Chairman

I take you back to the funeral and for a moment must endure your confusion. This isn’t your past, you won’t be born for a millennium and a half yet.

Neither is it my own memory.

I sense your mind wander as curiosity takes hold - you want to know whose recollections these are. With little effort I refocus your thoughts. I brought you back here to see the funeral; through whose eyes it is witnessed is unimportant.

Ten billion traumatised souls are watching The Chairman burn. They are weeping, panicked, every television channel and internet news feed conveying the same devastating pictures, but you have no idea what these concepts mean. They haven’t existed for fifteen hundred years.

Refocus. We feel the emotion of the memory: the Chairman was loved. For three centuries he has been adored by Humanity as its saviour. He has been their advisor and their protector. And now he burns.

A million mourners surround the pyre, watching the man who couldn’t die slowly turn to ash. Some breathe deeply of the thick smoke, imagining they may take into themselves some wisp of the Chairman, as he took into himself the essence of so many willing Acolytes.

The Chairman couldn’t die. Yet we watch his cremation. I have no memories to show you which might explain the paradox of his end. No one still living, or preserved, knows. He was loved by humanity, but perhaps he was no longer welcomed by it. Here, in this memory, he has already shown mankind how to live; he has cured its every ill. The world is repaired and nations exist as neighbours. The world no longer needs The Chairman. It can manage on its own.

Someone found a way to end the saviour, though I have no memories of it.

I show you another recollection: ten years later. The first war has already begun and we don’t linger here.

Forward further: I take you now to a terrified woman, running through a burning city. It is a hundred years since the funeral and Humanity is wiping itself out.

I return you now to your own memories. You are running. Just as the woman, you are engulfed by fear. Why do you flee the Sheriff and his mob? You clutch a satchel of gold tightly against your chest. It is important to you. I am intrigued, so I take you back a little.

You are in the town. It is late and the streets are utterly dark. Rare amongst settlements, the town has some limited electricity, but so valuable a resource isn’t wasted on such extravagancies as street lighting. I know this because you know it. The sight of ramshackle houses, barely visible in the light of the battered crescent moon, amuses me somewhat. I find it strange that Humanity, after all this time, still clings to these crumbling relics of a lost age. Why does it not build anew? You don’t understand what I mean. We return our attention to the memory.

With a failing, ancient torch, one of your men illuminates the steering column of a jeep. The makeshift vehicle has been thrown together from the remnants of a dozen other ruined cars. To my eyes it is little more than scrap, but your memory is one of wonder at the amazing technology. It is the only working vehicle in the town and the first you have seen for months. You urge the young man to hurry and he tells you he is almost done. Hugging the bag of gold trinkets, you order the other three men into the back of the jeep. There are no seats so they crouch on the rusted and holed metal floor. Hissing, you demand the would-be car thief get the engine started. He doesn’t answer. You prepare to slap him about the back of his roughly shaved head, but a brief spark from the exposed wires sets the dilapidated engine sputtering loudly into some painful semblance of life. You slide in next to him and he revs the engine. It is as thunder in the silence of night.

Someone is shouting in the next street. The Sheriff has woken and he knows you have escaped. A second later his cries grow louder; he knows you have the town’s treasures. You tell the young man to get the car moving, you have what you came for and it’s time you weren’t here. One of your men passes you a crossbow which you snatch and begin loading a bolt. All the while your eyes are fixed on the glint of stolen gold. It entrances you. You believe it to be nothing but greed, but I know better. It is something so much greater. You can no more resist the lure of the precious metal than could a bee ignore pollen.

I bring you forward a few hours. You are hurt. Not badly, but enough to ignite your furious temper, and you are screaming at the young man. The vicious tirade continues as you punch him to the ground and kick him hard in the ribs. He is pleading for mercy, swearing it isn’t his fault. You aren’t listening. You look over the ruined jeep, twisted about a tree. Staring into his eyes you level the crossbow to his head. You don’t allow incompetence and there is little emotion in the memory as you squeeze the wooden trigger.

The young man is dead. Each of your men saw what you did and you don’t regret it. The gang will be stronger for the discipline they now know you will not hesitate to dispense.

I am fascinated.

You are wiping blood from the shaft of the bolt, pulled from the corpse. With fear, one of your men tells you the jeep can’t be repaired. You swear and tell them all to start walking.

I allow a few moments to pass and now the dogs are closing in. Their barks are more guttural than those in other memories I hold. I want to see those animals, so we jump further forward.

You are scrambling up a thin rope, frayed by decades of use. You don’t know if it will hold. First up the wall, you have told the others to wait. You would gladly sacrifice their lives for your own safety, and the security of the gold.

You have reached the degraded remnants of barbed wire atop a fifty foot concrete wall. Your thick leather gloves and long coat will protect you but the others have no such luxury and you doubt they will fare so favourably. You don’t care. You push away some of the brittle wire and it crumbles. Muscles burning you swing a leg up, onto the wide ledge. After checking the grapple - made of salvages scraps from the jeep - you beckon for the next man.

He is half way up. And now we see the dogs burst through the tree line. They are magnificent. With the benefit of my perspective, you are now able to appreciate the splendour of the animals. But as we focus on the memory we are feeling only the horror. The beasts are a savage breed, something between an oversized boar, tusks and all, and the most vicious Rottweiler. These animals will kill whatever they catch. But they can’t climb walls.

The dogs and their master, the sheriff, are fast closing in. One of your men has joined you on the wall and a second is climbing. The third is panicked. Frantic. He is preparing to climb up behind the other, but you shoot him a glare and shake your head. You don’t believe the rope will take the weight of both men. He will have to wait a little longer. The dogs are close enough that the last man must feel the moisture of their heaving breath against his face, but still you warn him not to touch the rope.

He fears you, but the dogs are closer. He fears them more. He grips the rope. You are aiming your crossbow: if he begins to climb, you will kill him.

The second man has reached the top and the first is helping him onto the ledge, swearing as part of the rusted wire slices into his hands and through his thin jacket. The last man can finally begin his ascent, with the dogs snapping at the frayed end of the rope. Maybe he will make it. But you know the Sheriff will be right behind him, climbing the rope to catch you and the others. You have a decision to make, which you do with no hesitation and without the bonds of morality.

I am impressed.

You fire a bolt into the screaming man. It doesn’t kill him, but it throws him clear of the rope. You order your men to pull it up, quickly. The monstrous dogs tear into the prone man: I find it curious that in the theatre of your memories you give these people no names. They are just your men. Does that make it easier?

I take note.

As the man is ripped apart by the dogs you lower the rope to the other side of the wall. The Sheriff has no firearms. Neither does his mob. All they can do is hurl stones at you as you retreat behind the ledge.

You have no idea what the wall signifies. Even those living about it have only legend and myth, the truth distorted by the passing of centuries. I take us back to before mankind shattered its civilisation. To when the memory of the Chairman still rested, first hand, in the minds of the eldest generations. Through the eyes of a middle aged woman we witness the construction of the wall. She isn’t old enough to remember The Chairman; she has only the stories and the videos. But that seems to be enough. You sense her devotion and it confuses you. You don’t understand what it was like back then.

She is shouting and chanting with a crowd of Acolytes. No, they aren’t Acolytes. They would however, gladly have been so when such things still meant something. Some of them are crying, as the Chairman’s temple and estate are walled in and cut off from the world he had led. The world he had served. But we don’t feel the woman’s tears, only her fury. How dare they isolate the Chairman’s spirit from his Acolytes? She doesn’t believe he is dead.

A spokesman for the new council addresses the gathering from a hastily built platform. There is silence as people listen. Construction on the wall stops, temporarily. The engines of huge machines are switched off and from their giant arms concrete slabs hang precariously above the foundations. The spokesman pleads with the crowd to disperse. He isn’t angry, just concerned. He says he shares their love for the long dead Chairman. Our host doesn’t believe him. He assures the would-be Acolytes that the absorption of those who have strayed into The Chairman’s estate is nothing more than a residual effect. The beloved immortal is dead, cremated, and will not return. The wall, he says, will prevent anyone else from being absorbed - killed - so pointlessly.

The woman, our host, pulls away from the crowd as the spokesman continues in his propaganda. All eyes are on him. She runs through one of the few remaining gaps in the fifty mile perimeter. We feel her heart racing at the elation of her assured immortality. I feel your own emotions rising with hers. The excitement is new to you. I have felt it a hundred thousand times already.

Back to your memories.

You have left the wall behind and found refuge in the thick foliage of the forest that has claimed the abandoned estate. The Sheriff hasn’t even tried to follow. You don’t understand why. You are not from these parts so the legends mean nothing to you. You have won, you tell your two men. They don’t look happy and, again, you can’t understand why. As they prepare a fire in the fading light, you can hear them talking mournfully of their fallen friends. You are shaking your head, and now you are berating them. The important thing is that they survived. Sacrifices must be made for the greater good. They disagree.

I do not. I soak up your unique morality. It is new to me. It is fascinating.

We are now deep into the night. Your men had been complaining of hunger so you sent them out to look for something edible. You lay back on a bundle of tattered blankets, enjoying a moment alone in the fire’s crackling heat. They aren’t going to find anything to eat, it is too dark. You just wanted them out of your way for a while.

Something is calling in the woods, like a lion’s roar through the beak of some monstrous bird. You curse and jump to your feet. You have taken up a burning branch and now wave it about, illuminating the small clearing by parts, banishing shadows one by one.

A scream. It is human; one of your men. You won’t run to him, it’s too late. You know the sound of death. Besides, why should you risk your own life? You never see what it was that devoured him, but I can feel your curiosity. I can show you.

The other man saw it. I have his memories.

The roar sounds again, far closer than you ever experienced it. We are one of your men. He glances back, showing us his companion in the strobe of a dying torch. Terror, which we feel through him, has distorted the recollection. As a slide show, each flicker gives an exaggerated snapshot of his doomed friend. Each picture, suspended against an infinitely dark backdrop, revealing more of the creature. The eyes come long before the body, reflecting the torch. Then emerge the teeth.

You withdraw from the memory of the man’s emotion. I don’t blame you. More detached, we watch his thoughts from afar. Now you can appreciate the majesty of the lizard. You don’t know the word dinosaur until I reveal it to you. As the claws of the raptor impale the screaming man and rip his innards from his body, I explain to you the creature isn’t a real dinosaur. But you know nothing of evolution or ancient pre-history. They are long dead pursuits. Disinterested in my explanations, you prefer to focus on the magnificent creature which you know only as a monster.

Our host has fled the gruesome scene, leaving his friend to be consumed. I dismiss the memory and tell you vaguely that The Chairman made the dinosaurs as a gift to science. But we are too close now for half truths. You sense the Chairman made them as an indulgence to his childhood fascination. It is true. But the lizards were tame when The Chairman made them. Here, within their isolated world, they have grown wild over a millennium and a half. They haven’t evolved, they can’t breed. The Chairman created them sterile, but as immortal as himself: more so, as it transpired. You sense all of this without me telling you a word of it. The joining is nearly complete.

The Chairman made them as an indulgence to his childhood fascination. My own attention wanders at the thought, and with it comes your focus. No one knows who The Chairman had been as a child, only as a man.

Again, that isn’t entirely true.

We are now a woman: a journalist, back in the golden age. She is excited, but afraid. Is she making a mistake? The article stares at her from the computer screen, daring her to send it. She has to. There is no doubt. It will be the biggest story ever broken. Here, on this page of text, she has answered one of the fundamental questions of the modern age. She knows who The Chairman is. Hundreds of books have been published on the enticing subject, suggesting an extra-terrestrial or even supernatural origin. Others hint at deliberate genetic engineering or more accidental mutation. But she knows the truth. She knows the boy, the human boy, The Chairman had once been. And she knows how he became so much more. The story has to be told. She presses the send button on the glassy panel.

The screen turns dark and the gentle whir of the computer fades as it winds down. She is swearing and we feel her anxiety.

A soft pulse of light fills her home office and she shields her eyes against it. Someone is telling her not to be afraid. That terrifies her. She knows the voice, everyone does, but she can’t believe he is here, with her.

The Chairman is benevolent. He is the loving God that walks among Humanity, and yet his presence fills her with dread. Why should it?

He is asking her in that soft and infinitely wise voice to not publish the story. She can’t answer. We feel her desperation as she tries to talk, but what do you say to The Chairman? She isn’t an Acolyte, or a member of The Council. She shouldn’t even be in the same room as him. She won’t open her eyes. He is telling her now that her curiosity is admirable. He isn’t upset or angry. Of course he isn’t; The Chairman doesn’t suffer such primitive emotions. She knows that isn’t really true, she knows exactly who he once was and how he became a God. She knows he was once as flawed and emotional as any other human. But a lifetime of worship is not easily swept aside by anything as cold as the truth.

He wants to reward her. She is scared because she knows what he is offering: absorption. She feels sick and still can not look at him. She isn’t an Acolyte; she doesn’t want to be absorbed. The selfish thought smells of vulgar heresy; she should be rejoicing at the promised immortality as a shard of the Chairman’s essence. But no, she doesn’t want it. She wants to remain herself.

It is a futile concern. The armies of the world couldn’t have prevented her from being taken into the glowing form of their God. The armies of the world wouldn’t have even tried.

I sense your confused scepticism. Nothing you are seeing makes any sense to you: it is a memory of a world long dead. But is also feel your acceptance. We have grown almost close enough for the final transfer.

I take us back to your memories, for no reason other than that is where your mind is wandering.

Dawn has come. Neither you nor your last surviving follower slept. At every mention of the nightmare which slaughtered the other, you berate the trembling man. You call him pathetic, a coward. You demand he get a grip on his fear. The truth is, however, you are just as afraid. You hide it, as ever, behind an angry, indifferent persona.

Amid the forest you have found another wall, far smaller than the earlier concrete perimeter. It is little taller than you; more ornamental than functional. The marble facia has fallen almost entirely away to reveal naked bricks. Turning a piece of the smooth white rubble over in your hand, you are wondering if there might be some value to it. But it isn’t gold. You don’t want it. Your companion is giving you a leg-up onto the top of the narrow wall. You help him up behind you and jump down to the other side.

I show you a brief glimpse of a memory, a hint of the immaculately landscaped estate which once surrounded The Chairman’s temple. Aside from the crumbling marble wall, defining the estate, the grounds are now indistinguishable from the rest of the wild land inside the concrete perimeter. In your memories it is all just woodlands.

Some way into the grounds, you have tripped on something. You are cursing, trying to find some way to blame it on your companion. He is offering to help you up, but you refuse his hand. It must have been a barely exposed root or thick vine. You turn to look, intent on unleashing your anger on the offending vegetation. But you freeze at the glint of gold sparkling in the new sun, almost completely buried in a millennium of decomposed vegetation. The anger drains in a heartbeat and you walk, entranced, towards the glint. Even as you recall the memory, I can feel your excitement mount. You don’t know why.

I do.

Again I show you a memory of The Chairman’s estate, in its prime. I don’t know whose memory it is: there are thousands and they are all practically identical. Virtually every Acolyte, willing or otherwise, saw the Chairman’s estate. The gold maze, its walls four feet tall and as wide as breeze blocks, surrounds the temple which itself stands as a prize at the centre. Polished to a mirror, the gold walls don’t serve to bar an Acolyte’s approach for they could be scaled with ease. Their maze-like arrangement is of far more significance than that of a simple garden amusement. I liken it to a circuit diagram. Like so many things, that means nothing to you. Not yet. I don’t try to explain.

Refocus.

You are clawing at the hard soil with your gloved fingers. The rest of the world has ceased to exist; you know nothing but the gold in the ground. Still you can see only the glint and you have no idea how deep the wall of gold runs. In this memory you will never find out. Your obsession is interrupted by the cries of your companion. You might have ignored him had his cries not been of more gold.

A few minutes later: over more than a thousand year the growth and decay of grasses and trees has conspired to hide the Chairman’s tools of absorption, but you have uncovered a dozen patches of the wall and are now beginning to see they are connected. You are wondering just how extensive the pattern is.

The other man is gasping. Now squealing. He screams that the gleaming metal is burning his hands. He can’t pull free. Although buried, the maze is no less functional. Like his dinosaurs, the constructions of The Chairman are not easily worn down by the passing of centuries. You know this for we are almost at the climax of our joining.

Now the terrified man has fallen silent. As a seizure, he is thrashing on the floor, his hand still fused to the gold. You rush to his side, curious rather than concerned. His eyes threaten to burst from sockets that can no longer fully contain their contents. Your own eyes become locked with those swelling orbs, transfixed by tiny lightning storms playing across the darkness of dilated pupils. You can feel, if not hear, the rumble accompanying each hairsbreadth fork of purple energy.

You are swearing under your breath. The bond between gold and flesh is too complete for you to tear his hand away, but you continue to tug at his arm long after the futility has become obvious. As the last of the unwilling Acolyte’s essence is drawn through the gold apparatus into the gathering remnants of The Chairman’s vitality, the man’s fit finally subsides. His ruined and vacant body lies as a corpse. Still wrenching at the arm, you are unprepared for the sudden release of the bond between the hand and the gold which now glows noticeably brighter. Unchallenged you pull him away with too much force, striking your head hard against another barely covered seam of precious metal. Flesh and gold fuse.

You are fitting.

The apparatus is probing your essence, preparing you for absorption. But it has found something familiar, something uniquely compatible.

Even as you thrash violently, throwing your body through angles for which it was never intended, you hold tight your bag of golden trinkets. Far more than mere greed, your fascination is some small facet of a kinship that ties you to the Chairman - a connection beyond the mundane language of simple genetics. Through all of your life the gold of the apparatus has been calling for you, luring you closer.

You are wracked by the seizure. Your body is reworked and you essence supplemented. You will not be absorbed. You will be elevated. This is no longer memory. This is now.

I am not The Chairman, though once I became him. The Chairman died. Now I am you, and this time I will be different. You don’t share the compassion and vision of the man who became the Chairman, so neither do I.

Our joining is done.

Humanity doesn’t need a friend to guide it with love and familiarity. It has proved, through its betrayal of the Chairman, it can’t be trusted with such generous freedom. What Humanity needs is a God that will rule with a demand for absolute obedience. All it deserves is a demon. Perhaps, with you, that is what I shall become this time.

We are awake.