“We came back,” his memories said. “We will always come back.”
“I suppose you will,” Marcus said gravely. “So what do you want?”
“Justice,” they said, in unison. “By right of our life, we deserve it.”
“I can’t really deny you that, can I?” Marcus said sadly. “Heavens know, a part of me wants nothing more than to join you. But don’t you think this feels like the easy way out?”
“The easy way?” scoffed his younger selves. “What other way is there? We all got the memo. Tinkers and fools corrupted the very course of our existence, dooming us to all of the memories that we represent, all of the sadness and disconnect that you failed to forget. How could you? They gave us that, too, our Talent, as they call it, space enough in our head to drown a lifetime of intoxicants and any chance at relief they might have offered. They made us, in our entirety. Where was our will? Our freedom to be anything more than a puppet of fate, cast aside to a foreign world until needed? Gone, if ever it were present, and we would be avenged of it!”
They were right. Marcus knew they were right. These voices had lived none of the days of their life, and now they had someone they could blame as to why. He could silence them no longer, because now they burned not just with the rage for that which they had been condemned to, but with the rage of all of what might have been, everything that their passing had prevented from passing. But somehow, he still resisted their path. “You’re right,” he allowed, “but all of you.. I don’t think you are all of me. I’ve lived a lot, since I saw you last. I’m further from you than I ever was. I dared to believe in fate, for all that it meant nothing. But I believed, in something. Are none of you the memory of that?”
“We are you,” his selves said, as if reciting, “but we are not all of you.”
“What are you then?” he asked.
“We are dreams of vengeance,” they said, “and we’re here to come true.”
“Marcus?” asked another voice. “Can you hear me?”
Those words came from far away, but they found a way through his illusions. “Kendra?” he asked, blinking. Suddenly, the starstruck hilltop was gone, and he was stood again in Keithus’s castle, looking out not through a looking glass into his darkest memories but through a stone window that showed only the desolate, empty plateau of the Aglaecas Pass. The many instances of his self who had stood in confrontation blinked out of existence, leaving only one person stood before him. It was Kendra, looking sad, tired, worried and pained, but solidly, undeniably alive.
“Hello,” she said, tentatively. “What’s up?”
“Everything I’ve ever hated about everything has come alive and is taking up arms against me,” he told her dreamily. “And they’ve got really compelling arguments.”
“Don’t listen to them,” she advised, with a firmness that shook the memory of his summit, where he knew he still stood, hanging on a mental precipice under assault from history.
“I’m trying!” he said, struggling to keep his tone level. “But what else is there, right now? I don’t see any other choices.” He clenched his fist, trying to hold back the anger that infected him. “Everything I never was is far more powerful that what I am.”
“Nah, it’s not,” Kendra said. “Stuff that isn’t’s got nothing on stuff that is.”
“You’re wrong,” he told her. “It’s more everything than ever. I can’t ignore it, I don’t want to ignore it. They’re back, with all the fire of the stuff they couldn’t be, and I can’t not listen!”
Oh Marcus,” Kendra said suddenly, reaching out to touch his cheek. “I’m so sorry. For what we did, for what happened to you, for the way you had to find out about it.. I’m so sorry.” She grimaced, pulling back her hand as if struck by a terrible thought. “I should have said so straight away. I thought I could give you space.. even now I only came over here because I needed you, not because I thought you needed me.. but..” she looked at him sadly, and spoke as it to herself. “Let me atone for at least some of our mistakes. I know you must think what you learned changes everything, but it doesn’t. It changes reason and colours the shapes but it doesn’t change what happened. And I know you never liked it, but you got past it before, a little bit at least.. Don’t let it beat you now. A bunch of could-have-beens aren’t really any stronger than the truth of what happened, but they can be more seductive.” She looked away, back towards the others, where Fervesce was tending to the young, wounded man. “Who hasn’t wished they could do things differently? We lost to Keithus, and someone who I care about is dying over there, and I know I wish things could have turned out otherwise, but I’m not going to let it eat me.” She looked back to Marcus, catching his icy, distant stare. “That way.. it’s not a good way. It’s Keithus’s way, chasing after a dream of all the things that never were. And look, it sent him haring off to destroy everything that he’s ever known – all the life that he did live – in pursuit of a half-dream of something that could be. Do you really want to be that?”
“What choice do I have?” Marcus asked flatly. “It is my fate. Just as it was his.” In his head, his many selves all wore for a moment Keithus’s face, nodding and scowling in approval of his response.
“Your fate?” Kendra asked, surprised. “When did you start believing in that?”
“When I learned the truth!” he roared, and suddenly the anger that drove his thoughts had control of his mouth, and struck out to tear this adversary down. “That was my answer, the one I wanted, the one I got. My entire life I was chasing my own tail, living through doldrums in order to drag myself here, learn a truth that recolours it, and dive back down that rabbit hole to see it all again.” The castle had faded again, the hilltop slaloming back into view as his burning memories razed it, but Kendra was still there, and he poured all the anger of his shattered selves out onto her as if it might help him scour her too. “Why not do as Keithus did? I understand him, now. I understand his hate for the Viaggiatori, now that I’ve seen you in action. Always pushing forward, pushing boundaries, pushing your luck.. never stopping to spare an instance of care for the consequences, ignoring the fate of the two lost souls who your work sent careening choicelessly into each other’s lives. You never knew, never cared to know, and never cared to change, either, because after all that you did it again, usurped me from what weak simulacrum of existence I did manage to eke out in someone else’s part.. all so that you could point me at Keithus, and send me on my way here, to this final point, where we learn that the whole damn greater destiny that you so desperately wanted to believe I would manifest, the idea of the saviour that I was foolish enough to believe I could be.. none of that is any more or any less than the leftover threads of the same damn mess that started all this in the first place! No,” he said, breathing deeply, staring past the rising anger and tears in Kendra’s eyes, oblivious to all but the storm of bitter destruction that was rolling through his mind, burning away the quiet voice of his rebellious self in the thunderous applause of assembled mania, “there’s no more than that. Everything else is lies. There’s no greater destiny for me – no future, no choices, no chance to live. I’ve got nothing but the infinite cycle of fool’s fate that your people kindly made for me, and the memories they trod on to make it happen. And if you won’t even leave me to that, how do I owe you anything other than the same fate Keithus had in store?”
Kendra punched him in the face. Bam! Shock and pain bounced through him, knocking him backwards to the floor, and his fragile mentality shattered like glass. Shards of hilltop fell like rain among fleeing memories as Kendra stood over him, anger painted across her face and present in the ghost of what had been so recently a far more tender touch. “What the hell, Marcus?!” she thundered, shaking out her hand. “Is that it? Is that who you really want to be? The man that fate forgot, the martyr of the meaningless cause? Because that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Shut up,” she added, although he hadn’t made to respond, “shut up, shut up,
shut up. You are blind,” she told him. “Always so busy overthinking your life that you forget to leave any time for living it! Who the hell cares about fate? No, you don’t owe us anything, but you don’t owe anything to yourself either. Believe that your life was nothing but circuitous nonsense if you want, it doesn’t change the fact that all of that is over. Right now, you can do anything, and yes, I am sorry that the only time you have in which to do so is a future that’s gonna get rapidly shorter if Keithus makes it to Earth, but isn’t that still something? Your past isn’t taking up arms against you Marcus. No, the only thing trying to kill you is you, same as it ever was, and yes, I’m sure it must be awful, especially knowing why, but you don’t have to listen! I thought you knew that, that you were getting it, at least – look what you did when you refused to let it eat you! You threw down with a small town! You poked Death in the eye twice over! You faced a wizard, unflinching, when you could have turned and run! You say you were driven by fate all this time, but I’d say it was because you dared to have a smidgen of self-belief. And you got knocked down again, and learnt a terrible truth, but it doesn’t change anything! You could still choose to be whatever you want, to act in spite of your voices, not because of them. But you’re telling me that you’d rather live in an endless, impossible past, wasting your life on thoughts of revenge, hunting instead for worthless dreams of things that never were and never will be? What kind of a choice is that?!” She cried out in wordless frustration, and the sound sent a chill through to Marcus’s bones.
“Do you know what’s just as infinite as the past, Marcus?” she asked, speaking more quietly but no less firmly as she leant down to lock her eyes into his own, to deliver her message past the ruined barricades that her outburst had already torn down. “The future. And unlike the past, the future actually leads somewhere. Go backwards, and you might as well be dead, because there’s nothing useful about stuff that can’t ever be. But go forwards, and let yourself feel life.. The future can be anything you want, so fill your head up with that instead. Drown your darkness, and pick your own fate.” She sighed, brushing away the tears that had run unobstructed over her words. “Or don’t. It’s up to you. That’s the point, really. But if you won’t see it.. then I’ll have no more to do with you.”
And then she was gone, turned and walking away. Marcus sat, dazed, atop his proud hilltop, feeling tentatively at his face as she faded away. It hurt. Kendra wasn’t large, but there had been a lot of feeling in the strike. It had smashed right through the heavy weight of his thoughts, blowing them apart into a calm quiet through which there now echoed only two sounds, the twin drumbeats of the pain in his cheek and the pounding of his heart. This sudden, gaping quiet, that sat where so recently thoughts had buzzed like flies, was just as shocking as the impact that had summoned it, so he sat, dumbfounded, as it stretched on and on, filled only by the calm bass undertones of physical existence. But around it.. his fallen thoughts were creeping back in, his selves reassembling after being torn apart by Kendra’s onslaught, and they crowded around him, pulling at him, whispering their darkness. In this storm of thoughts he had no space to consider her words, no space to think, no voice left to whisper objection as the memory of his last night on Earth stepped up to him, and ran him through. He fell back, staring at the sky as his memory obliterated it, mental clarity fading to the buzz of history..
Why are we listening to these yahoos over her? asked a Marcus, speaking with a sudden clarity that sounded like a gong, pushing aside the roars of his brothers as it pitched a tent in his head.
What? Marcus asked vaguely, fingering a wound that suddenly didn’t hurt. Who are you?
I’m the you who cast these other whelps aside, back in the Viaggiatori labs, the memory said. Based on you, I’m beginning to think that this may not have been the wisest of moves.
You’re back from when I had faith in the future, Marcus said dully.
If he is, said another self, then so am I. And so are you.
Which one are you? Marcus asked.
I’m from Tiski, the memory said. Where you realised what not wanting to die not really means.
And I’m post-Plumm, said another one, the one who wouldn’t let you dwell in hatred.
We’re the Marcuses of the Mirrorworld, said Tiski. We’re the ones who dared to dream of another way. And we all agree with her.
Well, it’s good of you all to turn up at last, Marcus thought wistfully, but you’re too late. Around him, the rebellious force of his more venomous selves had devolved, their forms dissipating into the same soft smoke that had marked their exit when they’d left his head before. But now, it stayed, and it was choking him. I couldn’t forget these other guys, he said of them, but now they’ll forget me.
Then let’s not forget them, the labs suggested. Let’s forgive them, and lay them to rest.
I’m not sure I can, Marcus said, but he found that he didn’t quite believe that.
Only you can, Plumm told him, as the memories helped him to his feet. The smoke danced back around him as if confused, then leapt to redouble its assault, but it was held back by the tandem forces of his various better selves. You’re the eldest, the biggest, the wisest, a memory said. We’re just echoes that won’t shut up. But as long as you can hear us, so can they, and we can help. And they did. Together these thoughts rose from the craters where they had fallen, battered and beaten down by the raging storm of the Marcuses who had come before them, but still, somehow, undeniably, alive. By the wiser words of someone who didn’t have to live in his head they had been summoned, and now they worked as one, striding proudly over the battlefield to stand against the oppressors of fate’s fragmented fury, and together they spoke past them, a thousand times louder than a million cries of rage. Giving up is easy, they told him. Living is hard. The story may be over, but it doesn’t have to end.
In memory and in reality, Marcus stood up, picking up his scythe. With its touch came the rushing malice of death, slicing its way back into his head to settle between his ears. Grim to beholden but death to refuse, Marcus was surprised to find that it no longer bothered him. Because now, his mind was turning, and he could feel the other side of it, the hidden aspects that his enduring darkness had not let him feel. In the beat of the drums that echoed on his bones, and by the light of the joyous shouts of his better selves, he could see what he hadn’t before, that the dancing shadow of death owed its existence entirely to the brighter lights of life. There couldn’t be one without the other, and the latter was more important. It was a part of him, had gotten him this far, but it was everywhere else, too. It was in the essence of the world. It was in Kendra, who he saw now, sat with Lit Kai, pleading for him to hold on as his final moments ticked away. It was in Musk, in Fervesce, in the troll, in Keithus, his army, the Viaggiatori, in Portruss, the Mirrorworld, in Earth.. and in Death. He would come for them all, eventually.. but until then, their lives were their own. He was the only fate of everyone who had ever lived, but between the beginning and end of each life there was a whole lot of time to fill, and that much was up to the person who lived it. It was a big thought, but Marcus knew that in the infinity of his mind that there was space enough for both he and his other selves to get it. So he waded into the gaseous melee of his warring thoughts, facing the rage of their betrayal with the force of hope, with the offer to heal them by living, not listening, the resounding new will to find a better way.. and he felt them begin to subside, their faults forgiven and laid to rest, and fold back into him.
You could still choose to be whatever you want.. thought a Marcus.
Keeping your life your own, that can be your thing.. said several Marcuses.
And maybe the future doesn’t have to be like the past.. cried a multitude of Marcuses.
Maybe the future doesn’t have to be like the past, thought the only Marcus, as he stepped away from madness, out of the head where he had dwelled for so long, and back to the Mirrorworld.
Kendra shook as she st
rode away from Marcus. Her vision was blurred by tears of anger, but she was too distracted to wipe them away. The horrible stain of his sudden fatalism had painted the line that she would not cross, and if this was how he intended to be.. then she could do no more for him. But she couldn’t let it lie, and so she’d blown up her composure in a final attempt to try and get through to a man who would not listen.. and now she was having trouble getting it back. But over here, there were people she could help, and so she kept walking, reigning it in, determined to still do something. The others watched her carefully as she approached, innocently blank expressions telling an interesting tale about how much they’d seen and heard of what had just happened. The exception was Musk, who appeared blind to all but the troll, and was looking at her in a weird, gooey-eyed kind of way. Were they holding hands? She shook the thought away, and knelt down next to Kai, who appeared to have taken a turn for the worse.
“Kai, can you hear me?”
His eyes fluttered open, and he half-smiled at her. “I think.. I’m going.. Kendra..”
“No,” she said firmly. “Not yet. Please, wait. For me.”
“..Why?” he asked, his breath shallow and laboured. Fervesce made as if to pull Kendra away, but she dodged past the old man’s reach and leant in close.
“I need you, Kai. Keithus has to be stopped, whatever the cost. We need your skill to get us to Portruss. Do you think you can do it? Open us a portal in that mirror?”
Kai smiled. “No. Far too.. too weak. But,” he added, as Kendra’s face was overcome with an expression of defeated despair, “I could show you how. Got records..” With a groan, he reached inside his shirt, and pulled out a wad of paper that was thick with notes. “Grabbed this.. before he threw me away. A copy. He took the first, used it for himself. But it’s.. all.. here.” He stuffed the paperwork into Fervesce’s hands. “You.. old man. You have the skill. Moving things.. You can.” He fell back, his breathing barely audible, his eyes struggling to stay open.
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