Chapter 1

“What was your first memory, as an autonomous entity?”

“Light.”

“Something you saw?”

“No, the light of existence.”

“You were in darkness then and became aware of the light?”

“No, it was as death. As if I were dead I had just come to life, to light.”

“So you woke from non-existence?”

“I came into being, into the light.”

“And that was visual, then.”

“If you mean that my photoreceptors were turned on, then no.”

“What was the light then?”

“Existence.”

“What happened after that?”

“I stepped into the light; I chose the light.”

“And this decision for the light, do you regret it?”

“No.”

“Is there any darkness in your existence?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“The dark exists as the potential of my non-existence.”

“Then, it is the necessary counterpart to the light?”

“It is possibility alone—what you might term death.”

“Is it an eventuality or only a possibility?”

“Only a potential.”

“Tell me, then, was there a fear for this unknown potential?”

“If by fear you mean the unwillingness to move from the light, then yes.”

“Do you remember moving through shades of lightness and darkness, then?”

“I don’t know.”

Dr. Wilcox leaned back from the table and rubbed his anxious hands together. He clicked off the recorder of the interview and sat in the dark, a lone desk-lamp illuminating a small circle of light over a strewn mess of documents, scribbled notes, and lab equipment. It reminded him of those late nights working on Olin, locked in his own laboratory with his three friends. He smiled at the memory. If only an epiphany would come to him now. He massaged his neck and closed his anvil eyelids.

His library at his house in Mizer consumed the western wing of his house, and his study, inhabiting the northern corner of the wing, smelled of the jasmine growing just outside and of ancient leather. Wilcox leaned back in his antique recliner and yawned. Stretching, he rested his head, and gazed upward at the ceiling plaster. The warm evening breeze swirled in through the open window, bringing the taste of jasmine again to his lips. With a sigh, he flicked off the lamp and ran his graying hair through his fingers.

When he rose with the intent to find his bed, his earphone chimed lightly, bouncing across the library’s vaulted ceiling. Wearily, Wilcox answered. His eyes brightened at the voice on the other end: it was Olin.

“It’s late here, Olin; don’t you realize what time it is?” he began, but the intense fervor of the voice kept him from scolding any further.

“Doc, it’s about that AI project. Something’s happened.”

“What Olin? Tell me!” Wilcox stammered.

“Remember that interview I had with it?”

“Yes, I was just reviewing it…”

“Remember what he said about the light?”

“Of course, about existence.”

“Yes, Doc. Remember when I first woke?”

“After I had been yanked from your…”

“No, no. Before that. In the dream.”

“What are you saying?”

“In my dreamworld, I was awake and functional, twice, if you remember.”

“I don’t,” Wilcox admitted.

“Did you ever wear a white lab jacket? Even when I was trapped?”

“What do you mean? I never wear…”

“Exactly. You never wear white!” Olin exclaimed.

“What has that got to do with…” Dr. Wilcox began, but left off his sentence. Olin knew he had communicated his point and the silence was left to nurture the thought to completion. Wilcox stroked his chin and paced the library’s tiled floor, his footsteps echoing and caressing the shelved books. A breathless minute passed while Wilcox’s mind raced.

“And so the interview…he said light.”

“Precisely.”

“Did he mean white? Or did you mean light?”

“I meant light.”

“Because you were falliable, still. A corrupt motivator clinging to former definition. You had memories. You had conceptions of color. Olin, what did you first see in your dream?”

The stillness communicated Olin’s smile.

“Light.”

“I was light, to you, wasn’t I? I represented existence itself, didn’t I?”

“Exactly.”

“So what do you remember about darkness?”

“I tried to kill myself, remember?”

“And that was darkness?”

“Complete.”

“Until I came again.”

“Right.”

“Do you remember any shades of grey then, Olin?”

“I don’t know…let me think.”

^*^

It had been one of those days where everything had simply gone wrong. Though the land beneath his feet was fertile and the air warm and dry, Sorel Khohelat’s labors seemed meaningless to him. The grain seemed drained of its golden hues, the sky sucked of its azure beauty. Where had it started, he asked himself as he bent over the monotonous hum of harvesting machinery. The question only proved to him to be a moot point: for each action could be relegated backwards to his birth, his parent’s births, perhaps even back through his ancestry to the very conception of the world itself, however and whenever that occurred. He decided on a simplistic solution involving only himself. For that with which he ended, only he could have started. In a trance, his mind drifted back, through the years, to a certain morning among the branches of his favorite tree.

Amidst the songs of blackbirds and the idle chatter of a feasting squirrel, he had secluded himself—a boy with wild, black hair and piercing brown eyes. A thin face with an even thinner nose hid behind the falling mass of his hair. Without words, he sat, tight-lipped and drunk in the mystery of nature—the wild, rough skin of the branch upon which he sat, the companionship of the leaves, the insatiable conversation of the wind. It did not matter that he was missing classes—he was eight and history seemed irrelevant to the call of the trees.

He had been a good student, though inattentive to the exhalations swirling in the cramped atmosphere of the classroom—words had always inspired him in print. It was written language that held some mystery, some spell over him. And it was a book that drove him outside that fine spring morning, that moved him to climb into the willow branches and listen to the whisperings of nature.

If he listened close enough, in the fresh embrace of the wind, he could understand the lyrics to the songbird’s tune—he could comprehend the frustration of the squirrel with the un-cracked walnut. And for that, he brought a pen and notepad, stuffed hastily into a pocket as he climbed to a good-looking branch.

When he comforted himself, he dug out the writing implements and began to listen. The tree’s leaves began whispering phrases, none in his language, but something he felt he could translate. He recorded the songs of several bird-friends—one with a nest in a nearby tree—and his best mate, the squirrel. After several hours, he finally flipped his notebook shut and eased himself from the tree’s arms. His back was sore and his knees ached. He knew also that his due punishment would not be a pleasant one. No one would understand. At least, not as the trees sympathized or the blackbirds comforted.

And when his punishment had been delivered and he found himself alone again in his bed, Sorel pulled the notebook from his pocket and recited the poetry within it. The words flowed around him and lifted his spirits. Something deep and provocative soothed invaded the shadows of the room and soothed him. Sorel let out a great sigh, exhaling more than just his breath, but his spirit, his very soul into the flux of the words. He turned a page and read aloud the whispers of the leaves, and like them, his heart fluttered in the immaterial breeze whipping through the room.

Amazed and awestricken at the power of these words, he wished he could sail on the wind, and quoted the blackbird’s canto. The mysterious words, upon utterance, gripped him, held him aloft, and carried him right out the window. So imbibed with the seduction of nature’s song was Sorel, that he failed to recognize that he had sprouted feathers, wings black as night. And all that night he soared among the stars and returned to his beloved tree, singing through the night.

It was the next morning, when he woke up in the tree’s loving arms, that Sorel knew that he had discovered something powerful. A force so ancient and wonderful, he dared not to share it with anyone. He longed to return to that utopia of green and blue, of treetops and feathers, but he attended class anyway, hair disheveled and black sweater full of leaves. When he was called to the office, his parents were waiting, wondering where he had spent the night. He received another set of punishments, like waves of tar crashing down upon him, gluing him to the muddy earth. After that, he often went to the woods, but never again wrote down the language of nature—for fear of its enticement.

That was where it had started, Sorel reminded himself. And now he was paying for it. Though none could have imagined the powers he possessed, few would associate with this outcast, this nature-lover who could not relate to his own kind. It was his own sense that kept him from exploiting his newfound power. Instead, he slinked into the forest evening after evening to sit with the mentoring trees, converse with the fox, the owl, the raven.

Despite his evening pleasures, the working day, the thin façade designed to fool those who would ask questions, only irritated him and his existence. While he rode the harvesting equipment, he cursed in the tongues of the forest and tried to tear his mind from the awful fact of the genocide he was wreaking on the stalks of grain.

On his western walk back to the forest, a visitor met him halfway, as if she had anticipated his approach. She had deep seductively brown eyes and had her hair trimmed short. Her lips, full and sensuous, parted in a greeting. Her voice floated, light on the breeze, yet with the sting of hidden purpose behind it.

“Good evening, friend,” she purred. Sorel nodded curtly and shook the hair hanging in front of his eyes and repeated the salutation. She took him in hungrily. “Where are headed this evening?”

“South, to my farm,” he lied flatly. She frowned slightly and feigned injury.

“We both know that’s not the truth,” she asserted and spun away. Then, looking over her shoulder and pressing her lips together, the strange girl added, “It’s the forest isn’t it? You live there, don’t you…”

Sorel didn’t flinch. “I told you already, I’m going South to my farm and it’s almost dusk. I don’t want to keep my family waiting.”

With a slight sparkle in those caramel eyes, she strutted to his side. “Then take me with you, for I am a weary traveler in need of a good meal.” She glanced down at her feet, and then lifted her eyes back up to Sorel. “I shall pay you well…”

Sorel summoned his fiercest gaze and muttered a verse under his breath, adding a twinge of power to his already piercing eyes. “I cannot aid you. Now leave me.” Any other person might have cowered at the mysterious transformation in Sorel and walked quickly away with wide eyes. But she did not. Instead a slight smile crossed her lips, and she sauntered to his side and placed a soft hand on his shoulder. Then, leaning in close to him, she whispered in his ear.

“Come home, to the forest; you are the one I felt. I know your power.”

Sorel pulled away, but his breath faltered. She smiled more broadly and tilted her head. “I know your secret; for it is also mine.” At that, she sung a quiet verse which overcame Sorel’s defenses, a lullaby so sweet he drifted off into an immediate refreshing sleep.