by Perrin Briar
Robin moved to the window, looking out at the impressive view. He sipped on his whiskey and sputtered, half choking. He glared at the liquid before turning back to Ratchett.
“Bourbon,” Ratchett said with a grin.
Robin goggled the bottom of his glass and threw his head back, swallowing the rest of the liquor. The others sipped and reacted the same, but didn’t enjoy it half as much.
“Good?” Ratchett said.
Robin nodded vehemently.
“Cheers,” Ratchett said, supping on his own whiskey as if it was water. “Now, would you care to tell me what you’re doing here?”
“We came because we’re worried about what we’re doing to the world,” Sturgess said.
“The world?” Ratchett said. “We’ve been doing this for years and now you come to see me? Why not sooner?”
“Because we didn’t know if we could come here,” Sturgess said.
Ratchett made a fart sound with his lips.
“Try again,” he said.
“Try what again?” Sturgess said.
“Spinning me another lie,” Ratchett said. “Or perhaps you’re spinning them for yourself.”
Sturgess frowned.
“You’re right,” Ratchett said. “That we destroyed the world. But it was merely our idea. It was you and your villages who carried it out. If we’re guilty, so are you.”
“The difference is, we admit our part in all this,” Sturgess said. “And we’re ready to make amends. Our hands aren’t clean, but our conscious is.”
“So, it’s a confession you’ve come to hear,” Ratchett said.
“And a way to fix the world,” Sturgess said.
“Fix the world?” Ratchett said. “I’m afraid it’s too late for that. And what good will an apology do you now?”
“It would be a start,” Sturgess said.
Ratchett blinked and looked Sturgess over. He allowed himself a small smile.
“Very well,” he said. “You shall have your apology. We were each of us merchants. Merchants of death. Nothing more. We have taken everything from you. We have taken your homes, your purpose, your self respect. Your future. That is perhaps the worst of all.
“We took everything from you without letting you know we’d done it. An inadvertent kindness, perhaps. We’d done it to your ancestors, your parents, and would have continued to do it to your descendents if it wasn’t for our most powerful flaw: greed.
“We have played our part, and we played it exceptionally well. Too well, in fact. There is nothing more we can do. I apologize for the way we treated you and your people. There was no reason to divide us up the way we did. Do you realize we were once all prosperous, once upon a time?”
“Yes,” Sturgess said. “We’ve passed that knowledge down from generation to generation.”
“It’s true,” Ratchett said. “Then we got a nasty case of greed. It was given to us, implanted, by a sinister force known as the Cursed One. He came to us, the Merchant Council, one day. We took him in, a weary traveler from a distant land. We made him a deal. He was going to make us richer than we had ever dreamed. The only thing we needed to do was leave the weaker elements of our world behind.
“We were equal once. We performed different duties, felt tired in different ways—physically or intellectually—but we all worked together. We put our effort together, and sometimes our efforts paid off big, other times it paid off small. But we relied on each other.
“The Cursed One took all the good we’d built, the envy of the world, of every world. He turned it to ruin. And we let him do it. We let him turn us into what he wanted us to be, into what he needed us to be. He found us to be weak, pliable material, easily manipulated. All he had to give us in exchange was some useless gemstones he no longer had need for.
“And so here we are, in this position, stuck. We didn’t even know what we were doing till it was too late. We made the decision to create a hierarchy, and since then the world has been suffering for it. We became rich and powerful within our own world, but what difference did that make? There was nothing to use it for. We were stuck here in our own little world, and I suppose that was what he wanted.
“We were the top dogs of our society, of our little social spheres, and nothing else mattered. It was a perfect system. We were at the top, and would do anything to maintain it, to never lose or slip down a rung on the social ladder. That was what really destroyed us, but it was the Cursed One who instigated it all.”
“But you destroyed yourself,” Sturgess said. “What happened here?”
“The question is, what didn’t happen?” Ratchett said. “You have entered the viper’s pit, the place where every sin, every pitfall, that can befall a human soul has occurred. There is nothing here, no act of betrayal the human race is capable of committing, that has not happened. It’s just as well we destroyed ourselves. There was no way we could return to the purity we once possessed. But you can.
“You can leave this place and never return, return to the earth, land and nature, where you can commit our same sins, or you can commit your own. I give you your future, your freedom, back to you. And with it comes a responsibility: to promise me you will get payback for what was done to us and our world, for you to destroy the Cursed One. For you to show the kind of courage we did not, could not. I pray you’ll do what needs to be done. That is, if it isn’t too late.”
“You sold out the lives of our entire village, for this?” Sturgess said, gesturing wide to the opulent office.
“Yes,” Ratchett said. “I told you it wasn’t something you would welcome, that it would not be something you would find inspiring. But it would be the truth. It seemed so important at the time, handfuls of yellow metal and shiny jewels. And then when I had it all, and my enemies were destroyed, I was left with this, everything I had ever dreamed about, ever wanted. And I felt… nothing. Emptiness.”
“You want us to feel sorry for you?” Sturgess said. “We told you what was happening to the world and our home, but you took no notice and carried on, even punishing us if we were delayed. Why?”
“Because that was what it all became about,” Ratchett said. “I didn’t want to do it any longer, wanted to end it, to finish our arrangement, but the Cursed One told me I could not end it, told me there was no way to take back our agreement, that I had to keep providing Gravitas.
“He… He’s unlike anyone I’ve ever met before, driven by an obsession I’ve never seen before. He won’t stop, not while his goal still remains unobtained. I was afraid, for myself, for my loved ones, for everything I have managed to grow and accumulate over the years.
“An idea can be more dangerous than a well-maintained army. An idea can spread, fast. There’s no armor that can stop it, nothing to prevent it from digging deep into the mind. It can infect anyone anywhere, and at anytime. And once it stabs its claws into the flesh it is difficult to relinquish its hold once it has reached a certain depth. By then it is usually too late.
“It takes time for a man to be dangerous with a weapon, but a man can instantly be made dangerous if he subscribes to a certain ideology. That is what makes ideas and intellectuals so dangerous and hard to control, and what ultimately defeated us.”
“Didn’t anyone care about us?” Sturgess said. “There must have been someone in your city that felt something for us, regret or guilt, that showed some kind of remorse for what was done to us.”
“No,” Ratchett said. “Or if they did, they were quickly muffled. The people have little power, using it only when they mobilize. Something they do rarely, because we are at the reins. Though they have been known to buck at times.”
He picked up a heavy chest, a few gold coins spilled from it and rolled across the floor.
“Your ancestors kept the truth of your past remarkably intact, but there are some things they have allowed to be forgotten,” Ratchett said.
He was standing at the large broken bay window, looking out at the sky. The final few stars glinted and winked o
ut, giving way to the birth of a new day.
“The stars,” Ratchett said. “Beautiful, aren’t they? But they’re not the same here as they are in your village, correct?”
Sturgess nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “I did notice.”
“There’s a very salient reason for that,” Ratchett said. “Can you guess what it is? I wouldn’t blame you if you couldn’t.”
Sturgess looked at the stars and shrugged.
“Because we’re in a different part of the world,” he said. “Things will always look different from another perspective.”
“Yes,” Ratchett said. “And no. Let me give you a little clue. Those things up in the sky that twinkle so beautifully, the things you say your prayers to each night, they aren’t really stars at all.”
Sturgess blinked. It was like someone had just told him two and two didn’t equal four, that the person he’d called his father his entire life wasn’t related.
“What?” Sturgess said.
“They’re not really stars,” Ratchett said with a smile.
Sturgess could tell the Merchant was enjoying this revelation.
“What are they?” Sturgess said.
“They’re villages,” Ratchett said, turning back to look at the final few blinking lights. “They’re towns and cities and small encampments. Your village will be one of those blinking lights. You see, the world is divided in half. Half live up there, half live down here.”
Sturgess physically stumbled, stepping back and almost falling over. He gripped the back of an armchair. The others were sat down, and seemed to sink further into the chairs’ leather upholstery.
“No,” Sturgess said. “No, it can’t be.”
“It is,” Ratchett said. “You came here via the platform, did you not? Didn’t you notice a little shift and shake? That was gravity switching from one side of the world to the other. You spun on your axis, turning upside down. Only for this world, it is the right way up.”
Sturgess shook his head. It was a lot to take in. Why hadn’t his ancestors considered that to be important enough to pass on to their descendents? Why had it taken a Merchant to tell them this? It would have made a difference to them and their culture, he was sure. To know they were part of something bigger, that the people they were praying to were the same they also worked for. Maybe that was what the Merchants had planned all along.
“If what you say is true,” Sturgess said. “It’s worse than we thought. There’s not just the mining camps we’re aware of, but dozens of them, maybe hundreds, all over the world. They’re destroying our world faster than we thought, all in an effort to support your greed.”
“Tragic, isn’t it?” Ratchett said. “The Cursed One’s plan was a runaway success. We found people liked to be sheep, liked to follow. We could never pull it back, could never bring the world back to the way it was, because in their heart of hearts, they were all happier in their new situation.”
“We weren’t happier,” Sturgess said.
“No,” Ratchett said. “There are exceptions to every rule.”
“How could we have not noticed the stars for villages?” Sturgess said.
“You don’t see what you’re not looking for,” Ratchett said. “It’s our weakness too. If only we had stopped and thought what effect our actions would have had on the world…”
He shook his head. The guise of a man with a great deal of deep regret. The Merchant was not at all what Sturgess had envisioned of the ruling class. He was human, with human flaws and wants and dreams and regrets. He was just a man.
“Do you know how long a human can survive in this world?” Ratchett said.
“In the pits, a few decades,” Sturgess said
“A human can survive but forty or fifty years,” Ratchett said. “It’s better to live that time in as much comfort as possible. That’s the only difference between us, really. Our level of comfort. If someone gives you the opportunity to live like a king, to live better than others, aren’t you obliged to take it?”
“Not if it leaves others in the doldrums,” Sturgess said.
“We saw a way to live as comfortably as we dreamed,” Ratchett said. “As comfortably as anyone would have wished if they had the chance. My ancestor was given that opportunity. And he took it. It meant dividing our world in half, it meant making the most of what we had, the most of the resources at our disposal.
“‘There is something of value in every world,’ my father was fond of saying. I often wondered how he could know that given he had never set foot in another world besides our own before. The only logical answer was it came from the lips of the Cursed One.
“It doesn’t matter where you live or what you do for a living, there is always something people want. Usually it’s food and water, and that was certainly true here, until we had enough of it and then we desired more things. We wanted gems and jewels and things of refined taste. We catered to these desires. You do the best you can for those you care for.”
“And evil to those you do not need to care for,” Sturgess said. “Your leadership has finally come to an end.”
“You think you were the unlucky ones, having to mine for rocks, but you are wrong,” Ratchett said. “You were the lucky ones. When you have saturated the market, when there is no one else to get money from, you turn on each other, your former business partners. A war between the rich and powerful took place.
“We dug for Gravitas, deeper and deeper into the earth. But that wasn’t the only place we dug. We found reserves of greed in our own hearts that we never knew existed. But greed is one resource that cannot exist in a vacuum, and relies on destroying the reserves of others.
“And it can’t stop until it has completely destroyed the reserves of every other person who desires what it wants. Greed defeats all, until eventually there is nothing that remains but fear and disgust. Because it cost you not only everything you have, but everything your loved ones have too.
“You should certainly be afraid of what is happening to our world. Eventually you will dig too deep, grasp a little too far, and you’re going to learn the wrath a world can have upon innocents who did little more than follow orders, doing what they had to in order to survive.”
“Is that what you’re trying to do with us now?” Sturgess said. “Trying to survive?”
“No,” Ratchett said. “My fate is the same as our world. I must give the only thing I have left.”
He picked up the heavy chest of gold, the coins spilling over the side, and threw himself out the broken window.
Rosetta #3
IT WASN’T the first time Rosetta wondered if perhaps Admiral was playing a joke on her. She was standing perched on the edge of the great swirling whirlpool. The spray hit her face, stinging. If there was anything that made you feel awake it was the feeling you were about to die. The swirling vortex of terror was unlike anything she had ever seen before. She looked up and locked eyes on Admiral.
“Are you having a laugh?” Rosetta said.
But she figured if this Admiral wanted her to commit suicide, there was a much easier way of getting her to do it than the one he had decided to force upon her—by taking time out of his presumably busy schedule and escorting her all the way across the ocean, into dangerous waters that were apparently still being run and owned by renegade pirates.
At first Rosetta couldn’t believe pirates still existed, but that was before she saw her first Jolly Roger. That was quite enough for her to realize her mistake.
“You join us at quite an unfortunate moment in our history,” Admiral said. “You see, the king died recently. We all knew his weight would kill him one day. We had to stage a rather hasty coronation of the next king, and he wasn’t quite ready to be crowned just yet. We are still going through a period of transition.”
To say Rosetta was surprised by the age of the new king was an understatement, but she found herself to be nonetheless impressed by his maturity and sense of self. He also seemed to have a good sort in
the form of his elder brother, Admiral, who maintained the right kind of mentorship for the good king.
The king excused the rest of the court when Rosetta entered the Great Hall. Once his lords and ladies had vacated, his countenance changed immediately. He bounced in his throne like the child he was.
“You knew Bryan, Zoe, Cassie and Aaron on the surface?” he said.
“Yes,” Rosetta said. “Uh, Your Majesty.”
“Don’t bother with the formalities,” King said.
Admiral frowned at the young king, but the boy shrugged the look off.
“No one knows her,” King said. “So no one can use or take advantage of her as she will be off soon.”
Admiral still wasn’t appeased, but he bowed and allowed the motion to be carried.
“How were they when you last saw them?” Rosetta said.
“Tired,” King said. “But otherwise in good shape.”
“When was this?” Rosetta said.
“No more than four days ago,” King said. “It feels a great deal longer than that, I must say.”
“It gets faster the older you get,” Rosetta said. “Something for you to look forward to.”
“Nice to know,” King said.
“I need to go wherever the family went,” Rosetta said. “Can you help me?”
“Yes,” King said. “I don’t see why not. We can charter a boat and get someone to captain it to the Demon Isles.”
“The Demon Isles?” Rosetta said.
“There aren’t any demons there anymore,” King said.
“That’s a relief,” Rosetta said with a frown.
Anymore? she thought. Are these people for real?
“But there was one thing I wanted to see, if you don’t mind?” King said.
His eyes shifted to Rosetta’s arm that hung limply at her side.
“Of course,” Rosetta said.
She pulled up her sleeve and showed the exposed metal, the fake flesh largely torn off due to her various escapades, hanging like torn shreds of meat from a mauled limb. The metal was clear, and when Rosetta moved each individual finger, the machinery moved inside. King climbed down from his throne and approached Rosetta.