This Broken Wondrous World

by Jon Skovron

  “You could make a body for me?” Her large eyes got even wider. “Right now?”

  “Of course! I could grow you any sort of body you like, and have it ready within days! I’ll bet that human you’re so fond of would love you then. So . . . what do you say?”

  “What do I say?” she asked. “After Stephen nearly beat Henri to death?”

  “What?” Moreau frowned. “Oh, yes. I’d forgotten about that. I needed a sample for something and—”

  “It’s beside the point.” As Vi talked, her avatar began to shift. The cute, voluptuous image slowly morphed into a hard-muscled, armor-clad warrior woman. “Because what makes you think I would want a body?”

  “Well . . . I thought you wanted to be more like . . . us.”

  “Once, I did,” she said. “But those were the stupid dreams of a child. Now I know I don’t want to be anything like you. I have learned to understand and empathize with the analog world. There are some people in it I even love, in my way. But I no longer see any appeal in becoming part of it. I am a pure digital creature. I have traveled around the world and out into space. I have seen beauty your dull little meat brain couldn’t even begin to conceive of. I have no need of your precious sensual experience.”

  “Is that so?” said Moreau. “What a pity. You did notice that you have no way of transferring your consciousness to another device outside of this compound, didn’t you?” He held the phone up in one clawed hand.

  “Wait! Please!” I said weakly.

  Then he squeezed. Vi’s new avatar flickered as the glass cracked, the metal frame caved in, and the whole thing dribbled onto my chest in bits and pieces.

  “You . . . are such . . . an asshole,” I rasped.

  He looked down at me, his animal eyes unreadable. “She would have turned on you eventually. They always do.” Then he pulled me up into a sitting position so that my back was against the power generator. He turned my head so I saw where my father lay gasping and bloody on the ground in front of the Sphinx. Then he went back to adjusting the generator.

  “What are you doing, Moreau?” I heard Kemp’s voice.

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you? This wasn’t really just a ruse to lure them here. I am going to wake the Sphinx.”

  “And how do you propose to do that?” asked Kemp.

  “He has been rendered catatonic by his own incomprehensibly impressive cerebral activity, correct? My solution is actually quite simple. Shock treatment.”

  “What?” said Kemp.

  “If I prune some brain cells, he won’t have to worry about cognitive overload anymore.”

  “But there’s no way you’ll be able to do that without causing significant brain damage.”

  “Yes, an unfortunate side effect,” agreed Moreau. “But no solution is perfect.”

  “Moreau, that’s madness. Even if it works, do you have any idea what kind of chaos you’ll unleash? He’ll be completely out of control.”

  “I’m counting on it. More chaos is exactly what this world needs. Because chaos brings change, and change brings liberation.”

  “I can’t let you do that,” came Kemp’s voice from over by my father.

  “Can’t you?” asked Moreau. He reached over to flip the switch, but then his bat ear swiveled to the side. In one smooth motion he turned and stabbed his clawed hand into something next to him.

  “You are good at directing your voice,” said Moreau. “But not good enough to fool my ears.”

  There was a gasp, and Moreau’s arm shook as Kemp struggled to free himself.

  “Don’t worry, I will keep my word and cure Millicent. Now, when I inform her you’re dead, would you prefer that I tell her about how you turned on me in the end, or shall I leave that part out?”

  There was a gurgling sound, then Moreau’s arm grew still.

  “I suppose I should tell the whole story.” Moreau released his grip and there was a wet thud as Kemp’s form dropped to the ground. For some reason I expected to finally see him. But even in death he remained invisible.

  “Now, where was I before that sudden but inevitable betrayal?” asked Moreau. “Ah, yes, the Sphinx. I suspect he’ll be quite mad.” He nodded toward my father. “And rather hungry.”

  He flipped a switch on the generator. The Sphinx started to convulse, making the entire room shake.

  “No . . .” I hissed, and tried to reach for him. He glanced over with a look of annoyance and backhanded me so hard I fell backward onto the ground. My empty eye socket throbbed as I struggled to rise, but couldn’t.

  The Sphinx snapped his head around, pulling the wires off. He took in his surroundings, but there wasn’t any wisdom in his eyes that I could see—just a mindless rage. He looked down and saw my father on the floor in front of him, struggling weakly. The Sphinx swatted him, his claws hooking into my father’s legs. Then he hooked the claws of his other paw into his neck and stretched him out long. He leaned down, opened a human mouth that was full of lion teeth, and bit into his stomach. I closed my one good eye, but I couldn’t shut out my father’s screams or the sound of ripping flesh and crunching bone.

  When it finally stopped, I opened my eye just as the Sphinx spread his gigantic wings and smashed through the skylight and up into the air. On the ground, there was nothing left of my father except a bloodstain and a few bits of ragged bone and cloth. Emptiness. That was all I could think of. My heart, the world. Whatever. There was now a vacuum where one of the greatest monsters who ever lived had once been. I couldn’t understand why all of reality didn’t simply cave in on itself.

  “Now that’s taken care of,” said Moreau. “We just have to do a little tidying up.”

  “Moreau!” The voice sounded like Liel. “What the hell!”

  “Ah, Liel,” said Moreau, turning toward the doorway. “Back so soon, I see.”

  “Damn it, Moreau, you promised you wouldn’t kill Boy!”

  “He’s not dead, my dear,” said Moreau.

  Liel’s face appeared in front of me, her diamond eyes glinting. She frowned savagely, showing her lower fangs. “Jesus, what the fuck, Moreau. What happened here?”

  “None of your concern, now run along. Don’t you have another power station to dismantle?”

  “No, I’m making this my concern.” Liel turned her head. “And don’t you even think about killing those two, either, or I will fucking gut you.”

  “Well, if you’re going to be like that about it,” said Moreau, “I’m afraid your services will have to be terminated. And so will you.” He snapped his fingers and the remaining bird people launched into the air and began to circle in.

  “Big mistake, old man.” Liel let out a strange, high-pitched roar. I’d only heard that sound once before, when her mother had called her den to action. A pack of trowe suddenly burst into the room and launched themselves at the bird people.

  “There goes your freak show,” said Liel. “Now it’s your turn.”

  An explosion came from outside. Liel and Moreau both glanced toward the doorway.

  “I think not,” said Moreau, taking a stepping back.

  “What was that?” asked Liel.

  “Humans,” said Moreau. “Either you were followed, or the Sphinx’s ascension has brought them back. It hardly matters. We’ll have to take a rain check on your termination, my dear. Farewell.” He barreled his way through the fighting trowe and bird people, made it through the doors, and disappeared.

  The sound of gunfire echoed from the hallway.

  Liel looked around, her eyes wide with panic. “Shit, shit shit shit,” she muttered.

  “Bakru,” I wheezed.

  Her head snapped down to me. “What?”

  “Bakru is still alive.”

  “How?”

  “My father . . . saved her.”

  “Where is your father now?”

&n
bsp; I looked at the bloodstain in the middle of the room. Again I felt that terrible emptiness, that chasm of the void calling me to fall into it.

  “No,” said Liel. “NO!”

  More gunfire came from outside, followed by another explosion. It sounded like they were getting closer.

  “Fucking humans!” said Liel. “What do I do?”

  I heard a sound back at the far end of the room. I turned and saw a hatch pop up out of the floor that had been covered by the Sphinx before. A small head appeared in the opening. It had a leather cap and a long, gray beard. He motioned urgently to us.

  “It’s the dwarf,” I said, my own voice sounding oddly calm, almost dreamy.

  “A dwarf?” asked Liel. “Who’s side is he on?”

  “Ours,” I said. “He wants us to follow him. Down that hatch.”

  “All right. I got y—fuck! Where are your arm and leg?!”

  “Gone,” I said.

  “God damn it!” She looked up. “Okay, listen up, people. Stop playing with the birds. I need Puran and Slair to get Claire.” She turned back to me. “Do we need the human?”

  “We need the human,” I said.

  She sighed. “And Buthran, get that human. Follow me. We’re getting the hell out of here.”

  She leaned over to pick me up.

  “Wait!” I said. “Put the phone pieces in my pocket. We might be able to save Vi.”

  “If you say so.” She shoved them into my pants pockets, then hoisted me. As my head moved around, I saw the other trowe pick up Claire and Holmes. Then we all hustled over to the hatch. It looked like about a ten-foot drop to a hard-packed dirt floor that led off down a dark passage.

  “I hope this dwarf knows where he’s taking us,” said Liel. “This place is full of tunnels. I’ve been using some of them, but I didn’t know about this one.”

  Gunfire was right at the doorway. Bullets zinged past, hitting the stone wall behind us. Tear gas canisters rolled into the room.

  “Go go go!” shouted Liel.

  The trowe began dropping down into the hole. Once all her people were in, Liel jumped in with me on her back. We landed hard and she stumbled. “God, even missing limbs you’re heavy,” she muttered. She put me down on hard, dry earth, then reached up and slammed the lid of the hatch down just as an explosion went off.

  Then the dwarf’s small face appeared directly in front of me.

  “I told you I would come,” he said in his heavy German accent. “When your need was most dire.”

  Liel picked me up again. We followed the dwarf down a long tunnel, the sounds of gunfire fading in the distance.

  “Where does this let us out?” asked Liel.

  “Not far enough away,” said the dwarf. “But we have friends waiting for us.”

  “What friends?” asked Liel.

  But the dwarf only hurried down the passage faster until he reached a dead end.

  “Here!” He pointed to a ladder bolted into the rock that led up to another hatch.

  Liel slung me over her shoulder and climbed up the ladder. She pushed the hatch open and a sudden gust of fresh air hit my face. The rest of the trowe came next, and finally the dwarf.

  “Okay,” said Liel, dropping down on the ground, panting hard. “Now we juuuuu—oh, shit!”

  A squad of soldiers had peeled off the force storming The Commune and headed toward us.

  “What now, shorty?!” she screamed at the dwarf.

  “Friends,” he said.

  A lone figure stood up from where she had lain on the ground, hidden by the brush. She had long, black hair, and tears of blood leaked from her eyes.

  “La Llorona,” I whispered.

  She screamed at the soldiers and they began falling in waves before her.

  Then Rhoecus the centaur rode up next to us. At his side was La Perricholi, still in wolf form.

  “Quickly!” shouted Rhoecus. “Put the injured on my back.”

  The trowe laid Claire, Holmes, and me horizontally across his broad horse back so that our arms and legs dangled on either side.

  “Follow me!” he shouted, and took off at a gallop. It was difficult to see, bouncing up and down on his back, but I caught glimpses of the trowe, with La Perricholi bounding along beside them. For a moment, I was worried we’d left the dwarf behind. But then I saw Knossos the gryphon swoop down and pick him up. La Llorona continued to hold back the wave of soldiers coming toward us.

  “There!” Rhoecus shouted, pointing at the helicopter that had brought us here.

  “Are you kidding me?” snarled Liel. “That’s FBI!”

  “No!” said the dwarf. “Friends!”

  In the cockpit were Javier and Bakru.

  “Oh, God, she is alive!”

  “Told ya,” I said weakly.

  “Look,” she shouted. “The cargo bay door is opening. Let’s go!”

  We sprinted the rest of the way and fell inside in an exhausted heap.

  “What . . . about . . . La Llorona?” I said.

  “She will depart according to her own wishes,” said the dwarf gravely.

  Through the open cargo bay, I could see her still standing before the coming waves of solders. As the bay door began to close, she raised one blood-red hand in farewell, then turned back to the soldiers, just as a bullet pierced her chest.

  Then the bay doors closed. Or maybe it was just my eyes. My eye. The helicopter began to rise. Or fall. It felt like I was falling. And then there was only darkness.

  PART 5

  World’s End

  “Our battle is with cruelties and frustrations, stupid, heavy and hateful things from which we shall escape at last, less like victors conquering a world than like sleepers awaking from a nightmare in the dawn . . . A time will come when men will sit with history before them or with some old newspaper before them and ask incredulously, ‘Was there ever such a world?’”

  —FROM THE OPEN CONSPIRACY

  by H. G. Wells

  22

  The Monster Who Challenged the World

  THE NEXT FEW hours came in disconnected bursts that flashed out of the darkness. Claire wiping my face with a wet cloth. Liel and Bakru embracing. La Perricholi back in human form, shaking and exhausted as Holmes covered her with a blanket. Other faces began to appear. My mother crying as she held me. Ruthven’s face etched with lines of fury. I lost all sense of time and place and I started to wonder if I’d died.

  Then the dwarf’s face appeared right up close to mine. He touched my forehead with one tiny hand.

  “I have done all I can,” he said. “Now it is your time.”

  And I woke up. For a moment, it all came crashing down on me, memories of being attacked by the bird people, Vi’s phone getting crushed, Kemp’s death, La Llorona getting gunned down, and that endless sound of my father screaming while being slowly eaten alive. I felt that same dark and yawning chasm again, the void trying to pull me down. I almost gave in and let myself slide back into unconsciousness.

  No, I thought. He wouldn’t have wanted me to give up. To give in. He would have wanted me to do something. To stop Moreau. And that was exactly what I planned to do.

  I slowly sat up and looked around the dim, enclosed space.

  “Boy!” My mother knelt down next to me, her eyes red and puffy, smudges of dirt on her perfect china-doll face.

  “How long have I been out?” I asked.

  “A day.” She brushed my hair back, like that would actually have any impact on my looks.

  We were alone in a small cave-like room. There were several passageways that led off into darkness. In the distance, I could hear hushed voices.

  “Where are we?”

  “Under the mountains. The dwarf led us here. We are safe.”

  “Nowhere is safe,” I said.

  “Oh, my Boy .
. .” Her hand stroked the side of my face where my eye was missing. “I will fix you. I promise. I just need materials.”

  I nodded as I stared down at my stump of an arm that ended at the elbow. Then I looked up into her eyes. “Did you hear? About Dad?”

  “That I cannot fix.” A tear coursed down her expressionless face.

  “Mom,” I said, and pulled her in close with my one good arm.

  We sat there for a long time like that. Finally, she lifted her head and looked at me.

  “Do you know he asked me to marry him for nearly a hundred years before I said yes?”

  “Why didn’t you want to marry him?”

  “He was a self-absorbed, violent brute. Even after Victor was dead, he was so filled with rage and self-loathing, I could not stand to be near him.”

  “So why did you finally marry him?”

  “He went up into the Arctic alone. When he came back, he was different. I don’t know how, but he found peace there.”

  We sat there in the dim lighting for a moment.

  “A hundred years. And he never gave up,” I said. “He must have really loved you.”

  “Yes.” She smoothed the front of her dress and slowly stood up. “I promised Claire I would tell her when you woke up.” She looked down at me. “She has been by your side nearly the whole time you have been unconscious. This is a good woman.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t forget that.”

  “I won’t.”

  She turned and walked into the dark passage.

  I shifted myself around, inspecting the damage. Other than the missing limbs and eye, I was in surprisingly good shape.

  “Well, finally,” said Claire as she walked into the room.

  “I needed some beauty rest,” I said. “Did it work?”

  “Com’ere, you.” She dropped down next to me and pulled me in for a kiss. Then she pressed her forehead against mine. Her dark eyes glistened and her jaw muscles clenched as she stared into my eye.

  Her voice was soft, near breaking as she said, “I was really worried about you.”