The This Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  1. In the Bardo

  2. Rich

  3. By Such Means We Achieve Veneration

  4. Richer

  5. Elegy for Pheno-Women and Pheno-Men

  6. Richest

  7. Twenty Eighty-Four

  8. Xanadu

  9. In the Bardo

  Acknowledgements

  Credits

  Also by Adam Roberts

  Copyright

  You don’t get me, I’m part of the union

  You don’t get me, I’m part of the union

  You don’t get me, I’m part of the union

  Till the day I die

  Till the day I die.

  Richard Hudson and John Ford

  The analysis of an idea, as it is properly carried out, is, in fact, nothing else than ridding it of the form in which it has become familiar.

  G.W.F. Hegel

  Allow me to remark:

  The Ghost has just as good a right

  In every way to fear the light,

  As men to fear the dark.

  Charles Dodgson

  1

  In the Bardo

  In the Bardo subject and object are the same. You say, ‘I’m not sure I understand what that means.’

  There’s somebody else with you in the Bardo and this other person is going through the same process you are. Or, to put it another way: there are many persons in the Bardo and they’re all going through the same process as you. The place is crammed with people. So many! Do any of them understand this business better than you do? You say it again: ‘I’m not sure I understand what that means.’

  ‘Means,’ says the other. ‘I mean, since we can’t suppose time has any purchase in this place, the present tense in your statement comes into question, rather, don’t you think? Meant, means, will mean. I mean, who’s to say?’

  You say: ‘Huh?’

  A flash of light marks your passage out of the Bardo, and you’re alive again. That flash was the sunlight. All of it. That flash of light is all the sunlight you will see in the course of your life, and all the darkness, too. Which is to say, you see, in an instant, the balance of the two – but of course you’ll see less darkness and more light over the run of your whole existence, because the day is lit and, though the night is not, there’s always light inside your dreams.

  Embodiment, and its queasy wondrousness. Milk assuages your wailing. You run, and it’s a pure joy, and the high grass snickers at your hips. You take your share of the meat. You are a parent and sit under an overhang and watch the rain come down so hard it’s as if the whole sky has collapsed its liquid blue down upon you in one go. It smells of cleanness and clover, of sky and freshness. As you sit there, cradling one of your kids, a thought rushes your memory with intense and vivid suddenness: that time when Hari cut the throat of a wild cow with a lucky cut, and all the cow’s blood came out in one go, with a great sloshing and gushing – it was the noise of this rain, the noise of life sluicing endlessly through the sky and the earth, through you and all the animals, and you feel a sharp fragment of understanding. There was good eating for days from that cow. You sleep and dream of a great mountain. The next day the ground is muddy. A pain in your jaw grows until you can do nothing but lie on the ground and cry. It fills your head with its pain, and when you think the pain is so great it cannot possibly be greater, it swells further – fire and grinding and pressure combined into an agony. It breaks the bone to burst from your head through the side of your face, and the release of this pressure is so sweet you sleep for a day. It still hurts, and the others make fun of your ruined face, and then you are feverish and then you are more feverish and then you are dead.

  In the Bardo subject and object are the same. You can remember the whole of that lived life, as fine-veined and perfect as a single glossy leaf from a tree with a trillion leaves. You hold the whole memory in your mind. The light comes again.

  You are reborn, and live long enough to develop a sense of yourself, of your mother and your siblings, of heat and shade, of the difference between bitter food and sweet, and then you die – a day and a night of diarrhoea and you’re gone.

  In the Bardo subject and object are the same.

  ‘I can remember all of them,’ you say. ‘I suppose you do, too? Is it the same for you?’

  The other person there smiles. ‘Are you sure,’ this other person asks, ‘you’re not collating numerous similar life-memories into a smaller number of manageable memories?’

  You say: ‘That’s a good question.’

  The light, again. There is more brightness than darkness in this life, too. It’s like that for almost every life. You grow up by a pool, and there are fish to eat as well as what the tribe hunts in the forest. You and your brothers and sisters and cousins are a tribe within the tribe, and you like mischief. One day, when one of the community’s Big Men is washing himself in the pool, you and your siblings all piss into the pool for a joke. The Big Man is very angry, and his anger does not settle as anger usually does. He surprises the group of you all later that day – you’d already forgotten the prank, and are picking and eating berries. But the Big Man has not forgotten, and though most of your sisters and brothers run off screaming, he catches you and punches you on the side of the head. His is the Big Fist, so its blow breaks the bone and you lie on the ground sobbing and passing in and out of consciousness. Over the course of evening and sunset the shadow of the bush slides over you like a blanket. Your mother finds you and tries to lift you up, but the movement dislodges something inside you and you start fitting furiously. Vomit comes up one way and goes down another and you’re dead.

  In the Bardo subject and object are the same.

  ‘Does it just go on and on?’ you ask. ‘I mean, I suppose what I’m wondering is … are we on our way anywhere?’

  The other person smiles. ‘You mean, enlightenment? Zen and spiritual evanishment and all that? I don’t know anything about any of that.’

  You tell them your name.

  They tell you theirs: Abby something.

  ‘Abby Normal?’ you laugh, and Abby laughs, too, so that’s a joke you share, it seems. A cultural reference you have in common. At the time this doesn’t strike you as strange, but later, when the sheer scope of … well – everything … comes home to you, it sounds a more discordant note. I mean, what are the odds? That you both recognised the reference, that you had cultural knowledge sufficiently in common to both laugh? An old black and white comedy movie. Pastiche monster-mash.

  Where did you start this process? Which was your first life? You wonder about yourself. You ask Abby.

  By way of reply Abby smiles a Serenissima smile.

  This time there is no flash, and this life is more darkness than light: you live underground, and when you come up the light hurts your eyes and you don’t like it. But you bring up the ore and you eat your meals, and you play, and when you get older you fuck, and you don’t know any different. Then you’re dead and you do know any different and you think: That wasn’t much of a life.

  Bright light. You live by the river and your life is a habitual matter: prayers, scooping the water into your irrigation channels, growing your food, passing your due to the rulers, making small trades with your neighbours. You marry four times and have six children, two of whom live to adulthood and are present at your deathbed.

  In the Bardo subject and object are the same thing.

  ‘There’s a degree of monotony,’ you note.

  Abby shrugs.

  Darkness this time: you are blind, all your long life. You never see the sunlight, although you can feel it on your face.

  In the Bardo subject and object are the same thing.

  Brightness swells
again.

  You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are a farmer. You are pressed into the army and die of dysentery far from home. You are a farmer, pressed into the army and spiked with a spear from behind on a battlefield whose name you do not know. You are a farmer and you die by the sword. You are a farmer and you die of disease.

  In the Bardo subject and object are the same thing.

  ‘That phrase keeps occurring to me,’ you tell Abby, as you stretch your limbs and settle once more, yet again, into the calmly eternal rhythm of the Bardo. ‘And I couldn’t for the life of me tell you why. Or what it means.’

  ‘Let’s say,’ Abby suggests, ‘I. Let’s say, you. You’re your subject. Subject, verb, object. For example – I eat the apple.’

  Apple, you think. Adam, you think. Was Adam the first life? Was Adam your first life?

  ‘So in the world of living and dying I eat an apple, but in the Bardo I and the apple are the same thing?’

  ‘Search me,’ says Abby, grinning.

  ‘I don’t feel very apple-y.’

  ‘Golden,’ says Abby. ‘Delicious.’

  The brightness swells again.

  You are a nobleman – afterwards, when you’re back in the Bardo and can remember it all, you’re struck by how rare this is. A nobleman! You dress in fine clothes, and slaves attend your mundane needs, and you own a fine house with flat roofs and a carp pond. A man you trust absolutely, a man you have known all your life, shoves you hard, and keeps shoving you until your back is pressed against the wall. You’re so astonished you don’t say anything, because this is a man you trust absolutely. He breaks the skin of your chest with the point of his dagger, and sets his foot back to brace himself as he pushes hard, and the whole blade of the dagger slides into your chest. It is intensely painful, a bursting nova of pain. The dagger goes right through you and the point sticks in the plaster of the wall behind you.

  ‘Thus perish all traitors!’ your friend shouts, right in your face, and bits of his spittle land on your mouth and your nose and go into your eye, and despite the intensity of the pain the main thing of which you are conscious is … surprise. Traitor? You? Traitor?

  In the Bardo subject is object.

  ‘I’m one point closer to appleness,’ you tell Abby. ‘I know now what it’s like to be sliced with a knife.’

  ‘You approach applitude,’ says Abby.

  ‘Appleosity,’ you agree.

  ‘Snip snap,’ says Abby, with a strange smile.

  You herd cows. You follow the plough. You are a weaver. You are a fisherman and you drown when a storm capsizes your boat. You fall sick. You are stretched on a rack. You learn to read, which means, since you are the only person in your village who can read, you become a de facto priest. You plough. You carry seaweed from the coast up to a walled field to fertilise it. You build a dam. You clean the house, over and over, over and over. You are the most successful farmer in your district and people come to beg you for charity when their crops fail, and then one year the rainy season does not come, and then it does not come for a second year and you and the rest of them all starve to death together. You give birth but the child will not come, and you keep pushing and pushing and pushing until you die of exhaustion. You climb a tree to pick fruit, and fall from the tree, and break your leg, and your leg grows three times as fat overnight, and becomes ghastly squishy, and goes black and you die in agony. You farm. You farm. You farm. You are burnt to death when your barn catches fire – foolishly you rush inside to try and save your horse, and both you and the horse die in agony. You are cut to death by a man with an axe during a time of war. You are raped by eleven men, and it kills you. You die of cholera. You die of dysentery. You die of sepsis. You give birth and it feels like you are being torn in two and then you are dead. You accidentally kill a man and have to abscond from your village, and you live in the woods for half a year, growing wilder, driven to more desperate crimes by hunger, until winter comes and you freeze to death.

  In the Bardo subject is object.

  ‘I get the impression,’ you tell Abby, ‘that things are speeding up.’

  ‘It’s wider, in terms of human population,’ Abby agrees. ‘But shorter in an absolute sense. The timeline, I mean.’

  You are evicted from your farm because the nobleman wants the land for his sheep. You trek to the coast, and your wife and two of your children die on the journey, and then you make a new life as a fisherman with help from your cousin. You marry again. Prayer and work help you overcome your grief. You get a tumour in your testicle and it grows to the size of a football. A surgeon comes from the town to cut it out and you die of postoperative sepsis.

  The Bardo’s subject is its object.

  ‘I get the feeling I’m getting closer to something.’

  You farm. You farm. You dedicate your life to God. You are a miner. You are a dock worker. You are a railwayman. You farm. Your farm is mortgaged and lost and you move to the city where you get work in a factory, and then you develop a cough and the cough won’t go away, and your lungs fill with gunk and you die. You go to school and the schoolmaster beats you, and then, when you are limping home with blood dripping down your trouser-leg into your shoe, a street dog bites you, excited by the smell, and the wound goes bad, and you die. You work in a factory. You work in an office. You are pressed into the army and die when your troop carrier sinks on its way to the land where the fighting is. You work in an office. You die of influenza. You work for a bank. You work for the council. You are a teacher. You are a mechanic. You are a nurse. You are an agricultural labourer. You are a jeweller. You work in an office. You die of old age. You take an overdose of recreational drugs. You are crushed to death when the crowd at Mecca becomes overexcited. You die of an asthma attack at the age of seventeen. You drown in your bath when your carer leaves you alone for five minutes to take a call from her boyfriend. You crash
your car. You die when your life support malfunctions and the temperature in your pod plunges to equalise with the temperature of deep space beyond the hull. You remotely operate an areoforming robot, and die when the feedback is maladjusted by a viral e-infection and crashes your heart. You work for an AI in AI–human liaison and die of old age, rich and self-satisfied. You live on Mars. You spend all your life in an artificial habitat in orbit around Jupiter. You mine ice. You think up clever advertising strategies to sell blackseed food products.

  In the Bardo: sub/ob/ject.

  ‘I feel I’ve shot past something. Is this the future now?’

  ‘You keep talking like time has any meaning in this what-for-want-of-a-better-word-I-have-to-call place,’ laughs Abby. ‘Quaint!’

  You live as a prince of the solar system in an augmented body and are assassinated by one of your rivals. Your whole life is lived inside a generation starship. You are one of a fan-religion living in a series of serried shells around Bluestar 44. You are a soldier, bringing one thing only – your capacity for aggression – to an autoarmy that lacks that quality. You live on a purple-red world under a diamond-coloured sun. You live in a foam-matrix on a deep space trajectory. You are part of a cult that uses enhanced sexual pleasure to crystallise the transcendental. You extend your life with a combination of artificial supports and a time-dilation algoractivator. You upload your consciousness into a series of insectorgs and swarm for the sheer joy of swarming. The stars are running out of fuel and one by one they flare and sputter and go dark. You—

  —are in the Bardo.

  You’re in the Bardo again.

  ‘Was that it?’ you ask.

  There were an inestimable number of people in the Bardo before (as if before has any meaning in this place!) but now it seems empty (as if now has any meaning in this place!) – is it empty? You are the subject of this story, you suppose, after all. It’s a common enough human supposition.

  ‘Abby?’ you say. ‘Abby, are you there?’

  A breath is drawn, as if Abby is about to reply to you, and that miniature crescendo of white noise breaks off sharply and—