–
I was what I am inside, but unleashed. Power. Crackling, enormous consciousness. I could feel it, innately, like the way you know where your hands are without having to look or feel for them. There was nothing different about me, only it felt like I had woken from a twenty-five-year dream.
And I was plugged into everything.
–
The angles, edges and vertices of reality itself lay bare in front of them, as fast as the club had fallen away. A three hundred and sixty-degree diorama of dimensions showed itself to them, full up on colours and sounds. The extent of everything flooded his perception, and though he could take hold of nothing, as he pulled away from the electric blue hum of the dead planet, everything became crystal clear. It was a neon swirl of potential, and history, and sadness. Their words flowed out of them as if they’d always been there, already said and done, for years before them.
“So this is what you want me to do.”
“This is what we have to do.”
“Why?”
“It can’t carry on, Alex. Can’t you hear them down there? The ringing, wailing tragedy of them all? Everyone. Ever, living in agony, and for what? Your girlfriend’s lying dying in some club down there, right now. For what? They’re already dead, and this is all one big nightmare of pain and frustration. They don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve this.”
“You?”
“Us, Alex. Them. All of us.”
The funny thing was that, on some level, Alex really understood what he was getting at when he said this. There, inside his brain—or stretched out across the cosmos. Who could tell by this stage? As Chuck spoke to him, the other half of the same impulse, he could feel the life of every human on Earth—not just see them, but feel them—and it broke his heart.
The collective emotion of history pushed through him, a warm ghost. He knew all of it. Wars, from admirals to medics and politicians. Teenage love, cresting and thriving and swelling, becoming lifelong, driving, insane devotion. Religion, television, birthday cakes, colour wheels, and death. He felt everything inside of him.
It was exhilarating, and chilling, and oddly comfortable. The energy of every Anchor that had come before him—all of them, glowing points of light, reaching back out through time towards them, simultaneously occupying living points in the flat map of history.
And all he wanted was to end it all. Daedalus, that bastard, he was right about everything. The pain that arched out from all of it sliced through him—a high-definition experience in heartache. Concentrated. Tragic.
Only a monster could let this carry on.
Alex had to end it. He was going to end it.
He reached out, with nothing, with the kinetics and colour of his personality, and simply made it so. He didn’t flinch, in any ethereal or moral way. He began erasing them, simply because it needed to be done. He shook the soft static of a blanket strewn with life. It was easy, a will that he simply had to make law. He could feel the network before him thinning out as he vibrated through the cold process of ending it, node by node. He was methodical and just, and within moments, he’d torn through a fifth of the planet’s population. The silence they left behind was more wonderful than anything he had ever experienced.
–
I healed Julie. I know what you’re thinking, yaddayadda unfair preferences, but I couldn’t help it. Something primal and human in me looked into her life and I had no choice but to protect her. Not everybody had to go, just...just enough people. The same went for Clark, my mom. Cynthia. I knew my actions here would end the world they lived in, and them themselves, but I couldn’t let them go on suffering while they waited for it to happen. They deserved good lives, and I’d give that to them one last time.
–
Then he stopped. It all stopped. Everything around him ground silently to a halt, a pause in the crackling kinesis of his actions, barely started.
He could feel Daedalus become uneasy. Something stirred then they weren’t the only ones there with each other anymore.
“Frank?” He could feel him there, now. There was no sight, but he understood the feeling of this man, better than anything else in the world. He knew he was there. “Frank, I’m scared.”
“Alex, my boy, listen.” The old man’s voice echoed and bounced around them. “There’s no time to waste on explanations.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I have to make you understand what you’re doing, and the consequences, because you clearly don’t.”
“I don’t have time to get into ethics with you, Grandpa.” Grandpa? Did he...had he always known? This was the way his mouth formed around the shape of this man—his truest essence. Of course this was his grandfather. How could any of this have ever been any other way?
His grandfather’s formless voice snapped out loudly at him. “Then don’t get into it, Alex. We both know this isn’t you. A move this cold and judicial is not who you are. You are better than this.”
“And who the hell am I, Frank?” Alex snapped.“Some collection of impulses cruising through the cosmos, pretending to be alive with all the other screeching souls?” He screamed, there on the ethereal plane. “This is all a lie, and just keeping it going for the sake of it is immoral.”
“And yet, here you are, faced with a decision that ends in genocide. Plugged into the lives of millions of other people. You have more power than anyone ever, and your first move is to exterminate the whole world?”
“It’s an act of mercy.”
“It’s an act of cowardice! People need to persevere! It’s why they never died out to begin with—why you’re around to see this horrible moment in your own life. At this point in time and space, the needs of the many don’t outweigh those of the few. They are the needs of the few, Alex. Your humanity is all you have.
“Love has to be meted out with hatred. Peace with war. Reality wasn’t ready to end with the death of the day—and it isn’t ready for it now. The world needs an Anchor, and that brings with it a certain responsibility. Don’t betray everyone for this trash and his ideals.”
Alex had no body with which to sigh, but he felt himself doing it anyway. “I’m so tired.”
“I don’t care. You take responsibility for all of this, Alex. You’re the only one left who can. You have the power, but you have no right to make this decision for them. Fight this and just be the fucking hero you were meant to be.”
19. Campanile Runoff in the Friendly City
There was no shape to anything when Alex set loose an avalanche of feedback on the mind of Chuck Daedalus in his own head. What he did wasn’t an action so much as it was the energy of an action. The movement of it—he simply made the decision to save life, and it was so.
Chuck’s voice became buried in the piercing static of this tidal wave of creation. Alex could feel him there, struggling as if he had his arms wrapped around the man. Screaming into nothing, where his voice withered and died. He was locked into front row seats for his own failure. He wanted Alex to end it all. To finish everything, finally and forever. To make the world stop.
It was a fair request, but life wasn’t fair. Alex understood that. Daedalus would have to as well. Beneath them, the reality nexus swirled and pulsated, thrashing out red arms and traced full of blue veins, damaged and hanging loose from the life Alex van der Haar had snuffed out. A ball of information, it glowed in the dark, living its own final moments, but still weak and fading.
Alex looked at it, and could not help but think he’d failed everyone. A pause stretched out there, in the middle of the void, a pause full of the nothing and everything of infinite space. Years, long and pointed, hung violently in the air.
Daedalus hesitated then croaked. “Well?”
From the darkness, came a sound that was small, and almost indiscernible. A steady patter of high pitches, growing like a light from the end of a train tunnel. It swelled steadily, with crushing implications of size, now a noise that was laughter. It was one person—the s
ound of one child laughing, over and over again, feeding back and adding to itself, becoming loud. It delayed, peeling off and off again. It filled the space out around them from end to end, echoing off walls unseen. Louder still, the unstoppable weight of an explosion, a wall of sound... Laughter rang from the insides and the ceiling and every atom of every inch of the universe. It emanated from within Alex van der Haar, and blanketed reality in a sound so immense and full of joy it transcended hearing, to become a single, unifying, gigantic clamour.
It stopped, for one brief, glorious shining moment that split the darkness. That moment hung there, in the way of grand things. Immense things. Things that changed the world.
He had to save them all. He wouldn’t make it through this, but that didn’t matter anymore. He stopped, his entire person hanging on the next second. Then he forced out a sonic scream, one final push of energy out and through the universe, and a blast rushed outwards over the network. Over everything. Into the reaches of the cosmos, it dug into and through the smallest gaps in reality, as if searching.
It was frantic, unleashed and desperate, searching in the way water rushes into the gaps in a tidal pool. Searching, manic like a mother’s eyes search over the surface of a pool when she can’t find her baby. Searching, until it zeroed in on one life force, and simply stopped. Stopped on one unique personality—a light shining bright. A light burned fiercely into the fabric of the network, pulsating with power unlike anything ever. Connected, with power that left Alex vivified. It was old, and pervasive, long gone, too distilled and human to be erased from the face of the world. A power, not just over the world, but that actually fuelled life. It was woven into the thread of everything, older and more crucial than anything.
Set apart for greater achievements than anyone in history. And with its own ponytail that was, frankly, getting much too long.
Cynthia.
Alex whispered, from nowhere, to technically no one, in the most holy moment of his entire life, to a soul he knew would save the world. “You are?”
Cynthia, a girl who had never lived, whispered back to her dead brother. “I am. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. This was all set in motion...a long time ago. You couldn’t know what I knew and have beaten him.”
“I love you, Cynthia.”
“I know. I know...kind of everything, Alex. I don’t know how, but, my dreams...”
Alex smiled, within himself, and to the glowing white force that was his little sister, and said his final words before resetting the network. “Your dreams. My dreams. Truth be told, I’m just looking forward to a little more shuteye.” Then, with one final, flash, he set in motion to re-engage the personalities he’d severed. All the nodes on the web of life, as easily extinguished as they had been, burned again, instantly white hot.
From inside his mind, he watched as the spinning orb of light he’d called home was sucked away from him, rapidly retreating, and set back on its path, with millions of people now teeming across its face.
Alex van der Haar felt his consciousness drift off into the inky void. Chuck Daedalus thrashed violently against his will. It didn’t matter anymore. His protests gathered in the static storm of the moment, swept away by the event of life becoming life once again. And Alex, absorbed by the intricate beauty of the world he’d nearly destroyed, alive and sparkling in the retreating distance, stopped. Exhausted. He allowed himself a moment, blocking out the threats and noise and screaming inside his own head, and just breathed. He hung there, as Daedalus clamoured within him, and marvelled—truly marvelled—at what he saw, now a pinprick away from him, almost swallowed by black.
The space around him grew cold, as he slowly turned inwards and shut the outside off. Methodically, he began sorting through his own consciousness, split down the middle with that of the man he once called Daedalus. He was quiet. Searching, now, as Daedalus grew silent too.
“What are you looking for?”
“You know what I’m looking for, Chuck.”
“But...you can’t. You don’t have the right.”
“Chuck?”
“Yes?”
Alex paused, hovering now over the part of his own life he’d been looking for, the part mirrored by his own attacker’s anguished form, lodged deep inside of him—a final piece to the puzzle. An ability to blink things out of existence.
“Don’t talk to me about rights.”Then, which he activated the last part of this process, and ended. No fuss. All water under the bridge—just forgotten.
It didn’t matter, ultimately. Anchors died all the time. There had been so many before him. At that moment, the reality reflex was alive inside of someone new. Someone new.
A simple act. Not a thing out of place, just a focused, concentrated and good death. Alex van der Haar and Charles Daedalus disappeared forever while the world below them ticked on.
And a new Anchor was born into it.
Published internationally by Duncan Reyneke
© Duncan Reyneke 2016
Terms and Conditions:
The purchaser of this book is subject to the condition that he/she shall in no way resell it, nor any part of it, nor make copies of it to distribute freely.
All Persons Fictitious Disclaimer:
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and co-incidental.
Cover photography by Deon Pietersen, Photoelectric Productions
Nails in the Sky Page 24