“Where did the fucking Buddhists come from?” I say to no one in particular.
Aziz steps from the closest limo and smiles and bows and bows a little more, mincing across like my unappointed man-servant, hands clasped together as if in prayer, but actually soliciting tips.
“The Bamiyan Valley was once a great point of contact between Eastern and Western cultures, delighted sir,” he says in the sort of crisp, lightly accented voice typical to AI systems in children’s cartoons. “Perhaps you have heard of the Silk Road?”
“To China?” I say like a total idiot.
“Yes, oh valiant one,” Aziz says, voice not so much fawning as perhaps relying on the casual observer to detect his passive resistance by way of a gentle ironic undertone.
“I didn’t fly here under my own power,” I say, my own voice distant in the reflection. “I guess I didn’t really think about the geography.”
I walk away from Aziz before he can say anything else, Twilight, Legion, Portal, Cusp, Stiletto and Heracleon falling into my wake.
Ahead of us, figures emerge from the ground-level caves, the entrances big enough to park a few tanks, and after the ubiquitous bellhop-looking flunkies, the majority of the welcome party are fellow masks. I immediately recognize Manticore, Night Angel, Susurrus, Lynx, Cipher, Jetstar, Nocturne and Volt, among a who’s who of the international superhero diaspora that includes L’Hyperman (France), Vorstellung (Germany), Argenta (Italy), Castillo (Argentina), Zero (Denmark), Asgeir and Brunhildr (Norway), Alarum (Japan), Wastelander (Australia), Pretender (Canada), Snapshot (Syria), Archer (Angola), St Simeon (Scotland) and Blaze and Lady Nine (Mexico). Striding through their midst comes St George, dressed for the cold climate in a bright red flared suit and waistcoat, a white scarf about his gaunt, stubbled cheeks.
He barely looks at me as he takes in we new arrivals in the manner of an official, the clipboard not in his hands but perhaps up his ass.
“Welcome to the Ascension,” he says in that effortlessly affronting English accent of his, the years having swapped out the Liverpudlian twang for a more subtle undertone of nascent privilege. He nods in acknowledgement to repeat customer Legion (reduced down to just two for the occasion, though he is holding hands with himself, his copy like a human safety blanket) and dark eyes gloss over the rest of us. “We have quarters for you all within the main hangar, if you’ll follow Stormhawk.”
I vaguely remember the purple-skinned Mohican who steps out from the watching crowd with the inevitable aura of the duly deputized, an officious little look of superiority on his clean-shaved smirk. St George nods to his apprentice and we re-orient ourselves.
“This way, please,” Stormhawk says and lifts off the ground to lead us towards the biggest of the immediate cave mouths, floating a dozen feet in the air.
*
STING’S CAMP IS ready to accommodate an army. We bunk down according to gender (there’s a tiny back room with lockers for the undecided, or so I hear whispered, including a Danish mutant with more DNA in common with a rose bush than a human being) inside the utilitarian bunker. For a few dollars more they have more lavish quarters deeper into the mountain, but since no one has actually hit me up for a fee at this point, I know when a low profile is the better part of valor, and I’m shown to my metal cot within the dormitory and left with nothing but a badly photocopied pamphlet outlining the daily routine which apparently starts with sunrise meditation.
“Fun fun fun,” I say aloud.
The comment falls on empty beds around me, my fellow travelers in various parts of the huge chamber settling in, Legion nowhere to be seen, others with their luggage that, as usual, I didn’t even think to pack. My Wallachian-designed costume continues to serve me well, having thickened considerably in the chill climate, the neck rising up almost like a priest’s collar or the collar on the sort of suits people are always wearing in science fiction movies. A gentle warmth tickles my ears, I notice now I have stopped moving, and for the barest instant I wonder at what other cleverness was factored into my outfit’s design by my one-time hosts.
“So where is all the action around here?” I ask again to no one in particular, almost hoping Aziz pops up somewhere close by.
As if in response, a French chick in a white body suit sweeps through, clapping her hands loudly, giving me a quick once-over as she moves for the front of the hangar.
“Come along, monsieurs, evening address in five minutes. Vite!”
Like most French women, I can see she’s wearing a thong through the taut fabric of her costume, and though I don’t know her name, I can already tell I like the way she’s moving. With nothing to unpack, I fall into step behind her deciding if there’s nothing else I can do, at least for now I can enjoy the view.
*
WE ASCEND THE outer walkway and enter another large cave, a huge, concrete-reinforced gathering point with a polished white floor and electrical conduits and cables to the speaker stacks positioned either side of the end of the chamber big enough to fit a 747. Nearly a hundred people – or should I say, a hundred costumed misfits like myself –stand waiting, and as weird and unsettling as that might be, the sight of more streaming in every second has my inner voices working overtime as they plot imminent super villain attacks or disasters of every stripe wrought by the sheer narrative gravity of so many super-powered individuals in the one place at the one time.
Night unfolds its arms around the settlement outside, and at first I think someone has lit a flare within the fluoro-lit hangar until I glance in the direction of the light source and see a lithe, familiar shape moving within the outer periphery of the crowd, a nimbus like a veritably holy man emanating from Sting as he grins with his perfect features and white teeth, patting a few backs before ass-lickers like Stormhawk and a few others shepherd him toward a low riser between the two huge black PA stacks.
“Friends,” Sting’s amplified voice rings out over the crowd.
At once there is a smattering of applause that builds like a kind of warmth, a palpable psychic cheer as dozens of my fellow madmen clap their hands, the gesture turning into arms raised in the air as is apparently customary here, clapping for deaf people, hands waggling at the top of extended limbs, beatific smiles on far too many faces to confirm my worst suspicions that we have a cult-like scenario on our hands.
Twilight appears at my elbow with an insouciant grin, for all intents and purposes deliberately invading my personal space like he wants to make a scene here and now. Showing Herculean resolve, I shoosh him and angle back to the makeshift stage as the hubbub of the nerdgasm around us dies down.
“Friends, welcome,” Sting says.
Eerily, he then makes a cutting signal and one of his crew deliberately silence the PA system, triggering me to wonder just how often he uses this trick as he casually switches to telepathic broadcast mode.
Many of you have made a long journey to get here, Sting says. For many, that journey has taken many more years than the miles you have travelled to be here today. So I thank you. And I am here to tell you that you have in truth only taken the first step.
Nervous little jittery laughs travel through the crowd, something almost equally telepathic in the ripe-for-bonding, crowd-shared interpellation coming off Sting’s utterances in waves, an almost forcible compulsion that is nothing but the natural charisma of an accomplished and demonstrably powerful mask at work in his native element – and with an audience ripe for the plucking.
Sting smiles charmingly, and man of the common people he ain’t, steps down from the jerry-rigged podium and starts through the hordes around him.
You have dedicated your lives to service in vain, he thinks at us. You feel the great emptiness within that you hoped you might fill through giving to the greater good, yet the more you do, and the more you try, the emptier that existence feels. You have sought self-improvement, the betterment of your powers, your God-or-whoever-given abilities. And still the emptiness remains. The unhappiness. The existential crisis y
ou have been in, that has been strangling you perhaps for many years, and yet like the proverbial frog in hot water, it has crept up on you so slowly you didn’t even realize you were nearly dead inside.
Jubilant shouts sound from somewhere, and as inappropriate as that might seem, in a shockingly short space of time Sting has those assembled eating out of his hand. I actually witness Legion standing slack-jawed, for all the world like this audience with Sting is just for him and the rest of us are paintings on stage props all around.
You are not your powers. You are not your mask, your cape, your gadgets, your magickal artefacts, your inherited abilities. You are not even your thoughts.
A hush of confusion and suspense arises at once. Of the more than two hundred present, almost every one cranes forward to hear Sting continue, having forgotten already they are not even using their ears to hear.
There is a Being within you who many of you have never met – and yet that Being is you. And that is who I have called to the Ascension, for it is the Being within you who is the you who I wish to free.
Zephyr 18.11 “Eternal Love”
I LATER LEARN this is not the first time Sting has made this dramatic speech, but for me and the other newly arrived, the performance strikes a unique chord. I can’t even resist the fascination of it myself, though it is deflating when moments later Sting drops the oratory and the atmosphere within the chamber quickly morphs into something more like a school assembly than a spiritual meeting of the minds.
“I would like to see more of you at morning meditation,” Sting says with the aid of a microphone once more. “These are primers for the day and our timetable of classes and courses and to establish your psionic resonance. Daily meditation is essential to calibrating, and for some of you, further developing your psionic field for the sake of Ascension.”
He looks around. A brief hush returns.
“Mr Magnificent made the transition this morning,” Sting says.
There is a burst of ecstatic applause and a few cheers. He lifts a hand and the craziness dies down.
“He is now among the Ascended. I want this for so many of you. You must believe. You must free yourself of your enslavement to these ideas of Being you have labored under since birth, since putting on a mask. But this means work. You saw Mr Magnificent. He lived up to his namesake. His efforts reaped their rewards. Now he is among the Ascended. He is beyond dressing up in a mask and cape and thinking, no, fooling himself that he is doing anything for the cosmos by stopping bank robbers and petty criminals and our fellow sociopaths. He is Ascended.”
Sting advances slowly through the crowd. He’s only a half-dozen people away at this point, but he doesn’t look my way.
“We are wasting our talents dressing up for Halloween every day and fighting the good fight,” he says into the mic. “We are the first. I don’t like to use terms like ‘new order’ because of the associations it has for many of us who have spent years fighting megalomaniacs and madmen spouting such ideologies. But I do not mean a new order in the world, my friends. I mean a new order outside the world as we know it.”
He stops. Turns. Looks straight at me. A flicker of a smile plays over his taut face.
“You are not your mind and you are not your thoughts. The true you is within. If you want to meet this Being who is you who longs to dwell in the astral sea of eternal love, then you need to set your alarm clocks and not spend your nights drinking in the settlement.”
His fatherly rebuke accompanied by a wry smile, Sting earns warm laughs of self-admonishment, especially among the many who I suspect are guilty as charged. So saying, Sting effectively drops the mic and walks off, trailed by his helpers as well as the inevitable half-dozen groupies not yet ready to let him go gently into any great blue yonder, whether in this world or the next.
I swap a look with Twilight and raise my eyebrows under the domino mask I feel suddenly self-conscious about, though I notice everyone else is pretty much in costume still as well.
“What do you think?”
“Good news,” Twilight answers. “He said there’s a bar.”
“I don’t think we’re going to learn much that way,” I say. “This isn’t the old days and this sure isn’t Atlantic City, Toto. I’m guessing morning meditation is where the trail starts.”
Twilight eyes me up and down again with an irritating self-amused smirk on his features. “Have you forgotten why we came here, Zeph?”
“Well I know why I came,” I say. “I’m still not sure about you.”
Twilight leans in close. I can smell liquor on his breath.
“Matrioshka, right?”
“I know that,” I say. “But how the fuck am I meant to trace someone who can jump bodies at will?”
“Bigger problem than that,” the big guy says. “What do you think all this talk of Ascension is about? I’m guessing she is not alone.”
“You think?”
“What was that he said? ‘Floating in a cosmic sea of eternal love’?”
“Close enough.”
“That sounds like jumping ship on your body, if you ask me.”
Twilight turns and bulls away into the disembarking crowd as the feeling of it all being too much threatens to overwhelm me. After a moment to gather my resolve, I thread through the other freaks and outcasts after him.
*
NIGHT OUTSIDE, THE cold quasi-Alpine winds of the Afghan hinterland whisk through the township with all the hospitality of permafrost, and caught between the various ideas about where I am and why I’m here, the allure of a military bunk bed and trying to get some sleep lack the requisite pull. Like others of our ilk, Twilight and I mosey down the slope from the hangar entrance like unemployed youths seeking to commune in our hooded uniforms. Fortunately, the now vibrant neon glow from the settlement’s night spots guide our way in from the cold.
The bar doesn’t have a formal name, with only a big lit-up Budweiser mirror above the bar reminiscent of my old waterfront digs in the days I squandered with Loren as far as signage goes, but being peopled almost entirely with dudes in masks and capes, I am quick to learn it’s called Babrak’s after the always grinning one-eyed man who keeps a small team of barkeeps in line from the throne of his stool within easy spitting distance of a flatscreen TV tuned to the Russian mutant basketball league.
Although we’re accustomed to clubs and bars where costumed crimefighters are thick on the ground, to be in a place so exclusive seems strange. Half the talk is about the day’s experiences – sessions in guided meditation, the difficulties of yoga, things that are missed from back home – but the common theme is of outsiders lumped together in the face of adversity, though this time it is of their own choosing. I plop down on a stool next to a guy with an enclosed helm resting on the bar beside him, purple cloak a little plosion d from time away from the laundromat. He gives me a Maori welcome and downs a shot of tequila, muttering something in Spanish I can barely understand about tomorrow’s sunrise.
“You speak English?” I ask.
“Yeah,” the guys says perhaps a tad begrudgingly. Just as reluctantly, he then offers one of his big gloved hands. “I’m Cavalier.”
“Where you from? Mexico?”
“Dude, I’m from LA. You haven’t heard of me?”
He tilts his not unhandsome mug and snaps his fingers – perhaps the biggest feat, given the heavy gloves – and says something like “zapiche”. At once a sword materializes out of thin air, and would fall to the ground if Cavalier didn’t snatch it in a practiced move that entails standing and slashing a zee in the air.
“No?” he asks, looking at me looking blank. “But I know you, Zephyr.”
“Well . . . sorry. I don’t get out to LA much.”
Cavalier looks disheartened. He sits and dispels the sword with a lot less vigor, signaling to the barkeep for another drink. I add my order, fingers crossed for a Stoli.
“You’re not worried about the early morning session?”
“Me?” Cav
alier gives a TV bad guy laugh and shakes his head. “Tomorrow, I sleep. The night is for the living.”
“They do . . . workshops here at night?”
“Look around you, cabrone. No one here is attending any workshops.”
I do in fact peer about, as per the dude’s instructions.
Unnecessarily, Cavalier stands and hollers, “Hey, everyone. Zephyr wants to know if we are going to the sunrise workshop.”
Mixed guffaws and polite but condescending laughter waft my way. I narrow my eyes at Cavalier as he sits again and our drinks are delivered. He taps his glass against my effete bottle.
“Explain yourself,” I say. “I thought everyone was here for the, you know, the –”
“You feel silly saying it, don’t you?”
“– the Ascension. Yeah, kind of.”
Cavalier smirks, making friendlier. “Look around you, mi companiero. Do any of these guys look to you like Sting’s caliber of supermen?”
“It’s not really for me to say.”
“And how polite of you,” Cavalier replies. “If only your friend Sting was the same. He has told us all, and none too delicately, that we are not fit for the program.”
“Er, how come?”
Cavalier shrugs. “We are not good enough, my friend.”
“Good? As in . . . um . . . your alignment?”
“No, as in our powers,” he says. “I will be frank with you, Zephyr. I am just a master swordsman with Olympic level fitness and a sorcerous blade inherited from my grandfather, the Black –”
“Oh OK,” I interrupt. “I get it.”
“These other brothers, we call ourselves the ‘dregs’ now,” Cavalier says.
“Dregs? Why the fuck do you stick around?”
The other guy gives a deep sigh, discontent writ on his swarthy features.
Zephyr Box Set 2 Page 48