The Destiny Machine

by J L Aarne

  Sabra spreads his hands and takes a mocking bow. “And here I am,” he says. “Chased but never brought to bay. And there you sit and I’m here to accept your surrender.”

  Flowers smiles faintly. “You talk a good game,” he says. “People like you. It’s why I never caught you.”

  Aarom can’t help feeling like a redundant observer in this situation. He stays by the door and watches, allowing them their moment. There’s no threat here. The flag was a genuine summons. In another time, on a real battlefield, it would have been white.

  “You would have made a better homicide detective, I think,” Sabra tells him. “You’re a man—literally and figuratively—out of time.”

  Flowers nods thoughtfully. “I don’t like you,” he says. “Just so we’re clear. You never would have fooled me.”

  Sabra tilts his head to one side, considering it. “How would you know?” he asks. “We—neither of us—will ever really know. Oh well. Are you ready?”

  “Said I was, didn’t I?”

  “Yes. And I don’t mind saying, sir, it’ll be my pleasure.”

  Flowers puts his hand out palm up for Sabra to take. “We better get this over with then before you go and shoot your load all over yourself,” he says.

  Sabra laughs and Marion Flowers might not like him, but Sabra likes the police chief more than he expected to. He walks over to the table and slaps his palm into Flowers’s hand like they’re going to shake.

  Flowers’s eyes snap open wide and he goes rigid in his chair. His eyes stare at nothing, blind to everything before him, and he looks into the schism of time and space on the other side of the bridge Sabra builds around him with his knowledge of all the things that never were and never will be. He gasps and appears to be in excruciating pain.

  Then before Sabra can begin his story, something unexpected happens. Flowers’s eyes focus and he looks down at his hand in Sabra’s, up the length of his arm to his face and he’s seeing them both. Aarom doesn’t know how he knows, but Flowers is seeing through the door Sabra opened for him, he’s on the edge of that bridge, and he’s also seeing Sabra standing there with him in his kitchen. Sabra’s eyes widen with shock and understanding and it is Flowers who takes his hand back and breaks the connection.

  He is filled to the brim with jittery energy for a moment. Then he collapses back in his chair like a paper doll in the rain and nearly slides to the floor before Sabra jumps forward to catch him. He’s conscious, but barely and he’s delirious like he has a bad fever.

  “The sky is red,” Flowers murmurs.

  “I know. It’s not always red, but I know,” Sabra tells him.

  He waves for Aarom to come assist him. They help Flowers into his living room and sit him down on the sofa. He pants for breath like he’s run for miles at a sprint and Aarom remembers feeling that way when it happened to him, too. It takes as much out of them as they take from it when, despite all the odds, they don’t die. He remembers that and, following on the heels of that feeling, an overwhelming sensation of melting despair.

  “Are you all right?” Aarom asks him.

  Flowers rolls his eyes up to look at him and regards Aarom with confusion. He’s seen him with Sabra and known all along that he was there, but he stares at him like he is trying to make sense of him. “What happened?” he asks.

  “Don’t you remember?” Aarom asks.

  “I don’t think…” He licks his lips and swallows. “I didn’t die. Did I?”

  “No,” Sabra says. “You didn’t die.”

  “What does that mean?” Flowers asks.

  “What do you think it means?” Sabra asks. He palms his sickle knife from the inside pocket of his coat and wiggles it before Flowers’s eyes. “This is going to hurt.”

  Before Flowers can move, Sabra’s hand flashes out, the knife flicks, cuts a crescent into the back of Flowers’s hand. Sabra flips the flap of skin up with the tip of the knife and when he stands up, Marion Flowers’s interface chip is resting on the blade, fine hairs of nanofibers dangling from it and already withering.

  “Shit!” Flowers smacks his other hand over the wound and jerks up, pain galvanizing him for the moment. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m killing you. I should think that was obvious,” Sabra says. “Now watch closely.”

  He puts the chip on the edge of the end table near Flowers so he can see what he’s doing, turns the blade of his knife over it and slowly presses down. The hot blade crushes and melts the chip. When he lifts it away, the chip is a small silver and silicone smear on the metal tabletop.

  Sabra scrapes the melted chip off the table, wipes the knife on a cloth and returns it to his pocket. Flowers is shaking again. The pain is unimaginable, Aarom knows. It’s hard to believe that it’s something a human being can endure and not lose consciousness, but they usually don’t. It’s not over either. The nanofibers are dying and the pain moving through his body will soon reach his spine. Then it will reach his brain and then he will pass out.

  “Aarom, get the flag,” Sabra says.

  Aarom leaves them there and goes to the kitchen to retrieve the black flag from the window. This hasn’t happened as they expected, so the flag doesn’t get left behind as a suicide note for Flowers’s loved ones and the authorities. Aarom folds it and puts it in his pocket.

  Back in the living room, Sabra has filled a little lancet syringe with sunshine and he’s leaning over Flowers to shoot it into his arm. He doesn’t use a tourniquet, but the veins in Flowers’s forearms are big and stick out on their own.

  “Never done that shit before,” Flowers says through gritted teeth. “Guess there’s a lot of firsts for me tonight though.”

  “This will make you feel better,” Sabra says.

  What he doesn’t tell him is that it’ll make him feel almost nothing for many hours and when he wakes up, he’ll be somewhere else. He doesn’t tell him that sunshine will help along the natural process of killing the nanofibers because a cop like Flowers should already know that, no matter where his head is at the moment. Sunshine has recreational uses now, but it was originally invented in an underground lab by rebel scientists to disable and fry interface ID chips. It still will, but the original problem with it remains: in order for it to work that way, the average person has to take so much that it brings them dangerously close to fatal overdose.

  Flowers licks his lips and makes a sound in his throat that is part surprise and part borderline sexual pleasure. Aarom chuffs soft, amused laughter at the sight. He remembers that too; his first time on the shine. Right now Flowers’s head feels like it’s full of soft focus rainbows, his skin is so pleasure sensitive that if someone bit one of his fingers off he’d come in his pants and he is so completely introspective that from one moment to the next he believes the universe is revealing to him it’s most sacred secrets. It is doubtful he will feel any more pain until he wakes up.

  “Let’s find his car keys and get him out of here before the machine alerts them about the dead chip,” Sabra says.

  Flowers is still sort of awake. He raises his hand like a child who knows the answer. “No key,” he says. “Retinal scan and voice recognition.”

  “Excellent,” Sabra says. “Don’t fall asleep on us yet then, Chief.”

  He bends down to put an arm around Flower’s waist and haul him off the sofa. Aarom goes to his other side and they half carry the man out of the house to the car. They lay Flowers across the back seat and Sabra pulls out his knife again to deactivate and destroy the GPS system installed in the dash. The car spits sparks in protest, but it’s quickly done and he leans over the seat to prod Flowers.

  “Come on, just this one more little thing and you can nod off,” Sabra says. “I’ll even carry you inside when we get there and put you to bed.”

  Flowers pulls himself up and leans out over the console divider. “Press the… the thing,” he says.

  Sabra punches the green button on the dash and a green scanner light hits F
lowers in the right eye, pans across his face twice and blinks out. A calm female computer voice says, “Name, please.”

  “Marion Thaddeus Flowers.”

  The car starts and the lights on the dash come to life. The computer begins to tell them the weather report, latest news updates, traffic report for their area and Sabra turns it off.

  “Thaddeus?” Sabra says.

  “Yeah,” Flowers says.

  Aarom laughs. “Sorry,” he says, and he bites it back down. “Sabra, I’m going home.”

  “You want me to drive you?” Sabra asks.

  “The two of us and the missing and assumed dead chief of police in the same car?” Aarom says. “I’ll take my chances on the street.”

  “All right,” Sabra says. He leans out the window and reaches to give a flap of Aarom’s coat a tug. Aarom leans down to peer in at him and Sabra kisses him. It’s a goodbye kiss and it’s quick. “Be careful. I’ll see you later.”

  “You be careful,” Aarom says.

  He walks behind the car and holds the gate open for Sabra to back it out before he closes it. Then he walks back toward the high-rises and apartment complexes. He can see the bridge over the river as the road dips and he’s walking down it as a night train goes over the water, the lights along the sides of the cars streaming like neon tracers in the dark. Before he reaches the train station, he pulls back the strip of cosmetic tape on the back of his hand, removes the Lawrence Martin proxy chip and replaces it with the new one Sabra gave him. Sebastian Burge buys a ticket back across the river on the night train.

  10.

  Chief of Police Marion Flowers has been officially dead a week when Aarom is walking down Jonathan’s street and he sees the flag hanging. At first he thinks it’s hanging in the window of one of Jonathan’s neighbors. He stares at the house for a long time and doesn’t move. He is sure he doesn’t even breathe. He knows it’s Jonathan’s house, Jonathan’s window, Jonathan’s flag, but his mind refuses to believe what his eyes are seeing for several minutes. It can’t be. They talked about this. It’s not possible. Jonathan is the most happy and alive person Aarom knows. Jonathan wouldn’t do such a thing.

  But he would. Aarom knows he would. That he has. The talk they’d had about it hadn’t ended in his favor. He hadn’t won that fight. Jonathan hadn’t done it right away, but he is doing it now.

  “No,” Aarom says. His voice, strained and pathetically pleading, startles him enough to get him moving again. “No,” he repeats as he crosses to the other side of the street and goes up the walk. “No, no, no, no, no.”

  The door is open because they always leave their doors open. Jonathan is waiting for him in a comfortable easy chair. He’s drinking scotch from a crystal lowball glass and waiting. When he sees Aarom, he looks him in the eyes and finishes his drink.

  “Jonathan—”

  “I knew it would be you,” Jonathan says.

  Aarom starts to go to him and sit, but he changes his mind, unsure what the right thing to do or say in this situation is. He stands there feeling helpless and lost, his mind racing in circles.

  “Of course you knew it would be me,” Aarom says. “What are you doing?”

  Jonathan rolls one hand in a vague way and shrugs. “Oh, you know.”

  “No,” Aarom snaps. “I told you no. I told you already that I won’t do it.”

  “That seems rather unprofessional of you.”

  “I don’t give a fuck how unprofessional it seems to you. I said no.”

  Jonathan stands and crosses his arms over his chest. “And you get to have the last word. This is all about you, huh, Aarom?”

  Aarom pinches the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb and tries to be calm or at least not to shout. “I didn’t say that. That’s not what I meant. Jonathan, please.”

  “It’s good enough for you, but not for me?”

  “You die. There’s nothing good or bad about it, it just is. You die and you’re gone and I know what’s over there, so I know how it works. They almost never go easy. They die bloody, sick, starving and in pain. Their throats are ripped out. They curl up to sleep and freeze or pass away with empty bellies. Other starving people capture them and eat them after spending a long time raping them. You cannot possibly be angry with me for not wanting that for you.”

  Jonathan steps around the coffee table and walks toward him and Aarom retreats a step before he makes himself stop and stand still. A smile that is almost teasing touches Jonathan’s lips, but the situation is not funny and there is too much strain between them for happiness, so it looks cruel.

  “I don’t care,” he says. “I don’t care. I told you. I’m not afraid. I am not afraid. It’s you that’s afraid of death, not me. Not even your own death scares you; it’s mine that does it. Tell me about that, Aarom.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Aarom says. “You’re my friend. I don’t want you to die. There’s nothing strange about it.”

  Jonathan stares at him until Aarom is tempted to fidget and look away. “You’re such a liar,” he says. “I used to not think so, but then I used to be so clueless, too. I think you tell the worst lies to yourself though. You’re doing it to yourself, don’t you see that?”

  “Doing what?” Aarom asks.

  Jonathan puts out a hand to touch him and Aarom twists out of his reach. “That,” he says simply. “You do it all to yourself. And I’m tired. Don’t flatter yourself and think I’m doing it for you or in spite of you. I’m doing it for me. That great big emptiness, it’s inside of me now, too, and I can’t think of a single reason to stay.”

  “Jonathan, please don’t do this,” Aarom says. “Don’t make me do this.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because.” Aarom swallows and lets his guard down a little more. Just enough to give him a little bit of the truth. “I need you.”

  Jonathan goes still and his eyes fix on Aarom’s face, intense and demanding. “Why?” he asks softly. “Why do you need me?”

  Aarom raises shaking hands to his face and presses the heels of his palms to his eyes. He’s going to cry in a minute, he can feel it coming, a stinging pressure behind his eyes. If he says nothing, Jonathan will do it and he’ll leave him. He’ll leave angry and sad and not the way Aarom has known him all these years, but that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is that Aarom will remember him dying. His horrible death in some other divergent and destroyed world will be painted on the backs of his eyelids every time he closes them for the rest of his life. If he tells Jonathan what he wants to hear and gives him his answer, he might still lose him, but he is less and less convinced that Jonathan’s rejection will be derisive laughter or stem from a lack of interest and similar emotion.

  But there’s hope in that. Hope; the most seductive and atrocious of evils.

  He can still choose death no matter what Aarom confesses and that would somehow be worse.

  Aarom drops his hands to his sides, defeated, and returns Jonathan’s stare. He takes a breath, licks his lips and says, “I love you. I’ve loved you… forever. My whole life, I think. So, I need you. I would rather cut off my own hands than do what you’re asking me to do.”

  Jonathan’s expression softens, but his voice is still hard when he says, “But what good is your love to me this way?”

  Aarom shakes his head. He doesn’t know and he doesn’t know what to do and he can feel the tiny light of hope he’d been clinging to being blown out as he continues to say nothing. What is there to say? He’s given him everything. Those three little words, the three most overused and abused words in the English language—in any language—that mean everything, that mean worlds when they’re meant as he means them. If it’s not enough, then there’s nothing else. There is no bigger gun for him to pull out.

  “Come here,” Jonathan says.

  Aarom hesitates and Jonathan crooks a finger. He goes to him, but cautiously. Jonathan keeps his hands down by his sides, but he leans in close until Aarom becomes uneasy and i
s on the verge of shying away like a half-tamed animal. Jonathan watches him do it and smiles.

  “I love you, too,” he whispers.

  Aarom’s eyes narrow and he searches his face for any hint of mockery, but he doesn’t find it. He doesn’t quite believe he heard him right either. Or perhaps Jonathan doesn’t mean it the way Aarom means it. It seems like quite the unlikely coincidence.

  “What did you say?” Aarom asks.

  “I love you,” Jonathan repeats. “If you weren’t such a dumbass sometimes, you’d know it, too.”

  “You do?” Aarom says. “Are you just saying that because—”

  “I’m saying it because it’s true. So, what are you going to do about it?”

  Aarom knows what he wants to do about it, but he can’t. That hasn’t changed. “I don’t know,” he says. “I still can’t… I’m still me. You could still die. It doesn’t change that.”

  Jonathan listens to him and nods solemnly. For a second, it’s like he’s truly agreeing with Aarom. Then he moves quickly, faster than Aarom can retreat from him, grabs both of his hands tightly and jerks him toward him. “One for the road then,” he says, and kisses Aarom, silencing his fearful protests.

  It happens in a blink, like the single flap of a hummingbird’s wings, and in that instant Aarom isn’t in control of it and the contact of his skin with Jonathan’s cracks the door open. The kiss, the slide of Jonathan’s tongue over his teeth into his mouth and the shocking thrill of desire that slams into him like a hard punch blows that door open wide into nevermore, but Jonathan isn’t dropped into it to go crashing to the bottom alone. This time, Aarom is pulled in with him and they fall together.

  Their lives are twined together like snakes in a basket. They’re thirteen when the first bomb falls on American soil, but their parents have joined a caravan already going inland to escape the ravages of natural disasters along the coast, so they are not hurt by them. They see the clouds from hundreds of miles away as the sky goes dark with ashes, but they’re safely out of range of the blasts. Everyone back home is dead.