by Nas Hedron
Hipper Tiger Books
This is the Official Pirate Edition of the novel Luck and Death at the Edge of the World, by Nas Hedron. It is provided free of charge by the publisher, Hipper Tiger.
This edition contains the entire novel, but the commercial edition has additional material in a section called Facts in the Fiction that explores the factual background of six different elements of the fictional story, including a detailed discussion of each topic, illustrations, and links to relevant web pages, documents, and videos.
The commercial edition is available on Amazon.com (and all other Amazon sites) and Kobo.com.
A Hipper Tiger Book
Copyright © 2012 Nassau Hedron.
Edition 3.0
First edition published May 7, 2012. This edition published November 4, 2012.
Kindle ISBN 978-0-9879911-1-9
EPUB ISBN 978-0-9879911-0-2
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Contact the author at [email protected] or visit NassauHedron.com.
Cover illustration by Hipper Tiger using elements to which no copyright restrictions attach.
This book, like everything else, is for my wife: you make my heart go boom, boom, boom.
Table of Contents
Luck and Death at the Edge of the World
One: Brace and Erase
Two: Mad, Fat, and Dangerous to Know
Three: A Sixteen Year Old Cheerleader Crossed With a Porn Queen
Four: 3% Threats and Paradoxical Data
Five: A Magic Bullet and a Sentimental A.I.
Six: Suerte y Muerte
Seven: Rubbing Herself Against It Like a Cat
Eight: UIFs and the Felon
Nine: An Elegant Problem
Ten: Peace, or Something Equally Absurd
Eleven: With No Disrespect, So What?
Twelve: A Plan of Last Resort
Thirteen: Spiders and Tics
Fourteen: As Dead As God on Sunday
Fifteen: Airportlandia
Sixteen: Things Are Measured Differently Here
Seventeen: El Paraíso Perdido
Eighteen: More Degraded, More Carnal
Nineteen: Born To Dogs In The Street
Twenty: Wanna Buy Some Shitty Tomatoes?
Twenty-One: From The Throats Of Men, From The Hearts Of Men
Twenty-Two: Blood Everyfuckingwhere
Twenty-Three: Six or Seven Shots Through The Wall
Twenty-Four: There Is A Solution To Every Problem
Twenty-Five: Sleep At The Edge Of The World
Facts in the Fiction
Introduction: Mad Dogs and Robot Men
One: A City in the Clouds
Two: The Robots Go to the Dogs
Three: Mutant Diseases Spread By Hard-to-Kill Bugs
Four: Ghosts Living in Shells
Five: Alan the A.I. + Alan Turing, Human Being
Six: A Down to Earth Dharma
Preview: Felon and the Judas Kiss
About the Book
One: Keep the Krill in Check
Preview: Los Angeles Honey
About the Book
One: The Bright Sky Presses Down
Two: Remember Forget
Three: Two Teardrops Fall
Four: Your Kaikki Knows Where You Are
Preview: In the Empire of the Monkey King
About the Book
One: Full Of Worthless Prayers
Two: Die All Over Again
Three: Gun Oil, Sweat, Dust, And Testosterone
The Book and the Author
About Nas Hedron
Books by Nas Hedron
Acknowledgments
Luck and Death at the Edge of the World
One: Brace and Erase
We Brace while we’re still in the Jenny, its twin rotors beating a heavy rhythm in the night air about twenty minutes outside Tijuana, and when the wave of Brace crests inside me I think to myself: so this is what it feels like to be a sociopath.
Each of us has inhaled deeply and abruptly, the way they tell you to do, holding a disposable applicator mask over nose and mouth. The interior of the Jenny is utterly dark in the visual spectrum for stealth, but our visors are tuned to an expanded EM range and the ultraviolet lamps make the inside of the hold gleam a pale whitish purple. We sit facing each other on benches that run down each side of the hold. On the floor in between us there is a small pile of crumpled applicator masks, a California National Forces logo fluorescing on each one.
The Brace has a harsh chemical tang in my nose and throat, reminiscent of burning plastic, but that’s quickly forgotten as the drug rushes up the inside of my face and explodes in my frontal cortex, then lies there sizzling, lighting up my brain from the inside with an intense white light, like the weaponized phosphorus of Angelfire.
I feel several things at once, none of it quite what I imagined.
My entire body is engorged with a carnal joy that I am suddenly too inhuman to express in words.
I am refreshed, reborn, re-energized—I could run, run, run forever and never run down. Despite my energy, I am filled with an ecstatic peace, a sense of being exactly where I belong, free of conscience, worry, or human sympathy.
I am blissfully awash in evil, in a profound lust for violence, unrestrained by anything like love, all empathy junked in a rush of pure kinetic bliss with the sweet taste of sin in the back of my throat.
Or maybe that’s not sin—in the first rush I bit the inside of my cheek and it’s bleeding.
I look across the aisle at Yarborough. Because of the reflection on his visor I can’t make out his eyes, but I can see his mouth. He is grinning uncontrollably, and I feel my face pull into the same rictus—not a smile, but a manic baring of the teeth, something inherited from our predator ancestors who hunted with their teeth, fought with their teeth and killed with their teeth.
He tilts his head slightly and his eyes become visible. He looks back at me and we know each other, the way monsters know each other. Next to me Macchia begins stomping his feet, first one and then the other, in a slow rhythm. I can feel his left leg against my right as he raises it up and stomps it down, over and over. I can feel the vibrations of his footfalls through the metal plating of the floor. After a moment Yarborough falls into step with him, and then I do, and then we all do, as though the entire squad is marching while sitting down. The beat is out of time with the Jenny’s rotors, setting up a jazzy syncopation. Someone down the aisle starts ratcheting their flechette launchers with a sound that is eerily like a güiro.
Wired on Brace, we’re not a very disciplined force, but then we don’t have to be. This isn’t a strategic infiltration like Boulder, or a covert intel op like New York. This is strictly civilian control, a euphemism for stomping on everyone and everything so painfully that for the rest of their lives they will keep their heads down, cause no trouble, and be grateful to simply be left alone. Guiterrez is a hard man and normally keeps his city under control, but lately he’s been distracted by local affairs—ambitious lieutenants, pleasures of the flesh—and the some isolated pockets of resistance have developed. Sacramento wants the place disinfected before isolated resistance comes together into something like insurrection.
The brass may call this civilian control, but we call this kind of mission what it is: deploy and destroy, burn and return. The Jenny’s floor begins to sink perceptibly, signaling our imminent arrival at the drop zone. Almost time.
Whatever we do down th
ere, we won’t even remember it once the Brace wears off. It’s been coupled with a GABA agonist marketed under the trade name Erase, which temporarily prevents the formation of long-term memory. Like a bunch of blind drunks, when our consciences return in the morning we’ll be unaware of the atrocious things we did the night before. Hell, I can’t even remember boarding the Jenny.
Except that’s not right.
The Brace and Erase were administered simultaneously in the mask, which I only used once we were in flight. There’s no reason for me not to remember what happened before that. I check my memory, but I don’t remember boarding, or even being briefed, which is when I realize this has to be a dream. And if it’s a dream it must be based on memories—the very memories that the Erase was supposed to prevent from forming in the first place, buried somewhere deep in my head but excavated during sleep.
I feel panic rising because I know where the dream must be headed and despite being a mental fiction it feels real. I look at my hand, at the elapsed mission time displayed on my chronometer, at the equipment in the Jenny. Everything is detailed, precise, real. I bite the inside of my cheek again where it’s bleeding and it hurts.
Like so many things, I have training to deal with dreams. The Forces prepare us to take counter-measures against things like psychic driving and induced trance states. We know the Texans have used trance techniques on prisoners and we suspect that the Brazilians have too, so we’re prepared.
I force my breathing to slow and check my Alpha and Omega. Alpha: is there consistency between what I see now and what I normally see in the waking world, what the boffins call consistency of perception with established facts? And Omega: is there internal logical consistency within what I’m seeing?
At the moment the Omega seems intact. The situation remains consistent from one moment to the next, the people present don’t turn into other people, our actions are consistent with the mission, our behavior is consistent with having taken Brace.
And the Alpha? Only now that I’ve asked myself the question do I remember that Yarborough’s dead. Meeks and Kuzui are here and they went AWOL before the squad was ever deployed. Dreams have a way of obscuring facts like that until you scrutinize the situation detail by detail.
So I am dreaming. The problem is that knowing I’m dreaming doesn’t help me as long as I’m still trapped in a dream that’s carrying me into the heart of Tijuana. I can moderate my psychological responses a little, though I can’t control them completely—my practice isn’t evolved enough for that. But controlling my physiological responses is way beyond my grasp. If we actually get to the city my body will overdose on adrenaline no matter how clearly I recognize that the things I’m seeing, the things we’re doing, aren’t real, and that will begin to erode my psychological control. Even a lifetime of meditation probably wouldn’t get me safely through reliving Tijuana.
If I could wake up I could put an end to it, and my Forces training is supposed to let me do exactly that, but it’s not working. I try shouting loudly and abruptly. I try suddenly kicking out at Macchia beside me, but he just grins at me. Abrupt, startling actions like these usually allow a sleeping person to briefly overcome the REM atonia that keeps them paralyzed while they’re dreaming so that they don’t end up running around the bedroom acting out their dreams. Then when their sleeping body kicks or shouts, it wakes them up. The problem is that it’s not working. Nothing is working and Tijuana is getting closer. I’d jump out of the Jenny—that would almost certainly wake me up—but the hold is sealed until we land.
I need a new approach. I ignore the logic of the dream, ignore the other people, and get off the bench, sweeping aside the pile of masks and seating myself cross-legged on the floor. No one says anything about it. I rest my hands on my knees, close my eyes, and focus on my breath.
One, two. Inhale, exhale. One, two.
I get distracted by the guys stomping around me, by the vibrations of the engine that I can feel through the deck, but I bring my mind back to my breath. One, two. Inhale, exhale. I feel the Jenny settle onto the ground and as the doors crack open the familiar smell of the Mexican desert washes over me, making me lose focus again, but I bring my mind back to my breath.
One, two. One, two. One, two.
The details of the dream and my dread of it keep tugging at my attention and I lose my grip, lose my focus, again and again, and have to bring it back.
The doors slide open wide and the guys tumble out in an undisciplined, drugged gaggle, laughing and hooting, like a pile of evil puppies. I know what they’re about to do. I know every unspeakable detail and those details bang on the door of my attention, but I keep my eyes closed and force myself to re-focus on my breath.
Felon approaches me and bellows over the sound of the rotors, which are slowing now but haven’t completely stopped.
“Burroughs, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
I ignore him and remain where I am.
“Burroughs!” He grabs my arm and tries to pull me upright, screaming in my ear. I focus on my breath. “Goddamn it, what the hell is the matter with you?” One, two. One, two. “This is dereliction Burroughs—you know the penalty for dereliction in the field?”
I feel my adrenaline kick up a notch when he ratchets one of his flechette launchers. The situation still feels entirely real and I begin to doubt myself, which is when the thing I’ve been waiting for finally happens: my alarm goes off.
The intermittent buzzing of the alarm goes on for a while before the dream finally begins to disintegrate, Felon’s voice crackling and spitting like bad comm as his apparition comes apart. I allow my eyes to open an instant too soon and out the door of the Jenny I see the desert for a moment, glowing green through the nightvision filter of my visor, before it’s replaced by my bedroom.
I look at the clock: 6:00 a.m. I say “I’m awake” and the alarm stops. I sit up in bed feeling shaky, covered in sweat. I throw the covers off and strip off my t-shirt and underwear, walking to the mat in the corner.
I’ll shower later. I’ve got a new client to meet today—a big one—and work to do. I need to collect myself. I sit down naked on the mat and re-start the process of meditation that I began inside the dream. I begin the Mosquito Meditation—nothing less is going to do the trick today.
Two: Mad, Fat, and Dangerous to Know
Who would want to kill him? Even I don’t actually give a damn if he lives or dies and I’m paid a lot of money to care. I’ll try to keep him alive because it’s my job, because I have a reputation to protect, but about his death itself I would feel nothing, truly nothing. The attempt on his life must have been about money because I can’t imagine him arousing anyone’s passion.
He’s tall, but fat. His receding hairline gives his face a round, moonish look, eyes buried deep within folds of skin. His hair would be grey except that in a quaint, old-fashioned touch of vanity he dies it pitch black. By turns he stalks around the manse like a ghost, totters like the drunk he is, or charges like a stumbling bull, bellowing his head off. This is Max Prince in the flesh—the doughy, pale, puffy flesh. His T-shirts can barely contain his belly, like a ham shoved into a pair of panty hose. Sometimes he forgets to dress at all and wanders around in his pajamas or, on one occasion, a white dress shirt and nothing else. His hair is inevitably in disarray and his nails are always dirty. His breath is noxious.
But his eyes are still bright blue and clear, even if you can barely make them out through the sponge-like flesh that surrounds them. Blue like jewels, just like they always were. In a bygone era he was slim, sexy, and famous—an actor and singer at the top of the entertainment industry. Now he resembles one of those antique pornos that are printed on paper. If you cut away all the intellectual bullshit about how a three-hundred-year-old copy of Hustler represents a form of authentic American folk art, what you have in your hands is a well-thumbed nudie magazine with the sheen coming off the pages. He’s like that. Once he was beguiling in a trashy way, now you don’t want
to touch him without gloves. Once he got people sweaty, now he’s just greasy and unpleasant.
Four decades ago Max Prince was known as the Mad Prince because of his outrageous conduct, especially his prodigious appetite for expensive drugs and disposable women. The women were starlets, debutantes, and cashiers from the local corner store. They were the mothers, daughters, and sisters of his business partners and friends.
There was no end to it. Screwing six women a day, he ingested every drug known to man—from natural psychedelics to hyped-up synthetic amphetamines—in quantities that would have killed an ordinary man, and washed it all down with vodka straight from the bottle. No matter what he did, though, he remained charming in his raffish way, and he never forgot his lines or was late on the set. His singing never suffered. On talk sims, chatting with the host and flirting with the other guests, he was sometimes self-deprecating, sometimes entertainingly arrogant, sometimes seemingly candid. Mostly he was funny and good looking and as a result we forgave him everything.
He destroyed stuff. He would trash a hotel room, tearing down the drapes and using the curtain rod to smash everything that was breakable. He would take offence at the color of someone’s parked car for reasons no sober person could interpret and use the heavy decorative cane he affected in those days to knock out all the windows, finishing with powerful blows to the hood that would make it buckle and cave. His keepers and managers would cheerfully pay for everything, sweeping up in his wake. They paid off the girls too, as well as their parents, abortionists, and psychiatrists, and greased the palms of the law so that the drugs he took never became a career-threatening issue. A good parasite—that is to say a well-adapted one—does everything it can to ensure the survival of its host, and his staff were good parasites, smoothing the way for him and keeping him out of trouble while drawing outrageous salaries.