Cypulchre

by Joseph Travers MacKinnon

  “Piss off!” Paul says, irritated, swatting at the little paparazzi. It takes off, loaded with genetic information.

  Feeling like a tourist—some voyeur skulking through the home and life he’d surrendered—Paul covets in broad visual sweeps all he’d never possess: awards, antiques, busts of prominent scientists, and eclectic placarded inventions. The spoils of unfettered scientific exploration litter the foyer, tiled with veined black and white marble. Every nook and cranny speaks to Shouta’s love for scientific progress and himself.

  Pictures line the walls, half-a-dozen or more showcasing Katajima brandishing canines with powerful personalities, including Winchester III, President Jacoby, NewsLink’s David Danson, and, in a glossy capture, high-ranking members of the military and Congress.

  Figuring prominently among the miscellany is a defunct Tesla coil, raised on a wooden pedestal. At the sight of it, Paul keels ever so slightly, his sadness translated into a peptic fissure. He’d given the relic to Shouta as a birthday present—a playful and expensive riff on living on the fringe of scientific inquiry. Now it’s a dust-covered testament to the homeowner’s comprehension of what was lost for the sake of his gain.

  Behind the coil stands a large Samurai statue: a helmeted buke with an electric sword in one hand, glowing blue, and a gross-looking plasma cannon in the other. Judging from its composition and the oil smears around its joints, the armoured buke is probably a prototype for a battle-mech of some sort, now a toy for Shouta’s collection. Katajima’s hobbies have not changed, but his financial ability to pursue them certainly has.

  Shadowed and neglected mid-centre on the alcove behind the massive coil and the buke is a small digigraph looping a video feed of Paul and Shouta ingratiating one another, spilling expensive wine in celebration of their newly-funded Shef-Ajima Laboratory, looked-on by a class photo of technicians, engineers, surgeons, and staff, Oni Matsui and Allen Scheele included. Paul bows his head in grief at the sight of a man named Sheffield, happy and relatively unbroken.

  His moment of reflection is upset by cynical-sounding cackling ahead. Paul stands his ground, ready on black tile like a righteous knight from Carrollian fantasy.

  “Hey, Katajima! Is that you?”

  The cackling stops, followed by the operatic voice—cutting off as if the needle’d been dragged across his dramatic finish in protest. Footsteps reverberate in the long hallway, marking the presence of another in the labyrinth. Paul’s not too worried about what shape or mood the Minotaur should arrive in. He steadies his hand over his revolver.

  Ambient creaks and hums submit to the volume of an Italian tenor who has resumed belting on the heels of the bass. Katajima, white-haired and smiling, turns the corner, wine from his glass carrying on without him. Red splotches across the grid.

  “Oh damn it!” Katajima looks at the red splattered on the marble, and up at Paul.

  “Shouta?” asks Paul, pulling his hand away from his gun.

  “Still haven’t got the handle of this thing! Oh well. Such is life.”

  Paul notices something odd about Katajima’s demeanour. “What the hell is going on? We were supposed to—”

  “Oh, hey Paulie. Surprised to see you.”

  “I bet. Met one of your colleagues at my place. A real empty suit.” Paul grits his teeth. “Killed my dogs.” He sniffles angrily. “Burnt the place to the ground.”

  Katajima notices Paul’s hand fidgeting at his side, and wrinkles his face with a disingenuous smile. “Wasn’t my doing, I assure you. Just caught word of it now. Someone’s put it into Winchester’s head that you’ve something to do with the Anomaly. Haven’t had a moment to sort him out.”

  “‘Just caught word’?”

  Katajima twists his wrist, and draws out a hemigram of an Outland memo. “Let’s see. Tim Archer. Delocal ID: ba de buh, six-nine-zero-zero-two-eight. PILOT report says he’s dead as a doornail. Last signal was—let’s see here—your patio.”

  “Winchester, huh?”

  “Uh huh,” grumbles Katajima.

  “You seem a little—”

  “Off my game?”

  Paul was going to say “possessed.”

  “Oh, Paul.” The white haired lab-rat-cum-magnate makes a sucking sound with his tongue against his teeth, and swaggers a few steps closer. “Please make yourself at home.” Katajima pirouettes—arms indicating the splendour around—and unwittingly spills more of his wine. “He’s done considerably well for himself, wouldn’t you say?”

  Paul discounts this rudeness as a symptom of low tolerance. “Listen, I waited…”

  “Ha!” Katajima interrupts. Flailing his arms erratically, Katajima steps into a pouty face. “Must have been absolutely terrible!”

  “We agreed…”

  Katajima throws his wine glass into the shadows encroaching on the seeming chess board, and waltzes within breath’s warmth of Paul. His nose is bleeding. “How was that?”

  Paul takes a step back, transfixed on the blood dripping from Shouta’s nose. Either he’s recently taken-up snorting cocaine, or someone’s been tinkering inside his head. “What?”

  “Waiting, hours on end for someone—for something that’d never come. The thought of it makes me downright sick! Poor Paulie.”

  “You are sick, you know that?” monotones Paul, sweating anger through his shirt.

  “Hmm?”

  “You climbed over me to get out of the quick sand, and I didn’t say a bloody word. I ask you this one time—just this once—for help…You owe me,” Paul yells.

  Katajima cups his chin and feigns interest. “Mm-hmm.”

  “Pythia and Angela—we need you. And, unless you’ve forgotten: you need me. You and the city of Los Angeles.”

  Striking another melodramatic pose, Katajima addresses Paul: “It’s an awful thing to lose family; even worse to be unable to help. Really a punishing kind of impotence, wouldn’t you say?”

  “At the Indian—“

  “I said…” Katajima rolls his eyes into their pinkish folds, and back again, “I’d help you get them back.”

  “Yeah.” Paul tries to recompose himself, still unable to get a read off of Shouta’s amorphous tone and form. “But first,” he strains, “we have to figure some way to get me into the CLOUD without actually synching.”

  “The Creator cannot enter his creation. That’d just get him crucified.”

  “This thing has to be stopped. For all we know it’s the very same tech singularity the government eradicated the Watson D-series to prevent from spreading.”

  Shouta sighs, ostensibly bored.

  “For fuck’s sakes, you’re the one who came to me. You’re the one planning to take it down.”

  “Was I? Am I? Oh, Shouta, Shouta, Shouta. I’ve recently had a change of mind. Bad for me, bad for you. Oh yes, and your Empty Thought? I was compelled to destroy the program. Felt it was more dangerous than the problem it was designed to resolve.”

  Paul waits for a punch-line. Without one, his face turns bright red. “Is this some kind of messed-up joke?” Paul screams into Katajima’s taunting smile, saliva coning outward. The gun feels especially heavy on Paul’s side.

  “Forgive me. The funeral’s been on my mind. I know you know the kind of toll guilt can take on a man. It’s given me a lot to think about…Do you ever think on your sins, Paul?”

  “Enough with the goddamn games!”

  “Indulge me, Paul. Do you remember our adventures? Do you remember our old lab? Do you remember Allen? Or do you need some SIK tabs to jog your self-awareness? ”

  Katajima’s mirth begins to unhinge Paul’s moral restraint. “Of course I remember.”

  Katajima nods, thoughtfully.

  “I remember how you killed him,” Paul continues through clenched teeth.

  “You convinced yourself that I did, when in fact, you cleared him for entry and encouraged me with doctored reports and data.”

  Paul shakes his head.

  “C’mon; if anyone could have saved
him, it was you, right?”

  “I had nothing to do with his death.”

  “You mean you washed your hands of his fate?”

  “My hands were never dirty to begin with. What the hell does this have to do with anything?”

  “Could have grabbed a few Hitachi drives and reintegrated him. Ol’ Winchester would have cut down all his money trees to help keep things quiet—to keep things running smoothly. Shit, he’d have splurged on a new circulatory system and a neural map if that’s what it took. But your self-righteousness interfered.”

  “You opened the door before I could equip him with a parachute. I told you it was premature.”

  “It’s not just what you did, it’s what you didn’t do.”

  “I tried everything.”

  “Wrong, wrong, wrong. Don’t lie to me, Paul! Can’t you remember? There’s still history beneath all of that snow!” Shouta’s face concretizes in an ecstatic smile. “You opened the flood gates! You got all up in arms about the CLOUD. You drew too much heat, too much attention. The Board wouldn’t take the chance bringing poor Allen back from Oasis with everyone watching or blemish the CLOUD further with a casualty. No one wants to try to be a hero if failure paints him the villain! If he died, then the project was caput. You threw the baby out with the bath water, buddy. And someone lost everything because you wanted everything your way. You and your overblown ego…”

  “That someone was me,” Paul yells. “I lost everything. Look around, Shouta. My loss is your everything. I got two dead dogs, a burnt-down sanatorium, and a family—that hates me—marching to destruction…How dare you?” Paul bites his lip, attempting to suppress his fury. He surrenders the attempt. “I swear to God, Shouta. If you don’t help me…”

  “You’ll what? You’ll hurt me?” He widens his mouth to mime an ‘o’. “Kill me?” Katajima playfully runs his finger across his neck, and twirls into the umbra of the skylight diagonally gridding the chess board. “Abandon me in the dark recesses of the noosphere? C’mon! Talk dirty to me, baby!”

  Paul can feel his fingers gravitating towards the cold steel cutting into his waistline.

  Katajima notices Paul’s hand twitch towards his belt and recoils. “No, Paul. It’s not right that you should have all the fun...” Katajima jaws into his delivery, smiling at Paul. “I mean, that’s what this is all about. Ridding myself of all and any debtors before moving on, moving forward. Peeling off this base weakness.”

  “What’s wrong with you? The Anomaly tune-up your mind or something? I’m not asking for the world here.”

  “Oh, I disagree on the basis of relative meaning. You’re asking for your world back.”

  “Does this get you off or something, you sick bastard?”

  “Little Pythia. Wow! She’s a tough one to crack.”

  Paul’s eyes widen. “I swear, Shouta. One more word...”

  “And boisterous! Now that she’s bunking at dear ol’ Winchester’s, she’s evaporated twenty-four-seven. My lord. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.”

  Tears trail across Paul’s soot-masked cheeks. He’d have killed Katajima simply for touching his dogs. Going after Pythia? Hot adrenalin pitches through his veins.

  “Now, she likes you a whole lot more than that other one; Angela, is it?”

  Paul pulls his revolver and aims it at Katajima. “Shut the hell up. Just shut your mouth.”

  “Her ego, my ego. Can you hate me, if she’s a part of me? Can you bring yourself to kill me then, daddy?” Katajima laughs.

  “You…What have you done to my daughters?”

  Katajima paces around Paul, articulating into the barrel of the gun. “Here’s a little food for thought: perhaps what’s taken your little family doesn’t give a damn about what happens to them, and is more invested in watching you suffer.”

  With explosive judgment seated under his thumb, Paul asks in a shaky voice, “Is it you? Are you doing this?”

  Katajima’s smile pronounces his cheeks, mocking Paul in advance of his answer, “Ah, both excellent questions. In short, no, on a technicality! And yes!” He steps back and curtsies, coinciding with a swell in the background instrumental.

  Paul thumbs back the hammer on the revolver.

  “Why?”

  Resuming a rigid, upright posture, Katajima tilts his head, squeezing air-snaps out his vertebrae. “Don’t ask stupid questions, Paul.”

  “I’m not leaving until I know.”

  “Well,” Katajima throws his hands up, and grabs his cheek-skin taught, “good luck with that.” Partly muffled by his stretched embouchure, Katajima declares: “Hey Sheffield, I know what would cheer you up!”

  Ahead of Paul’s wagging gun, Katajima pulls the flesh free from his own face, laughing, stringing sinew and dripping blood.

  “How do I look, Paulie?” he chatters through an excavated mouth.

  Paul lurches back, aghast, as Katajima’s fat, teeth, and musculature are revealed.

  Katajima’s fierce laughter turns to a rattle, interrupted by gurgling sounds. He claws again and again, pulling at his hair, skin, and eyes. No longer identifiable, the sadomasochist tears at his chest without pause—without instinctive objection—as if possessed.

  “What are you doing!?” screams Paul, tempted to shoot but otherwise stupefied. “Shouta! Shouta!”

  Katajima’s form falls to its knees, skeleton-baring through the gore. What remains of the esophagus and voice box manages a burbling “Ha-ha-ha-ha,” and the body crashes forward.

  “Oh Jeeze...” Paul cannot finish his thought, as it fragments into a million little inconsolable anxieties. He vomits off to the side.

  Wiping his mouth clean, he looks askew at the bloody stump of what used to be a man. He approaches the body, gun still drawn. Parts of it—fingers, mainly—twitch involuntarily. Paul turns the body over, and checks for a pulse. He doesn’t stand a chance. The carotid vein Paul would check is not even in the right neighbourhood.

  Paul grinds his teeth and looks around for witnesses, help, for anybody. The great hall is quiet and still. He crouches and rips open Katajima’s tattered shirt, exposing a PILOT device with a small sensor board flashing a red-alert indicator. Although his suspicion was right—Katajima was not of sound mind or in control of his body at all—it doesn’t amount to any great conclusion. Paul pulls the PILOT insert, and interfaces it with his Monocle.

  Paul mouths bits of the diagnostic as it scrolls in front of his iris. “‘Outland Override; Redirect Command to: Unknown User. Inhibit Re-Entry. Enable Window Feed.’” Jesus. Whoever hacked into Shouta’s personal cypulchre and then commandeered his body via his PILOT device made him watch… Paul intuits a prompt: “Ping user location.”

  “LOCATION NOT FOUND.”

  “Trace origin of override.”

  “TIER 3, MEGA-CLUSTER. RESTRICTED, CLOUD SYSTEM V1.341.”

  Off in some back chapter of the mansion, the operatic record twists forward announcing its finish with intermittent cracks and hisses. Clk-clk-ce-buh.

  Paul, sick of watching Katajima’s blood checkmate his corpulent mass, pockets Katajima’s PILOT insert—a dead-man’s key—and jogs towards the back of the mansion in search of Katajima’s executive deck.

  It has to be here. Shouta would never be more than fifty feet away from it: a custom piece of hardware that they designed together. It interfaces with the CLOUD in such a way that the user can effect virtual and cognitive changes without actually evaporating. It’s Paul’s best chance at saving his girls and delivering the Empty Thought remotely, that is, without getting an implant and doing it in person.

  At the end of a wood-paneled side hall draped with tapestries is a small metal door. In a place where nothing is small or simple… Paul courts over, and cautiously opens the hatch. Bingo.

  Chapter 18: PESTICIDE

  SHOUTING ERUPTS in one of the antechambers. “Dr. Katajima! Oh my goodness!”

  Japanese. Haruto knows. Haruto, the guard with the big-assed gun.

  Comm chat
ter, beeps, and “roger-that’s” ride on what Paul surmises to be Haruto’s grief and anger-filled wails. “You bastard! You’ll pray for me to let you die before this is over!”

  “Shit,” murmurs Paul, noticing blood on his hands.

  Beyond the hatch door is a small room. Exposed-brick walls, seemingly pixelated in the glow of a low-hanging LED chandelier, surround a metal table that could easily double as a medical bench. On it, Katajima’s deck, a half-finished bottle of Saki, and a steel briefcase.

  Paul taps the deck—a book-sized screen with executive access to the CLOUD’s backend. Now I can address the Anomaly remotely. Link the Empty Thought and destroy both the Anomaly and the CLOUD forever. Will have to rain everyone out first, or they’ll be destroyed as well.

  He cracks open the briefcase. Enveloped in foam-padding is a fragmentor. Q’s, no doubt, Paul tells himself, unsurprised.

  Encircled by sleek-silver is the core of the device: a thumbnail-sized processor designed to encrypt, atomize, and suspend data.

  Katajima’s deck’s no good without the fragmentor. Paul’s Empty Thought would destroy the deck, and any other device it came into contact with while cohered as a complete program. Gotta upload the fragmented Empty Thought and figure out a way to then decrypt it on the other end.

  Paul throws the deck into the briefcase, clasps it shut, and turns to go. Ahead: a corridor that could stand-in for any of the Louvre’s. Katajima’s dead body actualizes it—anchors it in the real.

  There’s a loud bang. Paul stops.

  Mid-way down the corridor, the windowed side-wall caves in. Instantaneously, glass, stone, and drywall tear through the gaping divot. A cloud of dust and debris unfurls over buckled marble, finding and hiding Shouta’s body. A second bang rocks the foundations, as if the hill’s evacuating into some infernal chasm. Is this fortress’ existence tied to its master’s?

  Paul grips the small doorframe for stability. The ground continues to shake, and with it, the crystal LED chandeliers dangling along the corridor. Pillars bearing memorabilia and scientific artifacts bear over, and ceiling fragments cascade down like wavering flakes of snow.