by Andrew Post
We came to an open stretch of road. People up ahead who were gathered around a market stall noticed me, noticed the Smock behind me, and promptly closed up shop and vamoosed. She didn’t give me any instructions, so I stopped at the intersection. The courthouse, where I’d just been to watch Clifford burn, was straight ahead. To the left, the waterfront; to the right, the hills leading up to downtown Duluth.
“Where to?”
“Do you really need those things to walk? We’re taking too long.”
“Yes, I do, actually.”
“What about the sockets? Do you still have them?”
“How do you know about that?”
Over my shoulder, the Smock pushed forward the tablet. On the screen was my book. No big surprise. “You and the high priestess were bonded. You said yourself you were given the ability to walk again as well as receiving her benefit of being socketed for harvesting and reconstructing.”
“Well, that’s over now.” Even my nose had gone back to normal. Reversion hadn’t exactly been a pleasant experience, but I was glad to be me again. Could’ve been worse. I could’ve boiled into what looked like scrambled eggs, like Thadius’s first attempts of making sentient cartoon characters. “Who are you?”
I started to turn around, but she shoved me before I could face her. “Keep walking.”
“Where? You haven’t said where we’re going.”
“Where’s the courthouse?”
“Straight ahead. Shouldn’t you know that? Aren’t you—?”
“Straight ahead it is, then.” A rough shove. “Get going.”
“Hey.”
“Go.”
“Fine.”
“You need to finish what you started, Cass.” Her voice, the cadence and softness of her voice was so like Mom. For a moment, I felt a knot rise in my chest. She’d read the book; she knew what Mom was like and was using it against me.
I turned around. “Listen here—”
She raised a hand. “Go.”
If I was being led to my death and there was no way around it, I might as well make it as unfun for everyone else as it was going to be for me. I took my time even when she shoved me again and again.
The courthouse came into view, its door surrounded by stately, if chipped, pillars and broken-out windows. Clifford’s body smoldered upon the platform, blackened to the point of unrecognizability. The crowd had dispersed, as well as all the other Smocks, save for the one bringing me back to this spot. I felt her hand on my shoulder before I could take the first step up the cement stairs.
“Wait.”
Over my shoulder, I saw a crowd of Smocks emerge from the various buildings at the intersection. Some stepped off the burned-out shell of a city bus. Another threw open the top of a Dumpster and gracelessly climbed out.
None of them looked quite right. They weren’t in step with each other, and their cloaks were ragged and dirty. One was trying to get its mask on right—even though it had no eyeholes; apparently there was a correct way to put it on—and worked to pack in some long hair pulling the mask down the rest of the way. Red hair.
“Okay,” Suzanne said right behind me. “Go ahead. Up and in.”
We entered the courthouse.
Another shove forward, and I went stumbling through the big wooden doors. I caught myself, braking against the marble floor with my crutches. The place was empty, save for one Smock at the front before the judge’s stand. The jury box was empty, as were all the seats for the nervous people who would wait for their cases. Sunlight shone through the windows along one side of the large, wood-paneled room. It reminded me of a church in a way.
The Smock at the head of the room lowered a hand from the side of its faceless head, ending some communication with someone after saying, “It was complete,” when I was shoved in.
“What is this?” demanded the Smock ahead—another Suzanne?
“Wait,” I said. “What the hell—?”
“This is her. The author. We finally have her,” the Suzanne behind me said. I was confused. I knew there was a chance there’d be multiple Suzanne Klines, just as there’d been multiple Thadiuses, but I thought there was a rule against putting too many in one spot. To reduce confusion? Yeah, I thought, sounds like a good idea.
Suzanne, the one ahead of me, came forward, pushed through the set of swinging half doors dividing the courtroom, to meet the rest of us at the other end. She reached up and peeled off her mask. She was smiling.
“Ha. So it is. And here I thought we’d have to stick around this versh a while longer to find you.” She grabbed my wrists, yanked my hands out to see my palms. I nearly fumbled over, but when she saw I didn’t have sockets anymore, she shoved my hands back as if I were carrying some easily commuted virus. I took my crutches up before I fell over.
She studied my face. “I read your book.”
“And did you like it?” I sneered.
“I like the fact that you sent it out before it was done. Would’ve been a serious shame for anyone out there who read the complete thing only to see it had a sad ending. The last scratchers caught and killed trying to pull a fast one on us. We still got the Betrayer, though. And we’ll find his versh twin as well: Thadius. But I will say, I was glad you didn’t end it with any deus ex machina. That always tends to ruin a good story when that happens.”
“So what now? You got me. You already sent out Smocks looking for the other Casseteras. Once you have all of us, what then? Job done?”
“We’re called the Regolatore, and no, once every trace of you has been expunged from every versh, our job will not be done. There’s the detail of the machines, or cauldrons, as you call them. Finding each of those will be the next task. It’s a fool’s errand, really. New vershes are being created all the time, branching off constantly. But only the most stalwart take on missions like these. Merely attempting it shows our devotion. And I’m proud to attempt, every day, to scrub out as many stains like you as I can.”
“If you read my book, then you know our story. Yours and mine. I got through to you once—”
“That priestess was weak. Her recompiling ridded her of that scrap of idiocy, thankfully. You can try to play as many songs for me as you like, scratcher. It doesn’t matter. My versh twin may have birthed you, may have birthed an army of you. It won’t have an effect this time. My faith is ironclad.”
“You’re evil. You shouldn’t be, but you are.”
She laughed. “How am I evil? That’s just a word the judged use to feel better about their own deeds, like somehow by some twist of fate they were in the right all along. There is no right and wrong. There are the strong, who can take control; and there are the weak, who can do nothing. The weak make the words, make the insults. You have nothing, Cassetera Robuck. Nothing but your little, empty, pointless words.”
“And with those words I wrote it down—what the Regolatore are really doing, what Thadius told me in the Mega Deluxo early on. The Regolatore do what they do just because they don’t want anyone else to do the same thing to them. Stopping others from punishing you by beating them to the punch and killing millions before they even have a chance to do anything wrong isn’t right; it’s even more wrong, if anything. Sure, the cauldrons probably never should’ve been invented, I’ll give you that, but doing all this just to prevent them from doing it to you is . . . terrible. Past terrible. Way past. There isn’t a word for it, what you assholes do.”
“And you believe him? You know, in another versh, he kills you. In another, he sides with the Betrayer and both of them turn on you cooperatively. How do you know that this, what’s happening right now, wasn’t the result of dozens of Clifford Thadius Cohens working across the vershes to shove you before me right now so they could make an escape?”
“Because I know. I know my Thadius, and that’s all I need.”
“You’re right. What’s here is here is here and what is now is now is now. There’s you and there’s me, the judge and the judged. The moment I make the call and sa
y you’ve been burned, I can leave this versh. All the servants of the Regolatore can. Left to be what it is . . . hollowed out, used up, but clean. So let’s get started. Go ahead and get on your knees.”
“No.”
“On your knees.” After a quick sweep of her leg, both of my crutches were knocked out from under me. I tried catching myself, but she’d moved so quickly I barely had time to put one hand up. My cheekbone made solid contact with the gritty marble.
She bent in front of me. “You may have come from my versh twin’s womb, but I know in my heart that it was an anomaly, that happening. I could never give birth to anything so . . . broken and misdirected. You might as well say something now, a final line. I’ll be sure to write it down and add it to your little book when we’re through,” she sneered.
One of the Smocks that had guided me in stepped forward. She reached up and removed her mask. Behind her, all the others did the same. Every one of them was . . . me. Two dozen Casseteras. Some young, some middle-aged. Some now revealing that under their stolen costumes of slate-gray gowns they were using strap-on exoskeleton legs to walk. Some didn’t require assistance to walk. All of them yanked off gloves, littering the floor with four dozen identical pairs of gloves—all of them slapping down around me, raining. The one that had found me on the waterfront stepped forward.
“Here’s a final line for you: Define deus ex machina, bitch.”
Track 41
(WHAT’S THE STORY) MORNING GLORY?
It’d be kind of impossible to reiterate everything that happened in that courtroom right then. Suzanne was surprised, to say the least. She tried her best to put up her hands to steal some chunks out of the army of Casseteras that had come to my rescue, but when she was in the crosshairs of forty-plus sockets already trained on her, it would’ve taken some direct intervention from whatever god the Regolatore dreamed up to justify their twisted crusade to keep her from getting hit.
Suzanne scrambled back, trying to find some cover. The Casseteras all spread out, fanning to every inch of the back of the courtroom. All of them fired: balls of broken glass, ignited gushes of gasoline, sharp pieces of metal as long as I am tall. The far end of the courtroom was hammered, and it was all so loud.
As soon as I got my crutches under me, I tried getting away, afraid that another me would get overzealous and accidentally cut my head off with a reconstructed circular saw blade or something.
Suzanne did her best to fight back, dodging behind the judge’s stand and producing her own firepower. She stuck to the shotgun-like blasts of metal shavings, the occasional salvo of white-hot liquefied metal. More than one Cassetera met her end, unfortunately. But for every hit Suzanne landed, she received three more. By the last few seconds of the fight—and it didn’t take long to get there—Suzanne was bloodied. Pieces of her face had been snagged off, she was missing a few fingers, and her left leg was peppered with several harvested holes the diameter of quarters.
The Cassetera who had pulled me from the fray remained crouched next to me until it’d reached this point. I can’t say she was the same one who’d found me on the dock preparing to leave, but I assumed she was. She resembled me more than the others did, a faint mix of both Suzanne and myself with some WTF-added years that’d given her a few gray hairs that didn’t quite jive with how young her voice was. I assumed she’d gone through the A like me, had lived on the rig and all that, had met Mosaic Face online, met Thadius, had lived with Clifford for that time. I just wondered where our stories split, why she was the one rescuing me and I wasn’t the one rescuing her. I assume she figured I was wondering this.
“One little moment,” she said. “You went left, and I went right.”
I put a crutch tip to the floor, pushed up. She helped me. We remained in the grand hall right outside the courtroom, the air cool here. The fighting was deafening, but with her so close to me, it was impossible not to hear. Plus—and it may sound self-centered, but—when you’re talking to yourself, you tend to listen better than you would to someone else.
“But when?” I asked. “What moment?” I wanted to be the one to save the day, the one to deliver that killer line about deus ex machina. Also, it would’ve been nice to be the one to hold her up and say to her—
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, “that’s my story, and this one’s yours.”
“But I didn’t get to save you. You made me finish what I started; you had to come save me.”
“You did save me,” she said. From her cloak, she produced the tablet. On the screen: The Siren House by Cassetera Robuck. “By doing this. My mom was dead, my dad had left, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I got online, found this, talked to Mosaic Face, met Thadius and . . . it’s because of you, I had a reason to just keep going.”
The fighting ended abruptly, its final trumpeting a prolonged shriek of agony and a sloppy thump of a body hitting the floor.
Out in the courtroom, “Uh, Cassetera?”
More than a few replied with “You’re going to need to be more specific.”
“This versh’s Cassetera?”
“Oh, I think she’s right out here.”
The remaining Casseteras, all dressed in their faux-Smock attire from the neck down, emerged into the hall. I’m only guessing there were twenty of them, but there may have been more. A few came out limping; one was nursing a harvest wound to her shoulder; another was holding a hand over a bleeding eye. They came around to where the Cassetera holding the tablet was holding me up. Together, unanimously and unspoken, they crowded around and, as one flood of redheaded women, helped move me into the courtroom.
Suzanne sat on the floor, her back to the judge’s stand, the brass bas-relief symbol for Minnesota above her head. She looked defeated, in all senses. She saw us coming up the main aisle, with me at the head. Her bloody face didn’t shift a bit as we approached. The Casseteras brought me ahead of the group, held me up so I could address Suzanne.
“A crowd-sourced victory. With yourself.” Suzanne tried laughing, but all she produced was a blood bubble. She coughed, pressed a hand to her ribs, pulled it away. The wound on her side—where a sizeable hunk had been harvested—bled freely. She covered it with a hand again. “What a clusterfuck this versh has proven to be.”
“Call,” I said. “Tell them—whoever you answer to—that it’s done. That this versh is clean now and should be left alone.”
Suzanne tried sitting up, and several Casseteras threw out their hands, ready to fire. I gestured for them to lower them. They each gave me unsure glances, faces mirroring my own, eyes as green as mine, as green as Mom’s, looking back at me.
“It’s all right,” I said. “Let her.”
Suzanne raised her hand to her temple, and—I assumed—established the telepathic link to her higher-ups, whatever versh they were in. I could tell by the looks on a few of the Casseteras’ faces around me that they could hear.
“There,” Suzanne said.
I looked to one of my versh twins, and she nodded.
Suzanne had done as she’d been told. It’d been so easy.
“But that’s just here,” Suzanne said. “One versh out of billions. Even this event now will cause more vershes to break off. More avenues the Regolatore will have to chase down. This will never be over.”
A few of the Casseteras interrupted one another, all trying to say the same thing. They exchanged awkward glances and nodded or said, “Sorry. Go ahead.”
One said, “We’ll take care of it. But this one’s off-limits. Understand?”
Suzanne looked at the wall of redheads surrounding me, then at me, tucked in the middle of them all. So many potential daughters she could’ve had, and did have in different lives. “I’m sure you will take care of it,” she said. “I’m sure you will.” She pulled her hand off her wound and let herself bleed.
All of us waited until she no longer blinked or moved. I’m sure they were all thinking the same thing I was. This all too closely matched when Mom died.
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But together, all the Casseteras . . . We patted each other’s backs, gave one another kisses on the forehead. Comforted the one to the right and left. Hands came out and rested on my shoulders, several. I patted them each as soon as they fell. She wasn’t Mom to any of us, but we’d fought for her—and with her—all the same.
I was holding Suzanne’s hand when the moment came. The song “Lightning Strikes” wasn’t playing, but it may as well have been. None of the other Casseteras sang it or hummed it, but so many minds thinking the same thing at the same time, I don’t know, made the song audible to me right then. Suzanne’s hand went limp, the fingers losing their warmth almost immediately. I let her go. We all let her go.
* * *
They helped me up. Together, we left, a mob of snuffling redheads.
Down the street, some clack-thumping, some squeaking with assisting robotic legs strapped to their bodies, Casseteras helping other Casseteras. We reached the dock, and they helped me into the boat.
They all donned their masks and, one by one, split off, whipped out versh hoppers, gave a final wave, and were gone.
The boat rocked under me, and I watched as each one became a rainbow popper. I couldn’t help but think back on unicorns colliding. The final Cassetera remained behind. I couldn’t be sure if it was the same who’d found me in the boat after Clifford had been burned, but I had a feeling. She watched with me as another incognito Cassetera popped out—flash—and then it was just me and her. She took a seat on the dock and let her legs dangle over the edge, kicking them forward and back. I watched her study her own limbs, lazily push forward and draw back in tandem.
“Apparently this doesn’t last,” she said.
I was getting kind of sick of her being able to read my mind like that, but it certainly cut down on spending time trying to articulate what I had to say.
“Sorry, no,” I said. “It’ll go back. You’ll be on crutches again.”
She shrugged. “Eh. I mean . . . You probably already know what I’m thinking because you already went through it.” She indicated my crutches piled into the boat with me. “That this is how I’m just supposed to be.”