by Mark Jeffrey
Casey gaped and yelled, “Max!” and was about to jump in when Max seemed to snap out of it. He jerked violently, and then flailed for the surface. His head broke water and he gasped in English with a thick German accent, “Dunkirk! Dunkirk! Man overboard! I need — I need the line!”
Immediately Casey leapt into action: there was a pool hook nearby — she snatched it from the wall and into the pool around Max’s chest and dragged him to the side of the pool. “Ah Petunia!” Max said when he saw Casey. “Thanks. I didn’t know that …” And his eyes lost focus for a moment …
… And when they returned to the present, he said in his normal voice, “Casey. What … why am I in the pool? What just happened?”
With a start, Casey noticed that his hair was long again.
Max hoisted himself out of the water. A pool boy rushed towards him and offered a towel, which Max quickly accepted and began drying himself off. People were still staring, but eyes were starting to drift off: the crisis was over.
“You … you seemed to lose your head for a minute,” Casey said quietly. “You were like … different people. Like someone with multiple personalities. You kept switching between them.”
Max blinked in surprise. “Really.” Self-consciously, he dried himself with the towel. “Did I … you know … do anything … ?”
“No!” Casey said immediately. “Well … no. Not like that. But … yeah. But no! Not what you’re thinking.”
“Oh. Good. I think,” Max mumbled in between mouth muffles of towel.
“But …” Casey began. “Here’s the weird thing. When you changed personalities, you changed physically as well. Not into a different person. More like a different version of you, but a different physical version of you also.”
“That’s because his power is uncorked now,” Enki said. Casey turned in surprise. “You’re right: he is shifting between different personalities. His mind has been dissociated for so long —! Each time he came to Mr. E on the Isle of the Dreamtime and erased his memory, a new Max Quick was born, a new personality, really. And now the walls between all those versions of Max have been erased, and they are encountering each other for the first time.
“And as for the physical changes … when his mind is intensely focused, physical reality changes. Max was made for that. All of his different personalities experienced different things, suffered different injuries. Those injuries travel with the memory of that personality. When that personality surfaces, so does the corresponding physicality.
“Where have you been?” Casey asked accusingly.
“I have been ascertaining the details of our situation,” Enki replied. “I now have a map of the surrounding area and have arranged transport to the nearby metropolis of the rather plainly named City 29.”
“I thought we were supposed to be relaxing,” Max accused. “You almost took Ian’s head off just for reading the paper.”
“No,” Enki rumbled. “I said you should be relaxing. I did not say what I would be doing while you were relaxing. You need it. I don’t. I’ve been off the job for … well, for quite a while. I’ve rested enough. Far too long, as a matter of fact. But you all need the rest.”
“Is this going to keep happening to me?” Max asked.
“Yes, for awhile,” Enki replied.
“You knew about this?” Casey asked.
Enki nodded. “I suspected.”
“So why didn’t you say anything?” Casey asked.
Enki shrugged. “What as the point? Either it happened or it didn’t. Knowing that I suspected it might changed nothing.”
“So you’re saying his brain is what makes those changes happen?” Casey said.
“Yes,” Enki replied. “When Max slips into a past personality, his body snaps into the state it was in ‘physically’ when that personality was aware and looking out through his eyes — as it must. It identifies with the body once again. And when it leaves, the body goes back to the way it was.”
“But what about the Marvin Sparkle scar?” Casey asked. To Enki’s perplexed expression she explained: “Max didn’t remember when Marvin Sparkle carved him up when we first met him, but he still had the scar. Shouldn’t that have gone away, since the past-personality that actually acquired that injury was no longer at the surface?”
Enki nodded. “Normally, yes. But human — or even Niburian brains — are sloppy. They’re inexact. With these things, sometimes there’s bleed-through. The Max you met must have still felt sliced open on some level. Or maybe he was reminded somewhere along the way. Who knows? Or the cut may have been deep enough or bitter enough to last through several versions of himself — the forgetting may have taken several lifetimes.”
Casey and Max both nodded.
“Max,” Enki said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “This is going to be difficult for some time. Your memories are freely available to you, but the brain is associative: you’ll only actually recall things when there is a trigger, something that reminds you of them. Ultimately, you will succeed in integrating all your personalities into one person. But until then, it will be rough.
“And Max …” Enki faltered for a moment, and then said: “Sometimes, you will recall things you’ve done that are horrible. Nobody lives for thousands of years without that. You will be appalled. You won’t believe you were capable of this or that. But no matter what you remember, you can’t give up, you can’t feel so riddled with guilt that you can’t go on. Come talk to me. Or if I’m not around, talk to Casey. Or Ian or Sasha.
“This is important. I hope you’ll remember it. It’s very easy to slip into despair and self-loathing — trust me, I’ve been there. When you feel you’ve gone to the dark side and so there’s no hope — only then do you actually go to the dark side. There’s always hope until then.”
Max nodded, hoping he meant it. “Well, I don’t even remember anything I did just now,” he said. “It’s like I was standing here one minutes and the next, I’m the pool, at the side, with Casey staring at me. So I don’t know how that is ‘integrating my personalities’ or whatever.”
“It’s the first step,” Enki said with a smile. “It’s all subconscious now. But soon, very soon, it will break forth into your conscious mind. Then the true battle will begin.”
Casey watched this warily. She had been feeling uneasy about Enki and his unwillingness to discuss where he had gotten their guns. Now, as she watched Max, she realized she was uneasy about him as well. With all of those personalities bouncing around inside of him … who knew how he would eventually turn out?
Who was Max Quick, really, now?
She didn’t know. He didn’t know. So she couldn’t trust him.
IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON when the company all arrived on the great patio of the Shell Hotel, intent on catching a late lunch or early dinner. They had all ditched their bathing suits and now wore new clothes that Enki had procured from the hotel’s store. Again, the hotel had insisted that payment was not required and that they were ‘guests’. Even Maurice had gotten a bit of a makeover, trading in his ripped up jeans and bandana for new versions of much the same. He looked uncomfortable in them, but clearly was doing his best to look thankful anyway.
Nevertheless, Ian and Casey still kept their hoodies cinched around their waists to hide the presence of their wonderful weapons.
As they waited for a table to become available, Max turned — and couldn’t believe that he hadn’t noticed the painting before.
On the outside wall of the back patio of the Shell Hotel was a magnificent portrait of a stunningly beautiful Italian girl. It was executed in oil on a stretched canvas. Oh, it had dimmed with time: the colors were muddier, perhaps, than they had been when it had first been created long ago. It was presently vacuum-sealed beneath glass to protect it from the scratchy, salty air.
Her flowing black locks curled on her shoulders. Her dark eyes twinkled – the artist had captured her mischief, her vitality. The way her dark red dress cinched her tiny waist so perfectly, the
folds in her dress, so real, so touchable …
It was the work of a master.
Max stepped backwards, slowly, drinking the painting in, utterly oblivious to the people in swimsuits, tennis gear, suits, shorts and t-shirts milling around nearby.
And Max knew the artist, of course.
This was a painting by Giovanni di Cyranus. And it was of his daughter, Bonfilia.
Max was about to say something to Enki about it when noticed that the old man had suddenly disappeared.
“Hey. Where did Enki go?” Max asked Ian.
Ian shrugged. “Dunno. He was here a minute ago …?”
“Bathroom, I guess,” Max said and then trailed off as he looked up. A strange, humming red jewel had just mysteriously appeared. It hovered, just over the treetops just beyond the lawn of the Shell Hotel, as though looking for something.
“What’s … that?” Max said, pointing up.
As it floated, a great, howling gust kicked up around it. The treetop canopy twisted and bucked beneath in the windy sunlight. Leaves fell by the millions.
Then the scarlet gem spotted its prey. It tore off across the back porch of the Shell. The sculpted bushes and flags all snapped like panic in its wake.
Before either Max or Casey could react, the jewel, which appeared as a burning red flame encased in ice, dove.
It went right for Maurice.
Maurice screamed. “No! It’s the Man! I won’t go back! I won’t!”
Casey and Max both strained to draw breath. As the gem drew close, they felt the air pulled from their lungs. The crimson jewel screeched a warbling whistle that sounded uncannily like an alarm. Max thought vaguely that his ears might already be drizzling blood at the sound.
There was a sharp stab of light and a thunderclap that startled Max before he realized that him himself was the source. His hands lit up instantly with stars and light. He couldn’t help himself.
No! Max felt frost sink into his heart. The second he’d done it, he knew he’d just blown their cover and drawn attention to the company. But he couldn’t let this — this thing just take Maurice.
Guests of the Shell Hotel ran in all directions, screaming in terror.
Max fired a gout of argent at the jewel, shoving it away from Maurice, who cowered on the ground, covering his head. The jewel tore off down the patio and out over the ocean with gut-wrenching acceleration. White caps appeared directly beneath the gem’s path.
Was it retreating? Had he damaged it?
Now that he had recovered from his surprise, he realized he could easily fire another stronger blast and possibly shatter the gem.
He cocked his arm back.
Starfire flowed up his arm at an every-increasing speed, collecting at the end of his fist in a fiercely shining dewdrop. A pulsing white sun built towards detonation in his clenched hand.
Max began to throw the searing shout of power.
But before he could complete the motion, something slammed into his back. It felt like a splash of ice, almost like a giant snowball had hit him.
At once, his senses were filled with jangling music.
A discordant cacophony, a din of chimes of and bells and notes and horns and singing voices drenched every frequency of his hearing. Manic colors danced in front of his eyes, a visual symmetry accompanying what was going on his ears.
He couldn’t think. He couldn’t talk or even scream. His mind was instantly paralyzed, iced. His power was snuffed out like a candle. His hand was just a mortal hand once again. It no longer wielded otherworldly power.
He fell to the ground, jaw wedged open, shaking wildly like an epileptic. A malady of melody stunned his entire nervous system.
As he lay there, helpless, quivering, he saw who had done this to him.
Jane Willow.
She regarded him coldly for split second, and then turned her attention to Casey, who by now had drawn a Red Rose.
“Ah,” Jane said, “Sharp girls with pretty guns. I’ve heard of you.”
“Well, then hear this,” Casey growled and blasted three shots in rapid succession. The vine tendrils of her splendid gun wound and stretched around the barrel, hungry for battle.
But Jane Willow whooshed. The blur of her form tracked along the patio and ducked into the Lobby.
Casey followed, with Sasha close on her heels.
Ian was about to follow, but he resisted the impulse: someone had to see if Max was okay. Snarling, he bent down and checked his pulse. Max was still alive. But he was unresponsive, comatose.
Ian snapped his head up, watching the running and screaming guests. He expected to see Enki amongst them, running towards him now.
But he didn’t.
Where the hell was Enki?
JANE WILLOW reached the piano and sat. Guests of the Shell Hotel ran screaming at the sight of Casey and Sasha wielding drawn guns.
Casey wasn’t sure what Jane was up to. Shouldn’t she be worried about defending herself from a hailstorm of bullets?
But Casey already knew better than to underestimate this particular opponent. The piano was important to Jane Willow for some reason. Alright then. Casey changed her aim, blasting away instead at the dark polished wood of the Steinway grand.
She fully expected to hear piano wire twang, to see splinters of wood spray into the air. But none of these things happened.
Instead, Jane sat at the ivories, madly pounding out notes of a vivid, yet violent, strain of music. And a tight shimmer had formed around both Jane and the piano. This music, the vibration of the notes in a specific sequence, Casey suddenly understood instinctively, had somehow formed this shimmer.
But worse, her bullets bounced off it. They fell to the floor with no more menace than pennies falling through a hole in a pocket.
Casey shrieked in annoyance. Jane was inside some kind of music-shield.
And this damnable music —! It hurt her ears as well as her eyes. It made her vision sort of wobble. As she strained to see, she beheld that the shimmer wasn’t a disturbance in the air at all; rather it was a localized alteration of space-time itself. Some things Mr. E had told her at the Isle of the Dreamtime came back to her. If music — words, software, numbers, any sort of pattern — defined the fabric of the universe, then maybe music was also a key to manipulating it. Music could shape it.
The timbre of the melody altered with a wrench. The edges of the protective shimmer began to bubble.
“Sasha!” Casey called out. “Get down! I — I think she’s about to attack!”
Objects began to materialize inside the bubbles. What was this, now? Knives, maybe? Or swords or maces or spades? But Casey saw to her surprise that the objects were not weapons — they were instead everyday, mundane. In one bubble, a pearl necklace appeared. In another, a clothes iron. In still another, a silver hand mirror. And in one more, a tight cluster of coins. And so on.
But then, a sharp new arpeggio of notes detonated these objects, send them hurtling at near-lightspeed in all directions. It formed a deadly shrapnel of the sort of objects a spiritualist might produce in a seance. The pearl necklace broke, became a hail of milky bullets. The iron — red hot — seared the air. The hand mirror shattered, a hundred jagged nuggets of silver nitrate-coated glass sprayed outwards. The coins clanged noisily in the air, treasure made terrible.
There was nothing Casey could shoot at, no way to defend herself with the Red Roses. She ducked behind a lobby chair and tucked herself into a ball.
Jane Willow wielded weaponized music. Melody and meter were her blades and bullets.
The chair cushions were instantly shredded. Red thread and feathers filled the air with a slow puffy fog of debris. But the thick chair wood held; Casey found that she was unharmed. She risked a peek around.
Jane Willow snarled when she glimpsed Casey. She seemed to consider for an instant — and then hit several ear-screeching, disharmonious chords in rapid succession.
Casey instantly felt ill. She wretched in a sudden fit of wheezed c
oughing. Her lungs felt full of fluid. She was sweating and dizzy and going to vomit any second now.
Jane Willow was creating a virus made of music. As she tickled the keys, the DNA, the actual information that made up a virulent invading organism, was transmitted directly into the mind of Casey. Jane couldn’t get at Casey so long as she was protected by the chair, so instead she was using music to turn Casey’s own body against her.
A malady of melody.
It was Sasha who came to Casey’s rescue. After what seemed like an eternity of thrashing around, Sasha slipped two balled-up wads of cloth in Casey’s ears. At that, Casey blinked: she felt better already (although the sick didn’t dissipate entirely). She looked a question at Sasha who pantomimed something to the effect of, Stuff these in your ears, you can not hear Jane music, she no can hurt you.
While both Sasha and Casey were distracted, Jane whooshed back out to the patio.
Who was this girl?
Jane stopped abruptly at the incapacitated Max. She snarled in surprise when she found Ian hovering protectively over him. They locked eyes for a second — and instantly, Ian became covered in his bloodmetal armor. Seeing this, Jane reluctantly backed away and whooshed back across the patio.
Casey, emerging now from the lobby, blasted at the motion with her guns, just a little too late each time. The previously immaculate white pillars of the Shell Hotel exploded in a mist of wood and white paint.
And then Casey became confused. The motion was in too many places at once …
Then she figured it out. Jane Willow was tossing twirling umbrellas from the patio in multiple directions as she whooshed past. They sailed into the air – up, down, left, right. It almost appeared to be a choreographed dance routine.
The end result was that Casey was mazed. She couldn’t track fast enough to discern which motion was what. She groaned inwardly as she realized that she was only shooting twirling umbrellas – while Jane Willow got away.
Meanwhile, Max watched catatonic from the ground. He was unable to move or think straight (his mind contained only a clamoring, cataclysmic, infinity-decimal din of music), but he was aware of everything around him. He knew what was happening.