Karmer's Heart

RUN: UNBLOCK.HEARTLOCK

Agent Karmer swipes a finger across the silver heart-shaped locket resting against his breastbone; it opens and illuminates from the inside a bright, smokey teal. Everyone else does the same.

Twelve government officials wearing their own heart-shaped pieces reclined in egg-shaped chairs around Agent Karmer stare intently up at the blank concave ceiling. They have gathered to ‘Re-Witness’ the testimony of Karmer’s 131st failed attempt negotiating with factions of the so-called Libertarian Front, but what his superiors do not know is that this time Karmer intends for them something radically different.

“Does everyone see wheat fields?” Karmer asks.

“Corn, here.” says a gravelly voice. Karmer closes his eyes and resets the linking software.

“How about now, Chief?”

“Wheat.” answers the Chief Justice, giving a thumbs-up although no one is looking, “Go ahead, Agent Karmer.”

Gazing into the dimly lit dome they all see the same imagery in their fields of vision: an overhead flight of endless wheat fields. Karmer speaks, not aloud, but directly into their minds.

“Many of you know me already; I’m the cop who’s made a career out of failing.” Chuckles come from a few of the Re-Witnesses.

“During my career, I’ve met many Libertarians. Some are true scoundrels, many are peaceable, but all share the fundamental belief that nature ought not to be governed. This means they flat out reject RATIONAL governance, and unfortunately, all of its life-saving strategies. Despite my very best efforts to prove to them RATIONAL’s just influence, their deep-seated mistrust inevitably resurfaces to cripple my attempts.”

The worn dulcet of Overseer Offenhirscht’s voice comes on, heard by all.

“Of course, we are capable of infiltrating their enclaves to enforce RATIONAL adoption. We could execute that plan with minimal losses, today. But RATIONAL has not yet advised that plan, and so we continue to afford them their freedom and redouble our efforts for peaceful induction. Which you’ve been doing with dedication for a long time, Agent Karmer, and for that we commend you.”

Light applause ensues from his esteemed colleagues, lightly unnerving him.

RUN RECONSTRUCT: SOVEREIGN.HEART.FINAL.ACT

The golden fields dissolve into a soaring morning aerial of sprawling pasturelands watered by the many forks of a snaking river.

“What you are witnessing now is a four-dimensional Dronalite reconstruction of approximately 200 acres of land accorded by the Ktunaxa during the peace pleas of the great upheaval, to the libertarian faction known as ‘Sovereign Heart’.

The tributaries culminate in a spectacular river gorge where people swim and jump from the bluffs.

“How many were their numbers, Agent?” asks Trustor Kaelen.

“At the time of my witnessing, sixteen thousand five hundred thirty four.” Karmer answers.

“And when was this reconstruction sampled?” someone else chimes in, as if it were Q&A hour.

“On the day of their Final Act of Sovereignty.” Karmer replies bluntly. They are more distracted than he’d prefer.

Closing his eyes, he accesses a separate suite of projections, custom coded and fined-tuned for his particular needs. Here he can view real-time data on the vitals and neuroendocrinals of everyone currently in heart-link with him. Here, safely concealed within his own encrypted Heart-Lock, he can run his own programs.

RUN AUGMENTATION: ENDORPHEONIX.RISING

His heart-shaped locket throbs momentarily scarlet then returns to its indistinct phase of iridescence. Entranced as they are, no one notices that their own heart-shaped pieces each flash similarly in succession.

Their flight over the river basin descends towards an open field where tiny human forms scurry about with vigour. Getting closer, it soon becomes apparent that the people are engaged in a passionate match of Floating Saucers, and dogs play along the outskirts, barking enthusiastically at the game.

“I will now sync the reconstruction with biometric data captured on site by my own Heart-Piece,” Karmer informs them, “providing us with extremely high-fidelity sense data to re-witness.” Karmer hears the subtle cues of increased respiration and, closing his eyes, checks on the group’s biometric data panel: heart-rates have increased by eight to twelve percent. Perfect, Karmer thinks.

RUN AUGMENTATION: DOPAMINERVA.ASCENDING

He steals them away from the enthralling sport, reconstructing them across the field to a site where red-embered earth roasts sizzling sides of meat, and around which people are gathered in the laughter soaked communion of food and drink.

“These people look healthy.” comments the Magister of Commentaries wistfully.

Karmer lets the implication of these words sink in until he feels the time is right to take them further. He ferries them down the trail to a makeshift amphitheatre of the woods, where rough-cut log benches seat women nursing infants and children of all ages play up and down the isles in the dirt, making up a lively audience for some type of oral story being performed there. The hatted crone who tells the story keeps the front rows enraptured, wide-eyed, and utterly vulnerable to her every word.

RUN AUGMENTATION: SERATONYMOUS.CALLING

“It really is too bad about these Free Thinkers, though.” Chairperson Parsinnoi breaks the silence.

“I agree. They all look like perfectly nice people.” Chairperson Elinoi admits. “There seems to be real culture here.”

Karmer gently ushers his spectators to the next planned scene: a shallows in the river where someone in simple robes baptizes eager supplicants waiting their turn to be cleansed, overlooked by a grassy slope of lotus-sitting meditators, their shimmering stoic frames, reflected in the water below, punctured in ripples by the recently baptized now swimming away downstream, some of them diverting to climb up the embankment to join the meditators.

“It’s an odd juxtaposition,” contributes the rarely divulging Regent of Prognosis, “to see such a superstitious belief being…” they pause to find the right word, “held, by such rational practitioners.”

He’d like to allow this dialogue to unfold, but Karmer knows that the cascading dance of neuroendocrinals triggered in their bodies must progress at its own tempo, and he can sense an implicit tug to keep his group moving. He plunges them into the water.

ALERT: NEUROCHEMICAL SPIKING

As they perceive their bodies penetrating the cool water, the Re-Witnesses’ actual bodies flinch in their egg-chairs, their heart-shapes flashing titanium yellow, and they each hold their breath until they perceive surfacing, at which point they gasp for air. The Proctor of Narratives even flaps their arms about in a panicky motion distantly resembling swimming.

ALERT: BROKEN HEART-LINK

Intuitively, Karmer ducks into his mind’s control panel to perform a quick check of his group’s vitals and now it is his breath’s turn to be caught in shock.. One of the data streams previously visible to him is missing. Somehow, the Chief Justice has broken Heart-Link. Karmer feels panic welling up inside him, panic he knows will bring him only closer to failure if he lets it. Glitches with Heart-Link are sometimes known to happen, he rationalizes. This could just be a buffering issue. Something inside him tells him it isn’t. He decides he must proceed as planned.

RUN: CASCADIAN.NEUREFLECT

Nervous systems entirely hijacked by the full-body stimulation of the cool, enveloping wetness, their vision subsumed by a swirling canvas of crystalline blues, the re-witnesses are finally able to sense a feeling that is not first screened and mitigated by RATIONAL. Just what it is they are feeling, none of them will ever be able to accurately describe or relate, and each one has a unique personal reaction to it.

Karmer can hear the sniffled whimpering of tear-shed, juxtaposed with a ticklish giggling and the Magister’s clockwork heaving of baritone sighs, coming at almost perfect twenty second intervals. Karmer knows, in his own way, some version of what they are going through. He’s been there too. Compassion, not induced by anything he’d coded, surges into his awareness. His colleagues now seem to him strikingly human, whereas before, and for all his life perhaps, they had felt more like opponents. Although increasingly nervous about the Chief Justice’s absence, he allows himself to bask, just for a minute, in this elusive state.

ALERT: MONSTERIS.INCLOSET

The Chief Justice has known Karmer a long time; they’ve shared many a spirited season on the Judiciary branch hardball team, and have grown to be, what he would consider, fairly good acquaintances over the years. Now his voice pierces Karmer’s inner-ear without a merciful shred of friendliness.

“Agent Karmer, what are you doing?”

Norepinephrine sears through Karmer’s system. It’s all over.

RUN: OPERATION SINK.2.SWIM

Karmer does not respond, his mind racing for options.

“Agent Karmer, I order you to cease and desist immediately.”

How quickly hope denudes into defeat. Karmer, keenly trained to resist mind-based interference, lets out a long sigh and allows himself two words to his former boss:

“Sorry, Chief.”

Karmer ejects the Chief’s presence from his mind and seals the breech with custom code, knowing that his only hope now is to finish his presentation and pray that its message will survive in the hearts and minds of his eleven fellow witnesses.

Karmer rounds up his flock of swimmers and advances them to a sandy shore downstream, where they are lifted from the water, by cooperative hands, into a new type of immersion: a great dance, wild and chaotic; thousands of bare feet kicking dust into the hot evening air.

One by one his Re-Witnesses begin to squirm and twitch in their chairs, their bodies’ autonomic response to dancing. At first, their movements are jerky and spasmodic, but as resistance wanes, their movements gradually become a little more relaxed, if not to say smooth. In fact, several of them begin to vocalize a range of emotions, much to Karmer’s satisfaction in these last moments of his life.

RUN AUGMENTATION: REPENTYR.OXYTOSINS

When he feels a sharp, sawing pain in his head, like a swarm of angry insects chewing through his ganglia as they burrow feverishly into his brain, he decides it's time for some parting words.

“As I said, this was captured on the day of their Final Act of Sovereignty,” he reminds his group members, “and the Veliomide they took with breakfast will soon begin to do its work.”

“What?!” roars the Magister of Commentaries, seemingly having forgotten he already knows how this ends. One by one, before their eyes, the dancers begin to fall to ground, and with each one down, so comensurately the energy rises of those who remain.

“This shouldn’t be happening!” cries Trustor Kaelen. “We can’t let them do this to themselves!”

Karmer backtracks them through the various scenes of their tour. Meditators slump on the hill as limp bodies float lazily past them downriver. A field of able-bodied athletes lying as still as the floating saucers about them. An old storyteller wrapped in blankets, frozen in the peaceful embrace of all the children and mothers who adored her.

ALERT: VITAL DISRUPTION DETECTED

For the first time in his life not feeling on some level like a failure, Karmer smiles to himself. Then something at the top of his neck snaps like an over-stretched cord, and his visual fields all go dark.

And then there is nothing left of Karmer, at all, as Karmer knows it.

All that is left of the man is a distant awareness of discrete pools of iridescence, each throbbing a distinct set of colors.

The Chief Justice’s voice beams into the minds of the eleven remaining officials.

“Agent Karmer has breached RATIONAL and you have all been compromised.”

They begin to boo.

“You will proceed to quarantine, immediately, for RATIONAL-“ he begins, but they cut him off, intuitively finding together the means by which to eject him. Eyes peeled, they stare into the dome, their silver heart-shaped pieces each glowing a slightly different color from the next.