The Sovereign Era (Book 2): Pilgrimage

by Selznick, Matthew Wayne

  Pilgrimage

  A Novel of the Sovereign Era

  by

  Matthew Wayne Selznick

  The Charters Duology, Volume Two

  Published by

  MWS MEDIA

  Long Beach, California, USA

  Pilgrimage—A Novel of the Sovereign Era

  Published by MWS Media

  First publication: June, 2013

  ISBN-10: 0976942496

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9769424-9-8

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 Matthew Wayne Selznick

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write the publisher at mwsmedia@gmail.com with the subject line "Attention: Permissions Coordinator."

  Cover Art and Design: Neal Von Flue

  Developmental Editor: J. C. Hutchins

  Copy Editor: Cameron Harris

  This ebook is unencumbered by digital rights management technology. Please remember that this ebook is intended for use by the legal owner. If you acquired this ebook without paying for it, please consider paying for it through an authorized retailer or through the author's web site: http://www.mattselznick.com. Visit this blog post for more on Matthew Wayne Selznick's position on unauthorized electronic file sharing: http://bit.ly/selznickonpiracy.

  Find a typo, continuity error, or other mistake?

  Please contact MWS Media at mwsmedia@gmail.com and let the publisher know about it! We'll confirm it and, if applicable, correct it as quickly as possible. Thanks!

  Dedication

  This is for Carmen, who makes it all happen.

  Acknowledgments

  This book may never have been written if not for the patient and persistent encouragement and enthusiasm of my community of readers and fans. Their evangelism and support continues to make a meaningful difference in my life and my art.

  The following folks were willing and able to materially support the creation of this book through their generous patronage:

  Chrispian H. Burks

  Timothy P. Callahan

  J.C. Hutchins

  Larry Latouf (xgdfalcon)

  James Melzer

  Jason Penney

  Cassandra Perryman

  Jason Rennie

  Carmen Whitmer

  Author’s Note

  This story is largely told through the written journal of Nathan Andrew Charters. I have taken some liberties with the source material in the service of clarity and consistency, but I’ve endeavored to maintain Nate’s voice wherever possible, as this is, after all, his story.

  The sections presented from the points of view of other characters are an extrapolation based on interviews, court documents and transcriptions, and the public record, and should be considered a storytelling construction.

  -- Matthew Wayne Selznick

  Sovereign Ability Classes

  (Adapted from a joint report of the Donner Institute for Sovereign Studies and the Office of Science and Technology Policy, November 14, 1985.)

  The variety of Sovereign metahuman abilities is apparently without limit. However, we recommend the adoption of classification of Sovereign abilities for the purposes of defining and quantifying the Sovereign phenomenon.

  Latent

  Individuals appear physiologically identical to baseline humans. While psychological or physical stress may cause some individuals to manifest abilities of a different, higher ability class, most live their lives without realizing their potential.

  There may be as many as 3,000 latent Sovereigns in the human population.

  Nominal

  Individuals possess minor psychic or physical abilities outside of the human baseline.

  Psychic abilities provide measurable, reproducible results more reliably than could be predicted by statistical chance. Physical abilities are expressed through one to three specific characteristics that fall outside the measured human baseline. Abilities are usually passive in nature and personal in range.

  Approximately 35% of all Sovereign belong to the Nominal ability class.

  Standard

  Individuals possess a “suite” of related psychic and/or physical abilities with a localized range. Physiological adaptations that support the ability suite may also be evident.

  Passive and active abilities are found, with range limited to the immediate vicinity and restricted to line-of-sight.

  Approximately 3% of Sovereign can be classed as Standard.

  Exceptional

  Exceptional-class Sovereigns also possess passive and active talent suites, but at a greater power level. Range is limited to a localized area around the individual, and targets (if any) must be in line-of-sight.

  About 1.5% of all Sovereign can be classified as Exceptional.

  Titan

  Similarly possessing a talent suite of related physical and psychic abilities with supporting physiological adaptations. Titan-class Sovereigns are vastly more powerful than Exceptional individuals. Range for active abilities is potentially regional and not necessarily limited to line-of-sight awareness.

  We estimate the existence of no more than two dozen Titan-class Sovereigns.

  Paramount

  The Paramount class is defined by Sovereigns whose psychic or physical abilities have little or no discernible thematic connection. Paramount class abilities are demonstrably unrestricted in terms of power level or range.

  Further, Paramount-class abilities appear to defy the laws of physics and our definition of reality as currently understood.

  At this time, one Paramount-class Sovereign has been identified: Doctor William Karl Donner.

  From The Journal Of Nate Charters – One

  About a year later, I was a celebrity.

  It was stupid.

  It was bad enough people would do a double take when they saw me in the grocery store, or passed me on the freeway. I was used to that. It’s how it’s been my whole life. When you look like me, it’s just what happens.

  A year after Declaration Day, I was lucky if I didn’t see myself as a badly airbrushed artist’s rendition on the cover of The Weekly World News in the checkout line.

  Me and Bat Boy, tabloid superstars. Except he’s not real.

  I don’t think.

  Hard to know for sure, these days.

  On Friday, April 11, 1986, a week before the first anniversary of Declaration Day, the lawyers decided it would be a good idea for me and my mother to be guests on The Azarrio Show.

  So there I was, Nathan Andrew Charters: household name, boy freak, full-on metahuman and fake Sovereign, roasting under the lights and sweating in a big sticky vinyl chair across the stage from the parents of my childhood rival, who were also trying to sue me and my mother into the poorhouse at best or help the feds throw us in jail at worst.

  It was stupid.

  My throat clenched as the host, Hank Azarrio, strode across the stage. “Okay, gang… we’re back from commercial in thirty seconds.” He oozed an oily, gunky stink of hairspray, sweat, makeup like swampy clay, and really terrible cologne. I was the only one in the room bothered by that, of course. Just one of my little gifts. “Everybody all set?”

  My mother’s “Yes�
� slipped out of pursed lips. She had righteous indignation to maintain.

  Marc Teslowski, doughy and pink, nodded his square head up and down and blinked his piggy eyes. His wife, Jeri, was either terrified or starstruck or maybe both. She smiled with her lips closed and bounced her clenched, knobby little fists in her lap.

  Our lawyers straightened their ties and stuck out their chins. The firm had sent Drake Ottman, a young dude with a soap-opera name, to sit in our corner. The name of Teslowski’s guy had slipped out of my head a second after I broke off our cold handshake.

  What did stick with me was how he’d tried to avoid my fingernails by curving his hand, even after I’d gone to the trouble of clipping and filing them down for the occasion. I scared some folks. This guy was part of that club.

  It bugged me, sometimes. Not so much, that day.

  The red light over the studio audience blinked. Azarrio ran his hand lightly across his salt-and-pepper-and-cement hair, licked his bushy gross mustache with a thick, pale tongue, and addressed the live camera.

  “We’re back on The Azarrio Show with four people at the center of a controversy directly connected to the story of the century: the remarkable phenomenon of the Sovereigns.”

  Azarrio indicated me with a wave of his hand that pushed his stench up my sinuses. I suppressed a gag. As much as I didn’t want to care, I tried to look cool when one of the cameras zoomed in on my face.

  “This young man, despite the fact that he probably needs no introduction, is Nathan Andrew Charters—your friends call you Nate, though, right?”

  All the makeup in the world couldn’t hide the acne-scar pockmarks cratering his cheeks. I wondered if that acne had made him a pariah when he was a kid the way my… nature… had made me. I felt the corners of my lips twitch up at the thought of a junior Azarrio having his backpack emptied into a trash can.

  “Nathan’s fine,” I said.

  Azarrio’s eyes narrowed slightly, but the grin beneath his bushy lip stayed steady.

  “Nate, here, is at the center of an ongoing legal battle that has captured the fascination of the entire world. How does it feel to get all that attention, Nate?”

  Asshole acted like I was six, not sixteen.

  Fine. I was getting really good with confrontation.

  Imagining my girlfriend, Lina, in the front row of the studio audience of housewives and unemployed middle-aged twits, I pushed down a little flurry of butterflies in my belly and kept my eyes on Azarrio and off the cameras.

  “Are you asking how it feels to know the same people who turned my dad into a crazy freak and then tried to kill him are trying to pin two murders on me and him and my mom?”

  Azarrio’s eyes glittered. It occurred to me that I was feeding him just what he wanted, but screw it. This whole thing was lame. In for a penny, or whatever.

  “I guess it’s gonna feel great, once those people end up in prison and PrenticeCambrian and the government cut us a big check and stuff.”

  Red light for me, green light for Azarrio. He addressed the camera.

  “Nate’s referring to allegations from PrenticeCambrian—which, by the way, the powers that be want me to mention, is the parent company of some of our affiliate-station sponsors—that his dad, the former scientist Andrew Charters, killed two PrenticeCambrian employees and that Nate himself assaulted a high-ranking executive of PrenticeCambrian subsidiary Tyndale Labs.”

  My mother’s scent drifted on the currents of the studio air-conditioning. It was barbed with tension.

  “Call them what they were.”

  She leaned forward in her chair. I imagined someone in the control room giving the word to put her on camera. “Assassins.”

  “Alleged assassins, as I’m sure PrenticeCambrian’s legal team would want us to note.” Azarrio wore a mask of concern and empathy that didn’t match his almost-predatory scent.

  I wondered if that was what this was for him—if he looked at his guests like prey to corner so he could extract reactions that would bring high ratings for his time slot.

  I hoped my mother kept it together, even if I felt my own irritation scratching like bugs multiplying under my skin.

  “Ask Marc Teslowski if there’s any question on that point.” She acted like he wasn’t eight feet away from her. Dude was suing us, too, after all. “It’s his son those assassins,” she hissed the word, drawing it out, “nearly gutted in my mother-in-law’s driveway.”

  I don’t think Azarrio liked my mother directing his show for him. Instead of turning his attention to Teslowski, he addressed the camera, smooth as sculpted shit.

  “Ms. Charters refers to young Byron Teslowski, the teenaged boy hospitalized after the incident at Kirby Lake left two dead under circumstances that are at the heart of the Charters’ legal battle with PrenticeCambrian, the government, and, in a related but separate case, the Teslowskis.”

  Now he faced Marc Teslowski, who held the arms of his chair in a white-knuckled grip. Teslowski didn’t look at me in the same way my mother didn’t look at him.

  So, I made sure to stare, hard, at him.

  “Marc and Jeri Teslowski,” Azarrio said, “you contend that your son Byron, who the Sovereign claim as one of their own under the controversial Sovereign Compromise, is being illegally held at the Donner Institute for Sovereign Studies near Missoula, Montana.”

  “That’s right.” Teslowski spoke through gritted teeth. “Everybody knows that.”

  “And you hold the Charters—including Nate’s father, Andrew Charters, a fugitive and suspect in the killings—responsible. How, exactly?”

  Teslowski turned to look at me at last. I let the shit-eating grin I’d been holding back push slowly at the corners of my mouth. I kept my eyes on his.

  “That punk helped my kid make a break for it—"

  Teslowski’s lawyer put his skittish hand on Teslowski’s shoulder. “We intend to show that Nathan Charters,” he made his voice project, “very likely with the cooperation of his father, and on behalf of the Sovereign, conspired to create an opportunity by which the Donner Institute for Sovereign Studies could apprehend Byron Teslowski.”

  Our boy Drake spoke up. He had a voice like that DJ on KLOS who plays whole albums on Sunday night: deep and slow. It didn’t fit his face. “As our suit brought against PrenticeCambrian and the United States will show, those accusations have no basis in fact.”

  I looked away from Teslowski to glance at the audience. They were getting into our little circus.

  Azarrio acknowledged both attorneys with a nod of his head and turned back to Teslowski. “Marc, you and Jeri also have a civil suit against the Donner Institute for Sovereign Studies to get your son back. Why isn’t this a case of criminal kidnapping?”

  Teslowski’s face darkened. “The goddamned Sovereign Compromise.” I imagined someone in the control room hitting the bleep button.

  Azarrio shook his head and looked as if he wanted to tut-tut into his microphone. His sympathy didn’t reach his eyes.

  “Mrs. Teslowski…Jeri…” She went as white as her husband was red. “How long has it been since you’ve seen your son?”

  She swallowed and looked at her hands. My smarmy grin felt a little tired. I didn’t have a problem with Byron’s mom. She still had to live with her husband.

  At least Byron got out.

  “It was…” She glanced past me, I guess to my mother. I didn’t see any blame in her face. Figured. The Teslowskis might be suing us, but it must be all Marc Teslowski’s idea.

  “It was May fourth, last year.”

  Azarrio seemed to actually soften for a second. “That’s a long time.”

  She nodded, birdlike.

  Azarrio turned to me. “What about you, Nate? Byron’s a friend of yours…the Donner Institute is assisting you and your mother in your legal battles…have you heard from Byron Teslowski? Maybe chat on the phone?”

  “Nope.”

  I think Azarrio expected me to say something else. When I just looked at
him, he ad-libbed, “Do you think he’s being held against his will?”

  My mother said, “You don’t have to answer that—Drake, should he answer—"

  “Knowing how things were,” I said quickly before Drake could speak up, “I bet Byron’s fine.”

  Marc Teslowski grunted. Azarrio met my eyes like we were partners in his little show.

  “Why do you say that?”

  Byron Teslowski had made my life hell for years. He somehow made it okay to pick on the weird kid with the odd bone structure and giant eyes when no one would even think of making fun of Tom Harper in his wheelchair or Keri What’s-her-name with one leg all bent and shorter than the other one.

  We hit high school, and he filled out, and girls liked him, and he kicked ass at every sport he tried. All along, he kept pushing at me, making sure everybody kept thinking I was the weird kid. He ended up with a whole little gang of jocks and cheerleaders in orbit around his smirking face. I could count my friends on one hand and not need my thumb.

  Declaration Day changed everything. I learned some things about Byron. About his dad.

  Which is why I helped Byron a year before, but not in the way the Teslowskis thought. It’s also why I answered Hank Azarrio the way I did.

  “Because his dad’s a prick.”

  A groan of disapproval flowed off the audience. Azarrio, his back to them and fully aware the live camera was on me for the moment, actually gave me a wink. He was quick about it, and made sure he closed his left eye—the one the Teslowskis couldn’t see.

  Asshole.

  He turned his back on me and faced the audience while a different camera put him in frame.

  “Strong words from a young man in the eye of the storm.” His tone hit perfect notes of concerned disapproval. “When we come back, we’ll hear what our audience thinks. After this.”

  The lights turned red. We had two minutes. Teslowski made the most of it. He flew out of his chair and loomed over me.

  “You little shit. Who do you think you are?”

  His belly strained beneath his button-down shirt. It was kind of a stupid move, really, putting his gut right in front of a guy whose fingernails can slice through aluminum cans and “still cut tomatoes like this,” as they say on the knife commercial.