Finishing Touch

The Finishing Touch

THE Deputy Head for the Preservation of Human Intellect stepped up to
the Round Tower. She brushed the palm of her hand lovingly along its
smooth ceramic skin. Glazed infinity. From the outside the squat
cylinder was unremarkable except in contrast with its surroundings
located as it was in the depths of the Brazilian rainforest.
-My life's ambition, she thought, so near completion...
Her husband stood by childishly fidgeting with boredom.
"Esther..." he ventured, what are you to do now? Now the Project is at
an end."
Esther paused, carefully selecting a reply as if testing the ripeness
of tomatoes on a supermarket shelf, inspecting each one for
blemishes.
"Begin life again".
Her husband hadn't the least idea what she was on about so he just
nodded enigmatically, jutting out his bottom lip just so, a stock
response, perfected through years of repetition.
One thousand and twenty four or more succinctly 2 to the power of 10
such Towers had been constructed by the Project: their number a
numerical tribute to the digital machines they housed and their
biological creators. Each contained within its invulnerable shell the
sum store of human knowledge and achievement, continually updated via a
secure self-healing network. If humanity were obliterated tomorrow
these stumpy archives would survive sucking energy straight from the
sun overhead oblivious to the fact.
Esther played her fingers over a shielded panel set into the delicious
curve of the Tower. A segment of the wall silently transformed itself
into an entrance.
Her husband took a hesitant step backwards.
"Hmm, I thought the Towers were physically non-operational, hmm, not
for another one thousand and twenty four years you said".
"Not this one", she replied.
"Not just yet".
She stepped inside, her eyes slowly adjusting to the unnatural
ambience of the chemical lighting. Her husband reluctantly followed her
in. He had never...
In all his life he had never imagined a place soulless as where he was
now standing. It was a testimony and testament to the lady at his side.
His wife. The irresistible force behind the Project.
Esther circled her husband. She thumbed a surface mounted depression
by the entrance and watched as a toughened sheet of transparent plastic
partitioned her husband from the world without. A viscous preserving
emulsion flooded the chamber. Esther watched as her husband flailed
about helplessly.
"Darling. Don't resist".
"Yours is a singular fate".
"For once in your life you're going to be of use to somebody".