Debris of Shadows_Book II_The Forgotten Cathedral

by Tony LaRocca

  “Give it to me,” he said in a voice that was deeper than before. He sucked in every breath as if it were his last. The purple puke on his chest and belly glowed brighter as his skin darkened to the color of soot. “It’s mine.”

  Holy penguin–fuck, said the tree, what the hell is the matter with you? Put on the goddamn crown!

  Brother Asher stepped over the body and ran towards her, his arms outstretched. Wisps of lilac smoke dribbled from the corners of his eyes. Tish stumbled away, and placed the crown on her head.

  The world turned a deep shade of red, and seemed to stop. No, not quite stop. The monk still lurched towards her, but he did so in slow motion, moving only a few inches a second.

  “Unidentified user,” said a man in a dull, nasal voice that echoed throughout the tunnel. He sounded like her mom’s GPS. “Unidentified user. Identifying… identifying… identifying. Please wait. Identifying.” It fell silent for a few seconds. “78.593 percent match: Cole, Leticia, citizen Q39B–p28. Is this information correct? Is this information correct? Is this information correct?”

  She opened her mouth to respond, but no sound came out. Her throat was full of thorns and thistle. Yes, she shouted from inside of her mind. Yes, that’s me.

  “Internal monologue input accepted. Identity confirmed.” There was a pause. “Corruption detected above 0.005 percent acceptable tolerance. Attempt to repair, or delete? Attempt to repair, or delete? Attempt to repair, or —”

  Tish swallowed. Repair.

  “Attempting to repair.” A warm tickle that felt like static electricity filled her throat. The sensation was not painful, just weird. She tried to resist the urge to gag, but failed. “Please stay still. Repairing 31.722 percent complete.”

  She tried to freeze, while Brother Asher continued his drawn–out advance. His exaggerated, staggering steps made it seem as if he were drunk. Anger, confusion, and pain had twisted his blackened face into a snarl. She had always been a little afraid of him, but had never imagined that he could be like this. His long, bony fingers curled into claws. She took a step back.

  “Error, error, error. Please stay still. Error. Process dropping from 68.001 percent to 57.245. Advise that you stay still to avoid further relapses.” The electric tickle swirled within her torso before flowing through her arms and legs. They felt numb with pins and needles, as if she had been sitting on them. She clenched her teeth as the monk took another step towards her. He was less than three feet away, and moving closer.

  An icy chill filled her feet from her toes to her ankles. It felt as if someone had dunked them in near–freezing water. The bitter coldness shot to the top of her head, and, after a few seconds, fell back down to her soles. Unable to control herself, she let out a cry. Then, as quickly as it had begun, the sensation stopped.

  “Object Cole, Leticia, repaired with a corruption error of 0.002 percent. This is within the allowable tolerance. Would you like to run the scan again?”

  “No,” she said aloud. She coughed, and ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth. It felt clean. Her voice sounded strange and unfamiliar, but she realized that it was truly hers. It was the one she had used all of her life, before Brother Asher’s changes. “No, don’t run it again.” She looked down at her perfect hands. Her eyes brimmed with tears. She blinked them away, and looked up to see Asher’s fingers inches from her scalp. With a yelp, she darted back towards the gray, hollowed–out hemisphere.

  “Enter command, or say ‘Menu.’”

  Hello, can you still hear me? asked the tree. If you can, say, “Menu.”

  Tish shrugged. “Menu.”

  “Tools, productivity, communications, or reference information?” the flanged voice asked in reply.

  Say, “Admin override, tango, three, whiskey, one, Lima, papa, four.”

  Tish repeated the words. Five chimes filled the air. “State password.”

  Oh shit. Um… The voice trailed off. Hang on just a second.

  “State password within ten seconds, or security protocols will be enacted. Lobotomization in T minus ten seconds. Ten, nine, eight…”

  Got it, said the tree. Now, repeat after me, one at a time. And if you want to keep your brains inside of your skull, don’t screw it up. She proceeded to read off a stream of letters and numbers. Tish repeated them, and the computer stopped its countdown. Finally, after what felt like the fiftieth character, the list came to an end.

  “Correct. Admin menu available. Enter command.”

  Exit.

  Tish took a deep breath. “Exit.”

  Everything before her eyes — Asher, the roots, flames, and cobblestones, even the air, with its smell of charred vegetation and rotten flesh — spun around her with an echoing whoosh. She felt as if a whirlpool were sucking her into the ground. I’m being flushed down a toilet, she thought as the sights, smells, and sounds of the tunnel swirled up and away from her, shrank to a pinpoint in the darkness, and winked out.

  Chapter 20

  Matthew tried to breathe, but his lungs refused to work. Despite the agony that spread throughout his chest, he knew that he did not really need oxygen. His heart did not even need to beat, for that matter. The nanomachines in his zhivoi–paint created the illusion of life, and the thing behind him was distorting that illusion. But the Sage of the Cathedral was just an illusion as well. Separating his shoulder would give him the power to affect and change it, but it refused to budge. This was Talya’s reality, and within its circuits, he was no longer Matthew Galbraith. She insisted that he was Malachi Jaeger, therefore —

  His eyes widened.

  She turned me into the general.

  He forced himself to concentrate past his pain. Why were his father’s muscles distended, turning his expression into that of a hateful clown? Why did their light shine through his skin? Why was the general so feared by both Biopures and other Cylebs?

  Because of the power coursing through his nerves, he thought. Because of his ability to commandeer anything electronic, and if he wished, to destroy it.

  He looked up at Brandon, the Ingegno. The Cyleb resembled a bloated, puffy, dried out infant, trapped within a hovering wheelchair, and unable to hold up his own swollen head without assistance. He had impersonated Matthew’s adopted grandfather before, so why wasn’t he using an avatar now? Why had he reverted to his true, crippled form?

  The answer came to him. Sculpting the reality of a Sage took energy. He should know more than anyone that it sapped away at the sculptor’s life. That was why he was five going on fifty.

  He studied the chair that floated beside him. He was sure that the general would find it easy to control, but how? He focused on its white–hot anti–grav propeller. He visualized the circuits inside, and imagined them failing. He pretended to send a surge of energy from his mind to melt their processors. He concentrated on the imaginary sensation of power with all of his strength.

  Nothing happened.

  He inwardly groaned in frustration. If he did have the general’s abilities, then he had no idea how to use them.

  He thought of his father, ignoring the convulsions within his heart. He had witnessed the ancient Cyleb’s cruelty firsthand. Perhaps he had not always been that way, if Talya’s rants were to be believed. Perhaps, as she had said, he had once tried to save NorMec and its Biopures. But his torture and years of solitude, imprisoned in melted rock, had turned him into a vindictive monster. He had destroyed the minds of the NorMec Regular Army soldiers who had infiltrated his Sage. He had ordered innocent Biopures put to death, because he had wanted the armory they had been using as a shelter. He had driven his old friend Colonel Rivers to suicide. He was an unforgiving man who let his uncontrollable anger spiral into acts of murderous rage.

  What was it like, to be such a hateful person?

  He continued to stare at Brandon’s chair, unable to close his eyes. Yes, he had been tortured, and yes, he had felt rage, but never because he had been betrayed by those he had loved. But how would that feel, to have
lava poured onto his skin, even if the raw energy of his body allowed him to survive? What was it like to be sealed in basalt, enduring almost twenty years of pain and isolation?

  He imagined resentment flowing through his soul like a raging, uncontrollable river. He imagined the utter loneliness of being locked inside of his own withered brain as his charred muscles fed upon themselves. Perhaps the general had been able to dine upon the cybernetic energies of the mutants that had swarmed upon the desert above. Maybe that was how he had survived. If his father had been able to do that for so many years, then surely he could overload one tiny processor.

  But what is his mind like? If I were General Jaeger, what would I feel?

  He would want to kill everyone who had betrayed him, he decided, especially if he had only tried to help them. No wonder his father had waged war upon NorMec Gov. upon his return. If he were Malachi, he would want to stomp on General Peters and all of the others until their ribs splintered through their lungs. He would want to clamp his emaciated fingers around their jaws, and rip —

  The outer shell of the chair zoomed at him, filling his vision. Within an instant, its smooth, reflective surface grew into a landscape of jagged valleys and mountains. It continued to expand until its alloy became a twisted lattice of molecules. The pinpoints of their gaps widened into gaping maws. His mind flew towards the nearest one, and fell inside. Then light bloomed in the darkness.

  He stood within a white room. Its illumination seemed to come from the walls themselves. He examined his glowing body. He still wore the guise of General Jaeger, but no longer felt any pain. He took a deep breath, and let it out in a sigh.

  “Took you long enough.”

  He turned around, and saw a boy with a mop of blond hair, wearing clothes as white as their surroundings. He guessed him to be about five or six years old. The child shrugged. “But I shouldn’t say that. I calculated that it would take you about half a second longer. I’m getting slow in my old age.”

  Matthew licked his leathery, distended lips. “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Older than you.” The boy took his hand, and led him to the center of the room. Piles of plastic bricks, some of them higher than his head, formed a circle. What the decor lacked in color, the small interlocking blocks made up for in droves. They were of every conceivable hue. Some were reflective, some were clear, and some were porous. The child sat, and grabbed handfuls of seemingly random pieces. His tiny fingers clicked them together, forming sculptures of varying heights. Matthew could see patterns in some of the shapes, while the structures of others seemed aimless. He picked one up.

  “Drop it,” said the boy in a hushed whisper, his eyes wide. “Don’t touch it!”

  Matthew resisted the urge to laugh. The look of terror on the kid’s cherubic face was real. He placed the sculpture back on the floor.

  “You don’t understand,” said the child. “If I make them good, they give me candy. If I don’t…” His voice trailed off, and he swallowed. “So, I make sure that they’re good.”

  Matthew cocked his head. “You’re Brandon, I assume?”

  “Yes, dummy, I’m Brandon. My brain’s plugged into my chair. I let you in through my data receiver. I could have kept you out, if I wanted. You can make probabilities collapse the right way, when you know how.” He chose one of the sculptures, and clicked a long, reflective brick into place. He threw the shape into the air. A beam of light from the ceiling raked across its surface, and it disappeared. A hum filled the room as a pile of chocolate materialized. The boy ran to it, and stuffed his face.

  “I don’t have to share,” he said, his mouth smeared and brown. “They’re mine.”

  “Okay,” said Matthew.

  Tears appeared in his eyes. “I don’t care if I’m mean, they’re mine.”

  “I never called you mean.”

  Brandon did not respond. He gobbled up the candy, and wiped his mouth with his white sleeve. His lips came clean, but his tunic was still pristine. He gave Matthew a guilty look as his cheeks turned red.

  “I can’t help it,” he said. He wiped his eyes.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” said Matthew.

  Brandon lowered his head. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “I’m so lonely. They get to be in the same room. Why am I alone?”

  “Jonathan and Talya?”

  Brandon nodded.

  Matthew pursed his lips. “What’s the probability that they put something inside of the candy?” he asked. “Something that you can’t live without.”

  Brandon shrugged. “One. I know they do. I can’t help it. It’s too late.”

  The glowing man held out his hand. “I’m Matthew.”

  “I know. There’s no way Malachi could be here. I say…” He screwed his face into a grimace of concentration. “There’s a 0.921 probability that you are an artificial intelligence, based on the embryo offspring of him and Cyleb Zeta. If your story is true, and there is a 0.843 probability that it is, then you saying that you are Benjamin Dvorkin’s grandson means that he implanted you into his daughter. The fact that Talya can’t permanently change your A.I. means that you are most likely a gestalt entity, probably composed of nanomachines. I’m going to assume that you died of the Burning, since that is the one disease Benjamin would not have been able to cure. I’m going to go one step further, and say that your rapid aging is caused by some sort of schism in your nanomachines’ entity, I just don’t have enough info to figure out why.”

  Matthew’s lips curled into a smile. “That’s impressive,” he said.

  The boy shrugged again, and clicked more blocks together, forming a dodecahedron. He turned it over, added a pentagonal pyramid to one of its sides, and sent it into the light. He gulped down his reward, and turned to another shape.

  “So,” said Matthew, “what do you want from me?”

  “Just someone to play with. Like I said, I’m all alone. They’re together, but it’s cold where I am.”

  Matthew raised an eyebrow. “Does that mean you’ll help me?”

  “Uh… no. I’ll get in trouble.” Brandon clicked a few more bricks together, and sifted through the pile on his right.

  Matthew picked up one of the plastic blocks. Greek mathematical symbols covered its surface. He handed it to Brandon. The boy shot him a withering look, as if he had just been given a piece of excrement. He tapped a circle on the floor with his foot. A small aperture swiveled open. He dropped the brick inside, and it disappeared with a flash of light.

  “Brandon, the citizens of NorMec are innocent. They don’t deserve to be destroyed.”

  “I know.” The circle in the floor whirled closed.

  Matthew put his hand underneath the boy’s chin. He pulled it up, and looked into his eyes. They were a dark hazel. “Isn’t that bad?”

  Brandon yanked his head away, and went back to work. He created a spiral that flowed from one color to the next, across all the hues of the rainbow. He tossed it into the light, and stuffed his mouth with chocolate. “Leave me alone,” he said.

  “I thought that you wanted me to play.”

  “That’s before I realized that you’re stupid. There’s no good, there’s no bad. Jonathan says that that stuff is for losers.”

  Matthew gave him a sheepish smile. “Hey,” he said, “I’m sorry. Honestly, I just want to play.”

  “No. You’re trying to trick me into doing something that could get me in trouble, so just go. I want you to leave. I let you in, I can kick you out.”

  “Oh, stop,” said Matthew. “You didn’t let me in, I did that on my own. You wanted me to come here, but now you’re scared.”

  The boy rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right, like I’d be scared of you. You’re not Malachi.”

  “Oh yeah?” asked Matthew. “If you’re not scared, then I dare you to tell me what he would do.”

  Brandon let out a scornful laugh. “Seriously, is that the best you can do? Your father has the guts to do whatever’s necessary, you don’t. If you were
Mal, we wouldn’t even be talking, you would have just broken my neck on sight. Even then, it wouldn’t work. Don’t you get it? I’m the one who’s outside, and all alone.”

  The child examined another sculpture, and built what looked like a DNA helix into its top. He gave it to the light, and another pile of chocolate materialized.

  Matthew grabbed him around the waist, and threw him across the room. The small boy flew through the air, collided against the far, pale wall, and fell to the floor. The glowing man then snatched up all of the candy, and tapped the circle. The disposal swiveled open.

  “No,” the boy shouted as he jumped to his feet. “No, they’re mine!”

  “Then do as I say.”

  Brandon shook. Tears trickled down his cheeks. “Please give them back. I’ll be good.”

  “You have to do what I say, first.”

  “No, you’ll make me do something bad. Then I’ll be punished.” Something opal and glittery oozed from his nostrils. He let out a tiny yelp, and tried to push it back in with his fingers. “You have to give them to me. Just one, please!”

  “Do what I tell you.”

  The thick, pearly, sparkling gel seeped out of Brandon’s right ear as well. He kept his left hand at his nose, and tended to it with his right. “Okay,” he whimpered, “anything!”

  Matthew’s body lay rigid upon his cot. He could see three views at once. They overlapped each other, but if he concentrated, he could focus on one at a time. In the first, he saw the ceiling of the lab, complete with its security camera and turret. In the second, he could see his glowing arm holding the pile of chocolate over the incinerator, while poor Brandon, one hand clamped over his ear as the other plugged his nostrils, obeyed his instructions.

  The third came from a camera mounted upon the hovering chair. He pushed the other two to the back of his mind, and focused on it. He could see a distorted image of himself, as if through a fish–eye lens. His perspective shifted, and trucked by his prone body as the chair steered around his bed, bringing Talya’s creature into view.