by Curtis Hox
He glanced over his shoulder at her and tried to wave. But it didn’t work, and he groaned. “Look at me! I can’t move my arms right!”
She walked around him, ducking under one of the bleacher rows.
Simone had mumbled her most basic mantra of calming until she realized that wouldn’t be enough. Her mother had taught her how to move through the different psy-katas and mantras to channel her entities, but she could only go so far. By the time she spoke to him, hearing the words as if someone else spoke them, she was as centered as she could be. When she saw what the Enemies had done to him, it didn’t phase her. She knew she would have been sick had she not protected herself.
He was branded, every bit of him blemished.
“They messed you up,” she heard herself say, hoping a joke would alleviate his suffering.
“My own damn fault. I got cocky. I knew they were probing Sterling. I just didn’t know why.”
His shoulders and arms were on backward, but not as if twisted by some horrible device. They looked like they had grown that way. And his neck, his spine, and his Adam’s apple had switched places. His head was truly facing the wrong way. She tried not to stare.
“Hard to walk?” she asked.
That earned a laugh.
She reached forward and placed her hands on his, feeling the circular brands on his skin. The tension that wracked him disappeared. He even sighed, and seemed to deflate into his chair. She felt a sickness that wanted to reach into her. But her lords were deflecting it. She was safe.
“There we go,” she said and pulled away.
Joss relaxed, as if he’d just dipped into a cool pool of water on a scorching day.
“I’m messed up,” he whimpered.
“I know. But there’s hope.”
“I’m getting ... worse. I want to do ... bad things. Inhuman things.”
She looked at him as if she’d known him for a lifetime and would do anything in the world for him. Something about the way he stared back at her made her wary, though. She stepped away. The anxiety returned and caused him to grimace. He said, “The Consortium’s going to tank me.”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll be a specimen for the rest of my life. That sucks balls. Oh, that sucks.”
He began weeping again. “Don’t stare at me like that. I’m one of the smart people, really smart, and I know what the Consortium does with problems to the order of things like me. If they don’t outright liquidate you, they file you away in a laboratory somewhere, telling the world everything has been taken care of. But it’s a big lie, the Big Lie, that the Consortium tells the world to calm the superstitious.”
“What happened?”
“After you left the clinic, I fell asleep. I woke up with bio-dendrites extending from my skull, into the wall.” She saw a wild look in his eyes, the kind you might imagine seeing on someone at the edge of a cliff, hanging on for dear life. “The Rogues were stealing my soul, bit by bit. I had to escape. I used to think I’d mess up big because of the reason I was at Sterling in the first place: I tend to interface deep into the cyber world. When I return from those trips, I sometimes retain qualities of the avatars I used. It freaks people out. I always thought that would be what messed me up, maybe cost me the right girl, or the right job. But not this ... not being turned into an infected and deformed Rogueslave.”
She stepped away a bit more, as if she needed a break from him. “How did you escape the clinic?”
“First, I got the brands. Then I woke up with those digital feeds growing out of my head ... and my body was different. My whole body hurt. I was deformed. I yanked the suckers off and ran. That’s how. Ran into a wall, actually.”
She smiled, and he smiled back. “I bet.”
Simone, though, had sensed something when she’d touched him. She knew the indescribable feeling of the void cyber minds—the Rogues who did the bidding of the Great Enemies. But what scared her was that she felt drawn to it, as if something inside her wanted her to embrace him. Only her centering mantra kept her from being overwhelmed. At first she assumed whatever evil intelligence had kidnapped him (and captured part of him, she reminded herself) had left traces of itself. But she believed this was not the work of a mere Rogue AI. Sure, it was possible that he could melt into a mess of goo before her eyes, the very thing the world feared, and infect everything for a square mile. But something worse could happen, the Great Enemies could gain another foothold in their reality, each one a tiny step in the destruction of everything pure, good, and real.
She stared at him for a moment, trying to shake the feeling that something wanted her, something that had him wanted her. She wondered if his vertebrae had just switched in the cervical area ... then she realized the battle between Order and Unreason was beginning. Her mastery of the mantras and katas was slipping. She was now looking at the handiwork of dark minds and trying to make sense of it. That was the first step in falling into a pit of despair. Then they have you.
“There’s a partial copy of you in the system,” she said. “Doesn’t seem to me that much of you. Just a little.”
He looked at her as if she were messing with him. “How can you be sure?”
“It spoke to me. You spoke to me. Plus, you’re a fan of Orwell? You have a problem with Big Brother?”
“Yeah. Ironic, isn’t it?”
“There’s a money machine in the Visual Arts building that’s dispensing cash to people who can answer questions from his novel.”
“I guess it did get part of me. If I fix this, I’ll track every lost copy of that thing down. I must be miserable in there.”
She knew she should go now because her hold on staying centered was slipping. And that feeling of being drawn to him was growing. “Joss, be brave. The Lords of Right can aid you. I’ll ask for their help. I’ll do what I can for you. I promise. Just hold on. Okay?”
“Lords of Right?” He sneered, as if she were the freak with her arms on backward and her head all twisted around.
“I’m an advocate of Order, and you’ve been touched by the Lords of—”
“Let me guess: Unreason. Got it.” A touch of aggression shuddered through his frame. She stepped back. But she had to force herself, as if she were a magnet and he made of iron. He raised his deformed arms. “Listen, this is no alien intelligence from Alpha Fucking Centauri or some demon god from a dark hell, or wherever you think it’s from. This is a good old-fashioned, fifth-generation Rogue SAI with a nasty streak. I’m guessing a torsion fetish. But it didn’t fully get me, did it? I escaped.”
“Escaped?” She would only be able to be in his presence for a few more minutes before the disharmony overtook her. “You’re way out of sorts, Joss. It’s still in you.”
He whimpered. “I know. I need to fix this. I can’t live like this. Help me.”
She inhaled a deep breath, knowing her mother would be up her butt about this, but decided to do it anyway. “You didn’t win. You’re a victim. I’ll try to help you. Just be brave.” A desperation in the set of his eyes arrested her. She thought she looked directly at the Great Enemies and that they looked back at her ... and they wanted her. “In the clinic, when I asked why you were here, you said you changed. You never told me what you changed into. Tell me now. I need to know what kind of entity you channeled. It’ll let me know what’s got you now.”
As if he might tell her what he’d had for lunch, he said, “It was nothing, although it freaked everyone out who saw it.” She waited. “I looked flat.”
Simone stepped back again.
She stared at him as the horrible truth dawned on her. He was, indeed, under the eyes of the Evil Ones. She felt her heart ache for him because of how far he’d fallen. To have channeled such an entity of illogic meant they had been after him for some time. She was centered enough she didn’t cry out or show her anguish in any way. But she had to state the truth so that everyone could hear.
“Joss Beckwith, you are a Child of the Dark Void, the Frozen Gulf, the E
ndless Abyss and the Twelve Hells of the Mind. You are caught in the Storm of Turmoil. You have been claimed by the Blood Tricad—Dagons and Persens and Rigalens—the Army of Unreason and their Seeds of Discord. You are my sworn enemy, and I will save you from the Great Enemies of Mankind, or destroy you. May the Unnamed Blessed Lords of Order and Right and Goodness guide me.” She didn’t have to push herself through the crowd after they heard that.
Principal Smalls stood with his mouth open. Coach Buzz looked at her like she’d sprouted horns. The student body stared with fear and loathing. They knew what they had heard. Simone had declared herself one of the Alters who believed the earth was a place of conflict between supernatural beings from across the universe. She was an advocate of what smart peopled called the Crazy Thesis.
She couldn’t help herself, annoyed as hell by their looks, and their inability to see what he was, so she stopped in the middle of them. “I’m going for my second ice cream of the day. Anyone want to join me?”
A few students backed away.
Kimberlee appeared. “I could go for another. I want to try the caramel swirl.”
Arm in arm they moved through the group and walked away.
“Thanks,” Simone said. “I think I just blew my chance of winning the Senior Send Off, didn’t I?”
“Maybe not,” Kimberlee said. “You might grow on them. I can’t believe what happened to Joss.”
They moved even closer together and walked away from the horror that was Joss Beckwith. Simone’s mother and brother would soon be there, as would members of the Alumni Association Council, and then the real fireworks would start.
* * *
When the first of new, but discreet, limousines pulled in, the students mingled around the main campus, happy the day’s activities had been cancelled once again. A wave of excitement rippled through everybody as they watched Principal Smalls greet a tiny, elderly woman who looked like she might need a walker to get in the building. She also looked like she might have once taught Home Economics—a course never offered at Sterling—with her chaste gray dress buttoned to her chin and her hair up in a tight bun. A large bodyguard with a blank face who looked strong enough to tip over the car escorted her inside.
“Mrs. Ogilvey,” Principal Smalls said, “welcome back to the Sterling School.”
She looked around at the campus and smiled. “You’ve expanded since I visited last.” She waved the bodyguard back to the car.
Principal Smalls guided her to his office. The school secretary working that morning stood at attention. Mrs. Ogilvey took a seat in one of Principal Small’s chairs.
“So the branded boy was hiding?” she asked. “And he’s already been deformed?”
Principal Smalls shut his door before hurrying to his desk. “Yes, and ... horribly.”
“The government people don’t know?”
“About him being found? No, ma’am.”
“Good, we should keep this ... manageable for as long as possible.”
“Of course.”
She held onto a small clutch with both gloved hands. She opened this and retrieved a small hourglass with a digital readout on the bottom. She turned it upside down and let the sand pour. The digital numbers began ticking off as the first grains fell. She waited.
It was a five-minute piece.
When it finished the digital read out read: 05:15.
“Not good,” she said. “Fifteen second discrepancy. A Rogue incursion is highly likely at the Sterling School, Principal Smalls, and must be contained before this place becomes ... unrecognizable.”
“Incursion? Oh my.”
“In the meantime, the boy will bring the wrong kind of attention. We have to prepare a response.”
“The Consortium people were a mistake—”
“Yes, they were.” Mrs. Ogilvey looked like she’d just swallowed a stone. “Tell me about how our new student is doing. Was I wrong to side with her mother and go against your wishes in allowing her to attend?”
“Simone Wellborn has made her beliefs known,” Principal Smalls replied.
“Has she?”
“She told the boy he was a tool of the Great Enemies, I think she called them.”
“Did she?” Mrs. Penny Ogilvey sighed, expecting nothing less from the Wellborn girl. “We’ve kept you in the dark far too long, but I hate to tell you: The fact that a Rogue attack has begun here means the Council president will be pleased.”
“Pleased?”
“Anything that encourages the creation of Transhuman super warriors makes him giddy. He has fought all of his life, certainly since he was a student here and in one of my classes, to turn the world into two factions, one that clearly sides with his enemies, the pretend gods, as he calls them, so that he can weed them out, and those who do not, so that he can know who his allies are. He has lobbied the hardest for the inclusion of the Altertranshumans into society, and into Sterling.”
She watched Principal Smalls sit quietly. She knew he was unused to hearing anyone talk about the Council president in such intimate terms. He had never met the man, didn’t even know who he was.
She remembered her time here, not unlike Principal Smalls’ time. Both of them were defective. He was born without two functioning kidneys, and she was missing her uterus—two damaged, but otherwise normal human beings with simple intellect packages who didn’t amount to much in today’s world. They had gone to Sterling School decades apart, but both were now protected by Sterling in a world increasingly changing and fearful of what science had wrought. And Sterling was under attack.
“Transhuman warriors?” Principal Smalls asked, as if he were hearing a dirty secret and was unsure how to respond. “What are those?”
She waved his question away, as if he should know. She realized he probably had no idea. “What the students today deal with amazes me. The rapid change in what is considered normal is baffling. When I was a student there were no Nonhumans, just the new legal category of the Transhuman, someone changed biologically in a fundamental way by technology. The entrance of the ... what are the kids calling Nonhumans nowadays?”
“Nonnys.”
“Yes, the entrance of the Nonnys happened after my time, but I remember resisting allowing these monsters on campus. I lost that battle. But we kept the dangerous ones out. The peaceful ones came and were accepted, and I can admit I was wrong. But now the most dangerous types of human beings, Alters, the least controllable, are welcomed with open arms—all in the name of inclusion. I believe I may have made a mistake siding with the Wellborns. This isn’t about inclusion. It’s about what the fringe believes and what our Council president believes, and forcing the world to believe the same thing. All in the name of saving humanity.”
“The Wellborn family has always been at the forefront—”
“Where is she?” Mrs. Ogilvey asked.
“Who, the Wellborn girl? Yes, yes. I imagine she’s back in her room—”
“Why don’t we go see her?”
Principal Smalls harrumphed a few times, as if he’d swallowed a hair. “The student dormitories? It’s such a mess, and loud. The music they play ... ” She stood. She waited for him to open the door. “Yes, ma’am. If you’ll follow me.”
“Certainly.”
* * *
Principal Smalls knocked on the young woman’s door.
“Hold on, hold on,” both adults heard from the other side of the room.
Mrs. Ogilvey smiled. “She’s a spitfire like her mother, isn’t she? Your job should be interesting this year.”
He opened his mouth to respond, but the door opened as well, and there stood the diminutive Wellborn girl with the flaring black pigtails. She rubbed her eyes.
“Taking an afternoon nap, Miss. Wellborn?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“This is Mrs. Ogilvey, a member of the Sterling School Alumni Association Council.”
She stopped rubbing. “Did my mother send you?”
Mrs. Ogilvey steppe
d into the room. Principal Smalls remained in the doorway. Mrs. Ogilvey looked around and noted what she figured to be a typical female’s dorm room: an open suitcase, half empty, a few items of clothing littering the place, some unused school materials on her desk.
And, ah, there it was, Mrs. Ogilvey thought: the talisman.
She walked over to the rumpled bed, where a miniature model of a fullerene molecule sat. She stared at the symbol of modern science and natural perfection and wondered how deep into this ideology their new student had fallen. It scared her, seeing the talisman there, so out in the open. Even a year ago, such a thing would have landed the girl in a detention center. But there were always dissenters. She thought about when she was a girl. As the Cyber Wars raged on their doorsteps any crackpot with a theory for what was happening was given voice. How many died because of people with the certainty this girl felt in her heart?
“May I?” Mrs. Ogilvey asked.
A long moment stretched between the two of them.
“Yes, of course.”
Mrs. Ogilvey picked it up. The dynamic material was cold and heavy. The tiny holes looked drilled with precision. Each node was a round pellet connected by solid metal bars.
Now, the moment of truth. “You speak to your lords with this?”
Such a question would normally be denied. But the inclusion of Alters into the Consortium as important agents in the battle for global security meant they were now to be accepted in all sectors of society. Most people hated them, and feared them, still. But here at Sterling, they were promised an open forum. Even if that meant talismans.
“I do, ma’am. And they usually talk back to me.”
Just the slightest raise of a delicate chin. The girl was defiant, brave, and ... calm. Just like her mother.
“And you think Joss Beckwith has been tainted by ... unreason?” A single nod. “I see.” She set the bucky back on the pillow.
“Am I in trouble?” Simone asked.
“We may all be in trouble,” Mrs. Ogilvey replied. “May I sit?”
Simone pushed rumpled clothes from her desk chair. “Sure.”
“Are you all right?” Principal Smalls asked.
