The Sword

by J. M. Kaukola

“I’ve got it, Princess. I was just messing with you a little. Anyone ever tell you you’re too damn smart?”

  Firenze wound up, for another diatribe, and then froze. He scowled a little, mostly at himself. Finally, he said, “Often enough I’ve stopped denying it.”

  Clausen smirked, at that. “So, what’ve you found?”

  “A lot, Sarge. Like I said, Berenson was pulling a lot of data down, and even with compression, I’m not sure how his brain was sorting it, unless he’s got more wetware in there than we’ve been led to believe. I’d be hesitant to call him human, to be honest. Maybe an evolutionary spur? Homo sapiens superior? Nah, sounds too cartoon-”

  “Focus.”

  “Right.” Firenze agreed. “So, his graybox had an interesting, custom, file storing system, but it was designed to be read. Probably for his handlers, in the original Faction. Once I found the ‘After Action Reports’-”

  “Now that makes a lot of sense.” Clausen declared.

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing. Just, standard operational procedure. TACNET records everything you do, and you postgame it, every time. What you did right, what you did wrong, that sort of thing. This would be a damn fine way to break it all down.”

  “Probably.” Firenze shrugged. “I’m more of a how kind of guy, not a why.”

  “And that’s why shit always goes wrong. Too many guys asking the wrong damn question.” Clausen said.

  Firenze sighed. “Look, if you’re not interested-”

  “I am.”

  “Alright.” Firenze reached back, onto his wiring-covered desk, and fished out a pair of VR goggles. “Then why don’t we take a ride?”

  “Seriously? We can’t just watch the video?”

  “Watch the- you’re serious? This is how it was recorded! It’s bad enough you’re only getting audio-visual feed through your goggles, you want to cut back to a monitor?” Firenze sounded offended at the concept. “Look, I can have it converted for that in an hour or two, but you should really get into the real deal. You’ll want to see some of this stuff. I mean… it’s fucked up. I can’t be the only one plucking through the garden of horrors on this box.”

  Clausen held out his hand, and took the goggles. “All right. Let’s take a look.”

  He pulled them over his head, the hood and headset settled into place. He never liked these things. All the awkward weight of a combat helmet, none of the survival bonus. The world was dark when the helmet sealed, and he had to pull on the gloves by feel. After a moment, the screens in front of his eyes flickered, color-tested, and then he was standing in another world.

  The office was expensive. That was the best way to describe it. Wooden panels, too plain to not be real, covered the walls. The desk at the back was real wood, too, heavy and lacquered. A mug sat on the corner, steaming. He wished he could smell it.

  Ahead of him, the air bent. A point of light, indescribably small, yet incredibly bright, appeared at the floor, slid seven feet, straight up. It made a subtle hiss, and left a blazing white path behind, as it turned, ninety degrees, and cut the air itself. In an instant, a door of light stood before him, blazing like the sun. A shadow broke the gleaming well, and Firenze stepped through, into the world. The doorway vanished behind him, and he took a deep breath.

  “Subtle, Princess.” Clausen remarked. “You always make an entrance?”

  “What?” Firenze asked, befuddled. After a moment, he caught on, and laughed. He explained, “Oh, that. I used to have ninjas run in and hurl smoke bombs, then I’d step out like a badass. Lauren said it was a bit much.”

  “So, instead, you cut a hole in the air?”

  Firenze shrugged.

  Clausen turned his head, and tried not to let his stomach turn with it.

  “Oh, yeah. That.” Firenze said. “That’s why I can’t do goggle sets. The brain knows something’s wrong when the senses don’t match. Much better with a jack.”

  Clausen forced his breakfast back down, and replied, “Yeah, that’s… not going to happen. Ever.”

  “The problem is that your inner ear doesn’t feel the motion your eyes are seeing. There are similar problems with timing and spatial awareness. Net lag can really give you a case of the pukes.”

  “I was in a place where they fixed that.” Clausen said. Conversation bought him time to get used the split sensation. He really hated these goggles. “Training center. VR. They had us in body gloves, held in zero-contact harnesses. We could run, turn, dive, you name it. Full immersion, and you never had to use a jack.”

  “Sarge, I hope you appreciate how expensive and over-engineered that is? That’s a huge mechanical solution to a simple software problem.” Firenze paused. “You know, come to think of it, I think that sums up the Authority, rather poetically.”

  “Ha ha.” Clausen shot back. He glanced around the room, once more, and this time, his stomach didn’t revolt. “How am I turning my head? Did Berenson look around like this?”

  “Eh, no.” Firenze said. “The graybox stores all the data, and this simulation recreates it. Anything Berenson saw, it can show. Anything he heard, it recorded. If he touched the wall, it can even give the right grain to the wood. The rest is… conjecture. Filling in the blank spaces with statistically probable data.” Firenze turned to the steaming cup, and the balding man behind the desk, frozen in mid-typing. “So, I can’t tell you how this coffee tastes, or what Mister Lacroix was doing before this moment. Although, I can guess he has vanilla in his drink from the smell, and I figure he was probably typing… something.” Firenze pointed to the computer on the desk. “I can’t turn the screen. Go behind it.”

  Clausen leaned over the desk, and saw the blank monitor. “Berenson never looked at this?”

  “Apparently.” Firenze said. “So, there are limits. Like outside that door-” he pointed to a small, burgundy doorway. “-is nothing but a blank space.”

  “And I assume we can’t touch anything?”

  Another voice answered. “Touch? Sure. You just can’t alter anything. You’d only be changing the simulation, not the events.” A woman stood beside Firenze, arms crossed and leaning against the bookcase.

  “Ma’am?” Clausen asked. “I assume you’re-”

  “Lauren.” She said. “And you’re Sergeant Clausen.” She glanced him, up and down. “Wearing a very cheap suit.”

  “Suit?” Clausen asked, utterly lost.

  “Your avatar.” Firenze explained. “She’s commenting on your avatar. It’s a generic. A copy and paste job straight out of the welcome suite on… what was it, NodeRunner seven point one?” He guessed. “Yeah, that’s the one.”

  “So, whenever I’m online, I’m dressed like…”

  “A hobo.” Lauren stated, flatly. Firenze shrugged, but didn’t disagree.

  Clausen glanced down, to his flat blue suit coat and khaki pants. They looked fine to him. A bit stiff, maybe, but-

  He was wearing different pants.

  Now he wore well pleated slacks, and a sporty coat. They looked real. He moved his arm, and the fabric shifted, like it had layers beneath. Even his hands looked better. He glanced at his palm, checked the lines. They were right. “Okay, that’s creepy.” He stated. “How’d you do that?”

  “She… uh… pulled your bio out of government registry. They take a pretty detailed physical.” Firenze admitted. “Your avatar is now… accurate.”

  “And the clothes?”

  “Fuck if I know. I just wear what I wear.” Firenze admitted.

  “And how did you do-”

  “I overrode your account locks, and updated your default parameters.” Lauren said, and then shrugged. “Your passwords were awful.”

  “Privacy?”

  “Not really a thing she believes in.” Firenze said. “Plus, she’s being bitchy because she doesn’t want to be here. Really doesn’t want to be here.”

  Lauren pushed off the wall, and began to pace the room. She said, “None of us should be here.”

  “They’re
just recordings.” Firenze countered. “They can’t do anything.”

  She replied, “Says the man who didn’t notice there was a pain tracker, until we felt a gunshot.”

  Clausen asked, “The box records pain?”

  “With questionably high fidelity.” Lauren answered. “One might wonder about the decisions of the designers, when the graybox spends so much resources obsessing over the exact nature of the agony. There are unique sensations recorded for every type and blend suffering this platform has ever endured. They kept them on file, even replayed the worst of it to teach lessons. Recursive torture. It was at that point that I stopped wondering about the creators’ intents.”

  “You don’t have that turned on, do you?” Clausen asked.

  “Hell no.” Firenze stated. “Not anymore.”

  Lauren cut him off. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are in the playground of men who designed a pain stratifying engine. Nothing held here will be good for us.” She paused, when Firenze tried to speak, cut him off with a “shush” sign. She turned to Clausen, and insisted, “Grant keeps saying that recordings can’t hurt him, but he’s wrong. There are things in here that have gotten lodged in his wetware, and now, he sees them when he sleeps.”

  “Nightmares.” Clausen said.

  “Horrible ones, from places he’s never been. Guilt from another, laid on his mind.” She agreed. “I try to steer his thoughts away, but there are so many…”

  “You’re in his dreams?” Clausen asked.

  “Usually.” She said, with a sudden splash of subversive cheer. “His subconscious isn’t as fun to spar with, but it can get pretty intense.”

  Firenze coughed, and tried to act professional, “Well, we should get going-”

  Lauren cut him off, somber again, and made one last attempt, “Please, Sergeant.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am.” Clausen said. “We need to know what we’re dealing with.”

  Without a word, she was vanished.

  “She’s… gone?” Clausen asked.

  “No, just invisible. Doesn’t feel like talking to you right now. Just remember, in here, if you’re talking to me, you’re talking to her, too.” Firenze said.

  “She disagreed with you?”

  “She’ll do that.”

  “But I thought masks didn’t-” Clausen started. “Nevermind. Let’s get to work.”

  The memory started with a bomb. Then they got worse.

  #

  Another day, another safehouse, another doorway. It was becoming a rhythm.

  Clausen had repacked his bugout bag four times. He’d put comments on the simulator runs, coached the fireteam leaders. He’d watched those damned graybox videos, too many times. Maybe he watched them to learn something. Maybe he watched them as punishment, for making Firenze wade through that muck.

  The mask had been right. There was nothing good in the graybox.

  Clausen had rehearsed this conversation on the walk down. How to talk to a mass murderer? How to talk to someone whose brain you’d picked apart? How to say anything? Give him something to shoot, any day.

  The door to Berenson’s room was ajar, but Clausen knocked, anyway.

  “Come in.” Berenson said. The voice from inside the room sounded strained, thin.

  With the door pushed aside, Clausen saw him. Berenson sat in the center of the room, legs crossed as if in meditation, hands locked at his sides. Sweat poured down his face. His eyes were closed, but moved rapidly under his lids. His skin was pale, his hair matted. He looked like a man dying of fever.

  “Mister Clausen, I presume?” Berenson asked, without opening his eyes.

  “Yeah.” Clausen said. The room was a wreck, the bed disheveled, the tables covered in half-eaten meals and empty boxes. The same empty boxes they’d found when they’d moved in. Not a single table had been cleaned, not a cabinet closed. Berenson had his clear square of floor, a towel laid out to clean his gun, and nothing more.

  “You wonder, why I live like this?” Berenson asked. He shook, trembled, like a man fighting a chill. His jaw clenched, and he shuddered, but never winced.

  “Are you alright?” Clausen asked. “Are you dying on us?”

  “The room. I will answer about the room.” Berenson said, his voice hissing between his teeth as he fought off a wave of pain.

  “Sure.” Clausen said. “I’ll play. Why’s it still trashed?”

  “It is not mine.” Berenson answered.

  “The people who lived here? They aren’t coming back.” Clausen said. “They bugged out, and they left this all to burn. No one’s going to care.”

  “It is not about the care. These things are not mine. They were left, but never given.” Berenson took a shuddering breath, let it out slowly. “Nothing here is mine, so I will not partake. I own myself. I own my weapon. I have been given leave to the resources of your unit. No more.”

  “You know you’re not a prisoner, right?” Clausen asked.

  Berenson’s eyes flashed open, and he declared, “I was never a prisoner.” He smiled, calmly, and then doubled over into a coughing fit. He heaved and hacked, doubled over and held himself up with his hands. Blood spattered over the lacquer floor.

  “You might want to get that checked out.” Clausen said.

  Berenson gasped, between fits, and spat a great gob of blood and phlegm. “Yeah, I will get-” he wretched, again, and nearly fell into his own puddle, “-right on that. After we win.” He sat up, eyes clearer, and leaned back against the bed frame. Exhausted, he said, “It is not contagious.”

  “What is it?” Clausen asked.

  “Nanophage.” Berenson said, and smiled, faintly. “It is eating my body from the inside, out. Slowly. There is nothing I can do to stop it.”

  “That sounds painful.”

  “It is like nothing I have ever felt, and if I am correct, you have some conception of how much pain I have measured.” Berenson said. “It is the price the Agency demanded for their trust, before the Airship. Now it is Raschel's leash, to keep me in check. They are the only source for relief, for the boosters that keep the phage from full effect. I knew the cost when I agreed to this mission.” He stood, slowly, triedto regain his composure. “Do not tell anyone what you saw.”

  “Why?”

  “It would break the illusion. I must-” he coughed again, nearly toppled, but held out one hand, to forestall help. When he finished, he straightened, and said, “I must maintain the image of invincibility, or your unit will lose confidence, Striker will gain boldness, and Raschel might tire of my games. It would be calamitous.”

  “Sure.” Clausen said.

  “You doubt me?” Berenson asked, incredulous.

  “No. I’m withholding judgment.” Clausen answered.

  “Smart.” Berenson said, between measured breaths. “I assume you have watched the graybox recordings?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And copied them, and distributed them to your men?”

  “Yeah.”

  Berenson, now obviously fishing for a response, demanded, “And?”

  Clausen paused, for just a moment, to measure his response, the one he’d been preparing for days. “I’m sorry.”

  Berenson blinked, glanced around the room, as if looking for some hidden audience. He turned back, head tilted like a curious puppy. “Sorry?! You are sorry? Did I give you the wrong box?”

  “I’m sorry, for what was done to you, and that we didn’t get to you sooner.”

  Berenson stared, dumbfounded, for a long moment, and then flashed to anger. He demanded, “Did you miss the part where I killed those people? When I put a man on his knees, and made him justify his life to me, like some wrathful god? Where I twisted men and women on psychological strings, to act out my own sick morality plays? Did I forget to include those, because I have quite a collection of just that!”

  “Oh, I saw it. All of it.” Clausen agreed. “If there is any justice in this world, you will burn for every one of those crimes. Noth
ing will ever excuse what you’ve done. But it doesn’t change the fact that what was done to you should never have occurred. Not the training, not the surgeries, not the inducer, not the way you were thrown away at the end. The men and women who ordered all of that-”

  “The Council.” Berenson spat.

  “They needed a short drop and a quick stop.” Clausen said. “The Authority exists to put a boot up just those asses, and we were slow on the draw. I’m sorry.”

  Berenson shook his head, “Well, congratulations, Mister Clausen, you managed to draw the entirely incorrect message from that entire endeavor.”

  “I saw what I saw.”

  “You saw Striker at his very best-”

  “I saw a child, play-acting a role, custom-made for the devil himself. I saw you chafe under it, and now, I see you break from it. You’re a son of a bitch, Antonius, but you’re more than they made you to be.”

  “Do not justify me!” Berenson snarled. His composure was gone. He broke into another fit of coughing, blood spraying between his fingers as he tried to hold his mouth shut. “Do not justify me!”

  Clausen let the storm pass.

  Berenson tried to get control, but was forced to lean back against the bed, once more, in a half-squat. He glanced up, sunken eyes almost pleading, “Do not justify me, Mister Clausen. If you have any respect for my victims, you would leave them this. I took from them… nearly everything, including their lives. The one thing I left them, the one thing I could never break, was the fact that they were destroyed by a monster. Striker. The beast, the modern devil. They were made virtuous, in death, by the vileness of their attacker. If you reduce me to some pathetic, broken thing, some child soldier, some victim of fate, then you turn their deaths into worse than an ending, you turn them into senselessness. You cannot ever justify me.”

  Clausen let the man keep his silence for a moment. Finally, he asked, “Were all those memories yours?”

  “No.” Berenson said. “But they were all Striker’s. Tiberius and I shared everything.” He glanced to one of his hands, to the blood-stains on his palm. “To call us brothers is a disservice. He is my otherself. Striker was the sum total of our experience, the best and worst of us. We were the platform, and the agent of the Council’s will.”