Under the Shadow of the Plateau: Frontier Forever

by Benjamin Krieger

  Minister Brian piped back in, “Wouldn’t that be dangerous though? And how would we lure the beast back–”

  All the other ministers recoiled at the one who seemed intent on destroying himself, except for Portsmith, who yelled furiously, “Damn it, Brian! You have got to be the most shriveled scrotum ev–”

  “The time for propriety is gone now, Portsmith!” Jacoby interrupted with bravado. Initiating the same clever cover-up routine he used whenever such a misstep was made, he continued passionately, “If these conversations have an audience in the future, they will see and hear the truth. Some of it will be ugly, but they will know we did our best considering the challenges put before us. Know it in your heart, for it is true. Right now, the fate of the planet depends on our actions.”

  Most of the room remained silent.

  With a mocking military cadence, yet still sounding more sincere than she felt, Minister Beverly said, “What an uncharacteristically human thing for you to say, Minister Jacoby. Thank you so much for your courage and enthusiasm regarding the pursuit of Natural Order. Now, let us please get back to business. May I ask what orders you propose we give the Marshal?”

  The Matron had just informed everyone that the second Athena-class Marshal had just left the tunnels, and Jacoby knew it would be difficult to make her go back. Although he had ideas about how it might be done, they could not be discussed in front of the whole board. Accepting his colleague’s clever trap, the minister made a bow of false concession as he said contemplatively, “That’s a good question, Minister Beverly.”

  Minister Beatrice, who unofficially represented a number of important technology companies, had run out of patience. Leaning in towards the table menacingly, she sucked her teeth and said with dripping sarcasm, “Wait, do you mean it, Jacoby? No more propriety? Well then, let me start with you, Portsmith. The idiom you were looking for was ‘put all your eggs in one basket’ and it’s something you’re not supposed to do...” There were a few chuckles as she turned to address Ministers Jacoby and Lewis. “And adding more fuses to our subterranean powder keg is a terrible idea. We should remove the tunnels completely, like the Matron requested. At this point, the cost is negligible.”

  “Says the one who would get paid to do the work,” Minister Shinto said with a laugh.

  Beatrice glared at him for accusing her so directly, “You’re an idiot, Shinto! The time for propriety is never over! Can you not talk in broken riddles like the rest of us?”

  Everyone laughed again.

  “She’s right,” said Minister Omar. “You don’t put all your eggs in one basket, because eggs are fragile. I think the Marshal should be sent to help with the war effort.”

  Not wanting things to backslide, Minister Lewis said urgently, “Revoking the Marshal’s autonomy comes with a price of its own. Wherever she goes, she has to be the one to make the decision.”

  Once again, oblivious to his impending misstep, Minister Brian said with concern, “But if she’s not fit for duty–”

  The whole room erupted into angry blustering but Minister Tikonova’s voice rang out loudest, “There are no problems with the Marshal, you imbecile!” Palming her forehead, it was all the Gene Bank representative could do to prevent herself from jumping over the holographic table and strangling his projection. At the top of her lungs she yelled, “They are only trying to say that we need to deal with these problems before this heaping pile of shit gets any bigger!”

  “Before the fan hits it! Right, Portsmith?!” Minister Shinto shouted. He got a few more nervous laughs but failed to defuse the situation.

  Staring furiously at Minister Brian, Minister Beatrice tried not to yell, “Have you ever heard this one, Portsmith!? Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater! The point is, the water is replaceable but the baby is not... Do you get it?” Unable to contain her anger any longer, Beatrice turned away from Brian and flashed Portsmith a shit-eating grin.

  Grateful, for usually it was he who had to chew out Minister Brian, Minister Portsmith smiled his thanks to her. Then he flipped them a pair of birds respectively, laughed, and said respectfully, “Thank you very much, Beatrice. I had not heard that one. Hopefully everyone took your meaning.” Much more angrily, he gave Brian the finger alone before standing to address the whole board. “We’ve voted, many times, not to replace the tunnels until it was necessary. The core will inevitably need to be replaced and the cost of that has not changed–”

  Beatrice sighed, for apparently Portsmith had not understood her idiom, and she was about to call him out on it when someone else interrupted. From a shadowy figure in the corner of the room, a dark and mysterious voice shouted, “Fool... Change is not something we can control. It must come naturally–” The shapeless silhouette grew closer to the table until it stood beside their glowing projections. “–from within...”

  “Alfred, you nuisance!” As much as Portsmith hated Brian, Minister Alfred was his true nemesis, and he recognized his unique brand of antagonism through the disguise. He tried to slam his fist down onto the table, but having knocked over the surface that should have been there earlier, the blow carried him straight onto the floor instead. Everyone laughed except Portsmith, who stood up and continued to yell. “We have clear policies about what avatars are allowed in these meetings! Take that damned thing off before I kick your ass off this council for good!”

  In the same ghostly whisper, the bodiless voice continued, “We are a board, not a council... and I am familiar with the policies you speak of, but this is neither avatar nor skin. This...” Dramatically throwing off the cloak that concealed him, the little man yelled in his normal, flamboyant voice, “is a garment!” Snatching the flying fabric out of the air before it could land on the table in front of him, he dazzled them with some of its illusory effects. Then, throwing the cape on the floor, it looked as though a portal into pure-black space had appeared beneath Minister Portsmith. “Cool! I didn’t know it could do that!”

  No one knew exactly how Minister Alfred had earned his seat on the board, but he hopped up onto the table to strut around as if he owned the place. “If you don’t like it though, we can add an amendment to the bylaws later. No clothes at board meetings. I can commit to a ‘yes’ vote already...” Reserved laughter echoed through the room, as little Alfred stomped back across the table and jumped down into his seat. Then, batting his eyelashes, he crooned romantically, “And please, Portsmith, call me Alfredo. I don’t know why you ever stopped...”

  “God damn it, Alfred!” the large man yelled back at the little one. “You make me believe in hell! Please! Just say whatever it is you’re going to say so we can be done with it!”

  “Call me Alfredo...” he replied, pretending to file his nails demurely.

  “Please, Alfredo!” Portsmith shrieked with desperation.

  “Yaaaas,” Alfred squealed. “I love it. Are you sure you want me to just tell you though? I was thinking about doing a riddle.”

  Minister Lews balled his fists and shouted at him. “Alfred!”

  “Okay! I’m warning you though, it adds another fuse to the keg, or egg to the pot, or duck to the row, or baby to the tub, or–” He looked around. “Was that all of them?”

  Portsmith bit his lip and held his breath.

  “Okay, fine. This isn’t really a riddle, but I’d be willing to bet not a single one of you can tell me how this meeting started. What was the first order of business the Matron brought to our attention? Anyone?”

  Minister Beverly opened her mouth to answer, but Alfred interrupted before she got a word out. “Nope! Need a clue? Who would win in a fight, an Athena-class Marshal or the ‘werwolf’?” He laughed, “Which is a great nickname by the way. You spent a lot of time debating this earlier... Still, no ideas? Okay. The answer is, we don’t know. You’re all sheep. You get so caught up playing your stupid little games, going around in circles, blaming each other, trying to say everything without saying anything... It’s ridiculous! You end up distracting yours
elves from the actual issue! The first thing the Matron told us was...” With that, he gestured towards the Matron, begging her to repeat it.

  As if she were flattered to have been called on, the Matron blushed and said softly, “Alfredo–”

  “Don’t you call me that!” Alfred screamed at her playfully, “Only Portsmith gets to call me that.”

  Everyone laughed, including the Matron, who pretended to fight back a smile as she corrected herself. “Minister Alfred... Thank you for listening to me so intently. While I do not want to downplay the dangers associated with any of our current predicaments, the situation with the Peacekeeper cannot be ignored...” Mixed looks of understanding and confusion flooded the room because no one thought Brennan’s assassination was a big deal. Lowering her voice so she sounded overly serious, the Matron continued, “Corruption within any law enforcement division needs to be rooted out immediately, and Officer Brennan’s field termination is a clear indication that something is wrong. It is–”

  Sincerely apologetic, Alfred cut her off, “Actually, Matron, dear, I am so sorry. And when the time comes, you have my vote for whatever it was that you were about to pitch, but I forgot about the whole Peacekeeper thing too...” Many ministers burst out laughing and the Matron donned a look of wide-eyed shock. “I was talking about the frequency manipulators that you said had been decommissioned. I’m so sorry.”

  Looks of realization washed through the board. Although the same liability issues prohibited them from saying so directly, the frequency manipulators in question had the potential to control the Werbian creature, but so far had all been destroyed too quickly to be proven effective. Feigning a look of surprise and then gradual understanding, the Matron took a second to compose herself. “Of course! I’m sorry, Alfred! I thought you were talki–”

  “No problem at all!” Alfred insisted. “Seriously, I will back whatever plan you have concerning the Peacekeepers. But, with all this talk about sending things here or there... I don’t have a good metaphor or idiom for it, but I thought that needed to be more formally addressed... Y’know?”

  Alfred had taken the bait, and before the Matron could reply, Jacoby took a bite too. He was not fond of Alfred either, but he said with what seemed like genuine warmth, “I see! Those wouldn’t work underground, would they?”

  “So much for three birds in a pot,” said Minister Portsmith disappointedly.

  Minister Beatrice agreed, “And at the rate we’re going through them, we need to find an alternative anyway.”

  After a few seconds of consideration, reliable Minister Jacoby asked, “Matron, could we effectively target it from space?”

  As if she hadn’t thought about it, the Matron replied immediately, “Only if we deactivate our orbital field dampeners, which needless to say, would attract a lot of attention.”

  “Yes,” Jacoby replied gladly, “but we’ve also done it many times before. Albeit not for a long time. How long has it been since we ran a test like that, Minister Beatrice?”

  “Such a procedure is long overdue,” Beatrice confirmed with a knowing wink.

  “Fantastic,” Jacoby replied. “I’ll add it to the docket. And as I mentioned earlier, I think we should consider requisitioning a full armada, so I’m adding that too. Is there anything else we need to discuss before we wrap this up?”

  It was another two hours before the board finally got around to voting, but they ended up approving the requisition of Jacoby’s armada and the deactivation of the orbital dampeners. Once the meeting was finally adjourned, most of them logged off and went back to their respective galaxies right away, while the rest stayed to trade compliments and gossip for another hour and a half. The Matron wasn’t required to stay, but she couldn’t afford to miss anything, so she was always the last to leave. But as soon as she found herself alone again in the privacy of her stateroom, an earnest and increasingly familiar smile crept across her face as she removed her habit.

  Once undressed, the Matron’s skin squeaked unflatteringly as she sank back into her chair’s fine leather upholstery. Static electricity began to build up beneath her as she dug her toes into the carpet’s rich burgundy fibers. The immaculate view through her window made her heart swell with pride, but Earth’s dull glow filled her with a sense of calm. The prophecy was coming true. Nothing could stop her now. Fighting sleep as the ship’s orbit imperceptibly rocked her, the Matron whispered, “Goodnight, my children...”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Message from Above

  Less than ten minutes out of Mechanicsburg, the Marshal had decided to grab one last drink in Buena Vista. It was out of the way, but since they were likely to be in New York indefinitely, they told themselves it was worth checking in with Harvey one last time. They felt a little guilty avoiding responsibility like that, but they were glad that they did, because their faithful bartender said that a Privateer had visited with word from Officer Brennan. “They have a bad reputation, but I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of them. They’re basically law-abiding bounty hunters, and apparently they’ve become heavily involved in the war effort. She said Peacekeepers were dying left and right down there, but Brennan was cutting more mustard than the rest.”

  Harvey laughed and clinked drinks with the Marshal before continuing. “He does not, however, remember his last death accurately. The way the lieutenant told it, they’d been drinking, and he started talking about how excited he was to reunite with you once you were born. Then another Privateer told him that you’d been up and running for months. Brennan freaked out, started talking conspiracy this and that, which is why he sent her to ask me if I’d seen you...”

  The bartender tapped at the terminal behind the bar and beckoned for the Marshal to look at the spreadsheet on his screen. “She brought me this. Their company is killing hundreds of poachers a day without making a dent. Even though this is just a rough estimate, it puts their population somewhere in the hundreds of millions... There’s no way to know how many Peacekeepers have been reassigned down there, but it seems like most of them. Or maybe even all...”

  The Marshal didn’t know what to say. Forget New York, we should go south. With that many people involved, we should have heard more about it. The Matron is intentionally hiding this from us. Or us from them.

  What good would it do to join the fray? Even if we find Brennan, killing scores of poachers isn’t going to solve anything.

  What the hell are they even doing down there? If they’re abducting animals, what are they doing with them?

  The tunnels were empty!

  Are you sure about that?

  If we prioritize our search based on the numbers from this spreadsheet, we might be more successful.

  Forget that. We need to go to New York. If we can’t get anyone on the hardline, maybe killing a bunch of city folk will get the attention of someone who actually cares about Natural Order.

  “Marshal?” Harvey asked probingly.

  The Marshal finished their drink and slammed down the empty glass hard enough to break it. “Sorry,” they said, and then they left for New York.

  They drove straight there but it still took several days because of rough terrain. There was a little more than an hour until they would see the megacity’s shining white domes on the horizon for the first time, when the Marshal saw something hit the upper atmosphere. The Longcoat’s proximity sensors informed them that if they continued at their current rate, they would collide with the incoming projectile perfectly. Looking up as they followed the fiery streak through the sky, they raised the Longcoat’s shields and maxed the throttle for a minute, then slowed to a stop just outside the projected impact radius.

  Wiping sweat from their forehead as they dismounted, the Marshal walked around to the front of the bike-tank and leaned back against the giant front tire to watch the object’s final minute of free fall. Hat in hand, they shielded their piercing blue-grey eyes from the sun and recognized the grey, cylindrical container as a military drop-box with the
letters U.S.i. stenciled vertically on the side. They waited until it finally slammed into the ground and sent a massive shockwave in all directions. Using the hat to protect their face, the Marshal popped up from the bike and burst into a sprint, plowing through the wall of sand and stone that was flying their way.

  Before they were halfway to the container, its outer shielding opened like an inverted umbrella and cast down a dark cone of shade. With long powerful strides, the Marshal ran towards what looked like a metallic palm tree, charging up a blast with their hand-gun trained on its trunk as a precaution. A soft pink light, exactly the same shade as the energy accumulating at the tip of their finger, began emanating from the canister’s canopy. Instantly soothed by the high-tech glow, the Marshal found herself unaware that she was once again alone inside her head. She disarmed her weapon and slowed to a walk.

  “Athena-class Marshal #2,” the canister called out with a loud tinny voice. “Please approach the container.” There was a long beat and then the message repeated. “Athena-class Marshal #2. Please approach the container.”

  Before complying, the Marshal used the Logo to call up the Longcoat and park it close enough to the canister to stop the umbrella from closing while she was under it. Stepping into the surprisingly dark and cool shade, she was starkly aware of how singular her thoughts had become.

  “Athena-class Marshal #2,” said the voice from inside the canister. “Please verify.”

  Without either of them having to think about it, the Logo replied with all the requested documentation. To the Marshal’s dismay, the Longcoat backed itself away and the container’s canopy closed around her. Placated by pink light, both halves of her mind were slow to react. Inwardly, she panicked and examined the protocols inside the LGO that had allowed the canister to move the Longcoat, trying to ensure such a lapse in control never happened again. She could still feel the connection to the artificial intelligence inside the Logo but could not hear its voice.