Death From Above!

by J. I. Greco

  “But that means you’re all going to have to suicide,” Trip says. Still dangling in the air in the guard’s grasp, Trip crosses his legs and lights a cigarette. “To open the portal or whatever.”

  “Ritual self-sacrifice to open the Time of Invitation,” Mugatham’mmmrrrrr says. “And it will be worth it to ascend to the comets, where our souls can watch the Formless Ones frolic and play on the earth that we prepared for them, free of all lesser beings.”

  Trip slips his Zippo away and sends smoke rings up at the guard. “Like us.”

  “We are not worthy to be in the same plane of existence as the Formless Ones,” Mugatham’mmmrrrrr says.

  “Which kind of is the point I’m getting to.”

  “You may release him. For now,” Mugatham’mmmrrrrr says to the guard. “How so?” he asks Trip as the guard abruptly drops Trip.

  Trip stands up, dusting off his tux lapels, and walks back to the Chief-King. “You’ve got it pretty good here, right. You’ve got the market on food in the Wasteland covered—you’re arguably the more successful, wealthiest, and most comfortable civilization on the planet. And with your network of tribal-states, you’re one of the most influential power blocs out there. People respect you. When the Cthulist speak—when the Cthulists king speaks—people listen.”

  “They do,” Mugatham’mmmrrrrr says. “They do listen.”

  “Yep. But that all goes away the moment you plunge those sacrificial daggers into your hearts,” Trip says, drawing a thumb across the front of his neck. “Who’s gonna listen to you once you’re a disembodied soul on a comet way out in the middle of nowhere space? Not the Formless Ones. And why would they listen? They’re gods, by Shatner. You said it yourself, you’re not worthy of them. They’re not going to listen—hell, they probably won’t even be able to hear you, you’ll be so small and insignificant to them.”

  “You have a point, but it does not matter.” Mugatham’mmmrrrrr spins on his heel and walks out into the council chamber, through the slashes of sunlight. “Our very existence has been leading to this moment… generations of genetic manipulation, this war, it is our destiny.”

  “Sure, sure,” Trip says, following, “but who says it has to be this generation’s destiny?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why not kick the can?” Trip says, throwing his arm around Mugatham’mmmrrrrr’s shoulders. “Down the road. Let some other sucker generation do the ritual self-sacrificing, while you stick around and continue being a big fish in a small pond. And maybe your kids and their kids can be big fish, too. Something they’ll never even get a chance to be if you go all stabby-hearty now.”

  “It would be nice to see my Bradulithuni’mmmrrrrr on the throne.” Mugatham’mmmrrrrr pulls away and steps into the circle of short grass. He lowers himself, sitting cross-legged. “But the Formless Ones… we have an obligation. And the war to end all wars has already begun.”

  “The Formless Ones have waited this long to come back.” Trip plops down onto the short grass in front of Mugatham’mmmrrrrr, stretching himself out prone on his side, propping his head up on his elbow. “They can wait a little more. And it’s not like the war is exactly going your way, is it?”

  “We’re winning.”

  “Are you?” Trip asks. “From what I see, I see a tie so far. You take a region. The Chinese take a province. And so it goes, back and forth, nobody making any real headway. So it’s a stalemate. Nobody’s gonna get the upper hand unless you can manage to convince a lot more people to convert and grow your army, which, you gotta admit, is a long shot, especially when the reward for signing up is eventual suicide. Face it, the Chinese don’t have that kind of PR problem. The only thing holding them back is the logistics of getting troops from the mainland over here faster. But they’ll have that licked soon enough — once they get the landbridge over the Aleutians done, they can march billions over here and swamp you practically overnight.”

  “That has been a concern. But we are working on counter-measures.”

  “You can weaponize all the trees you want, but at the end of the day, you’ve got a billion plus Chinese coming for you. Not to mention the Indians — you heard the rumors coming out of Mumbai, right? They’re about ready to settle their differences with the Chinese and join the fight against the gene-freaks. Their words.”

  Mugatham’mmmrrrrr shakes his head, his chin-tentacles flopping from side to side. “The Indians would never deal with the Chinese. Not after what they did to Visakhapatnam.”

  “I think you underestimate the fear and loathing you guys and your agenda inspire. Wouldn’t surprise me to see the world uniting against you the second it seems like the tide is turning in your favor. Nobody but you wants to see the world end. At least not in a forced mass suicide.”

  “We won’t lose the war.” Mugatham’mmmrrrrr raises his hands to the ceiling. “We have the gods on our side.”

  “Said every loser ever. And then what happens to the Formless Ones’ dream of coming back? It could be a thousand years or more before you’re strong enough to spark a final war again. And that’s assuming the rest of the world leaves any of you alive to get the chance.”

  Mugatham’mmmrrrrr’s hands drop to his side. “You know, I told Bradulithuni’mmmrrrrr going to war now was a mistake. We needed more time to build our forces, to ensure a victory.” The Cthulist’s blood red eyes look sadly at Trip. “We need to make peace.”

  Trip nods. “You need to make peace.”

  “But how? We’re so entrenched… and the Chinese are bent on completing their occupation. If we unilaterally pull back they’ll simply sweep over us.”

  Trip sits up, flicking his cig to the side. “That’s where I come in.”

  “You?”

  “I’ll talk to them.”

  “To the Chinese?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why would they listen to you?”

  “I’m charming,” Trip says with a broad smile. “Talked to you for two minutes and got you to want peace, didn’t I?”

  Mugatham’mmmrrrrr frowns. “I’m assuming because you are you, there will be a fee for this service?”

  “Oh, yeah. Big one. But split between all the warring parties, so the individual contributions won’t be that bad.” Trip thrusts his hand out. “We got a deal?”

  Mugatham’mmmrrrrr’s hand slowly stretches out towards Trip’s. “We have a—”

  The Chief-King is interrupted as a Cthulist in a plain yellow robe with a jagged scar across her forehead bursts through the curtain to the receiving room.

  “Sir!” the Cthulist announces, catching her breath. “An aircraft has landed in the courtyard!”

  “An aircraft?” Mugatham’mmmrrrrr asks, bemused. “No dirigible can penetrate our air defenses.”

  “And no dirigible has,” says the golden-skinned woman in a leather aviator’s jacket, a billowing white silk scarf flapping behind her, as she pushes through the curtains and past the Cthulist in the yellow robe. “I came by jet. Jet plane. Outflew your anti-dirigible guns like they weren’t there.”

  “Lock,” Trip says, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “You know this woman?” Mugatham’mmmrrrrr asks.

  “She’s sorta my daughter,” Trip says. He lights a cig. “And hence, she’s not to be trusted. Or listened to. In fact, you’re better off just shooing her off now without letting her speak.”

  “Is this true?” Mugatham’mmmrrrrr asks, getting to his feet. “You came here in a jet… plane?”

  “It’s outside.” Lock yanks off her gloves. “And there’s more where it came from. I’m taking pre-orders now.”

  Trip hastily stands. “Mugatham’mmmrrrrr, about our plan… a peaceful end to the war, remember? If we could just shake on it…”

  “Um, later. Later,” Mugatham’mmmrrrrr says, ignoring the offered hand. “Right now, I want to see this plane of yours, Lock. How much did you say they were? And how many can you get me?”

  Chapter Seventeen
>
  “Well, that was a little bit of bad luck,” Rudy says. He’s standing in front of the Wound, parked on a grassy knoll a few miles down the road from the Cthulist enclave, chewing on a pear, watching the wind take the contrails Lock’s jet left behind when she flew overhead a few seconds ago, a sonic boom announcing her departure.

  Trip sits cross-legged on the hood of the Wound, his eyes closed. “Yep.”

  “Nice jet, though.” Rudy takes a big bite of pear. The fruit, and the warm sun, have got him feeling better about his forced detox. At least he’s not sweating as much anymore, and his skin is almost back to its usual ruddy pallor. “She’s gonna sell a million of them.”

  “If not more,” Trip says flatly.

  “I wonder how many Mugatham’mmmrrrrr bought.”

  “As many as he could, I reckon.”

  “So, what now?” Rudy asks. “We try the Chinese?”

  “No point.”

  “Oh, because Hu hates your guts and would sooner beat you to death with her shiny new peg leg than talk to you, especially after that mauling she took at the start of the war?”

  “No, because that’s where Lock is headed now. What inventory Mugatham’mmmrrrrr didn’t buy, the Chinese will.”

  “So, diplomacy’s a no-go?”

  “That window has closed.”

  “Then how do we stop the war?” Rudy turns to look at his brother. “You do still want to stop the war, right?”

  “I do, and will,” Trip says, without opening his eyes.

  “How?”

  “I have no idea,” Trip answers, and reaches up behind his left ear to flick a small control nub underneath his blinking antenna, plunging him into real darkness.

  A moment later. Or maybe a year.

  Trip’s breathing steadies, and in his mind’s cybernetic-implant eye, with a flash of static washing over his consciousness, he sees stretching out before him a vast land of barely restrained chaos. It’s a churning vista of data, below a sea of bits, fragments of command and control code bobbing in it like icebergs, and above a sky of data streams, intra-system communiqués flashing through it like lightning.

  And at its center, a black box. Light years across, but also smaller than a hair’s breadth. It sits there, doing nothing, being nothing, but somehow also being the center of this little pocket universe of data.

  As so far, impenetrable.

  He’s poked it a thousand times, from a million different angles, and nothing. No response, no reaction. It might as well be a dead part of the implant, and when he’d found it that first time, that’s exactly what he thought it was, some part of the centuries-old alien biomechanical matrix that had simply given out, no longer able to repair itself thanks to old age, unable to hold data or process information. But if was simply the manifestation of dead tissue, why was it exactly square on all sides instead of jagged and random like he would have expected? And why would the manifestation of dead tissue have, inscribed identically on each facet, a smirking smiling face… his face?

  So, not dead tissue.

  A memory bank, then. But a protected one, not in the implant’s main line, inaccessible without a key, or maybe not at all. Holding something. Something from long ago. Something an ancestor had squirreled away for safekeeping. Something of such earth-shattering importance that it must be protected, sustained over the generations, hidden and secret. Or so he’d come to assume, building it up over time. It could, for all he knows, just as easily contain a not particularly special recipe for an Old Fashioned.

  But whatever it is, his curiosity was piqued, and he has to know. Today’s gonna be the day. Has to be.

  He could use a win about now.

  He sends out a probe. And another. And another, and another, and another. A thousand data tendrils, one after the other, and sometimes all together, thwacking against the sides of the big black box, feeling for any weakness, any soft spot, that can then be ripped into an opening.

  And as always happens his thoughts begin to drift.

  So Lock cracked the secret to avoiding Death From Above. So what? She’s a smart kid. And she’s got those nanochines. If I had those nanochines, I’d have cracked it, too. And faster, you can bet your ass about that.

  Still, nothing. Each probe bounces off, the walls of the black box as strong as ever.

  Trip sends another wave of probes—twice as many and twice as fast as he ever has, all at the same time.

  And Rox… I’m happy for her. Okay, maybe not happy. But not angry. No, not angry. Never angry. Jealous, maybe. What? Me, jealous? Ha. Never. Okay, it’s just you and me here, and you’re me. Maybe a little. Just a little. So little I’d never have to admit it to her. That’s almost like I’m not jealous at all, right? I mean, for all practical purposes.

  The massive wave of tendril probes crash against the monolithic box, pummeling it until the last probe disintegrates into data dust. And when the dust clears, the box remains, its walls intact, his own stupid grinning face taunting him.

  But can you blame me? She took my job. And she’s better at it. Way better. She actually cares about that shit-hole of a town. Cares about me. Cares enough to have my kid. My kid. A kid… Vishnu’s nipples, I’m gonna be a daddy…

  With a warbling war-cry, Trip sends his consciousness spiraling up, up into the clouds of data, up past the binary lightning storms, past the blinking stars, pinpricks of memories, his, his ancestors’, everyone who’d ever worn the implant, and then down, back down, his consciousness constricting, forcing all his speed into the fall, faster and faster, a bullet aimed straight at the top of the cube, right at the center of that mocking asshole’s smirk.

  How fucked up is that?

  The big black box rushing up at him at ever increasing speed, his own face getting larger and larger and larger, miles away, meters, inches… Trip steals himself for the impact.

  The blow never comes. Only darkness.

  It seems to go on forever. Swallows him whole. Never-ending. Pressing in on him. A nothingness. Void.

  This is it. I’ve gone and done it now. Broke the damn implant. And maybe my brain, too. Nice job, asshole.

  “Stop being so dramatic.”

  And then…

  Light.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The virtual reality that coalesces around Trip is both foreign, yet familiar.

  He’s seen it before, this sharply appointed space, with its curving walls, twin couches facing each other across a big blue rug with some kind of militarized bird on it, a bust broken into dark gray blocks and dust at the base of a side table, and floor-to-ceiling windows behind a dark wood desk.

  But Trip’s damn sure he’s never seen it before with his eyes.

  No, not his eyes.

  That other him. His eyes.

  The one in the black sports jacket, skinny tie, and jeans, sitting at that desk, leaning back, his feet up, red Converses on the desk, puffing away smugly at a cigar, and smirking at Trip.

  But it’s not Trip there behind the desk. The shoulders are wrong. Broader. And there’s gray at this other Trip’s temples. And maybe a few wrinkles around his eyes.

  Age, yeah. This Trip’s older. But that’s not what’s ever so slightly off about him.

  “You’re not me,” Trip says.

  “And it only took you how long to figure that out?” the man behind the desk says. “I mean, I assumed it was only going to go downhill from me, but gotta say, that’s still surprising.”

  Trip snaps his fingers. “I know you. You’re the first. To wear the implant. My great-great-great-great grandfather—”

  “No names,” the man says. “You never know who might be listening.”

  “And I know this room. How do I know this room?”

  Granpap swings his feet off the desk. “For a time, it was the office of the most powerful man in the world. Like between ‘45 and ‘73, ‘74. Then corporate interests took over behind the scenes, like Ike warned everybody about, and then it was just the office of a series of
increasingly ineffective corporate stooges, until the Wultr came along, bought the planet’s debt, and gave the office to somebody who knew how to do some serious business.”

  “You?”

  “You want a history lesson or do you want my help?”

  “Help?”

  “That’s why I put a version of myself in here, in the implant.” Granpap taps the side of his head with a middle finger. “To help future generations. Which, it appears I assumed rightly, would need all the help they could get.”

  “I thought you were a treasure map or something.”

  “Well, I’m not. What I am is something a lot more valuable. Like, sum total of experience and wisdom of our bloodline’s greatest generation valuable — the mind and memories of the peak iteration, at your service, and at an unprecedented price. Free. You can’t beat that.”

  “I do all right on my own, thank you,” Trip says. “So if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather have a treasure map.”

  “Right, right. Doing great on your own.” Granpap taps ashes into a large glass bowl. “You even bother to ask yourself why now?”

  “Why what now?”

  “Why did you become aware of my memory bubble just a couple months back when I’ve been here all along? And why, after so many attempts to break in did you finally manage it? What’s so special? What was the key?”

  “Persistence?”

  “Self-doubt.”

  Trip huffs. “Yeah, right.”

  “You can hide it from yourself, but not me. This implant of ours, it sees deeper into the brain than you know—than you can even be aware of. The Wultr were horrible businessmen, and boy could they run a planet into the ground, but they knew how to salvage, and the aliens they salvaged these implants from, they knew their shit. Thanks to this thing, I know you better than you know yourself, and I’m a fuckin’ ghost. I see everything in here. Every little thought. And for the first time in your life, you’ve been feeling self-doubt. A little at first, but it built and built over the months, until pow! It was like an earthquake down here. You see that bust. That wasn’t on the floor in pieces five minutes ago. So don’t deny it.”