The Complete Karma Trilogy

by Jude Fawley

  “Jealousy? No. It’s something else. I mean, I guess we’ll just see when we get there. We’ll either find something, or we won’t.”

  “Very true,” Marcus said. “I’m very interested to see which it will be.”

  They stood at the front door of Charles’ mansion, and Eric had just rung. They waited, somewhat tensely, for a response. After two minutes, Eric said to the others, “He’s in there. I can see him on my Karma Map. We rang the doorbell, and he went to the bathroom. Make any sense to you guys? If he takes any longer, I say we just break in.”

  Only a second after Eric had finished speaking, the door opened and Charles was standing behind it, fairly worn looking but still handsome. “Can I help you?” he asked, a little out of breath.

  “We’re here to inspect the place,” Eric said with authority. “And I’ll be asking you a few questions, if you’ll show me around.”

  “Naturally. Please, do come in. And I know it’s a quaint tradition, but if you could leave your shoes by the door, I would appreciate it,” he said as he backed up, and opened the door wider to let them in. Everyone but Eric took their shoes off. Will was embarrassed by his metallic feet, which looked so conspicuous among the rest. While they were all still at the entrance, Eric whispered into Will’s ear, “Check the bathroom. Thoroughly. There’s a reason he went in there first. Ask him where it is.”

  “Mr. Darcy,” Will started, after Eric had backed away from him. “If you could point me in the direction of the bathroom, please?”

  “It’s right down that hall, to your left. You won’t be able to miss it.”

  “And take me to the master bedroom, or wherever it is you sleep,” Eric said, when Will had finished.

  “Oh, you’re the man from before, aren’t you? That I met in the City Park. I just recognized you. Pleasure to see you again. If you’re offering a position again, now isn’t the best time.”

  “That’s not why we’re here. The master bedroom.”

  “My mistake. Right this way.”

  While they walked down the halls and up the stairs, past all of the tapestries and portraits hanging on the walls, Eric had his Karma Map out, and was inspecting it carefully. Finally Charles stopped in front of a door, and opened it for them.

  “Here you have it. Be my guest.”

  “This isn’t your bedroom,” Eric said, before even looking into it.

  “What on earth does that mean?” Charles asked, genuinely confused.

  “It’s not a Privacy Room.”

  “Do I have to sleep in it to convince you? Or what? You can stay around for that if you want to, and I’ll try. But I don’t sleep, and I don’t have much need for a bedroom, so I didn’t even bother having one installed. The only Privacy Room is the bathroom downstairs that your young friend is using.”

  “And where does a rich man like you take the ladies when they come over, then?” Eric continued.

  “If you mean what I think you mean, I’m celibate, and there’s none of that.”

  “Celibate? Celibate?”

  “Am I not answering your questions properly? I’m sorry, but once again I’ve been sort of caught off guard by your rudeness, and am having a hard time adjusting.”

  “Can you take us to the kitchen?”

  “Right this way.”

  Downstairs, Will was working his way methodically through the bathroom. There was still no mirror above the sink, just like he’d seen it on his Map. He thought he would start there, since it was the most conspicuous. He felt around all of the edges, and rapped his fist against the walls to see if they sounded hollow. He turned all of the knobs on and off on the sink and in the shower, and the light switches on and off. He accidentally broke one of the handles off of the sink, a problem he’d been having ever since he had started taking the steroids prescribed to him by the police. The new strength in his hands, and in his body, seemed excessive. He laid the broken handle on the counter. Then he flushed the toilet and took the porcelain top off of it.

  “How ancient is this toilet?” he asked himself. He had never seen anything like it. And the floor was tile, which he had never seen in a bathroom before either. He picked up the rug off the ground, to see what was under it.

  The Privacy Room, the small triangles in the corner, seemed normal to him as well. When he thought he had tried everything, he left and rejoined the group, which was by then in the kitchen.

  Eric was still rapidly asking questions. “Did you have the place inspected and certified, when you moved in?”

  “Surely you have the paperwork for that yourself. It was one of your very own officers that looked the place over, and installed the Privacy Room in the bathroom for me. So I don’t know why you’re asking.”

  “If you say so,” Eric responded. He then walked up to the large window on the far side of the kitchen, which overlooked an expansive open field, with trees in the distance, the likes of which were unseen in the city.

  “How much of that is yours.”

  “All of it, I think.”

  “Why haven’t you ever gone out there?”

  “You keep on saying things that I honestly don’t understand. How would you know that I’ve never gone out there? Does Karma keep track of that kind of thing?”

  Eric showed him the screen of his Karma Map. “These are all places that you’ve been, around this house. And you’ve never gone out there. Apparently no one has, ever since Karma started keeping track. Now why is that?”

  “You can really do that? That’s amazing. I’ve never seen that. I suppose I just haven’t felt like going out there. But surely that isn’t a crime, like you’re making it sound.”

  “You take a one hour subway all the way into New York City just to sit in your little City Park, for your ‘nature,’ but you don’t ever even go into your own backyard?”

  “Well there aren’t as many benches in my backyard. Maybe if I ever get that fixed I’ll switch to that. And there’s so many nice people you meet on the subway.”

  Eric’s patience was tested to its limits with Charles. For a while he was silent. Will took the opportunity to whisper to Eric, “I couldn’t find anything. I don’t know why, because like you said he had to be doing something.”

  “I’m going to go look myself,” Eric said to Will, at a normal volume. “You ask him a few questions of your own. I’ll be back.”

  While he was walking away, Charles said, indicating Marcus, “You still don’t talk much, now do you. I’m starting to wonder what they keep you around for. Is there something you do?”

  Marcus didn’t answer. Will ignored the question as well. “Is there a reason you don’t have any mirrors in the place? I couldn’t help but notice.”

  “That’s very perceptive of you. There’s nothing a mirror is very good for, if you think about it. I just don’t see the use.”

  “I don’t see the use of a lot of the decoration you have around the place, either.”

  “For a second I thought you might be less aggressive than the other, but there you go. Well, I assure you that all of these pots and pictures are far prettier than me, and I keep them around for that.”

  “You don’t live with anyone else?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “In a house this large.”

  “I might get it downsized if I don’t figure out a way to use some of the rooms.”

  Before Will could think of another question, his Karma Card began to ring. So did everyone else’s around him, with the exception of Charles. Eric returned from the hallway. “Are you getting this too?” he asked, pointing to his Card. “Did you see this?”

  They all nodded.

  “We have to go. We’ll be back, Mr. Darcy. Some other time.”

  The directions on the Karma Card were far more descriptive than Will had ever seen them be before. He was to get off at stop R2-J, which was right next to a Karma Card manufacturing plant on the outskirts of the city. There were people attacking it, at that very moment. He was only to use his st
un gun, so that the attackers could be interrogated. It said that the attackers were well armed. Everyone else’s Card said the same thing.

  “This is pretty serious, isn’t it.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” John said, one of the other officers in their group.

  “Can I leave my bag somewhere? I feel like it’s going to get in the way,” Will said, looking at the bulky thing he’d been carrying around everywhere with him.

  “You can do whatever you want with it, but if you lose anything in it you’ll have to buy replacements yourself, and I promise you that you don’t want to do that.”

  “But there’s nowhere on the subway, I mean?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Fine,” Will said. “I just feel like I’m going to die, and it will be because I’ll be too busy carrying this huge bag around while everyone is shooting at me.”

  “Good luck with that,” Eric said.

  When the subway pulled up to the subway station, already explosions could be heard from above. “I don’t want to go,” Steve said. “This is absurd.”

  “Don’t be a pansy,” Eric said.

  Will took the two sets of handcuffs he had out of his bag, the normal and the high-torsion. He also took his Karma Map, his stun gun, and his Grappling Chain, and put them all in his pockets, except for the stun gun that he kept in his hand. The rest he left in the bag. When the doors of the subway opened, he ran out, and as he passed the benches that filled the station, he threw his bag under one of them. Everyone else followed, slightly less enthusiastic than he was.

  Above ground there was fire everywhere, and several officers were lying around on the ground, bleeding from various wounds. He looked around for someone that seemed coherent enough to tell him what was going on.

  “Where are they?” he yelled, over another explosion in the background. The man was sitting on the ground, holding his knee and rocking back and forth. He simply pointed to a hole in the wall of a building that was twenty feet away from them, out of which smoke was pouring. “Over there? Thank you!” he yelled, as he was already running off.

  As he entered the building through the hole, he was shot in the left shoulder by a bullet. By a gun, a real gun. He didn’t think that any existed. The man that had shot him was standing right next to him, and was preparing to shoot him again. With quick reflexes, Will paralyzed him with his stun gun, and watched him crumple to the ground. He could hear noises of movement ahead of him, so he ran on.

  Twenty feet ahead of him, another man had turned around and began shooting at Will. The range of Will’s stun gun was far less than twenty feet, so he shot the man with his Grappling Chain, directly in the chest, and anchored himself on the ground. The man flew toward him, and, as soon as he was within arm’s length, Will punched him in the face and into the ground, where he then shot him with his stun gun.

  A group of men had climbed a staircase, and were shooting at him from a platform above. Will shot the corner of the ledge below them with his Grappling Chain, which took him up as soon as it latched on. Right before he reached the end of its length, he pulled as hard as he could on the remaining chain with the arm that wasn’t holding the gun, so that it sent him flying high over the platform, where he started trying to stun them from above before he landed. One of them shot him in his hip, he stunned two others, and the third one he had to kick off of the platform, through the railing, to avoid being shot pointblank.

  He looked around to his left and right, but couldn’t see any more people, so he took out his Karma Map and zoomed in on himself. There was one more man, further down the hallway he was in, that he could see if he scrolled over. He put the Map away and continued onward.

  The man was standing in front of a large steel door. Loud machines could be heard on the other side, and the room felt full of their vibrations. The man was placing a large explosive against the wall, and pressing buttons on it. Will shot him in the back with his Grappling Chain, and whipped him into the wall to his side as he flew past, where he made a loud cracking noise.

  He walked up to the explosive, to see what it said. It was flashing the number ten over and over again. He wasn’t sure, but he thought that he had stopped them from doing whatever it was they were doing.

  Then he was shot again, a bullet cutting across the side of his neck. He sidestepped to avoid another shot, which embedded itself into the wall where he had been. He tried jumping behind a short wall to take cover, but ended up going twenty feet higher than he thought he would, and hitting his head on the ceiling. He was extremely disoriented as he fell back down, and landed on his back on the wall he had been trying to jump over. While he was prostrate, he could see the man taking aim at him again.

  Right before he pulled the trigger, he was Evaporated. Eric stood in the place where he had been. “Will, what the hell. You ran off ahead.”

  “Eric, that man didn’t have a Chip. I looked at my Map, that man wasn’t here.” The other man, the one who had been setting the bomb, was still lying unconscious where Will had thrown him.

  “Will, shut up!”

  “But it’s true, Eric, they’re out there! I looked at my Map, right before I walked into this room. And they’re wearing uniforms. It’s Charles. It has to be.”

  The other men showed up shortly after, Marcus, Steve, and John. They helped Will to his feet, since he could barely support himself. “I tried jumping,” he said, “and somehow I jumped to the ceiling. These damn steroids are throwing me off.”

  “You mean the shoes, right?” Steve asked.

  “What do you mean, the shoes?”

  “Did Fred give you your stuff, back when you started? That asshole never tells people what the shoes do. Sure, it’s funny when you find out while your outside, but I swear to God someone’s going to die because of that dude, trying to jump inside a building.”

  Will’s Karma Card began to ring. One of the other guys, John, pulled it out of his pocket for him. Eric’s was ringing as well. The message was the same—it said to go directly to the Karma Tower.

  “Damn it, Will. I told you,” Eric said.

  John read through the rest of the message. “They’re sending in a Helicar for you.”

  Decay 10

  Nice Lotus

  THE OFFICERS HAD just left Charles’ mansion. When he was sure that they were gone, he went straight back to the bathroom. He said to his sink, “Send Brother Peril back in. They’re gone.”

  While he was waiting, he shaved his head, put in contacts that changed the color of his eyes, and changed into some ragged, oversized clothes that he had in a closet next to the bathroom. Then Peril arrived, looking a lot like Charles had only moments before.

  “Interesting look you have there, Brother Charles,” Peril said, after knocking and waiting to be let in to the bathroom.

  “It’s time, Brother Peril. For everything we planned. It’s all happening.”

  “Is it really?”

  “It is. I need you to go to the Park, and put on the leather gloves, so that the ghosts know they should meet you there. I’ll be there right behind you, I just need to go talk to Brother Vincent.”

  The ghosts were all the people that Charles had in the city without Karma Chips, recruiting new members and doing all the things that people being watched by Karma could never get away with. Jackson’s group was one of the many teams he had operating. The main difficulty with having ghosts was that they were nearly impossible to communicate with, so he had to develop strange systems that only ever worked half of the time.

  “I’m wearing the gloves? Why am I doing it? And what do I tell them when they show up?”

  “We don’t have that much time, they’re already suspicious. The Karma Chip factory will only keep them preoccupied for so long. I told you I’d be there right behind you, I’ll talk to them.”

  “Is there anything special I have to do with the gloves?”

  “Just look at them a lot.”

  “Alright.”

&nb
sp; “And Brother Peril,” Charles said, becoming really serious and quiet.

  “Yes?”

  “Be really careful. Now more than ever. But make it to the City Park.”

  In the back of the temple building, Emerson was sitting in a rolling chair, watching the many screens that showed their people in the city. Behind him, a few men were busy soldering away on electrical devices. Charles burst into the building. “Brother Emerson. Where is Brother Vincent?”

  “It’s not his shift,” he responded.

  “I don’t really care right now.”

  “He should be in the temple, meditating.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And Brother Charles, while I have you, they’re bringing in another recruit. What should we do with him?”

  “Who’s bringing him in?”

  “Jackson’s group. He just left a message at checkpoint delta, so he should be here within a few hours.”

  Charles tripped momentarily over the triviality of dealing with a new member, but eventually said, “Send him to the farm, or something. It doesn’t really matter. But more importantly, when he shows up, tell Jackson to stay here with everyone else. He’s going to miss the meeting in City Park, but maybe he can be of some use to all of you.”

  Charles didn’t wait for a response, he circled the building and went through the doors of the temple, and found Vincent in the rows of people sitting on the floor. He tapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Brother Vincent. Brother Vincent.”

  The man’s trance was broken with a startle. He quickly got to his feet, before he even knew what was going on. “Yes? What is it?”

  “Nice lotus. And I want you with Brother Emerson, in the control station. I know it’s not your shift, but I want you watching over it. I just sent out the attack on the Karma Chip factory. You’re going to start the thing with the Rehabilitation clinic. And after you get that going, you’re going to get absolutely everyone armed, on the farm and in the temple, and you’re going to wait on my word. You might have to leave a few people behind at the farm—they just brought in a damn new recruit, and someone’s going to have to watch over him, make sure he doesn’t run away. I’m going to meet all the ghosts that are still in the city, it can’t wait. If any more ghosts bring any more recruits, tell them to stop, and to accompany all of you on the next phase. There will be no more recruiting for a while. And tell my engineers to just go somewhere safe and wait, they’re not fighting. But give them weapons anyway, just in case. Got it?”