The Complete Karma Trilogy

by Jude Fawley

  It wasn’t terribly hard for him to take care of all of them. Their range was five feet, his was limited only by physics. He backed himself against a wall, to make sure he wasn’t caught from behind, and shot anything that moved. The few bystanders that were slow to follow orders finally left, screaming.

  And finally the subway arrived, which he was pleased to find full of monks. He waved at them as the doors opened, and Vincent yelled at a few of the monks that were aiming their Pens at him in anticipation. “That’s one of ours. Let him on.”

  On the train, Charles sat next to Vincent. Across the aisle from both of them was sitting Jackson.

  “Good to see you alive, Brother Jackson,” Charles said.

  “The same to you, Brother Charles. It was crazy there, back at the Park. If I didn’t bring an Evaporation Pen with me, I wouldn’t have made it.”

  Charles hadn’t given any of his monks an Evaporation Pen, even his ghosts, because he didn’t trust them enough. He had made a cost-benefit analysis, and decided it was better for a monk to die in an unpleasant, potentially avoidable situation than to give away their martial capabilities. At least until the very last stage of the plan, when it didn’t matter anymore. So he didn’t know where Jackson got a Pen, but he recognized that there was no point in chastising his ghost. “I know it was crazy, and I’m sorry. Brother Vincent, do we have everything?”

  “In triplicate,” Vincent said. “More than triplicate. And we really haven’t run into too many problems. All of the police must be out there taking care of the Rehabilitation clinic rebellions, like you planned. I haven’t seen any.”

  “They’re still around. I don’t know if you could tell at that last stop, but I Evaporated a whole group of them. Don’t let your guard down. What’s up with that guy down there? He’s bleeding out of his ear.” Charles indicated Damon, who was sitting with a Pen in his hand, staring blankly in front of him.

  “Oh, he’s new, Brother Charles,” a monk sitting next to Damon said.

  “Of course,” Charles said, not quite understanding.

  Since they only had one more stop before Karma Tower, Charles decided it was a good time to tell his plan in full to his Order, as they sped along ahead. “You’ve all been carrying a few things I would like to explain,” Charles said. “Some of those boxes are explosives, but the more important boxes are a really large Privacy Room that we’ve been working on for a while. My ghosts—which I see at least some of you made it,” he said, acknowledging Jackson in particular, “they’re going to take four of the corners, up to the top of Karma Tower. The rest of you are going to take the four bottom corners, and some of you are going to guard them while the rest of you join me in the Tower.

  “Brother Vincent will divide the duties out here in the next few minutes, I just wanted to give you an overview. It’s very important that the Privacy Room is set up, and protected. Police officers may come to try to break them, if they’re on to our plan. Police officers will probably try to come and kill you, whether they’re on to our plan or not.

  “I want to thank you for coming this far. This is nearly it. In less than thirty minutes, we’ll either be complete failures or champions of justice, but either way I’m glad that we tried. It’s more than most have done. And it’s been an honor, being a brother to you all. It’s more than just a word we use—I hope you’ve all found that to be true.

  “Forget about probability, actually. Forget about failure. We’re going to destroy Karma.”

  They all cheered, as he discreetly left in the direction of the front of the subway, to watch as they approached. Vincent told everyone what their duties would be as soon as they arrived.

  When they reached Karma Tower, and the large group of monks split into smaller groups to do their individual tasks, Charles found the first pedestrian that he could, walking on the street in front of the building. He handed them a piece of paper, and then pointed a gun at their head. The gun was useless, but it was his experience that if he pointed an Evaporation Pen at a complete stranger, they usually just laughed at him.

  “Call the number,” he said.

  The man he had found was nervous, but did what he was told. He brought out his Karma Card, and said to it, “Call PQ-8316.”

  Charles took the Card out of his hand when it began to ring. A man answered on the other end of the line.

  “Marcus?” Charles asked.

  “Here,” Marcus replied.

  “We’re set over here. Are they still the only ones that know? You’re with all of them?”

  Marcus looked around at the other people in the Helicar with him, as they flew out to join officers suppressing the rebellion that was still underway at one of the Rehabilitation clinics. There was Eric, Steve, John, and a few other officers that had been placed with them to fill the Helicar. Will wasn’t there.

  “I’m with all of them. As far as I know,” he said. “Karma was pretty clear about keeping you a secret,” he said.

  Sitting across from him, Eric asked Marcus who he was talking to.

  “Then take care of it,” Charles said.

  Marcus hung up the Card, and then Evaporated Steve and another officer with one shot. The sides of the Helicar were open, so he easily kicked two of the other remaining officers out of it before they had time to react, and they fell a kilometer to the ground below. Then he Evaporated John as well. He wanted to save Eric for last.

  Eric caught his hand, but only after he had finished Evaporating John. “What are you doing?” Eric asked, confusion in his eyes. “This shouldn’t be possible. You shoot one officer, and your weapons stop working. Those are the rules.”

  “This Pen is homemade,” Marcus said as he punched Eric in the face. Eric fell to the ground of the Helicar, still stunned. “I’ve always hated you the most,” Marcus said, as he punched him repeatedly in the face, on the ground. Eric didn’t defend himself. Evaporation was too simple for all of the resentment that Marcus had harbored against Eric for the past two years. He wanted to see the man suffer.

  The pilot looked back at the two remaining men, Marcus standing, Eric lying on the ground, barely conscious. “Turn this around, and go back to Karma Tower,” Marcus said. “Or I will kill you too.”

  Ronin 13

  Window Threats

  DYING WAS THE worst thing that had ever happened to Reiko. Her thoughts slowed down, condensed into a single point of excruciating pain, as her arms and legs faded from existence. It happened faster than any of them could react effectively to, leaving nothing where an existence, a life, had once been. It was Noboru’s body that had died, but Reiko was there, and lived through it herself.

  It was like a very sudden onset of amnesia. All of the thoughts and emotions that Noboru had brought with him were suddenly gone, leaving nothing but traces of where they had been. Reiko could still recall certain things about his childhood, and his personality, but their vividness had died, as well as the supervening entity that was “Noboru”, the thread that held all of the feelings and thoughts together. It was then that Reiko realized she was slowly incorporating the being of everyone else into her, when she saw what was left after the rupture of Noboru’s death.

  They had all been calling out to him that he needed to run. Reiko had nearly forced her way into his body, to do the running for him, but she didn’t know the extent of the damage she would do, so she hesitated. It was only after he was gone entirely that she realized anything would have been better than hesitating.

  The day prior, in the morning before anyone had started working yet, Reiko had gathered the engineers into the conference room to deliver her speech. The night before she had lied awake for hours, thinking of what she would say, and how they would react, and what she would have to say in response. Multiple angles occurred to her, multiple forms of persuasion that she considered individually for their merits and their faults. In the end she decided that she would just make it up as she went.

  She had told Mr. Laurel that she wanted to discuss with the en
gineers her final report on the psychological impacts of Kaishin, and that she would prefer that he wasn’t there. Almost too easily, he agreed. She wanted Toru to be there to hear it, even though she had already convinced him to join her, but she went on without him when there was no sign of him showing up.

  Alone with the engineers she said, “I’m here to give my final evaluation on the usage of Kaishin, as it applies to rats, and the implications of my evaluation for human usage. It was a job I was assigned to do by Mr. Okada, who personally hired me for this job only a month ago. This evaluation was projected to take three months, but due to present circumstances it seemed that it should either be given now, or forever be irrelevant. So here we are.

  “Before I say anything else, I want to bring attention to the fact that this room is under audio and video surveillance. Or at least it used to be. Perhaps you were not aware this was the case, but my point is that I’m going to say some things that are very dangerous to say for people in our position, and the reason I am willing to do that is that I have trust. Haru told me that he has deactivated all of that equipment, and I trust him. When I’m done speaking to you now, you all will know the rebellious intent that I have, but I trust you. So I feel able to speak freely, and this is what I think.

  “I don’t really think that Kaishin is safe for human use. It would be absurd to say that it was, with such little research done on it. This experiment is obviously meant to be a punishment for our test subjects, even if it may prove to be informative to us in a sick, demented way. But even though it is not safe, what I want to propose to you is that we use Kaishin first. And not as an experiment, but as a weapon aimed at the people that disgrace this company with their presence, the Americans. Let me tell you why.

  “First of all, why would you let the honor go to anyone but yourselves? I don’t think it is an understatement to say that this technology, if it does what any of us thinks it does, will bring about a new era of human possibility. You know better than I do what those possibilities will be—why let someone else be the first beneficiary of something you’ve dedicated so much time, effort, and sheer skill to?

  “There are less selfish reasons, though. That first reason I’ve already given takes as a premise that Kaishin will work. I still think that, even if there was no hope for it to work, we should go first. Because it would not be fair that our fellow employees, our fellow brothers, suffer a fate that we would not be willing to face ourselves, simply for standing up for something that we all believe in—that what the Americans are doing is an injustice, an immorality, and an affront to the human race. They would ruthlessly take over countries, and destroy our Asian neighbors, just to be in power—there is no other explanation for their actions than that they strive for power, and somehow it is our lives that are the expense.

  “If we attack them in the way I propose, it will be suicide. We’ve all seen the American response to rebellion, and it is harsh. Even if we succeed in killing every one of our known enemies, they will send more and in the end we will be punished for what we’ve done. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. They say that Mr. Okada committed suicide—perhaps in a way he did, by not backing down—he did it in the name of honor. His wonderful vision for the world was assaulted, and there was no other way to protect it. Let us follow him—that is what I wanted to say. Let us follow our leader, even into suicide. It will be better than living in a Japan that has fallen so easily and shamefully to an American invasion.

  “If we do that, if we use Kaishin, there are three possibilities—we’ll die instantly, nothing will happen, or we’ll become the greatest human processor of information ever made, capable of things beyond imagination. And hopefully we will get that last possibility—that is the extent of my plan. If we are given the chance, I believe we will be much better suited to understand how to fight at that time, and so I leave the rest until then.

  “Have I made myself clear? Will anyone join me? I will do it alone if I have to, but being the only person with Kaishin in my head would be exactly like being the only person with Kaishin not in my head—it would mean so much more with at least one more person joining me. It feels presumptuous of me to feel this strongly, after only working here for such a short time, but I do feel this strongly. I’ll die for this. Does anyone else feel the same?”

  Nine hours later, eight of them had Kaishin surgically grafted to their brain, and four were connected. In another four hours all eight were together, their consciousness slowly coalescing into its new form. By morning the next day, they were ready.

  They kidnapped a guard they found that had longer hair than the others. He was taking an elevator up to Mr. Perry’s floor, but when the door opened up to Kaishin they forcefully dragged him back to the room with the surgical equipment, to insert a Kaishin. It was ten minutes before Mr. Laurel was expected to arrive, so they worked quickly.

  Originally they had intended to use a transmitter-only Kaishin, to fully interrogate him even without his compliance, but the more they considered it the more they thought they could control the guard, if they mentally overwhelmed him. If the fight was one on one they wouldn’t have been so confident, but they were eight minds to his one, and they easily suppressed his will in a small recess of their minds, where he could do nothing. Jointly they controlled the movements of his body, along with his memory, to form an American guard that was undetectably altered from his previous self, from the outside. Only an incision, hidden under layers of hair, betrayed the illusion. They let him back on the elevator, and up to the floor directly underneath the Ranch, where he was perfectly on time and ready for a day of work, guarding the maze.

  They could feel an understanding of English slowly flowing into their consciousness, through the guard. Immediately they could all speak it, but the understanding only came slowly. It felt strange for them, to learn a foreign language in such an unusual way. Not only did they possess their original understanding of Japanese, and the guard’s original understanding of English, but on top of that foundation emerged a new understanding of the similarities of the two, the intertwining and the borrowings that each language took from the other—their Japanese itself improved, through the absorption of a man that knew nothing about the language, except “Hello”, “Goodbye”, and “Thank you”.

  “We should find more, and absorb them all,” the ambitious portion of their mind said.

  “We can’t overwhelm them all, not when they’re enemies,” the cautious portion of their mind replied. “That is exactly what the Americans did when they came to Kenko, they put a few men above a large number of intelligent individuals, and it will be their undoing.”

  “Can we destroy their will entirely, one by one?” they asked. The guard’s will was still present, even though it was small and weak. “It seems like we could destroy it easily.”

  “We don’t know what that will do,” they said. “Now is not the time to gamble.”

  Reiko always participated in the ambitious thoughts, although her concept of self was slowly fading. Diametrically opposed to herself was a diffuse Toru, who she couldn’t make out completely, but knew he was there.

  They learned, through the guard, that a contingent of sixteen men would be escorting the human experiments to Kaishin, and they would be beyond overwhelming by force. Instead they decided to allow the surgeries to happen, using the newer model and program. Originally Toru had been concerned about the discovery of Haru’s new, illicit program, but they decided that as long as the three new programmers were disposed of, Mr. Perry would never be able to tell the difference, and that was the only important factor. They learned also about the Evaporation Pen, the destructive weapon that was in the pocket of every one of Mr. Perry’s personal guards, although the hundreds of other American guards were not allowed to carry one, because of their destructive capacities. The new information influenced their plans extensively.

  When the programmers showed up at eight, their elevator went the opposite direction than the one they sele
cted, courtesy of Haru’s hacking, and they were abducted into the mechanical floor that was located in the basement of the Kenko building. Ichiro and Nami’s body were in the basement waiting for them, where they bound and gagged the programmers in an obscure corner where they wouldn’t be found for a while. Shortly after that, Mr. Perry arrived at Kaishin with the first round of experiments, and the bodies of Saori, Toru, and Hideo all handled his presence.

  Meanwhile, Noboru and Haru went to the floor that Karma’s terminal was situated on, because Haru’s consciousness insisted that Karma be spoken to directly. “I’ve been fighting against Karma for a long time,” Haru’s consciousness distinctively said. “I need it to know, before we all die in this, that it has been me fighting it for so long, and so successfully. I want it to fully appreciate its loss, and for that to happen I need to speak to it directly. I never have. I want it to know my face.”

  Such personal thoughts were incongruous to the widespread unity of the rest of their consciousness, but they were allowed because Haru’s thoughts promised that it was not just personal, but would also serve a purpose for their overall goal.

  To arrange the meeting with Karma, Haru had to forge a document that requested an immediate time slot for the terminal, which was usually always booked by the more important Americans that were stationed at Kenko. From a computer on the same floor as Karma, Haru took the liberty of modifying the online version of that schedule directly, and sending an email to parties that were affected by the schedule change, apologizing but emphasizing the necessity of the change. He made the appointment for 8:45, which was the earliest time that he could manage. When 8:45 came around, Haru and Noboru entered the room, with Noboru keeping a watch for Americans that might come along. When the people of the former 8:45 appointment didn’t show up, they knew they had successfully formed a window to speak to Karma, and Haru signed in to the computer with credentials that belonged to Mr. Perry.