DUALITY: The World of Lies

by Paul Barufaldi

  The Zenith Realms. He dared to enter an eerily quiet agricultural town to buy a night at the inn. He spent an hour in the lobby just waiting for someone to serve him. A young woman eventually came through, who upon seeing him summarily ignored his presence entirely and left. He chased her down and demanded a room, and when he offered 3 coins for it she begrudgingly accepted and handed him his key without another word. When he further demanded a bath, she shrugged and set him one and was once again off. He cleansed himself well with soap, and ate a meal so large it staggered the restaurant owners to see a man consume it. They were a bit friendlier there, but not by much. Communicating in their dialect was problematic, to say the least. At good third of their words were entirely different than his, and the rest they invariably pronounced oddly.

  The deeper into the Zenith realms he went the more breathtaking the scenery became: scented crimson lakes with a natural air of incense, registers of a hundred crystalline cascades each beaming with rainbows, deep water fjords of turquoise blue, and majestic limestone falls hiding amidst sleepy pine forests.

  In the next township he encountered he dropped some coin to some impoverished vagabonds who in turn fed him and helped him to buy gear and pointed him to those who could tell him more of the lands that lay ahead and how best they could be navigated. The folk here were tall and broad, like Gahre, and looked upon him with the same vague familiarity as he looked upon them. After all he shared their blood. In the next town he came upon, things began to look eerily familiar: an old winery, a stone bridge over a sandy river, a pastoral farm, a picturesque temple he had seen perhaps before in a dream. And then he came upon a rustic house with a sign over the doorway that bore his mother's maiden name, and knocked at the door. Again the dialectic differences befuddled communication with the old woman who answered, but she summoned her son who was far more flexible in his speech and soon enough determined that they were indeed kin! The boy was a second cousin to Gahre. He was invited him in at once and others of the family were called and a minor feast was pulled together that very night. He was regaled with tales of his mother and shown a portrait of her that nearly made him weep. Gahre regaled them right back with tales of his own. His capture of Har Darox enthralled them, as did his tales of the wild path he had followed here from Tulan, and they were suitably impressed that he had managed the journey in a mere seven weeks. He relayed a censored version of his experience at the Great Oak. His life in Tulan fascinated them and they begged more descriptions of his nation which to them was an exotic land a world away.

  On the following day an uncle and cousins brought him by wagon to a neighboring village to the north to meet his grandmother. She remembered him from his early boyhood. He had been little more than four when his mother had left here to be with his father in Tulan, and he held no strong memory of the people or the place beyond that vaguest trace of familiarity. She was a kindly woman, his grandmother, and she cared for him well during his stay, washing his garb and making sure he was fed and bathed. Two days turned to four and four into a week and one week into two. Attachments whipped up out of the ground like vines that sought to ensnare him there forever. His uncle had taken him to their wheelmill and offered him work and even land for a cabin. The females of his clan brought their maiden friends before him, beautiful girls all, and told him he had his pick! As time wore on, Gahre became increasingly concerned because he knew the various family members would be talking of the interesting kinsman who had come to them and The Order had a small presence in the city that lay not twenty kilometers northeast of this village. What's more, they knew he had kin in this region and exactly who they were, so it wouldn't take much for them to put two and two together and come a-knocking -or just sweep him away in the dead of night.

  So, to his family's wailing discontent, he abruptly told them he must return west and could delay no longer. The lie was for his own protection should they be questioned. He intended, of course, to continue east. After fond and tearful farewells and final pleas for him to remain, Gahre set himself back on the trail, east by east, trail by trail to the shores of the vast and tumultuous Mercantile Sea.

  The port city of Perth was a winding labyrinth of alleys formed by tall wooden buildings and small industry, a hub of travelers, merchants, fishers and the like where even a stranger could blend into a low profile within the slums and dock districts. Thieves were an ever present nuisance here, and Gahre had several run-ins with pickpockets, muggers, and packsnatchers. Burglars were even in the hotels, operating in collusion with the owners. The place was a swamp of iniquity. Gahre's extrasensory awareness kept him and his gear protected, but that did not stop their attempts to part him from it. And on the one occasion it failed, he did chase and beat a man who had in a flash slashed his pack and tore off with a portion of its contents as Gahre was left to decide between abandoning the rest of it on the ground where it would surely not remain long or pursuing the criminal. He chose to pursue and did catch the man and beat him lightly with a firm reprimand. If he had not been a fugitive himself, he would have apprehended the offender and delivered him unto the law himself. This incident drew the ire of a local guild of which the cutpurse was a member, and Gahre found himself being stalked in the streets by a thousand eyes peering at him out of every crowd and window. In desperation he made his way at night to the docks and roused a old seaman in his vessel and bid him to make the crossing at once. The old fisher balked until Gahre flashed before him a large and flawless emerald that was a thousand coin or more in value. The old man at once set to work procuring supplies for the voyage as Gahre hid himself in the hold. By first light they were underway and full sail east by southeast on calm waters under fair skies.

  The old man had lived a tumultuous life. Born to a prosperous and influential house, he had been raised in the opulent trappings of nobility in the nation of Kirodomo, Gahre's very destination. The wrinkled old man had risen in the ranks of governance and lorded over a third of nation, when a civil uprising gained traction in the masses. The rebellion rose nearly overnight and terrorized the establishment, infecting even the ranks of the legions. The war he described was brutal, fought street to street, house to house, and brother against brother. There had been an escalating game of kidnappings and mass executions on both sides, brutal torture, and then a failing of the agricultural system and the economy til their once fair lands had been transformed into an unrecognizable and monstrous realm of torment, cruelty, and perdition. Gahre was reminded of how it mirrored the history of the Far West, and they discussed the causes at some length along their journey.

  When the duke's palace had been destroyed and much of his family captured and killed at the hands of their enemies, what remained of the man’s house fled with the mass exodus of refugees and began their life anew in the nation state he'd just passed through, Zenithia. During those times The Order had mobilized a multinational army of the surrounding states, invaded Kirodomo, and declared martial law. But he never returned, and when his wife passed away two decades ago he took to this solitary life at sea. He said he was more content now straining his tired bones in honest trade then he had ever been at his height of wealth and power.

  The sea turned deadly with a sudden tempest, so they dropped the sails and sealed themselves in the hold for two dark days. When they emerged, Cearulei once again shone its brightness, and they found themselves washed ashore on a sandy atoll in sight of the virgin coast of the mainland. The old man announced to him they had arrived in Kirodomo. Gahre helped him set his vessel back to sea and paid him the agreed upon fare for the passage.

  Whereupon that realm's shore he had been laid was mostly a matter of guesswork. He knew sure enough that his bearing now was south southeast and set to it through more uncharted lands that grew wetter and more tropical with each day’s trek. He ventured through towering stone forests, layered tropical steppes bursting with bright enormous flowers, and a volcanic fireland seeping with lava flows and billowing sulphuric smoke, natural hotsprings and gey
sers, then to more jungle domains of ape and tiger where he dared not let his guard down and forewent four nights of sleep in the crossing. In the viniest wrangling depths of jungle, he discovered yet another gem along his journey, an ancient overgrown Dharma temple, camouflaged by the ever encroaching environs in such a way that it enhanced its hidden splendors. To his delight, there were monks there, dozens, in a quiet sect. He took shelter with them and prayed at their shrines and took their tutelage for a nearly a week. They held great discourses on the world of Samsara that rang true as they opened Gahre's mind even further on the matter. He told them of his intentions, and he was given an old parchment, a map, that showed him how to circumvent the populated cities of Kirodomo and find passage on old roads all the way to Kum Damma on to Pyre and the eastern edge of the known world.

  Their maps proved true, and Gahre surefootedly pressed the charted course, foraging as he went on sustenance primarily of snakes and rodents. The jungle presented new challenges that he met as hardily as all that had come before. And sure enough the land became increasingly sparse and the air more arid until he reached the very end of it and set his eyes upon upon a beige vista that stretched to the horizon and what he knew to be a great many more beyond: The Sea of Sand.

  Female Intuition

  “Get up! Wake up you slumbering jackass.”

  Mei burst into the Captain's quarters, hollering and shaking Aru's soundly sleeping form forcefully until he roused in a state of confused annoyance. She didn't care, something was very, very wrong aboard the Kinetic.

  “Mei,” he yawned, “have you been vaping?”

  She had been and liberally, but that was entirely beside the point! Now that she had awakened him in a frenzy, she found herself at a loss as to how to explain the problem without revealing certain aspects of it that needed to remain hidden, leaving her tongue-tied and silent. Maybe she was a bit out of control, but this was no delusion. She was certain of that much.

  “You have,” he concluded, sitting up and squinching his tired eyes with a sigh. “And we've been down this road before, haven't we? Delusion, paranoia, psychotic episodes...”

  Mei wasn't having it, not now. She struck him square and hard in each shoulder with the heels of her hands, sending his head thumping back on the headboard. For a split second she thought maybe she had overdone it, but then it occurred to her how many times he had banged her head off the very same headboard, and repeatedly.

  “Listen to me, dammit!” she hissed. “I've received confirmation instructions from Service Intelligence, and the thing of it is...”

  Alert now, Aru quickly grasped both her wrists with the better measure of his strength, and lowered them to the surface of the bed where he held them in place. He was face to face with her and glaring.

  “What? You sent a covert transmission to Occitania routed through the trans-star hyper-relay network without clearing it with me first?”

  By the Folly of Mandu! How could she explain this to him? “Well, yes and no,” she answered, bobbing her head from side to side. She could not tell him the coded method she and her contact used; it was a covert system she was obliged to keep concealed. Essentially, she sent personal messages to friends and family, which were monitored as metadata by the Arathian L-5 network. Service intelligence, or at least a certain member of it, could read them and decode the hidden message from the content by order of what she chose or did not choose to discuss, by cross-referencing a chart correlating the number of words used, the timestamp of the message, and its content. That coded chart only existed in the minds of two human operatives, one of which was Mei, and thus was considered uncrackable by whatever machine decoders might also be scanning through her messages.

  “Let's just say there is a serious error in the response code, which leads me to believe it has been intercepted and compromised.” It was a message returned from her “old school classmate” discussing in alternating order her life then Mei's then hers again, which was another aspect of the code. Except the message should have been received four days ago and the timestamp and coded opening paragraph didn't match the chart confirmation format. The rest of the message was encoded correctly and told her that they were to rendezvous with a service patrol ship in long range Occitanian orbit with the proper code-signal and follow it into dock on the bloodmoon Oberion. That was all set out in the message correctly, but the beginning of it, explaining why she didn't respond sooner, was botched. Additionally, they were only eight hours com distance now from Occitania via the hyper-relays, and it should not have taken her contact three days to respond. If there had been a legitimate reason for the delayed response, the opening part of the email should have discussed an entirely different topic that correlated to the timestamp in accordance with the chart confirmation format! It was totally fucked up and should not have happened under any circumstances, but she also could not tell Aru any of this without severely compromising a very valuable clandestine tool of human Service Intelligence -particularly to a bloody Red bastard like him!

  “Well, Hell, Mei! What do you want me to say here? I don't know who you are dealing with or how. If you are using a code, especially transmitting to Tropica, you'd better believe Rubelian Intelligence has all that metadata too, and you my dear, are almost certainly on their surveillance short-list. The good news is that if Red High Command intercepted, held, and incorrectly modified the response, it means they don't have it cracked.”

  Yeah, ok, that was... possible. Maybe. But no...

  “The Red L-6 network on Occitania would never compromise clandestine control that way, never. That's the first rule of CC! The Machine Lord would damn well know the code before he went manipulating it, and only then for damn good reason. Otherwise, it would have come through on time and intact. What this reeks of... is desperation.”

  “Yeah, how?” he yawned.

  “Like whatever entity held it knew it didn't have the code cracked but knew it had to modify it in order to....” To suit the altered timestamp! That was right. The botched manipulation was the opening statement explaining why the response was late. This entity may not have known the code, but it knew it was a coded message and manipulated it to explain away the late response. But it was not a late response; it had been sent on-time and held back by the intervening entity, who then tried to make it appear.... or... wait! Mei was thinking feverishly. No... that was too much. It couldn't be! Oh but what if it is?

  “In order to what?!” Aru prodded for her to pick up where she had blankly left off. “You haven't managed to convince me of anything more than how doped up you are right now. Start making sense or I'll do what I did last time we found ourselves here.”

  Oh shit! Not that again. He'd had the security bots tranq her and lock her up in the medbay for a week to detox, which was totally unnecessary overkill in her opinion. Aru and his haughty anti-drug stance was the most hypocritically nauseating of his character flaws. He had better not try it. She'd left the EMP gun on deck. Damn. She would have to cool this off with him until she was armed again. That EMP would take out his stupid security bots in a flash. “If you even try that again, I promise you I won't be the one who finds himself incapacitated this time!”

  “Dear, I have full command authority over the ship. What are you going to do, lock me up with Ming? Making threats like that doesn't bolster your case one bit. Quite the opposite. I swear woman, that herb is going to be the death of you -or more likely the both of us.”

  Fucking fuck! Infighting was pointless. She knew that. “Who threatened who first? Aru, you have to trust me at least a little. And there's more. We've both been so groggy lately...”

  Aru cut her off. “Yeah, well, I only got... oh nine hours of sleep. Wow, that is a lot more than I would have thought.”

  “Right, and I was down for six of them too, but guess what? It feels longer. Do you know what I mean? It's like, you know, I can't remember my dreams well, but I feel like I had more, like something in excess of the norm. Instead of one or two fleeting
flashes of them, I feel like there is a whole anthology of dreams I'm trying to sort out.”

  “Come, Mei, we've had a quite a run recently. And we're passing through the solar borders into the Cearulein heliosphere which always has some effect. Let’s remember all the ship's systems that were damaged by the thermal meltdown. System reported circadian simulation was still down, that alone can strongly affect REM cycles -to say nothing of how copious vaping might exacerbate things.”

  God, he sounded just like Indulu right now, harping on her habit like that to the exclusion everything else, like it was the only thing that mattered. As soon as she vaped up, apparently, everything else in the fucking universe stopped moving. This kind of malarkey drove her nuts. If he would only open up a little to what she was trying to convey to him. If she could only articulate it…

  “We passed through magnetic sheathing borders two hours ago and are now reading low Cearulein solar winds. I was on deck at the time. You know we always get a velocity drop and a power surge crossing the heliosheath. As usual, the burn sequencing started to normalize velocity, but it wasn't normal… at least... it didn't feel like a normal acceleration. It feels like we're going a lot faster than System reports.”

  “Mei, for God's sake. You know as well as I do that the inner ring is stabilized in such a way that one cannot feel acceleration positive or negative aboard the Kinetic. By the time we “feel” anything at all we're already in Code 1 Red Alert. Let's look at this, shall we? Your message seemed “weird.” Your dreams are “weird.” The ship feels “weird.” And I'm supposed to discount your erratic behavior and twitching eyes that stem directly from blatant drug use as an underlying cause of things feeling “weird” to you? Behavior, I might add, that we've seen before, the same kind of paranoia we get on every go-around with this addiction of yours!”