by Travis Borne
“We are going to get you back, Kim,” he uttered to himself.
The town below no longer resembled a Brobdingnagian black scab, just blotches of scabs, gobs of trash bulldozed into hills—hills shrinking rapidly as the builders compressed the rounded-up trash. In only six days they had achieved what seemed this miracle, a miracle that came at a small cost.
The jackhammer wallops continued as if a construction worker was chasing his nerves with a ground stamper; often the nerves wanted to escape his skull and hang themselves using a noose contrived from what little hair Jim had rounding his noggin. A grinding cacophony like 500 wood saws trying to chew metal, and bright arcs of energy danced about the perimeter as if mirrors were reflecting glints of a supernova. The long shadows of the rising sun twisted everything in a warped, but oddly beautiful way, and the occasional jolting gong made his butt pucker as the wall resounded the echoing diminuendos. Nerves were bungee cords going every which way, tugging on the anchor that was his sanity, pulling ever deeper the opening of an unstable fissure that was ready to let it all out. Black-bag program retired, he no longer had the dream maps to purpose as a release—he and Lion would seriously fuck up some DCs—but, he was better now. The acerbic thoughts still rolled around, sure, but he only had to remember the good things, things that possessed the power to keep him on the good side of the line.
Though, as annoying as it was (front-door construction madness on roids), the breach to his left was nearly sealed; only a block down Main the final layers of compressed metal blocks (scraps of drones did come in handy) were being welded into place near the top. On the ground, vertical supports were strewn perpendicularly; earlier they’d been gnarled like award-winning fingernails. Builders were raising the straightened beams while others tirelessly carried newly compacted blocks across the park. Like linebackers they ran with the six-by-three-foot slabs as if they were carrying helium-filled footballs. Exchanging hands at the base, chunks were raised by others who walked straight up. Grappling cables running through channels on their packs made them trams. They zipped up and out of the shadows, and into the morning light.
Thoughts were a fresh stew being stirred in Jim’s head: black balloon giants playing around, strong enough to spit in the face of gravity itself. From the perspective of the craft that took Amy to meet her death, he thought, high, high in the sky, he pictured ants overhauling the last anthill on Earth, one that had just barely survived a stampede of starved, charging anteaters.
The metal clangs came often, the grinding was constant…really, it was surprising he’d got any sleep with all the commotion. But maybe that’s why he excelled at being a lender: he never had any trouble falling, or staying asleep. As he stared at the leaping, rolling, running bobbers, he didn’t realize he’d finished his coffee, and, had gone back in to snag a second cup. All of this was unreal, like a movie. The builders had packs with myriad attachments: gadgets, welding arms, grappling-hook cannons, crane-like claw arms, and enigmatic tools. Some had even combined their bodies to form powerful lifting machinery and temporary platforms. And he remembered, as if it was all just a dream—that clawing rat of a drone, how it so desperately attempted to get at him, scratching at the floor for traction, reaching to Amy as if she was the only thing that mattered. It wanted only death. And the builders—just look at this shit—were completely the opposite.
And a thought of Nelman dove into Jim’s mental stew. He remembered the last touch: it was one of the most powerful anchors holding him back from the bad side of the line. And, as he just lay there moments later, holding Amy tight—the nightmare mixed with his reality: Nelman fought for his life, no, ours, selflessly. He saved us all. If Amy hadn’t been able to log in… None of this. None of what he was witnessing right now would be… They’d all be dead, nothing would exist, even those builders down there… Tough. Ha. They would’ve been found all right, then chewed up and spit out like hard candy.
Jim went deep into the memory and the tiniest details glinted like molecular firecrackers popping around his mental imagery.
It was those same, or at least similar, myriad attachments. All types—no single drone was alike. They had Nelman, pushed him down. Damn, I wish we could’ve saved him. The evil fuckers ground him to bits. Welders, sparking zappers. And the one reaching for me—how it discharged that metal, snaking arm. As if, it could create weapons on the fly. Could they be that advanced, though?
He could feel it again, all of it, as he fought to keep Amy safe; the others (the docs and Bertha), were kicking it, trying to get the door to close. It began to enwrap his leg like a boa constrictor: cold, murderous steel. He kicked and kicked with Amy held tightly in his arms. Its mission: kill her—and it seemed to focus on her. And his mission: keep Amy safe at all costs, and nothing else mattered.
So why, why did I let Greg and Eddie take us to that fucking void of a world? He stared outward blankly, not even seeing the builders anymore. He was dreaming awake—his anger beginning to seethe. Stop it, Jim! Nor did he realize he’d been white-knuckling the broken-handled, empty cup of joe with one hand, nearly bending the balcony railing with the other. A half hour had vanished. And he realized it more than ever, just then. His mind was truly, unalterably, different.
Another gong brought him back. He looked to the gymnasium warehouse. As if a train had punched it doing 155, the structure and its contents had been demolished—a direct hit from a thief: the football-field-sized RESCUE #486. The builders used every scrap, every weight, every remnant of a workout machine, leaving only the concrete slab.
Jim straightened his gaze. The park. It had been raked clean of its black ash and had lines like grooves in a freshly tilled garden. The trees, many were mere stubs, now cleanly cut and smeared over with some sort of yellow, mustard-like substance; every amputation had been tended to neatly. Moats surrounded each stump, filled via a network of meandering canals. Perhaps the dead sticks were still alive, somehow—someone must’ve thought so; they were being cared for with great regard.
Julio’s pizza stand had been vacuumed away clean; where it had been—directly below Jim’s building and right across Main—remained nothing but a brown patch. The canopy and converted shipping containers had for years been the go-to hangout for the best pizza. Jim laughed at the thought. Pizza. Seeing things more objectively was light beaming onto a weird and twisted reality: the town as it once was. Exercise, exercise fucking overload. And Pizza, everything was pizza; put some shit on dough and bake. But, Jim thought, like the coffee it’d be damn good right now. He could only imagine how succulent the slimy cheese, gooey tomato sauce, and Meat-Master pepperoni concoction would taste with his pedestaled ability to perceive the world around him. Get it back. Just tell the builders: pizza stand, Jim’s and Amy’s—no, he’d name it only after her: Amy’s Pizza Stand.
The imagery was punching his brain as jackhammering and random unexpected bongs went unheard, unfelt. He thought about the makeshift hack of a restaurant, somewhere out there, like a crumbled box, the Julio’s Pizza sign baking like a corpse in the quarantine zone, under the torch that was the yellow sun. Or perhaps the builders had already found it; they’d already crushed it up too. A metal block, now a part of the great wall. The great patch.
Builders were running with patches, patch after patch after patch; taking Rim Road, or through the park around the lake. The lake. It was nearly full again: the wooden dock was gone, also the old boat—hopefully some catfish will survive, Jim thought, stupefied. The lake was clearly within view, now, denuded of its curtain that’d been a mini forest. And the park was now an open field with charred sticks; somehow it looked smaller. Most trees had been uprooted leaving flooded craters. A lone builder was tending to the holes, covering them—and to the land, rather hastily; like an all-in-one: farmer, tiller, tractor, and he’d managed to get water flowing from the spring at a faster rate. He cleverly diverted the life juice through his meandering channels, to all vegetation.
He was back, partly. Jim’s mind w
as able to multitask like no other time he could recall. Part was still swimming in a mad dream world, angry again, thinking of Amy and what he’d done—his fucking choice. The other had popped back into reality and was astounded, looking about at each significant and wonderful and quixotic change: the fascinating technology that he’d so absentmindedly craved just months earlier. He was clear minded on one side of the line, yet still learning, testing the waters of his new mind. Lingering, bizarre, and vivid dreams colorfully swirled inside yet another part. There were sections upon sections and he could dive into each: areas once locked, barring creativity itself, imprisoning the good shit. The exploding imagery popped during this morning, unlike previous others. It was a three-dimensional canvas and every neuron could dive ninth dimensionally into some unknown, and explore. There were colors, too, colors he never even knew existed.
The Jewel City Defense Center. He rotated his head. We might as well call it the Lender Facility now—cat’s out of the bag. It could be made out clearly now, in the distance and off to his right at 2 o’clock. Its bulge was more prominent than ever—as if the wall was a rusty nude, pregnant and ready to pop, sitting in the mud bath that was the earth; the shrubbery and trees that had surrounded it had been her clothing, once a cloak of ignorance, now just burnt rags.
That ship had spun around, digging into the earth. Rico told him about it later that same day. He said it melted the trees around it like Mercurian toothpicks taking a solar flare. Yes, he actually said Mercurian. Crooked toothpicks now; a builder was working at cutting each off; knee height, and a lender accompanied him, slopping that same gook onto the tops. Jim knew Rico had changed, he’d become, like himself; how he’d described it earlier—he even cursed once—while they’d sat on the steps of Town Hall yesterday eating thank-God-for-that-Meat-Master sandwiches. Their thoughts had been on exactly the same page, too. Yes, the trees had concealed the facility—but things were going to be different now; no more secrets.
Jim thoughts pushed forward, the objective: save his brother Jerry and the others. He’d already run the numbers, had thought about possible plans, ran various scenarios through his mind. Only 66 of us. We’ll have to work together like no other time, he thought, partly out loud, or was it his dream self—like another was standing next to him. He shook his head vehemently to unify the various tangents glowing within his mind. Well, maybe like that time, yet that seems like another life: Amy brought us together for the mass login. She was unconscious, but it was all her, the reason we were such a team amid the chaos. United we were…yes, maybe like that time.
Still palming it tightly, he brought the cup to his lips—nothing. Another cup? How many had he had? He couldn’t just stand here all day, although he was supposed to be resting. But his feet felt glued to the floor. He thought of breakfast coming up the shoot—not today. And that thumb of a vitamin and how it made him feel, and Kim again, her gentle touch, her rough touch—her happy poison. The drugs were nothing compared to how he felt now.
He felt hungry now.
He looked right toward the older neighborhood, to the old Mexican architecture, buildings that lined the park on Park Avenue. Food. Two builders were working on Bertha’s Restaurant. It sat smack at the intersection of Park and Main, across from the courthouse. The Town Hall building; it looked almost as good as new! But how? Many of the houses behind it had been wiped clean, less than half remained as anything recognizable, but even there he could see a few builders working on the good ones, taking parts from others and raking clean those that were crumbs. The small hovering bots surrounded the builders like gnats, occasionally working together to lift and place objects on roofs, taking care of nails and screws, the intricate shit, working with the builders as if they shared a hive mentality; the efficiency kept Jim’s jaw open, head shaking, eyes pumping.
Knock, knock.
“Jim?”
Jon’s voice pulled him from the discursive stew of intertwining realities and dreams. And he went to get the door.
18. The Damaged Mug of Oil
“Hey, Jon. Sleep well?” Jim moved aside invitingly.
“Not bad, even with the noise, surprisingly. So, what’s on the agenda today?”
“Don’t know, Jon. Ted’s still working with Marlo, says he should have the map ready soon. And Ted mentioned that we hardly need any lenders now so no employment needed there. He told me the system is able to maintain high green with only a few, and—” He gestured his hand toward the window. “—voilà, all of this. I can’t comprehend how it’s possible to empower that many bots.”
“A good mind,” Jon replied, “one repaired from the damaging effects of the cleansing can empower thousands, hundreds of thousands of bots. Only a sliver is needed for each. They use it like a drip of water and it gives them a free, licensed consciousness. On the ship we flew in—”
“That glob of floating metal?”
“No, that wasn’t ours. Herald received your call and couldn’t get here fast enough with our ship so he asked for help. We’d been waiting on you. Herald had to wait until the printed Amy repaired your DNA, and of course he wanted to make sure you’d pass the test. No cheating, no helping hand, no exceptions—one of his most immutable provisions.”
“Test?”
“Like he told you, you’d proven yourselves worthy. Some of the other towns—they were real fuck-ups. One of them, he told me, was so bad he simply slaughtered them all, even their printed Amy—she’d also become, well, corrupted. They raised her wrong.”
“God—why?” Jim thought of the Amy he’d known, the printed one. She was real, authentically genuine; how in the world could anyone…? He got visibly upset after a second of pause. He squeezed his half-full cup of coffee tight again and his knuckles went white.
Noticing a seemingly hidden rage, something about the glints flickering in Jim’s glossy saltwater-blue eyes, Jon cocked his head, then continued. “Herald is different than anyone you’ll ever meet. He did what he said he had to. And he told me that you, and the few others who’d made it—by the way, they all went with him, none chose to stay like you, me, the others—that you’d receive a good dose of his old memories, also that many would fade if you didn’t hold onto them.”
Jim’s eyes went up in thought.
“Got another mug?” Jon asked. Jim shook his head, still facing the wall, while Jon had gravitated toward the smell: coffee. Then Jim chugged his and handed Jon the only mug in his apartment: chipped sharply on one edge, just as black as the coffee, with no handle. “Thanks. You don’t mind, do ya?” There was only one cup’s worth left in the makeshift concoction.
“Not at all, go ahead. You know, Jon, I do remember a lot, barge loads and none of it seems to be fading—in fact the shit in my head seems to be intensifying. I remember much, as if I was him—there, on the rooftop…in, in the club—Subterranean. The best, worst, and most life-altering events stand out like bright lights in the back of my head, and I can pull them to the forefront on demand. Herald was only going to save himself. Yes, I remember his…do you know of this?”
“No, Jim. And I never talked to the few others that received his memories, or know of what happened to them, but I knew Herald quite well—although he…well, he has changed so much, and continues to change.”
“Secrets,” Jim replied; Jon nodded. “I remember one memory as if it’s a gleaming sword piercing my brain. It was around 2020 and he was sitting atop the Meddlinn building, coding alone. He’d envisioned only himself—Jon I can feel his hatred in this memory—damn, how he hated the world. Fuck, Jon, I can feel it like—like fire. I can feel his seething disgust for humanity like—” The demon appeared in Jim’s mind. It was bad, a malevolent, vicious, and pure hatred. Jim jerked his head to the side as if a bonfire had ignited to his left. “—it’s worse than anything I—”
“His feelings went deep, really deep, Jim.” Jon recalled a memory too: the club talk, being told of Herald’s experiences with drugs: LSD, weed, alcohol, Angel’s Trumpet, mixin
g it all—going deep, really deep; the craziness, and, Jon remembered when he linked up with Herald in the exact same club—years earlier before Herald had even started at Meddlinn; when he just happened to bump into him there: Herald in the corner, kicking back like a incubus. It’d been freshman year at San Diego High, at least that was the last time they’d seen each other since, before Herald had dropped out. Herald was such a nerd, then; just like me, Jon thought. But right there, then, he looked evil. It was as if he was the devil, Satan possessing the acne-scarred skin suit of his once dork friend; now Herald was cool, so cool, cool as fucking hell, a chick magnet sitting in the back, babes sucking and slurping over every inch of him.
Viewing the playback of the memory in his head, Jim continued, “He was just sitting there, hating, coding…” Jim had gravitated toward the window, Jon had his side, and both stood gazing outward at the builders. “He built the—blocker device—”
“Yes, that’s right,” Jon said, coming back to the moment.
“I see his dreams too, Jon, they mix with mine now. Herald envisioned himself sitting atop a mountain in Colorado, laughing, watching the world burn, burning all to hell. Happy at last, while—blocked.” Jon nodded. “And then, he met—”
“She changed everything,” Jon interrupted. “If it hadn’t been for her, if it wasn’t for Ana none of us would be here now. None of that you see out there would exist. Earth would a dead stick—as of two decades ago.” Jon’s gaze dutifully mimicked Jim’s: staring at a town bustling with repairs as if the builders were powered by mini nuclear-fission reactors and a good dose of the odd coffee he found himself thoroughly enjoying; it was thick, almost as thick as oil but deeply rich as if one coffee bean equaled one hundred—and potent. Jon hard blinked; the caffeine was a team of kangaroos kicking his brain, and it didn’t seem like normal caffeine.