by Mark Jeffrey
“So now, we must convince you. We must seduce you — and prod you. But in the end, you will choose us. We are patient, Max Quick. We exist in eternity. For us, Time means aught.”
“Well!” Max said, clapping his hands and getting to his feet. “This is really quite the pickle we’re in here then, isn’t it?”
The Bondsman was silent.
“But you’re more than just the Bondsman personality. Your mind-virus also invaded the minds of everyone on the planet. They’re having a mass psychotic episode — of you. Logan called it ‘wetiko’ — the Archontic stench on everything. Everyone here experiences it, and is, to a degree, mad. Even me, now. You’re a poison in the collective unconscious, a corruption of it. You’ve replaced the archetypes that should be in everyone’s mind, the dream symbols — with your own images.”
“That is so.”
“And by altering mass consciousness, you’ve thereby altered and corrupted the physical world as well, since all seven billion people in this world are co-creating this reality together. Polluted minds give rise to a polluted physical world. Hence, the wacky weather, the reduced color spectrum, the mutated animals and perversion of nature itself. And you enhance this with all the millions of miniature Machines and your horrible music videos and movies and Bondsman rallies. You do everything you can to make the wound in reality deeper.
“But there’s something else I’ve figured out. Actually Sasha helped me understand a lot of this. The only way you can jump into anyone is if they think like you. They have to resonate with Bondman-ish energy, if you will. Jane Willow had done some evil things, she was vulnerable. Same with Sasha — her experience as a slave under Jadeth and the fear she’s scarred with, that opened her up to you. And Maurice — God knows what he did in the Vietnam war.
“So do you know what I think?” Max folded his arms. “I think the less I think like you, the less power you have over me. In fact, you don’t have any real existence outside of me. When I’m not around, neither are you. You vanish.”
“You’re saying I’m irreal?”
“No.”
“Imaginary?”
“No. You’re real. And you’re not. You’re both at once.”
The Bondsman looked quizzical, almost like a dog hearing a strange sound.
“Oh,” Max said, going on offense. “Surprise? From a supernatural intelligence? What’s the matter? Your eternity of plotting for this moment never included ‘both’ as a possibility? That’s because your brain works like a clock: you’re trapped in opposites. Both never occurred to you because it can’t. You can’t understand it.”
The Bondsman waved this away. “You say nothing. You speak in cartoons, words of no import. But consider this. We have laid such cunning for you here that it will tear your heart part. The longer you are here, the more certain this is. As you say, we have planned this very moment for eons. Time is an illusion, as you well know. We are not contained by it. We have eons for rumination.
“We have considered every possibility. Absolutely everything you might do here today, we have foreseen. And we have rigged the game to be certain that we win no matter what. Every possible turn has been accounted for.
“And I should warn you: your friends are already beset by Fell Simon at the other end of the island. Your attempts to spare them have come to naught. Already, they engage in a battle they cannot win: they will be dead soon. Of course, if you accept our offer, I will have Simon pull back immediately and they will live.”
“They can take care of themselves,” Max gritted. “Your little pal Simon might be in a for more surprises than you think.”
“Should you refuse us,” the Bondsman continued, “You will know true hunger. You do not know bottomlessness, as the Archons do, Max. But you will. We will it teach you. Limited by the flesh, there is an end, a release for you: you can starve to death. But we cannot. Our starvation only runs deeper and deeper and grows ever more acute, and their is no end to the sharpening of this acuity. Thusly, we warn you.
“You will become us in the end, Max. All beings that exist will eventually. But if you tarry, if you delay … if you do not accept what we offer now … then when, at last you come to us a begging wretch, petitioning us for admission into our ranks, you will be a much diminished version of yourself. Oh, we shall admit you. We shall always admit you. But you will be so very far down at the bottom by then, rather then up here on the Throne of the Bondsman as you could be today.”
“I should attack you,” Max said, rage rising now in his voice for the first time. “I should rip you to ribbons. You know I can do it.”
“Then do it,” the Bondsman shrugged. “By all means. Is that not why we are here? The final conflict? But even if you succeeded in killing me, it would not matter. As you have deduced, there are many backup copies of the Bondsman program. So while this body would lay here slain, across the world, a new master Bondsman copy would be designated. You know, I’ll let you in on a secret: the Resistance has actually succeeding in assassinating the Bondsman on several occasions! And to think they have always been baffled as to how I’m on television the very next day.
“No, Max Quick. Final victory over me is not possible. All you can do is kill this copy of the Bondsman. But there are legions more, all ready to take my place.”
“You’re right. It wouldn’t work,” Max continued, his rage deflating. “But not just because of your backup copies. That’s just a detail. No. It’s the Archontic thinking that’s the real problem. By participating in the illusion of one or the other, by thinking in a binary interpretation of good and evil, me versus you, I would be feeding your illusion. I would become even more tangled in it. Reality is not that simple. By attacking, I strengthen you. So — thanks, but no thanks. I learned my lesson with the Machine — and Casey learned what you Archons really are in Arturo Gyp.”
The Bondsman said nothing. In fact, he looked perplexed, so far as Max could tell beneath the golden frown.
“There is another world beneath this one,” the Bondsman said at last. “You have at last come to wisdom there, I presume.”
“Oh yes,” Max said with a wave like this was obvious. “There aren’t really any planets. The world is really flat. All the crazy stuff Maurice said is actually true. And I remember all this because of Venetia. Because of all of Giovanni’s daughters.” The Bondsman tried to interrupt with another thought, but Max overrode him. “And that’s what you’re trying to remind me of. That’s why you just brought that up just now. That’s the point of letting me find that painting in the City-State: You want me to feel guilt. You want me to think of myself as small, worthless, wretched. Because by doing so, I will again play into your hand — I can’t be saved, I’ll think. I’m hopelessly flawed. So why not give in? Why not be strong and rule?”
“You are a Bondsman already, Max Quick. I have no need to convert you, not truly. You have killed. You have caused untold suffering.”
“Yes,” Max said. “That is true.”
“So why fight us? You already know this of yourself. Wear the mask, take up the mantle.”
“No. And yes.”
“Which is it?”
“Both,” Max said.
The Bondsman laughed. “You must make a choice.”
“No. And yes. Because it’s the only way out of this mess.”
For the first time, the Bondsman seemed genuinely concerned, anxious. And Max understood why: the Archons were bound by the same mode of thought they projected — absolutist, binary, concrete. They could not conceive of anything outside of their clockwork mindset.
The Bondsman literally did not understand what Max was saying. He could not understand something so irrational. He changed tactics. “Don’t you want to know who is beneath this mask? To at last discover the identity of your adversary! The one who —”
“Save it. I don’t care.”
Again, the Bondsman was thrown off balance. Quantum concepts eluded him. Max knew his hunch had been right. He wanted to gri
n, but he kept his own face slack — he wore a mask of his own.
“Look. I don’t have to become you,” Max continued. “I already am you. You’re right: there is a Bondsman inside of me. Everyone is this world is a Bondsman of sorts. We’re all drenched in wetiko, Archontic illusion. And the only way out of it, the only real way to win, is to escape the cycle of it — by seeing it for what it really is: yourself. By accepting it. By recognizing that we’re the same. We’re not separate. We never were. Two was the very first lie.
“So — yes, I will become you. I will wear the golden mask. But you will also become me. We will stop this charade of separation! We will fuse into one being, or rather, recognize at last the one being we have always been!”
The Bondsman seemed to grin then. A low chuckle came from beneath the golden mask. Almost, Max thought he had misstepped.
“You will not attack me then,” the Bondsman said. “You’re going to what, hug me out of existence? Shall I come down, then, from my Throne? Shall we complete this transfer of the Bondsman program from me, into you, of your own free will?”
“I said I would accept,” Max enunciated, with a glint in his eye. “I said I would accept all of it. And I even accept the part of me that does not accept you. I also embrace the part of me that does not embrace you! The part of me that hates you! Only then am I completely honest, completely free of illusion or self-deception, believing a thing wholly and completely! And do you know what that gives me the freedom to do?”
“What’s that?”
“Attack you!”
Max exploded into argent like a nuclear core meltdown. The Bondsman shrieked and backed away. He flung up his arms self-protectively.
For this was a very different attack than the one that the Bondsman had been anticipating and the one he had been trying to provoke Max into executing.
Had Max attacked head-on with blind hatred, drunk with illusion, and not recognizing the Bondsman as himself, but viewing the Bondsman as other, someone else, separate … this attack would failed. It would have rebounded on Max, and all would have been lost. Sooner or later, Max would have despaired and succumbed to the lure of becoming the Bondsman.
But attacking with the proper mindset, comprehending both poles of the illusion, and accepting everything …
Madame Europa Romani had counseled attack. But this kind of attack, Max knew now. Now he understood.
So attack, Max did.
He threw molten star-lava in gouts on the Bondsman. An avalanche of power crashed into the Bondsman like a tossed glowing mountainside. And what it was potent against the very essence of an Archontic creation as well as the flesh. What Max’s attack embodied was an assault on the very essence of wetiko, of the very Archontic fabric of being.
“No!” the Bondsman screeched.
Then, quite suddenly, the Bondsman tore the golden mask from his face and flung it to the floor.
Max found himself staring into the face of Enki.
Despite himself, Max gasped. Enki was not dead?
“Now, do you see?” the Bondsman roared through Enki’s throat. “I have possessed Enki! He is the Bondsman now! You wish to destroy me? Then you will destroy your beloved Enki as well!”
And now the Bondsman became a giant column of slick ash, turning and gyrating, as Europa Romani had done. And this ash threw off a black, acrid smoke that covered Max in a choking, vomit-mass of charcoal and soot and death. A hurricane of it engulfed the entire throne room.
But Max did not flinch. He stood there and took it.
The Bondsman became Enki again, sitting on the Battle Throne. With snarl he launched the Thunderchair into the air — hurtling down the golden step pyramid murderously at Max.
“Not true,” Max said calmly, enfolding Enki now in his swirling starpower. A gyre of white flame, a hurricane of stars lit the cavernous room like a great rotating galaxy. “You’re a mind-virus, living information. That’s all. I’m going to see you as you really are — and you’re going to see me.”
Enki, possessed by the Bondsman, gnashed and wailed. He flung power at Max using his Battle Throne. He threw gouts of sizzling lava and emerald malice and sickly yellow fear.
Max did not resist. He did not raise a wall of star-flame to protect himself. He simply allowed these things to hit him, to hurt him. He gasped with every blow, and intense pain seared him to his core. He cried out, unable even to hear himself scream.
All of Max’s nerves were mapped with fire. Every molecule of his being was etched in agony.
And still, he drew the Bondsman closer, enfolded him in this embrace of power.
The Bondsman opened his mouth and made the strange gargling sound Stevie James had — and Max felt the Bondsman mind-virus fill his ears like ice. The subzero, shivering sound spread into his brain, mapping every dendron. It was terrifying. But he did not resist; he drank it in, allowed it soak his entire body fully. Soon he was filled with the ice of space. He did not strive to detach from it — which is what everyone else did: they drove it into their subconscious; they looked away — and this was the trap.
Instead Max turned into it willingly, he wanted to be conscious of every particle of it.
And as this happened, his own memories of every terrible thing he had ever done bubbled up and spilled into this conscious mind. Faces, times, names, places, guilt, anger, terror … they slammed across his vision with the ferocity of storm replayed at high speed and at excruciating definition. He saw this with his inner eye, let it pass through unresisted, and accepted even this as well. It was him. He was evil — as well as good. He was both at once: he knew this completely.
He was the Bondsman. And he was Max Quick.
Synthesis. Union. Integration of opposites. The Shadow, individuated.
Max opened his eyes — and found he was now seeing out of Enki, staring back at his own face. He had achieved the shift in perspective he was looking for.
Now.
Now.
Now he changed the flow of his power, and formulated a container.
He could not defeat wetiko itself, he knew that. That was akin to attempting to expunge evil itself from the universe: it could not be done. But the Bondsman was a different matter. The Bondsman was simply living information. He was a specific weapon of wetiko. He was a virus, a mind-program, Words.
And Words could be contained, imprisoned. Information could be locked, made unknowable. Just as the Bondsman’s own name had once been locked and unknowable. It would be Mi, knowledge made physical.
And once it was, all remains of the Bondsman program in all minds would cease to exist everywhere at that very moment.
Fiercely, Max let the program of the Bondsman fill his mind. It was him, he accepted that. He needed to accept it in every detail. As he felt the Bondsman mind-virus flood his awareness, he felt it squirm and jibber like a trapped thing. Waves of fear pounded out from it.
Max had only sympathy for it — which was the only way to heal it and fight it at once.
He felt Enki’s own true mind join his effort now. Together, they focused ….
From Max’s forehead, a shaft of red flame sprang.
It inscribed runes on the Battle Throne. The beam moved like a pen, Writing, Writing, the source code of the Bondsman mind virus, Writing, True Writing. Max howled in agony. His eyeballs pounded and seared and sizzled. He feared he would henceforth be blind.
The runes of Mi took shape. It took the form of Niburian heiroglyphs, cuneiform that smoked and glowed now on the Chair. Line by line, the code that made up the Bondsman program was rendered.
Enki joined him in the effort. His mind merged with Max’s. He had Written like this before — in the Pyramid of the Arches, for one, as well as in countless Books. He had the experience, the mental discipline — and Max had the power of the Imaginal required.
Enki also bucked and winced and cried out in agony. Together, they forged the container. And Max couldn’t have done this so perfectly without Enki, without his experience
. Under his guidance, the container was specific, vivid, formed masterfully.
When it was done, they both collapsed.
There the Battle Throne stood. Upon it was ancient writing: runes etched in smoking gold and light. The code that comprised the Bondsman mind-virus was merely twenty lines long. It was simple, as all elegant code was. It was designed to be fractal, recursive: when executed, from very simple beginnings it sprang into a self-replicating swamp of complexity.
But not anymore. Now it was contained, locked.
Epilogue: Through The Arch
IAN, CASEY, Sasha, Marvin, Ninti, Jane, Logan and Cody entered the throne hall. Maurice rode on Ian’s back: his shattered kneecap prevented him from walking.
At the end of the very long walk from the periphery of the throne room to its center, they found Max cradling Enki’s head in his lap. Reverently, but wary of the fact that they were in the very lair of the Bondsman, they approached.
Casey picked up the Bondsman’s mask from the floor. “Where is he? Where’s the Bondsman?” Marvin Sparkle and Logan had already fanned out behind the golden step-pyramid, suspicious that no one else seemed to be present except for Max and Enki.
“Gone,” Max said without looking up. “Or more accurately, caged. He won’t be a problem anymore.”
“My God!” Casey gasped, noticing the extent of Enki’s wounds for the first time. “Will he —?”
Max merely shook his head. Enki was dying.
The Old One’s body was burnt and smoking. He gasped for air, his lungs rattled with a wet wheezing sound that could not be good. His eyes had lost their pupils entirely: they were now pure white, his sight scalded away by the fires of Writing. And all his hair and his beard had been burned completely off. He was bald and hairless and pink as a newborn.
And yet, Enki smiled. He was happy.
Ninti bent and, with a nod of permission from Max, took his head into her lap.
“Ninti,” Enki said, recognizing her touch at once. He smiled even wider still. “Well. This is an unlooked-for surprise. I am glad we will have one last fight before I die.”
