by Roman McClay
“You wouldn’t hold it against me, would you?” Blax then asked.
“We all feel this world deeply LT; it’s the price we pay for all our capacities, we feel it all so deeply,” Jack said as he stared away now; that was the most he’d say on it.
“I suppose it keeps us relatively honest,” Blax began, “imagine how bad we’d be if we didn’t feel anything at all. Jesus, they think we’re psychopaths now; imagine.”
“I think you think they think we feel anything at all,” Jack protested with a sentence all full of thinking. “They assume we’re sociopaths. Monsters. Villains of the worst kind.”
“Yeah, I just meant imagine how much more brutal it would get if our amygdalae were as small as our in-group,” he said with a small smirk and led the newly minted Jack Margaux into the house through the 9 x 7.5 bedroom & study. The walls were grey and had built-in shelving that held almost 1,000 books in this 320 square-foot shotgun home, the floor was poured concrete and the murphy bed was up and out of the way as they walked passed it and passed the open bathroom into the kitchen .
The bathroom was built exactly the same as the rest of the small home; a poured concrete sink with black fixtures that came straight out of the wall, a square toilet and a large 4 x 4 shower with troweled, mottled, mortar, too with black fixtures; a rainfall 12in x 12in showerhead above, and a black coiled hose sprayer attached to the wall. It had no glass, and just a half-wall that made up part of the hallway too.
There were 4x6 framed photographs of idiosyncratic images and people and art he had collected over the years; and if one were sagacious enough, one could trace the history of this man from about 24-years-of-age until now just via the images on the walls.
The hallway had a framed poster of Hunter S. Thompson’s foray into politics when he ran for sheriff of Pitkin county in 1970; and there were dozens of golden hyena and coyote and racoon and mountain lion skulls -and a few small mouse skulls too- screwed to the wall with garlands of dried inverted flowers of love lies bleeding and sage and old paint brushes slicked with matte black paint and deep brown wooden ends.
He had painted some of the skulls olive drab with black stenciled Army lettering on them; and some he left bleached white with some foxing along the sutures. Some had lower jaws and long canines, others had these parts missing; but one tiny bobcat skull had the meter-long blonde hair of his last -and it would be his last , he insisted, refusing to even think of The Bust now- his last love’s feral and helix of hair.
It was just one strand wrapped around the dead feline’s prow, so long was it that it circumnavigated the head several times and was in no danger of becoming dislodged. But this demur was a fiction, he had love in his heart each time it beat and in between each time as well.
He hid The Bust from his men; and so even in his thoughts he banished her, pretending that Alexandra would be his last love. Even as he was fused, clearly conjoined with his True Love, he somehow managed to incorporate her by ignoring her, like the sub-cortical mind of modern man.
He pulled two highball glasses from the poured concrete countertop. It was 5-meters in length, 80cm in depth and one meter high, and he filled the glasses with ice that had been sitting in the black bronzed champagne bin; he then poured carbonated water over top of the rocks.
He sliced two thin sheaths of lime and placed one in each glass and handed one to Jack and said, “ice is civilization. That’s why I came .”
Jack One barely smiled and shallowly drank; the bubbles exploding about the face. The smell of fresh lime made it feel like summer even if just under his nose; the winter storm collecting around the looming Spanish Peaks to their north and north west could be seen through the 7x7 double-paned black-framed garage door that ran the opposite wall of the countertop and led into the courtyard between the two shipping containers.
He opened the large door and stepped out onto the concrete patio -it was five meters wide by 13 meters in length- and he looked at the matte grey -Ghost grey- 2014 BMW X6M. It was a vintage car now in 2036 e.v., but it was still nearly perfect in every way, he thought.
This made him want to speak aloud on the job, the task, before them, finally. He had thought it through.
“It would be like blowing up the BMW factory in Germany, where the M series are made; and melting down all the tools and erasing the CAD software and files, and,” Blax paused and looked down and shook his head .
“The terroir will remain.” Jack One reassured him. “The vintners will remain, the back vintages will remain -just with us instead of them- and we will graft and clone the vines from each parcel.”
“The fucking French government will invade Colorado over this,” Blax scoffed at his own half-joke.
“They aren’t going to know anything, it will be blamed on those Islamic fucks; they are notorious for destroying Buddhist statues and Hindu art and on and on. They’ll take the hit which is a two-fer ,” Jack said curtly.
“Of all the shit we’ve had to do, this one gives me the most pause. I seriously think I may throw up over it,” Blax said without grin or grimace.
“We can do it without you; I only need my team anyway, I don’t even need the others and theirs,” Jack said.
“No, that’s the thing, we’re not just doing Margaux ; all the first growths are going; The Jacks are on those,” Blax said as he nodded to them out on patrol.
“Why did I think we were only doing the one?” Jack asked.
“Because Isaiah was still working out the logistics until about 15 minutes ago; that’s when I got the DM. Anyway, each of you will take your bots to each of the Château and I have to co-ordinate shipping logistics; so, I’m going to be on the Gironde with a goddamn barge stacked with Conex boxes five high. It’s going to look like a goddamn Chinese apartment building on the water.”
“Will you be at the Bordeaux port?” Jack One asked.
“No, we’re gonna build a bridge like Caesar across the Rhine when he was fighting the Gauls ; and you guys are going to drive your convoys right over that bridge into the containers and park them inside; those tiny European work trucks fit perfectly in the boxes, each Château will be allowed to carry five trucks, one for each team member.
“Isaiah has the location of the best vintages; he’s sent maps to each of you already; just open the files. He’s listed the total number of OWC that can fit in each truck and marked them, so you guys will just grab the cases that match your dossier he sent.”
“Strong or on the prowl?” Jack asked.
“Night prowl; the security system is all set to be disabled; anyone there, you’ll dispatch and hide; nobody, no winemakers will be there at 0300. Set the charges in the vineyards after everything is loaded; and after you’ve taken cuttings of course,” Blax said with a huff.
“What port are we using stateside?” Jack asked.
“Isaiah will give us a vector once we clear the Gironde ; he has to play-it-by-ear based on AWACKS and any other spies-in-the-sky,” Blax said and placed his hand on the car’s front fender to feel the cool metal below his hot skin of the palm. The knuckle bones rebelled at being stretched taut and pulled back against him.
“If we run into any interference from random law enforcement?” Jack One asked .
“Dispatch them. Man, if we were just jacking the wine I’d have a methuselah sized hard on for this; but the auto-de-fey of the vine stocks and the razing of the Château ? It’s fucking blaspheme,” he said.
“I know you have a more,” Jack was searching for the word, “gestalt , role in all this; I get it and I respect it. But, two things: first, you signed up for all this, you’re not being forced to do anything; and secondly, you could turn your baselines all off and not feel any of this. Why the fuck are you leaving them on?”
“You know as well as me why we,” Blax stressed the we , “need to expound on our feelings; it’s who we are. That’s just prima facia obvious. Secondly, I could turn it all off, yes , but I don’t want to. I’ve said this many times, I must feel th
ings first, even if I ultimately override those emotions. I won’t just check out on my responsibilities. I have a duty to face the reality of what it is we; of what we do.
“Living in some narcotic haze of obliviousness is what tout le monde does; that’s how they can blithely carry on with their fatuous and murderous little lives without any, even a moment, of hesitation or moral quandary. The moral writhing and pain is the whole fucking point, Jack. And I’d caution you to not take the easy fucking way out so often; it attenuates the soul,” Blax pointed at him sternly now.
“The soul’s a sorta fifth wheel to a wagon, eh ?” Jack quoted from what they now called the Good Book. Jack knew that he could always soften his Lt’s pique by quoting The Author.
“Don’t ingratiate yourself with me like that,” Blax said and grinned and reached out and cupped his right hand behind Jack’s neck and squeezed in that affectionate but aggressive alpha manner. “I love you, I adore you; and you’re right more than you’re wrong; shit, you’re right more than me probably. But being right isn’t the only metric of truth; just like being rich isn’t the only way to measure a successful life.
“And this focus on money and things -while for a larger purpose, yes- has an affect on my soul, man. And I never want to lose that feeling of contempt -my deep contempt- for money. I don’t. I cherish it, that contempt, I cherish it like all the artifacts in my life, in my home. You think I feel good when I think -when I see- her hair or a photo from some moment that’s lost? I feel pain, but it’s good pain; it’s the pain of a moral man, a man who cares about more than getting paid or laid. It’s the pain of a man who I respect; even if nobody else respects me for it,” Blax said.
“LT, I respect you; I swear I do. I just don’t want to sit here and say nothing when I know how to fix a problem. Come on, that’s as much who we,” Jack this time emphasizing the we , “are too. Right? We are problem solvers and we lecture people; it’s what we do.” Jack concluded with a smirk.
“I know. This dialectic is necessary even if we both know what the other will say and what the end result will be. Playing it out, saying it out loud helps, I promise you, hearing it all out loud, even when I say not to say it,” Blax chuckled, “helps.”
He looked out over the dark land as evening fell and fell and fell into the ravine to their south.
“Can you -I’ve had the other Jacks blocked, so I can run these parallel processing programs Isaiah sent to me for the ship and OBX-logistics- can you let them run a channel through you; see if they have any other concerns? I just sent them their names, targets and battleplans,” Blax said and sat down -on the massive, black, wooden-beam that sat low on the ground outside the container- and drank his soda water.
“Yeah, Jack said to ask Isaiah about his sea-sickness since we’re going to France, well, since were leaving France on a boat,” Jack One said.
“A ship , and a big ship; he won’t feel a thing and plus, we all get motion sickness. Isaiah said he can’t fix it without ennervating some other cognitive -or- was it some immuno-response? Anyway, the answer is no , take the Bomine or Dramamine like the rest of us. It’s old-school but Isaiah has no answer for it yet. Which Jack was that?” Blax finally asked.
“Which Jack do you think; and why does he get Mouton ? I assume that’s why we’ve all been given these Château names? They match the location of each our targets?” Jack asked as the file from Isaiah populated his coder and thus his mind.
“Yeah, let’s muster in the garage; I’ve got all the logistics downloaded. I can breathe now,” Blax got up and grabbed Jack’s large shoulder and squeezed. He looked inside the container home to the western end’s double paned double doors and saw the painting reflected in it, twice, of course, one just behind the first, hovering like an apparition, lit in a green light; somehow that band of light was alone.
The painting hung on the side of the fridge, eight meters away, it was black and grey and ¾ of his own face, from a younger age. It was callow to him, tenebrous, and it had his asymmetric smirk, and the black scar of worry that ran north and south in the image, but it was absent his real forehead and brow. It was too smooth, too insouciant. He stared at the two images, one in each of the panes of the glass door; and he wondered why the last one, the final one -cloaked in that green light- seemed not just behind and right justified, but seemed larger and both above and below his brother of reflection; he turned all the way around and looked at the original painting on the side of the black fridge and noticed its own reflection in the glass of the image’s frame.
They gathered back around as Jack One sent DMs to them all requesting a muster ASAP. And as they huddled Blax began handing out their new implants.
“Margaux , Lafite , that’s mine,” he kept that one for himself, then saying, “and Château Mouton , Jack Latour and Mr. Haut Brion .” He said this in a sing-songy way as he passed out new updates to their PGCs; they each swallowed the capsules as they were received.
“LT, you hitting Lafite and doing the exfiltration too? Seems heavy,” Jack Four -Jack Mouton- asked.
“Heavy,” Blax said, “is right.”
“Roger that LT,” Jack Two -Jack Haut Brion for this job- said and placed his hand on the shoulder of Jack Mouton; squeezing it and then cupping it behind his thick neck.
“I worry too much, I know,” Jack Four said, “but someone has to worry about these things; sometimes you guys are all balls and no brains.”
“How’s everyone’s catalytic and CNS function reports; has Isaiah signed off on everyone yet?” Blax, the one they called LT -it stood for Fate’s Lieutenant - asked.
“Five by five,” they all said in unison; this speaking all at once was a game they liked to play .
Blax just looked up at them -these four men, built just like him, maybe slightly bigger, not that he’d ever admit that- standing just like him, well, a younger him, he thought, without the crease that vivisected his forehead from the furrowed brow of doom as they called it, without the back and neck injuries that made him brace himself just slightly or compensate with posture from time to time- he looked at them and smiled at their martial games. The sound of their voices in concert with one another was sonorous to him, and the poetry in it -both form and content- warmed him.
These last couple of years had given him something he had never had, and he was still adjusting to the pleasures of it. They were 16 in body now; 20 -maybe 21- morphologically. And here he was at 62 years of age, he thought. It was the first time he had had anyone -much less four people- who had understood one word he had said, one thought he had expressed, one feeling he had wrestled or been ebullient with, or had one instinct in which he had found a resonant echo in nature besides the mute and mysterious beasts of the forest. Well, the first time he’d had men understand him , he modified and thought of The Bust out there in the wilderness somewhere.
The age of just 16 , he thought again. Of course, everything was so augmented and compressed now they all had downloaded the haptic and heuristic -as well as technical- knowledge it had taken him decades to acquire; so, they were very competent; he didn’t overly concern himself with that part. It was the intangibles; the poetry of life, the nuances of loyalty and a man’s motivation, he thought.
Sure, they all shared his DNA, had been educated more or less correctly and had been screened from thousands who had his genome for the right disposition, but, like Jack Four, he worried. He too worried they were all balls and no brains; and in fact - he then thought- they made a virtue of this . They had a confidence he lacked; they had not failed the way he had failed; they had a father, in him, that he had not had. It showed on their faces, in their gaits, in their bravura. That is what a real father does, he thought, he encourages you while demanding that you be your best. And when you achieve it he is proud of you and says fucking so. This is what builds great men.
He wanted to get out of this suit , he then thought. He pulled at the neck, began taking off the tie and jacket as he walked inside his narrow home.
The dinner had gone long , he thought of Jack Ma, and how he had claimed to have been the only 1 of 30 applicants rejected by the Chinese Police, and that this now seemed untrue to Blax. He felt that Isaiah’s instincts about Ma were right; all in an instant, out of the blue, that one comment had made it all seem like the man was obviously working for the Chinese government. Blax ruminated -again- on if he had accomplished what they wanted, and, Jesus, the flight home was longer than the dinner.
He wanted out of this suit.
He saw the black ink on gray paper that was tacked to the gray wall just above his tattoo machines and read it to himself, I stand for the heart. To the dogs with the head! I had rather be a fool with a heart than Jupiter Olympus with his head .
0. A Drop of Blood
Each of us must be tempered in some fire. Nobody had more to do with choosing the fire that tempered me than myself, and instead of finding fault with the fire I give thanks that I had the mettle to take it and hold it
You can’t Win [Black, Jack]
Whereas vines grew best when they were made to suffer
Wine & War [Kladstrup, Don & Petie]
It is only because we have forgotten that we can now and then return to the person we once were, envisaging things as that person did, be hurt again, because we are not ourselves anymore, but someone else, who once loved something that we no longer care about… the past becomes irrecoverable. Or, rather, it would be irrecoverable, were it not that a few words had been carefully put away and forgotten against the day when it may become unobtainable
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower [Proust, Marcel]
I. 2036 e.v.
“This,” he bowed as he spoke to introduce the meal, “gentlemen, is a Perigod foie gras , and I’ve paired it with the Viognier from Caduceus , and a short-glass of Château d’Yquem that I’ve pulled from the cellar. I know you -as I- do not have a much a sweet tooth, but notice the richness, the unctuousness of that foie gras with the Sauternes wine and then the apricot and lime zest, the pleasant steel and nimbus of smoke on the finish. Let it rest as you take in the presentation of the open breast, the basil from our own garden, the goat cheese made by Jack, with mere milk, unpasteurized, rennet, and a warm outdoor sun-oven.
