by Mark Jeffrey
Strangely, however, this figure was covered in clothing of some sort from head to toe, fingertip to fingertip. Not a speck of skin could be spotted. He wore a sort of stylized red robe. Black gloves poked out of the sleeves, slippery and sleek as penguin flippers. His gloved fingers were bejeweled. Small golden chains dripped from the rings, linking the fingers in a tinkling digital prison.
About his head he wore a squarish, medieval cowl of black and red. This framed a mask of gold that completely covered the man’s face. The eyes could not be seen beneath; only twin voids of space.
The golden mask frowned.
This, it seemed, was the Bondsman. It was the same person depicted in the giant painting in the Grand Lobby, Max realized. At the sight, Maurice backed away from the television in fear.
“Aw geez,” Maurice whimpered, cringing. “Aw geez. Aw geez.”
“That’s him?” Sasha asked. “That’s the Bondsman?”
Maurice could only nod and gnaw his palm in terror.
“What’s with that mask?” Max asked. He tried to see into the Bondsman with his new perception, but saw nothing deeper. “Does he always wear that?”
Maurice nodded again.
“Well … what’s he look like underneath?” Max asked.
“No one knows,” Maurice whispered. “Nobody’s ever seen.”
“Really? No one?” Ian remarked. “That’s interesting.”
“What is he, super ugly or something?” Sasha said. “Or – scarred?”
Sasha and Casey locked eyes for a moment. Siren?
Maybe in this altered timeline Siren wasn’t dead.
“Well, what’s his real name?” Casey asked, pushing down the fear. “I mean, it’s not ‘the Bondsman’. That’s a title. He has a name, right?”
Maurice nodded. “He does. Well. Everyone thinks so, anyway. But no one knows what it is.”
“He’s the World Emperor, you say?” Max said. “And yet, no one knows what the World Emperor looks like, or what his name is? That’s amazing.”
“How did this happen?” Enki demanded. “Where did this Bondsman come from?”
At once, Maurice lost his fear and became boisterous again. “Where did he come from? You don’t like poems much, do you?”
“Poems?” Enki said.
“Yeah. Poems.” Maurice sighed. “‘Here is a rhyme … of future’s time … when the Bondsman rules the world?’ That little ditty not ring a bell?”
“Sorry,” Enki shrugged.
“Figures. Every school kid knows it, even though they’re not supposed to … anyway:
Here is a rhyme
Of future's time
When the Bondsman rules the world
He will arise without warning
And appear one cold morning
On every screen in the land
A World Emperor decreed
He will make the earth bleed
Against him, no one can stand
A golden mask with a frown
'Neath a dark iron crown
And gloves of red satin and jewels
No one knows who's inside
In future's time, here described
When the Bondsman rules the world
Maurice sighed. “That was a prediction. From the time before the Man. It only became famous after, cuz of how right it turned out to be.”
“Hey,” Ian said. “We’ve heard that before. Remember? In that Book in Siren’s study — when the Pocket was happening. I knew I’d heard the name ‘the Bondsman’ before!”
“Oh right,” Casey replied. “He’s right — I had forgotten about that.” Max recalled it but only vaguely — he’d had more important matters on his mind at the time.
“How long ago did this Bondsman appear?” Sasha asked.
Maurice counted on his fingers. “Like thirty years.”
“How do you know that he’s even a real person?” Ian said, eyes narrowing skeptically at the figure on television. “I mean, it could just be a robot under there, for all we know. Or a puppet.”
“It might be a Niburian,” Sasha offered.
“Or an Archon,” Max said.
At the word Archon Maurice leapt back like he’d gotten a fresh injection of fear in his carotid. “Gaaaaauuugggh!” Maurice crossed his fingers to ward against Max’s words. “The Eaters of Time!”
Max blinked. “’The Eaters of …?’”
“The Eaters of Time! They’re friends of the Man. And they can hear you! Don’t talk about them!”
Max nodded. “Right. Of course. Silly me. I should’ve seen that coming.” Archons were in league with the Bondsman. Max remembered the ‘dinner of horrors’ he had attended through the Whispering Stone. He nodded inwardly. ‘Eaters of Time’ was an apt description of Archons, all right. “Anyone from certain other planets involved in this also?”
“Eh? No. There’s no such things as planets,” Maurice said disdainfully.
Ian perked up at that. “Huh?”
“Nope. That’s just a hoax.”
Ian blinked. “What, planets are a hoax?”
“Yeah,” Maurice said. “It’s just something they tell people to confuse them. The world’s actually flat.”
Ian’s eyes darted nervously around the room. They were in the presence of an unhinged loon.
Enki paced. “Maurice. Why are you here?”
“I escaped,” Maurice replied proudly, his eyes snapping back to the present. “I was a prisoner of the Bondsman. But I escaped! Or … Or he let me go. I’m never sure which. I was in the City-State of the World Emperor himself! I was –”
“No,” Enki cut him off. “I mean, why did you come find us?”
“Oh. Well. Because I’m, like, helping you. You’re helping me. It’s like, you’ve got peanut butter, I’ve got jelly and we’re making a sandwich.”
“But helping us do what, exactly?” Max asked.
Maurice looked blankly at Max, as though noticing him for the first time.
“I’m helping you get your heads in the game, man! There’s a lot you need to know — and not a lot of time to know it in.”
“Like what?” Max asked.
“Like that there’s another world beneath this one,” Maurice said, eyes wild. Enki looked odd as he said this like he’d just gotten a sudden stabbing headache.
“What, like underground?” Ian asked. Niburians loved underground fortresses. Whether it was Madworth’s nest or the Pyramid of the Arches, it seemed underground was where they like to go. “How does this help us, exactly?”
“I don’t know, man!”
“And what help is it that you need from us?” Sasha asked.
“Protection from the Bondsman, of course! I don’t need him capturing me again.”
“And in return …”
“I tell you things you need to know. Like, there’s no other planets, like said. That’s hoax, man, a joke! And there’s no sun, no moon neither. Or why do you think the sun and moon happen to just perfectly be the exact same size? You think that’s coincidence? Think, man, think! Of course it isn’t!”
Ian cocked an eyebrow. “And this is the information you think we need to know.”
“Yes!” Maurice almost yelled.
“Mr. Maurice,” Enki said. “Are you asking for sanctuary with us?”
“Yes!”
“Then I must insist that we handcuff you. Just until we —“
“No!” Maurice backed away. “No more chains! I won’t allow that, man! No. Way!”
“We can’t let you leave,” Enki continued. “When you came in this room you —“
But then something startling happened: Maurice simply vanished.
Just before he did so, Max caught a look of surprise on his face: he seemingly had not been expecting that himself.
Casey and Sasha whirled, pointing their guns in multiple directions at once. Ian leapt to his feet and thought about donning his bloodmetal armor. Max thought much the same about lighting up his own power.
“Where is he?’ Max snapped.
Only Enki seemed nonplussed. He stood there, eyes scanning the room. Then he announced, “Maurice is gone. And he had help with that vanishing act. But I do not think he will be returning.”
“The Bondsman?” Max asked.
“Hard to say,” Enki replied. “But no, I would guess not. Someone else helped him.”
“What do we do now?” Sasha asked.
“Do?” Enki said, yawning. “There’s nothing to be done tonight. Go back to sleep. You all need your rest still.”
THE NEXT MORNING, Ian rose early and began investigating their room in earnest. It wasn’t long until he found an old-style personal computer on a desk next to a phone. It was large and bulky. The logo on the plastic casing identified the model: SAI-80. A card next to the unit explained:
The Shell Hotel is pleased to offer Guests free informatics
Ian turned it on. It made all kinds of grinding noises as it booted up. Finally, a primitive command-line screen of blocky green letters against a pure-black background appeared.
> WELCOME TO SAI-80 … Boot sequence initiated …
> Boot complete!
> SAI Disk Operating System, version 2.2. Copyright 1976, Systems Application and Integration Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
> Please place phone into SAI Modem and press ENTER
Ian took the rotary phone handset and placed it into the strange base unit next to the computer. Two rubber depressions cupped both end of receiver and formed an airtight seal.
Ian typed ENTER. There was a sound of tones, and then the screech of a modem making a dial-up connection.
The screen abruptly cleared and the SAI-80 said:
> READY
Ian spent the next hour consulting the SAI-80 instructions and typing furiously. Then, he seemed to have a breakthrough.
The others awoke one at a time and groggily joined Ian wearing robes and drinking coffee. Casey wore her sunglasses, explaining the light was still too bright for her.
“Here we go,” Ian said, smiling at last. “Turns out there is some kind of Internet here. But it’s … it’s different. It’s not TCP/IP based. It’s some other protocol. It’s very … client-server. Everything is stricter. It’s all authenticated, encrypted.”
“In other words, it’s the Internet, but re-imagined by a tyrant,” Enki growled.
“Exactly,” Ian replied. “Everything is centrally-controlled. It’s not open the way our Internet is.”
A screen appeared with the familiar search engine entry bar. “Huh. The Bondsman’s search engine, it looks like,” Ian said. There was a grey logo at the top and text that said:
Hypertext Services: North American Region.
(Click here for other world region servers).
“Okay, I think I have what we want. Let me do some research while you all figure out breakfast,” Ian said.
AN HOUR LATER, Ian presented his findings to the company.
“Okay. First of all, it looks like world history is mostly still intact, believe it or not. For example, this world still had the Roman Empire, Shakespeare, the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln – all of it. Nothing seems different.
“But then, it sort of splits off. And then, everything becomes radically different. And that split point happens –”
“In 1912,” Casey finished. “When you and Max destroyed the Machine.”
“Exactly,” Ian said, flicking a guilty glance at Max.
Max sat, expressionless. Casey’s sunglasses concealed the reaction of his eyes.
Enki nodded. “At least that is a small bit of good news. Evidently, the Archons are still unable to alter history previous to 1912.”
“But … didn’t we see them fly into all times and places, back in the Pyramid of the Arches?” Sasha asked.
Enki nodded. “I would hazard to guess that they overestimated what the Machine would accomplish.”
“Even still, they were able do a lot of damage,” Ian said. “The world since 1912 has been nothing short of a nightmare. You know, it looks like the old Shell Hotel here is not at all what the rest of the world out there is like. It’s sort an oasis, a playground for the elite.
“But the rest of the planet … it looks like a prison. There is no Constitution or Bill of Rights anymore. In fact there’s no United States, or any other countries. There’s just the North American Region, the European Region, the African Region, etc. Everyone is a slave of the Bondsman’s state; everyone works from the time they’re eight until they die. Twelve hours of work a day, every day. No weekends! And we’re talking hard labor in mines and fields, with not a lot of machinery. It’s serious manual labor most of the time.”
Max shook his head.
What had he done?
He had destroyed the Machine in 1912, that’s what he’d done. And this was the result. He shattered the Machine, thereby completing its purpose — which had created this nightmare world. Everything Ian was reporting was his fault. Billions now lived lives of horror because of him, because of Max Quick.
It was too much for anyone to bear.
IT WAS ENKI who at last came to Max’s rescue, pulling him out of his silent inner gyre. “Here,” he said. “Now Max. You and Ian spent time in 1912. And Sasha and Casey spent their time in a mysterious place called Arturo Gyp. So now both of you have stories that it is imperative that the others know. So I have ordered us copious room service — more food and drink than you can possibly imagine — cheese and crackers and meats and fruits and much more than that! And we will spend the day exchanging tales!”
“And what about your tale?” Casey asked Enki.
The smile ran away from his face. “My tale? Well, my tale has been told, so much as I recall it. And other details are not important. So come. I would hear of your time in Arturo Gyp. Leave out nothing! I want to know everything!”
Casey and Sasha took turns narrating their story. They described how Cody Chance and the Indian Logan White-Cloud had taken them into their teepee. They described how Arturo Gyp was a town nobody could leave — and how they had hiked across the alkaline playa desert, encountering the Tree of Pain and the hulk of a crashed Sky Chamber … only to find themselves back at Arturo Gyp again by nightfall, despite the fact that they had walked in a straight line.
They told the tale of Blackthorne, the Sheriff, whom they suspected of being a Niburian at first — only watch him destroy his own Sky Chamber and kill all his own men amongst the canyons of Hill Day. Because Blackthorne realized, that really, he could never leave the Gyp … except via Casey Cyranus. Because he was Casey Cyranus, and Arturo Gyp was the setting of the battle for her soul, for which essential nature she would embrace in the end.
And of course they told that tale of their guns, the eldritch Red Roses and the ensorceled White Roses, magical weapons, made specifically for the two of them by a mysterious benefactor — and delivered by Logan White-Cloud. Casey and Sasha proudly displayed their irons — but as they explained, no one could actual handle the weapons except for them.
When it came to be Max and Ian’s turn, Ian did most of the talking with Max chiming in now and then. They described how that had found the House of the Hidden Hand, and its wonderous inhabitants: the gypsy Madame Europa Romani, the alienist Doctor Carlos Gustav, the real magician Gaspar ‘The Great’ Faliero, the Buddhist ascetic Sambhava, and at last, the gorgeous and treacherous psychic savant Michelle LeVeux. They told of their discovery of the Machine, and it’s custodian, the Niburian Millicent Madworth.
And they told of their time aboard the Peking, a sailing ship parked in New York harbor, and her master Captain Dunkirk — the man who gave Max his name ‘Max Quick’ in modern times.
And finally, they told of the destruction of the Machine. Max left the room as Ian completed the tale, being unable to hear it or face the consequences of that action just yet. Casey watched him walk away with concern in her eyes. Max really was broken pretty badly.
Alone in his room, Max suffered another
series of attacks like he had on the beach. Integrating all these new memories and personalities was so confusing —! But more than that, it was physically painful. He curled up in a ball and waited for them to pass.
And as he did so, he again got the distinct impression that several powerful entities, not unlike himself and Enki, were hiding in the Shell Hotel. But when he tried to sharpen these impressions, to make them more specific, they receded from him, and folded up like a flower under sudden moonlight.
Exhausted more in spirit than physically, Max fell asleep early in the evening.
THE NEXT morning, the company woke to slashing rain and thunder. Sheets of drenched wind battered the Shell Hotel. Bubbling whitecaps rode dark swells on the wide ocean. Crooked stabs of lightning licked the summer sky.
Max had been the first to rise, having gone to bed so early. It was almost 6:00 AM. Wrapping himself in a blanket, he stumbled in the main room and began making coffee.
To his surprise, Sasha appeared ten minutes later.
“Hey,” Max said quietly.
She head-nodded. “What up, M-dawg” she said.
At that, Max could not help but laugh. “We are,” he replied.
Sasha looked outside. “This is some storm. You know, the weather in this alternate timeline is kind of insane. You do realize those are near hurricane-force winds out there?” As if to make her point, a sudden gust slapped the windows, making them rattle.
Max looked up, surprised. “Seriously? How do you know?”
“The ocean. I can tell by the waves. My grandparents lived on the Gulf Coast in Florida. I’ve seen several storms like this.”
“Well. Glad we’re inside and not still out camping on the beach.”
After a moment, Sasha said, “What’re you doing up?”