Moon City

by Benjamin Kane Ethridge

  Chapter 19

  My mind continued to ascend and expand over the entire universe. I stopped noting all of the images individually and just experienced, and all the while I was aware of the fiery smell of burning wood around me. I didn’t have time to seek other dimensions, and therefore my son, because I was too consumed with this dimension. The process had to be completed before the fire grew out of control and it destroyed all the Deitii’s flesh, blood, and bone I needed—for even though I had the reach of God right now, I knew it was limited and that the final feeding still needed to take place.

  Sounds of burning support beams crackling overhead made me press harder to find the limits of my newfound power. I could come back from this once I reached it. I had to find the wall where this all stopped. I always had in the past, but now, instead of dreading that moment, I was racing toward it.

  Stars and planets whipped past me occasionally, but mostly empty space… blank canvas for a creator to do with as he pleased. I tasted blood and tried to tell myself it was from grinding my teeth, and not that my face was actively melting off from the flames.

  No.

  I had to control my imagination for it could be the inception of something real. I could literally imagine bursting into flames and it would happen. I had to focus on achieving more mental space in the universe than my present power could contain. I was almost there.

  Something hot struck my shoulder.

  That wasn’t imagination.

  I had to get out of this trance with enough power left to escape and deal with the robot. If I quit too soon though, this chance would be squandered.

  My breathing came raggedly from a dry throat. Two hot cores burned in my nostrils. The fire was closing in. My mind darted around a galaxy and filled its every crevice with me. This was an invasion not only of the materials of time and space, but its emptiness too. That’s what God turned out to be, after all, an overlord who pressed his fingerprints into everything and claimed ownership on his creations.

  I started to regain a sense of my body. I felt the sweat on my skin and the intense heat surrounding me.

  With a scream, I was back. I scrambled to my feet. My home, the house I’d known my entire adult life, was nothing more than a prison of fire and smoke. I disassociated my molecules and ran through the jungle of scarlet and amber claws. Moving forward, I waited until I left the fire far behind. My body reassembled in a rush and I gasped for clean, smoke-free air. My eyes burned and I rubbed at them to regain my sight.

  I assumed the robot had taken me for dead and returned to its master. I would attend to that later when—

  My eyes settled on a humanoid shape standing on a boulder across the gorge. The pale-faced robot with the star eyes and the purple polo shirt had climbed up there to watch my house burn. It saw me watching it, but it made no move. Somehow, it had known I would make it out alive. The fire had just been a greeting. Right away I gathered that this thing might give me more trouble than the previous assassin.

  I walked to the edge of the gorge. I had enough power left in me to leap across and come down on the machine like a giant fist, but as I lifted my eyes, it had left its position on the boulder and I could no longer see it. If this thing had a heartbeat, I would have been able to see it in my mind’s eye, but without complete realization of the universe, I could not see everything. I would need to get to my reserve and drink the rest today. There could be no further hesitation. I was ready. I was finally ready to be All and Everything.

  The fire brigade turned down the dirt road to my house. I walked in the opposite direction and ducked behind a boulder. I couldn’t be caught up with the likes of them. And if I couldn’t go after the robot directly, I could get it deactivated and out of my hair if I took out its most likely master: Dean Fulsome.

  But I could do that without depleting my reserves.

  I closed my eyes and dragged up every nightmare from my subconscious, and turned them into living things.

  They clawed their way up from the gorge, out of the darkness, into the torchlight. Hundreds of them. My private army sent to kill this Slaughter Man person, this Dean Fulsome, who sat on a sofa with a cat in that same apartment where I’d planted the cyanide gas capsule in the incinerator, his heart beating rapidly. I walked into the darkness and heard the growls of my followers in the distance, all hungry for that very heart. You should have taken care of the trash. The cyanide might have been an easier way to go, Dean.

  I hurried on. I took out my cell phone to call Carl, but my molecular disassociation must have somehow damaged it. That, or the fire.

  I went to toss the phone, but it suddenly rang.

  The call was from an unknown number.

  “Hello?” I asked.

  “Jazon Meyers was mine. You shouldn’t have done that. Really.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Are you a god yet?”

  I straightened and turned around, looking at every dark corner of every boulder. After I was sure nothing was watching me, I went to hang up.

  “I’d like to kill a god. Can you do that for me?” the deep voice whispered. “Can you let me have that? I’ll give you a head start.”

  “I don’t need—” I blared. “Who is this? Are you that robot?”

  The thing snorted. “I’m the reason gods don’t exist anymore.”

  I tossed the phone on the ground and walked quickly to find the adjacent service road back into town. In the near distance, I heard the life-ending scream of one of my creations and the screams of others around it, bearing witness to its murder.

  Chapter 20

  Nose gently running, eyes puffy and itchy, Dean sat on the sofa with Butterball on his lap, wondering how everything was playing out with the robots. To put a break in his anxiety, he’d been texting back and forth with Sandra, but the delay was atrocious. Something bothered him about how little she was sharing too. Ever since she went out with her friends.

  Nothing happened… the other night. Did it? He texted.

  I’m not your ex-wife, she replied. He could imagine the snappiness in her tone.

  I just miss you. Don’t want you to be unhappy with me.

  You’re eighty-two trillion miles away. What’s there to be unhappy with?

  After fifteen minutes, she added, I didn’t even have a drink. Just chatted with the girls about life. I’m still in love with YOU, ya know?

  Dean almost broke his stance on emoticons and sent a heart, but instead replied, Back at you, beautiful.

  He was so lonely for her, he was about to break another rule and send a selfie, even though he felt it completely demeaning and against the grain of everything that made Dean Fulsome who he was, but this distance… sucked.

  Lifting his phone, he got the camera just right, aligning his face in the center of the frame. He wasn’t very good with cell phones, but it seemed self-explanatory. Dean put on his best grin, happy Limbus had so generously fixed his crooked teeth when they hired him. Gently, he guided his thumb over the green button to take the photo. His phone vibrated and another button appeared. He pressed it to get rid of it, but answered a visual call instead.

  Donaldo stared at him quizzically for a moment on the screen of his phone. “Well, I’m glad you’re happy, but Jazon freaking Meyers was stomped to shit!”

  Dean bolted upright and Butterball leapt off his lap. “What happened?”

  “The AI core in Jazon was completely destroyed. It’s unrepairable. Short of him being put into a car crusher made of the finest Fanglion spirit-iron, I have no idea how that even happened. How it’s even physically possible.”

  “Where is Loveman?”

  “I don’t know. He’s gone silent. He’s operational, but he’s not allowing me to watch his movements.”

  “What?”

  “They have that freedom. Jazon never chose to go silent, but Loveman does it all the time.”

  “Wonderful.” Dean squeezed his forehead where a headache had begun to emerge. “Even if he’s tailing the
Killer, we have no clue where either of them are.”

  “Why don’t you get some sleep?” Donaldo yawned. “This will sort itself out by the morning. It always does.”

  “Sleep isn’t in my near future.”

  “Well, stay off the streets. There was a report of a disturbance on the west end of town, something like a riot. They don’t have details yet. It might be over the Grettish thing with the Zetú prisoners. They are planning to execute a few of them.”

  “Let me know if you hear from Loveman,” Dean said coldly and hung up.

  He sat back against the couch, feeling helpless. The Grettish terror groups only wanted to restore their wealth the Zetú had fairly taken in the United Market Exchange War. The awful thing was that Finny-Min and his community were not a group that reaped any of the financial rewards from the time. The Grettish species were all related through blood, however, and their idea that all species were linked in a similar way made them believe that all species were a large family held accountable as a group, rather than individuals. All this terror group was asking for, in this case, was enough money to rebuild their freighter. But the Zetú government would not negotiate with them.

  Dean had read the internal, secret files not released to the galaxy. The terror group was desperate. They’d even suggested contract mercenary missions in exchange for the hostages, but received no response from any government official. Dean understood why. There were many such groups and catering to one would mean they’d need to cater to all of them.

  But Finny-Min and his son, Dean… my friends. His mind raced.

  Now they were just asking for a lump sum of money again.

  His thoughts were broken as his employee Charles Blu emailed him. Dean read it, just for the sake of taking his mind off the present. The email essentially explained how busy Charles was and how he needed to find the time somehow to give his new recruits expense forms translated into Fanglion, but he had no time to coordinate with the translation department. What this meant was that Charles needed help with something he didn’t want to do. The staff at the translation department at Limbus could be hard to handle sometimes and intimidating if you didn’t know how to deal with them.

  Dean told Charles he’d handle it.

  He called an extremely high-strung woman named Helenex, who made Dean extremely uncomfortable for about ten minutes before she softened and explained that she could find time around lunch to process the form and send it to Charles. “He suggested you specifically. Said you were the best,” Dean told her.

  Helenex was extremely flattered.

  After they hung up, Dean leaned forward and took a drink of lukewarm water from a porcelain cup. A little redirection never hurt. Now Helenex would be gentler with Charles, and he might actually do his own job next time, rather than involve Dean.

  Probably not though.

  Why?

  Because you’re a sucker, he could hear the Firecracker Lady say.

  Just then it hit him square between the eyes. Dean sat up straight. A plan formed in his mind. Redirection. He can’t fight the Charles incompetence from Moon City, and he couldn’t fight the Grettish terrorist either—but he could gentle them by giving them what they wanted. He didn’t have the money to repair their freighter, but he knew someone now who did.

  He called back Donaldo and told him to keep a confidential channel open to the Firecracker Lady. “Let her know I’m lining someone up to smuggle the crocoshark venom off the moon for her.”

  Donaldo jotted it down.

  “Still no word from Loveman?”

  “Nope. The riot was caused by wild animals though. Thought that was interesting.”

  “Okay,” Dean replied, ignoring him, “get on that secure channel to Firecracker Lady please.”

  “Yep. Bye.”

  Dean immediately dialed out to Tasha’s department and asked for a direct line to the Terror Group leadership. It took several channels and one disconnection, but since the group waited eagerly for their demands to be met, they were willing to speak to just about anyone.

  Their leader was named Rooshish Zthuu. Dean couldn’t see the telltale Grettish fedora, but only the burning silver eyes on his phone.

  “We know you, Slaughter Man. Friend to Zetú. No friend to ours.”

  “I am a friend, and that’s why I’m willing to bargain.”

  “Speak,” replied Zthuu.

  “Killing them is not going to get you what you want.”

  Zthuu’s eyes studied him a moment. “We are ignored. Them. You. All. We kill instead. A better end than cowardice.”

  “I propose a bargain.”

  “Speak.”

  “I have work for you on Moon City. The Firecracker Lady has need of smugglers. You would be required to collect crocoshark venom, store it, and ship it off the moon to her buyers. Perhaps she’ll even repair your freighter for the job.”

  Donaldo’s text with the secure line address chimed on his phone. Dean was going out on a limb. He didn’t know if the Firecracker Lady would completely go for this arrangement, but a little redirection could buy his friends time. Or maybe she could propose another deal for them.

  “You work for her?” asked Zthuu.

  “No,” Dean admitted. “But she told me she had that need. I am getting you a secure line to her. Once you reach her, you may work out the deal. Send me an open channel and I will connect you.”

  “You do this for the Zetú?”

  “Yes. If anything happens to them, she will not trust you to honor your agreement.”

  Zthuu sniffed, although Dean could not see the Grettish’s nose under the shadow of its hat. “This appears to be a Limbus trap.”

  “This isn’t a Limbus communication. You can ask them as much if you don’t believe me.”

  “We will, human. And the Firecracker Lady. Your job is a dangerous one we may not accept.”

  “I leave that to you, but it is a way.”

  “Send an open channel,” said Zthuu and then he abruptly hung up.

  Quickly he forwarded the channel to Zthuu’s address and sucked in some air through his teeth. Now, he could only hope they negotiated something. The Grettish leader didn’t seem too trusting, but he also had his back against the wall. Time would tell.

  Dean. Dean. Dean.

  He cocked his head. He could have sworn he heard his name.

  DeanDeanDeanDeanDean.

  Getting up, he stepped over Butterball, who meowed expectantly at him.

  DEAN.

  DEAN.

  DEAN.

  DEAN.

  A vibration went through the entire building and Dean stumbled back. “What the hell?” he muttered and went to the window.

  He looked down below. Monstrous black shapes surrounded the building. They looked more than just wild animals as Donaldo had reported. These things looked like pieces of nightmare and shadow with long teeth and claws, and bleeding eyes that were hungry for…

  DEAN.

  It was the only word their mouths could form. He could tell in his gut they’d been made just for him, and the person who had made them was the very person he sought to kill.

  “He knows where I am now,” he whispered.

  Calmly, Dean collected his gun off the table. The growls and snarls below grew louder as he went to the kitchen and took a butcher knife out of the drawer.

  Chapter 21

  The guard for the apartment building had been pulled through the double-pane glass window. Dean couldn’t understand how this had even been done, but it had. He imagined that the monsters had somehow thrust their hands through the barrier, grabbed him by the shoulders and ripped him through the jagged remnants, but none of that seemed possible—there wasn’t a shard of glass remaining, just a mutilated corpse that sunk beneath its bloody uniform, and one of the inky-black manifestations chewing on a left-over piece of flesh behind the left arm. The boomerang shaped game, Returno, that the guard had always been playing when Dean said hello to him, lay in a pool of coagulated, ver
million blood. Across from that large puddle, several dead reg police were also being feasted on.

  Dean leveled his butcher’s knife.

  From around the corner of the street, sliding over the concrete driveway of a single-family dwelling, the shadow creations surged toward Dean. He didn’t think any more on it and rushed into them headlong, swinging his butcher’s blade at their throats and faces. They popped up before him in an endless succession. The blade went side to side and up and down in a manner that suggested that it knew the direction to go in without Dean’s assistance. Boiling black blood hissed and sizzled as it tossed left and right. Open-mouthed horror and pain surrounded him as he killed tens and dozens and double dozens.

  He was a robot now. Dean. Fulsome. Slaughter. Man.

  He thought about Jazon Meyers.

  About Mister Loveman.

  He was the same.

  Except he had no master.

  He only had the misfortune of being a tool to kill.

  The berserk rage continued. He felt his entire arm soaked with oil-black blood, from his knuckles to his neck. He remembered enduring this kind of endless murder back in the slaughterhouse in Corona. Back when his marriage was falling apart. Back when punching a hole through a cow’s throat was therapeutic, even when he knew damn well it shouldn’t, and that he was a horrible person and he had messed up his marriage and it was all his fault and why couldn’t he just go away and understand that people like him only brought the rest of the world down and what could he offer that hadn’t already been offered before?

  Really?

  Really?

  And he remembered what bullshit it was then. And he remembered what bullshit it was now. But he was killing nonstop again and he had a woman he loved who was just as distant as his ex-wife had been at the time. Except now, he understood what real love was—he understood that it wasn’t about dependency, it was about support and inspiration and so many things that he hadn’t had earlier in his life. But he couldn’t have them now.

  He was here.