by Mark Lingane
“Do you remember?” She lowered the pistol slightly.
“Remember what?”
“If you do then we don’t need to do this. It can all be fixed. There’s still time.”
“What are you talking about? Remember what?”
“Oh God, Josh, you don’t.”
She started to sob again. She raised the gun and aimed it at Joshua. She primed it and drew in her breath. Time seemed to slow. She was being shrouded in a thick fog. Then Joshua saw a glow start to radiate between them. The light grew more intense. Then Joshua realized his perspective was wrong and he was the one in the mist and the light was coming from him. He raised his hand and saw its ghostly outline. He looked up at Marianne and saw her outline reaching out to him. The light making up their forms intertwined and danced to the heartbeat of the universe.
A voice in his head said, We could be like this. Just you and me. Forever.
Reality came crashing back in. Marianne’s expression changed. She was no longer looking at Joshua but behind him. He didn’t feel game enough to look around.
“What?” she said, followed by, “J—”
That was all she said as a shot rang out. Joshua looked down at his body to see if he had been shot. He seemed all right. Marianne must have shot what was behind him. He looked up, relieved, but saw that Marianne was no longer standing in front of him. He looked down again and saw her prone form on the jetty boards. Things were happening too fast for his mind to get a grip of.
He heard running footsteps behind him. He quickly turned and saw a figure in dark clothing and sandy hair disappearing into the mist of the docks. He made a choice. He turned back to Marianne and ran toward her. He sat next to her on the jetty and lifted her body into his lap. She was still alive and breathing. She spoke. Her voice was very faint, making him lean close to her mouth.
“Ah, I understand. Passing allows you to see the truth. Everything isn’t broken. We don’t need to destroy everything and start over. We just needed to fix it. That’s what you saw. That’s why you left. And we didn’t understand.” She put her hand on his chest. “We didn’t believe you and we didn’t question it. We were afraid of what we didn’t know. Now it’s too late. Please forgive me and promise you’ll fix things. Promise me.”
She was bleeding heavily now and her body was feeling too light in his arms as he cradled her.
“One thing you should know,” she said, “is that through all I had to do, what I was sent to do, I loved you through all of it. We stole our moment and the price was paid. We’re free. I’m … glad … it … ended … this … way.”
Her eyes closed. “Oh, the stars,” she said and, slowly, Marianne exhaled.
He stood up, lifting her in his arms. The gods swirled and looked down upon him, throwing everything they had.
He screamed at the top of his lungs. “No. Not now. Not like this.”
The wind howled without mercy. It was the kind of night that man had been trying to escape from for his entire evolution. Lightning stabbed the ground with personal vengeance. Thunder growled like a large wild dog that hadn’t been fed in a week. The elements shook the earth like a cheap souvenir with no regard to what was alive. The night was as cold, dark and fearful as it had been in the primordial soup of creation, unleashing its power knowing that all would fall before it. Even the light would end one day. On that day there would be no light at the end of the tunnel.
The night echoed the thoughts of his mind.
He carried Marianne to the edge of the jetty. He looked at her one more time and kissed her forehead. He spoke some syllables as old as time, looked up at the unforgiving sky and dropped her into the water. He fell to his knees and sobbed bitterly. Down under the water something glowed brightly. It lit up the water with an intensity that glowed for miles. Silver streams shot out toward the sea. They were fish, reacting on ancient survival instincts, trying to get far away from this place as quickly as possible. Now other streams and flashes of light centered on the jetty. A maelstrom of currents churned the seabed into a dust cloud. Waves crashed unforgivingly against the dock line. Several weaker points were reclaimed by the ocean.
At the end of the jetty there was a patch of water the sea didn’t want to know about. It was dead calm and glowing bright white. When all colors come together they are white. When all things come together there is white as well. Under the water the light focused on a gaunt female face slowly turning blue. The face, when it had reached its final point of blue, suddenly accelerated up through the colors of the rainbow. It exploded and the sea was, once again, dark and cold. Overhead, if anyone was looking, a new star blinked.
Joshua didn’t notice any of this. Even if his mind had been able to grasp the goings on, he was still several hundred yards away and accelerating. Intense sadness wrenched through his heart and soul, making him angry at the way nothing made sense. He was torn and lost and no reasonable thought process could help him, but this was not the time for grief. Nearby there was a man with the answers and Joshua was going to find him, then beat the living daylights out of him.
To keep his focus he went over his last moments with Marianne. She had given him more information. What was it?
What I was sent to do.
I’m glad it ended this way.
What other way could it have ended? Sent to do what? Sent by whom? He finally knew the answer to that question. Dominion had sent each of these people to do something either with or to him, but each one had been thwarted.
I loved you through all of it.
As though it wasn’t a pleasant thing to do. But unpleasant for whom. Him?
The Dominion would make more sense but they wouldn’t send someone out to do something nasty then kill them to stop them doing it. That was stupid. The cogs of sanity turned slightly and a few latches fell across doorways. Reason started knocking but the truth was screaming.
It all made sense if these people were after him, but only if there was someone looking out for him. What did he have to do with this lot? Especially if they wanted to kill him which, when he thought about it, should have been easy to do considering what each had been carrying at the time of death.
Somewhere computers calculated, a decision was made and something happened.
Joshua’s meeting with the last of his clients and the clues to how this mess fitted together was only a few blocks, and a few minutes, away. Raphael was the only link to whoever was behind all this. He had to get there first. Too much relied on it.
He charged out of the maze of wharfs and powered across the vacant parking lot with the ghost of the assailant fuelling his thirst for revenge. He rounded into the city blocks, his heart pounding hard. He emerged onto the bustling streets of the city, which ran on endlessly. The nighttime revelers danced or fought with their selfish indulgences, reaching a crescendo of irrelevant activity. And he hated them all.
He looked along the street and saw what looked like a running figure dashing through the crowd. Whoever it was had a good two hundred yards head start, if not more. Joshua took off down the street after him and after his next victim. People seemed to come out of nowhere to block his way. He dodged them, jumped trolleys and became tangled in handbags. Everything was working against him. He pounded around the corner and into a marketplace. There were people and stalls everywhere.
He looked up for a clearer route. He grabbed a nearby drainpipe and shinned his way up. It ended a few meters away from a fire escape attached to a building that made up one wall of the market. He judged the distance and jumped. He judged wrongly and landed heavily with his ribs crashing against the rail, knocking the breath from him. He heaved himself over the rail, collapsed onto the fire escape and banged his knee on the wall. In anger, he dragged himself up and rapidly climbed the fire escape to the top of the building.
He reached the top of the building, gasping for air. He could see his destination. If he was quick he could beat the assailant. He ran across the rooftop and shuddered to a halt. He looked at th
e previously unseen gap between the two buildings. It was no more than ten or twelve feet, but to a tired and not-young man that was a long way. What was worse, it was a very long way down. He had to jump. There was no going back. It would take too long. There was no other way and it was the only way he could get there first.
He took a dozen paces back, breathed deeply, wished heavily and ran as fast as he could toward the gap. He jumped and closed his eyes.
He felt the adrenalin rush through him, his brain screaming in fear that he was going to die. He opened his eyes and saw that he wasn’t going to make it. The rush was all that saved him. He hit the wall hard and desperately grabbed at anything nearby. Nothing was there. As he bounced off the wall and started to fall he grabbed a drainpipe running horizontally beneath the roof. He was left hanging thirty feet up, out of breath, badly wounded and losing strength very quickly.
He thought how easy it would have been for him to just let go and let it all end there, but human life has a built-in system that says it is worth living even if it’s only a few minutes. He redoubled his efforts to hold on. He looked around and saw a nearby window with a ledge. The pipe ran a few feet above it. There was hope. Now all he needed was a way.
Hanging desperately above the street he looked down and saw the assailant enter the building. Anger welled within him once again. Without even realizing what he was doing he swung his way along the pipe toward the window and ledge. The pipe started creaking urgently then broke away. But luck was with him. The pipe swung away from the wall and around in an arc that flung him through the window, shattering it, and he fell onto a dusty floor. He was in but had it happened quickly enough?
He was to meet with Raphael on the first floor. The assailant had entered from the ground floor and he had entered from the second. He smashed open the door, looking left and right in search of the stairs. He spotted the telltale sign on the opposite side of the room. He dashed across and burst through the white door into an anonymous concrete stairwell. He leaped down as many stairs as his battered knees could tolerate.
There was a gunshot.
He entered a room on the first floor. He slowed to a jog as he surveyed the empty room and allowed his pounding heart a moment to recover. He took his gun from his holster and primed it. There was a sudden movement through a doorway and he charged toward it. He was met by someone coming out. There was a sound like two cars crashing into each other. The force of the collision caused him to somersault on the spot and the other to go crashing to the ground. Stars flashed before his eyes. His head spun. He could make out a figure staggering to its feet and turning. Joshua couldn’t focus on the body but he aimed and pulled the trigger. The other man did the same.
In a simultaneous moment Joshua saw the figure pinwheel into the wall clutching one leg and he felt pain sear through his right arm, forcing him to drop his gun. If he had been standing he would have collapsed. He looked up and saw the figure was gone. This was the last straw. After all he had been through, to be let down now was too much.
Trying to ignore the pain, which he failed to do completely, Joshua fought his way to his feet and staggered through the doorway. There was no sign of the figure, only a pool of blood and the gun in the center of it. Things were fair again; both were wounded and both were without weapons. Things were going to get personal.
He half ran, half staggered toward the front door. He followed a telltale trail of blood leading off through the crowd. People parted for him and watched silently as he ran, crazed, through the crowd. The trail was easy to follow. There was going to be an end to this, one way or another.
The trail led through back streets and onto main streets. Obviously the man had no intention of being secretive. Still Joshua didn’t like the feeling of where the trail was leading. The traffic was bumper to bumper. Joshua tried to take a shortcut across the street by jumping over the cars from hood to hood. People leaned out of their windows and yelled abuse at him as he did so.
He ran past a restaurant that was filling with customers for dinner. The people screamed and scattered as he yelled at them to get out of the way. He leaped over tables and chairs in alfresco cafes, cups and glasses spinning everywhere. The lights bounced their auras off the crowded streets. People watched and time seemed to slow.
Joshua hurtled into the Boulevard, the city’s main drag. Again, this was crowded. Cars and buses were honking in frustration. The taller buildings flashed their neon lights. As he ran along the street people became quiet and turned their attention to him. He ran on. At the end was a major roundabout surrounded by towering shopping malls and elite businesses. After Joshua ran through the roundabout it seemed that everything had gone eerily quiet, and he felt the entire city was watching him.
A few turns left and right and again he was away from the main streets. Eventually he came to the expansive grounds of the Department of Personal Information. The main gates were open and the trail led right through them. He sprinted, as best he could, across the lawns.
A guard was looking down at a pool of blood just inside the glassed main doors. The man looked up in time to see a running figure smashing through the glass, showering it everywhere. The figure just cleared the guard, hit the ground hard, rolled and was up and running, or rather limping, in the direction of the blood trail before the guard knew what to do. In an effort to look on top of the situation, he called out after the fleeing figure.
“Excuse me, do you have a pass?”
Joshua had been here before, a long time ago. The blood trail ran into the depths of the building. It seemed to go down more levels than were apparent from the outside or that were on any listing inside the building. The corridors became darker and more foreboding, but he felt unfazed by their menace. Eventually he came to a long corridor and he was hit with an incredible sense of déjà vu. He stood for a moment looking around the walls. There were many doors and on the doors were names. He wandered along, looking awkwardly at them, feeling that something was very wrong. He came to one door. Which was open. He looked in. It was empty.
He looked at the door again. His mouth dropped open.
He grabbed a piece of paper that was attached to the door. If he had had any strength left he would have been very angry, but he could do little more than limp along the corridor to his destination. Some of the other doors were open and the rest were closed, but he didn’t look at any of them because he knew what they would say.
In his hand, being washed away by the blood, the piece of paper displayed the name Ruth Friday.
The blood trail rounded the final corner. He didn’t like the feeling of where it was leading. This place had a far too familiar feel about it. At the end of the corridor the blood disappeared under a door. He dragged himself along, willing himself strength for the final conflict.
The lights seemed to move along at an agonizingly slow pace. Doors and walls blurred, leaving him with only his destination in sight. He staggered against the final door, fighting for breath. His own blood was mingling with the trail of the assailant, making him unsure of how close he was. He breathed deeply, stood up and steadied himself, then gave the door an almighty kick. This was where it was going to end. The whole story. Too much had been lost for it to end any other way.
The door swung open and he was greeted with a barrage of silence. He slumped through the door and crawled his way to the closest wall. The room stopped spinning and came into focus. It was empty except for a large black executive desk and a large black executive chair behind it. Sitting in the chair was the assailant. He looked familiar. His hair was standing on end, and Joshua was having trouble recognizing him as human.
“Do I know you?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied the apparently known stranger.
“Good. I’d hate to think I was being shot by strangers,” he wheezed. “Then why don’t I know you?”
The not-a-stranger laughed. “Would you like an explanation?” he said, indicating a seat on the other side of the desk. He motioned for Joshu
a to sit.
Joshua shrugged. “Why not,” he said, “it shouldn’t hurt. Well, not as much as being shot.” He walked cautiously toward the chair, keeping an unwavering gaze on his assailant. He eased himself gently into the plush leather cushioning, but still winced as his injuries flared.
“I’m sorry about that. I’m Jude Kilby,” said Jude Kilby. “Welcome to Dominion. I’m sorry to say everything that seems to have gone wrong.”
27
“ALL RIGHT, I’M GAME. What’s Dominion?” Joshua asked. He relaxed into the chair, placed his arms on the armrests, leaned back and got ready for The Explanation.
“Dominion, or what we call the Dominion, is the engine of reality. It has the function of turning raw chaos into matter, then into what matters, and thus, from moment to moment, creating the form and function of everything. The engine isn’t a machine. Think of it as a living process, like a flower growing. It doesn’t have a brain, but it has an understanding of what needs to happen now so that what comes next can also happen. It’s a created entity, a pseudo-life. But it’s some kind of living thing, even if it is artificial, and it strives to live and evolve.”
The man paused. “That’s what I’ve seen. It was built, or grown if you prefer, out of the absolute necessity to change. And as such it needs to be continually changing because that’s all it knows. If it stops doing that then it stops being what it is. It stops being the reality engine.”
“Are you telling me that all the world’s a machine, and we’re merely cogs within it?”
“No, it’s not a machine,” said Jude.
“Is it a stage?” asked Joshua.
“No!” Jude shouted. “Like any kind of plant it still needs to be directed and cared for by someone, otherwise it will die.” He paused for breath. “You can imagine what would happen then.”
“Surely it can only die if it’s alive?”
“It exists, just as any living entity does.”