by David Beers
Which was an actual war. Theo didn't understand the truth, that they were at war, but not with The Named. Humans were about to go to war with each other. People on one side of the street would go against those from the other side. People in one city would try to attack another city. Confusion and madness. Mock was going to throw the world back a thousand years, before anyone even thought of The Genesis. He would give people back their base instincts, those that The Genesis had worked so long and hard to eradicate. That would sustain the fear.
When you couldn't trust your neighbor not to kill you, fear abounded.
* * *
Theo didn't know where to begin. He was given the same amount of direction as he had been given when he started working on the building, but then he had known what he was doing. He was trained to wire buildings, whether with explosives or lights, it didn't matter. He hadn't been trained to pass out pills as some kind of authority.
He stood in front of a mirror in his apartment, looking at the uniform. It was the same uniform worn a thousand years ago. How many people had put that thing on and walked down the street? How long did it take for The Genesis to replace the people that wore these suits, to replace them with applications that could do the job even more efficiently? Theo didn't know but he doubted it was very long. He thought the people that wore these uniforms, the peace sign practically shining off them, were quickly discarded.
"Doesn't matter. You're already wearing it," he said aloud.
Theo had never married until now. Now, he was tied to Mock for better or worse. Now, it was till death do us part.
Get moving, he thought and turned away from the mirror. There was a lot to do today. A lot to do this entire week. He walked to his couch and picked up the bag of pills, slinging it over his shoulder. Inside there were a thousand of them, Mock had said, and the lot needed to be given out by the end of today. Theo checked the clock embedded in the wall—six in the morning. He had eighteen hours to get rid of these things, and he really didn't have any idea how to do it. Not knowing how to start was no excuse not to start, though—certainly not for Mock.
* * *
They looked at him with respect and awe. Like he was some kind of brilliant shooting star streaking across the sky, only much closer than it should have been.
Theo walked out of the lobby of his building and into the street, already beginning to attract stares at the uniform, people not fully recognizing what it was, only noticing the black of it, the different style. The style of a thousand years ago. The style that was designed by humans and not applications.
He stepped out onto the sidewalk, people behind him following, keeping their distance, but obviously wanting to see what this strange man from their building was up to.
Theo stopped at the front of the building and smiled. The smile wasn't a fun one, wasn't happiness, but a cruel look that told of understanding. Sitting just to the side of his apartment building was a metal table, beautiful in its construction, shining as if it just rolled off an assembly line. To the left of it was a sign that floated a few inches off the ground, completely transparent but with black letters written across it. The Named's Anti-virus, in huge, bold letters.
Theo walked over and sat down at the chair behind the table, the whole thing so high that it put him at about seven feet when sitting down. He understood why though, because when people walked up to this desk, they would all have to look up at him. He would be a king and they his peasants. Sitting on the table was a scroll and on the opening screen was the newest letter from The Genesis.
A limited supply of anti-virus has been developed in order to combat the drugs that The Named is using. Today, a direct representative of The Genesis will be at...
And it clicked then, why all those people were in the lobby. They shouldn't have been. They should have been hiding or deserting this place, just like the rest of the city. These people weren't from his apartment complex; they were from the rest of the city. They weren't hanging out in the lobby; they were waiting for him, waiting for someone to come outside and sit down at this chair.
He watched as the first few people in the lobby drifted out of the building, staring at him, at his table, with questioning wonder in their eyes. Trust, though. Trust resided there as well.
Theo lifted the bag and placed it on the table, opening it up and then pulling out a handful of tiny white pills wrapped in a digital package. Anti-virus. Because The Named used a virus, apparently, to ensure that they could march people to the top of buildings and throw them off. Maybe it's what they used to drug the applications that guarded the building while The Named wired the whole thing to collapse. Who knew what they used the virus for, but these people here were completely certain it was bad. Something nefarious and something The Genesis would fix, if they just lined up here and took this pill from its representative.
That's what Theo was, The Genesis' representative. No—he was Mock's representative, and by representative, he meant tool. A delivery mechanism. A delivery mechanism for self-destruction, as far as Theo could tell.
"You have the anti-virus?" A woman asked, the first person to line up at his table.
He had something, that was for sure. Anti-virus or virus, what did it matter at this point? He didn't think that people who lined up outside at a table marked anti-virus would quibble too much about what he called it.
"Yes," he said, opening his palm. About ten pills, all wrapped in digital bags, sat there. She reached for one, delicately, and picked it up.
"Thank you," she said.
Theo didn't say anything else, but watched as she walked away, tearing the digital wrapper off and dry swallowing the pill. The wrapper disintegrated as it fell to the ground, disappearing completely before it ever touched the earth.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Did I tell you what would happen? Go ahead, you can say I told you. I'll wait.
Is it over yet? If so I missed the theory arriving.
Goodness. Can you at least recognize that it's working? That everything we planned is working?
Is it unfolding right now like you wanted? Yes. Is it all on the verge of collapsing into something we might not be able to control? Yes.
We can't control what is happening? Everything we've done this whole time has been controlled. The theory just talked to his father who basically told him to kill us. We've sent a maniac to kill those he cares most about, and soon Mock's plan is going to completely take off. Everything is going to work perfectly.
We're sending a maniac to kill those he loves? That's your plan and it's going to work perfectly? Mock's plan, and bless it because it's doing exactly as you want, isn't controllable. That's the point. When those pills start reprogramming, there isn't any controlling what happens anymore. Not without a lot of death at least. And it's going to grow, spread like a disease throughout every city. Are you prepared to go into every single city and kill every single person infected? Because if for any reason one thing in this mix doesn't work perfectly, that's exactly what we'll have to do. You'll be looking at a fifty percent survival rate.
Every single time our plan works, you point out the negative, you know that right?
Because you only point out the positive. Very soon you're going to have revolution sparking up in cities.
Not revolution against us, though. Revolution against The Named.
And what's the difference?
The difference is I want revolution. We want revolution. The theory won't compromise, so we're going to make him pick his side. That's what the revolution is going to do. It's not against us at all. It's for us. Because once he picks, we win. I know you see that.
I do, but I'm not sure you see what happens if he chooses wrong.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Manny wasn't exactly thrilled about the dead baby attached to his back. It saddened him, but he'd been through this before. Watching a second child die wasn't nearly as powerful as watching the first, although it did hurt. That's why he still carried Dustin Jr. on hi
s back instead of dropping him to the ground and continuing on. The child deserved a burial and Manny would give him one, he just didn't have time right now. He had somewhere to be, and so the boy would just hang out strapped to Manny's back.
The corpse was beginning to smell but nothing that Manny couldn't handle yet. Plus, it was his son; Manny wasn't going to be grossed out by a child from his own loins.
You sure about that, Manny? Sure that this child came from you?
Manny shoved the thought away. Things like that were happening more and more, trying to interrupt his happiness. He wasn't going to listen to them, wasn't going to entertain such ludicrous notions. Dustin Jr. was his child, plain and simple, and he would bury him. Then, he'd try to have a new one. But to walk across this desert, thinking that Dustin wasn't his natural born child was ridiculous.
Manny first went to the cavern, knowing from about a thousand yards away that the thing was uninhabited. When he arrived, Dustin weighing about fifteen pounds on his back, he went inside and searched every single corner he could find. They had left things, his friends from long ago. Cots. Clothing. No food or water though, that had all been snatched up and taken with them. Manny sat down on Caesar's bed and placed the bag containing his dead son at his feet. He thought for a long time about where they might have gone. Where would Jerry take them? He tried reaching out to Jerry, tried talking to him, but the connection had been severed on Jerry's end. There wasn't any way to talk to him, and Manny couldn't feel Caesar anywhere. No, Manny was alone in this desert, but he wasn't going to turn around. He'd come all this way to kill Jerry, and goddamnit, that's what he was going to do.
But where would the old man have gone? Where would he have taken them?
Manny walked outside, pacing a few hundred yards around the entrance, looking for any trail that might show which way they headed. Nothing. Jerry was too smart for that, he'd covered up his tracks.
The compound? Would he go back to that? No, Manny didn't think so. It was too dangerous, and the place was destroyed anyway.
And then he knew, as certain as he understood that Jerry had killed his wife and son. No compound. No cave. That old city. The one that Jerry used to talk about—they called it the city of sin when humanity controlled Earth. There wasn't any other place for them to run to out here. Everything was in the open or controlled by The Genesis. That city though, it was out there in the desert without a soul to walk by it. Out there with all the wiring and water pipes still in place. Out there untouched.
So Manny picked up his bag, full with a dead child, and started walking toward Las Vegas. The chip in his head calculated the route, letting him know how long it would take and how much water he needed.
And a thousand yards out from the city, he knew he had been right. It was night when he arrived, and he could see tiny lights burning inside the massive buildings. Manny looked on, a bit awed by what he saw. This was why he had fought so long beside Jerry. These buildings right here were the reason he so wanted The Genesis to die, so wanted humanity to just have one more chance. The Genesis created buildings that struck a real sense of admiration at the structural genius behind it. These buildings though, even from here, even after a thousand years of decay, still held a beauty that The Genesis could never match. The builders understood elegance in a way that computers couldn't understand.
But Jerry had fucked all that up. He'd taken this beauty, the idea that this beauty could exist again, and trashed it. He sold everyone, all their dreams and all they fought for. Now this city would never realize its potential again. Would never, ever know humanity again.
Jerry might try, for the next hour or so, to rebuild this place into his little mecca, but Manny would take care of all of that. Manny was going to make sure that there wasn't any mecca, because no one deserved it. Especially not The Named.
* * *
"Is this depression?" Caesar asked aloud, not wanting to use the chip.
"Is what depression?" Grace answered.
"What I'm feeling. You think it's, like, the actual clinical definition of it—what we used to make all those pills for?"
"I'm not sure humans are capable of feeling depressed anymore. I think that the serotonin levels have mostly been leveled out through the gene pool, and the people that can't level out are deemed Unnecessary."
They rode on the plane that would never be able to take Caesar to The Genesis' home. Caesar sat in a leather chair, one that had cracks and holes in it, unable to withstand the years of use that The Named had put it through. Maybe when he got to Vegas he would repair it, fix it up so that it looked nice. He would have a lot of time to do a lot of things, he realized now. His body wasn't going to break down anytime soon, and outside of loving Paige, what else did he have to do? So making sure that he rode in a comfortable plane seemed like a good idea.
"I just can't believe it," he said. "I can't believe it's over."
Grace didn't say anything back and he didn't really expect her to. The whole plane ride had been in silence besides this single moment. He didn't care what she said, really, because there wasn't any other word for what he felt. A depression that seemed to sink a bit deeper into him every hour, a depression slowly coming to show him that he had nothing left to live for. Paige? Was that enough? Was going back to this new town and trying to create a life there—until The Genesis showed up with more fire that rained from the sky—what he wanted to do? He cared for her, loved her even, but that wasn't what this had been about. This had been about him shutting down The Genesis or being killed by it. Jerry said it wasn't over until one of them died, and that hadn't happened yet.
His father told him to break everything, and now he was heading back to another compound to figure out how to grow crops in the desert. To herd sheep or some such shit.
"You're going to give up then?" Grace asked.
It took him a few seconds to respond, but he finally said, "What choice do I have?"
"I don't know. Maybe you don't have one. Or maybe you try to swim to that island. You're depressed because you want to be. Not because of what you heard inside that world. You're depressed because you're hopeless, not because reality has changed any."
"What do you mean?"
"What's different between right now and before you went into that digital space?"
"What I know," Caesar answered.
"And that's it. Reality hasn't changed. The Genesis still lived there the entire time you were plotting and acting and killing. So this depression, or self-pity—I don't really know which—is because of your mindset. Reality is the same. You say you can't get there and that this whole dream you had, stupid from the get-go, is over. So you wallow around in this depression, probably thinking about suicide. That's your go to, isn't it, Caesar? Just end everything when things get tough?"
"Fuck you," he said.
"I mean, it is, isn't it? When I turned in my little girl forever ago, I didn't think about self-destruction. I simply prepared for the next time it may happen. When you began talking crazy, I didn't just delete myself because I knew how it would end, I tried to stop you. When you've been determined to go down this path, which will most certainly lead to your own destruction, I haven't thrown myself on a funeral pyre. I go on regardless of what happens."
"What do you care, Grace? You think the whole thing is foolish, so why have this little fucking pick me up?"
"Because there's too much quit in you. There's too much sadness. You can't go after The Genesis, fine. It's probably for the best. But there's a lot more to do here. There's a whole group of people who need hope. There's a woman who loves you. There's Leon who has no one. There's me who has served you your whole life. And what if you can go? What if you say I'm not stopping, no matter what, instead of flying around in this goddamn plane talking about depression? I'm just tired of hearing it, I suppose."
Caesar looked in her direction, seeing only the wall.
His eyes were wide, and his mouth open, like someone might have just shoved a sharp object
into his back—pain sprouting everywhere but Caesar unable to say anything.
It wasn't a sharp object Caesar felt, though, it was Jerry screaming.
Chapter Thirty
The Life of Caesar Wells
by Leon Bastille
I’d never seen anything like Las Vegas before. I think it was made all the sweeter by the fact that we just walked through hell. The unforgiving sun always shining from above. Clouds weren't allowed to live in the desert. I understood that conceptually before that walk, but after it, I realized there must have been laws against clouds coming anywhere near the desert.
When we arrived in Vegas, I thought that I might have found a place to finally settle down. No more sleeping on rock floors. No more using candlelight when you want to move during the night. Here we could funnel the electricity to rooms. Here we could live at least somewhat like I had in the cities, before all this happened.
We lost five people on the trip, and when we arrived, the entire group collapsed inside one of the lobbies of those old casinos. There were some chairs still there, though they were breaking apart. People wouldn't have cared if they collapsed right under their weight though, such was their exhaustion. I didn't bother with any furniture; I took my shirt off and laid right on the tiled floor, letting my hot skin soak up the sweet coldness below it.
Jerry said nothing. He lay down next to me, his shirt off too, and closed his eyes.
We woke up sometime in the afternoon the next day, the heat inside the lobby growing as the sun marched across the sky. I was used to the soreness that came with waking; it was constant ever since we began this journey, and today would be no different. We started looking around, the whole group, searching for anything that might be useful, for anything that might give us a clue as to where to start with this place.
There was hope, I think, in all of us. Everyone except for Jerry. He was quiet, calm, too, but the rest of us were just so happy to be somewhere other than that endless oven. We thought that this place could be a home, that we could build off the structures still standing. Even Paige's spirits picked up, though I know Caesar consumed almost all of her thoughts. Where he was, what he was doing. Jerry said nothing about him, and when I asked, it was the usual cold stare. By that point, Jerry liked me, but that didn't mean he was going to treat me any differently. Whatever Jerry was, he was consistent.