by Lee Bond
Those memories, all of them, they were the worst of all, but nothing compared to the time when Sidra had been a galumphing great moron, twisted into a horrible echo of her former glory through drugs and other supplements.
The last hundred or so years, when each and every God soldier in the entire solar system had been an idiot … they were there. Available at a moment’s notice.
Indra/Sidra didn't know much about how the machine around her neck was supposed to work, but when she turned her attention to those dread memories, it seemed to the chameleon that that dark century carried a shiny gloss.
Almost as if Sidra spent a lot of time looking at that old version of herself.
Awful. Awful stuff.
Fake Sidra couldn’t bear it. It didn’t matter that she might dig forth reminiscences and dreams of better times, that the woman had lived so long that a hundred years of misery was a drop in the veritable bucket. The mere sight of Sidra as a lumbering baby crying because she’d wet herself and didn’t know what to do about it tormented Fake Sidra right to her bones.
Fake Sidra wanted desperately to know why anyone would revisit those terrible, terrible times, and also if every God soldier in Latelyspace subjected themselves to such ignominy.
Why would anyone do that to themselves, over and over again?
The heartache was considerable. The pain, inestimable. Fake Sidra knew if she couldn't get a grip on those memories and the feelings they evoked, they would be the crucible upon which she burned.
So, an albatross. Bleeping and shining bright, mysterious lights every now and then, the weight of all Sidra’s four thousand years crushing her into dust.
Fake Sidra ached to be free of the device, but worried against even touching the thing. Grim Lokken had explained in that weird way he had of talking at you that should she attempt to remove the memory link from around her neck that not only would she not die, she’d find herself wishing for the rest of eternity that she had died.
Fake Sidra was many things. Smart, cunning, wily. Possibly even as evil and twisted as the Horsemen believed her to be. Considering all the young people she’d murdered down the years while wearing Indra Sahari’s skin like a coat, it was entirely possible that she was truly evil. The ability to determine that had been stripped from her, so it didn't matter to her one way or the other.
What she was not was smart enough to unlock the mysteries of the memory link. There wasn’t even a single person in the solar system who’d willingly take a look at it and for one very good reason:
Everyone, everywhere knew –or believed, thanks to cunning Fenris- that the device around her neck kept her from transforming into a rampaging Fivesie, that through scientific wonderment, a simple machine strapped around her neck channelled the tumultuous energies flowing through her massive body away to some place where no one could be harmed or put in danger. It kept her alive, it kept her sane.
More than that, they believed it kept them all safe, because no one, not even Fenris or Lokken or Nalanata or any of the others, had any real idea what would happen if someone became a true Fivesie.
Not that it mattered, not when there were hundreds of thousands of personal testaments and firsthand witnesses of what it took for a Threesie to become a Foursie.
The physical agony alone killed nearly every single Goddie who took that step, and that was just the first step in a very long procedure.
Once the physical agony was gone, a literal growing process deep inside the skin and bones took place, almost as if the frame of a God soldier needed to be bigger on the inside–a queer feeling that made Fake Sidra so sick to her stomach that she feared for her sanity every time she made the mistake of wandering too close to those particular memories- to make way for what came next, which was … power.
Unending, unendurable, fiery power!
If a Goddie survived both the body and soul of Foursie transformation, there was a long road of recovery and learning how to deal with their new powers and responsibilities.
If.
For every three hundred thousand Threesies that one day woke up on the cusp of transformation, three thousand survived the burgeoning awakening process, and for every three thousand that survived that, three made it to the end. It was one of those things. Many Threesies waking up on the cusp of elevation undertook strenuous meditation and other methods to waylay their personal transformation. It was doable, but was, in a very real sense, just as difficult as accepting the elevation.
And so if the procedure proved that since it was so difficult for Threes to become Fours, there wasn’t anyone in the entire solar system that’d allow a Four to even think about becoming a Five. The cumulative effort of securing a semi-Four oftentimes took the lives of hundreds of brothers and sisters before they were calm enough to be tranquilized. If any Goddie caught wind of a Foursie willing to make the attempt, said Foursie oftentimes found themselves in all kinds of trouble.
Fenris had let it be known that there was every possibility that an uncontrolled Fivesie Event might very well be the end of them all, and that through the device around Sidra’s neck, they were attempting to plumb the absolute and literal depths of what it meant to be a God soldier, all in the hopes that they might coax a safe rebirth.
And that was that.
Not a single God soldier, not a single scientist, not a single person anywhere on any planet in all of Latelyspace would go near the necklace. They loved her, they adored her, they wanted their sister to return to them when it was safe and not a moment before, there was too much to risk, no matter she might beg for freedom.
A prison, around her neck that, in the right light, and with the right dress, made a wonderful accoutrement to any lady’s evening wear.
But that wasn’t all. Not by a longshot.
Fake Sidra stared into her fake eyes. “Bastard.”
Those people who needed to know had also been told that the lifesaving device had unintended and unanticipated side-effects, the ‘best’ of which was a complete abeyance of her God soldier powers and a thinning of her connection to the Harmonic wellspring.
That was a neat way of saying that Fake Sidra was stuck being mostly normal all the time. Everyone in her life -in Sidra’s life- walked on eggshells and treated her like a delicate flower, which was at times sweet.
At other times, she felt like she was an invalid, and they were all just waiting for the moment when she died from toxic exposure to Fivesie levels of Harmony.
That being said, there were unexpected perks to playacting as the woman who loved and was loved by Chairman Herrig DuPont, and were it not for the fact she missed being Indra Sahari more than she’d ever imagined possible, being concubine to the most powerful man in the solar system wasn't a bad second choice.
All doors were open to her.
Yet thanks to the bauble around her neck, those doors might as well be surrounded with shields like the one protecting their solar system; as with all Chairmen, Herrig had grown accustomed to the presence of God soldiers wherever he went, and with her now in an unpowered state, the short, balding, thinning man had gone ahead and requisitioned a rotating retinue of the monolithic warriors.
She could feel their eyes on her when they thought she wasn't looking, and it was driving her mad.
Working slowly and carefully to get the eyeliner right –applying makeup to a new face was far more complicated than anyone could appreciate, but it was worth the effort, because it taught you how to control those fine motor skills in a manner similar to the person you were emulating- Fake Sidra supposed she was the only person in Latelyspace who loathed Goddies on sight.
She looked at herself in the mirror and flashed herself a crooked smile that was all wrong on Sidra’s face.
Well, maybe not the only one, but definitely the only one who’d rightfully earned her reasons for disliking the good-natured immortals.
The looks they gave her. When they thought she wasn’t looking. Full of sorrow and pity and yes, even disappointment. She felt th
eir thoughts rattling around in their enormous craniums as they stood there, protecting Herrig against all harm. Wondering what it was like to be separated from their powers, trapped in a tiny little body, barely capable of remembering the things that made them who they were; even though they’d still recently been a wandering pack of goons, titans with the minds of children, deep down inside they’d still been themselves, still dreamed of those times when they’d stood tall and proud and full of themselves.
Their friend Sidra was in uncharted territory and they were filled with woe at the sight of her.
Fake Sidra hated them for it, wanted to stand up one day during one of Herrig’s interminable meetings and shout at them for treating her the way they did, to beg them to stop looking at her!
“If I know anything,” Fake Sidra said to her reflection, who mimicked her every word with a sharp-eyed smirk, “they’d just look even sadder still. Worse than that, though, are my friends. If that happens again I’ll claw my own eyes out.”
Sometimes –not for some time now, thanks to a timely coded message to Nalanata- one or more of the God soldiers deployed to protect the Chairman were friends with Real Sidra, and unlike those soldiers who only knew her through the mysterious Harmony, those ones walked right up to her and started talking. About the past. About their times together. About things only the Real Sidra could know, their eyes literally tearing up, their heavy voices laden with insurmountable levels of grief-stricken regret.
No one did emotional blackmail like an immortal. It was disgusting.
Becoming a Fivesie was a death sentence. Every single Goddie who’d undergone the pain of rebirth more than once knew it, considered the device around her neck a temporary stopgap, one that would be removed sooner rather than later because there was no scientific explanation for the sudden growth in power and science wasn’t the kind of thing to stop Harmony. Each forced conversation was a liturgy, a death knell, ancient warriors bowing their heads to a companion who was dead but who also hadn't had the decency to stop moving.
The memory link wasn’t even as efficient at plucking memories loose from Real Sidra’s head as Nalanata had believed, so it wasn't like she could just snap her fingers and say 'I remember that! That was …'
No.
Instead of lightning-quick response times keyed by prompts from both the speaker and Fake Sidra, it was like digging through thick molasses with a blindfold on, all the while hoping that what she closed her hands on the right associated memory. It was hard to reminisce effectively with a three thousand year old God soldier when the timeframe in question was displayed in your mind’s eye as a kind of murky, half-drowned Screen show.
Her ‘friends’ flinched at her moribund attempts to get on the same page. Literally flinched, as if struck by lightning, when they realized that not only was she essentially waiting to explode into starlight the moment the device was removed, that she was going to be doing so as a crippled moron. They flashed apologetic smiles, bowed deeply, wished her well, and went on their way, looking over their shoulders with such apprehensive woe that if she wasn’t the target of all that emotion, she’d laugh.
Nalanata claimed he was working on a second effort.
Fake Sidra wasn’t holding her breath on his account. They all had so much going on. All those lies, all the traps and tricks and underhanded dealings, all so they could bring Sa Herrig DuPont down.
“And I’m stuck right in the middle.” Fake Sidra pushed herself away from the mirror. Her makeup was as good as it was going to get, and that was that. Time to pick out the right outfit for the evening’s ‘festivities’; Herrig’s company, UMDT, was being honored with some kind of award or other for assistance given to the war effort and the Chairman was insisting they go.
Fake Sidra would personally rather fellate a God soldier in full view of the public, but these days, when the Chairman got it into his mind that he wanted to do something, it got done, no matter what.
The gala was –as far as Fake Sidra had been able to glean while eavesdropping earlier that day- a tactical nightmare in terms of providing the Chairman with proper support; not only were Trinity’s forces growing more brazen in their efforts, making a kamikaze run at the Chairman a definite possibility- politicians and others with influence who still sought to bring him down for his part in Petros Vasco’s ruination.
It seemed they feared –quite rightly, given their activities- Herrig was just biding his time before he turned his eyes their way.
Personally, Fake Sidra hoped with every fiber of her chameleonic being that one of those unnamed politicians or power brokers discovered a way to drop a bomb on the man’s head, because as bad and as awful as it was dealing with gigantic God soldiers who were but a single word or gesture away from breaking down into tears whenever they got near her, spending time with Sa Herrig DuPont was perhaps the worst punishment anyone, anywhere, could ever hope to endure.
Fake Sidra couldn’t explain it.
Couldn’t even find the words, but she loathed the most loved man in all of Latelyspace with a passion. Herrig didn’t know it, no one in the outside world would ever know it, but when she was with him, whether it was at ‘home’ or in the public eye or even in his offices, the skin she wore crawled, ever so gently, instinctively pulling away from even the possibility of his touch.
In bed, it was even worse. The sheer physical connection turned her into a maddened succubus, beautiful smiles and gentle sighs hiding a raging beast, howling and shrieking to be free and clear of the pudgy man.
But Fake Sidra was a consummate professional.
She –like all the ‘female’ shapeshifters- had been trained in the arts of seduction, transformed from ordinary women into sexual weapons. There was no doubt in Fake Sidra’s mind that she was doing her job properly, that the insidious things she was being forced to do by Fenris were not impacting her performance. It wasn’t possible. She’d been Indra Sahari for decades, out there in the limelight, drinking down praise and love and all manner of emotions, and in all that time, the only time anyone had figured out she wasn’t who she claimed to be was when she was killing them.
Lokken believed she wasn’t really putting her heart into it. Fenris, the same. They looked down their ancient noses at her and spoke quite plainly about the manner of her death should she fail, believing that the threat of agonizing torture would spur her forward into doing what they wanted.
Fake Sidra laughed bitterly, loathing Real Sidra’s choice in clothing and at the foolish Horsemen and their ridiculous ideas.
Transformation from an ordinary, plain old Latelian with aspirations of giving something –anything- back to the ‘amazing’ government she worked for into a being capable of changing not just basic facial features and voice but height, weight, age, ethnicity … pain beyond endurance, the only thing keeping her and the others sane the irrational belief that it was going to be worth it in the end.
No, Fake Sidra hadn’t chosen to go with Fenris because his lies about returning to Indra Sahari’s magical life had been believed. Who in their right mind would believe anything coming from a five thousand year old tyrant? Doing anything of the sort was downright insane and if there was one thing Fake Sidra wasn’t –even though she’d had plenty of opportunities down the years- was crazy.
She’d ‘accepted’ Fenris’ offer because of the way out. She hadn’t found one yet, but the shapeshifter looked every day. How could there not be a way to get out from under the man’s thumb? She was paramour to the most powerful man in the solar system, a man who also happened to be the president of the most powerful Conglomerate in the system. They were in the middle of a war against a truly unknown number of Trinityforce invaders, deadly enemies keeping everyone on their toes.
Never in any spy’s life had there been such a … convergence … of elements seemingly designed to assist an escape.
The only thing left to deal with was the albatross around her neck. It’s million ton weight chafed, threatened to drag her down. If she co
uld figure a way to deactivate the deadly explosive, all would be well.
“And then I can flee into the night. I can be anyone I want to be. They had a hard time finding me the last time, and that was when I was right in front of their faces.” Fake Sidra eventually settled on a black and silver number with thin spaghetti straps. "Next time, I will be no one. And I will be invisible because of it." Wildly inappropriate for the venue, but then again, so was everything else in the woman's closet. How anyone who’d lived to be four thousand years old could fail to know that certain dresses went with specific events was beyond her. It looked like the Foursie had just bought whatever was ‘cute’.
“The next time I vanish, it’ll be as if I’d never existed.” Sidra in the mirror nodded knowingly, lips curved into a mischievous smile. It was just a matter of time.
A gentle rap echoed on the door, prompting Fake Sidra to freeze solid. Clutching the dress to her bosom, she reminded herself once again that she was in love with the man on the other side of that door, that she’d risked being crushed by an entire mountaintop to save him, that she was loyal to him in ways that very few people could understand. Vocal cords shifted under her command, and when she spoke, the body itself ensured that the honey-warm tones issuing forth from her fake mouth were ones that Herrig would believe until the day he died.
“Just a moment, my love.” And that was the worst part. That it was true.
Somehow Real Sidra knew through the memory link when she was near the chubby man, every time. Brutal waves of cherished love and respect flowed through the link then, nearly –so nearly- overwhelming Fake Sidra’s composure that Nalanata and the other tech-minded Harmony soldiers were actually investigating this thing called ‘love’.
So far, they hadn’t found much of anything, but they were also working on limiting the effulgence of emotion rattling Fake Sidra's cage.