by Eddie Patin
Riley started up the engine and Jason felt the car rise oddly off of the ground, immediately making him feel a little weird and sick. He hoped that he'd get used to it quickly.
"So, does this thing use gas?" Jason asked.
"No," Riley replied. "All vehicles here use fusion cores like the ones we have for the portable gates."
"Do you have to replace them every once in a while?"
"Not really. Hovercars can get by on a fusion cell pretty-much forever."
"Then why do you need more for portable gates?"
"Because those gates use a shet-ton of power to work. Opening a rift the old-fashioned non-Jason way requires a lot of fruking energy. Rifting just once is enough to suck a few of 'em dry. Your powers are really fruking unique and useful, Jason."
"Huh."
They pulled out of the sand-covered driveway into something that looked more like a wide runway than a street. Once Riley had navigated the hovercar to run straight on the odd road, they began to pick up speed very quickly. Before long, the Reality Rifters were humming along at what felt to Jason like Interstate speeds back on Earth.
Jason watched out the window, seeing the many other small houses and expansive properties zip by. Sometimes he saw people working out there, doing who knows what. A few times, he saw people riding horses.
"Horses, huh?" he exclaimed.
Riley looked up at him through the rearview mirror and smirked, saying nothing.
As Jason turned to look ahead, he saw a strange horizon that looked like a mountain range with weird spires and odd, jagged edges.
"What are those mountains way up there?" he asked.
Riley laughed.
"That's not mountains, Jason," he said. "That's Citadel. That's where we're going."
Chapter 6
It was surprising at how few vehicles there were on the road.
Earth wasn't exactly a sparsely-populated place, and Jason had taken drives to big cities plenty of times before—namely Denver by way of Interstate 70 south of his hometown. But back on universe 934, if Jason was heading to Denver, he would have been surrounded by other cars on the highway all heading to the same place. If he happened to be driving toward Denver during the morning or in the late afternoon, the Interstate would even clog up and slow down as he approached the suburbs around the metropolitan area.
That wasn't the case here. For over an hour, Gordon Wyatt's beat-up hovercar was almost the only vehicle on the road, skimming several feet over the surface. Riley held onto something a lot like a steering wheel and easily kept the craft parallel to the two metallic lines at the edges of the wide road that gleamed in the sun.
There was something different and strange about this highway, though. As their hovercar approached the massive, sprawling complex that choked up the entire horizon, Jason started seeing more similar roads to his left and right. He saw roads coming in at an angle.
All roads led to Citadel.
Instead of the freeway structures and smaller streets shooting off from them by way of off-ramps and other connections like Jason was accustomed to seeing back in Colorado, it was as if the huge megacity was the center of the region. All of the wide, sparsely-traveled hovercar roads stretching across the desert extended away from the monstrous metro sprawl like spokes from a wheel.
As the three of them approached Citadel, Jason started to see other vehicles like theirs heading in the same direction on adjacent highways, all gleaming and glittering under the bright, desert sun.
After an hour of travel from Gordon's house and Fort Firebrook, it became obvious that what Jason had previously thought was a weird mountain range was a massive city brimming with skyscrapers and odd structures all over. He could see the glimmering forms of tiny vehicles flying around in the air high off of the ground. As they drew in closer, it became apparent that there was a massive wall around the entire place—which stretched to the left and right farther than Jason could see—and the many roads heading into Citadel would eventually rise on gently sloping bridges to enter about halfway up the monumental enclosure.
"I can't see the end," Jason muttered to himself, looking both ways to the horizon of the wall they were approaching. On the other side of the huge, sand-colored structure, a thick array of buildings and towers stretched into the sky. Even from as far away as they were, Jason could now see twinkling and moving lights of many bright, neon colors—perhaps some sort of advertisements or billboards everywhere inside the city's bounds.
"The end of what?" Riley asked.
"How big is the city?" Jason asked, peering through the hovercar's window to the left, squinting at the distance of the infinitely-stretching wall. He couldn't see a corner, or even a curve. It just went on forever. Turning to look at the right side, he saw that the wall was the same way. Jason had no idea what direction was what. When he looked down at the tiny compass attached to his backpack, the needle didn't move around no matter which way it was facing. Perhaps the north pole of this planet didn't act in the same magnetic way as Earth's.
"Citadel is huge," Riley relied over his shoulder as he watched the road. "It's about two hundred miles across."
"Wow."
As they steadily approached the massive outer wall of the megacity, Jason noticed the distant form of a huge black building several miles away, standing tall over the other structures and skyscrapers around it.
"Oh, hey, another thing, dude," Riley said, meeting Jason's eyes in the rear-view mirror.
"Yeah?"
"About sixty miles inside, we're gonna reach my friend who'll do this work for you. That's a safe place there and we can talk freely. But when we're dealing with the Guard and just doing whatever in between here and there? Don't call me by my name, alright?"
"Okaaaay..." Jason replied, running a hand through his short hair. "What should I call you?"
"Max Graves."
Jason stifled a chuckle. "Uh ... okay ... Max Graves...? What the hell for?"
Riley smirked and rolled his eyes. "I know. It wasn't the best choice. I thought it was funny at the time."
"It is funny. Maximum Kill Count! Maximum graves! Somebody call the undertaker!"
They laughed.
"Yeah, well, seriously," Riley said, "It's another name I go by here to ... uh ... avoid trouble. I'm Max Graves, the moisture farmer from Fort Firebrook."
"Why?"
"It keeps Xygen off of my back. I have some contract problems with them from before I started planeswalking with Jason 47 and 113 and you. A lot of planeswalkers from this world get their start in merc teams working for the corporations after their time in the Guard."
"You made enemies in this Xygen corporation and had to get a new identity?"
"Sort of," Riley replied. "When I left the guard, I got in with the company into one of their best merc teams. They're called the Ninth Fists."
"That's a funny name."
"It has to do with the ninth dimension, I reckon. Anyway," the soldier said, "I had a contract with them for a certain amount of time. After my entire squad got fruked up on a bad mission, I had to spend some time recuperating and I didn't much appreciate how expendable I was to the company. When they wanted me to get back to work, I tried to renege on the rest of my contract. See—they never had to install any augments into me; I already had all of my fancy shet from when I was in the Dust Angels, back in the Guard. Most mercs' contract terms are determined by the value of the implants they put in you. Mine was just a standard contract for time. I didn't owe them shet other than that. They refused to make it any shorter, and I didn't really need anything from them. I had no company property—it was all mine. So, Xygen and me ... we sort of disagreed with each other after that. I didn't want them sending me on another fruking suicide mission with bad intel with another team going into a meat grinder. They didn't like me trying to jet."
"But you did, anyway."
"Yeah," Riley replied, smirking in the rear-view mirror. "Xygen is one of the most powerful corporations in Citadel.
It was fruking rough for a while. But with the help of Wally the Knife, I managed to hide my identity and avoid getting my mind wiped. That's who we're going to see. Good fruking guy. He's a capitalist."
Jason suddenly noticed Riley slowing down. He felt the hovercar lean back. They were very close to the massive outer wall of Citadel, heading up the bridge.
"We're here!" Jason exclaimed. "So ... uh ... what happens if they find out who you are?"
Riley shrugged and scratched his beard with a free hand. "Well, I'm well outside my time contract with Xygen now. But I reckon I'd get hauled in and the company would try to get to me. They'd probably make a play on the full disclosure stuff and insist on wiping my brain of sensitive company information and would probably zap the rest of it by accident." He laughed.
Jason felt a cold bloom of adrenaline in his stomach.
"Is there court and stuff?"
"Yeah," the soldier replied, slowing down as they approached a large opening with a wide, flat area for pulling over on the other side of a security checkpoint. Jason saw several soldier stepping out in tan and brown uniforms with sleek, silvery rifles. "Concord is a world government—not like the nations you have back on u934. But the corporations have a lot of power too, and Xygen is at the top of the rock."
"What about me?!" Jason asked, feeling frantic as they slowed down, approaching the soldiers. "What do I do? What do I say?"
"Don't worry," Riley said, meeting Jason's fearful eyes in the rear-view mirror. "You and Gliath are offworlders. You just have to register. Don't bother lying about who you are or where you're from—it's no big deal. We'll just say you're visiting me, alright? What's my name?"
"Max Graves."
And that's how it went.
As they pulled up to the security checkpoint, Riley did something with the hovercar that reduced its altitude until they were hovering just a foot or so off of the ground. When Riley opened the windows and Jason's face was blasted with the desert heat, he realized that the clunky old vehicle's climate control had been keeping him perfectly comfortable the whole drive. The sleek soldiers that looked a lot like futuristic versions of the US Military approached, leaning down to peer into each window. With eyes masked by face-shields that reflected like mirrors and only revealed their mouths, the guardsmen looked over the three of them inside the vehicle. They each carried very intimidating-looking rifles that didn't look like 'slug guns' from back home. They also had blasters a lot like Riley's strapped to their hips. Over their uniforms, the guardsmen wore sleek armor that looked like some sort of reflective plastic, mostly covering just their upper torsos and shoulders, as well as their knees and shins.
Riley—Max Graves—did the talking. Gliath was in his human form of course, but willfully declared that he was a Krulax from the world of Luva. Jason announced his own name when asked, saying that he was here visiting from planet Earth. It felt totally surreal.
After several seconds of scrutinizing and scanning the vehicle with handheld devices of some kind, Riley was directed to pull over in the equivalent of a parking lot—there were two other hovercars parked there, sitting on struts—and they all stepped out into the heat and followed the soldiers' directions into an office. Jason and Gliath were both scanned by a grid of lasers, answered the same questions about who they were and where they were from again, then were given flimsy plastic badges, instructed to wear them at all times.
"What happens if I lose it?" Jason asked.
A soldier with his features hidden by the mirror-like face shield frowned—Jason could see his grim mouth a lot like in the old Judge Dredd comics—and replied, "Report to the nearest Concord Guard station and turn yourself in to re-register. Do not lose it."
After a few minutes of being processed, the Reality Rifters all made their way to their hovercar again, and Jason was relieved to be out of the heat when Riley started up the vehicle once more. When the hovercar lifted off of its struts and settled into a smooth equilibrium two feet off of the ground, Riley moved them forward and deftly navigated back to the main road to continue into the megacity. Jason strapped in when heading down a steep ramp into a dingy labyrinth of massive, dusty buildings and multiple layers of elevated roads. The sudden drop made his stomach lurch.
Before long, they were humming along again, driving on a street surrounded by other hovercars of various shapes and sizes, heading deeper into Citadel. It was like driving through the most crowded, run-down part of downtown Denver, but the buildings loomed tightly over the streets. Scaffolding and bridges and other higher roads crisscrossed over them from one structure to another and in between. People walked around anywhere that was elevated out of the way of traffic. Jason saw a variety of dazzling advertisements and signs full of bright colors that were faded in the desert sun, mostly pushing places to eat, drink, watch movies and other entertainment, including obvious adverts for strip clubs and other adult venues. The heavy signage also surprisingly advertised many jobs available, along with weird alpha-numerical strings of code that Jason didn't understand.
"Why are there so many signs about places to work?" Jason asked.
"Everyone has to work," Riley replied. He swerved suddenly to avoid a hovercar blindly changing lanes, making Jason's heart jump.
"Really? That's like ... a law?" Jason stared out of the window at the crowds of people walking around in coarse, strange clothing of earth colors and reds, yellows, and oranges. Several of them wore suits a lot like Riley's Merc armor. Some had electronics and other bits of what Jason had to assume were cybernetic augments attached to their faces—some more subtle than others. "You have to work? It's a requirement?"
"My world is a lot different than yours in a lot of ways," Riley said. "It's physically similar, but there's a lot of cultural shet that's different. Everyone has to go into the Concord Guard when they're sixteen years old for a minimum four-year term of service. After that, you can choose to work in the civilian sector, or stay in the Guard, or contract with a corporation. A lot of people stay in the Guard because it's easiest."
"Why didn't you?"
"I was in the Dust Angels. From my talks with Jason 113, he says that's a lot like Earth's 'special forces'. You have that on your world too? Special Forces?"
"Yeah. It's not an Earth thing—it's a United States thing. Well, I guess other countries have their own versions of special forces too, but..." Jason trailed off and shut up. He wanted to hear more.
"When I went through the Guard, my world here was just getting into interdimensional rifting technology. I thought it was really fruking cool, and I wanted to be involved. Merc companies were popping up all over working for the corporations to explore other universes—get resources and shet—and there was a lot of talk in my unit about the Ninth Fists. When my term was finished, and I had to decide between going career like my dad, or joining up with a merc outfit instead. I decided to take the chance and go mercenary. Way more danger, I reckoned, but I also knew that I'd see a lot more crazy shet being on the slicing edge with those frukers than I would in the Guard. And I was right."
"What happens if people don't work?" Jason asked.
"Prison. Exile. When the Concord united the planet, they made sure that everyone had an income, but everyone was forced to work to make that possible. If people don't work, it all falls apart."
"So, everyone's basic needs are met?"
"Eh," Riley replied with a shrug. "I'm no expert on the economy or whatever, but for some reason, prices went up over the time I was a kid and in the Guard more and more until everyone mostly just lived the same. Every fruker you see out there kind of scrapes by."
"Huh."
Jason watched out the window as they drove on. Now that they were several miles from the entrance into Citadel, it all looked the same. It was crazy to think that they had sixty miles of this to drive through before getting to 'Wally the Knife'. What a huge, strange place.
As they continued, humming along, tightly tailgating with the many other hovercars on the odd,
lineless road, Jason started noticing strange things. They were surrounded by the same sorts of buildings, advertisements, other streets, overhead bridges and bizarre dystopian-esque structures. It was all very science-fictiony, but also very run-down and weathered by the desert sun and wind. There were groups of people that literally looked like slaves—or chain-gangs—working on the roads and buildings. Soldiers paced around them, their silvery rifles gleaming in the harsh sun.
"Who are they?" Jason finally asked. "Criminals?"
"Yeah," Riley replied. "Those are folks that are sentenced to labor for crimes. Either that, or they're just Exiles that were caught or never got away."
Exiles, Jason thought. He tried to remember the soldier's previous mention of them. "People that didn't do military service?"
Riley nodded and scratched his beard. "Exiles are the people that refuse to join the Guard when it's time, or, less often, the ones that don't want to work their societal jobs. Instead, they just leave or try to hide."
"Then they become prisoners? Slaves?!"
"Eh. Yeah. Thing is, most Exiles that don't wanna work still take their monthly income. They're lazy frukers. They don't carry the load like everyone else, but still try to eat the nuts."
Eat the nuts? Jason thought.
"Sounds like your world doesn't have a lot of freedom in it, Riley."
Riley shrugged. "I can see how you might say that, Jason. But it's the way it is here. I've known it all my life. Doesn't bother me—I grew up with it. Now," he said with a smirk, "I've seen a lot of shet since I've left Ebonexus and started planeswalking. I know it's different than your United States—assuming yours is a lot like Jason 113's—but I've also seen things a lot worse in other places. My people here expect to get their monthly income no matter what. To get shet like that, they have to work for it. If some people work and some don't, well, it doesn't add up, does it? Everyone here has to be in the Guard. Because of that, the Guard is really big and strong as a military, which was also needed to get the world under one government. This place makes it work, but for that to happen like it does, yeah—maybe there's not much freedom like you know it. But a lot of these poor frukers—" He waved his hand at the throngs of strange cyborgs walking around the road that they were zipping along. "They don't know any different. This is life."