by Mark Jeffrey
“But there other matters in which we may offer you aid,” Europa continued. “And coming from me, this may mean more: I say to you, Max Quick, that to defeat the Bondsman, you must confront him directly. I, who counseled restraint in the matter of the Machine, now counsel war. I counsel attack! You must square off against him directly, in full combat. You must do what only you can do.” Her face was livid, filled with battle-lust, as though she desired to fight herself.
“So it is a ‘him’,” Max said. “The Bondsman. He is not … female.”
Gustav and Faliero exchanged worried glances. “Do not assume anything,” Europa said. “There! And even with that one sentence I may have risked too much.”
Max only nodded. “I won’t.”
Three Sky Chambers suddenly appeared in the western sky. Max felt exposed in the open field, especially surrounded by silver-limned luminous apparitions. But Sambhava only chuckled. “Worry not about them; those insects of the sky will not trouble you while you are under our benediction.”
And as Sambhava predicted, the three lights bolted into the north without a second glance at the field where Max and his four ghost friends stood.
“Attack,” Max repeated. “Okay. Didn’t see that one coming. I figured that it would be another Archontic trap of some sort.”
Europa nodded. “It is. Of course.”
“Then why attack?” Max asked.
“It is the only path,” Europa said. “No other path has a possibility of victory. Oh yes. Victory. I said that word. The Bondsman is an evil that cannot be allowed to continue. He must be torn from the earth like a weed. He must be destroyed.”
“But it is a trap,” Max pressed.
“Yes. Of course it is. Everything the Archons do is a trap.”
“And there is no way to avoid it. There is no clever …”
“No. You cannot play chess with a supernaturally intelligent opponent and expect to win. Rather, you must look to other strengths.”
“And what are those?” Max asked. It seemed he was outgunned on every level.
Romani smiled. “Your heart. You must do what only you can do. The Archons cannot act in the world; they require agents to do their bidding. They are merely sentient fear and hate. They have no bodies. And the simplest outpouring of smiles and love can melt even their best-laid plans.”
“But the Bondsman … he’s infected the entire world! He’s polluted reality itself! How do you fight that?”
“There is another world beneath this one,” Gustav said.
“See, everyone keeps saying me,” Max said. “What does that mean?”
“Just that there is another world beneath this one,” Romani concluded, again shushing her companions.
“You must discover the True Name of the Bondsman,” Gustav added. “You cannot be victorious until you do.”
Max sank to his knees suddenly. He couldn’t take any more of this. Between the shock of seeing all of his friends from 1912, his wracked body, and millennia of lost memories crashing through his cerebellum — he suddenly had a meltdown moment.
“I know,” Romani said, reaching out to comfort him, although they both know she could not touch him. “I know. That’s why I saved our appearance until this moment, when you needed us the most.”
It was moments before Max could speak again. He knelt in the dirt, quaking. Abruptly, his hand became livid with white power. He shrugged a blast of stars and flame into the ground almost as an afterthought.
“I’ve done things,” Max said, sobbing somewhat. “I haven’t been all good. I’ve started to remember things.”
Romani nodded, and expression of understanding on her face. “Nevertheless. And in spite of. We are all capable of great good and great evil. Remember, the Bondsman resonates with evil, fear, hate. You must free yourself of the guilt of your past, or you will become more like the Bondsman.”
“But why?” Max asked. “Now that you’re …” He could not bring himself to say dead. “Now that you have another perspective … can you tell me why there is evil?”
“You mean that now that I’m dead,” Romani said, half laughing. “You think of me as a rotting body beneath this gravestone. I am not that body. But to your question — it is so simple to answer: free will includes the possibility of evil. And growth is not possible without free will. Good needs evil to grow. Yes, that means that you will not be your best self sometimes.
“But — Max — Damiz. You have been alive for so very long! The burden of living perfectly is likewise so much very greater. You are going to feel your deeds as far worse an heavier than they truly are.”
“You don’t know what I’ve done.” Max felt the words drop from his mouth like daggers.
“Yes. Yes we do,” Romani said.
“We all do,” Faliero completed. Sambhava and Gustav nodded.
“Here,” Romani said. “One more word of advice. Eat the berries in this field, they are all safe and nourishing. They will give you strength.
“And now we must leave you. But a word of caution before we do: Fell Simon has been tracking you. He is almost a day behind you. You have not been spotted from the Sky Chambers in the air, but it is probably not long until you are. I would advise that you make your way east — there is a small mountain town there called Raffle’s Pass. From this place, find transport along the road.”
Max nodded, taking this in.
Max thought of Marvin Sparkle again. He had buried the bodies here, the bodies of Europa Romani, Carlos Gustav, Gaspar Faliero, Sambhava and even Michelle, her headstone was here as well. Sparkle was looking for Max.
Was he also in the woods, somewhere behind him? But before he could ask the question, the shades of his friends had vanished.
Ah hell, Max muttered. They probably weren’t allowed to tell me that either.
Max had refused to fight with the Resistance. And yet, Madame Europa Romani herself had advised him to fight the Bondsman head on!
Should he have joined the Resistance after all?
He rose and went in search of berries, ate his fill and then fell instantly asleep amongst the graves of his old friends.
THE NEXT DAY was a day of wind and sun.
The air had a bite to it, a sharpness, a tang, like the snap of a ripe apple. And the wind was utterly brutal, driven by the round red sun that sizzled in the deep blue above. It drilled into Max, penetrating every layer of clothing he wore. In response, he pulled his hoodie up over his head and tied it tight — but even this didn’t make a difference. The cold sought him out, soaked into his very bones.
Before long, however, the forest ended abruptly, dumping Max out onto fresh pavement. A tar road snaked up the edge of a mountainside. He could see the Nurvenback Ridge in the distance: he was now well outside of the boundaries of Camp Griswold and had entered another region of mountains not on the map.
Max pushed his burning legs forward: up, up the mountain road for several long hours. The clouded deeps above were unnaturally huge here in this place. So were the peaks on either side. Jagged jigsaws of rock sliced the sky.
The air was sharp and cold. And thin! Max breathed in gasped, ragged breaths. Part of that was exertion of walking up the steady and steep incline for hours, of course. But it was also the altitude.
The whole earth seemed tilted here.
Thankfully he soon reached the quaint village of Raffle’s Pass, just as Romani had promised. It was filled with austere cottages and stores. Old stacked bricks and semi-crooked wooden buildings were everywhere — as well as the smell of fire and crackling logs.
Yet, the Bondsman’s influence did not seem to soak Raffle’s Pass as completely as other places he had seen, Max thought. And that gave him some hope. Apart from the color drained from the fabric of reality itself, this might have been a normal, small American town from the original timeline.
Nevertheless, Max pulled up his hoodie so that it covered much of his face. He wasn’t going to take any chances on being recognized.
&nbs
p; Not to say that Bondsman’s influence wasn’t here, of course. His masked, logo-ized golden face looked down from street signs, billboards and windows. And there, just before the treeline, the rotating hoops of one of the mini-Machines spun and pulsed like a mad heart, making Max wince with his newly-sensitized vision.
He entered a small convenience store called The Raffle Quartermaster.
He asked the woman who worked there where he was. No, not the name of the town now. He wanted to know what it had been called before the time of the Bondsman. Max suspected all the towns had changed their names — he was trying to get a bearing on where in the United States he might actually be.
“What ever do you mean?” the woman said loudly and nervously, looking around the store. “It’s never had another name! It’s always been called Raffle’s Pass!”
The lie in her voice hit Max like a shriek. It cut through his eardrum like the sharp warble of a siren. An instant blood-gushing headache pulsed against the back of his eyeballs.
Mr. E had once told Max that there was one a time when ‘telling a lie was a physical impossibility’. He had meant that, once upon a time, it literally could not be done. Lying did not exist yet as part of the laws of physics.
Well. It sure did now.
But Max’s own power had been awakened. And although it could be simply explained as a very deep connection to the Dreamtime, this power had myriad physical expressions. It meant he could bend reality — but it also meant he himself now experienced reality on that deeper, original level of being.
Lies now hit him like a physical assault.
He could not hide the wince on his face. But the storekeeper must have misunderstood it as guilt about something or other; she told him to leave the store immediately. On the way out, he asked if he could just buy a paper map of the North Western Continent — generally what used to be Canada, the United States and Mexico. But this just enraged her all the more. Max decided not to push the issue and left.
Two Sky Chambers floated out by the horizon.
“You’re not from here, are you?”
Max turned. Before he’d remembered to be cautious, he’d given this man a full view of his face.
“No,” Max said, readying to burst his fists into star-flame. But he found himself facing merely a homeless old man seated on a bench.
“Oh, don’t worry,” the man said. “Neither am I.” The man’s long, pencil-line-thin hair twirled in the mountain wind. “Name’s Stevie James.” The man held his hand out.
Hesitating only a moment, Max took it and shook.
“Ma — Michael. Mike Nick,” Max said, barely catching himself in time.
“Here, you look tired. Have a sit.” Stevie James offered him a place next to him on the bench. The was a slight stink to the man — but nothing horrible, nothing that could not be endured.
“Thanks,” Max said. “And yeah, I’m pretty wiped. I’ve been walking all day.”
As soon as Max sat, he caught sight of an old bookstore across the street. It looked like a musty sort of place, the kind that sold very old and rare books. Antique books. Relics of another age.
There is another world beneath this one.
Why had been reminded of those words just now?
He with his new percipience, Max noticed a sort of golden glow on one of the books. He had a sudden impression that it was from another world beneath this one.
Like the Battle Thrones he had seen beneath Snake Island.
What did that phrase mean, exactly? Max wondered.
Then a thought gripped him: Could it be that elements of the original timeline were still here in this one? That his original world was not completely erased with the destruction of the Machine back in 1912? That there were still objects somehow still … hanging around?
Like how old reel-to-reel tapes sometimes contained echoes of things previously recorded on it? Sort of … sediment layers of time?
He laughed out loud as he realized that he, himself, was one of these objects. He was an echo from a previous recording. So were Casey, Ian and Sasha.
“Oh?” Stevie James said. “Did I say something funny?”
“What? Oh, no,” Max said, somewhat self-consciously. “Just had a funny thought that’s all.”
“You going to share?” Stevie asked good-naturedly.
Max shook his head. “Sorry … it wouldn’t make sense to you. You’d have to have …”
That glowing book was pulsing gold light now. It was becoming … what? More annoying? More insistent. Yes, that was the correct word.
“You’d have to have the right …”
What was the matter with it?
“… Background.” Max finished. “What is with that damn book?” he blurted before he had a chance to think about what he was saying.
Stevie looked across the street, befuddled. He followed Max’s line of sight, evidently not seeing anything nearly as interesting as Max was.
“Can’t answer that,” Stevie said. “But here’s something funny for you. Kind of a riddle, really. Which came first: Time or the Clock?”
“What?” Max said. That got his attention. Homeless people didn’t usually muse on philosophical riddles.
“Time? Or the Clock?” Stevie repeated.
“Time,” Max said, finally, wondering why he was even answering. He must losing his mind, he decided. Or that desperate for company. That stupid pulsing light around the book was getting on his nerves. “You have to have time first. You have to have something to measure first, before make the thing that measures it. That’s like asking which came first, the gallon or the milk. Why? Why is that supposedly funny?”
Stevie laughed. “Because it’s not true. Before the clock, there was no time. There was just Now.”
Max sat up, now at full attention. This Stevie James was not at all what he appeared to be.
This was how Enki — Mr. E — talked. It was also how Carlos Gustav talked. This was Dreamtime-talk.
Max already felt his pocketed hands growing hotter with the power — the power of an Imaginal. His gaze flitted nervously to the two Sky Chambers hanging in the distance. If they sensed his use of star-fire, they’d be here in no time. But if he had to defend himself against Stevie James …
“Explain,” Max said to Stevie tightly.
“Well, it’s easy, actually,” Stevie said, seeming to suddenly drop the pretense of being a simple bum. “Time is an illusion. It’s not really real. Everything is always happening all at once. Everything that’s ever happened, is happening, or will happen — is all happening right here, right now. Everywhere is the center and it’s always now.”
“What does that have to do with the clock?” Max said, that damned book distracting him again.
“The clock is the lie. The clock is what makes you think things are happening in a row. The clock constrains your focus, prevents you from a wider, true vision. The clock is a set of blinders that —“
“Wait,” Max interrupted. “Alright. Enough of this. Who are you? Who are you really?”
“I told you,” Stevie said. “Stevie James. My name is Stevie James.”
There was no lie in his voice, Max realized. That blackboard-nail-screech of a lie was not present. Stevie James was telling the truth.
Danger!
“What?” Max said.
“I said Stevie —“
Max waved him silent. He shushed him. Who had just said …?
But there was no one else there.
“As I was saying, I was telling the truth about time,” Stevie continued. “You ever notice how sometimes time is slippery? You don’t really have a good handle it? An hour is like a day, and a day is like a month. And sometimes, a second is like a week?”
Max nodded slowly. The Pocket was a second that had lasted several weeks.
“For instance: right now, it’s now the middle of the night.”
With a start, Max realized that it was. Darkness drenched the cold night air. Only a few lamps and a singl
e traffic light now lit the small hamlet of Raffle’s Pass.
“How long have we been sitting here?” Max said.
“Only a few minutes or hours. But minutes are hours. That was my point. There is no difference. Sometimes planes take off and they show up hours early or days late. When people are freed from their miserable clocks, they’re loosed from the tyranny of time. Everything goes all plasticy.”
“What do you want?”
Stevie whispered conspiratorially to him now.
“If Max Quick is going to defeat the Bondsman, he needs all the help he can get.”
Max tried to keep his eyes from going wide, but it just wasn’t possible.
Panic zapped his intestines. This man knew who he was!
He scrambled back along the bench and jumped to his feet, brandishing fists in front of him. Stars streaked along their surface, betraying his identity beyond a shadow of a doubt to anyone who understood what that meant.
If Stevie James was an agent of the Bondsman, this was all going down right here, right now.
Danger! Run!
Max’s head snapped around. Who was saying that?
“I want to give you a gift,” Stevie continued, leaning towards Max now. “I want to help you.”
“I’m not here to fight him,” Max said cautiously. “Not in that way, anyway. A head-on assault won’t work.” I’ve done this whole thing already with the Machine. I know what I’m talking about! “Anyone who defeats him will simply play into his plans in some way that isn’t clear right now. Attacking him only gives him power. In fact, he loves to be attacked.”
Stevie nodded. “That’s all true. That’s why I’m here to help you in another way.”
Was this someone Romani had set up for him to meet? Was he the reason why she had sent him here, to Raffle’s Pass?
“But who are you? I want to know why you’re helping me. Are you with the Resistance or something?”
Stevie shook his head. “No. I’m not with the Resistance. I’m just someone who wants to do his part in this war. I’m just like you.”
“You’re nothing like me,” Max said. “Trust me.”
“You’re going to have to fight the Bondsman in the end,” Stevie continued. “He is your enemy — and the enemy of the entire world! And he’s your fault. You caused him to be. It’s up to you to make things right again. Nobody else can do it but you.”
