by Lee Bond
The light in the powerhouse was growing brighter, more and more of the hims responding to the presence of the man who’d imprisoned them, who’d turned them into batteries or worse, turned them into unthinking Suits of armor for an unkind, unfeeling machine mind; from fitful flickering to a brilliant blue rising of the dawn.
Chad pushed himself up off the ground. “I come ‘ere ‘opin’ you lot would forgive me, yeah? Like, accept that wot I did was shitty an’ awful an’ all that, but that I didn’t really ‘ave a choice in the matter, yeah? ‘e’s fucking King. Powers of a God, him. Back then, I were just really good at fightin’. When my mind broke and you all come to see wot were wot, ‘e were already there.”
The sapphire light continued to swell, burning away shadows in corners that’d been untouched for thousands of years.
“Cor blimey.” Chad said to himself. “Some of you as were nearly dead are risin’ up out of your naptime to take a gander at me, hey? Don’t blame you, don’t blame you.” he threw his hands into the air, almost in supplication. “Look, ‘ere it is, yeah? There’s a lad down there, just a wee sprog, really, but ‘e does know ‘ow to kick some arse. Me old Dad and the man who was makin’ me do as I done to you lot is on ‘is way to do for ‘im. Now, Master Nickels ‘as got some sort o’ grand plan for the whole of the Universe and I ain’t pretendin’ I care nor understand wot that’s really all about as it involves me not bein’ a real person and I fink that’s righteous bollocks in a silk handbag, but wot I do know is I would like to be in on the part where ‘e’s got ter kick me Da’s arse sideways before ‘e can get out. Only way that’s goin’ ter ‘appen is if we shut down most of the old Dome, hey? All them systems ‘e’s got runnin’ now, well, they won’t work wiv the entropy engines, now will they? Most everyfing will shut right down, givin’ our lad Nickels the chance ‘e needs to do for the man as forced me to do wot I did to you.”
Chad grinned slyly. “An’ that’s it, the rub right there. Hate me as much as might like, I ain’t never said I don’t deserve it. But I is bet it’s fair to say that you lot hate the old man more than you could ever hate me. So. ‘ow about it, lads. You want to get the band back togevver or wot?”
The sea of lights flickered and flashed, blue lightning under water. Round and round the strobing flares went, this way and that, fiercer to the left, more subdued to the right, then everything flipped; as Chad stood in the very center of the vast room, he was inexplicably stricken with the sensation that the lads in their bottles were talking with each other, and that he were looking at their argument.
“Will wonders never cease.” The ex-assassin pulled a cigarette out from behind an ear and lit up. Then he blinked. “Oh, which reminds me, hey? Got to get that proper tea recipe out o’ the ol’ logbook. Can’t go back to ‘avin’ that arse-and-sweat flavored water they is callin’ tea on the outside ever again.”
Chad started rummaging through the logbook, which –as First Brigadier- he had proper access to, in search of the aforementioned tea recipe while the lightshow argument raged around him.
A crack reached his ears. Loud, sharp, brittle. Followed by another. And another. Then too many for his skillset to count, on an on, crackcrackcrack. Chad spun this way and that, trying to spy one of the crystal tubes as it broke, to see if he could get a glimpse of an angry soul as it departed it’s long-term prison. But no matter which way he turned, crafty ears tuned to the particular sounds of thick crystal breaking, he caught sight of nowt. Just as the Arcadian realized he was standing right next to one of his Dad’s prisons, all sound went dead and he was cast into darkness save for the cherry bright tip of his nanoparticulate cigarette.
“Well, shit.” Chad took a long drag on his cigarette. “Guess I overplayed me hand. Won’t be the first time, but I reckon it might be me last time, hey? Well.” The Arcadian squared his shoulders, took another puff on his ciggy –as a prisoner was permitted before the firing squad got to do their thing- and waited. “Right then, lads. Time for your vengeance. Oh, if you could, be so kind as to do for The Dome’s meccynisms after you’re done wiv old Chad? Nickels … well, me pal Huey needs him. Right. Ah. There you is. Come on, lads, don’t be shy. Never let it be said that Chad Sikkmund never stood ‘is ground and took ‘is punishment like a man.”
The assembled Chad Sikkmunds, torn from millions and millions of iterations of previous versions of the Unreality, rose up from their hiding places and swarmed and swirled along the roof, cobalt blue orbs spitting tendrils of azure light across the smooth metal surface of the only world they’d ever known. They bounced and jounced like mindless flies for a brief moment, then seemed to suddenly lock in on Chad.
Then …
Then they swarmed. They rushed at Chad fast as they could, rushing over one another, tumbling this way and that, until they all slammed into the Arcadian’s chest and …
Chad opened their eyes. There were no recriminations, no shouts of traitor or fool or liar or coward. There was only understanding. They knew. They’d never once blamed the Alpha Chad for doing as he’d done.
“Oh this is like fucking Christmas.” Chad wiped a tear from their eyes. “You lot are the best. Wot the fuck … Christ ridin’ a bicycle, Welsh Me, you is one fucking tenacious cunt, in’t you?”
What now
“Now?” Chad grinned craftily. “Now, we is find Huey. He is need to know we is findin’ is boss, and that ‘is boss is doin’ orl right. Wot do we say, hey? Up for a little galactic adventurin’?”
Their response was immediate, and overwhelming. Chad doffed an imaginary hat to the hims, built themselves a nanotech door precisely the same as the one the Platinum King had let him build a hundred years ago –one capable of burrowing through The Dome’s defense mechs with no trouble- and stepped through with shoulders squared and head held high.
Before the doorway shut, they stuck their head back in.
“Good luck, Master N’Chalez,” they whispered, almost sadly, “you is need it. Arcade City’s in you now. Hope you do better than we did, and sooner, once you is outside again.”
25 … Wherein We’ll Catch the Conscience of the King. And then we kill him. Somehow.
King Barnabas Blake the One and Only opened his eyes, amazed and surprised at how refreshed and … relaxed he felt. It was as though a tremendous burden had been lifted from his shoulders, one he’d been carrying for so long that the gargantuan weight had settled into his very bones without him knowing, growing evermore but stealthily heavier down and down through the years. Traveling with Nickels, trying desperately to root Erg loose of the Dome’s systems, preparing for the end of everything, each one of those things had been thousand pound weights piled atop an already unthinkable weight, driving him further and further into enraged despair.
Now it was gone.
“Welladay.” Barnabas said to himself, stretching the kinks out of his arms, legs and back. “Must’ve fallen asleep or summat en route to deal with that scurrilous N’Chalez. Been runnin’ myself ragged these last few days, hey? Immortal king with endless power though I may be, guess I found my own limits. Not a man alive as wouldn’t need a bit of a nap after all I been through.”
And hadn’t he just been through the absolute worst time of his life? If he’d known that –as time grew shorter towards the end- the culmination of his plans would result in such madness and chaos, such sheer, unfettered and unkempt rage, distrust and deceit –not to mention one Garth N’Chalez- Barnabas reckoned he might’ve worked on another way to do things altogether.
The King ran a seamed hand through his wondrous mane of snow-white hair. “A month of sheer torture. Day in and day out with nowt but questions and stories, stories and questions. Him needing to know things, to dig into the history of Arcade City. Well, reckon I can’t lay too much fault on the lad for that, ‘specially as he is who he is and he come to do what he did, but them stories. Wilder still than anything Chad ever did whisper through the glass, and less sensible e’en than talking pigs or bigger-on-the-ins
ide boxes.”
Barnabas snorted. “Thought I’d gouge his eyes out with me thumbs I heard another one of them nonsensical Manbat tales.” Rolling his shoulders a few more times to get the old blood pumping proper-like, he sought to pull himself up. “Now, let’s us see, shall we, were we are at.”
“It’s Batman, asshole. And they aren’t nonsensical. The entire philosophy behind the guy is whether a good man can do bad things and still remain good. Also, freakin’ awesome gadgets. Weren’t you … oh. Right, I guess not. You weren’t listening because you were trying to come up with completely fucked up ways to kill me.”
Barnabas froze where he was, freshly invigorated blood turning to sluggish ice water in his veins. Mind turning furiously, the King tried to figure out what was going on. He was aboard Flying Monkey, was he not? On his way down to The Armory, eager to prevent N’Chalez from having any kind of palaver with his entombed Son, Chad Sikkmund?
Those memories held true. Davram’s Swan Song had crippled the particulate systems across the whole length of Arcade City, preventing dislocation and a great swathe of other Cloudborn abilities.
Long and long, that journey, with N’Chalez and … Agnethea. They’d come to Arcadia well earlier than he’d liked and he’d … panicked, was the only word. Yes. He’d panicked and –knowing what had befallen the Matrons and the rest of the city within a city- he’d given leave to the aged Platinum King trapped within the city walls, freeing it to prepare for the arrival of the outsider and the first of all Obsidian Golems. It’d seized that freedom with both hands.
“Almost like it were waitin’ for it.” Barnabas mused. He could feel N’Chalez somewhere out of eyeshot being amused, but summat weren’t right with his memories and before he even began to deal with the Kin’kithal –which he would, oh yes, he would indeed, and in such a final manner- his own brain needed to be put in order.
From there, the Platinum King had agreed to unleash the Menagerie upon N’Chalez, and all to slow the outsider down long enough for an unhappy King forced to wing his way back down to the earth astride his most prized possession.
“Only,” Barnabas pummeled his fraught mind, literally hammered at his forehead with a Kingly fist to shake loose those old treacle-thick thoughts, “that didn’t happen, did it? Summat there went haywire. Shut your gob, N’Chalez and continue on doin’ what you are doin’ or begin the fight well and true right here on the spot. You ain’t do for me as I lay asleep ‘ere now, which I can only assume means you got somethin’ to do or say afore you and I go to it. So shut your gob and let me get to where I need to be, hey?”
Garth’s mocking reply caused Barnabas to grind his teeth. “Not fun, is it, being the last in class to understand. Take your time, old man. I gotta … get set up.”
Barnabas shut his eyes and counted to twenty. He almost laughed at the defensive measure; it were a thing he’d done ages ago, long before he’d even volunteered to the Harmony Project.
It hadn’t worked then, weren’t working now. King Barnabas Blake the One and Only did his best to ignore whatever it was that Nickels was working on; whatever the self-appointed task was, it seemed to involve a lot of lifting, cursing, and half-assed singing of lyrics. None of which put a vexed King any good.
Freeing the Platinum King from the coercive restrictions set into it’s very existence had been necessary, hadn’t it?
Barnabas seemed to think so. Every fiber of his being felt it’d been the only way to prevent Garth’s untimely arrival at The Armory, not to mention the only conceivable way of freeing up enough resources for it to do for that damnable Golem.
“Should’ve worked.” Barnabas wrinkled his nose. Smoke? And fire? Ah yes. That part he remembered now, and with unmentionable clarity. He opened his eyes. “Reckon my Son is gone from these here parts, hey?”
Curiously, Barnabas wasn’t as upset with that as he thought he’d be. Gone for a hundred years, back for a month or so, then gone again. Weren’t it in the nature of children to do just that? Appear, disappear, come ‘round, go away? Back and forth through a parent’s life, full of stories or in desperate need of a handout, or sometimes even both? The King suspected this time would be the last time Chadsik al-Taryin nee Chad Sikkmund of Taryn would ever return home.
“Suppose so.” Garth shouted. “Most of The Dome is shut down. There’s like, just this one ginormous spotlight shining down on where Arcadia used to be.”
Where Arcadia used to be.
That’s right. The battle ‘twixt Agnethea and the Platinum King had gone awry somehow, and the machinations intended to force Nickels into wasting all kinds of time while the Golem got done for and a King flew to earth had failed miserably. The both of them, the two monarchs, one of flesh and one of metal, had neglected to consider the absolute depths a man like Garth N’Chalez would sink to in order to save a friend.
“You destroyed my most favorite thing.” Barnabas chided accusingly.
Fair Arcadia, the very first of the true and proper cities to sprout up ‘neath The Dome. A home made for them citizens of the new world as were the best and brightest, them who saw the wisdom in bowing to a then self-styled King. It weren’t too difficult to remember those earliest days, when almost the entire island had been swallowed by the giant metal cap. Oh, how the men and women and children and beasties about back then had panicked and tried everything within their power to break free, to break loose, or to carve even a single splinter from The Dome.
So many, so, so many had refused his power. Had denied the evidence that were as plain as day and as the noses on their miserable faces. But not all. Them with a strong sense of self-preservation had conned to the fact that there was no getting out, that the man in front of them as could make things appear and disappear with the twitch of a finger was the closest thing to a God they’d ever encounter in their miserable lives.
Arcadia had sprouted up overnight, and he’d moved all of them who saw wisdom in bowing to such a man who only wanted to be called King into the city, and from there, using their influence over the rest, King Barnabas Blake the One and Only had begun the arduous task of ruling over his people.
Except it, his wondrous city, the second thing he’d ever created using nowt more than his own imagination and need, were gone. As were all the men and women and children and e’en them beasties.
“Yeah, well,” Garth snapped, “you shat the bed so hard … I literally can’t even finish that metaphor. That’s how bad you fucked up.”
The King opened his eyes, surveyed the immaculately flat land that’d once been home to millions. He tried swiveling his head, to get a better lay of things, to see the devastation caused when his ship had crashed into The Armory and a fist grabbed at his heart. He couldn’t move!
“I should say this now before you get all spastic.” Garth’s figure hove into view. “And listen for all you’re worth. You are currently secured for your safety. Do you understand? The crash was very bad. You are hurt. There is a lot of flaming debris and all kinds of, like, stuff that can hurt you. I had to immobilize you to keep you from hurting yourself further. Get it? Your body is … healing. But you will do yourself a serious injury if you’re not careful.”
Barnabas ground his teeth. He spat and struggled and flexed his muscles. He reached for King’s Will and found nowt but dead space. Of course. If he were as injured as Nickels seemed to be implying –and it weren’t that difficult to believe, not really, which was more frustrating than anything- then all his Will-born powers would be devoted to bringing him back from this brink he tottered upon. “Damn you, N’Chalez, let me loose. Let me loose and we shall do this like we were ever meant to. Two powerful men, doing battle over the shattered remains of a once-beautiful city. Two juggernauts, each with plans for the Unreality as lay beyond the limits of a world-encompassing Dome. Remove these bonds and let’s have at it, hey? As we always wanted to, near on from the moment we laid proper eyes on each other.”
“Mmmm, I think … no.” Garth’s grinning, so
ot-streaked face reappeared in Barnabas’ very limited view. “We … yeah, we gotta talk.”
“How did you find out about my, ah … weakness, hey?” Barnabas grinned as he always did when he wanted to find out summat from someone who didn’t necessarily want to impart said information. A bit of a wry grin, it were, with a smidgeon of a twinkle to one eye as if to say ‘I’ll keep all you tell me a secret, hey, no need to keep it from me, we’re the best of friends, are we not?’
Garth narrowed his eyes thoughtfully at the King, a bit bemused. Always trying to get more than he deserved, was the fallen monarch. “That’s what we’ve got to talk about, Barnabas Blake. Or should I call you Watt? We’ve gotta talk about that, the nature of what you created, how it all went wrong, how I am awesome and am going to win, and, like, just general stuff like that.”
Barnabas struggled against his bonds again. Gods, he were fairly mounted to a bloody damn wall, weren’t he just. “Where are you getting all this information, sonny Jim? I hain’t never told no one ever once anything of what you just said, least of all my CyberPriestly moniker. Where came you by this information.”
Garth smiled as wide and as bright as he ever had since coming to Arcade City. The end was so fucking close now he could taste it. He held up two fingers and ticked them off, one for each word, savoring the crestfallen look spearing his current Number One Enemy right across the face. “User. Logs.”
“Well, shit.” Barnabas spat. It would be summat like that, hey?
***
Eyeing Barnabas as he dragged a large lump of something vaguely-table like over to where the King was … stowed … Garth continued on, “I’m glad you get it right away. And, not to put … Jeez … this thing is heavy, even with augment… whatever. Yeah, and how good do you feel about not having to wade through, like, a conversational hedge maze to get to that point, right? Like, you asked and I totally told you the answer. User logs. Simple. Plus, and this is even more important, Barnie, I’m not wasting my own time. I get that old mystic men chillin’ on mountain tops or in caves or whatever have got all the fucking time in the world, but us hero types…”