Multitude

by Swanson, Peter Joseph

  She pushed him off. “They’ll heal, even if you put on a magic voodoo mask and shake a damn rattle and dance around me in circles for a few weeks, like a rusted priest of old. They’ll heal. I’ll stay off of them and they’ll heal no matter what you do or don’t do. I want to lay in bed for a few weeks. I’m so sad. I miss all the hippisticks already!”

  Nurse Bobbit sparked indignantly, spun and whisked away.

  “Help me!” Thorn heard in his head, from radio waves. “It’s Nuremburg and I’m in the villas. I’m in the room closest to the elevator. I’m trapped in this room. The doors won’t open. Come and get me outta here! Take the steps forty-two flights up and then take the elevator the rest of the way to the very top. I hope it still works in the top half. I hope you can hear me. I hope you’re not dead. I don’t know who else to radio. I’m trying different frequencies and hope I find one that gets through into your head. But it isn’t like I have toooo much else to do right now. Hello? Hello uncle clone?”

  “What’s with you? You hearing things?”

  He turned to Lady Hatchet. “Nuremburg needs my help. He’s alive! He wasn’t with the hippisticks at all, I know it now for sure! He somehow just radioed to me. Does he have radio in him, too?”

  Lady Hatchet shook her head. “No. He probably just has a pen he’s talking into.”

  “Oh. Sure.” Thorn went to the door again. “The water is almost gone. I can walk through this safe enough, now. I’m going to go get him after I take care of you. Are you sure you don’t want a clinic?”

  She shook her head again. “I’m just bruised. I just need a bed.”

  “I’ll find you one and then I’m going to see if I can find him.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He says he’s in the villas. I’m finally going to the villas.”

  “Take me there. Let me rest, up there.”

  “No. I think it’s going to be a long climb up an elevator shaft.”

  After removing a pile a tree branches, Thorn was able to open the door and free Nuremburg from a large room littered with scattered furniture.

  “I’m so very very glad you heard my distress call,” Nuremburg said.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Not toooo much.” He rubbed scratches on his own arms.

  Thorn looked around. “If it wasn’t for the tree branches broken up all over the place, the villas have held up just fine, it looks. I hope you didn’t get hit by any tables or chairs.”

  Nuremburg pointed. “I hid in the closet.”

  “I’m glad you did. It means you’re alive now whereas the hippisticks are all dead.”

  Nuremburg looked dazed. “But… but they did this.”

  Thorn wiped a tear from his eye. “They goofed. Eleven Jane is gone. Dead. They only messed up their own world down there. She’s dead. They’re all dead. Dead! My heart hurts!”

  “You’re having a heart attack?”

  “In a way. In a way that the clinic can’t help me. You don’t understand right now, you’re too young, but Eleven Jane lived in my head and my heart all the time. She was very special to me. I am sad that they’re all dead but it’s hard to think about a whole crowd all at once. It’s easier to just think about one person, in a special way. I thought about her all the time in one way or another. I’m not sure she thought about me too much, though. I don’t think she liked me the same way, as much.”

  “Then I don’t get it.”

  “When you grow up a few more years you will.” Thorn sadly shook his head. “Then you’ll find that you think with your body way too much. When you get older you get very stupid all the time because your body is doing too much thinking for you. At your age, now, you’re the smartest you’ll ever be. Your mind is clear and removed enough from your body.”

  Nuremburg made a sour face. “Then I don’t want to get older. I don’t want to get dumb.”

  “Nobody does. But we do, if we don’t die. And be glad for stupid adults with bossy bodies or else you’d have never been born. They wouldn’t have bothered to procreate if it wasn’t mixed up with huge feelings. You’re glad you were born, aren’t you? You do know how mammals have babies, if they didn’t clone them?”

  “I think so. I saw some movies at the library but they looked dumb. Why would people do something so stupid with each other, and for so long, the movie must have been ten minutes long!”

  “In a few years that’ll look like the most important thing to you and the minutes will fly by. And that’s why I thought about Eleven Jane more than I should have, to be sane. But adults are rarely sane. So now I feel very sad, even though I’m very glad to see that you’re okay and Lady Hatchet is okay.” He looked around. “I bet we can all live up here from now on. We can leave the union city for good. It’s all smashed up down there. Smashed up bad. These villas will be perfect for us from now on. I hope there’s some cafeterias up here. I suppose there has to be. The robber scientists had to eat, too.”

  “No. There are kitchens up here.”

  Thorn asked, “Kitchens. What’s that? Do they have vending machines?”

  Nuremburg shrugged. “They’re just really small cafeterias, I guess. Of course they have vending machines. How else would you eat?”

  “There won’t be too many of us. That’s good that we leave cafeterias behind, then.”

  “But I don’t want to stay here in the villas for too long.”

  “Why not.”

  “I don’t want my dad to come back and find me and hit me again. I’m afraid he’ll knock out my teeth again. That really hurts!”

  “Your dad is dead. I’m pretty sure that was him. He looked like me, and I think I can say he was crazy.”

  Nuremburg stood a minute in silence, and then whispered to himself. “He’s dead.”

  “Unless it was another clone of us. How many were out running around? Do you know?”

  “I only ever saw two. You and him.”

  “Then I’m pretty sure it’s your dad who’s dead.”

  Nuremburg tensely smiled. Then he gave out a nervous laugh. “If he’s dead then I don’t have to hide from him anymore. I can stay up here and live without being afraid of him anymore. I can be happy, now, right? But I feel so bad that I don’t feel bad. Aren’t you supposed to feel something when your dad dies? Aren’t you supposed to feel bad?”

  “Wait a minute. It just struck me. He can’t be your dad. He’s too young to be your dad. I could swear he looked more like my age and I’m twenty.”

  “I don’t know. I never thought about that. I didn’t know I was supposed to. How old is a dad supposed to be?”

  “I have a gut feeling that he killed your dad when you were younger, and so you didn’t know. He wanted all his clones dead.”

  Nuremburg started to weep. “There was a few years when I didn’t see him at all, maybe five years, and maybe he was younger when I saw him again, I’m not sure. He came back crazy, and you don’t look at people too close when they’re hitting you. So I’m not sure.”

  “I’m sure of it. I killed the man who killed your dad. That’s it!”

  Nuremburg wiped his tears. “You killed him?”

  Thorn nodded. “That’s what I’ve decided. I killed the man who killed your dad. Then I won’t feel bad about it, either. And it’s probably completely true. It would almost be impossible for a man that young to be your dad.”

  Nuremburg started to weep again. “How can we ever be sure? I want to know if I’ll be okay!”

  “You’ll be okay no matter what, from now on. You’re safe from anybody hitting you.”

  “How can I? You don’t know that.”

  “I’ll take care of you! I’ll make sure of it. It’s a promise! But you’ll have to let me know where you are some of the time. You’ll have to let me be able to always reach you. That way I can stop anybody from hurting you ever again.”

  “Okay.” They stood a few moments looking at each other and then they hugged.

  * *

  In the r
ed lit Metroplex cave, Thorn wheeled Lady Hatchet along the wet shore. Nuremburg tagged behind. A day had passed and water was still gurgling back to its basin. The tall statue of a union worker, The Colossus of Gaol, was now laying face down on the hippistick side of the lake, his head in the side cave that once held their tents. The city on the other side of it was now in a dim shadow—it was no longer glowing. The buildings that fared the best were the ones attached to both cave floor and ceiling but they appeared completely gutted. Water still trickled from their popped out windows and barren balconies.

  Lady Hatchet shook her head in amazement, holding an umbrella. “Damn! I never thought I’d ever live through something so terrible. Damn this is a mess. I can’t believe I’ve lived to see the day to see something like this.”

  Thorn said. “Yeah? It all looks so different now.”

  She pointed. “Don’t you see what it was now? Look what’s all missing. The most fanciful part of it, that whole part across the top was just a hologram. They made the view of the city mostly a hologram to make it look better than it was.”

  Thorn said, “I thought maybe that all washed away.”

  “That happened, plenty, too. But still, our city was as all po-hunk as anything when you pulled the plug on it. It was an illusion. The hippisticks were right about that, about it being fake, even though they never quite put their finger on why.”

  “Eleven Jane,” Thorn murmured.

  She added, “Now it’s just an unplugged dripping trash heap.”

  Thorn looked at the long twisted sections of other buildings on their sides, on each other and in the streets. Then the frame of a couch fell from where it had lodged somewhere in the ceiling and it splashed down in the lake. It floated a moment and then it sank.

  “It’s gone. It’s all gone,” Lady Hatchet said. “I can’t believe it. It’s just a damn empty hole. My apartment! I won’t believe it! Look at that!” she pointed here and there. “I’m just going to close my eyes and refuse to believe it!” She squeezed her eyes closed. “There. Now when I open my eyes it’s all going to be pretty again and the damn hippisticks will be harmlessly swimming in harm’s way of a flabby glob monster and Venus will be twisting at one of her damn buttons. I’m going to wish upon a star full of unicorns! I want everything nice again! I want it so I should have it! I want it damn bad!” She put her arms out. “Come here, unicorns and make everything nice again!”

  Thorn said, “So no matter how scientific we may claim to be, we all have wishful thinking? I know I do.”

  She opened her eyes and glared at him. “Don’t get smart with me clone. Have you ever heard the story of the blind man who bought a house on Mars?”

  “No. Why.”

  She waved him off. “It’s damn stupid.”

  “Then I’m sure you’ll tell it.”

  “A blind man spent all his money on a house on Mars with thirty acres behind it. Well, it turns out he was ripped off. There was just a deep horrible canyon behind his house, but he didn’t know that, and he truly believed he had thirty acres behind his house. One day he goes for a blind walk, being a blind man. Well, you can guess what happened. Aaaaaah! His belief didn’t mean a damn thing!”

  “Wishful thinking can’t move mountains?”

  “Better yet,” Lady Hatchet said. “Rockets and a lot of battery power can make a damn asteroid appear almost as much. Damn!”

  “Flipped like a funhouse tunnel,” Nuremburg said.

  Lady Hatchet asked him, “You once went on one of those?”

  He nodded. “It was one of the robber scientists safaris. It was a whole carnival. And there were pool tables and mechanical pin ball machines that used a real ball. I suppose that’s all gone now. It had run out of air but I suppose there’s no fixing that ever again.”

  Thorn shook his head. “I bet not. Not now.”

  Lady Hatchet said to Nuremburg, “I am probably the only woman left alive. You can call me granny, then. I’m far too old for you to call Mom, or Auntie Fun. I am the universal mother, now, I suppose.”

  Thorn questioned her, “Universal mother. Are you sure all that?”

  She nodded. “It’s nice that the last woman in the world isn’t some queen or princess but a woman who had to work for a living and had foolish dreams. That’s certainly more realistic. And every boy needs a maternal figure around, to help him grow up, for one reason or another.”

  Thorn looked around and took in the view of all the debris. “There’s others around, still, I’m sure.”

  Lady Hatchet waved off the ruins of the city. “I feel so alone.”

  Nuremburg pulled a pen out of the mud. “I really don’t think I need anybody toooo much. I haven’t yet.”

  She replied, “Having adults around will help you not waste your youth. Once it’s gone it’s really gone it seems. Gone for good.”

  “I’ll just call you Lady Hatchet if you don’t mind. That’s what I’ve always known you as.”

  There was a loud gurgling in the center of the lake. Gray muddy foam blew up from a great pressure of gasses and then coffins starting floating up out of the hissing fountain. “What’s that?” Thorn wondered aloud. “Oh no!”

  “It’s them! The damn hippisticks!” Lady Hatchet put her hands over her face. “Oh damn!”

  Thorn ran to the lake, dove into the water, and swam to one. He ripped opened a box and water washed in. A child floated out, blue and dead. He hurried to another coffin and pulled out a blue dead woman, the top of her head completely smashed in from some terrible violent force. He swam to another and pulled out a dead man. Thorn started to cry and let himself sink deep into the depths amongst all the flotsam. A few broken coffins floated around him, rising and falling with the current. He sat on the bottom and studied the grotesque ballet, waiting for Eleven Jane to float by. He wanted to see her one more time. He wanted to hold her in his arms and pretend it was a romantic pre-Raphaelite funeral. He heard Wagner in his head, and Shakespeare, and even though he was underwater in an asteroid he badly wanted rain and thunder. When she didn’t appear, and his lungs started to hurt badly, he went back to shore.

  * *

  Inside the watchtower overlooking the asteroid’s broken runway and hangers, Thorn sat at the window and looked out at the dark large passenger rocket. It sat at an angle in a pile of rubble. It landed as well as the autopilot was able to manage. All the life aboard was dead. The six hundred replacement workers had succumbed to the latent pathogenic plant life that spontaneously sprang from within them when they were far from Earth. The invasive plants had all starved and died long before arriving at the asteroid belt. The plague had come full circle.

  Thorn watched video of the inside of the spaceship first becoming a sick bay and then a mummy filled greenhouse and then a dense dusty lattice of dead fungus. Thorn turned to the library monitor to replay the other disaster—the one that had occurred inside the asteroid. The first recording was a long angle of the beautiful cluster of glowing Metroplex buildings slowly tipping on their sides. Water splashed out of its basin, the waterfall slid off its shelf, and the buildings were pummeled. Water ran through windows like sieves. Some buildings cracked entirely loose from their basements and folded or rolled. The hologram half of the city switched off.

  “It doesn’t look real,” Thorn said to it, “I can’t believe my eyes.”

  Soon everything along the bottom wall was flooded and submerged. Turbulent dirty foam shot up as the city, below the surface, exhaled its air and gulped in the water. A few more buildings snapped loose and bobbed up high out of the noisy flood with terrific force before falling to their sides and taking on water, slowing sinking like massive torpedoed boats.

  “Give me an inside angle,” he asked the library.

  The page flipped to the inside eye and he saw the union hall steeple plowing up through the floor of the cafeteria gallery and puncturing the ceiling of glass pyramids, immediately followed by a cannon blast of water shooting wall to wall full of humanity’s varied
junk.

  “Give me footage of Eleven Jane. I want to see her swimming. No don’t show me him, I want to see her. I want to see all angles of her at the lake. Just her. Yes, that angle is nice. Slow that down.” Thorn watched her slowly walk into the lake, naked. His heart raced, and ached.

  Christopher Goi walked into the room with Nuremburg and they sat next to him. Thorn turned off the monitor. Nuremburg said, “Hi Dad. Her again? I just wanted to report that some real trees in the Metroplex park have been saved. That’ll help a little since the big plague on Earth killed all their trees. Right?”

  “That’s what it looks like,” Thorn said. “All we saw of Earth news was dead trees. I wish we’d get more news. It’s been so long since anything new came from there.”

  Christopher Goi shrugged. “By now it looks like everything on Earth ended up rotting away into dust. Nothing on Earth had seen anything like this plague and nothing had any immunity to it in the least. Contagious scientists going back and forth could have brought it to them many years ago. Who knows how long it incubated there before taking over.”

  Thorn was shocked. “What? That bad? Didn’t any of the people ever figure out a cure?”

  Christopher Goi said, “I don’t know for sure. Nothing seems to be moving on Earth. Nothing else is in transit towards us. My calls are not answered from Earth at all. Nowhere. It’s all silent and dark. Not even a robot is responding.”

  “Even the robots are silent?” Thorn said, feeling his stomach sicken at the idea of a ruined barren planet Earth.

  Christopher Goi sadly shook his head. “I just wonder why nothing on Earth at all answers me, not even the machines. The last message that seemed to come from Earth was from a computer that said, ‘We are digesting’…but I have to disregard that. It’s probably our own computers bouncing back to us, maybe. I don’t know. Maybe it’s what’s left of our robber scientists zapping around in there, still screaming mad, somehow jamming our Earth signals. I hope that’s all it is. I hope. Oh god.”