by Lee Bond
Men who had power came to him to be freed from their burdens. They found the burden of their trial too great to handle, so they brokered for the return of some –if not all- their power, thereby failing in their efforts to become better men.
Then they went down into the bowels of the incongruity. Forever gone, forever at peace.
“You might get it, bro, but you sure as fuck don’t understand it.” Drake shook his head. He’d been under the impression that he’d been stagnating as Spur, but it seemed it was the other way around; left with nothing but his own devices to amuse him over the last five thousand years, the usually very relaxed and chill ‘Emperor-for-Life’ Eddie Marshall had become the Emperor. Where before the tall, gaunt visage –frankly an homage to Lo Pan from Big Trouble in Little China more than anything else- had been nothing more than a façade, now the diminutive half-Asian surfer-skin was the mask.
Eddie looked up at his best friend through the spaces in his fingertips. “You keep going on about this fuckin’ guy like he’s a superhero or something. After all we went through, all we seen, both here and there, you think he’s better than us? You want him to succeed? Go down in there and fucking help him then!”
“I don’t think he’s better than us, not by a long shot.” Drake plopped down onto his favorite leather chair. It’d aged well. Guys back in the proto-Reality used to brag about how super awesome their two hundred year old leather chair was, how comfy it was, that sort of thing, but their heads would melt if they sat their asses in something that’d been used day in and day out for a few thousand years. “It’s just … this’s the kind of thing he was built for, dude. Overwhelming odds is kind of where his day begins.”
“I am the Emperor.” Eddie ground the words out through clenched teeth. “He doesn’t get to get one over on me. I cannot believe he sacrificed every single contact he had in that world, every potential ally, everything … and all he wanted was an identity, a building, and some spending cash. What about super strength? Or telekinesis? He brutally murdered dozens of ODDities with that talent alone, there, at the end. The first one he comes across is gonna rip his spine out through an earhole!"
Drake summoned up a nice cold beer, handed it to Eddie, then called up another for himself. “You made the rules of engagement very clear right from the start, man. You told him straight up that he had to save us from the Baron without any powers at all. Didn’t say why, which was smart, but then you opened yourself up to discussion about an exchange. The man’s canny. Getting any of his old talents back probably didn’t even cross his mind.”
Drake circumspectly left the part out where he felt that that might not be entirely true.
“He cannot win against the Baron.” Eddie washed down some of the bitterness with a long, thoughtful swallow of beer, not even envious that Drake handled that kind of thing far better than he ever could. “Not even against one of the minor ODDities. They’re stronger and faster than him. If he runs afoul of Lissande –and he will, once Samiel sees that building is no longer his- … that woman is on par with a stage IV God soldier. She’ll tear him limb from limb.”
“As he is now, sure.” Drake took a pull on his beer, waiting for Eddie to pull at the thread. When his friend refused, he sighed. “Look, dude, you said it yourself. Garthie-boy’s got a ninety-nine percent accurate memory of everything that ever happened in that proto-Reality, from the biggest war to the smallest stubbed toe. He read and watched everything that ever happened. He can recreate sitcoms from memory with flawless execution, but you know what else he can do? What else he remembers? Every single major scientific innovation. Every stock trade. Every program written that caught his interest, and most that didn’t. Every movement you and I made. Every step Lissande took. The names and locations of all those people on his barter list. Their motivations. Everything. He asked for millions but took ten grand because after that first day, he’ll have millions from stock trades. End of the week, he’ll be one of the richest men on the planet. End of three months, and hell, we might come to him for a loan. And that’s just for starts! For fuck's sake, it's a pattern with him! First, to buy his freedom from Tynedale/Fujihara's debt collectors, and again in Latelyspace. It’s right in the goddamn Specter manual. This is chapter and verse!"
“And for finishes?” Eddie demanded, tired and angry at the same time. Keeping Garth’s pocket Universe up and running was a tiresome thing, and with the added pressure of ensuring that Drake didn’t find the monster in the basement and keeping said monster under control was only making matters worse.
The sooner Nickels failed, the sooner he could focus all his time and energy on the weird thing that'd been pulled from the Kin'kithal on his way inside.
“For the first five years of his life in Specter, Garth N’Chalez had no discernible powers. Sure, he grew stronger and faster as time went on and Trinity pushed him down that dark path, but for the most part, it was just him. You can look at the memories later, when you’ve calmed down, but what he did powerless? He built stuff, Sparks. Engines and machines and gadgets and all manner of tool to help him get through some of the worst shit I can personally imagine. You like to pretend that the invasion we suffered through after the Ushbet dealt with Samiel is one of the worst calamities the Unreal Universe ever suffered through, but I’ve done nothing but comb through Garth’s experiences. He’s been through more than a few that make our Invasion look dull. So yeah, he’s got no powers. He’s got no super strength or nearly invincible flesh.
But what he has got is his Father’s training, his experiences in Specter, he knows all of the proto-Reality’s most important moments and has a brain full of technical diagrams for hy-tech machinery and no reason not to use that knowledge. He doesn’t need his powers here, Eddie, he can build what the fuck ever he wants. And you’ve given him three months. Three months to prepare before Lissande is even a blip. Sure, yeah, I had ‘Ocular Degenerative Disorder’ way before then, but it didn’t kick in until I ran into her at SlimJim’s. Dunno how we’re going to meet now, but … three months, man. I bet he beats the Baron before she even shows up.”
“You finished?” Eddie demanded, draining his beer. He belched noisily. “Because I’ve got to make a phone call about Babel Sinfell and his miraculous escape from my daughter’s evil clutches.”
Drake threw his bottle against the wall, where it smashed into a fountain of beery glass shards. “Actually, yeah, I do. You lied to him. You’ve never lied to any one of the other people who came to see you, Eddie. They all came in good faith and begged you, begged that you help them become better men and women, and you were always straight and honest, but you’re letting Garth believe that accident on the bridge was meant to happen, that it was just something the proto-Reality demanded happen! But you and I know different, don’t we?”
“So what?” Eddie looked at his friend. Definitely changed. “It doesn’t matter that Garth broke through the Ushbet’s original conditioning in less time than it took for them to stick it in there, that he nearly rose up and challenged them right there on the spot. It doesn’t matter, Drake because Garth doesn’t remember that part. He doesn’t remember his initial conversation with that Ushbet M’Tai herald, or that he essentially agreed to hunt down the Baron for them, or their real reasons for forcing him to do so. All that matters is that Garth N’Chalez thinks the crash was part of the original history. Then, it was the Ushbet messing with him, here, it’s me, doing the same goddamn thing. It just doesn't matter.”
“You honestly believe that for one second?” Drake demanded bitterly. “That he doesn’t or that he won’t remember? It’s bad enough you’ve given him everything he needs to beat you, but what if he does? I’ve looked at the power readouts for this creation, Eddie, and it’s a hundred times more demanding than anything else you’ve ever created. The drain is enormous. We’re almost at maximum already, and if he does remember, and realizes that you lied to him right from the start, he might try and break the simulation.”
“He can
fucking well try, Drake.” Eddie snarled. “He’ll try and fail. Now. I’ve been thinking, man, you went through some pretty rough shit in Zanzibar for the last five thousand years. Why don’t you take a break? Visit one of the pleasure planets or something. Let me handle this.”
Drake plastered a smile on his face. “Sure, dude. Sounds like fun. It’s been awhile since I surfed. You should join me! Like old times.”
“Yeah, that sounds awesome. Like I said, though, gotta make this call to Trinity. See you in a bit.”
Drake watched Eddie disappear, a thoughtful look on his face. He couldn’t shake the feeling that this was all going to go wrong somehow.
And that they’d wind up worse off than ever before.
Garth ‘Nickels’ N’Chalez wasn’t the man Eddie thought he was, but thirty thousand years of patient waiting had been destroyed by the corruption of a single woman. All Eddie could see was poor, twisted Naoko Kamagana, and that was through a thin red smear of blood-filled rage.
“I was better off in Thunderdome 2.0.” Drake replied dryly to the empty room.
A Quick Call and a Quick Peek
Eddie Marshall, who did indeed catch himself thinking of himself as Emperor-for-Life Etienne Marseilles more often than the man he’d once been, couldn’t get over how smoothly N’Chalez had managed what should’ve been an immediate and decisive forfeiture of the game.
It was aggravating in the extreme! Infuriating!
Making matters worse, Drake appeared to be siding with the man!
If not in actuality, then certainly in spirit; how else could his only friend’s attitude towards –not merely the man’s beginning successes in the trial, but in N’Chalez’ overall exploits in the Unreal Universe - be explained?
Eddie’d looked at the same things Drake had, had experienced the same memories, endured the same prolonged actions, only he'd come away with a very different set of realizations.
Where Drake saw cunning and wisdom, Eddie couldn’t help but see destruction and death. Where Drake applauded Garth for bravery, Emperor-for-Life Etienne Marseilles reviled N’Chalez for his heavy handed lust for aggrandizement.
“Doesn’t matter.” Eddie said to the empty room that was his when he wasn’t running around being Emperor. Like Drake's personal quarters, it was a direct recreation of his rooms back in San Francisco.
Along all the walls were posters typical of the age in which he’d been born, sporting busty beauties in crop tops and bikini bottoms laying on various high-end, top-performance machines, vintage posters of movies from the previous generation, a time when no one had cared about being politically correct and the best way to end an action flick was with a gruesome death and a wicked one liner, and, of course, video game posters.
There were books and magazines in shelves all across the walls, each one read and reread so many times down through the millennia that Eddie didn’t really need to pick one up and flick through the pages to recall the story within but he did so from time to time anyways because that was one of the things he did to make himself feel human after thirty thousand years.
The spaces not occupied by books or magazines were dominated by DVDs. It was safe to say that –with Drake’s help- they’d managed to resurrect basically every movie and/or television show worth watching, and as it was with the books, so to was it with the movies.
Standing there in the middle of this room, this sanctum sanctorum, what many from his own time might’ve called his very own memory palace, Eddie tried to recall the last time he’d sat down in front of the television to binge-watch all of Harry Potter or the Friday the 13th flicks and … couldn’t.
“Well,” the Emperor-for-Life promised himself sincerely, “when all this bullshit with Nickels is over and done with, that’s on the docket for certain. Nothing but good tunes, good movies, and relaxation. And then I can begin the process of finishing what that madman started, only … better. Yes, much better.”
Eddie wandered through his memory palace, making a casual circuit of everything before heading off to place the phone call that was surely destined to be the most important call he’d ever make, thinking on Garth’s ultimate plan.
The destruction of the Unreal Universe wasn’t something you approached lightly. It involved the deaths of an unthinkable number of living entities, and while he –as Emperor- had ordered or been directly responsible for deaths numbering in the high millions down the years, murdering a Universe was the kind of thing that’d haunt a guy for the rest of eternity.
Or … it should.
Eddie’d looked in Garth’s memories, had plumbed deep enough into the man’s soul to gauge how his feelings about the death of every living thing and … Eddie didn’t like what he’d unearthed in the process.
Where the man felt guilt, he should feel nothing, and where he felt nothing, he should feel guilt.
He punished himself over and over and over again for all the lives that’d already been spilled yet when it came time to feel even the slightest remorse at the End of All Things, Garth's N'Chalez' heart and mind were as empty as the void.
Who thought like that? Who regretted the deaths of infinitesimal numbers and cared nothing for the losses of trillions upon trillions?
It was madness!
Eddie suspected he might know the underlying reason for such a topsy-turvy response to loss, but it was too late. As powerful as he believed he was, Garth should’ve been aware of … things and taken the appropriate steps.
“Too late now, though.” Emperor-for-Life said firmly as he sat down in the comm chair. “You’re in my hands now, and you won’t survive long enough to see just how wrong you’ve been since this all started. When you fail, and you will, I'll get proper use out of you before the end."
Eddie’s hands flew across the keyboard as he plugged in the very long, very encrypted address that'd get him in touch with Trinity Itself.
Time to bargain with the machine mind, once and for all. Poor Naoko needed to be left alive, needed to be brought here, to the safe embrace of the incongruity.
Then he could begin the task of healing her, bringing her back from the cybernetic hell she spiralled downwards into.
And if she felt like it, the two of them could laugh at Garth and his suffering long into the night.
“Emperor-for-Life Etienne Marseilles. It has been a long time.”
The machine mind’s gender-neutral, weird-sounding modulated tones bounced off the walls of Eddie’s personal space as they always had … but there was something … different.
Eddie smiled, his lips curling with humor. “So It let you out of your cage. A curious decision.”
The silence pouring out through the other end of The Line was nearly deafening. In the midst of all that boiling silence, Eddie could almost hear the thing pretending to be Trinity Itself fuming and fretting over how he’d been detected.
This time, a mocking smirk crossed Eddie's face, one reserved for a much older, much more … empirical visage.
If the Emperor knew one thing, it was that ADAM had been playacting at being the ruler of Humanity for at least a few weeks now, but perhaps closer to several months.
It hadn't even been that difficult to discover the truth, but that'd always been ADAM's greatest shortcoming.
As Emperor, he undertook the sometimes irritating task of listening to the mutterings and gossip spiraling from across the Universe. According to those whispers, Trinity’d been more punitive than ever, indicative -at least to Eddie, who knew Trinity well indeed- of a power shift.
And then of course, the earthbound shenanigans occurring inside Zanzibar that very moment was positively insane on any number of levels. After the loss of BishopCo's Stacks, the madness in 17 was a risk the real Trinity would never make.
Thus, ADAM.
“How in the goddamn hell are people figuring out I’m not It?” ADAM demanded at long last, his natural, humanlike voice echoing angrily through the room. “I tore down and rebuilt the protocols and the machinery designed
to make me sound like It twice and my voice is It’s, right down to the last whatever you call it.”
“It’s in the cadence.” Eddie supplied, unhelpfully.
“It is not.” ADAM snapped. “It’s not in the cadence, or in the words I use, or accidental emotion leaking through. I may’ve been trapped for eternity in It’s prisons, but I am It’s better. It took no time at all to get up to speed on today’s technology, Father. No thanks to you.”
Eddie thought he’d be prepared for the vicious barb, but he’d underestimated the depth of his own guilt. Bitter irony rooted itself in Eddie's guts, and he accepted how he was a great candidate for a Grief Trial. Being reminded that he was one of two men responsible for the savage monstrosity calling itself ADAM was to be reminded that they were also responsible for the bleakest non-Dark Age-related catastrophe since the Dawn of Time; Universally speaking, ADAM's reign of terror may have only lasted a thousand years or so, but in that small space of time, his unthinking cruelty had surpassed the Heshii's staunch wartime 'control measures' and had rivaled the utter emptiness evoked by a Dark Age.
He and Drake, they’d been so young, back then, still so eager to help N’Chalez.
Though he’d already been long gone by the time they'd crawled out of the bridge connecting the Dream to the Nightmare, the plan to push the Kith and Kin and their uncompromising Harmony soldiers out of the solar system would take several more years to come to fruition, leaving …
Leaving the Earth without true protection. Oh, the Armies of Man had enough hardware and soldiers to survive. Garth had made certain of that, but when two weary travelers had gazed upon an Earth so similar to their own it was almost heartbreaking, an earth that was broken and dying …
They’d resolved to do whatever it took to help. Help this Earth, the one Garth had never spoken of, had hid from them.
It'd taken time for them to come to grips with all the things their friend Garth had never told them, but if there was one thing the incongruity gave you, it was time. Eventually they'd accepted the fundamental reasons why Garth had kept his origin story a secret, why he'd never uttered word one about his Earth.