EGOYAN ZHENG
LIGHTS IN THE MIST
translated by Xiao Yue Shan
The way I see it, my meeting with Eve Chalamet was one of the most unique experiences of my life. I’m convinced that people will have their doubts—yes, it’s a strange matter, because I have completely confirmed that, despite being the only person to have emerged alive from this mass murder, she presents with absolutely no symptoms of PTSD. Of course, such “survivors” are not uncommon, nor is it my first time interviewing one. In my experience, when the presentation of an individual’s trauma is at its most extreme, it is impossible for me to conduct an interview or even meet with the survivor face-to-face, as their physical and mental state would likely be on the brink of total collapse—unable to bear the burden—and discussing the inciting incident would not be an option. But despite this, and despite the incident being arguably relegated to history, the calm demeanour that Eve Chalamet presented throughout the course of our many meetings struck me as atypical. I’m uncertain as to whether or not this had something to do with her religious beliefs. To put it precisely, I don’t know if this has something to do with her being at the core of a cult (if I were to brazenly speculate, due to her ideological background and the “evil” nature of a cult, is it possible that trauma would not necessarily strike her as traumatic?). Yes, a cult. A so-called “cult.” Eve Chalamet is a singular case, because she is the only daughter of the cult leader Aaron Chalamet. It is not so far-fetched that she would have successfully carried on the “Earthly Awareness” sect her father founded—had that incomparably brutal “Last Judgment Massacre” not occurred.
It all began with her biological father. According to the data, in March of 1986 on the Western calendar, the founder of Earthly Awareness was born in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho of the United States. He was the eldest son of a blue-collar family; his father (Eve Chalamet’s grandfather) worked predominantly in a small sawmill, and his mother did domestic work while taking on the odd clerical job. From what we know, after graduating from a local high school in 2004, Aaron Chalamet worked as a cashier in the supermarket Walmart, a salesman for the 3C Channel, an insurance salesman, and a marketing manager for a new media network. In 2011, Aaron, who was originally a devout evangelical Protestant, moved alone to a small town called Fargo in North Dakota, and came under the employ of a local evangelical church. There, he was responsible for editing the church’s publications, managing the church’s Facebook group, and renewing the church’s website, amongst other tasks. In 2013, he married his wife, Carey James, who gave birth to their daughter, Eve Chalamet, and they remained in Fargo as a family. According to the findings, apart from Eve, the Chalamet couple did not have any other children. In 2023, after ten years of working at the church, Aaron Chalamet suddenly left his post, giving no reason for his departure. Nine years later, in May of 2032 on the Western calendar, Aaron Chalamet established a mysterious group called Earthly Awareness from his home in the suburbs of Fargo, and, as the head, formally proceeded in establishing and expanding the sect.
Such are the events that preceded the founding of Earthly Awareness. But, in actuality, 2032 is surprisingly not the year the sect was initiated. Investigations show that as far as ten years prior—between 2020 and 2030—Aaron had already, at strategic intervals, launched several small religious groups in the town of Fargo, and had already begun to display unusual organisational strategies. At that time, the name Earthly Awareness was not yet known to the public, and Aaron’s theories did not display any particularly strange inclinations—if the information is to be believed.
“Ah, yes, I thought he really was quite a charismatic preacher.” As one of Fargo’s residents, Glory S., who often attended Aaron’s talks during this “preliminary” period, described to me in an interview: “He was very charming, very likable. But. . . that’s mostly it? Looking back, nothing he said in his sermons was really new. None of it was that strange. Yes, objectively speaking, it wasn’t so different from what most true believers testified to.” As Glory S. indicated, the Aaron she remembers is a benevolent leader, completely normal, with no outstanding qualities. In his sermons, there was nothing beyond customary words of wisdom and common sense. “Yes, I mean, you must know. . . Are you a Christian? Hm, yes, there are many preachers who exaggerate their experiences, saying that they’ve come from God, saying that they’re miracles, it’s ‘the Power of the Lord,’ and so on. . .” During the interview, Glory maintained a cheerful expression, and her eyes shone. “It’s all very common, everyone’s used to it. Sometimes the preacher goes too far, and everyone’s got to hold back laughing. . . I always felt like there was some kind of agreement, a secret pact between us. Everyone knows that God is great, that people just go on and on. Everyone knows, but we don’t call anyone out, and we don’t get offended. It’s just funny. It’s all good fun. . . You know, it’s really kind of entertaining, a preacher talk show. . .” She smiles, as if drifting back into fond memories: “Nothing strange. But from what I saw, Aaron didn’t talk like that. He barely even mentioned miracles. I remember his sermons focused more on his own spiritual experiences, or the experiences of other believers. He always looked at you with these big, grey eyes. . . You know, he was good-looking. And tall. My mother always said that he should’ve been a movie star. . . Yes, he would encourage you to follow your own path towards accepting God. Optimistic. Positive. He was able to make you feel like, no matter how you looked at God, whatever feelings or experiences you had, no matter how strange, or rare, even if it didn’t fit exactly to what the Bible said, it was all allowed. We. . . Um, I mean me and some other friends from the church, sometimes we teased each other, saying that we were like some Chicken Soup for the Soul reading club. . . He really was a gentle, charitable man. How it got this way—” As the subject of the Earth Awareness cult and the Last Judgment Massacre came up, all of which would go on to be widely broadcasted, Glory S. was silent for some time, tears welling in her eyes. “I. . . All these things that came later. . . This cult stuff. . . I don’t know. I still don’t know. . .”
Truthfully, Glory S. was not alone in her point of view. This was the average perception of Aaron Chalamet during the pre-Earthly Awareness period. It was not limited to my personal interview of Glory S.; according to the investigations of other media outlets or independent journalists, many audience members of Aaron Chalamet’s sermons expressed similar opinions in their interviews. In other words, it would not be an overstatement to call him a “healing” and “warmly masculine” religious leader. Perhaps that is the reason why, despite gaining a name for himself in the small town of Fargo, Aaron Chalamet’s preaching did not arouse any suspicion during this period, nor any kind of significant attention at all.
Of course, this is the conundrum at the heart of the Earthly Awareness case. As if masked by a dense fog, the truth stays silent, concealed, and the human psyche’s most definitive mysteries disappear into a vast, empty space as wide as the world itself. What we must persist in finding out is: how did a small religious group—which initially focused only on the “passionate preaching of Protestant witness and experience,” which was never implicated in matters of supernaturalism or extremism, which on record has had no previous involvement in criminal activity—how did it turn so suddenly into a cult?
From what we know, when the sect bearing the name of Earthly Awareness was officially established in the year 2032, Aaron Chalamet purchased a forest property that autumn, approximately twenty-seven kilometres outside of Fargo. He then constructed a farm on the land, moved in with twelve of his most devoted followers and their families, and began conducting a communal lifestyle under a practice of piety. This undoubtedly incited some misgivings: where did the need for this so-called communal lifestyle come from? What kind of doctrine is it in accordance with? What are they really “practicing” out there? Was it at this moment in time that Aaron’s core beliefs began to shift, and the Earthly Awareness sect was, as a result, set astray in its beliefs?
And with that annihilating, hellfire Last Judgment Massacre, what is the connection?
Unsurprisingly, it is very difficult for outsiders to find out the truth about life inside a commune. All the efforts to inspect or collect evidence after the incident (whether on the part of police, media, or independent investigators) were equally met with tremendous obstructions. During the seven-year term of Earthly Awareness and its commune, every single one of its believers severed contact with the outside world. And after the Last Judgment Massacre on December 17, 2039—with the exception of the lone survivor, Eve Chalamet—the leader, Aaron Chalamet, along with a total of 132 believers, were all dead. In other words, the trail was almost entirely extinguished. Truthfully, “cutting off outside contact” is recognised as a common tactic of cults; only in this way can believers become gradually isolated, disconnected from external assistance or influences, and thus it is guaranteed that they will completely obey the doctrines of their religious order. But strangely, based on what we know, out of the 132 dead in the Massacre, over fifty percent consists of members from about twenty families. In other words, in the communal life of Earthly Awareness, most were lovers, married couples, nuclear families, or extended relatives, taking part together. Certain reports noted this fact as early as the incident’s outbreak; in July 2040, in an interview broadcasted on the internet radio program “Pacific Chronicles” of the channel “Voice of America,” T. G. Smith, a Religious Studies professor at Princeton University, analysed the aspect as follows: “This differs from the average cult. . . Yes, cults can certainly attract couples, lovers, or close relatives concurrently; this is indeed the ambition of all religious groups. But, in reality, such instances are rare, because many of those sublimated into cults find themselves there after being alienated from their loved ones.” In those electromagnetic records of a bygone era, Professor Smith’s voice cut in and out, as if suffering the interference of that antiquated electric field.
“. . . always like this . . . These kinds of people can no longer benefit from the intimacy or sense of belonging one receives from close friends or family members, and as such it’s easy for them to turn towards a cult in search of approval, in search of warmth. And if their personal relationships are not in a healthy state, it is naturally difficult for them to influence their loved ones—let alone convince them to join a cult together.”
“. . . it stands to reason. So, as the statistics inform us, according to past incidents, the proportion of closely bound individuals joining a cult together has always been on the low side. . .” Professor T. G. Smith emphasises: “Yes, but Earthly Awareness has somehow proved to be an exception. This is a very unique aspect. . .”
It is indeed unique—because after the Last Judgment Massacre, the question of the event’s origins spurred a flurry of theories, exacerbated by the obscurity of it all. Similar to the supposed collective practice of “communality,” how the scale of its initial twelve followers grew into the triple-digit crowd of the Last Judgment Massacre in seven years—this development was also impossible to unravel. On December 17, 2039 of the Western calendar, the North Dakota State Police of the United States received a report stating that on the rural property of the Earthly Awareness group, located on the outskirts of Fargo, 103 adult bodies were discovered, including that of leader Aaron Chalamet and his wife, Carey Chalamet. According to the weapons and tools left on the scene, ballistics were able to determine that all the deaths were the result of suicide or assisted suicide. In addition to this horror, the police had also discovered a small incinerator in the birch forest behind the farm, with a considerable number of pre-pubescent remains stacked inside. It was suspected that the incinerator had been constructed from parts ordered to the property, as the incomplete incineration indicated a product of subpar quality . Upon completion of forensic analysis, it was determined that the remains belonged to the children of the sect, twenty-nine in total: the youngest was two years old, and the oldest was twelve. All were cremated, with no survivors. At that point, the total number of the dead totalled 132. When the police searched the premises, they found that the relevant documents, disks, and digital footprints on each computer, cell phone, and piece of recording equipment had all been burned and destroyed. Aside from a few food items and some objects of daily use, the only thing left in the farmhouse was a suicide note, written by leader Aaron Chalamet.
Reason would infer that the contents of the suicide note contain important information. Instead, however, it threw the whole matter into even more secrecy. The note was found directly on the desk in the leader’s study, deliberately placed there in the open, and the text itself was brief, asserting that the sect’s actions were entirely voluntary. “We have nothing to fear in facing The Day of Judgment,” Aaron Chalamet had written. “Death is an unavoidable step in the abandonment of this meaningless shell and unreliable spirit, in order to seek rest in the bosom of our Lord, to return to our true colours.” He then appointed his only daughter, the sect’s website engineer, Eve Chalamet, as the inheritor of the sect’s assets and his successor as leader.
Without hesitation, the police immediately began tracking down the whereabouts of Eve Chalamet, upon which she soon turned herself in. As it was, she had been in Seattle alone to visit friends at the time of the event, and her alibi was solid. She also insisted that she had no prior knowledge of this mass suicide. However, there was no way of verifying that claim. Eve Chalamet, twenty-six years old at the time, was immediately named a prime suspect of first-degree murder—not for the deaths of the 103 adult followers, but of the twenty-nine children who had perished in that brutal fire; of those twenty-nine underaged individuals, a considerable number were too young to have taken their own lives. The police highly suspected that the sole heir of the sect, Eve Chalamet, was the instigator, or had acted as co-conspirator with her father and leader, Aaron, in planning this large-scale suicide and massacre.
No one could’ve predicted that Eve Chalamet’s formal interrogation would come to such an end. As common sense would have it, anything having to do with a cult should be rife with peculiarities: perhaps the leader’s abnormal history or their extremist way of thinking; perhaps the sect’s overly stringent methodologies or culture; perhaps the excessively invasive or coercive methods of transmitting its teachings; perhaps the cryptic source of its funding, be it from drug trafficking, smuggling, forceful collections, psychological manipulation, or similar criminal acts—such aberrations always give off signs, enough to incite suspicion. In other words, the “evil” nature of cults has a logic behind it, and is not entirely baseless.
All common sense. But the unexpected element was that none of the above seemed consistent with the conduct of the Earthly Awareness sect. As stated, despite having culminated in the incomparable horrors of the Last Judgment Massacre, investigations into the sect found zero traces of anything that could be deemed unseemly. Even the inquest into Eve Chalamet, of which investigators initially had high hopes, surprisingly turned up nothing. Every single person she had ever been in contact with was in near unanimous agreement that, even though she did fall into somewhat of a depression (after all, she had lost her father and the interpersonal network she formed with the sect’s followers; as both the leader’s daughter and someone who was highly involved in the operations, her ability to form relationships outside of the sect was very weak), Eve Chalamet continued to live as she always had, and appraisals of her mental state found no aberrations. However, during interrogations and the judicial process, Eve, despite maintaining a good-natured attitude, was duly uncooperative. Most of the time, she remained silent, refusing to disclose any details regarding the sect, and was especially recalcitrant when asked about its doctrines (namely, the possible reasons behind the Last Judgment Massacre). When confronted with questions such as: “What is the ‘Judgment Day’ that the suicide note references?”; “Is mass suicide in accordance with your religious beliefs?”; “What does it mean to ‘return to one’s true colours?’”; “Why is the soul described as unreliable? Are all souls unreliable? The soul of the leader, the souls of the followers—is it all unreliable?”; Eve Chalamet did not say a word. The interrogations lasted months, and the entire world was swept up in heated discussion. Online forums and tabloids flooded with all kinds of unverifiable rumours, countless op-eds and long-winded programs appeared, but very little was gained in the way of actual progress. A total of thirteen months later, in February 2041, the prosecution finally gave up, admitted defeat, and requested that the courts revoke Eve Chalamet’s detention order. That was how Eve Chalamet reclaimed her freedom.
Public opinion was uproarious. We must admit, if past cults are to be considered a kind of trial version or preliminary production, it would indicate that the Earthly Awareness which Aaron Chalamet created, and which Eve Chalamet inherited, was some kind of Cult 2.0. From what we know, the authorities had scrutinised the entire archive of personal exchanges between Aaron Chalamet and his daughter, only to find that the two were extremely vigilant. Since 2032, with the beginning of Earthly Awareness’ communal lifestyle, the two had seldom mentioned the sect’s core doctrines in external communications. The police had no way of pursuing the investigation into any of the sect’s actual infrastructure or the details and records of its operations, and were also unable to gain any insight into the contents of its teachings or where its trajectory began to veer. In other words, the sect’s entity and inner workings were shut airtight. Now that the Last Judgment Massacre has occurred, and dead men tell no tales, it is even more difficult to peer into those winding depths. The only possible breach was that Eve Chalamet was rumoured to have had a boyfriend, whose name is only known by the abbreviation of D.W.; they had dated for about a year while she was attending university. Apart from that, she had no close friends, and her social life was a void. But, throughout the entire year-long investigation, the police were unable to determine D.W.’s true identity. And since gaining freedom after four hundred days of detention, Eve Chalamet herself has not engaged in any religious activities. Keeping herself under wraps, she left the small town of Fargo incognito, and has thereafter disappeared into the masses, no one knowing where she’s ended up.
Of course, the meeting with Eve Chalamet was one of peak futility in my career as an interviewer. As one would have it, my interactions with her were limited to the brief period from late 2039 to February of 2041, after she had already been detained for nearly a year. It is my greatest regret that I did not fight for more time with her. As I have mentioned, she refused to reveal any details from beginning to end. It was precisely the same as her approach with the police. Her strategy was simple but effective: she would not deny any findings that had already been confirmed, but would not let a single word slip regarding matters of which we were still in the dark. For example, she admitted the existence of her university boyfriend, D.W., but completely resisted giving any information on his identity (as to how she, even while detained, was able to vaguely detect what progress the police had made, no one knew. Street talk and tabloids went wild on this point, and certain people even swore that Eve Chalamet had some magic power, or supernatural ability to read minds.). The interview itself was undoubtedly a failure, but I consider it my good fortune that I am an independent reporter; compared to the police or the FBI, I have considerably more time, and can also justify pursuing matters that have no sustaining connection to crimes such as murders, abductions, or assisted suicides. Nor am I bound by the statute of limitations. Personally, my concern has always been what we call “human nature”—absolute concepts like conscience, sacredness, evil, violence, or madness.
It goes without saying that I cannot recount here how I was able to track down D.W.; that involved a great many secrets, unthinkable schemes, anonymous sources, confidences, and endless troubles. In short, it was also shocking to me that sixteen years after the Last Judgment Massacre transpired, in April of 2055, somewhere in Canada, I was finally able to meet Eve Chalamet’s university boyfriend, D.W. Before our encounter, I think we each made adequate preparations—whether that be material research, asking around about one another’s conduct, establishing some tacit understanding of mutual confidence, or putting up any other kind of mental safeguard—before letting all of those guards down. Yes, time is both sweet and cruel. That is perhaps what the chasm of sixteen years gave to us—an ambiguous, enigmatic gift. The interview can be said to have gone smoothly; in my opinion, what D.W. divulged has nearly completely absolved the mystery surrounding the Last Judgment Massacre.
“I think the crux of it was really that ‘unreliable soul.’” In that small-town coffee shop, there were few customers during the slow hours, and the service staff seemed remarkably bored. The customary noises of labour had nearly dissipated to nothing, and a strange silence seized the clear, cool space. “At the time, I had also read Aaron Chalamet’s suicide note in the news. . .” Compared to the photographs I checked prior, D.W. had obviously gained weight. Still, in the lines of his face, one could vaguely see the handsome boy he had been. According to my personal investigations, D.W. was born into a middle-class family; both his parents were university professors, and thus enjoyed a relatively high social and economic status. I think this at least partly explains the sophistication I felt emanating from D.W.—yes, “sophistication.” He might have simply been one of those especially fortunate children, born under favourable conditions, blessed with natural endowments, growing up in an environment full of love and care, with fate granting him exceptional opportunities for education both at school and at home. Although it had been over twenty years since he was in university, I could vividly sense, through his description of this past life, the precocity and earnest nature he possessed during that time—even at such a young age. Now, twenty years later, he seemed unwilling to discuss his personal life, but I felt that he had no reservations in talking about the occasional trysts he had with Eve Chalamet during his student years. As D.W. expressed, the way he sees it is that, rather than Eve’s father, Aaron, it is likely Eve herself who was the key to the changes in Earthly Awareness and its core doctrine.
“Yes, I saw the suicide note that Aaron Chalamet left behind. And I immediately thought that the crux must not be on Aaron,” D.W. explained to me. “Aaron was just a normal guy. He didn’t have those kinds of abilities.”
“What abilities?”
“The ability to create ideologies.”
“Really. . .?” I muttered. “Have you met Aaron in person?”
“I have. But it was pure coincidence, not on purpose. Eve and I hadn’t reached that stage. Once, when I went to go pick her up, Aaron happened to be there. He had a great energy, very warm, very positive. . . Pretty much the way you described.”
“How do you know that Aaron had nothing to do with the real doctrines of Earthly Awareness?”
“Maybe I was a bit careless to say that. . .” D.W. replied: “But that’s my guess. Or I should say, that’s what I can guess based on what Eve talked about.”
“Did Eve bring these things up? The doctrines?”
D.W. shook his head. “We didn’t really talk that much.”
“Then how do you know?” I pressed on: “What did she say?”
“The core of it is the ‘unreliable soul.’ Eve didn’t believe in the souls of humanity. She didn’t believe that human souls belonged to human beings.” As D.W. recalled, when they first met, he was immediately attracted to Eve Chalamet’s mysterious ways. “Yes. She was beautiful, confident, independent, mysterious, different from other girls. . . Of course, her mystery might have come from the fact that she had always avoided getting close to people. She always lived alone, had no friends, no confidants. It was very strange for a young, female student.”
“I knew she had been responsible for managing and updating the sect’s website for a long time. During our relationship, she didn’t disclose much about her religion or her work, but what she did tell me was enough to somewhat understand her way of thinking.” D.W. explained that Eve Chalamet had been fascinated by concepts of biology and cultural anthropology since she was a child; completely opposed to the Christian belief in a seven-day creation, she was instead a faithful devotee to Darwin’s theory of evolution.
A cult member who was a deep believer in the theory of evolution? It was difficult to imagine. But according to D.W.’s explanations, it was actually quite rational. He stated that Eve believed in the ideas she deduced from On the Origin of Species: that chimpanzees, Homo erectus, Neanderthals, and other kinds of humanoids are all closely related as varieties of primates. As such, our species—the so-called Homo sapiens, should not actually possess the complex mental faculties we have. “I remember she had expounded on some of the evidence for me, but I’ve forgotten most of it.” D.W. paused for a long time, looking out the window. “But, basically, she believed that the body harbours one’s biological desires, while the central nervous system governs one’s rationale, logic, civility, and morality. ‘I think therefore I am.’ So, it is difficult to avoid violent conflicts between the body and the central nervous system; the history of mankind is simply a history of confrontation between the central nervous system and biological desire. . .”
“And?” Yes, it’s not totally senseless, but what does this have to do with the doctrine of Earthly Awareness? What is she hinting at?
“It’s like this: to put it simply, the way she saw it was that the ‘intelligence’ or ‘civility’ represented by the central nervous system was fundamentally incompatible with animal instinct. This kind of contradiction should not occur inside a single living body.” D.W. fixed his eyes on me. “Eve believed that the extant human soul, the human central nervous system, the brain, it was all just some kind of parasitic organism, being harboured inside the body.” D.W. paused. “Could say ‘parasitic,’ could also say ‘symbiotic,’ either would be right. Basically, in the process of human evolution, this ‘central nervous system’ took on the form of DNA code to embed itself parasitically into the human chromosome, and the process of evolution or natural selection was too delayed to phase out this ‘central nervous system DNA,’ which is fundamentally incompatible with the human body. In other words, humanity has been completely exploited by this DNA code of unidentified origin, and such is what created the brain and the spine in the human body. But the brain originally does not belong to humankind. It is of another species. . .”
“So she doesn’t believe that the human race. . .” D.W. continued, but I felt my thoughts were beginning to float away, freed from their constraints, wafting in the white glare of a borderless world. But, strangely enough, D.W.’s voice still sounded in my ears, incomparably clear, as if it were that of a god. “No, the correct way to say it is—she didn’t trust the human soul, didn’t believe in consciousness, because the soul and consciousness are direct products of the central nervous system, and the brain is simply an incidental parasite, living improperly in the human body. I can still clearly remember the example she made—she said that theoretically, the ‘central nervous system DNA’ resembles the countless source codes of abandoned websites in the Internet’s vast realm. Useless trash that had resulted from the network’s gradual accumulations. . .”
“So?” I heard my own voice, such a strange sound; it seemed to have come from somewhere other than my body. “And then?”
“So she obviously influenced her father, the leader, Aaron. This probably initiated the mysterious turn in the doctrine of Earthly Awareness. Looking at it this way, Aaron’s suicide note becomes comprehensible. You remember that note?”
“I remember. . .” Of course, I had never forgotten it—that mysterious note, was it perhaps similar to an undecipherable DNA code? “Meaningless shell, unreliable spirit. . .”
“Yes. Like the note said, what humans possesses are unreliable souls; we should completely abandon them, to break away completely from this dubious, alien lifeform, to part ways forever and return to the true colours of the human. . .”
“Uh. . . So let’s say that we didn’t trust in human souls, must that necessarily lead to the ‘Last Judgement Massacre’? It doesn’t make sense.” I urgently persisted: “Is it just because of those ‘unreliable souls’? What kind of logic is that?”
“Well, of course I don’t dare say that I fully understand them. . .” A vague halo flickered in D.W.’s pupils, like the surfaces of nighttime waters reflecting sky-hung constellations. “It should be. . . Let’s put it this way. . . This concept, Eve really did mention it to me. And it is also on a document that is only in my possession, one she recorded herself. Basically, her idea was that we could perhaps attempt certain methods to ‘cleanse’ the ‘neurotoxins’ that had been smuggled into the human body by way of the brain—perhaps with medication, thought training, EEG monitoring, and so on. But if none of those yielded satisfactory results, the final, and most extreme method, would be to ‘destroy the brain itself’. . .”
“Hold on. Hold on!”
“What?” D.W. didn’t hear me.
“Mr. D.W.—” I interrupted. He had apparently failed to recognise how impacted I was by the “truth” he had just told me, but really, what astonished me was my own behaviour. “Hold on. Mr. D.W., I have to tell you. . . No, I should first apologise to you—”
After so many years had passed, it was difficult for me to admit, in the moment, that all of this had originated from my own selfish motives. As a journalist, as an officer of the truth, as one responsible for presenting facts to the public, I’ve been dutifully loyal to my post for many years, and the ethics of journalism has been, throughout the duration of the medium’s existence, a heatedly debated topic. This is one of the defining features of our time: the methods of dissemination have rapidly progressed, and various propositions of information theory have also continued to expand and develop with differing opinions—but classic questions, even after centuries, have still yet to be resolved. Even in the last few decades, issues stemming from those first conundrums have continued to grow. With new platforms, new interview methods, new rumours, new ways of composing, disseminating, replicating, new information being grafted together, variegating, evolving, new ethical dilemmas (if the AI responsible for reviewing material malfunctioned, who should really be responsible?). . . I couldn’t help but think, in fear: if Marshall McLuhan were to be born today, he would be appalled. Truthfully, until I came face to face with D.W.—no, to put it precisely, until I took it upon myself to interrupt D.W. in that moment—I had not made up my mind about this matter; even though the choice to ask or not ask, to say or not say had already played through my mind many times before. What would happen if I asked? Or, if I didn’t? Perhaps I would just throw out the truth at a certain point in the conversation? How can I anticipate what he would then say? Maybe I should find some excuse to temporarily excuse myself, take some time, think it over in the restroom, then decide? Or should I invite D.W. to step outside, to have a smoke, create an environment that is somewhat removed from the scene at hand, relieve the pressure a bit, then wait for an opportunity to pose my question? It was like a crucial battle that could turn the whole situation around, on the precipice of charging or falling back; it was like waiting in the darkness for a lover’s answer, or walking alone into a doctor’s office to receive the verdict of a diagnosis. . . My mind was turning in circles while simultaneously trying to follow a thousand possible ends; that mounting escalation of countless possibilities, it was like the void of an endless, boundless snowstorm. Yes, after a long time had passed—as if many lives had came and went (was that the doing of the central nervous system? What the “unreliable spirit” had opened to me?)—I finally heard my own voice, both foreign and familiar, like a parallel-universe version of myself, one I had yet to meet. “Mr. D.W.,” I took a deep breath, “I have to first apologise. . . But I must ask, after you and Eve separated, did you ever see her again?”
“What?”
“After you two separated, before the Last Judgment Massacre, did you see each other again?”
D.W. was silent for some time. “Three or four times.” He looked at me.
“Alright.” I nodded. “Okay. . . What I have to say is that, according to my findings, amongst the children who died in the ‘Last Judgment Massacre’ of 2039, there is a high possibility that one of them could have been Eve Chalamet’s two-year-old daughter. . .”
“Daughter? She has a daughter?”
“She did indeed have a daughter,” I answered. “DNA testing of the remains has confirmed it. I’m certain. But this fact was not released to the media, and the public has no knowledge of it. Of course, I only found out after intensive research.” I fixed my eyes on D.W.’s eyes. “So, you didn’t know that she had a daughter?”
“You mean,” D.W.’s voice had gone hoarse. “She killed her own daughter. . .”
“Very possibly.” I paused. “Of course, as I understand, it is also very possible that she was also your daughter. . .”
D.W. turned to look out the window, his expression drowned in the backlit shadow. His lips moved slightly, as if he wanted to speak but his voice had completely vanished, like a thin beam of light venturing into a dark sea. I thought about those deep-sea creatures—their forms could be as giant as islands, or they could be as tiny as grains of sand; they could even be invisible like mayflies, escaping the naked eye, the visual knowledge of human beings. In such immense darkness, however, isn’t everything invisible? Perhaps they also communicate, in a language no human could understand, passing through sound waves, the rhythms of water. They could have parts and perceptions that we have no knowledge of. They may possess central nervous systems, or maybe not; but everything is working within them, soundlessly. . . I saw D.W. lower his head, his lips still parting and closing.
“Her daughter was never registered.” I continued to explain. “In reality, the number of dead resulting from the Last Judgment Massacre is not 132 people. It is 133.”
“What was her name?” D.W. turned his head, putting down the hands which he had raised to cover his face. Both his eyes were reddened, veins pulsed at his temples. It was as if at that very moment, wrinkles ravaged his face, and a dozen years fell upon him in a single instant. “She. . . Did she have a name?”
“I’m not sure.” I too fell silent. “From what I know, the officials also have no knowledge. From the beginning, they were unable to confirm the girl’s name. Nor were they able to uncover any relevant records. . .”
D.W. looked out the window once gain. Tears had left tracks on his face. It was difficult for me to detect his true feelings in this moment, but I have indeed reflected on the significance of this “namelessness.” The girl did truly exist, but whether or not she had a name is still unknown; we may never come to a day in which everything is revealed. If there was no name—I suddenly realised, because of the “unreliable soul”—perhaps a name was never given, as a name was not deserved. Looking back on it now, I don’t think that I necessarily exploited D.W.’s emotions, but as to whether or not my actions at the time were appropriate, I’m still unsure. Regardless, what I sensed at the time was that I should not allow my progress to stagnate, and I should also not turn my back on D.W. as he is moored in this deluge of emotions and memories. As this kind of shocking news is not anything that a normal person would be able to digest quickly, I should’ve instead helped D.W. by encouraging him to keep explaining Eve Chalamet’s mindset—a temporary diversion of focus would perhaps help his emotional state. It wasn’t until later that I understood: it was not only helpful to D.W., but to myself as well.
After coming back from the restroom, D.W. took out a tablet and pulled up the scanned file. It was then, following his slightly trembling finger, that I was able to glimpse, with my own eyes, that rarest of objects, the one and only existing piece of physical evidence. On the screen, Eve Chalamet’s blue handwriting was graceful and neat, and the characters of that cursive script, perfectly balanced and brightly personified, seemed to resemble a measureless formation of figures in dance. That was almost certainly the only remaining vestige of the now-vanished true founder of Earthly Consciousness, Eve Chalamet. The single piece of proof that she had once lived amongst “humanity.” I imagined the invisible inner workings behind those scanned files, the circuits inside the computer’s glass which could bear the weight of all those complex, multifarious human thoughts (“unreliable soul,” the various parasitic creatures in the human body, all of it as abstruse as the universe itself, as vast and richly beautiful and changeable as the Milky Way) in its material, in what is essentially only a recorded sequence of ones and zeroes. It was like the genome maps, the replication of DNA chromosomes, amassing or rearranging, living things undergoing constant permutation, their activities—hunting, foraging, seeking mates, reproducing, living alone or in groups, making art, warring with other cultures, imagining other worlds and the way people live inside of them, love, sympathy, charity, hatred, evil, conspiracy, tyranny, and murder, what we call “knowledge,” “soul,” “living,” life itself, all the flora and fauna in the world, all of it held in the nucleus, upon the double helix of DNA, which is also simply a permutation and arrangement of the A, T, C, and G bases. Beyond the window, spring was late to arrive in the small, eastern Canadian town. Past the floor-to-ceiling glass of the coffee shop’s front, the bare branches of trees were reaching upwards, raising their hands high, one by one, as if Giacometti’s thin limbs were paired with the blurred, absurd expressions of Francis Bacon portraits. Was that the silent and hopeless inquest of fate itself? I thought back again to my last meeting with the detained Eve Chalamet, exactly sixteen years ago. She was one of the most formidable interviewees I’d ever encountered. As I previously described, throughout that year, she remained rational, tranquil; she seemed highly cooperative on the surface, but in practice she explained nothing. As the last interview was about to end, I had already recognised that it would be a failure (having just learned that Eve Chalamet was about to be released from custody, and having achieved nothing at all), and thus all I could do was stake everything on a final question, to ask her once again about D.W., the one possible “breach” into her life—
“I think that we won’t be able to meet again. This might be the final question. . .” I gazed into her eyes, her deep, black pupils; sometimes they glittered with fragmented stars of light, like a universe giving birth to her soul, and sometimes they seemed completely vacant, void of borders, so insubstantial that even a line of sight could penetrate straight through. “Do you think that you ever loved D.W.?”
Her brow furrowed lightly, and she looked away. “Of course. I loved him. But what is love?”
“Or, let’s put it this way—” I suddenly felt as though my luck had changed: “Who was it that loved him? Was it you? Was it that person who was a part of Earth Awareness, which led 132 people to their deaths, tearing apart dozens of families, was that you?”
“Of course I’ve thought about all of this before.” Eve Chalamet was as calm as she has always been, her beautiful blue eyes like inextinguishable lamplights, flickering in a fog. “But that is not something I’m responsible for.” She broke into a strange smile. “As a normal person, I don’t actually understand a great deal. The only thing I’m sure of is that my mission is now complete.”
