A Life of Gogol

by Caroline Corfield

I can feel myself coming together. It's a little like an itch and a lot like oxidation. My atoms have been spread over this hillside. Bonded into the plant life; the grasses and mosses, anything that stays in close contact. But now my carbon and hydrogen are disengaging. These plants wither in patches. Dying as my nitrogen and phosphorus, oxygen and calcium and all the trace elements return to the old shape. The shape I chose when I first came to this planet. My name on this world is Gogol. 

I achieved consciousness as the atomic cocktail  reached a five metre diameter. Some of the body's molecules are already constructed. 

I don't need a physical form to be aware, but it's less energy if there's something to hang it on. My other selves will arrive as the circle of our material contracts and builds into the body I've used to live on this planet. 

The last consciousness will be Henry. He ended here on this windswept moor with a bullet through his brain. A person with great estate and influence his last will and testament foretold his death and forbade a search or a funeral thus securing a safe place for us to replenish. His naked body lay subsuming and breaking down becoming tough bog grasses and sweet moss. Much like the man he was. 

We remained untouched and undisturbed. We have only once been disturbed. Our left hand was taken by a scavenger. It's awkward but not insurmountable. 

I love the peace before the others arrive. Contemplating the thousands of years I've had on this planet and the hundreds on this hillside. I bought some acreage as soon as money was stable. Wrapped it in the words the humans here love so much and I dared to feel safe. They trust the words written down. It's an odd concept. To begin with I was unsure. I contemplated leaving. But over the centuries nothing untoward happened so we stayed. 

Here's Aethelard, he makes me laugh. Four metres in. We can sense the shape moving from a circle to the outline of a human. The oddest bipedal life-form I've ever come across. And there's been a few. I always chose the animal at the top of the food chain. Can't risk being eaten and having my atoms dispersed too far apart.

I like this hillside. We can have two or three hundred years between re-formations. Plenty of time to renew. The remoteness keeps us safe and undisturbed. 

Except that time with the hand, of course. Henry insisted it was a funny story. A wolf had come, snatched the rotting hand when we were the dead Monty. A hunter living miles away had shot the wolf for its pelt and thrown the body to his dogs. A pack of dogs, defecating wherever they wanted. We were never going to get the atoms back. 

When the atoms get too far apart they lose the memory of us. Revert to a chemical ordinariness. I suspect Henry enjoyed being one-handed. Made him a character.

And here is Montgomery. Always apologetic about the hand. I can feel the dirt under my right hand. Monty still thinks he's got a left and is always grasping the dirt as soon as he can. 

Finally Henry appears. 

We all recognise the shudder of completion as the body snaps to form. We elbow up in the dark space with forearms and meet resistance. This is not unusual. Life goes on while we recuperated as plant life. We turn and use our back to break the ground. There's the crack of something too solid. The panic from Henry with his memories full of buried-alive Victorian stories infects us all. We expend more energy than perhaps is needed and break what turns out to be a concrete slab over us. 

How is there concrete here? Where our words should be protecting us from humanity. What has happened here?

There is running. Boots on concrete. 

Boots indoors is not a good sign, Henry says.

Their speed is worrying, says Aethelard. 

Monty agrees. 

I don't know. When I arrived the isle had been wiped through by disease. The moors were unpopulated. I lived unseen, though not unknown through several incarnations now lost to time. The people in the valleys called me Bogle and the hill Gogol. I preferred the hill name. I hardly remember those lives. Short and hard there was no point in assimilating them. Aethelard was the first I kept because I recognised a fellow intelligence. That's how it goes on a new planet - always takes time to get into the right shape. 

Each fresh-built body has the freedom to live how they see fit. I observe. I sleep. Sometimes I nudge them to make safe decisions. I have to protect my atoms after all. Not until the body begins to fail and we need to refresh, do I come back and make sure I will survive. 

'Halt. Arms in the air,' the voice makes us shake in fear. 

I told you, they all say. 

We should be calm, I say. This is a misunderstanding. We own the land. Remember?

Henry raises our arms. He's the shortest distance from this future, which makes being in charge of the body easier and culturally more appropriate. Usually.

'Good God man, you're naked. Soldier, cover that man up. A towel or something,' the braid-uniformed man has strode forward through the huddled men with guns. His shouting sets our hairs standing all over. 

I let Henry do the talking till the rest of us can get our bearings in the new speech patterns. 

'I say, chaps. Do' mind awfully, telling me what's going on? This land...'

Why have you stopped? I ask.

Look at his face, says Henry.

I study the features; strong jaw, indicative of high testosterone and a chewy, poor diet. I look at the other soldiers, see the effects of malnourishment in their frames. Trouble has visited our hillside in our dormancy.

'You are going to tell me,' says Jaw-braid, 'exactly how you got inside our facility. And who you work for. I won't be answering questions.'

Hit him and make a run for it. Aethelard is suggesting violence as usual.

There's been some sort of bally revolution, exclaims Henry.

Quiet, I say. Let's think this through. We can over-power him, but it's more important we're safe. If our hillside is gone, then we need to find a new place.

Muttered acknowledgments. Better than arguments. I'm happier. We work well together.

We take the scrap of cloth from the scraggy soldier. He looks frightened too. Fear hunts within packs. A lone being can rationalise their emotions away, but evolutionary safety encourages groups to strengthen shared feelings even under scrutiny. 

The material is scratchy but we're hardly in our body yet. No new identity has coalesced either. We stand a chance of getting out of the situation before that particular complication arises. We imprint from our environment. I don't want shouty Jaw-braid to be one of us.

*

The room is cold and small, smelling of damp plaster and brick. We can hear a water drip somewhere above us. The revolution, if that is what's happened, has not gone well. 

'Sit,' orders Jaw-braid. 'I'm General Danekin of the People's Republic of Westeropa. You've infiltrated our Goggel Hill missile base. How?'

I can't control my smile when I hear the name of the hill. All these centuries and they still remember me. 

Don't smile, orders Henry, he'll think you're being insubordinate.

I quickly frown instead. 

'Eh ... Ah ... It's a long story,' begins Henry, 'I don't suppose you have water? I'm parched.'

The General's eyes narrow. There's no fear in his face only stony determination. I sense it's his Revolution that's losing.

'I can help you win,' I offer. My voice sounds far away, unused. It's very different to Henry's aristocratic, early twentieth century tones.

'We are winning,' says the General, as if he's said it by rote for so long he can't admit otherwise.

'Patently, you aren't. Let me show you who I really am, and how I can help you. If you help me.'

There's a flash of desperation then the General nods to the soldier at the door, who exits. 

'Go on,' says the General, tilting back onto the hind legs of his chair.

'I'm called Gogol. I landed here as the Romans were leaving. More than two thousand years ago. I wonder, for accuracy, can you tell me what this year is?'

The General is still relaxed, he won't believe me yet. I know this. It's not my first horse taming in a wooden ring. 

'In the old calendar this would be twenty one fifty three. It's the fifteenth year of the Glorious Revolution, when we overthrew the corporations, abolished private property and nationalised the people.'

The door opened and the soldier returned with a tin water jug. I can smell the chemicals from here. It won't be a pleasant drink and has only a probability of being safe.

'And,' I continue, 'you are losing against them, General Danekin. Malnutrition eats at your soldiers. Your diet and your water is contaminated. I can change that.'

No, says Monty, you can't offer that. We promised.

I promised, I retorted. And it was a long time ago. I can do what I like.

What's this, asks Aethelard, who's never really bothered with the reality of our existence and is the most human of us.

Gogol is going to give him some of us, explained Henry, in the water I suspect. It would be the fastest way to infect them.

Infect? Aethelard is worried now. 

Stop. I know what I'm doing. It won't last more than a few generations. We'll be gone from humanity before we renew. Perfectly safe.

'Let me demonstrate,' I say, and spot the anxiety on the General's face, 'on your soldier.'

The General calls the boy over, because I can see now, that's what he is. Even Aethelard thinks him too young for battle.

I pinch my thumb strongly and start the blood. It's red of course because I'm not stupid. You don't leave the little details incorrect. The drops plink into the water. The chemical smell changes, dissipates. A sweetness replaces it.

'Drink it,' says the General pouring some into the tin mug.

The soldier-boy's hand comes to the mug so shaky I'm worried he'll spill it.

'Carefully,' I say. 'Don't spill a drop. Unless you want super-insects as another enemy.'

His hand steadies. He sips gingerly, then gulps the whole mugful down.

We watch the transformation. He grows, bulks out, muscles appear. A light comes on in his eyes.

'Sir, ' he says, clear and confident. 'That is a miracle. That is...'

'Very good son,' says the General. 'You can go back to your position.' and he nods at me, while pouring a fresh mugful.

*

It's not our hillside. It's further north, more west. The ground is too wet. We run the risk of being washed away. Karl is old. It's long past the time for us to go dormant, and finally the General has relented. I want to leave the planet. Their words don't protect us. It will be a long time before we're not in the population despite my assurances to the others. Karl wants to sleep. The rest are keen to do this quickly.

We will go, when we next wake, I promise. And I drive Karl to find somewhere inaccessible and safe to lie down. Finally, clambering in through a remote cave opening, we find untainted mushrooms. Good enough we agree. 

Karl folds his clothes on the moist cave floor to lie naked between the stalagmites. He sighs, reminding me of the young soldier who imprinted on our body so long ago. Nervous all his life, unable to come to terms with the changes wrought in him. Karl felt all that. 

I never thought I'd break a promise. And I never though it would result in such devastation. The whole world in revolution. My essence in most of humanity and much of the biosphere. I thought it would be a thousand or so elite soldiers. The General lied. Henry tried to warn me, but I was stubborn. I should not be in charge. It's perverse to think that I... that We, are now too human for this world. I will leave and become stardust for a while, burn the terrible things from my consciousnesses. I will lose them, Aethelard, Monty, Henry and poor Karl, but perhaps it's for the best, humanity is already extinct.