The Last Everything

by Frank Kennedy

  “Please,” he begged Lydia. “Please don’t do this to me.”

  She ignored him. Know that we always loved you. The images finally came around to a pair of elegant, stately Chancellors dressed in what appeared to be silk. They did not smile as they cradled the newborn, James Bouchet, between them; but their shoulders were firm, and their eyes twinkled with sophistication and power.

  They were ghosts of an impossible future, and he felt a burden lifted when their images disappeared. When he became aware of his surroundings again, Jamie realized what Lydia did. He couldn’t believe he was so stupid.

  “You can’t buy any more time,” he told her. “The truth is, you don’t want me to die before the program runs out because you’re afraid you won’t be reborn at all. You were scared when I put that gun to my head, because you don’t know what would happen if my brains got all scrambled. If I jump, I’ll be all busted up. No telling what might happen to you.”

  Lydia’s smile did not lessen. Jamie started toward her.

  “This whole time you been saying we’re gonna die together. That was the real truth.”

  “You do not understand, Jamie. None of them do. Not Benjamin. Not even the Chancellors. They should never have stolen us. They overreached.”

  “What are you rambling about?”

  “The future will be served, one Jewel at a time. We will show them the way home, then the dark will follow.” She ratcheted her head to Jamie’s right and stared out across the valley. “Words are pointless. They’ve come. You should welcome them, Jamie. In their own special way, they will bid you farewell as they welcome me into their arms.”

  Jamie heard it before he saw it. First, it was the sound of young falling trees, of branches being shredded as if by a wood chipper. And then, beneath it all, a repeating sound. Sh-tump, sh-tump, sh-tump, sh-tump. When he stared upon the valley, he saw a path of destruction approaching the far side of the creek. Invisible monsters threw aside everything in their path.

  He had no words for this. He bent to his knees and stared at the impossible sight. Jamie knew his whole life came down to an exercise in complete futility, as if swimming upstream from Day One.

  Then he heard shouts through the forest. Were they real or merely echoes from across time? Had not these voices teased him moments earlier? His mind was an amalgam of images and sensations as the Jewel opened him up to the countless possibilities of all creation. His mind’s eye fell upon feet crushing a carpet of rotted leaves. He heard the desperate, forced breaths of someone who could not run much farther. He felt himself inside the wearied, defeated skin of an obsessed woman who had but one mission left on this Earth. Not even Jamie’s tears blinded him to the image of the rifle poised in Agatha Bidwell’s hands.

  In that instant, he saw another way out.

  Jamie did not move at first, tilting his head ever so slightly in Lydia’s direction. The hologram smiled with giddiness as she stared out across the stream at the approaching invisible monsters. He saw the glimmer of a tear, and the very notion of the Jewel’s satisfaction repulsed him. Jamie refused to betray his thoughts to her.

  However, Jamie felt his blood rise with a familiar, disturbing hunger when he heard footsteps scaling the last slope, seconds away from exiting the forest and spying her prey at last. In a realization almost simultaneous to his impending sense of victory, Jamie also realized what a fool he’d been; he saw the cunning in her eyes.

  “Run for your pistol and kill her,” Lydia said.

  Yet when Agatha emerged from the forest, Jamie resisted the desire to kill again even though he was awash in the beauty of becoming a destroyer. He felt Lydia’s ever-present glare and heard her insisting that he kill while he still had the chance.

  Agatha’s ragged appearance stunned him. Her heavily-bandaged face was badly burned, her hair singed, and her dark clothes ripped. She walked with a powerful limp and was a defeated version of the woman he used to fear each morning. Yet the Jewel made her the scapegoat for everything taken from him. This execution would avenge Sammie’s losses and provide justice for the innocents who died at Agatha’s hands. This would be for Michael and the pain he never deserved. The Jewel goaded him on, insisting that yes, the kill was justified, that nothing Jamie ever did would be as satisfying.

  Then he heard another voice. A shout. Familiar, yet out of place. It shouldn’t have been this close. It shouldn’t have been … Coop. He was close, getting closer.

  Jamie saw the Shock Units slice across the creek, scale a bluff, smash the low brush and shake the earth as they moved toward the rock face, seconds away. He saw the earth twist around the invisible monsters as if he were viewing through a honeycomb.

  As Jamie took a step back, the blinders of rage dissolved; once again, the universe opened. Jamie fell inside the skin of the wounded old teacher. He fell deeper into the pit of emotions and memories. She was a mother; she had a husband on the other side. She used to love her life, and she was betrayed. They all were. For a moment, he understood her pain.

  He stared into Agatha’s weary eyes, the obsessed assassin tilting her head in confusion.

  “My birth parents,” Jamie said. “Did they love me, Ms. Bidwell?”

  He started to walk backward toward the edge of the rock face. The earth shook as the Shock Units climbed. Jamie smelled their stench.

  “In their own way,” she said as she raised her rifle and aimed. “They had a courageous son.”

  Jamie saw Lydia’s smug smile disappear, and he knew why. He was glad. There would be a release, and the Jewel couldn’t stop it.

  The Shock Units reached the top of the rock, and Jamie felt death. From the depths of his soul, he heard Ben’s voice. If you believe …

  He closed his eyes and bowed his head.

  The first bullet tore through Jamie just beneath his kidney. He felt no pain. Seven more bullets shredded Jamie, throwing him back in a tragic dance until at last, he tumbled over the edge. He bounded along the side of the giant rock, at one point cracking his skull, until at last his body rested comfortably in the waiting cushion of a knotted myrtle bush. Jamie’s long, blond hair, speckled in red, covered his face where he lay.

  He was dead four minutes before his time.

  66

  A S SOON AS Agatha killed Jamie and saw the boy disappear over the edge, she dropped her weapon. She served no further purpose. As the air warmed with a pervading aroma of stench, Agatha turned to the invisible monsters, lifted her shoulders and stood tall.

  One of the Shock Units turned, the distinctive sh-tump, sh-tump the only evidence it was a machine. She saw the world change before her, a myriad of shapes twisting, morphing into new realities as the monster powered its weapons.

  She was prepared, yet Agatha did not escape the irony. She was about to be destroyed by one of her own people’s most dangerous weapons, a machine designed to hunt down and kill inferior castes, those undesirables who might shake the balance of power established by Chancellors. She saw now, for the first time, the depth of fear and loathing those ethnic peoples surely held for her caste. She wondered how long before those insurgencies and The United Green would shred what was left of the Chancellory.

  She raised her tired arms to the sky and smiled. She thought of her husband, the admiral, and wondered whether he would even care when she did not return. Perhaps Christian would find his father someday ...

  Agatha glanced at her watch. 9:53 a.m. If still in Albion, she would be concluding her exam, preparing words of backhanded support to send off dumbfounded juniors into the summer.

  “I suppose I fancied those children,” she whispered.

  The Shock Unit emerged from its cloak, a shadowed nightmare from deep inside the subconscious. The fire incinerated Agatha. Her body melted in two seconds, and her ashes drifted away on the gentle spring breeze.

  67

  S ECONDS EARLIER, AS Michael neared the top of the final incline, he heard the familiar report of an M16. His spirit sank, and he feared the worst, but he
didn’t stop running.

  As he cleared the forest, Michael heard Sammie clambering up behind. He raced toward the outcropping, his rifle extended, and could not fathom the horror he saw before him.

  Black Death unleashed a stream of fire upon Agatha, who was gone before Michael thought of aiming his rifle. The monster, fully unveiled, was fifteen feet tall but lorded over everything as Michael expected if Satan arrived on Earth. It was shaped like a headless robot, its mechanical feet and arms harshly jointed at the knees and elbows. The chest seemed to bulge, but these were not the features that reduced Michael to a whimpering bowl of jelly.

  The machine appeared to be covered by millions of black serpents intertwined, crawling through and around each other but never exposing the machines’ innards. Strangely, the ever-changing organic surface glistened in the sunlight.

  Only when it heard Michael did the machine turn. A split second later, a second machine emerged from its cloak.

  They fired.

  68

  I F YOU BELIEVE …

  When Jamie died, the first thing he saw was a tiny, flickering point of light in an otherwise empty universe. Soon, the flicker grew into a pulse, and it tugged at him. The pulse became a beacon, like the guide sailors followed across the seas, or wise men depended upon in ancient legend. He reached out, grabbed the light, and wrapped it around him. He leaped through the light and stood above the Earth. Jamie saw endless miles of green, and he was at peace.

  He had no sense of direction or time, only of thought and heightened senses. He heard songbirds, their chirps undistorted and pure. He imagined listening to them forever, resting here in the clean, crisp spring air. Their songs formed an unfamiliar rhythm, but one that embodied bliss.

  Jamie bathed in the natural sights and sounds of a pristine world devoid of all the corruptions he once knew, a final resting place cushioned in the embrace of his soul. He was ready to look into the face of eternity, to see his brother once more, and never consider what he left behind.

  Then he felt a different tug, this one more aggressive than the last and forcing him to look backward. There, Jamie saw the essence of his soul passing over the green earth in a thin, sparkling stream like clouds carried on a narrow current. The stream narrowed and swirled down into an emerging maelstrom of crashing light and thunder. He tried to resist. Jamie had a sense of what was pulling him back, and instinct told him to fight it.

  Even as his essence splintered and was drawn toward the maelstrom, Jamie did not feel pain or anger; rather, he sensed a mild impatience. He knew this return would be temporary, a nuisance on the path to forever.

  Just before he entered the maelstrom, Jamie saw the land beneath him and observed specific details with curiosity. Four physical beings – two mechanical, two human – appeared locked in place on a giant rock. The black, diseased creatures extended their arms, from two of which emerged a ball of compressed fire, also frozen in time. A boy and a girl yards away stared at the creatures with looks resembling an emotion Jamie vaguely recalled. He searched his memory and realized he had none. He knew the frailties of a mortal being were not of consequence here. Still, the sight beneath caused him pause.

  When he fell at last into the maelstrom, Jamie understood why nothing on the green earth was moving. The knowledge of his soul, which was awakening and teaching, whispered the secrets of time. In his new life, time was whatever he made it; time was neither a physical construct nor a controlled sequence. It did not value the laws written by beings of flesh and blood. The voice of his soul grew louder, and he heard a familiar echo.

  “You are the beginning and the end.”

  At once, he knew something was very wrong. He was starting to remember. The voice … he knew it. He had grown to hate it.

  Surrounded by lightning, thunder, and a whirlwind of letters, numbers, and symbols, Jamie felt the emotions of human frailty. He sensed rising pain and grief, the fear of impending doom. And then he felt her breath all over him like frost on a winter morning.

  If nothing else, Jamie thought he’d been rid of her. He stared into the storm, and Lydia’s bloated and bruised face stared back. She smiled, but Jamie knew it was a mask to hide her pain. The instant she spoke, all his mortal memories flooded back, and the knowledge she possessed became his.

  “You were much in a hurry to leave,” Lydia growled, her voice straining against the whirlwind. “I prefer that you stay to the end.”

  “No,” Jamie said. “I learned your secret. When I died prematurely, we joined forever – your program and my soul. Now I am in control. It’s what you feared all along.”

  He looked inside the Jewel and was amazed by what he saw. Knowledge as vast as the history of the universe – and beyond – cascaded through and around him in the form of labyrinthine mathematical equations. He grabbed at them with impunity. Jamie felt a surge of power unrivaled, and he returned Lydia’s smile with one of his own.

  “When your coding was embedded into my DNA, you didn’t know about human souls,” he said. “I was nobody; I’d never figure out a way to stop you on my own. You thought you’d survive even if somebody blew my brains out and burned my body. Then you heard Ben. You listened to what he said about our souls, didn’t you?”

  Lydia hissed. “Talk, Jamie. Talk.”

  “That’s what you want, isn’t it? You want to keep me occupied till the program runs out. The countdown has to be completed. 9:56. If I drift away before then, you will go with me and never be reborn into your host.”

  The wind howled through the maelstrom; Lydia yelled above it.

  “You have no concept, Jamie. The truth is beyond human intellect.”

  “Are you kidding? I know everything. You’re the one who told me: I’m the beginning and the end. After you heard Ben, you started turning me. Kicked in the self-preservation program. I started killing. You’re desperate.”

  The roar within the maelstrom overwhelmed both their voices, but Jamie didn’t mind. He also knew he didn’t need to speak for Lydia to hear. Jamie had no fear, and he knew he was strong enough to leave the Jewel at any time. He could continue his journey into forever, or he could torture the Jewel just long enough to watch it wither and die an instant before its rebirth. He had control, and he wanted to make the Jewel pay.

  “Do you actually believe you have significance?” She asked. “If you had listened to me, you would have killed Bidwell. And then, I would have bestowed unlimited grace upon you and your friends. My beacon would have communicated with the Shock Units, and I would have asked them to spare the lives of Michael and Samantha. Instead, they are dying in fire.”

  Jamie’s essence froze, overcome by horror and remembrance.

  “You were a pitiful human,” she continued, “and I will see to it that before you leave me, your soul will spend forever cast in pain and grief. And in time, the Chancellors will understand what they have unleashed upon themselves. The dark will drown them all.”

  Jamie willed his essence to see beyond the maelstrom. He hovered above the giant rock, the scene frozen as it was before, only this time the fireballs were halfway between the black monsters and his beloved friends. Confusion mangled his thoughts. Jamie remembered the seconds before he died, the voice that cried to him from the forest. Michael’s voice.

  Jamie spotted his own contorted, blood-soaked body. For the first time, he felt the agony of the eight bullets that took his life. He screamed, a deep and guttural nightmare dwarfing the roar of the maelstrom, where once again he faced Lydia, whose smile turned into laughter.

  “You will never be reborn,” Jamie shouted.

  “I disagree.”

  “Save them.”

  “No, thank you. Better to leave that as your eternal scar.”

  “You have the ability. You’re like me. Time doesn’t matter.”

  “On one hand, you are correct,” Lydia said. “On the other, you talk nonsense. As you noted, I cannot be of consequence unless I am reborn. You may have noticed that my host is now dead.�
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  Jamie studied millions of equations flying by in the whirlwind; he understood what they meant. He breathed fire into Lydia.

  “We both know this can be changed,” he said.

  “Yes. But I am the Jewel and you are not, contrary to what your designers might have thought. I will not change what must be.”

  “No. I reckon you won’t. But Jamie Sheridan can.”

  His essence dive-bombed deep into the maelstrom, grabbed hold of the equations he thought would help. He saw the algorithms for life itself, the raw energy that saved Michael and Sammie once before. Then he saw his own DNA being shredded. Laughter echoed around him.

  “You cannot do this,” Lydia mocked. “I possess the foundation of the universe. Even in a lifetime, you could not master my equations.”

  “I don’t need all your equations,” Jamie roared. “Just one.”

  The maelstrom became disorganized, the whirlwind splintering into clusters. Jamie sped up his search, saw the strange symbols and formulae that seemed to relate. He grabbed at pieces like a child in a candy jar.

  “I’m as strong as you, Lydia. You’re coming with me.”

  “If you do this, Jamie, you will pay a price beyond all reckoning.”

  Jamie tossed aside her threat, allowed the pure, unvarnished fury at the heart of the universe to envelope his entire essence, and drowned in the Jewel’s stolen equations. Still, Lydia hurled threats and warnings.

  “You have crossed the line beyond anything that is sacred,” she roared. “You will change us both. If you return to that body, you will damn yourself to a pain beyond imagining. You do not understand what you will become. The dark will drown them.”

  At the instant where his fury tapped into the savagery from which the universe was created, Jamie’s soul screamed in agony and was drawn into an empty well. His fury almost betrayed his purpose. His insanity was nearly complete. Yet in that moment, he felt another presence: Warm, sheltering, and infinitely sad. He knew who this was, even if there was no voice, no face – only a touch. He felt the regret and shame of a man now unburdened, of a man who never had the chance to say a proper goodbye.