by Lee
“They cannot know it, but the atmosphere of this planet will be ruined in less than five years unless drastic measures are taken into consideration, and quickly.”
“Well,” Chad said, staring at a few Latelians with the unconscionable indecency to stare back, “lucky for us, we ain’t in charge of the weather, is we? Oy, why d’you suppose these twats is starin’ at us?”
“Chances are it is either because you are naked and walking in the rain or because you are talking to yourself out loud. Some small percentage may be staring because of a combination of the two.”
Chad stopped, head tilted to one side. Talking to themselves? They replayed the last ten minutes back in their mind. As always when they accessed internal footage of their activities, it was like watching a holo-feed of themselves from a high up vantage point. There they was, coming to inside the wreckage of the trashed van, naked and glorious as a fallen angel and there they was … talking to themselves.
Naturally, they’d long since known they talked to themselves. Else they wouldn’t’ve known to pay special caution and heed when around other people; fuzzing out for a mo or two and then coming back into the conversational fray amidst an awkward silence or a corpse were generally the only signs that The Voice had had it’s way. As a professional, Chad had learned to cope with those embarrassing moments with aplomb and by being unusually careful with what they said.
This was, however, the first time they’d ever directly interacted with The Voice. It simply made it’s demands known through pictures, pictures involving much bloodshed and/or carnage, but beggars couldn’t be choosers; it had always been simpler and more expedient to give The Voice it’s pound of flesh and pint of blood when it got to the point where drugs failed to keep the savage murderer silent.
Chad was personally quite happy that there was a second person inside their heads. It made them feel better about some of the awful things they’d gotten themselves up to.
Bizarrely, the Voice wasn’t howling for blood, demanded no flesh. They’d already walked by no less than fifteen morally prudish Latelians –all of whom had been outraged that someone of such perfection should walk near them in all their nude glory- and it hadn’t once suggested that there needed to be a head jammed onto a surveillance pole or guts strewn across a bog-standard Sheet Extruder.
The FrancoBritish assassin resumed their leisurely stroll through the rain, ideas ticking over in their brain. “Well then, why is we not … We dunno, fightin’ or shoutin’ or killin’ somefin’? We is always at odds, yeah?”
“Typically this is so.” The Voice paused, considering. “We haven’t felt right since entering this solar system.”
“Too fuckin’ right, mate, too fuckin’ right on that!” Chad spat. Latelyspace. Bloody damned bizarre solar system. Chad figured Trinity was right on the money when It chose to ignore the place. Full of mutant soldiers and idiotic, gormless twats. There was no middle ground.
Idly, they said, “So, now we is communicatin’ on a more formal and respectful-like level and all that, how about we go and let us talk more normal?”
“I don’t follow.”
“Well,” Chad said, indicating themself, “we certainly don’t talk like this normally, does we? All the accents and what-not. It’s humiliatin’, it is. We’ve looked, yeah? In all these history books, television shows, and all sorts of fings like that, yeah, done some diggin’ about, risked our life in quite a few spots to ‘ave a gander at history books and what-not that Trinity might not like anyone readin’ through, right? Does you know what we was findin’?” Chad thought about those adventures. My, they had had some times in the pursuit of understanding their madness.
“I am afraid I do not. I was buried under narcotics.”
A pregnant silence ensued. Chad supposed they should feel embarrassed by the methods they’d used to keep The Voice at bay, especially –at least for the moment- since it seemed to be an all right fella, but they couldn’t; ordinary crazy people did not have a second voice inside their head making them even crazier. It was unfair.
Ever the soul of decorum, Chad glossed over the bit of embarrassment. “Wot we was findin’, mate, was that no one, ever, in the history of the universe since Trinity was takin’ over, has ever talked like this. Like we. Like me. Fuckin’ ‘ell, ‘ow long ‘ave we … I … been referrin’ to ourselves as we? Fuck me. You know what we is askin’. Twat.”
“You have been referring to yourself as ‘we’ since you woke up, Chad.”
“Yeah, well,” Chad started hotly, “just so you is understandin’, we is me, not us. And, like we was sayin’ before we interrupted ourselves, no one talks like this. Not a single person. We’ve visited worlds that are all FrancoBritish, right? Done tours and fings, cos we was finkin’, right, that since we is obviously talking some sort of old-fashioned lingo, somewhere out there in the great inky dark would be a planet somewhere where some silly old twat as fuckin’ sounds like me. Care to guess wot we is learnin’ on our great big travel?”
The Hotel loomed up ahead. Chad wrinkled their nose. It was far below their standards, but they weren’t in the mood to argue. They was tired of being rained on and the crap falling from the sky had more or less covered their magnificent body in grime and soot from dead and burned people. They hoped no one they knew saw them like this.
“I assume that your further adventures resulted in no answers.”
Chad stopped in their tracks and tried to come up with a way of looking at themselves with a look of disgust on their face. Short of confronting the intensely irritating master of understatement that was the second brain inside them in a mirror, Chad resorted to other means; they smacked themselves in the side of the head.
A burly Latelian warehouse worker, used to some pretty bizarre stuff –living as he did in Port City- took one look at the naked FrancoBrit smacking himself in the side of the head and hurried across the street.
“What d’yer fink, mate?” Chad demanded crankily, resuming their trek. “Of course there was no answers, was there. Well, all right, there was sort of an answer. We is learnin’ that not one single person anywhere ‘as talked this way since ever, mate. Lit’rally ever. During that same wanderjahr, right, we was findin’ out that not only are we … am I … home to a dead accent so dead it doesn’t even count anymore, we is home to several dead accents. Which don’t make no sense at all. Which means…”
“What, exactly? That we … I … am responsible for the way you speak?”
Chad nodded fervently. “As the you in this we, it is obvious to us that you, being the added crazy in our brain, are responsible. We was not talkin’ this way before you came strollin’ along, courtesy of those Offworlder buggers. Quid pro quo.”
“I believe you mean ‘ipso facto’.”
“Wot?”
“Quid pro quo means ‘an exchange’. Ipso facto means ‘by the fact itself’, which fits.”
Chad uttered a high-pitched ‘ooooh’ sound and fluttered their hands. “Aren’t we the wordsmith? Fancypants. Look, our fuckin’ point is this, mate. You is makin’ us talk this way, you can just bloody well stop it. We is tired of people askin’ us wot’s wrong wiv our mouth. It’s quite difficult enough to be a misunderstood artist wivvout having a language barrier. Entirely the wrong sort of quirk for what we does for a livin’, yeah?”
“I am not directly responsible for how you speak, Chad.” The Voice paused while Chad spent a few minutes shouting incoherently at a garbage can. When Chad straightened and continued heading resolutely towards the Hotel, it continued. “The accents you speak in are a direct result of the … ‘Offworld’ modifications made to your cybernetic systems, so to speak, but do not spring from my presence.”
Narrowing their eyes thoughtfully, Chad bowed deeply to a cluster of Latelians waiting to cross the street. They wanted to apologize for their nudity, but didn’t quite trust anything sincere to come out of their gob at the moment; it was obvious from the way they refused to make eye contact that they’
d heard at least the tail-end of the argument and were reluctant to involve themselves. They supposed it was fair. No one liked intruding in another man’s spat. Nude only served to make things even more awkward.
“Well, then,” Chad whispered out the side of their mouth, “if you is not responsible –and we is not believin’ a word you is sayin’, mind, we is just playin’ along- wot is?”
The Voice took a deep breath. “When you were remade, it was for a purpose. Part of that purpose required certain … existential connections stretching throughout time, space, and causality to be created. The glorious effort required to forge you into what you have become threatened the existence of an order thousands upon thousands of years old.”
“Wot?”
“You are not merely you, Chadsik al-Taryin; you are all the you’s you could have ever been.” The Voice smiled. “You are unique. In all Existence, there is only one man greater. The glory and power of all those separate Chads, bound into one body. Miraculous, is it not?”
Chad raised a hand to slow the conversation down, mind ticking through the different points The Voice had raised. “Let us get this straight, sonny Jim. You is sayin’ We is some sort of dimensional echo of myself? Like we is lookin’ through one of those mirror things? Where you stand there and wiggle your ‘and about and you can see ‘undreds of your ‘and doin’ the same fing, only you is certain the very last fella as is wigglin’ ‘is ‘and is actually flippin’ you the bird? All crammed inside ‘ere?” They rapped the side of their head.
“Precisely.”
“So, erm, what me mam was sayin’ is true, then. We is a special little boy.”
“Indeed you are, Chadsik al-Taryin. Very special. And the purpose for which you have been reborn is wondrous.”
Chad stopped and considered the Hotel that The Voice had led them to, nose wrinkling a second time; the assassin recalled that this was the place where their Job had stayed for a short time. Their nose wrinkled again.
Only legally allowed to house Offworld ‘guests’ because everyone considered Offworlders to be subhuman, Hotel Hospitalis had been a shambles during Garth Nickels’ stay; Since the end of the Offworld portion of the Game, it had fallen on harder times still; one entire side of ‘Hot Spit’ was blackened and charred from, if Chad was any guess, actual mortar fire. The cyborg assassin slapped a thigh at that. Following the revelation that not one of them would be permitted anywhere near the Latelian Box, it was obvious the pack of thugs and goons had chosen to riot. Ridiculous.
The pale-haired assassin shrugged. That was what you got when you invited actual mercenaries and cybernetically enhanced, maladapted psychopaths into your system. Chad wondered if any of those rioters had managed to leave or if the illustrious Chairwoman had just gone and dug a mass grave.
They nodded. A mass grave was cheaper, easier, less hassle. Wasn’t it?
Something was niggling at Chad. “So, erm, if you is not mindin’ us askin’, wot is the fuckin’ point of you bein’ in ‘ere wiv us? Since we’ve all got ourselves runnin’ around inside here already?”
“We … I … am here to guide you along the Path to Enlightningment.”
Chad sounded that last word out slowly. “You is makin’ that word up.”
“That word is a most holy word and is thirty thousand years old, Chadsik.”
“It’s still a made up word, mate. It could be a hundred million years old and have fancy little doodads atop some of the vowels, it ain’t make it more official sounding. Cor, what a word. ‘Enlightningment’.” Chad spat. “Right. We is not havin’ any more discussions of the sort you is attemptin’ to angle us towards, yeah? We is not terribly religious an’ it is more than a little disturbin’ to us that you, who, until we is seein’ some sort o’ tangible proof of your actual, separate existence, is. Before we is walkin’ into this shithole, we is needin’ to get something straight, though.”
“What is that?”
“We is not killin’ anyone else except for Garth Nickels.” There. They’d said it. Rude or not, impolite or not, Chad couldn’t stand the thought of killing anyone else. The body count on Hospitalis wasn’t technically too terrible –excluding all the God soldiers in The Museum … all that was Garth Bloody Nickels’ fault- but there was, by their count, three too many uninvolved Latelian corpses on their hands.
“We … I … haven’t killed anyone.”
The sentiment behind the statement, the earnestness in the utterance, drew Chad up short. Their forehead beetled in confusion and they even had to run a hand through their pale, straw-colored hair. “We ‘ate to be a bovver, my son, but there was quite a bit of stric’ly unnecessary murderin’. We is talkin’ about the two agents, right, and that ‘amilton fella-me-lad? Does you not remember takin’ over and doin’ all sorts of fings to ‘em, leavin’ us to tidy up afterwards? It’s very rude, you know. It’s quite difficult to come up wiv an interestin’ death for the bloke we’ve been ‘ired to terminate as it is. Coming to and finding a fuckin’ head stuck over a fist and bein’ required to art fings up is just … awful. And Barnes, well, that was just messy all over, right?”
“Let me ask you a question, Chad. If nothing but you is real, how can anything you do be a crime? Put another way, if no one is real, is there a murder?”
Chad stared at their reflection in the windows set into the door of the Hotel for a good, long moment. They waited to see if The Voice would give them a silly grin and a wink as if to say ‘nah, mate, just fuckin’ with ya’, but nothing happened. They looked at The Voice and The Voice looked back.
“Christ in a teacup, mate, you’re fuckin’ insane. Fuckin’. Insane. You put the Mad Goth King Blake to shame, you do. ‘No one is real’. We is bloody real, ain’t we? We is standin’ ‘ere talkin’ to myself like a fuckin’ knob, right enough, but we is real.”
“This … domain we exist in is Unreal.” The Voice repeated with insurmountable calm, “It … it is a preliminary step towards Reality drawn out long past its own conclusion. None of this was meant to be and yet it is. None of us is real, save yourself and one other man. He is …”
“Look, sonny Jim,” Chad interrupted rudely, “We is not give a fuck who ‘e is. We is sayin’, an’ kindly pay the fuck attention, we is not killin’ anyone else. Just Garth Nickels. If you is getting’ excitable on the subject, consider that you is in us and not the other fuckin’ way twisted, all right? We is drivin’ this stupid cybernetic bus. No one else and we swear if you bring up the idea of people not bein’ real again, we is finding a microwave oven and we will see what’s real and what’s not. Understand?”
The assassin paused for a moment, wondering what in the bloody hell a microwave was before lacing into the Voice a second time. “And if you bring up that stupid fuckin’ word again, there will be problems. We is not certain what they might involve as we is just rememberin’ that microwaves don’t exist anymore, but rest assured. Problems. With a capital Trouble.”
“By all means, Chad. As you so adroitly pointed out, you are indeed driving the bus.”
Chad smiled at The Voice’s discomfort. If they’d known all along that all they needed to do was have firm words with the crazy thing, well, they’d’ve done so long ago. Naturally, this would have in no way prevented or reduced the narcotic intake because drugs are fun and they liked to let their hair down like the next fella. “Good. We is agreed. No more killin’.”
xxx
Mijomi heard the door to the outside world open and close. Without bothering to look over her shoulder, she said, “We’re closed. Go away. Garth Nickels doesn’t stay here anymore. He’s busy reaping the rewards of murdering innocent Latelians in Central.”
“We … fuckin’ ‘ell, mate, around other people? … Christ. I is like to rent a room.”
Mijomi turned around slowly. She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully at the pale nude man standing just inside the door, dripping dirty water onto the floor. Her free hand twitched towards her prote. There was no way she was dealing with
a naked man who sounded like a foreigner but was as tall as a Latelian. Her hand was almost close enough to touch the call for help when she realized the appendage wasn’t going anywhere.
“’s a bit rude, isn’t it? Callin’ for the cops like that, straightaway? I could’ve been robbed or mugged or wotever it is you people call it.”
Mijomi blinked. Either she was hallucinating or the naked, oddly accented stranger had covered the distance between the desk and the front doors in about the same time it took to breath. He stood there, placidly holding her free hand against the wood of the desk. A brief flirtation with attempting to free herself revealed an inhuman strength.
And he was talking to himself, under his breath, in at least two different accents.
“We’re closed.” Mijomi said at last.
“If you were closed, the doors would not have opened.” One of The Voices said.
“Damn it, mate, we is doin’ the talkin’. You is like a silent, murder-y partner.” Chad looked apologetically at Mijomi, who was perhaps the ugliest woman they had ever seen on a human planet. It wasn’t that she was physically damaged or honest-to-goodness disfigured or anything like that. It was more that everything about the woman was slightly off-kilter somehow. “Erm, could you look just slightly off to the left, please? We is findin’ you makin’ eye contact somewhat … unwelcome.”
“She’s not real.”
Chad cleared their throat. Some people. “Wot was we just sayin’? Like, three minutes ago?”
“She’s pointing a gun at you.”
Chad looked at the gun pointed at their eye. “I know. We can see it. It’s right bloody there. The cheek. Now,” the assassin resumed, operating the woman’s proteus with their left hand, much to her shocked, vehement outrage, “as much as we is ‘atin’ it, my friend is entirely correct. If this place was closed, the doors wouldn’t ‘ave opened. It’s not … look, luv, you’re going to do yourself some damage if you persist in flailing about like that, honestly, don’t be ridiculous … that hard a concept to imagine. Doors locked, you is closed. Doors open, you is … erm … open.”
