Citizen Pariah (Unreal Universe Book 3)

by Lee

  The Voice found that if it spoke slowly and with great concentration, it was able to refer to itself as it was. “That was an accident. One that no one had any control over. The King’s influence over you was quite … unpredictable. The Savior Protocols and the ADAM sequencing shattered you further. You have healed.”

  Chad nodded. “’course. We is Chad. Chad is capable of anyfing we set our minds to.” They shifted to get comfortable. Knockin’ about naked wasn’t bad. Maybe their previous exposure had been awkward on account of the rain. “Chad is all.”

  “You must kill Garth Nickels and return to us.”

  “And who is ‘us’, exactly?” Chad had been trying to learn that for themselves since coming, but the portion of their brain that thought of itself as ‘The Voice’ was still infuriatingly beyond their ability to pierce. When they considered that part of their brain, they invariably imagined it as a very heavily padlocked book. “We is changin’ our minds, so you might as well tell Chad. Start wiv yourself.”

  “We … I am an iteration of The Harmony, a conscious thought-node stemming from the Unwritten Scriptures that are a part of the Path to Enlightningment.”

  “Fuck me, mate, religion?”

  “Of a sort.” The Voice admitted. “I am an independent entity, a … a guide designed to lead you down the Path to your true self.”

  “Cor, you weren’t jokin’ about wiv that word ‘savior’ was you?” Chad imagined themselves as ‘savior’ for a bit. Running around saying holy things and giving people benedictions. It sounded like a lot of effort. They shook their head. “Go on, you daft bugger. Wot is the Unwritten Scriptures and The Harmony and all that?”

  “The Unwritten Scriptures are what we follow, Chad. They are a prophesy of what is to come, a … revelation of events leading down the Path of Enlightningment. We have been following the Path patiently for thousands upon thousands of years. Now, as you know, the future is set…”

  “We is knowin’ no such fing.” Chad interrupted.

  “We are talking here in terms of millennia.” The Voice snapped. “The future is set in stone, it echoes backwards through the quantum strata of this … existence.”

  “Which you is sayin’ isn’t real.” Chad dug in their ear. “An’ we is wantin’ to point out that doesn’t make much sense. ‘ow can the future be tellin’ some fuckin’ Voice in the past wot it is doin’?”

  “If you would only allow me to introduce you properly to Enlightningment, you would understand instantly. I … we … the concepts being relayed here do not mesh well with language. You are so much more than you are right now, Chad.”

  “Not ‘avin’ it, mate.” Chad shifted again. Eager for their ship to arrive, they watched a bit of replay streaming from the Hungryfish; true to the Voice’s miserable prediction, even though the pilots had to know it was outfitted with Hand of Glory missiles, God Army ships were indeed trying to blow it from the sky. Happily, the silly bastards didn’t really have anything capable of causing the ship harm.

  Sensing the Voice’s rage, they relented. “Orl right, so you is sayin’ that you is some sort of holy order or wot ‘ave you from the veritable an’ implausibly far ago past an’ you is followin’ some sort o’ blueprint from the future that sort of reveals itself to you as you go along, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Chad nodded their head. “An’ you is sayin’ we is some kind of savior. Wot you is buildin’ in the garage, wiv spanners.”

  “That is a gross and crass simplification of the truth.” The Voice raged then stopped; every time it did that, Chadsik’s iterations rose up out of the deepest parts of the psyche with overwhelming, brutal force. It had to be exposure to Garth N’Chalez and the paradox field surrounding him that’d given Chadsik immunity.

  The Voice resumed. “You took nearly thirty thousand years of preparation to create. We unleashed ADAM on the ‘free people’ of Old Earth in an effort to better understand the unpredictable nature of this un-reality, to see the strata of existence-as-it-is, to burrow into previous existences, to funnel the various you’s into the now. Your mind cannot possibly comprehend what we did, how we did it, or why we did it. We knitted all of the you’s together into the Savior Protocols so you could kill Garth N’Chalez and lead us in the Holy War against the M’Zahdi Hesh, so we can …”

  “Like we said,” Chad interrupted rudely, “not innerested. Wot you fail to realize, my son, is that we, all of the we’s from all of these uvver whens and wotnot you claim we is comin’ from, is self-centered. We was all sufferin’ from a God complex to begin wiv, yeah? We fink it is great that you violated all the laws of physics or wotever to make us, an’ we could possibly find it in our ‘earts to fank you for makin’ us, but that’s about it. We is not innerested in holy wars against weird aliens or leadin’ the bunch of fuckin’ bodynappin’ space aliens as wot made us fuckin’ crazy batshit insane or doin’ anyfing like that, is we? Naw,” Chad drawled, “we is far more innerested in killin’ Nickels, collectin’ the bounty from Jordie, and buggerin’ off past The Cordon or summat. Now that we is in charge of ourselves and we is knowin’ wot we is capable of, we is gonna do some proper adventurin’. Might even ‘ang up the assassin cloak, yeah? Like, maybe we will be a pirate. Piratin’ sounds like fun. We could call ourselves Swashbuckle Chad, Scourge of the High Cordon. Er. Well, obviously it needs work. We ain’t ‘ad time, ‘as we? Ooh, ‘ere comes our ship.”

  The Voice whispered. “What are you going to do?”

  “Wot, now?” Chad stood and waved to their ship. Inside, there was a fresh change of clothes that they were quite eager to put on. They’d had their bit of nudist fun. They spied a bit of blackened ash on one of the Hungryfish’s wings and tsked. “Like we said, we is gonna watch Nickels for a bit an’ kill ‘im. We is not interested in art anymore. We is not likin’ Hospitalis.”

  Chad watched the ship land, covering their eyes and coughing when dirt and debris hammered against them. “We is actually considerin' launchin’ our Glory missiles into the sun on our way out. Supernova this whole fuckin’ solar system into ash. Wot you fink?”

  For a wonder, the Voice had nothing to say.

  The Hard Light of Truth

  Oscar stared dubiously at Garth - still covered in dried blood- before turning back to the robots and the shield generators they carried. He’d been running the math ever since he’d received the flash from his employer, and … it wouldn’t work. The crown of generators he’d built to cover UltraMegaDynamaTron’s property was pushing the boundaries of safety to the ultimate limit. Any more pressure on either the gravitic sphere of the planet or depressions in local space/time and anything at all could happen. Anything from black holes to the abrupt and complete dissolution of the tiny bits that kept everything together and in the shape of things like people and buildings and stars.

  It was exciting.

  Oscar looked at the notes he’d made. None of what Sa N’Chalez wanted made sense. He wanted to use the shield generators to separate the humungous metal plate into fifty even cubes. He wanted to use the generators to push those cubes into an igloo and then put that igloo over the singing pile of life.

  The power source required to make the metal plate that dwarfed everything in the vicinity run like water was … was beyond comprehension. He personally doubted there was enough power in the entire galaxy to make that happen.

  “Pardon me, sa,” Oscar spoke to the Latelian who stood next to Garth, “but what is happening?”

  Ute didn’t look up from his proteus, though he did answer; he was absorbed in reading field reports from a few of the men working for the Palazzo who retained enough loyalty to politely keep him updated on the search for Naoko Kamagana. Interestingly –and bizarrely enough- it seemed as though OverCommander Vasily had taken a personal interest in finding the young woman and was making his presence most keenly felt in the underground. “We’re saving everything.”

  “Everything everything or,” Oscar waved his hands around, “everythi
ng everything?”

  “Probably.” Ute scratched his forehead. Strike teams working to resolve The Palazzo’s responsibilities to the Kamagana family –presumably before anyone else in that family found out what’d happened and sued the Palazzo into oblivion- couldn’t find any reason at all why the most powerful man in the solar system would be pursuing a kidnapping case. They’d learned that the people responsible had in fact been Offworlders, but, that’d been obvious from the start. The only bit of new news –beyond Vasily’s involvement- was that they’d fled the planet following one of Morgan the Dead’s trade routes.

  “Probably?” Oscar shook his head and tried running the math again. He watched a bead of light flicker off a fingernail. He couldn’t say how long that’d been happening, but he was sure it’d been going on for his entire life. More weird thoughts percolated up into his brain and Oscar merrily watched a few seconds of something he knew he hadn’t experienced play across his eyes. His life had become exceptional.

  “Garth says the pile,” Ute jerked a thumb over a shoulder in the direction of the possible end-of-the-world explosion that could happen any second, “is made up of ‘real’ matter and that if it blows up, it’ll probably destroy all of everything.”

  “We’re not real?” Oscar frowned. He felt real. He pinched Ute’s arm as hard as he could. The hulking giant felt real. He considered pinching Garth N’Chalez, then changed his mind; his employer’s eyes –when they weren’t glowing blue- were filled with an emotion that drowned out conscious thought. It was one of the reasons why he was talking to Ute instead. It was very hard to talk to someone when your brain went full of static every time you looked at that person.

  Ute shrugged, then looked at the spot on his arm where Oscar had pinched him. “I’m just an ex-soldier, sa. I’m exceptionally good at shooting things and killing my enemies. Philosophical discussions on the fundamental nature of existence are not my milieu. I have,” Ute said ponderously, “however, seen some shit today that encourages me to find some books and read them.”

  “Everything everything?” Oscar said woefully, looking over his shoulder. Behind them all, the blue light grew brighter. He watched a long, thin trail of brilliant bright blue sparks trickle out of his nose, pulled inexorably towards the light.

  “Catch him, Ute.” Garth shouted. “If he hits the ground, he might … poof.”

  Ute followed the command before he knew what was happening; one hand snapped out and caught the scientist gently.

  “When will this be over, sa?” Ute did his best to ignore the sorrow in his voice, but it was unavoidable. Being told you weren’t really real without proof or explanations made for a very weary person.

  Garth picked some more dried blood off himself, wrinkling his nose in disgust. He wanted a long, hot shower and a nice, leisurely lunch. He looked at Ute –who was cradling Oscar in his arms like a child- then at the robots, who stood atop the Conquistador armor, shield generator focal points aimed at their feet.

  No more than a mile away, long-suffering first responders valiantly battled fire and mayhem caused by the Chairwoman’s over-the-top antics. Somewhere in the din, the great majority of the robots he’d purchased were assisting.

  He spun and stared thoughtfully at the mistuned duronium. It was almost as if the pile knew what was going to happen next. He ached in ways he’d never thought possible and he still had to push on. Beads of light were popping and sizzling out of poor Oscar and horrible thoughts of sacrificing the young Latelian to buy them more time to do it properly rose within him.

  It’d be easy. So, so easy. Trapped in the unflinching hard light of truth, Oscar Sabellik had been bathed in the energy the duronium had absorbed during his … explosion.

  The problem with one paradox is that with one, more could happen. More did happen. With disgusting regularity.

  So, Oscar Sabellik, doing his job, programming the robots to build modified gravny-gens, had absorbed … echoes … of that life. It was why he could pronounce a name that no one in the last thirty thousand years could pronounce; it was why he hadn’t yet burst into nothingness. It was why he was doing math no one else could understand.

  The pile erroneously ‘thought’ Oscar was Garth and had –even while excising his existence in that other Universe right out of the flow of time- been trying to stitch the two different Universal moments together.

  Throwing Oscar onto the pile would return all the energy he’d absorbed to the process. Hell, there was every chance that a new paradoxical fissure would be burrowed from their Unreality into the Real Universe, giving him access to the untold powers he’d once possessed. And from there, he could rip the Heshii from their place in the crannies of existence and beat them into a thin soup.

  It was a painfully tantalizing thought.

  The Heshii needed to be stopped, needed to be beaten, needed to be eradicated.

  Surely one life was worth all that? To save everything and everyone, surely the life of one innocent man was a small enough price to pay.

  Garth spat. He sickened himself. Full of loathing, something clicked inside. “Taking a life is easy. Sparing a life is hard.”

  “Sa?” Ute looked down at Oscar, who –against all belief- was snoring.

  Garth laughed. “Something a friend told me. I thought it was a general warning against the absolute asshole I’d become. I think maybe it was for this. You asked when this would be all over? Soon, Ute. Really soon.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “It’s me, Ute. I am the cause of all this. I’m … being treated as a disease. Everything happening around us is a direct result of the fact that I’m a paradox. As I am now, I should not be. The place I was before was stronger than here, things never spiraled this far out of control, but here? Here is fragile and tenuous as a spider web. It is desperate to be rid of me, of what I represent.” Garth sighed. “I thought because I was from here that I’d be accepted back into the fold with open arms, but I … I guess not. This place is fighting my existence tooth and nail. I’d planned on using the hard light of truth inside to fight the Heshii, but … I … I can’t. I can’t use it or it could rip everything apart and then, then they’d win.”

  A sad smile crept onto Garth’s face. Had he known this, thirty thousand years ago? Had he known that when he got this close to the end of the journey, he’d need to rid himself of the paradox energy? That he’d need to find some new way to defeat the Heshii?

  There was no way to tell. Not until he was inside Bravo and the last of his memories returned.

  “So … what are we … you … going to do?”

  “Cap the energy, as planned.” It was the only thing. Killing Oscar wasn’t an option. He was going to carry the shame of even considering it for a long time, possibly forever. “Trapped inside the bubble, it will be … an energy source. Stable, it’ll be the richest power source in the entire Universe. With it, I’ll be able to create some pretty amazing shit. Ha. I’ll need to, now. And maybe, just maybe, with me no longer being the physical embodiment of impossibility, this place will stop throwing ever-escalating insanity at us. The worst of the madness will taper off. The Chairwoman should stop launching missiles at random people, everyone will mellow out just enough so that this world just doesn’t explode out of frustration. Make sense?”

  “None at all, sa.” Ute shifted Oscar around, tried to aim the man’s head –which was continually leaking light out his nose now- so that the particles didn’t bounce off his skin. “But I do know that today has been monstrously weird and chaotic enough for a lifetime. If you say people will stop trying to kill you and that the pile won’t turn us all into light, then I must believe it to be so.”

  “Awesome.” Garth smiled, and then reached for power. The generators were going to be hit with a massive dose of reality-warping energy. Where before he’d gone with a trickle, now he went with a flood. The two titanic forces –the Real and the Unreal- went to war across his flesh immediately. It felt like his atoms were being shredded unde
r the pressure, but there was no time, no luxury, no option to give in, to quit.

  Ute watched the gravnetic generators burst to life, invisible beams of gravity catching luminance from the power boiling out of his new friend, stabbing down through the Conquistador armor like plowshares through earth. The robots, following commands programmed into them by Oscar and as directed by Garth, began moving.

  xxx

  “Shit.” Garth wanted to wail in frustration. Then, with added eloquence, “Fuck.”

  Ute furrowed his brow, trying to think of some solution to this most unforeseen problem; the robots, each bearing a generator, each ‘shoving’ one of the cubed hunks of armor plating, couldn’t get close to the pile without shutting down. Oscar stood on the other side of Garth, hammering away into his proteus, muttering crazily.

  Watching Nickels and Sabellik work together to resolve the problem was eerie, to say the very –the very- least. They kept finishing one another’s sentences, randomly shouting out integers and numbers and hypotheses, the other saying ‘no, won’t work, already tried it’.

  Garth grit his teeth. If he’d had time to build the gravny-gens properly, they could fucking well float their asses over to the pile, hauling their cargo in tow like a spastic five year old. But no, he’d gone and gotten himself rifle-butted. He shook his head. It’d happened. End of story.

  “What are we going to do?” Oscar asked, fingers falling from his prote. “Is this it? End of the Worlds?”