Something Coming Through

46. We’re Here To Help

Mangala | 30 July

Vic had never before seen a Jackaroo avatar in real life. The aliens had made contact because humanity had been about to fail and fall short of their full potential, as so many other intelligent species had failed and fallen, but they did not want to control or direct what people did with their gifts. It was not their thing, they said, to interfere. Kind of like the prime directive in that old TV show. They kept their presence on Earth to a minimum and had no contact at all with the people on the fifteen worlds they had gifted to humanity. They had even written it into the treaty with the UN.

Nevertheless, most people on Mangala believed that the Jackaroo were watching them. After the aliens had made themselves known, the conspiracy theorists and the UFO nuts had gained a new lease of life. They’d gone mainstream, elaborating ideas that Mangala and the other worlds were Petri dishes in some galactic experiment. Skinner boxes. Rat mazes. It was possible, some said, that eidolons weren’t the ghosts or memories or imprints of former tenants, but were instead part of a covert monitoring process that nudged and guided people in certain directions.

And here was proof of those paranoid theories, hissing and fizzing and swaying in front of Vic, conjured from some kind of memory wire and parasitising the quantum dust and algorithms that generated the eidolons in this ancient necropolis.

He stood his ground, feeling a prickling across his body, every hair trying to stand up, as the ghostly man-shape turned towards him. Its attention had the weight and warmth of summer sunlight.

Nevers was saying something, saying that it was all right, that this was a friend.

‘I am a friend,’ the avatar said.

Its voice came from nowhere and everywhere. It was the wind hunting in the crevices of the long dark ledge. It was the gentle clap of waves washing along the river’s edge. It was Vic’s breath and heartbeat.

‘We’re here to help,’ it said. ‘But we do not want to shape you. We give you the tools, but we let you make from them what you will. As is right. As it always has been. But there are others. Fellow travellers. Who do not share our scruples. Who plunge into your lives. Who plunder your stories. And if your stories are not pleasing, they reshape them.’

‘He means the!Cha,’ Nevers said.

‘They are young…’

The avatar’s voice faded into a dismal hiss; its body rippled like a heatwave mirage. Rogue eidolons fluttered away like scraps of mist, and the avatar stretched like a whip and gathered them into itself and slowly regained its shape and definition.

‘They have no patience,’ it said. ‘They like to accelerate change. They want to see what comes next.’

‘That’s what this is about,’ Nevers said. ‘The!Cha trade stories. And they create them or make them more interesting by directly interfering. By aiming people in certain directions.’

Vic said, ‘So the people we’re chasing, they’re working for the!Cha?’

‘They are being manipulated,’ Nevers said.

‘We changed you when we first contacted you,’ the avatar said. ‘It was unavoidable. Perhaps you will change further. Or perhaps you will dwindle, or destroy yourselves. But whatever happens, it should be your choice.’

Vic said, ‘Why involve me? Doesn’t that go against your principles?’

The avatar hummed and swayed. It said, ‘The!Cha are part of us. We are part of them.’

‘The!Cha are pointing people towards something dangerous,’ Nevers said.

‘They love stories,’ the avatar said.

‘And we have to give this one the right ending,’ Nevers said.

His smile was fierce and eager and hungry. The poor guy not realising that he was being manipulated — or knowing and not caring.

And Vic was in this too, in over his head. He had a sliding feeling that he was in the wrong place, heading in the wrong direction. Like one of those frustrating dreams.

He said, as calmly as he could, ‘I’m a murder police. I’m here because I want to find the people who killed my partner. And yours, too. This other stuff is way beyond my pay grade.’

‘It’s all part of the same thing,’ Nevers said. ‘The people you want are the people I want.’

Vic thought about that. He didn’t trust Nevers, let alone the avatar, but he’d seen the aftermath of the shootout, knew he was outgunned by the bad guys. And the avatar would definitely give him an edge.

He said, ‘So how can your friend here help us do the right thing?’