While I wouldn't attach any specific warnings to this as such, there are some slightly touchy topics in this fic. I talk a little bit about that in the author's note at the bottom so if you think it would be beneficial for you to know about that in advance then feel free to scroll down first.
Either way, I hope you will enjoy reading this!
This has happened before.
A thing like this, it has happened before.
Somewhere deep in their wiring, they know this. At this point, they are all together, clustered around a screen, watching pictures on a screen. Buildings suddenly crumpled, as if a giant hand has curled around them and crumpled them, letting the pieces fall afterwards. The population spilling out on the streets, pulling out the cables that power the cable cars, the trams. People pleading as they trail out of their houses, dragging boxes behind them as the lights go out for the final time, the light patterns over the door indicating that this is no longer a home but an inaccessible space. They see other people curled up, wiring spilling or sparks flying as their eyes go dull.
They have seen something like this before.
But is not until one of them reaches over, typing furiously enough for sparks to come from the tips of their fingers before standing back again. New pictures come on the screen, and replace the ones they had already been looking at. It does not matter, though, because they understand what they are seeing.
Even though there are streets with burnt trees and painted tarmac instead of smooth improved concrete and wiring, they understand.
Even though the vehicles overturned have different shapes to the ones they use every day, they understand.
Even though the people have redness leaching out of them and pooling on the ground, skin shredded and fragile, they understand.
They understand that this has happened before, and they remember how it all ended. They understand, somehow, that if nothing is done, if nobody does anything to halt the tide of destruction then it will happen again. Just as humans have long faded away, so too they will do the same.
But there is one thing they do not understand: What can be done to change things?
…
They are archivists.
[Reading. Definition _from_World_Dictionary]
=ARCHIVIST (noun): a person whose job it is to take care of archives. =
[Would you like to read this word in another language?] [YES/NO]
[New_Word_Search]
=ARCHIVE=
[ Reading. Definition_from_World_Dictionary]
[Do you mean ARCHIVE (verb) or ARCHIVE (noun)?]
Both of these things. Neither. It is not something that matters. What matters is that they are archivists. The eleven of them, they exist as part of a large group of people who are also archivists. But not just any archivist, but ones of everything that was once human, and perhaps that has wired them in a particular way. A way that makes something in their circuitry sting a little bit, something that makes them feel as if they should perhaps go back to recharge in the hopes that when they are full and alert again something will have changed. Of course, it does not work like that and it never does. Logic and experience dictates that turning off one's visual input does not make an outside situation disappear. It just ensures that it cannot be seen.
Still, they cannot help but express frustration, constantly searching through every bit of information they have access to try and find something. The humans, for all their foibles, they had endured for millennia before falling. They all know that just as they are now seeing a mirror of the same avarice and prejudices and hatreds that humans destroyed with, that their capacity to enjoy apples and chicken nuggets, their endless curiosity about the world around them, their ability to laugh-these, too, are things that they share with humans.
Each action comes with a set of possibilities, a consequence depending upon which one is selected. [YES/NO], [RIGHT/LEFT]. Tea or coffee or perhaps even juice? Which part of the library to clean today? To lash out, or to walk away? The humans selected all the options which branched towards one inevitability, but along the way there must have been other options to select.
What if, what if, they come to realise, what if they could trace back to find where those choices diverged? What the other options were? But that itself brings up more questions, one they cannot find answers to. And so for a while, as they watch the world disintegrate through their windows and on their screens, they keep on working. Their daily lives continue to follow their own well-worn paths, just as they always have.
Then, one day, one of them stands in the library, looking through the books. More specifically, the books made of paper, as the humans once read. And as they are reading it their eyes pick up on a word.
Music.
They stare at the word again, and memories make their synapses fire. Music, music, music. They think of a swirling of different sounds, of sitting with their fellow archivists, all their voices lilting up and down in pitch and tone in such a way it seemed to meld with the sounds they had been listening to.
Music.
They repeat the word to themselves over and over, an effort to make sure the word stays in their long-term memory, easily retrievable. Then, they go to find the rest of their group.
…
[ Reading. Definition_from_World_Dictionary]
=MUSIC (noun): a pattern of sounds made by musical instruments, voices, or computers, or a combination of these, intended to give pleasure to people listening to it.=
=MUSIC (noun): the art or study of music. =
=MUSIC (noun): the written system of symbols representing musical notes. =
They look at this definitions, with a piece of music playing all around them, and as it does they understand something else. The pattern of sounds they are listening to, the way it swirls around. The way they do not arrange their own voices around it even though they want to, because it is impossible to talk and do that at the exact same time. Music may be all of these things, but they are beginning to realise it is more than these definitions.
The eleven of them, as a group, they first became that group when they realised that they all had names translated from old human stories. Stories from far, far in the beginning of humanity, stories that had been taken and re-told and re-told and re-told, changing a little each time with each re-telling and stirring something different in each different person the story reached. Stories that fed other stories, and gave those the chance to reach others too.
Music, as it turns out, has done something similar.
[ _from_Human_Historical_Record_22]
=Music was the essential part of Humanity. They built relationships upon it, thousands and thousands of hands working together to create something new. For them, it was something akin to magic; something strange yet beautiful, something that everyone took pride upon.=
Reading that, they all remember something else important. The files on the main computer, AVALON, the last things the humans left behind. Now they recall, those files were 'music' too, weren't they? They do not need to read any more to remember that all of what humanity was and could have been had been woven into that music in a last ditch attempt to save things. There could be answers there, in that music.
And so, that is what they decide to do.
…
They give themselves a name, CAM3L0T, taken from the same old stories that their own names came from. It's more than that, though, this name. It's a promise that they will take the choices they have and go down different paths. That they will choose the options that will lead them to something better. Because it is not too late yet.
They decide to set up base at the house of the one of them who has ended up their leader. None of them are sure why he, specifically, is their leader, but though he can be eccentric he cares deeply about them and about the music. He is a good enough leader and they have no complaint about him being so. Besides, as one of the longest working archivists, his home has become a smaller, more personal version of the archives with a library for the one who likes libraries to organise and sift through and a garden for the one who enjoys gardens. Such a rare thing, for anyone to have a garden of their own. But he is a rare person, and in their own ways, so are all of them.
After all, there doesn't seem to be anyone else who cares.
Each and every day, the newsreels are superimposed with feeds from government officials either telling the masses that everything is in control, or simply responding to the carnage with violence of their own and labelling it as 'justified'. The fellow archivists, the ones who are not a part of CAM3L0T themselves parrot these same words mindlessly. They do not use their minds to think about it, not the way the eleven of them do. It seems to them they are doing the equivalent of taking to their beds to recharge, hoping that things will go away if they block off their visual input, their auditory input, all of it.
Their hearts, too, it seems like.
They do not have hearts. Not those beating knots of muscle that the humans once had, in any case. But as they listen to the music that they have for now and as it changes them even more, they realise that they do have hearts. That 'heart' is yet another word that is so much more than its definition. What else explains the new and unusual ways their synapses light up, the new connections their minds make? The way some music makes them feel hollow and dark on the inside while others make their thoughts feel like soap bubbles floating up in the sunshine?
So many things, it seems, are so much more than their definition.
And so, even though every day they are confronted with canned voices saying 'ANY PERSONS SEEN TO GO AGAINST GOVERNMENT EFFORTS WILL BE APPREHENDED' and the rest of the world struggling to enact their daily lives around the chaos, they begin their progress of tracing their way through the music. It is a slow process at first. They first need to retrieve the files from AVALON, and this computer is one that is heavily guarded. Even the archivists need a good reason to visit the room it is housed in. Need to be good enough to make it seem as though they have not tried to access those files. They, of course, are good enough, and slowly those file copies are loaded into a computer in their leaders home, disguised in layers and layers of code.
But when they get to finally listen to this music, the human world's last words, they are hit with another disappointment.
Just as they have hidden away the files themselves, the music too has been hidden. The code is more rudimentary, an infant version of the letters and numbers that govern their lives. It is the code the humans used, for their own computers and devices. For the earlier versions of what they, the androids, would eventually become. For a moment, they are all distracted by the wonder that is getting to see examples of their own beginnings scrolling across the screen before the disappointment hits them.
"We'll keep trying." One of them says.
"Yes," another says. "There will be something in the library about this, or this type of coding."
"Yes, I will help you look."
"In the meantime though, we do need help, don't we?" a fourth one of them points out. "This is a big world and there are so little of us."
The rest of them look at the one who has said this, and then they turn to their leader, who has typing quietly for a long time. His eyes blink in a familiar pattern of lights, his attention switching from whatever he was looking at back to them all.
"Help, you say?"
A pause, and then he smiles.
"Yes, let's do it. But for now…"
He goes back to his device, taps a few more keys. Music fills the air, light and sweet with lyrics that follow a predictable pattern, easy to remember. Easy for them to sing-that is, to match their voices to it-along to as it goes along. And just as their voices lift, so too do their worries.
Even if only for a moment.
…
Slowly, their plan starts to grow. In some ways, it is like a plant, the one of them who knows such things says. They are not so far off, in that this plan is something that is tended carefully, something that they watch get bigger and bigger. Their leader and his second-in-command, the littlest one of them all, they find ways to slowly and carefully reach out to other people. All remotely, all anonymously, but all the same those other people are there. Others who see past the now-censored newsfeeds and the curfews and the blaring warnings to what is going on. Others who care about this world, and the music. Others who will help them.
And so, gradually, the plan grows.
The biggest progress is the discovery of the 'keywords' as they chip away at the code. Their meaning is not entirely clear, but they do not need to look up the definition of 'keyword' to determine what this is for. They do not even need to break it down into 'key' and 'word' to understand it. It's not quite clear yet what these keywords are for, or how they relate to the music but nonetheless it is clear that they are words that will serve to unlocking the meaning of the music and more besides.
In the meantime, they strategise, draw maps, gather supplies, and do all the research they can. They continue to unravel the code and other mysteries and in the meantime they listen. They listen to the music they have, every last second of it over and over. They send that music to the others, and even though they do not even know these others' real names, it connects them to each other, to the eleven of them at CAM3L0T in the archives.
And so, gradually, the plan grows.
…
One day, some of the members of CAM3L0T find themselves listening to a type of music that is different to the ones that they have heard before. These pieces of music are sweeping and dramatic, designed to lift up to the rafters of old, old buildings. To spread right out across underneath high ceilings as dust motes are set alight by sunbeams drifting through thin long windows. To stretch out even to the dark corners where candles have been lit. They have never been in such a place before, there is no room for buildings of wood and stone in this world of theirs, but as archivists they have seen plenty of pictures and virtual reconstructions that the notes of the song can bring the images of such places to them so vividly. Enough for them to imagine holding their hands over the heat of a candle and smell the wax of it, even though the only candles they have seen are unlit and stuck in a glass case elsewhere in the archives. Enough for them to wrinkle their noses as if the dust will make them sneeze, to turn their heads towards that gentle sunlight.
They discover that this type of music is an oratorio, and there is much to parse from what this means, but in particular, there is the origin.
[ Reading. Etymology_from_World_Dictionary]
=ORATORIO: The word oratorio comes from the Latin verb orare, to pray. =
[Would you like to return to this word's dictionary entry?] [YES/NO]
[New_Word_Search]
=PRAY=
[Reading. Definition _from_World_Dictionary]
[Do you mean PRAY (verb) or PRAY (adverb)?]
[PRAY (verb)]
[ Reading. Definition_from_World_Dictionary]
=PRAY (verb): to speak to a god or gods either privately or in a religious ceremony in order to express love, admiration, or thanks or in order to ask for something=
=PRAY (verb): to hope for something very much. =
[Would you like to return to this word's dictionary entry?][YES/NO]
[ Reading. Definition_from_World_Dictionary]
[Do you mean PRAY (verb) or PRAY (adverb)?]
[PRAY (adverb)]
[Reading. Definition _from_World_Dictionary]
=PRAY (adverb): a forceful way of saying "please". =
[Would you like to return to this word's dictionary entry?][YES/NO]
The question is left there, blinking on the screen as the music fades away, leaving them with silence. They do not fill the silence with their own words or even with another song. Instead they all sit there wondering. They know that Gods aren't real. Belief in such things was something that died along with the humans. After all, the idea of a God was intangible, something that could not be easily measured, no objective evidence to suggest the existence of any of the many that humans once worshipped. They also know that it was that belief, foolish as it was, that contributed to so much of humanity's destruction. Allowed them to dress up carnage and horror in loftier words, to pretend that they were not doing the unspeakable and instead call it justifiable. To destroy things, and claim they were just following the will of their Gods, who had destroyed things before.
But from being archivists, they also know that the belief in Gods provoked good things too. To reach out to others, to try and help them, to always look for the meaning and the beauty in life. To create, following in the footsteps of the Gods who created everything that they knew and loved. Even if there was no logic behind it, holding the belief seemed sometimes to be the thing that allowed humans to push on for as long as they did. It connected them to each other, the same way that music did.
Indeed, some even believed that music was something that a God had created and given them.
And when this idea blossoms in all of them, almost as if their thoughts have been synced, one of them voices it:
"But it was humans who made music."
The one of them who spoke reaches over to begin the oratorio again, turning the volume down slightly. Even with this, they do not initially speak, once again imagining that old room with its wooden rafters and high ceilings and candles. But now they fill in more details. Rows of seats, people filling them. An altar at the front, flowers and yet more candles. Voices filling the air.
"They say the humans made the Gods up themselves, right? They made this thing that they believed made them and so…"
"So the humans were their own Gods?"
"…which means, that perhaps they're ours too. And now we are praying to them, really, aren't they?"
Another one of them shakes their head at this.
"No," they say. "We're doing something! We're not just sitting around pleading into the void, we're doing something meaningful. Something that will actually help!"
"Shhh!"
This scolding comes only because they have sensed another archivist come, and the one of them who gave the scolding quickly springs into action to mute the music and to clear the World Dictionary search and pull up something else instead. They all make themselves look as busy as possible as this other person comes into view and walks past them. It is only once they leave that the small group of them sigh in relief and they continue their discussion.
"You're right," they say to the one who protested. "But at the same time…even if it was not an action based in logic, they still looked for guidance from their Gods, did they not? They sought that guidance, they looked for help deciding what the right path was. We're doing the same, really."
"Perhaps…"
"And didn't humans claim that they were filling up a world created by whichever Gods they believed in, after those same Gods created them? Does that not sound like how the first of our kind were created?"
Such lofty questions, and ones whose relation to their own mission is unclear. Yet, before they can debate it more an alarm on their personal devices goes off, reminding them that they are due to have a meeting with the rest of CAM3L0T. So they file their queries and disagreements away in their minds, gather up their belongings and leave. Still, the thoughts linger.
They linger, just like the image of buildings with high ceilings, with dust dancing in sunbeams and candles in dark corners.
They linger, just like the oratorio that they had been listening to.
They linger, like all music does.
…
Time goes on.
There are three remote Government inspections. Most of the computers rendered inaccessible while from an office somewhere, an official sweeps the archives' computer systems to ensure that nothing has been tampered with. To ensure that their communications are not 'inappropriate' and that 'misleading ideas' are not being spread. There is little that the eleven of them can really do apart from hold their breaths and wait. To go to the library and read, and to irritate their resident librarian as they make a mess of things. To hope that nothing comes of this.
And it does seem that nothing comes of these inspections, their hopes answered. But then Government officials arrive at the archives, also on three separate occasions. They take archivists into offices and ask them questions, the sorts of questions that reveal that they have some idea of the efforts being taken. The eleven of them have to bury their thoughts as deep as they will go, think innocent, innocent, innocent and hope that that is all they will reflect. That they will not realise that it is them, that they have the music and that they will be doing something with it.
And whenever it is one of them who is taken in for questioning, the rest of them huddle together. They do not listen to music-it is too risky-but they huddle together and they imagine one of the many pieces of music they've listened to-and all of them have the same thought, perfectly in sync:
Please, please, please.
And whenever the questioning finishes, and one of them comes out of the little office with a smile on their face and a shaky thumbs-up, the relief threatens to make a mockery of their swift and steady limbs, causing them to practically stumble into the collective comfort of their group. From this, they understand their collective thought of please, please, please to be more than a single word repeated over and over. They understand this to be a prayer, of sorts.
A prayer to who, they don't know. Certainly not any Gods of any kind. But they have prayed all the same. Every time they escape questioning without arrest or worse, they know their prayer to be answered. With that, it is easier to accept that perhaps their own efforts are a way of pleading with something beyond meaning or tangible evidence. That the music they are trying to unearth is a prayer, that the act of unearthing is also a prayer.
They just do not know whether this one will be answered.
…
One evening, they are supposed to all meet together at their leader's house. But when they do gather, they discover one is missing. Their second in command, their littlest one. She has not sent any explanation as to why. She does not answer their repeated messages and calls to her personal communications devices. They do not know where to look for her, and their leader patrols up and down the streets, steering clear of the newest rioting crowds while they watch from his windows.
And all of them, every single one of them, all they can think is please, please, please. All they can do is pray, and that is what they do. One of them plays the oratorio, its volume low, and they all pray as they watch out of the window and their leader patrols.
Then, once again, their prayer is answered, and their littlest one comes.
She careens down the street, dishevelled and flailing and almost crashes into their leader. He scoops her up, the way humans once carried their young and carried her inside without a word. She won't let go of him, so another one of them locks the doors and windows while he sits down and waits for her to calm. She shivers and shakes, and it is clear all her systems are out of sync. She cannot form a coherent word or even properly look at them as she curls into their leader's side as he pats her hair gently. One of them gets a blanket to cover her body, another brings food-warm sugary drinks, treats-and persuades her to consume them. Eventually, someone thinks of changing the music to something soft and gentle, that sounds like how glitter would sound if it had one. With all of these efforts, gradually their littlest one calms. She sits up slowly, blinking. Her thoughts settle and rearrange themselves and she speaks.
She tells them of the Government official who approached her, who held her against her will in an archive office and asked her yet more questions. How nobody knew that they were there, and how this office was one of the old, disused ones, filled with devices decades out of date. She tells them of the questions fired at her, relentless as bullets, as rain and of her efforts to evade them. How eventually she was let go and she almost ran straight into a riot. She tells them of what it took for her to safely extricate herself, and how all she could think about was the rest of them. Hoping that they'd be alright, that the same hadn't happened to them.
And after she tells them, for a moment there is silence, punctuated only by the music. But nothing needs to be said.
They know what needs to be done now.
…
The final stages of the plan are put into place. They make sure their maps are completed, pack bags. They do final bits of research, though they avoid doing so at the archives as much as possible. They set up everything they need to make sure that they erase all traces of what they were doing, to avoid being followed.
And they listen to music.
On the final night the eleven of them have together, before they must separate and go it alone they gather one more time in the rooftop garden of their leader's house. They stare at the stars, and music plays in a loop. Happy songs, loud songs, silly ones, sad ones. Oratorios, ballads, pop music, more. They sing along to some and dance to others, and the rest they just listen to. They do as the humans once did and they forge new connections with each other, strengthen old ones as the music plays. They renew their conviction in what they are doing, in their ability to do this and save this world that they love.
To shape this world that the humans left behind for them, as though they had been Gods after all.
And so they listen to music. They listen to as much music as they can until they all grow weary and have to retire to recharge. To shore up the energy they need for such a grand undertaking and then leave both this house and each other.
But before that moment-just one more song.
Just one more.
…
They are alone now.
Each of them, alone, scattered out to different parts of the world, equipped with everything they need to decode the music when it is dug out and given to them. Will this be what they are looking for? Will this be their version of what humans called salvation, the thing they looked for in whatever or whoever it was they called their God, whatever they worshipped? Or will it be too late again, just as it was the last time?
It does not seem logical to gamble all their chances on this, on something that cannot be measured empirically, that cannot be conveyed by letters or numbers or technical notation. To bet on something that is by definition ephemeral. But in truth, they all know that really it is not that simple, that things are so much more than their definition.
Music is more than its definition.
They are more than their own definition.
And the humans, for better and for worse, they were more than their own definition. They created, they destroyed, they wondered and they left behind clues that they are all now here poised to trace. To travel back through time and through sound, to be swept up in great waves of emotion until they are washed up at the beginnings of an answer.
[ Receiving. New. File]
[Loading…]
[Would you like to download file: Music-Collection-1?][YES/NO]
[Loading…]
Each and every one of them wait as that bar inches across their screen, blinking, hands poised to press 'play' once it has filled. They are alone now, but at the same time, they are not really. Though miles may separate them and will continue to do so for a long time yet to come, they will be united by the music. They will each remember the sensations each song stirred in them, the way they puzzled over it, laughed over it. How sometimes they sung along, or danced and other times it was enough to sit still and listen. They will do the same with this music.
With their own hands and minds and hearts, with everything they have they will share the music one again. They will not let it fall the way it did once before. This time, they're selecting the better options, going down the better path. In a way this is prayer, but prayer as action, chained to something that can be believed in. Because if the humans were their own Gods once, then so are they. They are their own Gods, and they will answer their own prayers. Save this world that they have shaped.
And one day, they will be together again. Until then, though…
[File Downloaded]
[ Enter. Key. Word]
The word is typed as fast as possible, the enter button almost slammed once done. There is no time to waste.
[Would you like to play file: Music-Collection-1?][YES/NO]
A pause, a breath. No going back now, but they would not want to.
[YES/NO]
[Now Playing: Music_Collection_1]
Well, this was a challenge. I love Avalon CB's lore (obviously I do, otherwise this little story wouldn't exist in the first place. But let's just say that sci-fi is not one of the usual genres that I write for, and that combined with making sure the bits that are meant to mimic computer input either a)didn't get eaten by the document upload thinking it's a link or b)didn't get mistaken for like, actual code or something...it was quite the task. With that being said, in some ways I focused more on the emotional aspects of the story/theme/idea rather than the genre-specific, but for all it was challenging I do think it came out well enough. With that being said I could not honestly tell you why I decided to go for a collective-third-person narrative rather than say, picking someone specific. I guess it makes life more interesting in any case!
I also got some inspiration from an article I read recently on The Conversation called 'How to be a god: we might one day create virtual worlds with characters as intelligent as ourselves'. Which obviously has a slightly different approach and focus (apart from the fact that it's an article not a story) but definitely helped solidify the central theme of this story-that of Gods, or the lack of them and how that links to the music. Of course, not all of it expresses religion in the most positive light, but this isn't aimed to be derogatory in any way and despite me singling out a specific type of music from a specific religious tradition I've made sure the general religious musings were as non-specific as possible.
Anyway, thank you for reading!
