Superego

by Frank J. Fleming

  “What was that again?” I guess I hadn’t paid much attention to the final part of the plan; I hadn’t really thought I’d make it that far.

  “Rear of the cruiser. Escape pod 287.”

  I noticed a TV camera pointed at me. I smiled into it and then headed into the crashed cruiser. Inside I found a few Calabrai cowering behind seats. I headed farther up the slanted floor of the destroyed craft. I can’t remember if I shot the Calabrai I saw. I may have done so without even consciously thinking about it; my mind and body had almost been operating separately ever since the Fazium had taken effect. Eventually I was so far up into the craft that I knew I must be in the area sticking out of the roof. I found the escape pod Dip had indicated and entered it.

  “Prepare yourself.”

  The escape pod launched, and out its viewport I could see the rest of the pods launch in different directions. With all the police force’s resources currently in use trying to get into the conference hall, they wouldn’t be able to spare the manpower to check all of the pods. After a few minutes, my pod was well outside the city and over the forest. The sky had darkened a bit with rain clouds, giving me further cover. The pod began to descend and eventually came to a sudden halt in a clearing.

  “I’m on my way,” Dip told me. “We’ll need to be quick. We have some confusion to use as cover, but they’re preparing further blocks on outgoing traffic that my authorization may not be able to circumvent. As you instructed, I passed all the information we had on syndicate connections within the Galactic Alliance to every media organization I could. I’ll have to be radio silent for a few minutes, but I’ll contact you again when I arrive.”

  I opened the pod. It had started to drizzle, and I could actually feel water drops on my skin instead of just pain. The Fazium was tapering off, and I was beginning to feel tired, both mentally and physically. But I smiled. I set my feet on the ground. My legs ached, but I could stand. And I felt good—better than I could ever remember. I was a new man; I had found purpose. The syndicates were vast, but I would continue to hunt them down and hit them where it hurt. I had just exposed to the public how entrenched the criminals were in their government. And not only that, I’d shown them as cockroaches to be crushed, not giants to be feared. Maybe it would rouse people to action as Diane had hoped. But whether it did or not, the criminals who thought they ran the universe would not rest easy. Not while I was after them.

  I let myself enjoy the moment. The rain picked up, but the water felt good. It washed over me, cleaning off the old self, leaving the new. But the drug faded more, and as the pain throbbing throughout my body faded, for some reason I felt the aches more. The water was no longer pleasant but more like little rocks pelting bruised, raw skin. As the euphoria faded, a thought came to me: I wasn’t some new being with purpose. I was just a pathetic, deluded, broken murderer alone in a dark forest getting soaked in the rain.

  I tried to grab that feeling of purpose again—that faith—but it was gone, and reality was back. The Fazium and injuries must have messed up my mind to make me more susceptible to irrational thought, but my logical facilities had returned to remind me how pointless everything was. It didn’t matter how much of the syndicates I hunted and murdered, I’d still be an empty, pointless being.

  The only thing that didn’t make any rational sense was that I was still alive, that I’d improbably survived it all. My real plan all along had been to die in that fight, and if that had succeeded I might have actually ended my life feeling I’d had a purpose in the universe. But I lived, and the torture of a useless existence continued on.

  I looked up at the sky and the dark gray clouds dropping rain on me. “So do you exist?” I shouted to the darkness above. “And am I just some joke to you? I’m evil! Why don’t you smite me? Why am I still here?” I knew I was probably talking to nothing. I looked down at the ground. “I just want to know what to do. Please, if you exist, I just need you to tell me what to do.”

  There was no answer from above. Only silence. Until Dip spoke in my ear. “I’m almost there.”

  Here came my escape, but what was I escaping to? Why was I trying to save my life at all? There was nothing left for me that was worth anything at all.

  Diane. Caught up in my own drama and thinking I’d found purpose, I’d completely forgotten about her…natural for me, I guess. It’s why I knew I could never be with her—I could never be about anything other than myself. But I saw my own life as worthless. The best I could do was use it to help someone more worthy of existence, who perhaps wouldn’t have an empty and pointless life.

  “Dip, do you have any updates on Diane?”

  “I thought you intended to cease all involvement with her.”

  “Just tell me what’s happening with her. Nystrom and the other syndicates are probably too preoccupied to go after her now, but I don’t know how long that will last.” I dreaded seeing her again after what I had done to her. And after she’d probably seen exactly what a monster I was in my huge, bloody spectacle before the cameras. But what she thought of me was unimportant. I just needed to make sure she was safe. And I had this silly little hope that if I accomplished this one thing of use, God would finally let me have my ending.

  I could see my ship breaking through the clouds and descending to land in the clearing I was in. “I see that Diane is—”

  The ship halted its descent, hovering a few yards above me.

  “Why did you stop?” I asked after a moment’s silence.

  “I’m sorry, Rico.”

  “Sorry about wh—”

  The ship exploded, and I quickly shielded my face from the fire and debris. Then there was another bang, a much smaller explosion. Like a gunpowder-based firearm being fired. And something hit me in the back.

  My pain was gone again. And so was the feeling. I fell to the ground, and all I could feel was the rain on my face and the warmth of the burning pieces of my ship scattered next to me.

  CHAPTER 42

  It was no mystery who’d shot me. There was always one man who I’d assumed could take me down easily whenever he wanted to: my father. I just had begun to think he wasn’t going to show up.

  I didn’t know what he’d shot me with, but I seemed to be paralyzed from the neck down. I could hear footsteps on dead leaves over the sound of the rain. I was rolling over, though I couldn’t feel what pushed me. And then I was staring up at Anthony Burke, dressed in a dripping wet, long coat and hat, with an old fashioned-looking revolver in his hand, his dark, oddly sad eyes lit by the fires of my ship that weren’t yet extinguished by the rain.

  He knelt down next to me, returning the gun to a holster under his coat. He seemed quite certain I was disabled. “I knew in a fair fight, you’d outshoot me. I figured having your ship self-destruct in front of you would distract you enough to give me an edge.”

  My mouth still worked. “You made Dip destroy himself?”

  “Soon after you installed that program, I took control of it. He’s been reporting to me constantly since then. I didn’t have sinister intentions; I just always liked knowing what you were up to.”

  “But then you knew my plans here.”

  He smiled. “Yes. Yes, I did. I even helped when I could. How do you think Dip got so good at hacking our communications? I was using him to feed you information. Since he was just a computer program, you never did think to suspect him.”

  True. I’d thought he was simple and logical like me—always with clear motives. Quite unlike Anthony. “So you ordered that I die on this job but then made sure I knew Nystrom was plotting to kill me?”

  He nodded. “Yes…it’s complicated. Rico, do you know you were never meant to be a killer?”

  I was startled by the notion, though my paralyzed body didn’t outwardly show it, I assumed. “What do you mean?”

  “You weren’t originally intended to be a hitman—or to do any fighting at all. You were made to be highly intelligent and free from the emotional shackles that restrict most peop
le’s thinking. You were part of a long-term plan. The universe has been so chaotic, and it’s long since been time that someone should seize control and bring order to it. But people have tried that forever, so we thought we’d make new people—better people—to lead a new order. You were meant to be a ruler, Rico. You were to be my son—made from my DNA—who would go on to inherit the universe. But it didn’t work out.”

  Anthony’s face was growing darker. I think my vision was fading just slightly. I couldn’t tell if I was poisoned or bleeding out. “I never cared about being in charge.”

  He chuckled. “That was the miscalculation. We tried to take away your irrationality, and as a result you don’t care about anything other than the present moment. You weren’t the only one of you that we made, by the way. There were others made from the DNA of other Nystrom executives. But they were all menaces—constant dangers to anyone they were around and, despite their intelligence, there was no reasoning with them. They ended up being put down like dogs. Only you seemed to care about your own survival enough to adapt your behavior to get along with others. Nystrom still wanted to do away with you and forget the whole mess, but I fought for you. I saw potential in you. I figured in the least, with your intelligence and the modifications to increase your brain’s speed, you could be a skilled killer, and you quickly took interest in that training. I hoped one day you would be something more, but no. You never seemed to care.”

  I was trying to process this revelation. I had assumed that I had been designed from the beginning to be good at killing—that while I wasn’t quite the soldier intended by the program that made me, my identity and purpose were still to be an efficient killer. Instead, killing was just something Anthony had chosen for me when my initial purpose hadn’t worked out. He could have chosen something else for me, and perhaps I would have devoted myself to it just as much. I thought a killer was all I was, but it was simply all that Anthony had imagined I could be.

  “The executives never really trusted you—they remember too well the animals that the others like you turned out to be. So I don’t think they ever fully trusted my judgment for keeping you around. Maybe they’re right, maybe it wasn’t good judgment. It’s just…you’re my son. I was proud of what you were, and I didn’t want to just discard you. But Nystrom has big plans. And I have my own big plans. It was time for me to let you go to show them my devotion to the cause.”

  I figured it was something like that. I wasn’t too surprised that, in the end, I just wasn’t more important than money and power to my “father.”

  “But you warned me,” I said.

  “Nystrom has their plans, but I have…well…bigger ones. I acted as though I wanted you to go out fighting like you deserve, but I had something else in mind for you. You see, Nystrom thinks they’re big enough now that they don’t need to hide in the shadows. They can rule outright. That might be true, but I see a problem. You see, we’re criminals. People know that, and they’ll never really accept us. We’ll always have to use force to keep people in line. Like many other syndicates, we started as smugglers. Petty criminals. But as the governments expanded over too large a space and became weak and ineffectual, we found we were the only ones with the power and will to actually control things. Once you’re powerful enough, I guess you’re no longer really a criminal. You are the law. But can a bunch of thugs and murderers really be accepted as leaders?”

  He smiled. This was his big idea he was telling me. This was his baby. His real child. “What we can be, though, are the villains who rouse people to action. Do you know why we’re killing all those people on Zaldia?”

  “Minerals?” It was my only guess.

  “No. No one knows why we’re there…except me. I organized it for one purpose only. So we can ruthlessly kill innocent people and let all of civilization see it. You ever heard of the Nazis, Rico? A dictatorship that murdered millions of people back when humans were stuck on their home planet. They were so awful that everyone felt righteous in crushing them—that it was imperative to do anything to stop them. That’s what I’m trying to make Nystrom—a powerful, evil organization that everyone wants to righteously rise up against and destroy. And destroy the other syndicates while they’re at it. People will feel the need to do anything necessary to stop us and the others, and finally we’ll have the effective nation the future needs. So yes. Nystrom needs to come out of the shadows. And then it needs to be destroyed. Under my guidance.”

  I started to understand. “You want the face of Nystrom and the other syndicates destroyed, and then you want to use the people’s anti-syndicate fervor to build your own new government.”

  “Someone has to have the vision to guide things as they need to be.”

  I laughed. “Like when you made me.”

  “Mistakes will be made, son, but the universe is finally ready to move into the future. And your help was invaluable. The other leaders of Nystrom were hesitant to act on my idea. But now, with your spectacle exposing all the syndicates, people will rise up and demand an entirely new government. And I’ll be there…in the background, guiding things, as people wage war on the corruption in their government and the criminals behind it.”

  And that’s what stung the most. I was trying to rebel. For a while, I was even trying to be righteous. But all I did was further Anthony’s plans. He’d known exactly how I’d retaliate when I found out Nystrom had finally turned against me. Even when I thought I was doing something new and becoming someone different, all I was doing was acting my type and playing into his hands.

  In Anthony’s flame-lit face, I could see a twinge of remorse. It hurt him to kill me, but he’d decided other things were more important. That’s just how people are. “You never did ask why I killed your mother,” he said.

  “I figured if I needed to know, you’d tell me.”

  “But you weren’t curious?”

  “People kill other people all the time.”

  He chuckled. “That’s what I always liked about you. You were always simple, logical. You didn’t get hung up on silly human conventions. I had such high hopes for you. I even had hopes for you after this job. I knew you’d lash out, and then I thought that with Nystrom in flux I’d be able to bring you back into the fold. But I can’t now. Because you’re broken. I thought my son could survive anything, but this broke you. Did I hear you shouting at God a few minutes ago? What was that about?”

  A good question. “I’m just…I’m lost, I guess.”

  “It’s because of that woman. Diane, or whatever her real name is. Isn’t it?” He looked angry. “Somehow she got in your head and you couldn’t get her out. The things I would like to do to her…”

  “Please. Leave her alone.” The words came out almost automatically.

  He stared at me with a perplexed look on his face. “As you have probably realized, you’re going to die very soon. What’s it matter to you?”

  “I…don’t know. Just please let her live. If you can do me one favor, get her to safety.”

  He slowly stood up. I could no longer see his face. “You were at times a difficult son to love. I was never much for affection, but I sometimes wondered whether you thought of me as anything more than someone who gave you orders.”

  “Not really. Maybe I had more respect for you than I had for other people. You seemed smart.”

  He chuckled softly. “That you respected.”

  “I did.”

  “But not now?”

  I hadn’t meant to phrase it in past tense, but it was true. “No. You have all these big plans, but in the end you’re just another rat clawing at others for its share of garbage. Even if your plans work out and you have all the power you can imagine, you’re still going to be no more than a silly, miserable fool.”

  “And this is a new opinion?”

  No, not really. I had always seen the pursuit of power as pointless, but something was different now. I wanted so badly to leap up and grab Anthony and beat him until there was nothing recognizable l
eft…even though logically I knew how pointless that would be, and that it would bring me no happiness. Because it wasn’t even really him I was angry with. “I just now realized how broken I am.”

  “We did make mistakes creating you, but—”

  “Not that.” I thought about my long, empty life. “You were a bad father, though. Perhaps I could have been something—done something better with my life with proper guidance. But you were too myopic to help me there—just focused on ‘power,’ as if that was a goal worth anything.”

  “I made you the best you could be in your circumstances!” he said angrily.

  I took a deep breath, though it hurt some. “This is pointless. If I’m to die now, let me die in peace. You go rule the universe or whatever nonsense it is you’re focused on.”

  Anthony stood still. “Do you hate me, son?”

  “I don’t think enough of you to hate you. I think it once mattered to me that I thought you cared for me, but I don’t know why. Now I just want…I sort of wish I never knew you. Then maybe I could have been someone else. Someone…” I wasn’t sure where I was going with that, but it soon became clear to me. I wanted to be someone Diane could love and who could properly love her back. And be content with that. But I wasn’t going to share that with Anthony.

  “I’m sorry, son,” Anthony said. “This wasn’t easy for me, but I can see from your rambling that it was probably the right choice. You’re no longer your clear-cut, rational self, and that makes you dangerous. But it doesn’t matter; I already killed you with the first shot. I don’t hesitate on these sorts of things—I pick an action, and I follow through. That’s how I survive. You’ll be dead in a few more minutes. Goodbye.” He turned and walked off.

  So now I was alone, paralyzed, dying, and staring up at the rain that fell on my face. And I was angry for some reason…but not with Anthony. I remembered Diane’s talk of forgiveness, but forgiving my “father” was simple enough. He was just a fool—like every other sentient out there. But here was so much thoughtlessness in the universe that it seemed silly to obsess over a single instance of it.