Enter the Clockworld

by Jared Mandani

  “Isn’t it like, the same thing, except coyote is what Americans call it?” Ben asked.

  “Ugh. Leave it,” the coyote said in the voice of Mr. Reaper. “So, Ben? It seems like we meet again.”

  “It’s just a dream,” Ben said. “And not a controlled dream, either. I know it all happens in my own head.”

  “But then,” the coyote said. “What if someone managed to sneak something into your head? Something voodoo perhaps?”

  The creature growled and belched, then coughed up two round objects on the ground. Ben looked at them only to see them stare back. It was a pair of eyeballs.

  “Lost these?” James Reaper asked from inside of the coyote. “See better now?”

  “A virus,” Ben said. “You put a bullet in my head. It was some sort of a virus. A lasting memory of you planted into my mind. So we’d meet again.”

  “And you are powerless to stop me this time, Benjamin.”

  “Since when?” Ben asked him. “This is my dream. Look behind you. What happened to that tractor tire?”

  The animal threw its head back and sniffed around.

  “What tire?” the coyote asked.

  “Exactly,” Ben said. “There was a tire, and it’s gone now. Because I imagined it gone. This is my head, and I control everything here.”

  “And what are the chances of that?” the coyote said, its posture suddenly stooping and lax. “A technical mind, it was supposed to be. And yet they gave me this dreamer.”

  “Seems like your voodoo has no power here,” Ben told him.

  “Don’t be so sure!” the animal said, then spun around and scuttled into darkness. There was a flash of lightning — ZZAP! — and it was gone.

  “Woooooooo!” Its howl sounded from a distance.

  Ben looked up, and there was the Moon, and he woke up the next instant.

  A new day was already creeping up the eastern horizon to meet them. Kowalski looked up from his ancient paper book.

  “Everything all right, Ben?” he asked.

  “Just had an uncontrolled dream,” Ben told the old scientist. “This stuff is just creepy. No idea what Diego finds in them.”

  Francis Kowalski dropped off Ben and his father right next to their apartment block. The lifts were operational again, so Ben and his father reached their home quite soon without any adventures. The old man took his usual place in the kitchen, next to the little folding table, and Ben could for a moment forget this wasn’t his father at all, but rather a piece of automold pseudoplastic in the shape of his father, meant to console him now that his father was gone.

  Unable to stay inside, Ben went out and took a looptrain to his former workshop, now a fresh construction site with many yellow maintenance bots scuttling about. His insurance money wasn’t cleared yet, but the chaos all around seemed to be subsiding little by little.

  Chanting crowds were gone from the streets. There were small camping sites here and there, people still sleeping outside in tents, cooking their food on open fires made of artificial wood, watched by robot fire spiders from a distance. The revolution had already managed to become a lifestyle for some and yesterday’s news for others.

  “Hey! Hey man!” Ben saw a familiar face all of a sudden. It was the bearded hobo from before, the one who used to wear VR goggles on his head. “Look, do you know what’s happening? Let me tell you!”

  The VR headset had been replaced since, Ben noticed. The hobo’s head was decorated with a small round cap made of tinfoil now.

  “I’m telling you, man, I saw them myself, the masters of this place,” he told Ben. “And I overheard they’re gonna meet today somewhere. Decide who of them is going to rule the world next and such. Hey, man, you’d like a cup of tea? Want some tea?”

  “Okay,” Ben said, just because the hobo looked so wild it could have been dangerous to confront him. Ben let the man walk him into a big round tent, the nearest to them.

  Inside, it was quiet and dark. A beaten weatherpod was glowing in the middle, several teacups poised on top of it, along with a big self-heating kettle of tea. The bearded hobo marched towards the kettle and poured two cups.

  “Hey, who is it? Is it him again?” several voices sounded from the dark. “It’s this bearded freak again! Hey, man, get outta here!”

  As Ben’s eyes adjusted, he saw the weatherpod was surrounded by sleeping cots, someone prostrated on each one of them, half of the inhabitants of the tent watching the two of them.

  “It’s fine, boys, it’s okay,” the hobo told the inhabitants. “Me and my friend, we were only going to have us some tea.”

  “Get lost!” the answer was. “And stop coming in here!”

  “Must I leave as well?” Ben asked them.

  “Nah,” the inhabitants of the tent replied. “You can stay. There, have some tea. There’s the kettle.”

  “Wait, wait, alright?” The hobo pressed something into Ben’s hand and took a step back. “I’m leaving! I’m leaving.”

  And then, with a gust of cold January wind, he was gone.

  Ben looked at the item in his hand. It was a piece of paper — real yellow paper, folded many times. He carefully unfolded it, held it against the glowing weatherpod, and read:

  We know where your woman is being kept. Come see us. Same bistro, midday, any day. Viva la Resistance!

  P.S. The Baron would also like to meet you.

  “What is it?” someone asked Ben from the darkness. “A parting message?”

  “More like a welcoming one,” Ben said. “Sigma, folks. We won’t go away and such.”

  He nodded at them and left, crumbling the piece of paper in his hand.

  Daphne, he remembered the last meaningful words of Providence, the fortune-telling AI. La Republique. Viva.

  La Resistance? What the hell was La Resistance?

  All over again, Ben had no idea.