by Lee Bond
Barnabas scoffed. “Hero. You think you’re a hero. You think you’re a hero.”
Garth finished moving the heavy table-like structure –now Garth looked at it properly, it was a pretty demolished piece of engine, but it had a nice flat surface and seemed like it would do a good job in its new life as a table- into place and fixed Barnabas with both eyes; one of the most interesting things to develop since surviving the crash of ship and Armory was that his right eye had finally come online properly. “I’m about as heroic as this shithole is going to see with everyone else dead and gone, you colossal douchebag.”
Barnabas opened his mouth to lambast the rude outsider with a retort of his own, but clammed up instead. Everyone else was dead. There was no one.
“These user logs.” Barnabas said instead, “You found them of interest, hey?”
Garth produced the computer he and Chad had used inside the Armory to dig through the layers and strata of particulate usage down through the centuries. “Totally. It’s all there, you know, from tinkerers and artificers to the resurrection logs of every single gearhead and wardog that ever did live. Once you figure out how to read the string code and all that, it’s really goddamn fascinating.”
And it was, too. Garth would never lie about that; for all it’s twisted weirdness and maniacal machinations, there was a kind of diseased elegance about what’d been happening in Arcade City. The manipulations caused by the Platinum King –it was easier to think of the nanoparticulate consciousness that’d tried gaining control of the whole kit and caboodle as a singular entity- were in there as well, artfully intertwined with the continual deluge of data.
Barnabas gestured as wide as he could with his hands; N’Chalez had him really well secured, so it weren’t fair. The outsider’s admonition –that this was all for his safety- rattled around inside his brain and the King ground his teeth. So long as the restriction lay there, reminding him that he was in no danger, there was nowt he could do but play along with the man’s show and tell. “Never had a need, lad. I am King. Nothing happened ‘neath The Dome as wasn’t done by my explicit permission. One of the perks.”
Garth placed the smallish computer on the table and nodded. “No, yeah, totally, I get it. Even found your knockoff bullshit Asimov’s Laws in there, too. ‘Thou shalt listen to the King’ and ‘Thou shalt not go against the King’s wishes, either through action or inaction’ and ‘Thou shalt heed all the King’s wishes’. Blah blah blah. Pretty thorough.”
“Asimov?” Barnabas frowned.
“Very smart guy. Here, he got tapped to assist the Armies of Man in designing intelligence protocols to prevent machines from gaining too much free will. Elsewhere, he wrote science fiction novels that were truly inspired.” Garth shrugged. “What you took ten laws and a ridiculous amount of … uh … sub-laws to accomplish, he nailed down in three.”
“’tis a complex system.” Barnabas countered hotly. “Saw that from the beginning, didn’t I? Realized even before The Dome went up that I’d need to protect myself, hey? Nanotech particulate gives whosoever controls it the powers of a God. Couldn’t very well have them powers coming back to haunt me, now, could I?”
The One and Only King flashed a victorious grin at his apprentice. Summat of what he’d said had scored a direct hit against Garth’s ego, if for no other reason than the lad frowned and looked mightily pissed for a long second.
Good. There were possibly a way out of this yet.
“What are you doing, there?” Barnabas asked when it became apparent Nickels wasn’t going to take the bait and start arguing about the nature of the particulate.
“Hm?” Garth held up a few torn wires from the back of the computer. He hadn’t been particularly graceful when ripping it loose from the machinery it’d been attached to. “Oh. Powering this bitch up.”
By way of explanation, Garth held the wires in his hand high, and rummaged through the curious space inside his own brain that was his connection to the Cloud, though carefully; now he’d poked through some of the logs, he knew a great deal more about how particulate worked than he ever had before.
More specifically, how the damned thing wormed deep into your brain and turned you into a puppet.
If only he could travel back through time, warn the younger version of himself away from certain avenues, things in Gorensystem would’ve gone entirely differently.
Not to mention, Garth thought glumly as the wires in his hands grew about a foot in length before finally locking themselves into a patch of space over his right shoulder, this whole fucking bullshit nightmare called Arcade City probably never would’ve happened in the first place.
“To what end?” Barnabas demanded frostily. “I am King. I need no computer to access the logs. All you can see on your screen I can see in my mind’s eye.”
“Oh, really?” Garth demanded with equal frostiness. “Are you sure about that?” While he waited for the King to rise to the bait, he went and grabbed a chunk of Armory-stone big enough to work as a chair.
Barnabas watched Garth lugging the heavy stone back with concern. Nickels wasn’t the sort of person to raise a point without having some kind of counterattack. It was one of the more obvious personality flaws in the Kin’kithal, and while the majority of his conversational ripostes had been predicated almost entirely on something wildly illogical or blatantly made up, right here and now, Barnabas Blake couldn’t help but feel as though the man actually had something up his sleeve.
Garth pushed the stone into place, sat down on it, and looked sideways at the King, careful not to frown or flinch or otherwise make any kind of face that the man could read something into. “No?”
“I am King.” Barnabas jutted his chin out. “There is nowt,” he said sternly, “that happens in my city wi’out my knowledge and permission.”
Garth flashed a smile. “Be a lamb, then, my lord and King, and access your most recent interaction between the most august and magisterial self and the entity known to the Cloud Particulate as PK-1.”
The lad wasn’t even trying hard to rattle his confidence. Were he intent on making a King doubt himself, he would’ve gone back further, back to the very beginning days when he’d been new at the job and full of doubts and misgivings about what he was doing. The exchange between himself and the Platinum King … that’d been one hundred percent the right thing to do. No other way. It weren’t anyone’s fault save Garth’s that things had gone differently.
King Barnabas Blake the One and Only gestured and the entry made into the Cloud’s systems danced in the air between the two of them. “There, you see?” he demanded triumphantly. “A simple string. I released the King from all restrictions, ordered it to slow you down by using the Menagerie. Your desperation was a thing neither it nor I could’ve anticipated. You won that round, clear enough, hey?”
Ignoring the King’s chuckling laughter –to allow the dry amusement to get under his skin was to invite the roiling anger at Agnethea’s useless death to come to boil- Garth found the pertinent entry in the computer and did the same as his foe had done.
Pointing at the true log –which was twice as long and far more complex- that hovered in the air between the two of them, Garth put on his best Foghorn Leghorn voice and began, “Now, sir, as ya’ll can see here, my, I say my entry for the same date and time is considerably longer than yours, and as you can see, I say, as you can see, the encryption protocols associated with the entry haven’t been tampered with in any way. The entry, I say the entry is undoctored. Do ya’ll agree?”
Open hostility flared across the King’s seamed face, but he bit back the angry retort; Garth’s shenanigans and odd accent notwithstanding, he was correct. The encryption protocols blistering off the main string of code were untouched and followed the proper cypher-keys. The twinkling blocks of data showed no signs of even attempted tampering. “But this,” The King read through the doubly-long entry, “but this makes no sense. I … the Platinum King … changed my orders? It actually sent those devil
ish Menagerie members off to kill Chad? What’s this about a bargain ‘twixt you and it? This makes nowt a lick of sense.”
Barnabas flicked through his mental logs and found the very next entry. Nothing of import. As he’d expected, a battle between the Obsidian Golem and itself, whilst Nickels himself was off trying to get to Chad. Nickels’ decision to leave Agnethea behind the fence with the unstoppable Platinum King in order to free the original Platinum Brigadier was one of the only choices the man could’ve made; neither the outsider not the Golem had –at the time- possessed the kind of power needed to do for the perfect iteration of Dark Iron. Only one who’d done it before could have even come close to accomplishing it a second time.
Only … the King’s confidence floundered. That clearly hadn’t happened. Agnethea had somehow done for the freed Platinum King and Chad Sikkmund had disappeared from Arcade City, stealing nearly all of the power remaining to the world en route.
Glaring evidence of log tampering floated in the air. To his credit, Garth wasn’t doing anything smug. He was just sitting there, browsing through the files, looking interested.
“Show me the file after this entry, the original one.” Barnabas shouted. He struggled against his bonds. Held fast. “Show me!”
“No need to get your knickers in a twist.” Garth held up a finger. “Before I do, though, can I explain something I finally learned? About nanotech? It’s kind of important, and if I don’t, then, when we get to the part where I explain everything that’s been going on, you’ll be completely clueless. You’ll feel like a dummy and no matter how much I hate you and what you’ve done here, to the people of Arcade City, for thirty fucking thousand years, I gotta admit, Barnie, a dummy is the one thing you aren’t.”
Barnabas squinted as he ran through what Garth had said, looking for sign of insult. There was none. It were just a long way to go to give an awfully delivered second-rate compliment.
The King sighed. “I reckon there’s nowt I can do anyways, hey? I’m bound up for my safety, and summat in your gleaming black eye says you know all about that, so aye, go on ahead then, laddie buck, and explain what it is about nanotech particulate that you think you know that I do not.”
Garth smiled and nodded. “Sweet.”
Then, taking a long look at the King, he decided it would be best if he hurried things along.
***
“Nanotech,” the unspeakable man began, “is complex, but you knew that, right? You deciphered what, some handwritten notes or something I left lying around? If you figured out how to build all this from that, then you know damn well what I’m talking about.”
Barnabas snorted derisively. “Cloud particulate, aye. Well complex, Master Nickels. Most complicated thing in the Universe, I warrant.”
“Next to the rules for rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock, you are one hundred percent correct.” Garth moved through another section of the logbook as he spoke, unconcerned at this point if the King saw or not. He’d already proven to his satisfaction that what Barnabas Blake saw and what anyone else could see would be two different things. “Microscopic machines that can disassemble the fundamental building blocks of the very matter to which we owe everything … c’mon. How could a system like that be anything except complicated. You did a very good job…”
“No need to give me flowers, lad, and tell me I’m pretty.” Barnabas snapped, the pressure from being unable to move growing nearly unbearable.
“…in the beginning.” Garth finished, more or less enjoying the vexed look crossing his captive audience’s face. When Barnabas looked like he was gearing up for one of his own legendary tirades, the Kin’kithal decided to give the other guy a bit of a break. “But you know what, I did a good job in the beginning, too. How many instances of nanotech particulate exist beyond Arcade City?”
Barnabas jeered. “None, else Trinity would be a true God instead of a machine mind playing at one. There hain’t none. The stuff blows up. Seen it, time and again, back when … back when Trinity and I talked from time to time. Two old things, you see.”
“Old Trinity wants you and me and everyone else in the entire Universe to believe that nanotech doesn’t work anywhere else but here in Arcade City, but,” Garth flipped through another big block of logs, “but It’s wrong. Kind of intentionally.”
Barnabas struggled for a bit in silence, watching Master Nickels cautiously as he worked his way through dataset after dataset of encrypted logs, a-twirl with curiosity. What could the lad be looking for? He’d look his own self, but the revelation that the Platinum King had been tampering with those logs still rankled mightily. He wanted N’Chalez to be wrong as badly as anything he’d ever wanted in his entire life, but … he wasn’t.
The One and Only King calmed himself down by simply realizing that Garth would reveal what it was he were looking for as and when it were found and not a moment before. This whole thing was a prelude to battle anyway, and the moment a way was found to cajole Garth bloody N’Chalez into throwing the first punch, that battle would be lost, wouldn’t it just?
“That,” Barnabas said at long last, “is obviously a trick question, hey? There’s got to be more than one, I reckon, but no more than four, as if there were more instances than that, Trinity’d have more than enough samples to work with. Wot I want to know, mate, is wot does this have to do with the complexity of the particulate, hey? Saying it’s complicated is like saying you’re a prat. It’s obvious, everyone knows it, no one needs to say anything.”
Garth tagged a log entry for later perusal. “Har-de-har-har. You’re a laugh riot, King Barnabas. But your critical thinking skills are top notch. There are, in point of fact, precisely three different flavors of Cloud particulate out there in the Unreal Universe. Two of them I had a hand in, and the third … well, the third I honestly have no fucking idea where it came from. I suspect my dear old Dad had something to do with it, but … we’re not on what you’d call speaking terms.”
Barnabas thought of Chad in that moment, and for a brief moment, nowt more than the skipping beat of his heart, the King reckoned he did wish things had been done differently with the lad than as had gone down. That moment, though, that fair perilous moment when Chad Sikkmund had delivered unto him such a blow that his inner Harmony –already fractured, already broken- had shattered e’en further still…
Well. There were no shame in doing all you could to protect yourself, hey? When that slivery bit of disharmonious song had crammed itself edgewise into Chad’s brain, thereby opening it up into some strange vista full of voices like himself, well, a King had done what a King had done, and there weren’t nowt to do but own up to it.
King Barnabas Blake the One and Only imagined how the world could’ve been had he been more honest with Chad. The last remaining CyberPriest blinked the thoughts away. Like as not to imagine he’d been successful in destroying the Universe as easy as one, two, three…
“I care not to hear about your father, Nickels.” The King snapped irately. His entire body chafed and he ached to be free. He said as much, adding, “Finish your schoolboy lecture as to how you would’ve done things differently and therefore better ‘neath my Dome and let us get on wi’ it.”
Garth frowned. “I’m not le… well, sure. Okay, I suppose I am. I have this insatiable need to wrap things up, you caught me. Move to the head of the class. It’s important I solve everything, because when I win, and a new Universe is born from the ashes of the old, if there is random bullshit left behind by me or the things I built, or had a hand in building, or what-the-fuck-ever, then that new, way more awesome Universe will have all kinds of fucking problems it’s not geared to deal with. And Cloud particulate, asshat, is kind of a big fucking problem.”
Barnabas rolled a hand gleefully. Oh, was that Specter peeking out from underneath that working black eye? Could it be? Were it possible that summat of his original plan was still viable? Cause Nickels enough emotional strife and mayhap … “How is the most amazing technology in the Universe
a problem? It can do all you ask.”
“That is,” Garth countered sadly, “that is precisely the argument I’d expect you to make. The problem, Barnabas, with particulate and it’s complexity is that it is also equally stupid. Complex as it is, it can only handle simple commands. Case in point, Latelyspace. In the last of the Sovereign Systems, the Latelians, unknowingly for the most part, use their version of nanotech for precisely two things. They create kickass handheld Sheets that can do a fucking awful lot of stuff, and two, they build badass forearm computers. That’s it. They don’t do anything else with it. No temperature regulation, no getting rid of birds and rain and, like, the fucking sun and stuff.”
Barnabas howled with laughter until he actually shed a few tears. “Good lord, boyo, all your time here in Arcade City and that still be the thing that bothers you, hey? That there hain’t no birds or bees? Them’s simple enough things.”
Garth shot Barnabas a look that said ‘if you weren’t hardwired to view it as an assault, allowing you to bring all your weird-ass CyberPriest powers to bear, I would slap you so fucking silly right now it wouldn’t even be funny’. “It’s precisely that kind of thing, asshat, that got you … yeah. Anyways. The interesting thing about the nanotech in Latelyspace is … drumroll please … not a single fucking person has machine parts growing out of their bodies. It’s perfect.”
Barnabas bridled. “Hain’t nowt wrong with my Will, laddie. All that ails a proper gearhead on his or her journey to enlightenment, well, that’s just the sour bits of their own lives breaking out through the skin. Part o’ the process.”
