by Lee Bond
Morgan was powerful and undoubtedly had friends –bastards just like him- who benefited from his side venture and like all bad men, they’d want to protect their own kind to the fullest. Any attack on Morgan the Dead, from any corner, would bring swift, thorough reprisals.
Naoko’s guide led her through rooms and halls that Morgan had only ever hinted at, tittering behind fat manicured hands about ‘sights that cannot be unseen’ and ‘delicious flesh on display’. As they made their way deeper into the house, Naoko began to fear for the worst.
To reveal all his foul perversions and dark tastes set the tone, so Naoko steeled herself for the worst sorts of behaviors; Morgan was perverse and mercurial, a terrible combination. There was every chance she might not leave Sa Morgan the Dead’s presence. The compulsion forcing her down this past suddenly seemed reckless. Worse, it seemed insane. Alas, there was nothing to do but continue.
At long last, they arrived at Morgan’s feet.
“Si Naoko Kamagana. Such a pleasure it is for my eyes to fall upon such a beauty as yours once again!” Morgan sniggered from his ornate throne. Draped casually across the massive chair, cradling a goblet of bright red wine in one hand and drawing idle puffs from a thin cigarette held loosely in the other, Morgan in his carmine robes was Sin personified.
“Sa Morgan.” Naoko bobbed her head. His mood was considerably light, all things considered. During their last encounter, he’d put on a show of the vilest imaginings man has ever put to flesh, for her ‘edification on the true nature of Man’. She’d lost her composure then, threatening public castigation and worse. He’d simply laughed and told her to leave, never to return.
It was evident curiosity had captured Morgan’s imagination, and this was something she could work with.
“You simply must tell me your secrets, dear.” Morgan took a polite sip from his goblet before flinging it to the floor. Bright red wine spilled out across the brilliant white carpet leading up to the throne. Naoko’s guide hurried to clean the mess, face slack. “Your skin is luscious as ever, as are your lips, and your eyes. Tell me how, please.”
“Innocence.” Naoko replied primly. It was the answer that Morgan had come to expect, and she never failed to give it to him.
Morgan howled with laughter, tears running from his eyes. “Ahh,” he replied with a waggling finger, “innocence is not welcome in this house, si, and my eyes have not set themselves upon it for many, many moons.”
“Clean living, then.” She proffered the answer disdainfully. Morgan knew Naoko loathed him on sight, and found his tastes in the idle pursuits reprehensible.
“That must be it.” Morgan snapped his fingers idly and the guide stopped trying to clean the mess.
The young man moved to stand beside the throne as quickly as he could without slipping in the wine. His hands were stained from the brilliant wine. There was barely a flinch when Morgan rested his now empty hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“I have not lived cleanly for a very long time, either.”
“As you say.” Naoko saw nothing wrong with men and … and men, but Morgan’s tastes ran younger and younger with each passing year. Even if … even if the man were to go beyond tolerable limits in front of her, she doubted she could do anything, and it was with a heavy heart she conceded Morgan’s power. She was pleased that he hadn’t, not yet. If Morgan did, she well feared she’d willingly sacrifice her own life to spare whatever remained of the young slave’s innocence. There were limits.
“So.” Morgan said shrewdly, eyes glittering like black diamonds. “If I recall correctly, the last time we met … six years ago I believe it was? You swore it was the last time we two would ever meet again and I encouraged you to see you hold to your promises. Sirius! Play!”
Naoko stepped back as a hologram burst into view between her and Morgan’s throne. There was no need to look at the recording. The memory of that day was still a palpable thing inside her. The little drama unfolded itself as it did every few months in her dreams; Morgan passing a line of insufferable crudity and cruelty, her powerless to stop the abuse of the young man, him laughing at her threats, her being dragged out ever so gently. She shuddered, held back her tears.
Morgan continued when the hologram faded from sight. “That was a very heady day for me, my love. I saw a side of you I didn’t think existed, a woman of fire and of steel. If you could have killed me with your bare hands to save that scrumptious man’s life, you would have. Eh? It’s true, I know it. Admit it.”
Naoko bobbed her head and said nothing. Morgan the Dead was crowing over his perceived moral victory and she’d not deflate the man’s ego. A sated Morgan was a compliant Morgan. He was no fool, sadly. He’d suspect her motives, and watch for pitfalls. “I did not, though.”
“And the stars themselves did shake with your rage.” Morgan tipped an invisible hat. “I see that you have yourself under more control these days. It does you good. Makes the skin look softer longer.”
“I would not know, sa.”
“Of course not. You are a child, come to play in the house of an adult.” Morgan slapped his slave on the head hard enough to send the boy to his knees with a whimper. Naoko did not move, though her cheeks went scarlet. “Ahhh,” he crooned musically, knowingly, “what you want must be more precious than life itself…”
It was, though Naoko didn’t know how to articulate it. Knowing Garth, to talk to him, was to feel a greatness waiting for freedom, and if he fought in the Game, that wonderful piece of him –hidden beneath layers of secrets and hostility- would be forever lost.
“I suppose.” Naoko said softly, a tiny quaver in her voice. She felt as though she’d betrayed an entire people, but there was no other answer to give; the inexplicable connection the two of them shared was both empowering and weakening. If Garth Nickels died in the ring … Naoko dared not confront the feeling of what would happen next.
“Well then, dear lady si, please, out with it so I can be quit of you.” Morgan caressed and cajoled his playmate back to a standing position. “What do you want? And,” he interrupted Naoko rudely, “more importantly, what can you give me in return?”
Naoko took a bold step forward. “The Offworlder.”
Morgan laughed. Such a weight of impact from those two spoken words. The Offworlder. His mind lit with a thousand possibilities. The entire system was abuzz with tales of The Man from Trinityspace. Trillions upon trillions of amateurish Gameheads clustered around dime-a-dozen netLINK systems and downloaded shoddy pixilated reproductions of Sa Antonio Yrtzog’s stunning defeat. Morgan had gone to great lengths and even greater expense to acquire legitimate spEye-copies of the competition, Yrtzog’s physical reports and the Game Examiner’s official test results on Nickels’ phenomenal body.
The Offworlder. The only man in history to defeat an augmented soldier. Easily. Effortlessly. Well, that wasn’t entirely true; he’d gotten his head kicked in quite soundly for a few moments before coming to his senses, but in time, the story would surpass the proof. Destroy Yrtzog the man had, and that was all that mattered. All that would ever matter.
The Offworlder. The single-handed destroyer of thousands of hours of computational effort. Decision Trees across the system, smashed into unusable chunks of data. Nothing like this had ever happened before and Morgan suspected his new Trees were imperfect.
“What about him?” Morgan drew a languid toke from his cigarette, absentmindedly ruffling the boy’s hair.
“I … I have heard a rumor.” Naoko confessed hesitantly. She was gambling on the fact that as a notorious hater of women Morgan lacked the skills necessary to plumb her true emotions. All she needed to do was stay in control and stick to the script.
“Rumors I have plenty of. Sirius! Rumors!” Morgan barked imperiously. Sirius, his current data slave, filled the air with a Babel of gossips culled from millions of sources. “Which one, dear girl? Which one? Who really blew up the spaceport? Who are Ashok Guillfoyle’s co-conspirators? Who is that slut Indra Sahar
i sleeping with now?”
“This is one you haven’t heard. You can’t have heard.”
Morgan snapped his fingers and the sounds stopped. “Ahh, I see…” he dribbled smoke out of his nose, amused to see Naoko squirm. “You lost your play toys in the holocaust … such a terrible waste.” He tsked maliciously. “The greatest of us all, brought low by one man’s treachery. How awful for you, to be stuck once more within the confines of your pathetic home system. So you come to me to verify this rumor because without the government netLINKs, you’d be caught. Admit it.”
“I do.” For this, there was no need to hide her emotions. The death of the port’s computer systems truly had spelled Lady Ha’s demise, because without the powerful connectivity that drove the spaceport, there was no secure way to access the secondary –and oft-unused- netLINK. Without that freedom, Naoko was restricted to all but the simplest of trickeries.
Tsking again, Morgan relented. Naoko Kamagana hated him with a passion only the truly innocent were capable of mustering. For her to come to his demesne with a rumor implied that the secret she sat upon was world-shaking in proportions. For her to admit that without her precious spaceport netLINKs she was nothing was almost as profound; Morgan had seen the true Naoko Kamagana that day six years ago. Even if she wouldn’t admit it, Morgan knew that the woman in front of him was dangerous, proud, and indomitable.
This was why he continued to suffer her presence. No matter how hard he tried, Naoko would never buckle to his overtures or surrender to his demands, not now. And as much as she loathed him, he admired the young woman’s tenacity. Why, in another ten years, she would be … glorious. He’d met men and women with immense power and they had all, in the end, bowed before him. But not Naoko Kamagana, she of fire and steel. In his more maudlin moments, Morgan believed he might love her, as foul as that thought was. “What is this ‘rumor’?”
“I have heard that Garth Nickels will be allowed to continue fighting in the Game.” Naoko announced clearly. “That he has, in fact, been given a special executive order directly from Chairwoman Doans. An order allowing him to fight the final champion in his weight division. An order that goes on to say that if he wins, he is in the Finals. I need to know the truth of it.”
Morgan flinched, loathing himself for it. As rumors went, that was a big one indeed. He snapped his fingers and Sirius immediately went to work, displaying his search on a one-sided holographic mirror. If what Naoko said were true, the affect such an order would have would be … incalculable. A few seconds later, Sirius’ efforts yielded fruit. Morgan grinned craftily. “And what would you pay for this little tidbit?”
“This.” Naoko pulled out a specially built Sheet and tossed it to the floor.
The slave launched himself forward, scooped up the Sheet and hustled it back to his master, eager to be worthy. Being worthwhile meant some alone time, that most precious of commodities.
Morgan took the Sheet out of the boy’s hands, slapping him down to his knees once again before slotting the Sheet into a receptacle on his throne. What happened next was akin to Morgan discovering innocence within.
Naoko’s Decision Tree bristled before him in three-dimensional glory. There was a main branch, as all such things possessed, tracing the beginning of each Game from start to finish. That was the only similarity between her efforts and all others.
Connections between contestants and viewers rippled off from the main trunk into a recursive, fractal pattern, tiny slivers so thin that they were visible only in the way they glinted. Arcing wherever he looked, databases of sociological sets, psychological profile structures of demographic groups, indices of criminal activity, herding patterns of stereotypes, and documentation of percentages of drug use per neighborhood meshed together perfectly… the tree bristled with information. It went on to include a dizzying array of school reports, average grade per student per classroom per school and so on and so on … Buried beneath, in cunningly archived … what? … seedlings … were past Games and the comparative analyses between not just her own avatar-searches but others as well, compiled into a library of intense perfection. He saw here and there his data pulled from his own Trees, meshed with beauty and precision into her assessment.
The Tree burned before him, glorious silver fire.
It was … he wanted to weep with rage and disgust but instead, he closed his eyes for a moment.
Morgan breathed slowly through his nose, barely able to comprehend what he was seeing. His own Trees –the result of countless hours of meticulous effort- were childish caricatures by comparison, pathetic attempts. Naoko was … his dank old heart ached in his chest. “Sirius! Percentages!”
Nothing happened. The glittering Tree rotating under his eye would respond to general interest, but would not –would never- resolve into any specific data. Not without the keys.
“Naoko Kamagana, what is the meaning of this?” Morgan asked reproachfully, grinning slyly.
“As you once said, sa, nothing in this life is free.” Naoko smiled prettily. In an effort to entrance Morgan the Dead, she’d spent the better part of her evening enhancing the visual component of her Tree to lure the fat man in; her personal Tree was nowhere near so flashy. It didn’t need to be. Morgan the Dead’s eyes flashed with reflected silver light. She fought a shiver. “If you tell me what I want to know, I will unlock parts of it for your perusal.”
“Parts?” Morgan narrowed his murky eyes. Then they widened. “Ah, there is something else you want.” A grin split his lips.
“If it was just the truth of a rumor,” Naoko admitted, “I could have gone to my father. He has many friends in high places, even still. None so powerful as yours, of course, but high enough to ask for favors now and then.”
Morgan couldn’t take his eyes off Naoko’s work. It was beautiful. If Naoko would unlock its potential for him, he could recalibrate it to reflect the changes in the Game. For surely, if there was anything in Latelyspace that could include the destructive presence of Garth Nickels, it was this Tree. “Very well. Yes, the Offworlder has received an executive order, just as you heard. For whatever reason, I cannot guess, nor do I care to. It is an inexcusable lapse in Doans’ judgment.”
“Excellent.” Naoko hit a key on her proteus. “You may now examine your percentages if you wish.”
“No need.” Morgan flipped a hand and the Tree vanished from sight. The moment his unwelcome guest was gone, it would return. His body trembled with the anticipation. He would try to comprehend the roots of Naoko’s Tree, suspecting that –in the fullness of time- he would fail. “What is it you truly want to know?”
“Everything there is to know about Sa Garth Nickels.” Naoko said firmly. “I am … disinterested in Latelian records.”
“Ahhh….” Morgan smiled knowingly. “Are you worried that he will bring rack and ruin to us all?”
“Something of the sort, yes.” Naoko nodded briefly. “There are rumors circulating that he is a Trinity spy. And Ashok …”
“Yes yes yes, Ashok Guillfoyle blames the man for everything from the ADAM Wars to his current tongueless state.” Morgan bounced his head back and forth as he weighed out the pros and cons of assisting Naoko any further. How remarkable! He was in one of those moments where what he did could go either way, where a yes or a no truly held limitless values.
The Tree still burned in his eyes. He needed to see those roots, damn her.
“Very well. I’ll find the information you seek, Si Naoko Kamagana of the Iron Heart and Burning Blood. It will be costly in favors and cash, dear heart, so bear in mind when you receive the package the sorts of ‘favors’ I must give and receive in the pursuit of your needs.”
Naoko cheeks burned with scarlet shame and nodded. She’d already come to terms with what might happen in dealing with Morgan the Dead. It would be her burden to bear for the rest of her life.
Still, Garth had to survive. He must learn all he could about The Game, must learn about himself. Naoko couldn’t explain how she
knew she was the only one who could help him become the man he wanted to be when he closed his eyes, but it was the truth.
She couldn’t do that unless she knew everything there was to know, and she didn’t have time to gain his trust. Naoko hoped that someday, somehow, she could earn forgiveness for the cruelties that would arise because of this day.
She keyed in the codes that would unlock the Tree’s functionality. “You still have to enter in the main data sets by hand. I’ve been working on a method of extrapolating future contestants based on a number of different factors, but it’s still in its infancy.” Very much in infancy. It’d take her at least a decade to learn how to work the math.
Morgan pulled the Sheet out and handed it off to his slave, who hastened out of the room. “By the time you arrive at your pathetic little hovel in Port City, lovely heart, the information you need will be on your just as dismally awful netLINK. And I’m afraid I have a request for you as well, little one.”
Naoko stared unblinkingly at Morgan.
“I’ve grown weary of you so quickly this time, sweetling.” Morgan stifled a yawn with the back of a hand. “Ensure that at least six more years pass before you darken my doorstep. Better still, sixty. You have grown uncomfortably … scheming … since we last met. And to think,” he added darkly as she turned on her heel to storm out, “to think that I helped you become the master you are. If only your father knew the kinds of programming skills his precious daughter learned at my feet.”
Naoko ran through the corridors, blindly trusting her memory to lead her to freedom
“And to think,” Naoko muttered under her breath as she burst out the doors and beyond Morgan the Dead’s foul presence, tears threatening to choke her, “that I almost didn’t install that virus.”
Should Blood Do That?
“Yello, UltraMegaDynamaTron, Sa Garth Nickels, proprietor and mad genius, how can I help you?” Garth angled the Sheet so its tiny camera couldn’t see behind him. The screen flashed from the ‘incoming call’ logo to the face of a young, dour-looking man with no sense of humor. Garth could tell. It was one of his many talents.