Emperor-for-Life: DeadShop Redux (Unreal Universe Book 6)

by Lee Bond

  For the man, it would be a long time before he found his true reason for life. Decades. Many, many decades, a long, slow crawl through the minutiae of life, always knowing deep down inside himself that there was a greater reason for his existence, that one day in the future, he would encounter a mystery, uncover a truth so powerful, so intense, that it would bear recording, demand safekeeping.

  Alistair Wood.

  Samiel was more proud of him than any of his other creations. He supposed he had to include Lissande in that list, and a faint twinge of emotion somewhere down by where his heart should be as he considered her slightly less grand than she’d once been riled him, but not for long.

  Wood was the perfect weapon against a man like Nickels. Interested only in acquiring information, Alistair would never approach the time-traveler. Not in any capacity. He’d merely watch the man. Day in, day out. And with such a fascination for information, for secrets, for truth, a man like Wood would one day find himself in a position of great power and even greater responsibility.

  And Nickels? A man so accustomed to being out there in the middle of the stage, acting the fool, kicking up a fuss? With everything else being thrown at him –the Zigg-heads, all those moments caught in various death roles, deShure, Elteren- the grandiose moron would most certainly miss the pair of eyes watching him from the darkness.

  Samiel saw now that that was how you dealt with Nickels. You simply could not afford to engage him.

  “Should’ve left him alone. Should’ve let him have the field. Should’ve ignored him altogether, should’ve focused on my own projects.” Once revealed, the mistake was hard to forgive. Even Ultimate Samiel, up there where The Line was so thin it was bound to snap at any moment, reflected upon his own foolishness with a vast, whale-like moan of disappointment. “Could’ve done something different, anything. Shouldn’t’ve moved against him that first time.”

  Ah well. Under normal circumstances, Samiel would refuse to admit ‘what’s done is done’ and simply begin the process of correcting his mistakes, but the incipient success with Bishop was too fragile a web to even breathe on. Wholesale revision –even the attempt- would shred that web into tatters.

  “Thus, kindly Englishman Mr. Wood, there, in the background, all eyes on Nickels.”

  If he was capable, Samiel would lean back in his chair and smile, oh so smugly at the end awaiting Garth Nickels.

  “Now it’s just a waiting game.”

  Waiting. For a time-traveler, there was nothing worse than crawling hand and foot through the mud that was time.

  ***

  Bombatom greeted the arrival of the other Wayfarers with a curt nod of the head, miserable in his ‘proper’ gear, refusing to recognize that he felt infinitely more comfortable in the shrouding cloak and clothes than the more … forest-y … garb he insisted was a reflection of his true self.

  “Is he aware yet?” Dalarion Mosqure pointed at the heaving, throbbing ruby Lines speeding away from the apex of the monstrous Ziggurat; half the world was illuminated now, with the other half destined to be full of incongruous power within the next few minutes.

  “Nice to see you are wearing something appropriate to the situation, Bo’ba’tom.” Callen-zey-ta commented wryly, everyone present sensing the fleeting, mocking smile.

  “That’s not my name, Callen.” Bombatom didn’t move. He needed to witness the upcoming moment, if for no other reason than he’d tried so very hard to keep Chezzik from going into the past.

  He liked this world. He always had, even though life as a Wayfarer was an awful lot weirder and stranger –and yet, surprisingly boring- than most people could ever hope to appreciate.

  “And it is precisely because of that like, Bombatom,” Tenth snarked as he appeared in a violent burst of eldritch yellow fire, “that we’ve all assembled.”

  “As if I’d actively prevent this.” Bombatom winced as a particularly bright surge of temporal energy slammed through The Lines.

  “You told him not to go.” Tenth pulled up a piece of ground and squatted next to Bombatom. “You practically told him the actual truth.”

  “Never would I ever.” Bombatom held up a wrist, then pulled back the long, black sleeve to reveal the slender, unbreakable wristband. The digital display had long since stopped working, but The Line-generator, wrapping around the case with now-soft pink light, was still functional. There was no need for any fresh Lines to be drawn, so it was –at long last- powering down. “Been at it for too long.”

  The other Wayfarers, all of them bearing the unbreakable plastic Line generators that’d once been nothing more than a game for idle people of the past to play when they had nothing better to do, settled in beside Bombatom and Tenth.

  “It’s better this way.” Tenth put a hand on Bombatom’s shoulder. “You know that.”

  “Is it really, though?” Bombatom asked, throwing a hand to the Ziggurat. It was a massive, bloated cancer filled with a soul so gangrenous that the world itself wept every time Samiel came to earth. “There’s got to be a better way.”

  Tenth shook his head firmly. “We wore these,” he showed his own band, “to finish The Lines. Once the first of us figured out what they were for, he gathered as many as he could before the end of the Invasion and hunted for people who could carry the task forward into the future. The whole of the Earth, Bombatom. The whole of it. Better this than risking the chance that Samiel digs himself out of this … ah. He’s received the missive from his terrestrial agent. We are close now.”

  The other Wayfarers dipped their heads, intoning deeply, “Close now.”

  Bombatom frowned. “Well, fine. I still think I was meant to be an elf.”

  “You can think whatever you want to think, Bombatom, but the man you patterned yourself after was never an elf…”

  ***

  Samiel rubbed his hands together as best he could; straining against the individual pulleys and leather straps that kept his arms from flying off his body while still allowing him the luxury of using the keyboards arrayed around him as well as interacting with The Line Machine weren't necessarily conducive to those sorts of maneuvers, but the time-traveler made do as best he could.

  Success! Success had been had, and he would begin to reap the spoils.

  Mr. Alistair Wood had done a great thing, ensuring that this little time capsule, within which resided some form of memory stick or hard drive or whatever, made it through the Invasion, the apocalypse following those dark ships falling from the skies after Humanity's rough victory had been had and the subsequent viciousness of the world in which they all persisted.

  Running a hand against the simple metal lid, Samiel wondered at Wood's thoughts as he'd begun preparations for this capsule. Had the man, thoroughly educated at Oxford, an undoubtable genius in both the fields of technology and law, a pioneer and visionary in the world of information brokering and all that such a job implied … had he ever paused to wonder why it was he found himself spending such time, such effort in not only recording his experiences with Garth Nickels, but of securing that information against … everything.

  "Alas." Samiel ran his hands against the top of the container again. The metal was rough, etched and pitted, bearing not only the signs of age and surviving incalculable damage, but of attempts by 'loaders to pry it open and peer within; one such 'loader had fallen afoul of one his children, out there in the Zealload, wandering, half-crazed, more than mad, starved and parched, clutching the metal box as if his life had depended on it. Recognizing the intrinsic value of the ancient box, his child -a final stage Ometh Zigurrat ODDity- had secured the thing.

  From there? The point became moot. Once in the possession of an Ometh, the time capsule had always been in possession of Baron Samiel. It was one of those little things that seemed tiny at first, but the more you tried to understand the trickery behind temporal mechanics, the harder and more filled with doubt you became.

  The capsule had not been there, then it had been, the story of it's transferal
from one set of hands to another, residing nicely inside his mind. Samiel didn't bother to question the change. Presumably some older version of himself had seen reason to remove the steps between here and there, and to date, not once had he done himself wrong.

  "Alas." Samiel murmured. The container's damage was a testament to Wood's adherence to a cause he hadn't even known he followed. "I shall never know. A terrible thing, really. Especially since what I began with Granger and continued on with deShure, I perfected with Wood. My greatest terrestrial agent, and never a word spoken between us."

  The decision to keep Rommen deShure and Alistair Wood in the deep dark about their underlying motivations, their very reason for being … had not been reached without serious consideration. Being in contact with those normal men, twisted unknowingly to his design through careful manipulation of everything they saw, everything they experienced, everything they learned would've been of inestimable value, but as he'd learned from Granger's absolutely catastrophic swan song into the embrace of death …

  "Not worth it." All told, programming Wood had added an unconscionable amount of time to his personal lifespan, but the absolute guarantee that the Englishman would perform as and when needed, without hesitation, without doubt, especially now, with the time capsule in his hands … oh, now that had been worth it. "A thousand times, a million times, yes."

  Samiel turned the capsule over in his hands clumsily, hands too fat and fingers too wide to do anything gracefully any longer. The pits and grooves, the notches and gouges of this little box told a tale as grand as anything. It'd lived, survived and excelled, in a world so hostile that many just gave up and died the moment they came to grips with the truth.

  "But not this box." Samiel held it up above his broad head, let the incongruity bathe it in glorious amethyst splendor. "Imagine the story this thing could tell. Where it's been. Who held it. Who tried looking inside. The methods of entry. Savage and elegant, ineffective and pointless. Left in a shoebox for a hundred years, or high atop a rich man's shelf. Maybe a Bishop's hands held it as I do now, maybe a Bishop rattled it back and forth, hoping to hear some secret from the long ago past. For all I know, one of the Invaders fell upon it once or twice, disregarding it as just one more strange little trinket that odd human beings fiddled with. Hmmm. I wonder which, I wonder what."

  The capsule seemed to catch the light blazing from the incongruity, deep purple streaks glinting brightly across those parts of the surface most heavily damaged. No, no, not seemed, did. The ancient pits and grooves, abrasions and gouges, they did indeed spit and flare with lightning stolen from the incongruity. Faster and faster those lights began to spin, dipping inside then out, back and forth, until the whole of the ancient time capsule was cocooned in a shocking rose colored aura.

  Then, just as swiftly as the time capsule had appeared in Baron Samiel's presence, so too did it disappear in a fitful flicker of light. Gone. Erased from time as if it'd never been, leaving behind a tiny, powered thumb drive, it's tiny little 'on' light stuttering wanly beneath the purple moonlet's furious gaze.

  Samiel held the small device up to an eye, squinting at the die-cast metal drive.

  "All of my answers are here. Everything I've tried to accomplish, yet failed. Wood's assessment of Nickels will give me all the tools I need to understand my foe, to discover the method of undoing him. If," Samiel took a look at Chezzik's hastily implemented Line, saw that it was still green, and sighed, "if this damnable assassin isn't completely useless. At the very least, I may be given explanation as to why time has not yet proven that cyborg victorious."

  Samiel tossed the device into the air, clumsily as always, the leather straps and pulleys hampering freedom. Rather than disappear behind endless rows of machines and more machines, the thumb drive was snatched by a thin, shiny tendril of purple power.

  Sounds reached Samiel's ears. The computers were reading the data.

  "One day, when this is all over and I am free of these restraints and permitted to roam freely across a fresh, green Earth that has never known the presence of the Invaders or felt the sting of Humanity's reprisal, I'm literally going to do nothing but run. Run everywhere. Waving my arms like a madman, and the world shall rejoice with me, because they will know what it is that I did. Me. And no one else. And they will worship me for the God that I am."

  Wood's thin, educated and elderly voice filled the cavernous confines of the Ziggurat.

  "I don't know who I am talking to, or even if I am talking to anyone, or even if this recording will be found, or understood. I am ordinarily not a man to leap into the realms of fantasy or science fiction, but something inside of me says that yes, my words will be heard, and by someone dictating my life's events from the very beginning, and that the man who hears them will be doing so from a very, very long way away from where I am now.

  I first became of aware of the man calling himself Garth Nickels when he made landfall in San Francisco. His rapacious intent to seemingly cripple American industry rather than revitalize is already the stuff of legend, and it's only been a few months. Since then…"

  Samiel settled in for the long haul. Faint, almost long-forgotten sensations of excitement mingled with pre-victory euphoria stirred within.

  This. This was the stuff Granger, deShure, everyone in his employ had failed to provide him with…

  ***

  “Since then, I have done all I can to acquire all I can concerning the life and times of Garth Nickels. There are no known photographs save the one for his digital identification card, otherwise known as a PIDpak, and while I am a man of immense sway, it seems as though the Federal Government is solely invested in keeping his identity a great secret. Pushing, using my contacts and other means has resulted only in losing those assets, perhaps for good. No matter. There are always those who seek to curry favor with others with the means to make life comfortable.

  There was an opportunity to get a full look at the man, but alas, the shocking carnage of the moment stayed my hand. During my first and regrettably sole attempt at monitoring Nickels in his home environment, I was witness to a scene straight out of Gehenna. This man, claiming to be a wealthy benefactor from Switzerland, viciously murdering three people clearly in the throes of a serious Ziggurat addiction. My drone, and therefore I, were right there, in the middle of it all.

  Alas, as I said, shock and concern stole my hand away, and whilst I should’ve remained conscious enough in my appointed duties to make his face known to me, I was sat at my terminal, a veritable bump on a log. By the time I’d recovered enough to do my diligence, Nickels was aware of the drone’s presence, and so all hope was lost. My trusty device fled into the night.

  Planning to use the footage of the fight between himself and three very tough characters as a means of pushing Nickels into the dirt where he belongs, I uploaded the deadly conflict to the usual social media outlets, operating under the usual guises. Social Justice Warriors and other lambs being led to the slaughter leapt upon the footage within minutes, and as it always goes with these things, Master Nickels killing three people went viral.

  But for naught. By the time the morning had come, with the sun in the sky, our man had himself released a demonstration clip for an unnamed video game, a bit of playable nonsense with what is known as a ‘cutscene’ at the end. With great disgust, I downloaded the demo and walked through it, only to discover with my own two eyes that the man had spent considerable time and effort into making the real footage, of him murdering men and women, into something from a video game. Spurious claims that the original data uploaded to the Web by myself was nothing more than scenes stolen from an unprotected server were met with credible belief.

  My first attempt at discrediting the man, a complete failure. I remain hopeful, though, for even as I speak, contacts in the usual places are toiling endlessly in their efforts to crack the façade that Garth Nickels wears so easily. Furthermore, I remain confident that I will eventually prove successful. For the time being, my team and I
will begin the arduous process of officially hacking into the servers upon which this playable demo reside. With a firm connection to the external digital world, he has compromised his systems.

  First order of business, hack the security systems. Surveillance, audio, video. If need be, the employees themselves, though personal experience with Securicorps abroad, especially in Thailand, suggests that might not be as easy as I would like.

  Until then, stranger who guides my life, be calm. I will succeed.”

  ***

  Samiel realized he could listen to the soft, dry voice of Alistair Wood until the day he perished. It was so calm, so soothing, so full of upper crust British manifest destiny that to hear Wood’s voice was to believe in a being who could not fail. Would not fail. And all because he was who he was.

  “First encounters are always the most difficult.” Samiel said to long-dead Wood, a spot of bemusement in his voice as he recalled his first time with Nickels. Oh, how maddening that’d been!

  Losing that location for Gentleman Jim’s was still a blow that rankled. Samiel supposed it would always be that way, as well. How could it be any other way? For the first time in an unthinkable span of years, that particular plot of land wasn’t his.

  Samiel ground his enormous teeth together until he felt shooting pains rise up through his gums.

  Best not to focus on that. Best to listen to what his deep operative had to say.

  Samiel gestured, and the audio feed began again.

  ***

  “The man is a veritable genius, mysterious benefactor, in every sense of the word. Locked away inside that ever-growing compound alternately referred to as Changetech HQ and the ridiculously titled Arcade of Awesomeness, Garth Nickels appears hell-bent on earning the title of Renaissance Man. He outstrips his peers in leaps and bounds, releasing patents at the rate of three or four an hour, small, simple things that on the face of it seem unimportant but are, in truth, revolutionary.