Through the Doors of Oblivion

by Michael G. Williams

  Norton looked closely at Iria as they spoke, studying their face in the dim light of the city shining up at them. Finally, he spoke. “I believe you.” He sniffed once and repeated it, not quite surprised, but not quite not. “I believe you.”

  “Good.” Iria let out a breath. “Thank you for that.”

  Norton did not wait to ask his next question. “What am I?”

  It was so abrupt Iria took long seconds to process it, to turn the sounds into words and the words into an idea. “Huh?”

  “Am I a ghost? Some fleshless homunculus? An accretion of ideas? Am I like Frankenstein’s monster in Shelley’s novel? Or am I my own type and variety of thing?”

  Iria worked their jaw up and down for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” Norton said, a hand clapping Iria’s left shoulder in a friendly way. “I think I am something entirely new.”

  Iria smiled very faintly now, for the first time since they arrived, and Norton nodded at them to encourage more of it. “What do you mean?” they asked.

  Norton took his hand from Iria’s shoulder and, with it, gestured from left to right across the vast swath of San Francisco below them. “In a century and a half - and more! - of my city, there has only ever been one emperor.”

  Iria chuckled very faintly. “Well, that’s true.”

  “But it isn’t merely that.” As he spoke, the smile faded, and Norton grew more and more serious. He raised an index finger, delivering a history lesson from the lectern of The Fist. “Remaking myself, well, that was hardly novel in my time. People came here from the world over to remake themselves. Beggars with sacks of gold, investors taken for every penny they had, missionaries turned madam, ministers gone mad, murderers who started over and became respected, prospectors alternately rich and poor more often than they had a hot bath. Everyone who came here, Iria, came here to become something entirely new. For every story of my exploits, there are a thousand - ten thousand – tales of those who came here to shed the skin of their old lives like a snake against some desert rock. There was nowhere else in the world where that work of reinvention was so readily accomplished. It was what kept me here when…” Norton swallowed something hard, then went on. “When I realized who I had been was no longer available to me, and I had to think of something new - to become something new.” Norton looked out across the city, his eyes roving over its hills and valleys, its lights and sky, then back to Iria. The Emperor’s eyes were moist again with tears. “Iria, is that still possible here? Does San Francisco still have room in it for one more completely new thing? Because I will not lie to you, if we are eventually to be friends on equal footing: freedom is terrifying, and to become something new, to be something new…”

  Iria reached out their hand and put it on Norton’s shoulder this time, mirroring his gesture from before. “I know, Norton,” they said. “When you look at me,” and here they held the Emperor’s eye while shifting their face back and forth in the glow of the city, “What do you see?”

  Norton studied them for a few seconds and then said, somewhat carefully, “I confess I do not entirely know.”

  Iria smiled. “Neither do I,” they said, “And, most of the time, I have decided, that’s got to be okay: that in fact the answer to, ‘What and who am I?’ doesn’t have to be more than, ‘I am me.’ I’ve spent my whole life trying to be who I really am and simultaneously never being sure who that is, or how to describe myself to other people. So I came here and remade myself into something new because the options other people gave me were never right. I didn’t call myself Emperor or Empress, sure, but I changed my name. I changed my pronouns. I changed my appearance. I became who I am. A lot of people look at this version of me and they think they see a disguise, the same way I imagine people looked at your uniform and thought they saw a costume. What they see when they look at me, though, isn’t a disguise. It’s who I became when I removed the disguise they forced on me. I’m not wearing a mask. I took the mask off.” They smiled softly. “You talk like you’re the only person who ever came here and trashed everything about who you used to be, even as you tell me a laundry list of other people who did the same. That’s always been true here. Of course San Francisco has room in it for you. There’s still no better place on earth, I promise, to become who and what you really are. And that’s an area where I bet we have plenty to teach each other. You keep talking about your city. Well, Emperor, your San Francisco and my San Francisco are the same San Francisco no matter what it says on the calendar.” Iria paused, then, “So don’t be so dramatic. Or do, I guess, but only if that’s you.”

  Norton puffed out a long breath. “Thank you.” After a moment, he said it again. “Thank you.” Norton first slumped a little, then drew a breath and sat straighter than before.

  Iria cleared their throat. “You asked about this Biggy guy?”

  Norton’s eyes sparkled. “Yes! I owe him a great debt. Without him, the mission would have been a failure.”

  Iria arched an eyebrow. “Okay. Well, him breaking into Pioneer Hall didn’t make it into the record, which is good. But yeah, he was famous. In 1907 he was made Chief of Police so he could clean up the force. They were, like, super corrupt, and he was the biggest anti-corruption crusader around.” They smiled a little. “I think my favorite detail is that he authorized the police to lasso speeders.”

  Norton’s eyebrows went up. “‘Speeders?’”

  Iria made a little ah sound. “Oh, people driving too fast. Or riding their horse too fast. I mean, just picture it: you’re going too fast down the street, a cop tries to stop you, you don’t stop, so he friggin’ lassos you like something out of a western? I love it.” They smiled more widely this time. “But his first act as Chief of Police was to bust the old chief back down to street patrol to punish him for being on the take, which, I have to admit, was a pretty bad-ass move even if Biggy was a cop.”

  “You have an issue with the police in general, I take it?” Norton didn’t ask it rudely or in a challenging manner.

  “There are good ones, but…” Iria shrugged a little. “By and large, institutions of authority in general, and the cops in particular, are not great when dealing with the queer communities. They mostly get paid to preserve the status quo, and the status quo has people like Madge and me at a distinct disadvantage. And I think their work tends to foster an adversarial mindset. I mean, I get it, they do nothing but see people at their worst, day in, day out. But some of them signed up because they were authoritarian thugs in the first place. It’s not as simple as hating all cops, or loving all cops. That would be just as bad as the overgeneralizations people inflict on each other about anything else. A person in a police uniform is still a person, sure. But I do have some problems with the institution.” Iria studied their fingernails for a moment: painted purple and black, alternating, with little polka dots of the other color on each one. “It’s taken me a long time to reach the point of being able to say the reasonable thing like that, you know, out loud. I’m not sure I truly believe all of it yet - like, my knee-jerk reactions are still pretty judgmental - but I’m trying.”

  Norton considered it but didn’t press for more.

  “Anyway,” Iria said finally, “Yeah, so he did that. He was famous for it.”

  “I take it he was successful in reducing corruption?” Norton sounded pleased.

  “Sort of,” Iria said. “A year later he died.”

  Norton’s face went blank. “By what means?”

  Iria blanched at Norton. “Oh, wow. I’m sorry. He really became a friend to you back there, didn’t he?”

  Norton drew a breath. “The best are taken soonest,” he said, very stiff-upper-lip about it. “But he was not old. Was he killed in the course of his work?”

  “Excellent question.” Iria hesitated. “He fell off the back of a police boat and drowned in the Bay. It was 1908. A lot of people were starting to say he was corrupt, too, and the smart money was on him gett
ing fired. He fell off that boat before it could happen. A lot of people thought it suicide, but the people who knew him said that wouldn’t be, you know, a very him thing to do. It’s hard to say from this far removed, but I think he just… fell off.” Iria leaned closer for a moment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize this might be hard for you to hear.”

  Norton shifted on the outcropping, sitting a little straighter. “As I said,” he replied. “One must never apologize for speaking truth. Thank you, Iria. I am glad to know he was at least promoted and that his efforts were recognized.” Norton took his time saying anything else, then the rest tumbled out at once, a crowd of words trying to push each other out the door first. “I realize you have brought me here as a slave, and I know you did so with a degree of double-dealing in mind, but I thank you all the same. This is not ideal. It is not the afterlife I hoped awaited me. There is a part of me that will never forgive you for this, I suspect, but another part of me that knows harboring a grudge will effect no change. And in the end, if this is what must happen that I might again work to better my city, well…” Norton’s eyes were a little damp. “Noblesse oblige. My people need me. That is all that matters.”

  “If it helps,” Iria said, their hand still on Norton’s shoulder, “Biggy’s funeral was in a place that might mean something to you, too: Old St. Mary’s Cathedral, where you originally died. It’s where we summoned you back.”

  Norton chuckled once. Very quietly, he quoted the sign under the clock on that church: “Son, observe the time and fly from evil.” Then Norton turned to Iria, “I believe you owe me some of those Imperial treasury notes.”

  Iria flushed slightly pink. “Okay. So, we’re on?”

  “We are on,” Norton replied.

  “Two Norton dollars for a job well done,” they said. “Agreed?”

  “Three,” Norton countered.

  Iria shook their head. “Two. Trust me, some of the tasks we’ve got for you are going to seem like they’re worth a lot more than getting that flag. The flag was the easiest of the keys. I guarantee it.”

  Norton regarded Iria’s offer and then nodded. “Two, then.”

  The bargain struck, they sat in silence for another half hour, watching the lights and the city and the sky.

  November 30, 1908

  San Francisco Bay

  Chief of Police William J. Biggy stood on the back of Patrol, the uncreatively named police launch he was taking back to the city. He was in a good mood. He’d gone to Police Commissioner Keil’s home in Belvedere, across the Bay from San Francisco, to discuss the latest anguished goings-on. There’d been a lot of talk about corruption, and rumors Biggy had both hands in all the same cookie jars as the people he’d removed and replaced at every level of the Police Department. Biggy felt saturated in rumors. He’d long since grown tired of being implicated by every question put to him. Every mistake the police made got framed as being to someone’s benefit. Wags insisted every error was a conspiracy. The newspapers were all over Biggy. He’d gone to Keil to tender his resignation, but Keil talked him out of it. Biggy hadn’t anticipated that. He expected every member of the city’s administration - dirty, clean, or somewhere between - to be glad to see his back. If they were clean, Biggy’s constant hounding by the press made for an ongoing embarrassment or inconvenience. If the party in question were dirty, Biggy’s efforts against corruption presented a crisis. Keil argued with him for hours to secure Biggy’s promise to stay, and even now Biggy had doubts he could stick to it.

  Not that Biggy thought he had anything to be ashamed of, mind. Biggy could look back on the last two and a half years and be proud of what he accomplished. He didn’t question the value of that. Dealing with the public, on the other hand, had been a whole other kettle of fish. Chief of Police turned out to be a much more political job than he hoped. He did not fancy himself a politician, and he prayed he never would. Biggy wanted to lead. He wanted to cut through unofficial alliances and cartels of graft to put the city right again. The entangling circumstances of politics and corruption everywhere he turned made that harder and harder to do.

  Biggy presented, however, a noticeably pleasant demeanor when he boarded Patrol and told Officer Murphy to take him back across to San Francisco. The Bay’s cold water slapped and chopped, but the holidays were upon them. Soon it would be Christmas. There was much in the way of wholesome pleasure to enjoy. If they had a few quiet weeks, he might be able to get back out from under this cloud of contemptible speculation and do some real policing. That would be good. Maybe generate a positive headline or two, and get people thinking the right way again.

  Patrol passed Alcatraz Island in the dark of the night. The army had a base on Alcatraz where they kept prisoners of war, deserters, and other poor souls who happened to be both enlisted and of a criminal bent. It stood a grim and forbidding place: a fort perched atop a nearly barren rock jutting out of the Bay. It would be a lonely site to spend forever. Biggy could hear church bells ringing midnight across San Francisco, the sound carried on the always-blowing wind. He wondered if the prisoners could hear those same bells. Did the city, so close and so impossibly far away, whisper to them across the unforgiving waters?

  “You know,” Mammon said from Biggy’s side, “It gets turned into a federal penitentiary. The worst of the worst will go there. As the saying will eventually go, ‘If you break the rules, you go to prison. If you break the prison rules, you go to Alcatraz.’ Gangsters, bank robbers, kidnappers, murderers, you name it. They’ll knock down what’s there and build something nearly a town in its own right by the middle of the century.”

  Biggy felt cold all over his body, from the tips of his toes to the crown of his head. He and Officer Murphy had been alone aboard Patrol when they launched. Biggy preferred to keep his own company that night, after so much talking and such strong feeling. He stood at the back of the launch, leaned against the railing, letting the trip pass in as much solitude as Murphy and he could manage while both aboard. Mammon had, it seemed, simply come into being by Biggy’s side.

  Biggy felt abject terror flare up in his guts.

  Mammon leered at him, his posture casual, his green coat more muted in the starlight than when they last met in 1906. Biggy detected something more sinister in Mammon’s demeanor this time. The demon still bore the generic features of the friendly stranger who wants to sell you a broke-back mare and a cart with a bad axle, but something in the creature’s eyes frightened Biggy. The chief of police slid one hand closer to his belt, and to the flashlight he hid there every night. Biggy did not consider himself superstitious, but he also trusted his own experience. Biggy carried the tool Norton left behind, every night, on every occasion. He treasured it as a good luck charm. Ever since, he found himself occasionally meditating over it as one might find a monk at prayers before the crucifix. It had gotten him out of more scrapes than he could remember.

  “What do you want?” Biggy’s voice croaked hoarsely with surprise.

  “To give you a chance.” Mammon put a hand on Biggy’s shoulder and leaned close like a friend sharing a confidence. “I want us to work together, Biggy. You’ve got a lot of problems right now, I know, and most of them have to do with the greed of others. That happens to be my specialty. I can make those people forget you. I can make all the rumors go away, just like that.” The creature snapped its fingers, and Biggy saw a spark pass between them like a match striking. “Listen, I need an agent of my own. I’m up against some people who have decided to bring in outside contractors, and I need to staff up to oppose them. There’s just too much work for me to do on my own. I realize the odds are low you’ll say yes, but I can’t resist making the offer. You already know their agent, and I thought that might give you some valuable insights into how he operates.”

  Biggy took a slow, deep breath, then another, then looked Mammon in the eye. “I am a man of principle.”

  “And I’m a man of principal,” Mammon said with a grin and a chuckle.

  Biggy stared b
ack at it.

  “It’s a joke,” Mammon snapped. “A pun. You know, principal with an A-L rather than… Oh come on, would it kill you to laugh?”

  Biggy simply continued to stare. His features were frozen. He realized he was holding his breath.

  “Fine.” Mammon turned his own grin into a grimace without breaking stride. “A laugh wouldn’t kill you, but I will.” With the hand he had on Biggy’s shoulder, he pushed, very hard: harder than a man could push, harder than anyone could have expected. He pushed with the force of greed, and greed can move mountains.

  The seas were so rough, and the wind so strong, the pilot of the boat never even heard the splash.

  It would have been nice to change history, Mammon thought as he turned from the railing and started to walk toward the boat’s prow. Good help is so hard to find.

  1908 peeled away from Mammon’s vision and by the time he reached the front of the launch he was stepping back into the future.

  The pilot turned around at the sound of footsteps and saw, to his surprise, he was all alone.

  1915

  The Tower of Jewels rose 435 feet from base to tip, its surface covered in more than 100,000 pieces of cut glass and illuminated at night by 50 spotlights, gleaming so brightly it could hurt the eyes. It reflected dots of light the size of a silver dollar in hypnotic swirls as the jewels shifted in the wind, and the overall effect of the multicolored lights around it suggested the tower glowed from within. The Tower presided regally over the central grounds of the Panama-Pacific Exposition, the 1915 World’s Fair, with the Fountain of Energy before it and, around it, massive temporary exhibition halls crafted to look like the vast infrastructure of one of the classic cities of the ancient world. The city of San Francisco was technically hosting the Exposition to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal, but everyone knew its real purpose: to show the world a city reborn, like a phoenix, from the ashes of the earthquake and fires. A reborn San Francisco put out the welcome mat and threw open its doors, and the world was impressed.