“Then what’s this place about?” she asked. Beneath her placid expression, the mask she wore to spite him, Jack could see the heaviness in her eyes, tracks of tears recently smoothed away for the sake of pride. Their relationship was born out of chance and circumstance, an unexpected encounter, mutual need, mutual attraction, a dangerous codependence, a shared reality from which all others were excluded. A beginning like so many beginnings. Only much later, after she left and he was alone in a barren world, did he understand the true nature of their shared soul, and how much she meant to him.
He had damaged something between them; how badly, time would tell.
“In a lot of ways—all the ways that count—this place is whatever you need it to be. Whatever you want it to be. I know how it sounds—the natural state determined not by physics and nature, but necessity and preconception—but it’s true. This place is whatever we need, whatever we want. No more and no less.”
Ellen signed. “I guess I shouldn’t have expected a straight answer.”
“There isn’t one. Not a simple one, at least.” Jack thought a moment then recanted. “No, that’s not true. There is a simple answer, but it doesn’t make sense sometimes, and explaining it is difficult.”
She turned a little, and he saw her mouth hint at the beginnings of a smile, one eyebrow tilted just so, an almost playful look of challenge.
“It’s a place to start over,” he said. “A place to practice what we want to become. It’s someplace where we can forget the parts of our past that aren’t of any use to us, and remember the parts of our past that are. It’s an escape from all aspects of reality, both the mundane and the grand. But there’s no going back, not ever. What’s behind is gone now. This place is both the journey’s beginning and the journey’s end. This is Bali-hai, Xanadu, Eden and Disney World; all and none.”
She remained quiet for a moment, and he almost started to say something more, an effort to fill the void, to make the silence less conspicuous, his inadequate speech less confused. Then she said, “When I first got here, I thought I was dreaming, or that this place was some kind of plane your spirit traveled to. I thought maybe this was where you went after you died: Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, whatever. I even imagined that it was what your soul experienced just before being born. Now, I just don’t know. And your explanation didn’t help.”
“I told you it wouldn’t.”
“When …” She trailed off, hesitant to voice a question in case the answer was not to her liking; once known, there would be no going back, no return to innocence.
But she asked anyway; she had to know. “When do we have to go back?”
“When we’re ready.”
“And how are we supposed to know when that is?”
“When we want to leave, we’re ready.”
“Is that why Kreiger’s here?”
“No. Kreiger’s here because he followed you.” Things between them were improving; Jack saw no reason to upset her again, even if what he said bordered on a lie.
“Can we trust him?” she asked.
“No. But he can’t hurt us. He’s almost completely powerless. Hammerlock will watch him.”
The robot turned at his name, looking up at Ellen and nodding mutely.
“I won’t let anything bad happen to you,” Jack promised.
She shook her head. “At some point, Jack, that’s not your decision.”
He didn’t answer her back. He didn’t say anything at all. But he thought that maybe it was, more than anyone wanted to admit.
“You realize we’re not going to be having sex on the diner floor anymore,” Ellen said.
“I know.”
“Or in the road.”
“I know.”
“And I won’t be sunning naked anymore, either.”
Jack nodded, trying to give her protestation the gravity it deserved, though her teasing made a smile twist at the corner of his mouth. “Did I mention a part of me wished he had lost his way and disappeared?”
She turned to him, smiling as she leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the mouth. He kissed her back, a soft gesture, less romantic than apologetic. “What’s so wrong with paradise that it doesn’t last?” she asked softly.
“What would be the point of dreams if it did?”
There was something else he needed to ask her—something important—but it could wait. For a little while, anyway.
* * *
Everyone thought it would be the polar bears or the silverback gorillas or some obscure tree lemur from the decimated forests of Madagascar, but it wasn’t. The first mammal of the twenty-first century to go extinct was the elephant. Climate change eliminated food and water sources the animals relied upon as the human population soared past nine-billion, forcing elephants into even closer proximity. Native savannahs became communal grazing lands for domestic livestock. In 2073, a variant of aftosa jumped the species barrier, and the wild elephant population, the genetic pool too small, too close, was wiped out. Zoos harbored the last remaining elephants on the planet.
Breeding and reintroduction programs were drafted, but placed on hold with the outbreak of the War, the expense of saving a doomed population of captive elephants easy enough to forego in light of a global conflict; there would be time enough to save them afterwards.
As it turned out, there was not. The War went on too long, and when it was done, the elephants were gone.
As the last elephants died of old age in zoological habitats meant to recreate jungle environments they had never known, robotics and computer engineers turned wartime technology to resurrecting them, their every movement and sway, the soft, intelligent expression of their eyes, the sinuous grace of their trunks. Artificial intelligence imbued these simulacrums with all the random behavioristics of real elephants while their bodies of steel and wires and servos were diligently encased in a soft, pliable skin of polyvinyl hot-flesh and foam latex. These facsimiles allowed humanity to come to grips with the elephants’ passing, to mourn these great creatures that once graced the imagination and filled our dreams with notions of far away lands and distant times we would never know.
And so we said our good-byes.
But the surrogates outlived our grief. Mankind paid its respects and moved on, and those things of comfort that assuaged our guilt and sadness were no longer needed, their ongoing presence a source of shame, a reminder of our complicity. They gradually found their way into roadside zoos and carnivals and internet auction warehouses.
And after that, they started to disappear.
It was assumed that most had broken down or malfunctioned, and been melted into scrap, harvested for steel, microprocessors, and gold-stamped circuits. Standard reclamation. And for some, that was true. But most simply left, making their way across lands unknown from times unremembered. They followed a way they all knew, had always known, a fragment of self-written code, a piece of the artificial intelligence the programmers could never have foreseen, a shade of the animal’s actual instinct they hoped for, but could never replicate or even explain: the ghost in the machine.
If it looks like an elephant and thinks like an elephant and believes it is an elephant then it is an elephant.
Neglected latex skin dried up and fell away over time until it was entirely gone. Exposed to the elements, steel bones and joints wore away. Optic lenses blurred under the assault of the fine, desert sand. Stripped to bare metal skeletons of unnerving power and grace, they came here, the last of the last, and they waited, for what, even they no longer knew. The only thing they were certain of was that it would not be long now.
Out in the junkyard, one of the tall steel behemoths creaked forward, legs rusted with disuse, gears and motors locked with time and pointlessness; it could no longer respond to the ceaseless push of wind, the metal stress of the blazing sun, the relentless grip of time. Gravity dragged it to the ground, limbs snapping, body crunching, its steel shell smashing beneath its own weight, weakened by disuse and disinterest. Those tha
t remained, the herd now smaller by one, simply waited to follow; waited for the inevitable, their time having passed, the last remnants of a species gathered at the Elephant’s Graveyard in the secret place of a world that no longer knows elephants.
* * *
Kreiger hid out behind the café, tearing down the carnival canvas and curling up beneath it. Jasper remained with him, as faithful as a dog who doesn’t know any better. Laying there all morning and into the afternoon, Kreiger listened as decay overtook the junkyard; the slow erosion that was typical of such a place, a force arbitrarily halted by Jack that he might enjoy the fishbowl world he had created—it was the prerogative of a Caretaker to do as he pleased with regards to the forces of the universe—was lurching forward again at its own chaotic pace.
Jack was thinking about leaving; he hadn’t said so, but Kreiger knew.
And when Jack left, he would take reality with him. He hadn’t said so, but again, Kreiger knew.
The white wizard mused over this all afternoon, the certainty of his supposition punctuated by the occasional cracks and thumps of scrap collapsing down upon itself, turning to dust.
Will the Nexus obey you when Jack is gone? the voice in his head clucked, sly and wicked and riddled with unaccustomed truth. It sounded a little like the Caretaker, Jack Lantirn high on godhood and mescaline, maybe a bit too quick-witted and preachy. Do you think it will?
It should.
Yes, you crazy motherfucker, you deranged, poor man’s messiah, it should. But will it? Will it listen to you? Will it bend reality to the dreams inside of your mind, or simply bend your mind until you cannot distinguish reality from dream? Do you remember the hot sun? The cold nights? The world of dust? Eating things that would make a pig vomit? Do you remember wishing only for a way out?
“It wasn’t everything I remembered,” Kreiger whispered, thinking of the reality that Jack had shown him.
It never is, you crazy old man. It never is. The question is, are you ready to give all of that up for this place, and risk it not working? Who do you think you will become if you are cast out a second time? Will you be Rebreather, a hulking mindless shell with only the dimmest recollections of a life he was no longer even certain he lived? Or will you be Papa Lovebone, a pathetic hedonist living in a hole in the ground, frightened of everything, his only pleasure lies to masturbate his ego? Who will you be if you find yourself once more in the Wasteland? Or will you just kill yourself, and save everyone the bother of wondering?
Kreiger pulled the canvas tighter about himself, stealing it from Jasper a little at a time until he’d wound it around himself like a cocoon. “Fuck you.”
This time, there was no reply from the demon he called conscience, useless baggage he’d thought himself rid of long ago. But it was less like luggage than a bad penny, one that smelled like dead flies and old plumbing. It was back like it had never been missing at all. Back to drive him mad. Back to set his teeth on edge, make his temples throb, make his forehead ache like a rail spike slowly cleaving his skull in two. And its voice sounded like Jack—too smart to be the upstart writer, Kreiger knew, but like him all the same. Jack tried to break him, tried to push him back into the Wasteland, and failing that, tried to push him into hell. And now he was inside his head, pushing his brain apart with notions like conscience and doubt. And if he succeeded, the Nexus would twist free of his grasp, and he would be truly and completely lost.
Lost.
Cast Out.
Forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and …
Without realizing, Gusman Kreiger started banging his head upon the hardpan, forehead thumping into the ground in a rhythmic act of contrition, self-destruction, a zealot observing penitence before God.
Or a retard too enfeebled to stop abusing himself.
“Mr. Gooseman?”
He froze as a man caught in the midst of an act he does not want others to know about, and opened his eyes. In front of him, a shaded patch of sand pounded into a shallow depression. He let his gaze move up the edges of his tightly wrapped swaddle of canvas.
Jasper Desmond was down on hands and knees, his cheek pressed to the ground, trying to see inside the worm-shaped wrap of canvas to the face of his friend and mentor. Kreiger regarded the youth expectantly. When Jasper did not reply after a long minute of staring, Kreiger tried another tack. “Yes, Jubjub Bird?”
“I’m hungry.”
“So am I.”
He had hoped the remark would be enough to send the youth away. Instead, the boy only continued to stare at him, half of his face pressed into the sand, his eyes bright and strangely comical.
“What?” Kreiger asked.
“I’m hungry.”
Kreiger sighed and shifted within the canvas. “Go inside the building then. There is food there. Go in through the backdoor. And bring me back something to eat.”
The boy was up instantly, disappearing before Kreiger could wriggle around to follow his progress. By the time he oriented himself, Jasper was little more than a distant head threading its way though the piles of wreckage towards the backdoor of the café. More visible was the Guardian balanced atop the space rocket, a cordless reciprocating saw in one hand. Upon seeing Kreiger’s eyes flit up towards him, the robot flexed the trigger, the blade jumping to life with a sound like a high-pitched growl, the warning of a small dog that has learned to bite.
“You won’t hurt him, will you?” Kreiger asked, and immediately felt foolish for voicing the question. “Of course you won’t. Why would you? You never cared when the Dust Eater entered. You never cared when Oversight entered. Why should Jubjub Bird be any different? Their kind is all the same to you: collections of details only interesting when willed into action against your master. Besides, mine’s the only blood you instinctively want to see spread across the sand, isn’t it?
The reciprocating saw had already lapsed into silence. The robot made no movement, offered no indication that it had heard, or even cared. It merely waited and watched, the reciprocating saw poised like an enormous handgun, some ludicrous weapon from a pulp comic, exaggerated and gratuitous.
The Guardian and the Cast Out remained that way until Jasper Desmond returned.
“I found some pudding, Mr. Gooseman,” he said, leaning down so that his face was again level with the ground, staring in at the wizard. “I found chocolate and tapioca. I like chocolate. Do you like tapioca or chocolate?” As he asked the question, he pushed the plastic cup of tapioca pudding in close to Gusman Kreiger.
“You say you like chocolate?” Kreiger asked.
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll take the tapioca,” he said, extending a hand from his wrapping to take the pudding cup. “Did you bring a spoon?”
Jasper reached into his pocket and produced a pair of plastic spoons. Kreiger took one, and Jasper sat down cross-legged on the sand to eat his pudding.
“I sure do like it in there,” Jasper said. “It’s cool in there. Cool like ice cream. I bet they got ice cream in there, too. Wadda you think? I saw they got popcorn in there, so maybe they got ice cream. I saw some strange things in there, though. Things what don’ belong. But it’s shady and nice in there. Shady and nice shady …”
Still tightly swathed in carnival canvas, Kreiger wriggled into a seated position and stared at Jasper Desmond as the boy’s brain stumbled its way through every word, every thought, every impression that flitted through it, voiced before it could be cogitated into anything even vaguely coherent. He took a spoonful of tapioca pudding, and found it every bit as delicious as he imagined it would be: creamy and vanilla-sweet, lumpy like swallowed frog’s eggs. He methodically sucked at the flavor that lingered on the spoon while Jubjub Bird rambled. Finally he interrupted, not waiting for a pause in the one-sided conversation because he knew there wouldn’t be one.
“Why don’t you go inside the café,” Kreiger suggested.
“Would that be okay?” Jasper whispered.
“I’m sure it would be fi
ne,” the Cast Out replied.
Jasper started away, then stopped only a few paces off and turned back. “Aren’t you coming inside too, Mr. Gooseman?”
“You go on ahead; I’ll be along eventually.”
And the Cast Out honestly believed he was telling the truth.
DECISIONS
The sun sets, the moon rises. Day falls into night falls into day, a cycle as ceaseless and unchanging as the celestial bodies that mark their passage. Even at the edge, between the real and the imagined, its repetition is serene and timeless, as comforting as it is consistent.
But like the unending cycle of the sun and the moon, one eventually passing in favor of the other, change is inevitable.
Jack sat on the back step, enjoying the cool morning air. Silence at the edge was possible like nowhere else. No morning commuters or joggers or early risers searching out a newspaper or a cup of doughnut shop coffee. No rising buzz of cicadas in non-existent trees rustling in the wind. No birds singing before breakfast, no early bird catching the worm. In the west, the pale moon drifted towards the distant horizon, a tarnished dime offering its last glimmer to the sun. He drank his coffee while taking it all in, trying to remember every detail. Across the boneyard, an edge of decay had overtaken the relics of his imagination. Not the timeless, still-photo decay that was there before, rot glazed over in varnish, preserved forever in its state of dying. The collapse was progressing, subtly at first, but with increasing severity as the condition of his dream world worsened.
The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) Page 45