Agents of the Demiurge

by Brian Blose

  The main corridor they stood in stretched between the stairs leading down to the lower level and the lobby. Outside the glass doors of the lobby was the parking lot. Erik squinted down the hall. There were a shit ton of flashing lights outside.

  “Erik! Does the phone have reception yet?”

  He pulled the device from the pocket of his borrowed pants. “No.”

  “That's unfortunate. So here's the plan,” Hess said. “San, Jerome, Drake, and Ingrid are going to run into the lobby with guns blazing. I follow right behind and take out anyone lurking in the corners. Erik, you are going to guard our rears. Everyone kill as many people as you can and try not to die.”

  “Screw that,” Drake said. “Use the last pipe bomb.”

  “I'm saving it.”

  “For what? Don't you see the cops out there? We're screwed, Hess. Jerome needs to end the world before they string us up.”

  Hess shook his head. “We haven't lost until we've lost, Drake. We are going to take the lobby. Then we are going to toss a pipe bomb at the police cordon. That will give us some space. Then we set off the nuke. If it doesn't fizzle, then we use the distraction to get to the motorcycles we stashed. That's what we're going to do. Now let's do it.”

  Erik watched the others storm into the lobby. Drake pushed a protesting Ingrid before him as a human shield, firing wildly at the soldiers behind the reception desk. Jerome went at his side, thin arms thrown into the air with the recoil of each trigger pull. San jogged in the opposite direction, an insane bounce in her step.

  A cacophony of gunfire erupted. Hess hefted a rifled to his shoulder and stepped into the room. He paused, put his cheek to the stock of his rifle, and fired twice. Then he pivoted and repeated the procedure. Time and again, Hess turned, acquired a target, shot, and turned again. There was no rush, only inhumanly efficient movement.

  The pounding of boots on steps brought Erik back to his task of guarding the rear approach. He brought his handgun up and blew the face off the first man to appear in his line of sight. The next one got it in the chest. Target number three got lucky and managed to tumble back down the steps without injury.

  From the direction of the lobby, the shooting stopped. Erik glanced over his shoulder, trying to determine who had finished whom. From the direction of the steps, another wave of soldiers appeared.

  Erik took out three this time. The others retreated, but not before putting a piece of metal in his shoulder. He glanced back again, then spun and raised his weapon at the figure silhouetted at the entry to the lobby.

  “Come on,” Hess said.

  Erik stumbled into a semi-jog until he reached the lobby. Bodies lay where they had fallen in pools of red. Most were Church soldiers. He did a quick assessment. Only Hess and Jerome had survived.

  “Do you have reception now?”

  Erik pulled out the phone again. There was a single bar of reception. He dialed one and put the phone to his ear. Hess watched expectantly. Seconds ticked by. Then a flat beep sounded. The phone display now showed zero bars of reception. “Dropped call,” he said.

  “We'll try again outside.” Hess directed Jerome to guard their rear, then pulled free a pipe bomb. He handed a remote control to Erik. “Twist the wheel when I tell you, then run out and get behind one of the colonnades. Make the call as soon as you're in place.”

  He took the control offered to him. Hess pulled open the door and threw the pipe like a javelin, sending it into the front ranks of first responders. Before Hess could give the order, Erik spun the knob. A satisfying blast sounded, clearing its blast radius and sending everyone else dodging for cover.

  Erik ran through the door and made it to the nearest column. Hess joined him. The phone once more showed a single bar. Erik punched the keys and put it to his ear. The sound of speed dialing greeted him, followed by ringing.

  He glanced around wildly. Where was he supposed to watch for the explosion? “Where's the bomb?”

  “On the bluff.” Hess pointed ahead. “Ground zero is my house.”

  The phone continued to ring at his ear.

  “Please don't fizzle,” Hess whispered.

  Light washed over them, bright as a camera flash to the eyes and as warming as the noonday sun. “It's brighter than it should be,” Hess said.

  Erik jumped out from behind the column and struck a dramatic pose. “BOOM, MOTHERFUCKERS!”

  A split second later, the shock wave killed everyone present.

  Chapter 24 – Hess / Iteration 145

  Escape was almost simple following the detonation. Anyone who might have attempted to stop them either lay motionless in death or had fled in the grip of unreasoning panic, no doubt convinced the Demiurge had chosen to smite the people. All six Observers walked free of the Church headquarters, resisted only by terrain rearranged by the explosion and continuing structural collapses.

  Their disintegrated clothing proved their greatest inconvenience. While their bodies reformed unharmed, their coverings had a more mundane nature and hung on them in threads where it hung on them at all. They scavenged clothing from corpses farther from the epicenter and strutted free of the destruction.

  In the immediate aftermath of the explosion, following their resurrections, Erik had slapped Hess heartily on the back and proclaimed everything forgiven. More, he promised that if the two of them ever had another disagreement, his magnanimity could always be purchased for the modest price of one doomsday weapon.

  Jerome shepherded Ingrid along, sickly waif leading emaciated man to his emancipation. Drake and Erik pointed out interesting sights with glee, fascinated by twisted skyscrapers in the distance and split pavement and gushing water mains and hot rain falling from the expanding cap of the mushroom cloud. Due to the unexpected ferocity of their nuke and the resultant destruction of the storage space hosting their getaway motorcycles, Hess lead them in the direction of the garage on foot.

  Fortunately, the garage had survived the devastation of the city. The damage suffered by their base of operations was limited in scope to fried electronics and shattered windows. They filed inside and collapsed onto the second-hand furniture.

  Jerome stirred first, rising to collect unworn clothing and blankets from the office room. Hess noticed her hand linger against that of Drake when she passed him a bundle. He rolled his eyes, then glanced to the window. He saw only half-light unsuitable for estimating time there. “What time is it? Elza should be back by now.”

  San sat up. “Her car was parked at the end of the block when we got here, so she made it back. Is there any sign that she's been inside?”

  “If she made it back already, then why isn't she here?” Hess went first to the door to verify Elza's car was not on the street. Back inside, he noticed that her bags were gone. Moving more quickly now, he searched the garage until he found a note penned in her hand on the rickety card table they had used for their feast the previous evening.

  My Dearest Hess,

  I wish I could say the right words to return our relationship to normal. Failing that, I wish I could persuade you to pretend everything is normal. Because I am unable to do either of those things, our future together is guaranteed to hold nothing but bitterness – and I do not want that for us.

  The love between us has burned hot for longer than the shelf life of most civilizations. It was real, Hess, every moment of it. I know your nature makes it impossible for you to understand how I could value our time together and yet still choose to end our lives. I also know that my decision to walk away will be something you cannot reconcile with my most ardent professions. Nevertheless, I will try.

  From a tent deep within a frozen wilderness to an anonymous village nestled within fields of Taro to innumerable instances stretched across our very own portion of eternity, I have loved you. I loved you before I had the strength to say the words. I loved you in helpless desperation when I believed our dalliance treason against the Creator. I loved you enough to help you raise orphans and found charitable organizations and
introduce non-native technologies and take over the known world and even build a nuclear weapon.

  I love your unflinching dedication to doing the right thing. I love your unending empathy for creatures whose pain is largely self-inflicted. I love your grand visions for a better world. I love how you are always fully present within the moment. I love how you take charge of circumstances which would cause anyone else to surrender. I love how you transform me from a cold, intellectual bitch into someone worth knowing.

  Our love is more enduring than anything that has come before and anything likely to come after. It is more real than entire worlds – 144 have ceased to exist while we have persevered. But all things come to an end. Nothing lasts forever. Eventually our love would meet a trial it could not overcome.

  I prefer to end our love at high tide, while it still is real, while we regret not a single moment of our time together. For the duration of this world, I will yearn for your presence, your conversation, your touch, for you. I have chosen to believe that you yearn for me in return. To me, this mutual yearning is far preferable to caustic arguments undermining our history.

  I know this letter has been hard to read, and trust me, it was every bit as hard to write. Our love yet endures. It will end soon, when we cease to exist, but it will end in its glory.

  With all my love,

  Elza

  Hess placed the letter back on the table, arranging it identical to the way he had found it. When Jerome approached, Hess shook his head. He tried to respond to the question on her face, but his throat refused to pass sound. The dawning realization on every face in the room brought the reality home, each expression of shock driving the fiery nail deeper into his soul.

  No one interrupted the awkward silence until someone noticed Erik's absence. Jerome and Drake and Ingrid and San went about their business, eating and sleeping and packing bags and debating whether or not Erik would return.

  Hess spent the hours in a twilight existence, re-reading a letter already imprinted upon his perfect memory. His thoughts moved at a glacial pace, frozen into virtual immobility. For most of that time, he reclined on a bed in the garage's office, the one he had last used in the company of Elza.

  His memory ran a slide show on loop depicting Elza in all one hundred and forty-five bodies. They had all been his favorite in their time, simply by virtue of the fact that they had been the vessel to bring his woman back to him. The tensions of the present world had prevented their usual banter so that he never had the opportunity to tell Elza that her current form was his favorite. Now he would never get that chance. More, he could never mean those words now. Because this was the body that had walked away from him.

  Within hours, San departed in a flurry of witty goodbyes. She broke form only for Hess. For him, she kissed his cheek and whispered words of commiseration. Then San was gone and the garage grew even quieter, even emptier.

  Chapter 25 - Erik / Iteration 2

  He took the name Erik as he entered the village. Erik. The name of a victim several villages back. That man had fought for his life with admirable passion, though ultimately with little success. Everyone chose death at some point. The pathetic creatures valued their lives only so long as they basked in the warmth of pleasant experiences.

  None of them appreciated the gift of existence granted them. They lived, they experienced, they thought, they ate and mated and played and did all the myriad activities that people did. None of that could happen without the Creator's endowment of being.

  They didn't understand the enormity of something existing. No one did. They couldn't comprehend the concept of nothing. They couldn't grasp that the alternative to the Creator's world was eternal emptiness.

  Instead, the people saw the world as a stage for their pathetic stories of domestic drudgery. Each one thought himself unique and worthy of some special place in the order of existence. They thought the world existed for their personal benefit and opted out of life the moment that benefit declined.

  It was a tragedy only he could see. The Creator replaced emptiness with something-ness and the dumb creatures couldn't appreciate the majesty of what had been done. It was beyond ignorance. Beyond selfishness.

  They thought the world flawed when it didn't cater to every momentary, contradictory whim. Never did it occur to them that the world might not be created for their benefit. That any one person's ideal might constitute a nightmare for every other person. They never questioned their ceaseless desires, only a world that didn't fulfill them.

  Erik had asked dozens of people his question so far. None of them had provided a satisfactory answer. Each had experienced an agonizing death. In some ways, the deaths provided more insight than the words. After all, whether intended to be great truths or self-serving lies, in the end words were just puffs of air. Death was pure.

  He went through his normal routine, visiting the village's guest pavilion and meeting the locals. This village had about sixty people, and as usual, his victim chose himself. An obnoxiously social man moved about the square with an effervescent joy, flirting with any woman old enough to talk and young enough to walk, joking with the men and throwing balls with the boys. The name of this social addict was Geron.

  Geron's constant motion looked at first glance to be an outlet for his youthful exuberance, but Erik saw something bleaker in the manic activity. Erik suspected that Geron in fact couldn't stand to be still. And not because of some deep love of life. No. Geron couldn't bear to truly exist in a moment because he despised his existence. His frantic dance around the people of his village served to distract him from the misery he felt in the odd moment of reflection.

  This man would soon be robbed of all distractions. Instead of the mental noise of a haphazard existence, Geron would experience pure contemplation punctuated by excruciating agony, all of it permeated by overwhelming fear. How quickly would he give up hope and embrace annihilation? For most, a single night sufficed.

  After his treatment of a victim named Yurin caused him to question the purity of his intentions, Erik had decided to hold himself to a simple rule: if a victim asked for death, he would grant the wish. That was the magic moment, after all, when they chose death over life. Their self-hatred was the ugly truth he sought to uncover. Once they chose annihilation, he granted their freedom.

  Erik ate with the villagers and relaxed until night. He waited until Geron went inside a house, then retired to a hammock in the guest pavilion, feigning sleep. The village grew silent.

  Without a sound, Erik left the hammock. He slung his bag on his back and moved to a house near the one Geron slept inside. Using dry kindling from his bag, he built a small structure. Then he brought out strips of cloth and placed them inside his construction.

  Erik snuck to the remnants of the communal fires and blew life back into an ember. When it glowed a cheery red, he transferred its spark to a piece of kindling and carried it back to where he had made his preparations. The cloth blazed to life, then the kindling frame caught fire. Then the building it abutted began to burn.

  He returned to the guest pavilion to wait. Minutes passed before anyone noticed the flames. By then, one wall of the house was consumed by fire and the thatched roof was sending smoke throughout the village. Screams for help shattered the night.

  Erik emerged from the pavilion at the same time that most people were leaving their houses. He jogged up to Geron. “We need to get water! Come help me carry jugs from the spring!”

  Without a moment's hesitation, Geron followed him out of the village. Of course, five other men were running in the same direction. Before Erik and Geron could reach the spring, the fastest man rushed back towards the village, shouting “someone shattered all the jugs!”

  Geron stared at Erik, dumbfounded. “Someone broke the jugs. Why would someone do that? How are we going to put out the fire now?”

  “We need to go to the nearest village. We will ask their men to bring jugs to help us put out the fire.”

  Geron nodded his head. “
Yes, let's do that.”

  As easy as that, Erik got Geron alone. He waited until they were midway between villages before striking his target in the back of the head with the shaft of his walking stick. Geron went from running to rolling through the dust so fast the effect was positively comical.

  Erik put his walking stick through a loop on his bag, then started to drag his unconscious victim into the bush. No one would think to look for Geron until it was too late. The people of the village were dealing with one emergency and couldn't comprehend that someone might use the confusion to cover a murder. What fools the people were.

  “You always use the same method,” a voice said from the darkness.

  Erik looked up too late. A fist collided with his face, sending him to the ground with the taste of blood in his mouth. “That makes you predictable,” the voice continued.

  In a flash, Erik ripped the knob off of his walking stick and lurched back to his feet. He took a split second to regain his balance and then drove the sharpened point at his opponent with all the viciousness he could summon.

  The man twisted aside, jabbed Erik’s nose again, and then drove a heel into Erik’s calf, collapsing him in an awkward sprawl. The man picked up the walking stick and inspected the sharpened point. “Been a while since I’ve seen a spear.”

  “Kill him already,” said a woman he couldn’t see.

  The man rolled his eyes. “So now you want me to participate?”

  “I want you to finish what you started so we can put this incident behind us.”

  “First I want to know why he kills.”

  Erik stared up at the man, squinting in the dark to make out distinguishing characteristics. Was the flesh he saw unusually pale? Erik began to laugh. “What’s your name, stranger?”