Soul Jacker Box Set

by Michael John Grist

  M. ARTIFICIAL WOMB

  The tunnels change as we cross some unseen line into the Solid Core's inner sanctum, becoming metal-framed corridors embossed with the RG initials.

  Ritry Goligh.

  As we run, stamping drumrolls with our footfalls, we speak of this man who was our creator and embodies us in ways we cannot understand.

  "We're all aspects of him," Ray says as we pass down a dark, narrow hall. There are few turnings now; the maze has simplified to a single path, and I haven't seen the Lag for hours, but that hasn't stopped the waking visions.

  They come hardest for Far. He naps in Ray's side-holster and screams in his sleep. His stomach seems to have repaired itself, but I fear his mind is fatefully damaged. Those few seconds with his heart lost to the Lag have changed him.

  Ray goes on. "Far is Ritry as a boy. I'm the changes all his friends made in him; Ferrily and Tigrates, Carrolla. Doe is what Ven left; cold and hard and in control."

  "I can imagine captaining a subglacic," Doe says. The blood-mic sputters often now, so we run with our HUDs up most of the time, only pulling them down to periodically listen to the distant sighing of So's lullabies, somewhere in a world far gone. "I think I'd be good at it."

  She runs alongside Ray when the way is wide enough, which is touching. I remember enough to know Ven hated Tigrates and Ferrily.

  "So what am I?" I ask.

  "You're some kind of amalgam," Doe says. "The man evolved."

  "And So?" I ask. "The others."

  Ray answers. "So is Loralena, Me."

  There is quiet but for the clanging of our feet.

  "I think the gravity is getting heavier here," I say.

  "Did you hear what Ray said?" Doe asks.

  I look back at them both. "I heard you," I say. "I know."

  So, who still isn't dead, who hangs on behind singing us forward. So is Loralena.

  I blink and rub my eyes.

  "It is getting heavier," Doe says. "It's hard to even lift my arms."

  We run on. Now there are shapes carved into the walls, like ancient Egyptian gods. Here is a face I should recognize, but do not. There are figures scampering in the darkness.

  "A mother," Ray mutters to himself, barely captured on blood-mic. "A father?"

  We come upon an open archway to the side, cut directly into the wall. There has been nothing like it so far, and before I can stop him Ray runs in.

  "Wait," I say, but Doe follows, and I follow her.

  It is a dark cave, bar the glow coming from a tubular glass tank in the middle, topped with complex metal machinery. The tank is filled with pale green fluid, with a thick cable hanging down inside and inserted into the middle of a half-formed baby, like a mechanical umbilical cord.

  The baby is pink, floating in the liquid, and he is looking back at us with tiny gray eyes.

  "Young Ritry," says Far.

  He waits behind us in the arch. I didn't notice him dismounting from the side-holster. He hasn't spoken for what feels like days, and the sound startles me.

  "Come in, Far," Ray says.

  "No," says Far, "I can't let him see me."

  "Why not?"

  Far doesn't answer. He makes no further move toward us, so we turn back to the forming baby in the tank. Doe presses her face close to the glass with tears running down her cheeks. I have never seen Doe cry.

  "I'm sorry," she whispers to the little floating figure. "I'm so sorry."

  I can hear the seven tones of the artificial womb in the air now, playing in unison like a chord. There is no pulse to it, no familiar thump-thump, only an endless blend of notes like a funeral dirge for lost family, but it is not mournful. Here, like this, it is comforting. It makes me feel safe and at home.

  Then I hear a shuffle. There is something lurking in the darkness. I cannot resolve it, a shape scarcely more than a shadow, but the very notion of it terrifies me. Even here in this sacred place he exists.

  "Mr. Ruin," Far says.

  I stop breathing. I watch this dark figure as he slinks in the shadows. Even before we were born, he was watching.

  "He's not really here," Doe says, wiping away the tears, but her voice is uncertain, as though she's trying to convince herself. "It's just a memory."

  Slowly the dark figure circles his way closer to the glass, seeming to bring the darkness with him. We shuffle to make way. All I can see of his face is the glint of white teeth. He presses close to the machine womb's glass, then taps on it with his finger like a child at an aquarium, hankering for the attention of the fish.

  Little Ritry Goligh turns to face him. His half-formed gray eyes blink. Stalked before he was even born.

  "I'm going to kill this fucker," says Doe.

  Ray is shaking with rage beside me. I feel it too, welling up from everything I am, but these are shadows only. There is no use in smashing the past. It's what's happening right now that matters most; it's Ritry Goligh's present that we can change.

  I lay a hand on both of their shoulders and lead them out. "We will kill him," I promise. "I don't know how, but I swear it."

  Far gives me a long look as we leave. I think for a moment I glimpse some resolve hidden within him, some hint of deeper thoughts turning far below, but then it is gone and he is back to being just a weary, brutalized boy. He reaches for my hand and I take it. We run on together, while Ray and Doe clutch each other and beat their way down the hall.

  "I'm sorry," says Far as we run.

  "For what?" I ask.

  "For what's coming."

  I don't press it. I wonder, am I the captain of the chord now, or is Far?

  Then we reach the end.

  Our red dot flashes up against the heart of So's map in my HUD; the center of the Solid Core. We have reached our destination. Before us stands a huge blast door made of corroded black metal, riveted with rusted bolts like the exterior of the Solid Core. I run my gloved fingers over it, feeling the imperfections. This thing is ancient.

  There is no handle and no hinge. We pry at its seams and Ray shoulders it firmly, but it doesn't budge. I look at Doe and she nods.

  "Go back, Far," I tell the boy. He nods, so pale. His weals burn bright in the blackness, but he looks at me with trust and understanding in his eyes. We are a chord, and we will do this together.

  Doe prepares the dregs of our candlebomb, melting it into place around the frame of the corroded door. I smell ozone and scorched plastic. Wax dribbles over her fingers and down her suit.

  "Careful," Ray breathes in her ear, "don't ignite it prematurely."

  She whispers something about this not being her first rodeo. They work together to construct the lines of the bomb aligned to the cracks in the door while I spool out the remaining fuse.

  We're almost there.

  RITRY GOLIGH

  18. BRINK

  The train roars into the station with a percussive wind, thunderously loud, and people pour out. They flow either side of me like molten rock, so hot I can feel the energy burning off them.

  Things are changing for me now. Already I see things differently. People are memories and the Lag at once. They are all the same, and none of them are like me.

  I fold into the carriage. A man with a jaw like a toad glares at me. I look out of the glass as the doors hiss shut and some of the groaning engine sound is cocooned away. The train gets underway, the lights of Calico Central station rush by, and then there is darkness. In the black of the glass I study my reflection.

  Do I look different now? It's hard to know. I wonder at the calm I'm feeling inside, and I glance over the faces of the other commuters around me. They're tapping on nodes, staring vacantly up at the rack-ads, picking at their cuticles; all living their lives, going from place to place, all with their little bits of complexity, wonder and misery.

  I could pull them apart at the seams. I could become just like Mr. Ruin if I wanted, crack them open like eggs and eat. But I'm not like Mr. Ruin and I never was.

  I'm me.

&nbs
p; My face looks different in the glass. Thinner and older. It is a year since I cared to see a mirror.

  The train hisses into another station and I am vomited out by the press of bodies. Already my brand new suit clings to my skin. I feel the humidity soaking in like alcohol, trying to fog my mind. I move through the press. Somebody strikes me in the shoulder as he goes by, and I feel his scorn. He is a cruel and angry man, another bully with a briefcase.

  I have time enough for this. I catch up to him through the flow and step around to face him. He's taller than me, strong as I once was, with sandy hair that slides either side of his face. He seems momentarily surprised, then he recognizes me and the scorn comes back.

  "Having a bad day?" I ask, and jam my new node into his crotch. He gasps and doubles over. This is not a Skulk and I am not beyond the law, but I don't care. I can't be stopped now. I grab the back of his head and for a moment imagine ramming the node into his unprotected face five times, cracking his jaw, knocking three teeth loose, maybe imploding an eyeball. It's the kind of thing I might once have done. Far off, Mr. Ruin thrills at the prospect.

  Instead I push the node up into his throat and squeeze his windpipe. He's about to start struggling but as the edge of the metal digs into his throat his body goes slack. He thinks I have a knife. I lean in and whisper in his ear.

  "I should kill you. What do people like you bring to the world? What's the point of you? We'd all be better off with you buried in the fucking dirt."

  These are barely even words meant for him; I know it as I say them. But this is the most restrained I can be.

  I feel his mind recoil. He is full of fear now, the scorn gone. I feel his miserable, small Soul, and the cruelty he indulges in when he can. He is a sadist like Mr. Ruin, and I hate nothing more than sadists now.

  I Lag him. Perhaps I am the cruel one, to do this. I take every bit of pleasure he ever gained from cruelty, and leave only the sour guilt that remained afterward. He is clay in my hands and I am changing things now, finally.

  On his knees he begins to sob, as the unmitigated weight of all he has done crumples him. He has become a lost man, as I have been for so long. Perhaps it will be a new start.

  I leave him there and return to the train. I feel Mr. Ruin's distant delight. He thinks I am becoming more like him; beginning to savor the pain of others as a source of power.

  The train rises up through the tsunami wall to the open top, where people alight for shopping and sightseeing over the Arctic Ocean. The train's rhythm steadies out. Clack clack, clack clack, clack clack we go, along this string of walled cities that make up the isthmus; from Calico Central to Tenbridge Wulls, from Tenbridge Wulls to Saunderston, all the way to the end. There we descend gradually as the wall ramps down to the natural coast. I get off the express and wait at a dim station for the tram to the little town of Brink, and Candyland.

  I ride the tram alone. These rails are old, built over two hundred years ago, once atop a ridge and now skirting a coast. Now my reflection in the glass is spiked by the light of shored hydrate tankers, unloading fuel at the proto-Calico wall pumps. On the horizon there's a single bright point of light wrapped with fuzzy old bonds of violence. This is one of the Arctic rigs we fought so hard for, sucking hydrates out of the ancient ocean bed, once covered by ice. Now they stand across the whole of the North, sucking the last rotting succor out of the bodies of dead dinosaurs buried far below.

  We are everywhere now. We have consumed everything. There are no more dark spots on the map but the ones we've left behind.

  It's nearly midnight by the time I reach the final station, Brink. The night porter walks by holding his ticket ticker.

  "Here for the Mass lights?" he asks.

  I shake my head. He points out the window and I see colored fairy lights dancing in long lines over the small station outbuildings and around the curved spine of the single bench. I didn't notice them before.

  "No," I say, getting to my feet, "I'm visiting friends."

  He gives me an odd look, but takes the ticket from my hand and punches a hole through it.

  "You best hurry then," he says, "they'll be closing down the line soon." He carries on to the carriage end.

  The doors open and I leave the tram behind.

  I walk through the little town of Brink past shuttered windows and doors. The air smells of hot tar and brown sugar. I catch tinny music leaking from a second floor apartment, a bar of some sort, with faint voices livening up the night. Once that was my life too.

  Candyland is waiting for me, this one dark patch at the map's edge, where I will make my final stand. Now the saccharine air mixes with the scent of seeping vegetation. Walking across the empty parking lot, old memories bubble up. We came here together and held hands. The park was already dead but still we came to play. Here I held Art's hand. Here I kissed Loralena. Here I once pulled up in Don Zachary's speedboat.

  A different life.

  It grows very dark at the entrance, and barbed wire rustles in my hair as I clamber through the rusted turnstile. Boulder-like shapes lie in the shadows; under my fingers the heat of the sun still buzzes within their lifeless frames. They are toppled fishing boats, dropped here by a tsunami long ago. Down the main promenade there is jungle to either side. I still smell the refining sugar, but it is fading, replaced by hints of popcorn, the acrid burn of fireworks exploding overhead and the flowery shampoo smell of Mem's hair as she pulls me down to whisper in my ear:

  "This is wonderful, Daddy."

  The memory of a memory. Only I saw this place alive.

  I walk up the steep wooden roller coaster tracks to the apex of the dive, rising far above the land below. Here is my tower, standing as tall as the Calico wall and built with everything I have left. I enter and begin the slow ascent up the circling staircase, stroking the curved wall with the backs of my fingers. The surface is rough and granular, made out of memory. It is a cast of my life and the life of my family, and the reason my mind is so clear, because I'm going to take it all back.

  My skin tingles in the charged air. I have known this pain for so long.

  I arrive at the top and look out on the park and the world. Overhead old satellites circle through the stars. Across the park lie the twin cities I've forsaken, both Calico and the shadow sprawl of proto-Calico hugging the wall. This is all we have left.

  The wheel before me is as large as the wheel on a subglacic, connected to vents and flues throughout the tower. Everything is perfectly balanced and I am ready, just as I always was as a marine in the Arctic War, ready to fight for my right to exist. I lay my hands on the smooth handles and allow myself a brief moment to repeat a promise I made to Mr. Ruin all those years ago.

  To drown him in his own mind.

  Everything is to play for now.

  I lift the wheel and it clicks to engage. I feel the wind about me rush to fill the ventricles in the Tower, like blood through a pumping heart. The cement beneath my feet vibrates. I turn the wheel, and the thumping begins.

  I feel the wave rise on a tide of the bonds.

  It's beginning.

  I jack in.

  Down into my own mind I plunge, buoyed by the strength of the tower. Layers of thought pummel me like bubbles until I lose all sense of my body and the world around me, jacking deeper until my own Molten Core is a red glow ahead.

  I hit the blazing magma hard, too fast for Mr. Ruin to stop me, and consciousness falls away like protective brick cladding. Everything I am splits into the seven constituent tones of my mind's architecture, each one burning into existence in forging pods within the sublavic ship.

  Doe, Ray, Me, Far, So, La, Ti.

  They rouse and for an instant some sense of me is still with them, writing the mission folder they will soon read, painting the map they will need across the captain's chest, because for a brief moment only I see it all. I have glimpsed what violence lies ahead; I understand what is required to truly break free of Mr. Ruin's desecrating touch. It is terrifying and beaut
iful and beyond my comprehension.

  Then it is gone, as my last sense of self is swept away in the forging and I come to in one mind only, Me, coughing up treacle-black smoke in the rusted corridors of the sublavic, with the pod-forge flaming me to life and the screw failing and the air filled with the stink of burning brick.

  ME

  N. THE BRIDGE

  Huddled by the blast-door we talk in low fast whispers as Doe trims the wicks of the candle-bomb, aligning the gamma-clamp to corrosion marks in the huge black blast-door. Ray is talking into his blood-mic to So back at the outer orbit, his piercing green eyes on me.

  "Anything you can give us, So, on what's on the other side, anything at all."

  As ever, no answer comes. I flip up the chronometer function on my HUD. Has it already been a week in this maze?

  Far calls us to hurry from the end of the corridor. His trembling shadow casts a long way down in the orange oxyfer lights, and I gesture to him to be calm. I try to project my soothing vibes out to him, but it's hard when there's sweat beading down my face and pooling in the dead vacuum cups gathered under my eyes. I nod to Ray, who was always better at morale, and he smiles to Far, which helps.

  "T-minus three," says Doe, wiping her greasy hands on her black double-breasted flak jacket. I try to blink the panic-sweat out of my eyes but it won't dissipate. The HUD vacuums stopped working days ago. Everything here reeks of sweat.

  Ray claps a hand on my shoulder. I look through his visor and see his big grin and bright white teeth inset with loop piercings like some ridiculous mesh of braces.

  "You crying, Me?" he asks.

  "It's the vacuums," I say. "They don't work."