Cronix

by James Hider

  Patrick put a large plate in front of him. Eggs Benedict with spinach and crispy bacon, served on butter-soft brioches and liberally sprinkled with ground pepper and flakes of purple Himalayan rock salt. He ate ravenously, taking an occasionally sip from the sparkling mimosa the waiter served brought out to the terrace.

  “Your guide will be here around lunchtime. She sends her apologies. It seems she got held up with another client.” Patrick refilled his glass from a bottle of Krug and a jug of fresh-squeezed orange juice. “She said to keep these coming meantime, help you over the transition. She mentioned you might have had a rather tricky time of it.” He smiled understandingly, having no doubt seen countless war dead or plague victims stumble from the hotel’s luxury rooms.

  Oriente took a deep swig of the chilled wine and simply nodded, his mouth being too full of poached egg to speak. He noticed now that his right hand was shaking slightly. Must be the shock, he thought: the shock of being clubbed to death, seeing his sister dragged off by armed men and then waking up in paradise to be told it was all just a dream. Yet he could not shake off the horror of what his sister might still be going through, right now. He had to remind himself that she, in fact, was just another Eternal, and would very soon wake up and find herself at a similar terrace, with a cold drink, and a counselor to talk her through the experience, an experience that would become an interesting anecdote at the endless dinner parties of eternity.

  He finished his breakfast. After years of eating corn meal, the food was sublime. He smiled and raised his glass to the glittering horizon in a silent toast.

  Patrick returned bearing a silver tray with several letters on it. “There are some messages for you, Mr Oriente. Shall I put them on the table?” He thanked the waiter, curious to know who might know he was here. Just an hour ago he had been dying in battle in ancient Mesopotamia.

  The first message, written on headed paper, was a letter from the Decarnate Society, offering guidance and long-term counseling.

  The second was from Judge Richard Kirsten, expressing the hope that there were should be no hard feelings and offering to take him yachting somewhere called the Dragon Islands. “Stunning fauna and flora, with one of the broadest varieties of dinosaur species in all the inner worlds,” explained the judge, whom Oriente assumed to have been the old man who had sentenced him to live and die in Mesopotamia fourteen years ago.

  The third missive he picked up was in a thick, cream colored envelope with his name written in looping handwriting. As soon as he read it, he forgot all the other messages.

  “If you want to meet with Lola on Earth, please call me.”

  There was a number, but nothing more. Lola. A sudden guilt overtook him. The woman he'd fallen in love with, all but forgotten in the bizarre sweep of history. He tried to summon up the old feelings. So much had happened – Christ, he had been someone else for the past fourteen years – that it took him a minute to feel anything other than a mild sense of shame. No wonder the Eternals came across as so distant.

  Oriente went to the lobby, where a young maid was arranging some irises in a Chinese vase.

  “The phone? It’s over there, Mr Oriente,” she said, pointing to a wooden booth at the far end of the lounge. Oriente called the number and a woman’s voice greeted him before he could speak.

  “Mr Oriente. So glad you called. It gives me great faith in love.”

  “Who is this?” He frowned at the speaker in his hand.

  “My name is Dulath. I am the personal assistant of Mr Shustra.”

  The name rang a bell. Shustra, Shustra. He couldn’t place it.

  “I’m sorry, Mr…”

  “Shustra,” said the woman patiently. “Mr Tilloch Shustra.”

  “Tilloch? Ah, the Tamagochi twin? The one who invented Nirvana.”

  The woman laughed. “That’s the one, Mr Oriente. Mr Shustra would like to invite you to come visit on Five Islands. He’s been looking forwards to meeting you for a long time.”

  “Five Islands? Where is that?” Oriente pulled a cigarette from the packet and lit it in the booth.

  “It’s Mr Shustra’s private world. Quite stunning, I can assure you. He was concerned to invite you before the media descend on your hotel.”

  “The media?” Oriente peered through the booth's glass door, half expecting paparazzi to be descending already. But the lounge was empty, quite aside from the maid dusting the modishly worn leather couches.

  “Well, of course there's huge interest in your case, Mr Oriente. And I’m afraid Judge Karsten is quite the media whore. He’s friendly with any number of broadcast executives, and as a president of the court he was alerted of your release date.”

  Oriente did not like the sound of this one bit. He’d had quite enough of telling his story down on Earth, and had no wish to repeat the whole shebang up here. He accepted the Tamagochiite’s invitation there and then.

  “Great,” said the assistant. “I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes.”

  ***

  The woman arrived in a splendid black and grey Phantom coupe that scrunched over the gravel driveway and scattered white peacocks as it pulled up by the hotel's entrance. From the terrace, where he was sipping his fourth mimosa, Oriente watched the Tamagochiite’s assistant step elegantly out of the car.

  She was a handsome young woman with a gash of scarlet lipstick on her porcelain white face. A spaniel was sitting on the bench seat, scrutinizing the world with a dog’s intensity. The woman told it to stay, then walked over and shook his hand firmly.

  “Dulath Delaye,” she said. “But call me Dolly, please. A great pleasure Mr Oriente. Shall we go? Do you have any baggage?”

  “Just this traveling bag,” he said. “But I should settle my bill…”

  “Already taken care of.” She waved at Patrick the waiter, who came over and wished Oriente a pleasant journey.

  “If you fancy another drink, there’s a minibar in the car.”

  “I've probably had enough,” said Oriente, not sure if his dizziness was the drinks or the lingering effect of dying in battle just a few hours earlier. Hoping his speech wasn’t already fuzzy, he complimented the woman on her wheels.

  “I got a Rolls especially for you. Thought it might make you feel at home.”

  He was puzzled. “Why would a 1935 Rolls Royce make me feel at home?”

  “Uh…. I just figured it might remind you of, you know, Earth? Back when you were on it.”

  “I was there a long time after these beasts had gone out of production,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Guess I did my homework wrong, I thought it was from your historical period. Same century, more or less?”

  “Miss Delaye, I’m guessing we were both on Earth around the same time. I was born – if you can call it that -- just a couple of decades before the Exodus.”

  She turned on the ignition. “Dolly,” she corrected him. And I never was on Earth.”

  Oriente was surprised. “What do you…wait. Are you a…”

  She turned and smiled, a beautifully disarming smile. “Tilloch Shustra is my grandfather, in human terms. I changed my name when I got married. To an Eternal. I’m a Tamagochiite too. But the dog is real, as is my husband. We got him from Earth too. Boston.”

  “You uploaded your dog? I didn't know that was possible.”

  “Animal consciousness was a pet hobby of my great uncle Pegomas,” she said. She floored the gas and the car roared along the drive and out on to a country lane. Oriente gripped his seat, though he knew, rationally, nothing could hurt him now. She noticed his nervousness and nodded.

  “Hold on tight, Mr Oriente. We're going over a cliff.”

  “What ...” He was about to say more she swung the steering wheel sharp left and the Rolls Royce veered off the road, over a grass verge and off into the abyss. Oriente's words vanished into a halting yell which made his hostess grin with childish pleasure. The car simply floated up, into the air.

  “I know, I'm sorry,”
she said. “Cheap trick we play on first-timers. There's just so few of you left now, I couldn't resist.”

  Still breathless, Oriente peered over the side of the car. The lake was receding fast, the sailboats like puffs of air on the blue. The car was flying upwards, towards the distant mountains.

  “We headed to the hills?” he said. She shook her head and pointed at a distant cloudbank, fluffy and alluring on the horizon.

  “That's the gateway to the Five Islands,” she said. “We'll have to pull the roof up, though, the clouds get a little wet.”

  The cloud enveloped them in wispy white cover, then closed around them like a wall. White turned to solid grey and the sky around them grew dark, almost solid. It was impossible to tell how fast they were going, but Oriente was sure they had slowed down. He started in his seat when a large silver fish swam across the windscreen.

  “What the hell? When did we enter the sea?”

  “The cloudbank congeals at a certain height into water,” said Dolly. “We'll break the surface in about ten minutes.”

  As promised, the car emerged on to the surface of a rolling ocean a few minutes later. Dolly flicked the wipers on and lowered the roof: a fresh sea breeze whipped Oriente's hair, seagulls screeched overhead. They were floating in a channel, on either side of which rose a cliff face towering a thousand feet or more. The cliff edge to the left was fringed with tropical trees and jungle creepers. In the distance, mountains glowered blue in the distance.

  Dolly followed his gaze.

  “That's Island Two,” she said, steering the car-boat in the direction of the other cliff face. “Don't want to be going there.”

  “Why not?” said Oriente. The car was in the lee of the huge cliff now, and he could make out a jetty among the rocks.

  “Because Island Two is full of some of the most dangerous criminals in history.” She looked round to register his surprise, and was gratified by what she saw. “You see, in the chaos of the Exodus, any number of evil people managed to slip through the gates of eternity. Warlords, mass murderers, terrorists, drug barons. Politicians,” she grinned. “People who had caused massive suffering back on Earth. They changed their identities and created new lives for themselves up here in heaven, often indulging their nasty vices in their own private worlds, since a lot of them had amassed a great deal of capital. It’s one of Tilloch’s hobbies to hunt them down and bring them here, to his 'nature reserve' on Island Two, at least for one life cycle. He’s quite the moral crusader, in his own weird way.”

  “And do what with them?”

  “Oh, dispense a little retroactive justice,” she said. They were pulling up to the landing at the base of the cliff, and Oriente could see a tunnel mouth open behind it.

  “Sounds brutal.” Oriente said. “Not to mention illegal.”

  “Yes to both.” Dolly pulled up by the wooden jetty and they leapt out. A wizened tree was growing out of a split rock at the foot of the cliff, and on a low branch overhanging the surging waves, a grey-furred ape gnawed an orange fruit.

  “But then, the criminals would have trouble complaining to the authorities afterwards without unmasking themselves, so they generally don’t. And while they are here, Tilloch has come up with a fiendishly clever device to make them pay for their sins.”

  She explained as she led him up worn stone steps to the tunnel entrance that her grandfather used a refinement of consciousness-blocking, the family stock in trade, to allow the criminals to believe they were in fact still on Earth, their old mortal selves, somehow abducted by an all-powerful organization and left on a rugged, jungly island to survive as best they could. Often, they were told they were being filmed and broadcast live to a global broadcast.

  “A kind of reality show-cum-rough justice,” was how she put it. “Makes them even more self-conscious, that their peers might somehow be watching. Ultimately harmless, though.”

  Inside the entrance of the tunnel, a brass elevator door slid open. They stepped in, and Dolly pressed the top button.

  The elevator opened on to a broad stone rampart, the parapet of a ramshackle Spanish fort overlooking the gulf between the two islands. Oriente looked down at Island One: a neat Arcadia of meadows grazed by deer, placid lakes and shady groves. A Greek temple peeked out above a cypress grove on top of a distant knoll.

  Below the parapet where they stood, a wooden drawbridge crossed the narrow abyss to Island Two. The bridge was up, and the sea churned far below. On the far side was a clearing, traversed by a muddy trail that led off into thick jungle. Rising above the green canopy, Oriente saw a jagged mountain wreathed in smoky clouds. He had an odd feeling he had seen this place somewhere before.

  “A lot of people sense that,” said Dolly, leaning out over the parapet. “That's because Tilloch modeled it on Skull Island from the original King Kong movie. And it has its dinosaurs and monsters, too. There’s even a Kong out there somewhere, though I haven’t seen him for a while. I don’t think he likes dictators and war criminals much.”

  “Jesus.” Oriente scanned the forest for any sign of life, but could only see a flock of parrots skimming the treetops. “And who are the criminals out there?”

  “It varies,” she said. “Depending on who we can find. But we’ve had a variety. Some of them, the really bad ones, have been brought here several times, just for good measure. There was Gregor Suarez, the most infamous Muerte terrorist who disabled the soul poles at the final Dover Lemming festival. Thousands of people died. And then there was President Bush and his entire war cabinet” Tilloch released them at the same times as the surviving Al Qaeda leadership…”

  A man's voice interrupted her. Oriente span round to see a slender young man with blond hair and pale skin, a slightly Asiatic cast to his features. Not beautiful, exactly, but there was something utterly entrancing about his bearing, a quiet collection of subtle forces.

  “Mr Oriente,” he stepped forward, nimble as an acrobat, hand outstretched. “Such an honor to meet you. I am Tilloch Shustra. Welcome to Five Islands.”

  Oriente shook his hand. For a moment they stared into each other’s eyes, and Oriente felt like his soul was being weighed.

  “I see Dolly’s been giving you the tour,” he said. “I do hope you’ll be comfortable here.”

  “As long as I’m staying on this island,” said Oriente, trying to break the snake-charmer hold of the Tamagochiite’s eyes. Tilloch smiled

  “Don’t worry about that. We are all friends here.” He had a resonant, though not deep voice.

  “Although if you like, I can give you an air tour to see some of the more notorious residents of Skull Island.”

  “Why did you put the island here? Right next to your own private paradise?”

  “Ah,” said Tilloch. “A philosophical experiment. How can you measure heaven if there isn’t a little frisson of hell to add some spice? You enhance the positive by proximity to the negative. You feel safer here, knowing there are monsters and killers just over there, unable to cross the narrow chasm. Our guests in the nature reserve sometimes come to the bridge here and shout across the abyss. Beg to get out, rant and rage, fire an arrow at me if I’m out taking the air on the walls. I saw Joseph Kony out there just last week.”

  He seemed to be addressing Dolly by this point, like a bird-watching expert sharing his latest tropical sightings. The young woman raised her eyebrows. “Again? What is this, his fourth time?”

  “Joseph Kony?” Oriente repeated. “I know that name…”

  “He was the head of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, kidnapped thousands of children and turned them into his own personal soldiers to fight for the holy spirit. Used them to mutilate, rape and kill their own families.” Tilloch’s voice was matter of fact. “He’s been back a few times now. And I doubt this will be his last visit. Though for him, each one feels like the first time.”

  He smiled apologetically, as though he was forgetting his duties as a host. “But please, enough of that for now, Mr Oriente. May I
offer you some refreshment?”

  He led the way to a large, airy room that overlooked the parkland of Tilloch’s private island. Dolly uncorked a bottle of red, and Oriente could barely suppress a moan of pleasure as he tasted it. His host nodded in satisfaction.

  “Another little hobby of mine. I have been searching for the perfect flavors of wines and foods for years, replicating and improving upon what was indigenous to Earth. Of course, never having been there myself, I am told by Eternal friends that I have a palette less constrained by the memory of the old flavors than they do. But I of course cannot judge.”

  “You’ve never been to Earth?” Oriente accepted the tray of canapés his host offered, and again gasped with almost embarrassing pleasure at the subtle infusion of flavors, hints of infinite possibilities, that crept across his palate. Tilloch once again smiled with indulgent pride.

  “Feel free to get down on all fours and howl like a dog,” he said. “I believe in freedom of expression here. No standing on ceremony.”

  He gave a charming smile. “And in answer to your query, no, I have never been to Earth. Pegomas went there once, and hated it. Dingy, was how he described it. Didn’t like the taste of oxygen either, which I'd never really thought about, and he absolutely loathed the smell of his own fleshy body. He suffers from a condition that is a kind of inverse to your own fear of coming to the Orbiters. A squeamishness about flesh, of being a mass of tubes and oozing waste products. Many Tamagochiites suffer from it. Even some humans, now they’ve been away so long. Have you ever read de Vitulan? He’s an excellent poet of ours who's written extensively about such feelings.”

  Oriente shook his head, no: he had never even realized there were such things as Tamagochiite poets. The only ones he'd ever really heard of were the unfortunate children that Nurse Shareen had been caught peddling to criminal gangs back on Earth.

  Oriente could have happily sat there eating and drinking all night, listening to his host’s soothing voice and not wondering about the whys and wherefores of what had happened to him. But he knew he had to resist that temptation.