Last Mayor (Book 9): The Light

by Grist, Michael John

He washed the wound in his neck. Already the edges had sutured together. Accelerated healing had been at the top of his list thirty years earlier, when he'd wanted only to build a more sickness-resistant human species from the genetics up: Homo Dominus, Man the Master.

  He'd succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. He'd ended the world before it could end itself, and in the ashes he'd planted a seed that might survive. How could they denigrate him still?

  He smiled, as he remembered the things the Last Mayor had called him. He shrugged on the shirt. There was nothing to fear there. Parlor tricks. Arrogance in a past version of himself, that was what Rachel had once said. He cut those past versions away, and what was left? Pure, distilled Olan. The process of pruning was always ongoing. Every setback was a chance to improve what he was.

  And he was beyond Homo Dominus now. He was Homo Deus, Man the God. Who rivaled him in power? As a God, it wasn't surprising that he needed his followers around him. Gods needed praise, and soon he would get all the reflected praise he needed from one man, one incredible engine of power.

  The Last Mayor.

  It was only a matter of time. Soon they would flow together in a terrible wave across the world, severing, enslaving, until every person in every part belonged to him, and lived only to reflect his glory back.

  There would be no limits anymore. At last he would be whole again, and every one of his tormentors on the line would be dragged back to Earth, where he could punish them for all the ways they'd punished him.

  It was a good thing, really. There had to be order; that was one thing the humanitarians never understood. Man could never be kind because man was simply not kind. Systems had to be built to constrain him, and Olan Harrison understood systems better than anyone alive. Everything had been planned.

  He smiled, looking out at the mountains and doing up the last few buttons of his shirt. The Last Mayor knew nothing. Olan's power could not be questioned.

  He would go to him one final time. It would be worth it to see the fear grow in the man's eyes. There was nothing better than that for giving him relief, as the wicked saw their punishment coming nigh.

  He brushed his hair. He tucked in his shirt. He squeezed all his slaves on the line, and sucked in the strength as their breath failed them for five seconds, ten. Then he jumped back to the wall.

  18. STONEHENGE

  After I lurch out of the crushing rain of the wall, I collapse on the body hills and gasp for a while.

  Good God.

  While the migraine fights with the black eye inside my mind, I try to sort through everything I learned about Olan Harrison in those few startling moments when I plunged the black eye into his throat.

  It scares even me.

  He's barely human. He is what I was when I beat down Arnst and humiliated Feargal, when I watched Keeshom and the others die and didn't care; but he is fractured into a thousand more pieces. He is voices screaming in the darkness for help.

  I had Drake in my mind and it drove me insane. There are no excuses for what I did, I see that now; only reasons. I had my darker and my better angels, steering me on, but Olan Harrison doesn't have those angels, he is them. He is a jeering mob whipped into shape by the memory of a memory. He's a chimera. He's more like a non-player character fresh out of the Yangtze Darkness, repeating lines as they're spooned in from Internet feeds, building a sense of self through a constant process of whittling the 'weaker' parts of himself away, leaving only pure diamond power and a parade of terrible victories behind.

  I recall the worst of those victories, his 'severing' of everyone in his Redoubt. I see his immense power and wonder, can I possibly beat that?

  The sky is gray and heavy. The air smells of summer dust. Perhaps it'll rain; a storm out here on the body steppes. How much time remains? I feel cogs clanking into position for the end, with me and Olan at the center.

  On my feet, I survey my army. Quite a lot of them are broken. He sent diamond lances out that tore them to bits. Plenty lie torn and twitching around the hills. Perhaps I was lucky to survive.

  The migraine settles to a twinge. I reach out and collect my army's knowledge about the extent of the invisible shield. They didn't find a weak point, it seems, but they did find opportunities. There are places behind certain hills, close to the wall, with no easy line of sight. Places they can dig into the gray bodies and not be observed.

  I start walking over the uneven gray ground toward the nearest of them, and my army follow. They are limping demons with their feet torn off, lepers flickering in and out of existence like dying neon lights, bisected floaters pulling themselves around by their arms. This is my army of slaves, I think. Olan has his too, severed to his will. Are we really that different?

  The new camp I select is much like our old one. The wall hums nearby. The hills rise. There is a clearing, and it is there I decide to build my final work. A symbol for the ages, and for any eyes looking out from Olan's Redoubt, wondering what kind of plot the madman is hatching.

  I build Stonehenge.

  It's a whim. I've always wanted to build it in one of my cairns, but never had the time.

  My ocean dig into the body hills, extracting building materials as if it was Deepcraft, obscuring the tunnels that burrow down toward the bedrock below. Here a frozen gray arm unhooks from a waist, there a knee uncurls from a neck. These are pixels of stone, each a pointillist dab in the 3D portrait I'm building.

  In the clearing I lay the foundations; twenty-four 'dolmen' posts, each four bodies wide, newly interwoven. I have my demons stack them ten bodies high, forming gray pillars like the stones erected thousands of years ago, atop which they construct 'lintels' of dead floaters slotted together like Lego.

  I feel eyes on me. I grin for those watching from the Redoubt. At the same time, my army are deep into the hills now already, digging where they can't be seen. I send lepers jumping forward into the solid rock bodies, where they erupt like TNT blasts, making progress swift for the demons that follow. I lose lepers, but it's fast.

  Shortly after they hit bedrock there's a surge on the line, and I turn to see Olan Harrison returned. He's standing inside the wall where I can't reach him, dressed in a clean shirt, looking at me with something like a smile.

  "I thought we might talk," he says.

  I walk over to him. This is good. Every second with his attention on me is a second my teams keep digging, looking for the base of the wall.

  "So talk."

  19. TALK

  He studies me. We know each other now, so I know he's been plotting too. I felt the army leave the Redoubt hours ago, flinging themselves like lepers through the line, headed west.

  What's west? Anna. Istanbul. All the shields she's been standing up feel like distant braziers on the long dark night of the line. There's going to be a battle, and I don't know who will win.

  But I can't fight that war. I can't help Anna. I can only fight here, and now. I look into Olan Harrison's bright white eyes, and see that he knows this as surely as I do. The end is coming.

  "It's a fine construction," he says, nodding toward my Stonehenge. "It won't help."

  "They're not watching?" I counter. "Your severed slaves."

  His smile widens. "They are. But they don't see if I don't want them to. You should know that. You've done as much to your own."

  I smile back. He's talking about Feargal, of course. He sees the shame in me. "They still fought for me, at the end. Do you think your people will?"

  "They will. They can't live without me, now, nor I without them. We are bound together."

  I shake my head. He doesn't get it, and he never will. I've been in this exact spot before, facing these same choices. "Maybe they'd rather die."

  He laughs a little at that. I can see it's a foreign concept.

  "You speak of yourself, Last Mayor. Your willingness to die a martyr. Don't fear, you'll get your moment."

  "Come out of your wall," I say, taking a step closer. "Put that to the test."

  He looks
at me.

  I look at him.

  "Tell me," he says, as if it's a little bit of trivia that's been bugging him, "why do your people follow you?"

  It is an odd moment. I think of the old movie where Death plays chess with a man about to die, and they have a conversation about mundane things while souls are shuffled about the board. I can see that the notion of this final dialog appeals to Olan Harrison. He likes the drama.

  "Go fish," I say.

  He continues regardless. "You built symbols of another time for your people, and they loved you for it. Here you've built a symbol from the ancient past. It intrigues me. To what end?"

  Of course he wouldn't understand. He's worse than a child in many ways, with all the parts of himself that might once have understood already lost or whittled away. There can be no negotiation with someone like that, no treaties, no way to co-exist.

  I itch to kill him right now. Perhaps I could charge the wall and reach where he stands, but I'd be so weak I would scarcely land a blow. No. I have my plan; and reach casually down to where my army burrow through bedrock beneath my feet. Lepers explode the rock, so deep we don't even feel it. Demons hammer through the rubble with their huge fists. Soon they'll hit the wall, and perhaps they'll pass underneath. If Olan Harrison stays here long enough they'll come up behind him.

  "Earlier you told me you were old," I say. "Older than me, older than my grandparents. But you're not that same man anymore. You're like a child now, after your year on the line, except you're broken, Olan. I can hear the voices in your head, grinding against each other like faulty gears. Nothing works the way it should, and it never will again. You'll never be happy. You'll never inspire your people, or lead them to anything worth having. There can be no meaning in your world, only power, and discipline, and your boot on the face of humanity crushing down forever." I smile. "You should have stayed dead."

  He looks at me. There's not much he can say to argue. Everything I just said is true.

  "This is the moment," he says, "right now, which you'll regret forever. I welcome it. Hold up your mirror, Last Mayor. Show me what I am. I'll make sure you live with the consequences in eternity."

  I laugh. "Maybe. Or maybe I'll send you back." I glance up at the sky. "Not your favorite place, right? They'll have a big party mulching you to compost. The prodigal son. They always say the warden has the worst time in jail."

  There's the slightest flinch at that. He buries it deep, but I catch it. That's his fear. That's what drives him now. I drive it home.

  "They'll have a field day with you up there. All your severed slaves will follow you, and I expect they'll enjoy the reversal. They'll round on you like harpies. There won't be a single scrap of Olan Harrison left on the line when they're done."

  His eyes harden. Good. I'm getting to him.

  "Down here it'll fall to me," I go on. "And how do you think I'll memorialize you, in my comics, in our history?" I let that hang. "There won't be a single word. Not one. I'll erase your name and everything you did from the record. No one will ever know all the shit you caused. They'll be born and live and die thinking that this zombie apocalypse was just an accident. Or maybe, and I'm just spitballing this now, I'll turn your name into mud. When people want to say 'shit' in the future, I'll get them to say 'Olan'. I'll put it into common usage, like 'I really need to take an Olan,' or 'You think your Olan don't stink?'"

  I grin at him. His hardness is turning to diamonds. I'm getting him hot again. I shrug.

  "You're empty, Olan. That's it. You're a vessel, and maybe you always were. It's not worth getting angry with you. Like a dog that takes an Olan in the house, you didn't know any better. But I'm here now. Olan-training is in season. I'll jab some good sense into you if it's the last thing I do." I poke toward his neck, where the black eye sank in. The wound is a sealed line now, not even any scabs. His new body heals fast.

  He looks at me, the hardness dissipating. Then, impressively, he yawns.

  It's pretty good.

  "I don't see it," he says. "What they follow. Just a lot of noise from a scared little man. You spew out words, Last Mayor, like there's an unlimited supply. Like you have every right to them. But I took James While's tongue, when I brought him back down. I'll do the same with you. You can look at each other for eternity, from your cells, while your bodies age and decay, then are replaced to age and decay again. Millennia will pass like that. You'll beg for forgiveness so many times there won't be any other words left in that self-indulgent brain. 'Please' will be the only word you'll know. And I'll enjoy you trying to say it. You think I know no meaning? That is meaning to me. You will be my foundation and my banner for all to see. Everyone will know how you failed. Everyone will see how you suffer. It won't be my boot on the face of humanity, but yours."

  Maybe I flinch at that. Eternity? I believe he has the ability. It's dark stuff. Should I yawn?

  "That's a great plan, yeah. Universal misery. Humanity under your thumb. Is that what you wanted when you started down this path, Olan, when you first formed the SEAL? Or can you not remember? Sorry, is that a sensitive subject?"

  His white eyes burn holes in me.

  "Of course, right," I go on, while at the same time my army underfoot seem to have found a route under the wall. Ten feet down the wall ends. If I can make just ten or twenty more feet forward, I'll be able to jump the lepers up behind the wall and shred him. "We talked about it before, and you didn't know then. What the reason was. But I get it now. Not all the bullshit reasons you made up for your slaves; the Homo Dominus crap, the angels, the advancement of human civilization, the impending collapse of the Western global order. I saw it in your head." I wave a hand. "All horseshit. Even at the start, forty years ago when you first spun up the projects that would go on to become the Apotheo Net, the Logchain, it wasn't really about any of that."

  He stares. Maybe he really doesn't know why he's done this. Perhaps that's why he's here, talking to me now. He genuinely wants to know, and he thinks I have the answer. "Why did I do it then?" he asks.

  I laugh. It's not funny. "I think it's funny you say 'I', as if you're a person. You're not anyone, son. You don't even know why you're here. You're just here. You emptied out the line to have continuity, to be the same person continuing alive, but every moment is a fresh moment for you, isn't it? You live in an eternal present, and every second of it is a test. You don't have a history to cling to, any more than that voice of your creator in your ear. You've torn yourself so much I don't think any part of you is original. You're Frankenstein's monster run amok, and you don't even know it. Honestly, that would fill me with an endless dread. Maybe that's what you feel. Every day, every hour, every minute, you're filled with doubt. It's why you do what you do. It's why you crush everyone else. It's the only way to know what you are."

  He stares. These are hard truths. He can deny none of it.

  "So why did you start it?" I press on, hammering the metal while it's blazing hot. "Why start us down this convoluted path forty years ago? Maybe it was an accident of birth. You had your Homo Dominus theory, your Homo Deus, but if anything divides you from me on a genetic level, it's the fact that you were always a psychopath, and I wasn't. I've learned some of the tricks of the psychopathic, now, the things that come naturally to you. I've been cruel and uncaring. I've killed thousands. But it just doesn't sit right with me. I've got those internal controls, and you don't, and that's the whole thing."

  He looks on eagerly. Yes, he's enjoying this. He doesn't know this.

  "It's that simple. Everything else is an excuse. All your stories about angels and master races are feeble attempts to interpret it, to understand it, to spin it to your people and to yourself in some way that sounds good. But really, you just did what you wanted, and what you wanted was always more. You're like a cancer that kills the patient, even though that means the cancer dies itself. You'll keep growing until you reach absolute collapse, because nobody ever made you stop."

  He's nodding now. There
's a brighter light of comprehension in his eyes. "Go on."

  I feel again for my advance teams. The lead lepers are within feet of exiting the wall's shadow. Any second they'll break through.

  "I committed my share of atrocities," I say, "but each time I stopped myself. Someone like you might see that as weakness. I call it essentially, primally human. After Times Square I shot myself in the head, because that was the right thing to do. In Istanbul I pulled back at the last moment. I almost didn't, but I did."

  As I'm saying it, I realize it's true. Anna helped me, but her efforts only worked because a part of me already knew I'd gone too far. Seeing that now helps in ways I hadn't considered. For the last few months I've thought myself irredeemably broken, but maybe I'm not. Full atonement may never come, but at least I can try…

  "That's me," I say, almost sheepish now. "Comic book artist, hipster. I'm soft. Every person I've hurt or killed, I feel it, and that's what you should be afraid of, Olan Harrison. I feel it, but I will still wipe you out, and that's what makes me better than you. Without it, you're no more than an animal acting on its programming. You can't be a true master or god, because those both require the ability to control your own appetites, which you can't do. It's why you'll never build a world that means anything, why you'll never be happy or whole. Without reflection, you're just a goddamn computer program, and I think that's pretty sad."

  They're at the edge now. It's going to be seconds. I'm already lining up the orders for lepers to flash up and rip him apart.

  Then his head turns. The light in his eyes intensifies, as if he's seeing something I can't. It's not the lepers coming for him, as they flash up and take his arms. It's something else, something I can feel on the line too, so very far away.

  Anna has gone into battle with his army halfway round the world. And something's very wrong.

  Olan Harrison smiles at me.

  "I've enjoyed our talk, Last Mayor. But it's time for this to end." Then he flashes like a leper, out of existence before my lepers can tear him apart.