All the while the Russians couldn’t do anything because they were too busy on their western frontiers to hold off an invasion of EU Transhumanists. The Europeans had been one of the first to fall because they’d lost the better part of their martial culture since America had taken to guaranteeing their security. Britain remained whole, as did Ireland, but they were busy, in a shaky alliance with Russia, dealing with the EU Transhumanists. Africa and the Arab Peninsula had long since gone to the Transhumanists. What survivors there were from Africa and the EU had become boat people. Some of the EU citizens were allowed into Britain, Ireland, Canada, and the US—especially if their skills could be put to use—but most had been turned away. There had been limited naval encounters, but the Europeans no longer had the resources or will for any serious conflict. When they could not enter America or the British Isles, some of the more seaworthy vessels headed for Australia and New Zealand. Rumours coming out of these islands were not hopeful—facts were all but impossible to come by, or were being choked by the various governments.
Given the geopolitical state of the world, there was little choice for the Canadians but to stand against the western Transhumanists or they would go the way of the Asian small States or risk becoming another EU. The incentive appeared to be working. For the team leader had some interesting news. “The Canadians were at Blaine, as you all know, but they have also reinforced Edmonton and are now driving west toward Vancouver proper. The general sentiment is that little of the Transhumanists are being left alive. Speculation is they haven’t the resources to hold them—and not much inclination.” This was staggering news for Feargal, given the Canada he’d grown up in.
“Are you certain of this?”
“Yes, there have been reports through both the militias and Federals. Still, it’s not yet common knowledge.”
“Doesn’t sound very Canadian.”
“Desperation can make people behave in uncharacteristic ways.”
“Sometimes,” ginger piped in, “I wonder what any of us will look like after this?”
“You mean people or countries?” Matt asked.
“Both, I suppose.”
“Worthwhile question,” the team leader answered the kid gently, “but one best saved for when we’ve put this down.” Feargal smiled quietly, but was noticed.
“Something funny?” A question from the hallway door.
“No,” Matt answered seriously, “but sometimes I feel I’m the only one that believes there’ll be another side to this where people will still exist—the country as well.”
“Suppose there’s an argument to be made on a few fronts.” The doctor, who’d been silent for the larger part of the exchange, ventured.
“What do you mean?” From the door, but the voice wasn’t angry.
“Whomever the Transhumanists really are could possibly win—they’ve now a lot of territory and resources. But they are relatively small in number. Most Metas, however, only want peaceful co-existence. So the likelihood of a Transhumanist victory is small, and the possibility of a human victory is much greater. They’ve a deep investment in maintaining their civilisation. Nonetheless, more and more of these seemed to be more interested in a peaceful solution with the majority of Metas. So we have Transhumanists, Humans, and Multi-species theorists arguing for their own agendas. Whoever has the most to win, then determination, will. I’d put my money on the Multi-species agenda—only way we do not all kill each other, now or later.” This, shockingly, almost made sense to Matt.
Matt had wanted to head south as soon as possible, but the team that rescued him had to repair one of their trucks and that was going to take a couple of days. The doctor would have been happier if he had spent this getting some rest, but settled for checking in on him a couple of times a day. Concrete was such a small town Google Maps hadn’t even bothered with Street View, excepting for the roads and highways bisecting the town of 705. As was normal with small towns in the US it was drunk with religion. From Wikipedia, Matt had counted five churches. There had always been, for Feargal, something preternaturally perverse in small town America’s obsession with the multifariousness of Christian Faith.
God in their ineffable wisdom would have struck down a temple of any sort—if only through the hands of the good citizens of any of these towns. Short of this, a lightning strike or an act-of-God fire would have sufficed. Too extreme? This had come from his years knocking about the environs of the US. The east-coast, west-coast, and Great Lakes he could deal with—these were comprehensible on an international level. Yet, the silent, abiding vitriol of the heartland and small towns dotted about the country passed understanding for those beyond their isolationist, suspicious pathologies.
With his time in Concrete behind him, Matt caught a ride to the marginally better Sedro-Woolley. Same barricades he came across in Ferndale. As they pulled over and climbed out, an armed party came out to treat. If there was an indication on the collapse of the Union it was to be found in the city state mentality which was emerging with the Transhumanist’s failed incursion. With County, State, and Federal Governments apparently unable—some suggested unwilling—to impose order because of the massive dislocations of peoples near their increasingly fictional borders it fell to the towns and cities to defend themselves. For the moment, if not longer, this meant the Union was more a fragile ideology than a fact secured by power, law, and interlinked economies.
Here they stood on the east-side of Sedro-Woolley, unarmed, facing an unevenly armed body of citizens, local police—far beyond their fleshy, middle-aged experience—and an anxious militia. The latter, it turned out, were survivors of Blaine. Some of these demonstrating the whorled, shifted tissue which suggested a distant brush with the Meta-weapon. There was, though, more anxiety in their looks than hostility. Perhaps they knew theirs was a small, unsteady force more used to dealing with cow-town crime than the desperate starving masses that were winding south from the northern part of the State and others from southern BC. If they knew the truth they might have been more aggressive, but as it was they’d no idea that the influx of DPs was about over now Blaine had been won and the Canadians were about to press westward. There was little chance of the Transhumanists pushing south any time soon after the beating they took at Blaine—especially, Matt considered, with the death of Melissa and wounding of Wilson.
What welcome Feargal received was a stay of one night—once it was learned he was human and had money. The veterans of Blaine were given a place for the night and supplies; although accepting the food offered they were in a hurry to get home, so left Feargal on the road with the Sheriff. He was given a lift to the Three Rivers Inn on Ball south of Moore and they waited for him to check-in, in order to make certain he’d the wherewithal. The next day, if he didn’t have transportation the Sheriff would take him to either the train station or the west-end of town—but Matt was warned Burlington had much the same arrangement as they did. The train was recommended. Although the Cascade Highway remained open all the exits had been blocked, and he’d heard they were shooting anyone who approached them. There was a suggestion, by a deputy, that little better should be expected from Burlingtonians. Still, the town was a good enough place to grab the I5 south.
Uncertain how to take the advice, Matt simply nodded, thanked the Sheriff and their Deputy and took his canvas backpack, which he’d bought used in Concrete, up to his room. Three Rivers was much nicer than expected, after Concrete—which was just holding on to itself. The place looked a lot like a converted house with a hotel attached to it. The soft canary-yellow of the building and freshly tarmacked parking lot was inviting. More importantly it had clean rooms—wifi seemed to have given up, but he was sans phone for the moment—and the location was central. After settling in he found a store and picked up a burner; then sent his new number to Jonah. Afterwards he found a meal at a local diner, and hit Roost Books & Things a few blocks from the Inn.
With a copy of A Tale of Two Cities, not his favourite Dickens, he managed a h
alf-hearted latte from Roost and settled down for a good read before heading back to the Inn where he’d take a light dinner and get to sleep early. Since leaving Cody he’d been dogged by a tragic series of events. Feargal, though unintentionally, had managed to kill the team Salt had sent with him, supposedly for his own protection; lost his first real chance at collecting China; was robbed, kidnapped, tortured, had most of his electronics destroyed in the accident, and left near penury. Not the best of times, but maybe the worst. No, not that either.
***
“I’m sorry.” Matt looked up at the voice and away from Lucie. It was a fair representation of the young Manette, if not from the features—which were provocatively alien—then from a sense of compassion. Was this a tell? Was this another of the ludicrous skill sets the Metas had been deploying to uneven affect? Feargal was no longer certain.
“Hello.” She was, he supposed, in her late 20s—but this was a surmise without much to go by. The transformation had taken the woman in a series of unconventional bursts of graphical ideologies. There was a bluishness to the cheeks—these hinting at a potential cobalt as the conversion took hold—and a traditionally deep hard-candy red to the pupils. Traditionally, because primary colours normally came out in the eyes. But the blue skin was striking for originality. The seam ran from below her chin up into the widow’s peak hairline from which swept cobalt blue hair—this stopped at about the middle of her back.
The woman’s body was muscular, but toned rather than bulky. She was, perhaps, 180cm. With effort, Matt rose; the beating had still left tell-tale aches and pains behind, which Feargal assumed might be with him for some days, or even weeks, to come. “I’m sorry to bother you, but are you Matt Feargal?” He nodded, smile broadening as well as his suspicions. “The Sheriff told me you may be looking for a ride south.” Extending a hand, his smile deepened.
“I am, but I don’t want to put you out—I could take the train.”
“They’re not running with any frequency any longer and the buses have all but given up. My name is Cynthia, by the way.”
“Matt.” He replied. She took his hand in hers and the bluish skin gave way to burnt orange nails.
It was a small table, but Matt asked her to sit—shifting the cup to his side and dropping Dickens in his canvas bag. The chair, he could see, wobbled as she sat. It wasn’t from weight but a desiccated unease with anything imposing upon its fretful geometry. The woman steadied herself with a hand. “May I get you a coffee?”
“They’ve Chai, here.” Smiling, he got her the tea. The woman preparing the drink looked back at the Meta several times. Feargal wondered if she’d have been served without an Archaic standing in for her. He supposed not. Handing him the tea the woman leaned in.
“They’re not to be trusted.” He smiled, thanked her, and whispered in return.
“I know—necessary evil.” There was no other way to deal with the new world order of small town USA. To be fair, it wasn’t simply small town USA any longer. This type of thinking was swallowing the world.
Thanking Feargal, she turned her head, very slightly, to the side. “She doesn’t want me here.”
“She wouldn’t mind if you stopped breathing.” Her eyes, but not her head, tracked back to the man.
“No one’s put it quite so bluntly before.” Matt shrugged. “How about you?”
“Nothing so beautiful should be done away with—but I trust you no more than she does.”
“Because I’m Meta?”
“Because I don’t know you.” She wanted more, so he continued. “Had a bad go round with a Transhumanist spy I thought was Sansa and a friend.”
“What happened.”
“Killed her.” The baldness of the answer widened her eyes.
“That’s it—just like that?”
“No, had to chase her out of a building—then shot her down in the street in front of my team members. That took some explaining.”
“Shit.”
“It’s getting ugly out there—sure you want to join the party?”
“There is nothing for me here.” Motioning with her head.
“Okay, but if I’m bringing you along I’m going to have to contact someone.” She nodded and waited as he made the call.
The line rang several times and Matt was about the end the call when someone answered. Seemed that Salt had picked up a new PA since last they spoke. “Director Salt will be busy for the rest of the day. May I take a message?” There was something self-important and officious in the woman’s tone which put Feargal on edge.
“Just put the freak on the line, bitch.” There was a stunned silence, and the woman sputtered to life.
“I don’t know who you are used to dealing with...”
“This is Matt Feargal—tell him you put me on hold.” Ending the call, he tossed the burner on the table and waited. Smiling at the shocked look he shrugged. “Not house broken.” After a moment the phone vibrated against the woman’s saucer. “Hello?”
“Still winning friends wherever you go?”
“You need to tell your people who I am—if this happened in your office she’d be needing implants.”
“Are you okay?”
“Just fine, why?”
“You sound different.”
“I’m a lot angrier than when I left; having to kill Kathy hasn’t helped. You need to vet your people better—especially if you’re sending them out with me.”
“Sorry about that, but we’ve had our problems with provocateurs as well.”
“Not interested in your problems. I’m not here to help you win the war; I’m here to find my family and you’ve not been very helpful in that regard.” There was a strained silence. Matt felt their relationship was going the way of Halton’s. For the first time in a while, Matt was again confronting what that fallout would be—with Melissa dead.
“We still on for Portland?” Salt asked icily.
“Yes, I’ve got a ride so I should be there tomorrow some time.” Looking up questioningly, Cynthia nodded. “I think my ride will want to join Sansa.” The woman nodded with a smile.
“Good, but there is now a vetting process in place.” Matt smiled at the dig, but didn’t follow it up.
“When I get in town we can firm up a time and place.” Salt agreed and said he would be waiting. Matt ended the call without saying goodbye. For the first time he was recognising his anger was getting the better of him; knew he’d have to work on that. After all, Salt was all he really had left.
***
Sedro-Woolley had a nice Greek restaurant not far from Three Rivers, which made it convenient for an early night. He hadn’t had a Souvlaki in a long time, and Feargal hoped, rather than believed, this might suggest a turn of luck. It wasn’t, exactly, that he had much faith in luck—whether good or bad—but when it became impossible to determine in what direction the next minutes, let alone the next days and weeks, were going one necessarily clutched at whatever predictive mechanisms were on offer. Magical thinking was such a tool. Though for the last five years magical thinking didn’t seem such a stretch as it once might have. With this thought, the whole arc of what had been, was, and would be spread out before him.
Matt had become aware in a world of secularised reality—mostly mechanical cause and effect for the majority of humans. This, of course, was far from the underlying reality most were required to deal with, but as a general statement of fact it held up. Yet, over the past five years children were being brought up in a world where mechanical reality had been twisted into a Meta-magical Möbius strip. Following from this, reality was not a simple cause and effect; not a simple dialectic of possibilities and non-possibilities. From the fracturing of the dialectic came multiplicity; from the multiplicity of realities and species emerged the notion that thought had its own reality. Not simply as a thought-experiment, but in the sense that thought had been seen to alter physical reality. With this new ideogram came the collapse of Newtonian reality and the advent of Deconstructive Reality
in which the rules of interrelationships were subverted and re-imagined. The limits of this interpretive process were defined only by the imagination of the individual or individuals involved.
What destabilised the possibilities was the fact each new meme inspired two more. The process was exponential, so the further from the originary reality one proceeded the less connection one felt to and with that reality. Reality became a textualising game with only a very few rules and these rules were open to sudden and violent redundancies. What did that leave Matteo with? Hope. Hope was a chancy thing at the best of times, and when there was no certain way to measure the possibilities of desire then one was left with magical thinking. However, where this could—often was—a plastic condition for the Metahumans it was anything but for the Archaics. Just one more reason animosities between the groups were becoming pronounced—and that was the polite assessment. An inevitable conflict was building, and not simply between the Transhumanists and Archaics. Once that was sorted, if it was, then this other conflict would be inescapable. The consequences of this next dislocation remained unclear, though Matt wasn’t hopeful for either side.
For the moment, though, there was the restaurant and Cynthia’s company. That was enough. And the dinner had been enjoyable—so much so that they had a drink back at the Three Rivers. Matt had considered taking her up to his room, but he wanted to take his time—at least let Jonah give her the once over before he went any further. Besides the obvious issues there was the fact that he didn’t have any rubbers, and he wasn’t risking the outcome of that ever again. In the end he said good night—if disappointed the woman didn’t show it, but she’d been willing enough. After saying goodbye, Matt went upstairs, took a quick shower, and was asleep only minutes after climbing into bed. This was unusual for him; normally it took an hour or two and he would wake several times during the night. Yet, tonight he was gone quickly. With no will left to fight whatever was coming he surrendered to the quietus.
End Times, Inc. (A Great & Continuous Malignity) Page 16