Claus: The Trilogy

by Tony Bertauski

  “I just want to thank you again,” he says sweetly. “Big sacrifice, taking me to the shelter. I don’t have a job and all. It’s the economy, you know. Not much out there. You two work? Mmm?” Jack looks back and forth, trying to include them both. “Do you?”

  “Frost Plantation,” Sura says.

  Jack turns quickly with a smile reaching both ears. “Oh, really? That’s wonderful! Are they hiring?”

  “I don’t think so. Mr. Frost doesn’t like people, wouldn’t you say, Joe?”

  Joe changes lanes and nods.

  Somewhere in the flow of Christmas spirit, there’s a twinge of recognition, a memory that’s swept in the current. He could likely remember what’s nagging at him, but the Christmas spirit feels way too good to try.

  Frost.

  “Mr. Frost is protective of the ones that work out there, that sort of thing,” Sura says. “Anything happens to employees like us and he finds them, if you know what I mean.”

  “No. What do you mean?”

  “He finds them and hurts them.”

  So now we’re all championship liars. Great.

  She taps Joe on the shoulder. “I’m going to lie down.”

  “You don’t have to sleep,” Jack says. “I’ll be quiet.”

  Sura curls against the seat with her back to him. Jack spins around. It doesn’t matter if she talks, really. It still feels good. And there’s always Joe. He’s putting off some pretty good vibes, too. “Hey, I just want to say—”

  “Shhhh.” Joe puts his finger up and points to the back.

  “Oh, right,” Jack whispers. “I just want to say that it’s really great…”

  Joe turns the music up. Jack glowers at the backseat. She knew what she was doing. But then Joe gives Jack a thumbs-up, like he’s a good guy. It’s stupid, but Joe’s approval rejuvenates him, intensifying the feel-good humming.

  They near the end of the interstate. Jack rests his chin on the door, barely seeing over it. The scenery whizzes by, images of lit buildings and yellowish streetlights, billboards and railings. A car rushes past.

  He soaks in Joe’s energy, thinking about why this would even be happening, convinced this has to be a sign that maybe they know something. And, more importantly, how is he going to find them again without getting arrested?

  Jack’s eyes get heavy.

  The vibrations rain down like big drops of delicious fish oil, freshly pressed and chilled. He licks his lips. The railing along the road turns into a flat line. Lights in the buildings twinkle like stars. The landscape blurs into a white blanket.

  And Jack smiles.

  The cold feels like home.

  Faces emerge from the darkness: short, fat, and hairy. And a giant, icy mountain rises from the ground like an iceberg. He can see the short, fat, and hairy elven—yes, that’s what they are, they’re elven—all over the city… a city that has a name, something he should remember…

  New Jack City. A city so nice, I named it after me.

  Somehow, Joe’s energy transported him home. He’s back with his people on the North Pole where he belongs and not in this forgotten trash heap of smelly warmbloods and spongy, tasteless food. Yes, this is where he wants to be, how he wants to feel. It’s not much to ask. He just doesn’t want to feel lost anymore, unwanted, ashamed, and bad—

  Sounds of war are all around. Footsteps are on the ice, and angry shouts and disapproval echo. It’s all Jack’s fault; he’s to blame for thousands of years of grief, sadness, and suffering. He divided his people, dominated them with bitter anger. They hated him; they wanted him dead and gone because he was bad.

  He is bad.

  He’s bad, bad, bad and cold, cold, cold—

  “AHHHH!” Jack slams his head on the window.

  Joe’s shaking his shoulder. “You all right?”

  “Am I…” Jack looks around. He’s not on the North Pole. He’s in the truck, parked next to a curb.

  “We’re here,” Joe says. “That’s the shelter, right?”

  And so it is. They arrived just before midnight, just in time for Jack to get a bed. Just in time to get out of the truck. He takes a deep breath, shaking his head. He was dreaming about the ice and tunnels. Maybe he was dreaming about everyone hating him, too.

  Jack unbuckles the seatbelt as slowly as possible. He opens the door even slower. “Hey, I just want to say—”

  “It’s all right.” Joe holds up his hand. “Not a problem.”

  Jack slides out, feet on the pavement. Sura holds the door for him and takes his spot up front. Jack shuffles around the front of the truck and knocks on Joe’s door. The window comes down.

  “Say, if you ever want to hang out sometime, you know where I live.” He points at the shelter. “Just call or something. Send me a text or email. Ask for Jack.”

  “Sure thing,” Joe says. “Take care, Jack.”

  And the truck rolls away, loud exhaust rattling in Jack’s chest, taking the beautiful vibrations with it, leaving him on the front steps, alone and empty.

  Feeling as far away from home as ever.

  J A C K

  December 15

  Monday

  Mr. Frost slides down the toy factory aisles, hands on his belly, idly watching the helpers hard at work. They hardly notice him. He passes through the main crosswalk—a wide thoroughfare that crisscrosses the toy factory where, previously, they had Sura on a table—and quickens his pace, sliding to the very back where the new release is being manufactured.

  EyeTablets.

  EyeTablets will be the toy of the decade, destined to ship all over the world. An estimated two billion will be activated by the New Year.

  “May I?” Mr. Frost asks.

  The helpers back up. He touches one of the contact lenses with the tip of his finger and places it against his eye. He blinks several times, lubricating the infinitesimal circuitry. Green lines stream over his vision. A grid takes shape.

  Mr. Frost looks around.

  Holographic images are displayed for his vision only. He focuses on an icon, blinks twice to activate a newslink, and video begins to stream. He’d need earbud implants to hear it, but that will be next year’s big ticket.

  He reaches out and rearranges the images. The eyeTablet senses the location of his hand and the tension in his imaginary grip, and responds. He spreads his fingers and expands one of the displays. He looks down to see his toes on a wooden raft rocking in the middle of the ocean. The helpers are faint figures in the illusion’s scenery.

  “Email,” he says.

  A keyboard hovers in front of him. He pecks at the air, typing out a reply, the words hovering over the blue waves.

  “Voice activation,” he says.

  The keyboard disappears. The words appear as he says, “And thank you, once again, for your participation in this year’s beta testing. Merry Christmas, Frost Enterprises. Send.”

  The words are sucked into the sky, on their way to cyberspace.

  Christmas is so much easier in this day and age. Toys are tiny and shipping faster and more efficiently. It used to be that kids received plastic cars and stuffed animals; now it’s laptops and smartphones.

  And now this.

  Mr. Frost anonymously leaked the eyeTablet technology to a start-up company in exchange for exclusive rights to produce and ship as long as he remained a silent partner. He could’ve gone with Google or Apple, but he’d leaked enough trade secrets to them.

  The eyeTablets will be the greatest form of technology the general public will ever have experienced—the first step in phasing out phones and computers. However, it’s still rudimentary compared to what Mr. Frost has planned for future generations. He would eventually release eyeTablets with neural capacity, tapping into the brain and nervous system, sensing thoughts and expanding intelligence. Humans will be able to send each other thoughts instead of texts. Schools will become obsolete when students can download lessons and have them integrated into their muscle memory within seconds.

 
Want to learn Italian? Done.

  EyeTablets will eventually circumvent privacy at a level never thought possible. Governments will try to limit the technology to protect the general public, but people will want it, no matter the cost.

  Mr. Frost could have the ability to know all their thoughts, to see through their eyes, hear their surroundings, touch their innermost desires, and experience their lives as if he lived them. He could tap into the entire human population at once, see them like a god.

  He’ll be able to make them do things. He doesn’t like to think about that. After all, none of this is really his doing. In fact, it won’t be Mr. Frost eavesdropping on their thoughts and operating them like puppets.

  Jack will.

  Mr. Frost admits taking great pleasure in the creative aspect of inventing this technology. After all, the human population has done many wonderful things with his ingenuity. What they don’t know is the insidious intent behind all these wonderful gadgets.

  What’s in store for them is beyond their imagination.

  Mr. Frost finishes with the eyeTablets and slides down the main aisle.

  Sir, I want to remind you that Jack’s incarnation is ahead of schedule. He can be removed from the incubation tank in two days.

  She sounds sullen. The photosynthetic fur still irritates her. Not only that, she sounds distracted. He expected her to check in with news of Jack last night.

  What have the helpers reported about Sura and Joe?

  Non-eventful, sir.

  Mr. Frost veers too close to a blue-hat helper and almost knocks him over. He keeps his surprise in check. Nothing happened?

  Nothing worth reporting. They danced, they kissed, and they went home.

  Mr. Frost keeps his mind empty, avoiding entertaining thoughts of suspicion and shock. He didn’t see this coming. His spies had already updated him. He’s had to stay focused to keep those thoughts hidden from her. Maybe her unexpected deception is a ploy to rattle him into the open.

  You should come to the incubation lab for an assessment, she says.

  That won’t be necessary.

  You need to see if your creation—

  “My creation?”

  Some of the helpers look up. He must’ve blurted that out loud. Jack has been found and she’s pushing him to awaken another incarnation? Serotonin leaks from the root and floods him warmly, but fails to soothe his emotions.

  I am an unwilling participant in this madness, Freeda.

  For a victim, you take a lot of pride.

  I didn’t say victim. You know things would be very different without the root. None of this would be here.

  Her laughter is genuine. You can’t fool me, sir. I see inside you, remember. You pretend to hate this but, deep down, you enjoy it. You can’t beat the root, so you go along with it and pretend like there’s nothing you can do about it. You cope with the guilty pleasure by trying to understand the warmbloods, to empathize because it’s not your fault.

  I take no pleasure in destroying the human race.

  Jack is correct about the warmbloods, sir. They’re self-destructive. All of your attempts to be like them, to experience their emotions, and empathize with their short-lived lives are all very noble, but you know you’re just doing it to ease your guilt.

  Mr. Frost pumps his arms as he climbs the steep ramp.

  Stop fooling yourself, sir. You are an elven—they are human. If it makes you feel any better, you’re doing nothing but letting them destroy themselves. You’re not pulling the trigger, sir.

  I’m putting the gun in their hands.

  Very good, sir.

  He said “I.” He didn’t say “Jack.” I’m putting the gun in their hands.

  If you’re done spouting delusions, sir, would you come to the incubation lab for an inspection?

  Later. He goes to the elevator and punches the top button. Have Templeton bring me a drink. I’d like some conversation outside my own head.

  He feels her recede from his mind. His anger was genuine, but also intentional. Fierce emotion is an effective way to screen his true thoughts and motivation. He wanted to appear like an unwilling victim, but she convinced him that it was more than just a ruse.

  Perhaps he really is willing.

  J A C K

  December 19

  Friday

  Green hair settles over the shower drain. Jack scrubs his arms and legs. Ever since Joe and Sura dropped him off, he’s been itching like the truck seats were poison ivy. In the morning, his bed sheets looked like a leprechaun shaved. Bald patches of light blue skin are all over. He looks like a hallucination.

  Jack tries to turn off the hot water, but it’s already off. The pipes must be crossed because the cold knob feels like it’s pumping water out of a geothermal hot spring.

  He scrubs his head and face, lathering up and rinsing off, wishing the thoughts in his head would fall away like his hair. Joe and Sura’s sweet vibrations haunt him along with memories.

  He lived on the North Pole. I already knew that.

  He ruled like a king. Sweet.

  The elven hated him. Okay, not so sure about that one.

  They wanted him gone. That one’s iffy, too.

  He was the coldest elven to ever live, which would explain the blue skin, but not the hair. He can’t remember even having hair, not to mention curly, green hair.

  And the naughty list? He couldn’t care less about the naughty list anymore. He remembers something about Santa.

  Claus is my brother. He always wore that dumb red coat.

  It should be shocking, but the memory settles into place with no less disruption than if he remembered what he ate for breakfast that morning. Claus is his brother, no big deal. He thinks, for a moment, he’ll tell Willie that he personally knows the fat man—they’d slid out of the same womb; they were tight—but even Jack can understand how crazy that would sound. He’s already on thin ice covering Lake Sanity.

  But delivering toys?

  Sketchy.

  He doesn’t remember anything about toys. His memories are outdated—he can’t remember anything he’s done in the past two hundred years—but they weren’t delivering free stuff to the warmbloods. That’s ludicrous. Then again, Jack’s not in charge anymore. New management might see things differently.

  They were always a little soft.

  Still, he doubts the lists and the toys, but not entirely. He remembers sleighs and flying reindeer (turns out they are real), so maybe the toys are too. It all still feels like a dream. The idea of elven is too far-fetched, but all he has to do is look down at his giant feet and scaly soles to remind himself that the elven memories are as good an explanation as anything.

  Right now he needs to find Sura to get another sweet jolt of her mojo or whatever she’s dealing. That sweet essence emanates from her like distilled euphoria. He needs it to fill in the memory blanks and, more importantly, so he doesn’t feel so empty and alone!

  Now that he’s had a taste, he wants more. He felt full and whole, no longer lacking or searching to fill the bottomless emptiness inside him. He felt like there was nowhere in the world he needed to be but right here. He didn’t have to be anyone else but Jack.

  He felt like he was home.

  Jack doesn’t care why those kids make him feel that way—he just needs it. His heart is dead without it.

  “You need a dog groomer, man.” Pickett kicks the wad of hair off the drain. It sticks on the wall. “Take your trash out.”

  Pickett and a few others hang their towels and turn on the showers far away from Jack. Pickett continues staring as Jack rinses the suds from his head. Jack gives him a full frontal view with a smile.

  “You ain’t human,” Pickett says.

  “Neither are you.”

  “I ain’t shedding like a dog. I ain’t got blue skin. I ain’t got feet the size of flippers. You come from the ocean?”

  “I come from your momma.” Jack has no idea what that means, but it makes the others laugh. They try not
to.

  Pickett’s lips get thin. “Two days, smelly. You getting kicked out of the shelter in two days without an ID, and this place can stop smelling like a bucket of fish.”

  “And start smelling like your butt,” Jack says.

  “Better than you, garbage man.”

  Jack gargles a mouthful of shower water and spits it on the wall. The hairball washes across the floor and finds the drain.

  “Well, I got breaking news. I got my ID,” Jack lies.

  Pickett doesn’t fall for it, but he’s thinking. Jack’s inside his head. That’s where he wants to be. He wants to find Pickett’s buttons and tap-dance all over them.

  “I got that ID and I’m going to stay here forever and ever. And another thing, I talked to Willie, he’s going to give me a bunk right next to you so we can work out our differences. Isn’t that cool? We get to wake up next to each other like brothers. I got to warn you, though, I get the morning farts.” Jack sort of whispers. “They smell like herring.”

  Jack’s laughter bounces around the community shower. Pickett isn’t moving. Jack feels his anger rise. He senses it prickle beneath his skin. He watches a lump swell in Pickett’s throat. He hates Jack.

  And Jack loves it.

  Pickett crosses the shower. Sheldon comes with him but flinches when water spatters off Jack.

  “Man, that’s ice water,” Sheldon says.

  Something is hitting the floor, like a hole punched in a bucket of rocks. Little pellets of ice are bouncing off a patch of blue skin on Jack’s shoulder.

  “What the…?” Sheldon says.

  Ice chips pile on the floor. Jack’s shoulder is making ice, but that doesn’t faze Pickett. He holds his ground. He doesn’t care if gold coins are dropping out of Jack’s butt. His hatred blinds him to the impossible.

  Jack wants him to step closer. He wants Pickett to reach out, to give him all his rage. Jack doesn’t feel the emptiness when there’s hatred around him. Maybe he doesn’t need the Christmas spirit after all.

  He can fill the emptiness with this tasty treat.

  “Jack!” One of the staff steps inside. “Willie wants to see you, pronto.”