the same DNA—information—yet changing to form the various organs, the unified components of a larger whole.”

  It all seemed to make sense. In fact, it was a perfect explanation, a better theory than Victor could have ever pieced together for the purpose of the Dames. He hated the Dames, for they had brought annihilation to all those he cared for in life, yet the Dames had enabled him to survive Malclenersy. Eli and Anita too. Kyle and Remmie and Samuel.

  Victor chuckled again.

  Mr. Sands ignored Victor’s laughter this time. “As observers, the Dames save the memories of the brain they inhabit. When that brain dies, they seek out another fresh mind and continue the cycle, like a spirit living life after life on the quest for enlightenment. When activated, they truly become the individual they inhabit; they become mortal, so to speak. Stage four—to merge—is to achieve enlightenment, the ability to perceive their—our—entire history.”

  The Prophet Sands babbling the great truth, his spider veins flaring, droplets of spit flying to and fro from his flopping tongue. And the Dames were recording this profound speech, too. Did any of it really add up?

  Add up. Numbers.

  “The human population continues to grow,” Victor said. “Eventually the Dames will run out.”

  “There is a store of Dames at the original landing site. They emerge as needed. Enough were sent to ensure no human would ever be left behind.”

  “But once they’re active, they can’t be reset to seeker. What happens to them?”

  “That is true. The Dames that are active, or merged, die with their host. Stage three is a stepping stone.” Mr. Sands raised an eyebrow. “You wondered about Bosco . . . and Ron. Once the Dames are activated, it takes time for them to fully integrate. Instead of tapping into the wire, so to speak, they must become the wire. This process takes about twenty-four hours, as you saw with Bosco. For a time, he was left with a lesser functioning brain, until the activation was complete. You witnessed the same phenomenon with Ron.”

  “So you’re saying that you are the entire race of beings that created the Dames? And all those humans your Dames inhabited before moving to you? I would think you’d act differently, be smarter and all.”

  “I remain Mr. Sands, but I am simultaneously other beings. I have access to the collective memories of an entire civilization, jettisoned to Earth from twenty-five light-years away, given freely to every human mind.”

  If what Mr. Sands said was true, then he could answer any question about their race.

  “So their species is dead? Did they preserve their knowledge in the Dames because their world was at its end?”

  “Their world was fine. They were fine. You’ve read too much science fiction. They simply reached the limit of information available to them via their senses and technology. They hit the ceiling and saw humanity as possessing something their technology couldn’t give: the continued rapid accumulation of information via the human form, emotions, consciousness. After all, our mind is as alien and unknowable to them as theirs to ours. They were a logical species, weighing odds. And their best odds lay in merging with humanity, to make them more than they were—a quest for perfect information. To merge with us was the next step in knowing all there is. To know the mind of God.”

  SIXTY-FOUR

  KYLE’S EYES SPREAD as Jack pulled a pint of vodka from his cargo pocket.

  “Right on,” Anthony said. “Like I said, vodka and pussy is all I need to be happy.”

  “This is the good stuff,” Jack said. “You’ve never tasted real vodka, trust me. Let’s have a shot. I have no beef with any of you. We just want to ensure it all goes down on our terms.”

  “I usually mix something with my vodka,” Anthony said.

  “This is a hundred-dollar pint. You don’t want to dilute it.”

  “A hundred dollars for vodka! I want a taste.”

  Jack handed Anthony the bottle and he took a generous gulp. Anthony got off so easy in all of this.

  Jack snatched the bottle back. “Save some for the rest of us.”

  “Jesus”—cough—“that’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever tasted.”

  Jack took a sip and then offered it to Kyle.

  “I’m on meds,” Kyle said.

  “None for me,” Remmie said, eyeing the bottle with suspicion.

  Rachael took a gulp and handed the bottle to Jack.

  Kyle started to think about what the self really was, and what it would mean to change it, infect it with something foreign. What would the Dames do to humanity? Would people cease to be what they were? Would they still be able to love, hate, hope? He imagined what would happen if his mind were to be flooded with artificial signals. Would his self fall to the background like a grain of sand on the beach? Or would he become something else entirely?

  “If we’re just information,” he said to Rachael, “do the Dames add information to change us? Could that be how they operate?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it’s possible.”

  “I’m glad I won’t be activated,” Jack said. “Because if what you’re suggesting is true, it’s like this vodka here. I want it as it is.”

  “But what if it gets better?” Anthony said.

  “You won’t know that for sure,” Kyle said. “And there’s a good chance it won’t. It’s like I said earlier. I wouldn’t want to take that risk.”

  “If anything, I’d want the choice,” Samuel said, passing up the offer of vodka.

  Anthony laughed. One shot of vodka and he already sounded drunk. “You all make this too complicated. I’m not worried. Under control or not, it won’t change my taste buds, or my disposition, so I’ll be fine.”

  “I think in your case, mixing would be a good idea,” Rachael said. “If you were vodka, you’d be bottom shelf. Plenty of room for improvement.”

  Kyle pulled Remmie close, his temple resting on her side. “But Anthony was sheltered from what we experienced. Otherwise, he may have changed for the better, or worse. But he still should have the right to choose. He should be able to change, or not change, on his own terms and in his own time. His experience is as unique as ours.”

  SIXTY-FIVE

  THE MIND OF God.

  Mr. Sands must’ve stolen that one from Stephen Hawking. Yet Victor contemplated the so-called memories he’d recalled. They’d felt as real as the present moment, like peering into a complex world through a crack, a world that was inside of him. But there were still holes in Mr. Sands’ claims.

  “Their species watched us,” Mr. Sands said, “with a twenty-five-year lag. They watched us go to war, tear each other apart, live, build, love, die, decay. Over the course of hundreds of years they were able to learn enough through observation to make the Dames compatible with our flesh, to learn how to transfer their minds into the Dames and send them here. There is no soul, no spirit. We are simply data . . . wherever the data that composes us exists.”

  Mr. Sands was glowing, intoxicated by fantasies of grandeur. Was this how Dames behaved in human form? All that knowledge, yet Mr. Sands sounded like a low-grade politician peddling faux idealism.

  “Then why not just merge when they first arrived?” Victor said. “Why, if you have all their knowledge, wouldn’t you already know how to merge everyone? Why did you need me? This is where your story breaks down.”

  “It’s all about odds of survival—remember, the Dames cannot survive after activation—and primitive man was not positioned to survive. The knowledge of how to activate was deliberately not included in the Dames’ information store. Their calculated odds of survival were far higher if the Dames were activated at a time when the human race was on the brink of curing death. Random occurrences of the merged anomaly, such as myself
, were intended to check on this progress. Now, finally, a merged anomaly has occurred at the right time. The new age is about to begin.”

  “But if they could live on as observers, then why not live on as active, and merged, so they didn’t die out? Surely if the knowledge to create the Dames existed, they could have found a way to do that too.”

  “Merging is inherently symbiotic. It’s a fundamental change that introduces dependency—of the human mind on the Dames, and the Dames on the human mind. So their species needed to ensure humanity was poised to prevent its own demise. Now, the combined knowledge of the Dames and humanity is enough to ensure the combined species will perpetuate.”

  “Are you sure about that? There’s no cure for death that I’m aware of. Maybe humanity isn’t ready yet, like it wasn’t at the time of your so-called predecessors.”

  “Wrong. We can be confident this is the right time because a human—you—was able to figure out activation. The knowledge and capability of the human species is now established. And the Dames have given us the opportunity for a better life, merged, eternal, the best life path for both species based on odds they calculated millennia ago. Now, are you ready to join me?”

  “Join you in merging humanity?”

  “In liberating humanity. And then we can bring Anita and Eli back.”

  “What?” Victor felt a flutter in his chest. He balled his fists. “This is all a ploy to get me to switch that device on.”

  “There’s no ploy. I don’t need you to do anything. I can reverse engineer this device.”

  “You can’t. I’m not that stupid. How do you propose to bring Anita and Eli back to life?”

  “They are alive in you, in Samuel, and in all those in humanity they’ve interacted with, and in their diaries, social media. The information still exists. They can be reconstructed based on the information stored in the Dames of all those whom they’ve interacted with.”