- Yeah.
- You're Don Quixote.
- And you're my Sancho?
- Ha. A madman's squire. It makes both of us fools.
- So we're fools, then.
- And Universal Time is our windmill.
I sigh. I have defended it so much, so many times, and I'm tired.
- Without it, everything I've done is meaningless.
She strokes the curve of my neck.
- Is meaning more important than happiness? This is no kind of life.
I log out, look down at Toren 6. It is a world, much like any other. Its star rises and falls, and that must have meaning too. It will rise and fall for a million years, longer, until this whole arm of the galaxy is cold and grey and dead.
That is meaning too, isn't it?
* * *
I'm sitting with my note-pad in my hand, the page filled with my meticulous notes on timings, written into neat tables on page after page, in case the computer went down, for whatever reason.
The last time says 01/0957/6453/8756.54.3490
The Universal Time of the last ten-hour cycle. I haven't updated it for days, not since I flushed all the clocks into space.
01/0957/6453/8756.54.3490
Other than that, I'm adrift.
* * *
- How important is it to you, Rav? Comes her soft voice through the capsule's speakers. I thought I'd turned her off.
- They're cultists, I say.
- Their leader is gone. They're just people now.
- Because he stranded them.
- We're all stranded now, aren't we?
* * *
I finish the last book, Moby Dick, the one that got away. Circling in orbit, she's quiet as I read.
It ends well. As well as these things can. With a future.
* * *
When my capsule lands on their pad, I can see there are people waiting for me. They seem excited. They seem happier than when I was last here. I see structures looming in the distance, towers. They've been building.
I step out, weak and heavy with the sudden gravity. I must be pale. They pull a stretcher up and I collapse onto it.
"Have you brought the time?" Asks one eager voice, sounds like my wife Lena. Her face blots out the bright white sky, mouth moving a dark shadow through the light. Her hair hangs down over my face. I hear others, raucous, so many voices, not like the system. Real voices echoing across each other, asking about Tempus, about Central and the Empire.
"Have you brought it?" asks the face before me. "Are you Tempus?"
"No," I answer, as gravity thumps my chest with every breath. "I'm stranded, just like you."
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Thank you for reading Cullsman #9! I hope you enjoyed these stories, and I'd love to get your thoughts. Would you consider reviewing the collection on the shop site where you bought it? Reviews from readers like you are the lifeblood of indie authors.
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I'd also like to offer you my free Starter Library of 2 best-selling post-apocalypse thriller books- one of them is Mr. Ruin, about a broken ex-marine being hunted through the hellish fires of the mind, and the other is The Last, and tells the story of the last man alive in New York, after the zombie apocalypse devastates the world.
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Now, read on for the first chapter of Mr. Ruin, Book 1 of the Ruin War.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael John Grist is a bestselling British writer who lived in Tokyo, Japan for 11 years and now lives in London, England.
He writes science fiction and fantasy thrillers, and used to explore and photograph abandoned places in Japan, such as ruined theme parks, military bases and underground bunkers. These explorations have drawn millions of visitors to his website michaeljohngrist.com, and often provide inspiration for his fiction.
OTHER WORKS
Zombie Ocean (zombie apocalypse)
1. The Last
2. The Lost
3. The Least
1-3 Box Set 1
4. The Loss
5. The List
6. The Laws
4-6 Box Set 2
7. The Lash
Ruin War (science fiction thriller)
1. Mr. Ruin
2. King Ruin
3. God of Ruin
Ignifer Cycle (epic fantasy)
1. Ignifer's Rise
2. Ignifer's War
0. Ignifer's Tales - short stories
Short fiction
Cullsman #9 - 9 science fiction stories
Death of East - 9 weird tales
Non-fiction
Ruins of the Rising Sun - Adventures in Abandoned Japan
Mr. Ruin (RUIN WAR BOOK 1)
Your mind is the battlefield.
In the war that devastated the world, ex-marine Ritry was a 'Graysmith' - an elite interrogator who dived deep into the hellish fires of enemy minds. His efforts made him a hero, saving countless lives, but also scarred his sanity and lost him everyone he ever loved.
Now Ritry sees a chance at redemption. A shadowy figure known only as Mr. Ruin offers him an awesome power - the ability to dive not just into minds, but into the fabric underlying reality itself. Ritry could rewrite his past and start again.
But there is a terrible cost - as Mr. Ruin demands Ritry's absolute loyalty. And Mr. Ruin is not a good man, with vicious deeds in mind.
Ritry only has to choose.
MR. RUIN (EXCERPT)
The needle enters Mei-An's eye socket smoothly, nestling beside her bright white eyeball and passing back into her brain. She barely flinches, though I know it's uncomfortable as hell.
She's a pretty young half-Asiat, maybe 28, and I can't imagine what she's doing out here in the skulks. She came in to my graysmithy building an hour ago with a hunted look in her eyes, asking for a very specific inject: a hand-made combination of languages and vocational skills. It's plain she's running from something, but it isn't the job of a graysmith to ask questions.
I steadily depress the syringe plunger, injecting its silvery contents into her brain. It's dangerous stuff, enough to radically change her brain content and chemistry, but she doesn't seem too phased. A moment passes then I draw the needle out and lean back, giving her time to blink away the discomfort.
"How do you feel?" I ask.
"Shivery," she says. As her mouth opens I see the black tattoo on her tongue: DZ, the brand of Don Zachary, king of the skulks. "It's cold, like brain freeze."
I force a smile and study her, sitting there on the input tray of the bulky ElectroMagnetic Resonance machine. She's clearly strong despite her slight frame, and determined as hell. Her deep black hair is a stark contrast against the dive room's simple gray walls. Her long thin legs dangle down the EMR machine's side like a child's, though she's clearly no innocent. You don't get Don Zachary's brand and stay innocent for long.
A silvery tear beads from her eye and I dab it away with a surgical cloth.
"Let them settle for a few moments," I say, "then we'll dive."
She nods.
I leave her, exiting the spartan gray dive room to stand in the polished steel corridor alongside my assistant Carrolla. He's tall and shaven-headed, with features just shy of model-worthy. I think he must have had marine training, though he never fought in the Arctic War, like me. Working here in the lawless skulks is his war.
He raises an eyebrow, and I know what he's thinking.
"She wants a dive," I say, by way of explanation.
"I heard the Don crucified the last guy who crossed him," Carrolla says conversationally. "Nailed him to the tsunami wall. Does that sound like fun to you, Rit?"
I shrug. There are no shortage of legends about the Don. "I'm not turning her away."
"You fucking should."
"I'm fucking not."
"Don fucking Zachary," Carrolla mutters under his breath, "he'll pull your face right off."
I let it go, and we stand quietly for a moment, waiting. In Mei-An's brain the silvery inject will be spreading, starting to make connections and change the architecture of her mind. I look down at my hands, pale but still strong, gifted in this skill if in nothing else. I'm helping her, I think. It's what she wants, and it pays the bills.
"I need you tight on me for this," I say into the quiet. "It's a bigger job than usual."
Carrolla nods sharply, like a marine. He's got discipline, I'll give him that.
We go back into the dive room together. Mei-An is sitting there like a dab of milk on a slate. Carrolla takes up position at the control panel by the EMR machine's large hollow hub. I sit on the stool before Mei-An and look into her artificially widened eyes. I offer my hand and she takes it. It's good to get the skinship started in small ways, to start our systems aligning.
"There are serious risks to this," I tell her, though I've already told her it once. "Potential damage to your memory, to your wits, to your personality. I'm good, but there's always a risk. I need to hear you say you're sure."
She nods. "I'm sure. I don't have a choice."
I understand that. Who amongst us does?
"Lie down on your side," I tell her, "facing me."
She does. I climb onto the tray and lie down beside her, face to face.
"It'll be OK," I say. "Carrolla."
Carrolla pushes the button to fire the EMR up. Inside the large ring hub at its head, electromagnets start to whir and thump, forming a soupy electromagnetic static between us. The thumping gets louder and I can feel the tide rising. The input tray jerks into motion, drawing Mei-An and I into the machine's hollow heart.
Electromagnetic waves wash over us like an ocean, making the medium my trained mind can reach across, and I reach out with my thoughts to begin the synchronization of our brain patterns. Dimly I sense the outline of her brain, a hazy sphere of heat barely glimpsed through murky waters, transposed atop her face. I focus closer, building the bridge across which I'll pass into the outer reaches of her mind, then-
"Shit!"
It's Carrolla. I hear his shout tinnily through the hazy electromagnetic waves, followed by a red flash splashing across my field of view, like blood in the water. Then I feel it, fuck. Her mental immunity is kicking in fast, the Lag, reaching out to take a bite. It's a goddamn shark out here, and already furious at the presence of the silver inject.
"Her cells are starting to cook!" Carrolla calls to me from above. "Get out of there, Rit."
I can't though, not with the inject still inside her like bloody chum to the Lag. If I don't do something fast it'll bite half her mind away just to get the foreign matter out. Now the only way out is through.
"Stress levels are up," Carrolla calls, barely audible over the thump of the EMR. "If you're not coming out then get it calmed!"
I gaze through the layers of thought into Mei-An's eyes, big dark staring spheres, and will her to calm down. I've dived deeper than this a hundred times before, and it never gets any easier, or safer, but I've always survived.
The Lag snaps up at me from within her head.
"Look at me Mei-An," I say as I tune my thoughts toward a stronger connection. "Look at my eyes, that's it."
She tries to nod but now she's losing motor control, making the movement uneven and jerky. She's terrified. I kick a leg at Carrolla to increase the cooling CerebroSpinal Fluid flow bathing her brain, because if it gets any hotter inside her skull her brain really will begin to cook.
"It's going to be OK," I say, then crank the wavelength of my thoughts all the way down to fully match with hers.
A rush of thought-data pummels me, hard bubbles rising through the water; the inputs and outputs of billions of her individual brain cells. I swim roughly through the barrage, able only to see the pattern of her mounting panic. Her whole system is in emergency mode. If I had a better EMR I could fix her through that, but this is proto-Calico, a floating slum built of old wreckage and flotation barrels, and I don't.
So I dive.
A second flood of thoughts buffet me like the Arctic Ocean in tsunami: chemical stress levels spiking, the cell firing rate shooting up, even the inject area flipping belly up as unconsciousness dawns.
"Damn it, Rit, she's slipping," I hear Carrolla calling from above.
I dive deeper still, down into the root and branch systems of her brain's architecture, blasting by brain structures like thick tufts of kelp, so deep I lose my grip on the world above and the sense of my own body flits away. I pass beyond the confines of brain cells and structure, through the ocean's crust and into the realm where my mind truly meets hers.
The Molten Core.
Lava blooms around me, the burning red and orange fire of the living mind. This is her consciousness, where she thinks, and here I am an invader. It is bright and chaotic with the violent churning of her thoughts.
I peer through the boiling heat. Nearby I can see the silvery inject being attacked by the Lag in a powerful immune reaction. Here the Lag is a kind of worm, massive and fleshy, able to burrow through blazing lava with ease. I am powerless before it, battered and buffeted by fiery tidal flows, but I'm also the only thing that can save a good chunk of brave Mei-An's mind.
Everything is to play for now.
My sublavic ship forms around me, a submarine built for diving magma in the Molten Core, as it has a thousand times before, hulled with three layers of heat-proof brick cladding. Within its belly my six crew members fire into existence like clay pots forged in a kiln, and I send them to their posts throughout the ship: at the engines, manning the periscope, setting a course for Mei-An's Solid Core.
The Solid Core is the utmost center of the mind. I've never dived that deep, in my mind or any other; it would be madness. No one ever has. The risks that deep inside are massive, where the Lag is god and all the pathways are an endlessly shifting maze. I'm not even sure I could get in if I tried.
But I don't need to. I only need to get close.
The engine-screw churns the ship inward, and bubbles of memory burst out of the lava ahead, popping over the periscope and leaving behind hints of who this girl is and was. In one I glimpse her slinging back Arctic gin in an off-wall dive with a guy with a sternum piercing. In others she makes her first tentative forays across the tsunami wall and into the neon skulks of proto-Calico, falling into company with smugglers, shits, and the children of the Don.
The Lag snaps up at me with ravenous meat-jaws from the magma, and I launch a few sacrificial memories as torpedoes to slake its hunger: my walk through the park that morning, the taste of the juice-box Carrolla brought in for me, Arclo-berry, one of the newest strains out of the pack-ice. I won't miss them too much, and for the moment the Lag is distracted. It's just a worm, after all, ever hungry.
My sublavic ship powers on through molten rock, and in moments I hear the dark boundary line of the Solid Core through sonar, a pulse spreading through the magma with a steady
thump thump, thump thump
that is utterly unique, and key to deciphering this girl's burning architecture: her mother's pulse.
The mother's pulse is the first memory formed in the infant brain, a fingerprint of the mother's heart that molds the mind like soft clay, instilling a powerful mental immunity. It is the foundation all brains are built on, with uniquely healing properties, and I don't need to break into Mei-An's Solid Core to get it; I'm close enough now to tap the sound like a keg.
Tuning forks punch out through the ship's brick cladding and capture the pattern. The forks melt in seconds but I get what I've come for. I turn the ship around and amplify the pulse outward by vibrating the hull, soothing the Lag with this gentle lullaby from the womb. I head away from the Solid Core with the pulse rippling out around me, bathing Mei-An's mind with a pattern like a key slotting into a lock.
It works, and I feel her chemical stress levels calmi
ng through the flow of lava. Her brain-rate is settling down, so I pull my consciousness out a few layers, back into the realm of my ship's conning tower. More thoughts bubble up across the periscope; glimpses of her latter days in the company of the Don's son, an abusive shit who beat the will out of her, but calmer now, as the panic of her immune rejection stills.
thump thump, thump thump
The Lag has been quieted, but it's still out there tracking me sleepily through the lava. The job is not over. If I don't do something it will still eventually scrub the skills package, so I head to the zone where I first injected the silvery fluid, at the tail end of the optic nerve. There I massage the pulse around the inject's edges, guiding it by the nose like I would a kelp-tilling shark. It cools the enflamed cells and pets the Lag on the head like a trusty old dog.
I sigh with metaphoric relief.
"Can I have my Arcloberry juice box back?" I ask the Lag, a wordless information request through the CerebroSpinal Fluid. I remember the memory because I only gave the content not the frame, but the Lag is mute on its refund policy.
"My walk through the park then?" I press. "Come on, don't short me."
It bares its lipless, fleshy teeth. Fair enough, I've lost far more in the past, and at least I still have the frame. Nothing earthshattering happened on my way through the park anyway. Did it?
Dammit. I pull outward, and my body and the sublavic ship merge back into one as my thoughts suck free of Mei-An's mind. I rush back through the bubbling outer ocean of data as my consciousness disengages, then I'm back in my own head and panting hard in the decelerating thump thump of the EMR machine, back in the graysmithy room.
Mei-An is lying in front of me, her eyes now closed and breathing deeply. I feel shattered too. The job is done.
Cullsman #9 Page 11
