by Gann, Myles
‘I hope not.’
‘No, we’re done doing what’s wrong. It’s time to do what’s right.’
Caleb looked up.
- - -
A soft glow spilled across his front as Caleb opened the door into Alice’s apartment with a neutral look beaming. She was curled into her chair within a blanket with her eyes wide with news. “Caleb. Home early.”
“Joy is dead.”
“I know.” She let her head fall back into the cushioned back. “What happened?”
“Something changed. Something new was introduced, and Joy didn’t know how to handle it.”
“Nothing’s fixed now. Nothing will be.”
“Joy can be laid to peace. Imagine that kind of soil.” Alice sat up worriedly as Caleb stubbed a toe on the couch before sitting down. “You’re not sad?”
“Joy hated me. Hated us. I’m not happy, but I’m not sad either. My mind can’t find what it wants to say.”
“That means you’re sad.”
“Are you?”
Caleb stared at the carpet until his eyes completely lost focus. “I’ve got a complicated truth for you.”
‘She has a tear.’ Alice tried to smile. “Let’s hear it.”
“I quit my job tonight, and it was the right thing to do.”
She sat back and found her mental voice again. “Well, you said that causing inconvenience can be avoided, and I know you—that’s what I start with—you would think of that as a big inconvenience. You…won’t let yourself fail, won’t let yourself do the wrong thing, and certainly wouldn’t ever, ever, let a wrong thing happen twice. If your job represented some sort of failure…Joy? You feel responsible for Joy’s death, and you’re going to make sure it never happens again, which is accompanied by you quitting. But you don’t quit for a change of scenery. You’re too brave for that.”
“You have some lovely ideals about me.”
“The job would interfere with you doing the right thing. With your thinking.”
“With my actions. I’m going to end the war. I’ve gotten all I can from thinking. It’s time to act, and to find the real truth.”
Alice watched him as he continued to stare down, neither of them able to shake the tragedy of Joy.
Chapter 21
The doors opened and Caleb was suddenly washed in various lights. The first flew from the eyes of sweating, entranced scholars of the nature of judgment through sight. The next stuck to his body from the many rows of bulbs snapped tightly to the roof of unknown material, raining pseudo-photonic pockets across his playful shirt and plain shorts in a much more yellow shade than his homogeneous blue. The last strayed half a pace right and ahead of him as they walked: the quick, sideways, flashing smile of Major Howard, perhaps sharking more than the sights of all.
“Welcome to the Tank. You’re not going to be liked very much here at all.”
‘Do you smell that?’
‘Sweat?’
‘No. The swelter of the spotlight. Amplifies everything.’
‘You’re seriously intimidated here?’
‘I’m intimidated by your plans because I can’t see them.’
“Why’s that?”
‘Just know that I’m doing what’s right from now on.’
“These guys have been here for months, toning there little minds into what we used to think was the perfect weapon of war. You’ll be here for a couple of hours, then in debriefing for half-an-hour, then sleeping, and out of here by the morning.”
‘That idea isn’t supposed to terrify me?’
‘It should be encouraging.’
‘And if you do find the answer? If everything is suddenly solvable?’
‘Then raise your glasses.’
“I guess that’s good. Maybe I’ll fill my promise with Alice then.”
“What’s that?”
“Told her I’d be home by the weekend.”
The Major lead him around a small sand pit and stopped at a long row of treadmills. “You may very well. Hold up here. I’ll find the station we have set up for you.”
As the Major walked off, Caleb’s energy pulled at his skin. ‘You at least have to let me fight one of them.’
‘Something tells me you’ll get a chance.’
‘The man behind you is watching you with decadent nonchalance.’
Caleb turned around just as the man spoke. “You must be Mr. Special.” He lowered his paper and unevenly folded it across his lap. “Well, I can see why. We don’t have enough scrawny guys in the infantry. Our prayers are answered.”
Caleb smiled back. “I’m pleased to see the wit of the room is addressing me, and yet depressed that the best quip you could come up with revolves around you emasculating yourself in front of the new guy.”
The man couldn’t hide a slight glimmer of humor from his eyes. “Therein lies the beauty. I hit you with the blasé first, then the heavy punches later.”
“Softening my defenses. You are a military man.”
“Born and bred. Stanley,” he said with his hand extending.
“Caleb. Stanley doesn’t strike me as a military name.”
“What does? Stephen?” Caleb’s jovial mood stopped dead. “Yeah, I know all about that little cracked walnut. Name doesn’t seem like the type does it? Should get it changed to Osterizer or Destruco-Man.”
‘You were just humbled by a military goon. Glorious.’
“Good point. Corporal?”
He waved his hand. “That doesn’t matter here. Not to me. Doesn’t even matter out there. The only line that used to matter is General, which is when most with the title would stop seeing the battlefield. Now, well I suppose classes and ranks have stopped mattering so much.”
The Major walked back into the conversation. “Now it runs down loyalty lines. Glad you two met.” He turned to Stanley. “Is everything ready for the tests, Rue?”
“All except the needed men, but from the looks, that won’t be a problem.”
“Get them together.” The Major swiveled back to Caleb. “This way.” They walked through the thrum of treadmills; their various speeds delighting Caleb and interesting Power. One could hear the speeds at their decisive beats; the very movements in which there was a reaction delighted his symmetrical, intuitive mind at the deepest base of every dashing, sitting machine. The other measured itself against the man, and, more inherently, the machine. ‘Six miles, nine miles, eight-point-six miles, two miles.’ It could judge the speed by the beat within its mind, but could never understand that beneath that beat, his mind tethered every reactive component through a singular unification. ‘You’re thinking of my obsoletion. There’s something running through your mind that terrifies me.’ “Basically, we’re going to have you show for a few hours while our trainers teach you a few moves that’ll help you be a little more efficient at any speed. No scientists. Nothing underhanded.”
‘I’m sorry it terrifies you, but that just means it’s right.’ “That’ll be quite a change.”
‘What is it?’ “No need for it. We’ve got the source. From a practical standpoint, this is as good as it gets.”
‘I feel as though I’m becoming myself again.’ “Couldn’t agree more.” The ground changed back into the padded walkway and ducked under a plastic covering. ‘What is this? A left over biohazard tent?’
‘They’re isolating you.’ He looked around at the simple set-up and shrugged. “Seems as though we’ll only be doing one activity today,” he said with a nod to the bench press machine.
“The floor changes. We just need to get a base line first.” A man and a woman walked up to the Major and nodded. “Nameless trainers. Go ahead and give us a max out, if you will.”
Caleb smiled a little as he walked towards the bench. “I’ve never actually bench-pressed before.”
“Go figure,” the Major said with a smile. “We’ll set it to your body weight first.”
“One-seventy-seven, at last check.” He glimpsed the male trainer moving something a
long the wall as he let his back become horizontal across the comfortable bench. His hands ran up and down the cool metal a few times until his muscles felt stretched. The weight lifted from the holder on his strength’s command and lowered near his chest before being pushed back up and into the holder. “Send it up to one-ninety.”
A confirmation noise came from somewhere beside the trio at the wall, and Caleb lifted again. The resistance was minimal until the bar touched his chest; the return trip was painfully slow under his rapidly snapping muscles and decreasing ability to focus. As the bar lowered and the trainers raced over, Caleb unleashed the smallest bit of power he could to easily compensate his overwhelmed pectorals. He sat up with an exaggerated breath. “That’s it? I’ve benched broads heavier than that.”
Caleb smiled over as Stanley walked in with a chorus line of shirtless and barely-shirted men behind him. “The formula we used for our suit would have you at much less power than we expected.”
He smiled over to the Major. “I promise I can produce more than you think I can.”
“We’ll see I guess. Line up along the four walls, men. Even spaces.” ‘Did you notice the stacks of weights against the walls when we walked in?’
‘You didn’t?’
“Grab a weight.” A button descended and the bench suddenly lowered from underneath his buttocks. Caleb stood up straight and looked around while feeling pleasantly curious. “Caleb, I’d get out that blue power of yours. Men, throw those weights as hard as you can toward his body.”
The men threw out various hollers and whooping noises as they wound up their throwing arms. Caleb just smiled. “And what should I be doing?”
“I think that would be kind of obvious. We’re not going to order you around, just observe.”
His hands opened at his side and let Power fuel his response. “My head is light from this sudden shift in the tide.”
A few of the more zealous men threw small weights first—‘Five pounds,’—to which Caleb’s power didn’t even respond. The small weights bounced off of a field of power so purposefully vague that it relished in the confounded looks around the room. ‘They think it hit skin. I like this group. Very gullible.’ More forced disks flew and bounced from his transparent shield. The zealous men had reloaded, their weights a few inches circummed and a few pounds more weighted. Their tosses were equally useless. “You boys better step up the strength if you want me to actually try at all.”
They hurried their pace. Metal was flying towards Power’s all-compassing protection, and it was hardly paying attention, but was extended from Caleb’s body in a playful way. “That thirty-five pound weight almost indented slightly.”
“The forty-fives will, at least at these low levels. Show off a bit if you want.”
“With pleasure.”
The heaving and heavily-breathing soldiers of valor took the last weight in each stack in hand while their minds seemed to have lost whatever tread their muddied motivations allowed them. Caleb and Power could enjoy, at varying levels, the frustrated looks upon the faces of his cage that extended no further than one dimension in a three-dimensional world. The forty-fives were hurled with grunts and beginnings of sweat, and Power expelled itself within the spacious cage to catch them. Ten weights that hadn’t the strength behind them to actually reach Caleb’s body hung in the slightly blue hue before being stacked neatly behind him.
Caleb retook his body and sat down on the stack with one leg crossed over a knee. “That’s supposed to test me?”
The Major pushed off the wall and smiled to Stanley, who dismissed the flabbergasted soldiers. “It’s more of a test of inaction than anything. We put Stephen through a similar test and he tossed a weight across the warehouse and dented the wall. You, pure defense. A little showy, but eh, I’m sure that’ll go away.”
‘He’s complimenting you.’
‘He tricked me. Had I known my leash wasn’t held by you, I would’ve torn them a part.’
‘You would’ve four months ago. Not even a month ago.’
‘You have a point?’
‘Alice has changed you.’
‘Alice has changed both of us.’
‘I’m finding myself.’
‘And yet you can’t love her.’
‘And you’re not capable of loving anything.’
‘I have no problems with myself.’
‘What a romantic life you live. I truly wish I was that delusional.’
‘I know you do.’
‘As if your defenses don’t prove my point.’
‘I’ve always offered resistance.’
‘But never appealed to our mutual feelings for Alice. That’s almost an admittance of our union and not yours. You don’t show-off because you have no reason to. She’s stolen your fire and left you nothing in return.’
‘All this from a simple declaration of a simple, narcissistic move?’
‘I can find the patterns too.’
Stanley approached him slowly and crossed his arms. “You’ll be more useful than I thought.”
“And those men, more useless. Life is fun for learning new things.”
“Ain’t it, though?” He pulled Caleb into the center again as the Major disappeared behind the thin tent. “Keep the blue stuff bottled up for now. We’ll do a little hand-to-hand. No formal training, correct?”
“Not formal, no.”
“Come at me then. I’ll show you how we learn new things in the army.” Caleb fell down below Stanley’s shoulders and attempted to drive through his midsection, only to be embraced from below and thrown to the side. “Creative, but not a good first move. Usually you save that for the unexpected moment.”
“The beginning excluded?”
“Everybody can guess when the fight will start. Nobody knows when the fight will end.”
‘Don’t even put that into your twisted idea.’
‘Too late. It’s true too.’
“Back up let’s go. Get more creative.”
“Hold that attack,” Caleb heard within the realm of his half-cocked action. “We’re going to swim right along to strategy. Something tells me the combat training will come naturally to this kid. Lead him in, Rue.”
Stanley relaxed and smiled. “The brains are after you first.”
“What’s up with the name ‘Rue’?”
“Last name’s Rufus.”
Caleb laughed loudly as they moved outside of the small enclosure. “Your parents had some very nerdy ideas for your future.”
“What? Caleb Whitmor is a deformed hero wanna-be’s name?”
His smile refused to wane. “I think I was the pioneer of that category.”
Stanley quirked his lip upwards as he directed Caleb down a short hallway and into a busy office. Various desks were pushed together with rounded corners creating burst holes along each seam in duplicates. ‘Looks like the army can’t quite afford a pretty new shine on everything. These desks were ancient when I was young.’
‘They’re recycled aluminum cans, and did you really think anything would change that drastically?’
‘Everything’s changed.’
‘And gone back to how it was before.’
‘That’d be the end goal. Well, half of it.’
‘And the other half?’
‘To end up somewhere else all together.’
‘No, if that was the goal, you would never have put up a single protest to my end.’
‘Then what do you propose is the end goal?’
‘If I had a clue, I would’ve exploited it for the weak and pathetic thing it would be.’
‘Be quiet for a little. Let the grown-ups talk.’
“Lights, please.” The Major moved to an emerging trace of three dimensions of figure floating in midair. “Even though we’re dealing with something that spreads through the entire country, this is where we believe the leader is holed up. As you can see, this doesn’t exactly corner the bastard. We’re talking ant hills; massive tunnels underneath big, pointy
rocks, both of which stretch on and coil back for endless loops of miles at a time.”
“You seem to be cheering the boy up, Major.”
Caleb and the Major smiled at Stanley. “If you want a more intimate idea of the face and the name of the enemy, feel free to ask Rue here.”
He turned to the side and took another jab at Stanley. “Did he leave you at the altar?”
Stanley didn’t smile but stood, lifting his shirt to reveal across the broadest part of his chest; the skin across each pectoral razed with grotesque, thin hide that welled with leathery crinkle and crisp browning. “Az Zabhul Ronaldi…I called him ‘Arnold,’ but he didn’t seem to like that very much. White-hot hangers dug into my skin first before they used a cooler one to fill in the ditches with red ink. Six, twenty-four, nineteen-eighty-three. They kept me until my birthday, carved me up, then let me go figuring I’d just wander the desert and die. I found a squad and got back just in time to be shipped home.”
The large image turned into the three dimensional portrait. “He doesn’t look Middle-Eastern.”
The Major stepped forward. “Born in Brazil under an original name that became irrelevant after thirteen other name changes. Either way, this is the only important face we need from you over there. We had the idea of dropping you into the mountains and letting you trickle your way down, but the anti-aircraft deterrents stomped that out. The mission now is to get you somewhat close to him without destroying a plane.” The image flipped back to a panned-out version of the mountain range. “There’s a village here about ten miles from the far end of the range. We’ll drop you there and pretty much let you go.”
Caleb leaned back in the soft chair. “That’s the middle, but the beginning and end are still mysteries.”
The Major moved his hand and traced as he spoke. “Our end will be on the far end, where Rue will be with a small team to escort any prisoners you do take. The beginning…will be interesting. See, every time we open that hanger door on a plane, it get’s logged in a mission codex that has to be accounted for, and since this is as highly-classified as missions get, there can’t be any doors opening.”