“Not all of us,” Kreiger interjected.
“No, that’s true. Some of us peeked behind the curtain and saw the carpetbagger who calls himself wizard. How much emptier is the world for us, knowing what we know about the infinite mutability of reality, and our inability to affect it?”
“Ah, philosophy. If you want to achieve Zen, Jack, I suggest a forced fast and perhaps humbling yourself. Try getting the crap kicked out of you by a bunch of drunken zealot tertiaries unaware of their own place in the—and by that I mean your—divine plan. Nothing like coughing up bloody pieces of lung to help clarify what’s important.”
“And what’s important?”
Kreiger glared back at him. “The ability to choose,” he answered.
Jack nodded. “Exactly. The ability to choose. The ability not to simply be led or pushed or forced down a certain path, but to actually choose where you will go. Anything less is the life of a slave, of a minion, of a construct. There are too many already who mindlessly accept their role of mediocrity. I will not be one of them anymore. I expect you wouldn’t be either. That’s how we find the Nexus, people like you and I.”
Now it was Kreiger’s turn to quietly stare, taking full measure of what the young writer did and did not say. “What is it you want of me, Jack?”
Jack stared out past the junkyard to the distant horizon a billion parsecs from anything that might have reasonably been construed as reality. “All things in their time.”
“You know, there are those who say that in the Book of Genesis, the Devil’s sole purpose was to force God to piss or get off the pot. Make man a god like Himself, or cast him into the mortal realm with the rest of the animals. But above all, end the useless complacency of Eden.” Kreiger sighed wearily. “It was all very silly, really. Immortals running around naked; content and ignorant. No drive. No imagination. No needs or wants. It was incredibly boring, useless even. Paradise is overrated, and untenable to the human condition.”
“So why do you want it back?” Jack asked him.
“We’re not talking about me, Jack. Look around you. You’ve recreated Neverland. This whole world, for all the quirks and idiosyncrasies that you tell yourself make it more real and less puerile, is just a fantasy realm of timeless immortality spared from the necessity of change, from all responsibility, from all manner of tedium that is the earmark of reality as you know it. This is your Eden, Jack. Food when you want it without all those dishes to clean. The garbage takes itself out. The mailbox never has a bill in it. No requirement for a job, nobody to question your decision or conflict with your plans. No laundry to clean, no toilets to scrub, no phones to answer, no Jehovah’s witnesses ringing your doorbell. And lest I forget the main attraction, a willing and eager Eve looking to give you sweet lovin’ whenever you like because she’s of the mistaken impression that the sun rises because you smile and sets because you wink. So the question is, why let the snake into paradise?”
“I’m not partial to Judeo-Christian stereotypes; in some religions, the snake imparts wisdom. Personally, I’ve always thought they had their uses.”
“Which revisits the question: Why am I here?”
“When the time comes, you’ll know.”
Kreiger leaned his head back against the fence, stared into the brilliant, burning light of the sun, and sighed, searching for words that were not to be found. He drained the last of the beer from the can and flicked it over the edge where it sailed silently into the void, and disappeared.
The silence between them grew and the shadows shortened before Kreiger finally ended the stalemate—the day growing too hot, the silence too insufferable. “Have you seen any dregs?”
Jack took a sip of coffee, and answered. “No.”
“None?”
“No. No dregs. No Cast Outs.” Jack sighed. He had been idly fidgeting with a small stone. He flicked it at the surrounding chain link fence, but it went askew. The rock pinged off the chassis of a fallen robot, a metal man like a futuristic armored samurai, its legs stripped down to bare wires and support rods, exposing rusted pistons and neglected gears. It was a time of peace; they beat their swords into plowshares, and scavenged the metal leg casings of armored war drones to make coffeepots for the soup kitchen. But somewhere along the way, all of the elephants died. He knew it to be true in a reality disparate from this one. Insensible, but true.
All realities are insensible unless they are your own.
The robot did not move as the stone ricocheted off his chest and out between the links, lost in the open dust of the Wasteland. It was not like the other robots spurred into action by his arrival. This one was as dead and forgotten as the rest of the scrapyard that Jack called home.
“The fence came with the place,” Jack said. “All the warbots and barbed wire came in the first few days of my madness. Shellshock, you might call it. Everything dredged up from my memories of before, of our battle for the Nexus, of you and the rest of the Cast Outs.”
“You turned my army to dust,” Kreiger intoned, “and I turned your kingdom to scrap.”
Jack did not comment, apparently not sharing Kreiger’s view on the subject. Besides, it all seemed so long ago; a distant recollection of a storybook read a long time before, perhaps as a child.
“Have you found any life at all in the Wasteland?” Kreiger pressed.
“I rode out into the desert one time. I went until I could no longer see the Café behind me. I saw a trail in the dust that might have been the tracks of a beetle, or just as easily the trail of a piece of windblown chaff scraping the sand. That was all there was.”
Kreiger grunted and tried to reposition himself against the fence, joints aching. “I guess we really fucked it up.”
Jack climbed to his feet, retrieving the empty coffee mug. “I guess we did,” he said, and walked away.
* * *
The wizard stayed in the far corner of the junkyard until the sun crested the building to fall on him with all the fiery brilliance of God’s wrath. Then he made his way along the fence to a carnival barker’s canvas elaborately painted with some circus sideshow oddity called The Maxx. He no longer feared the war machines, inactive and still once again. What he feared now was not so much being caught up in Jack’s anger as Jack’s web, Jack’s world, Jack’s complacence. What he feared was becoming a denizen of the junkyard and, like everything else in it, decaying to dust.
He pulled the bottom of the canvas away, determined to crawl between it and the fence for shelter … and saw someone already there.
Jubjub Bird?
The young man was asleep on his side, arm for a pillow, snoring softly. Kreiger shook him gently.
“Mr. Gooseman?” Jasper smiled. “It’s you?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
“We was flyin’, Mr. Gooseman. Flyin’! Didja see?” A pause. “Course ya saw. You an’ me, we was both flyin’. Can ya believe it? We was flyin’ jes like birds an’ planes an’ clouds. Birds an’ planes an’ clouds. We was flyin’. Can ya believe it?”
Kreiger smiled, patting the young man on the shoulder. “Yes Jasper, I can believe it; we were flying. Now slide over; you’re bogarting the shade.”
PARADISE LOST
Hate is powerful; gasoline on an open flame; brilliant and fierce, dazzling and consuming.
But that power is a lie: its cost too high, its brilliance fleeting.
Ellen felt the courage run out of her the moment she turned away. She could have killed Kreiger within those first seconds; Jack could not have stopped her; nothing could have stopped her. The hatred would allow her that, allow her anything. She could have severed Kreiger’s head in a single blow, and suffered not one ounce of remorse as his dying heart—assuming he had one—pumped the last of his blood—or poison or acid or whatever filled his demon’s veins—out the gory stump in an obscene fountain, one more piece of wreckage on the beach of this vast and wondrous shore at the edge of all reality. Hate—rooted in anger and grief—would allow that. Let the blood
splash hot against her bare skin, splatter her ankles and slick the soles of her feet. She would not care. The hate offered resolution without repercussion. Yes, she could have killed Kreiger in those first few seconds. She could have done what Jack was afraid to do.
But he stopped her—so damnably calm she felt the urge to strike him instead—and just that quick, the hatred used her up, burned her out, left her hollow and cold, a shell weakly constructed of sadness and fear.
Some last scrap of anger towards Jack—strange that he should have kept it kindled—let her turn away before her emotions betrayed her.
And then it burned out entirely, leaving her in darkness, cold and alone, heart beating so loud she was deaf to the world. She did not hear anything Jack might have said, only the slam of blood through her veins, ringing in her ears. Her hands were shaking, fingers ice-cold. She tried to make fists, but could not make the muscles obey.
She propelled herself towards the stairs, but that was as far as she got. She stumbled sharply against the metal steps, and collapsed upon the cement, eyes closed, forcing back tears. Pride still counted for something, didn’t it? She kept her lips tight, refusing to let Jack hear her pain, come to comfort her, see her like this.
Why did you destroy everything we had? Why did you allow him to come here?
Everything was ruined, and Jack let it happen; as if he’d known all along the end was coming.
Why didn’t you tell me?
A little coal for her anger, the recrimination gave her enough strength to ascend and find something to wear. The walkway seemed narrower, the loft precarious. Until this moment, it never occurred to her that a simple misstep might kill one of them. Before this morning, this world had not felt dangerous.
In the blink of an eye, everything changed.
She found her jeans right where she dropped them the night before, so carefree, secure in Jack’s arms. Lost souls re-united, wild animals entwined, driven by passion. No secrets, just two spirits coming together, completely open. That was what she believed.
Apparently, she was wrong. And Kreiger proved it.
The sorcerer’s eyes—his strange, shapeshifter’s eyes—made her feel naked; so much worse than Dr. Kohler. Kohler saw her as a doll, projecting his dark fantasies upon her, but be had never really seen her, only what he wanted to see of her. She could deceive him, distract him, hide things from him. Kohler wouldn’t dare look below the surface lest scrutiny shatter the dream, his self-indulgent world collapsing under its own weight, a castle of matchsticks, a house of cards. But Kreiger saw deeper. She knew it the moment she saw his eyes, one blue, one green, and it brought back every encounter with the deranged sorcerer at the Sanity’s Edge Saloon. He saw through her like glass, every thought, every want, every flaw. She fell open before him like a book, and she hated him for it.
And she hated Jack for letting him come back, for letting him ruin everything.
And she even hated herself for feeling this way.
There is no place for hate in paradise. Paradise is lost, as unrecoverable as the past, gone like yesterday.
Ellen stared around the loft, holding her right sneaker, the left misplaced. It likely fell and bounced away as a carelessly thrown shoe is apt to, and was now lost somewhere in the discord of Jack’s garage. Sufficiently distracted last night, the matter of a missing shoe seemed trivial. But in the light of day, it was important again.
Everything had changed.
Ellen stormed about the garage, mad at Jack for deceiving her; mad at herself for being deceived. Once upon a time, she relied on no one, wanted nothing but the freedom to fly the Dreamline; an existence perfectly contained if somewhat trite and self-destructive.
Then Jack came into her life and changed everything, and there was no going back. And even if she could, she no longer wanted to.
But Jack was keeping secrets from her. The realization hurt, and that made her angry.
And anger had no place in paradise either.
The exact translation of utopia is nowhere. Paradise is no different.
The floor was cold against her feet as she searched the empty corners of the too-tidy garage. Not the workplace of a mechanic, but of a fledgling artist who felt the need to keep the floor swept, his things put away, tools at right angles, work hidden under a canvas. The workplace of an artist uncomfortable with being an artist, afraid someone will discover his aspirations and denounce him.
Of course, there was no sign of her sneaker. Her eyes traveled the walls to the workbench beside the Gordian knot of piping and waste-lines surrounding the hot water tank. It had to be over there somewhere; a shoe can only bounce and roll so far, and there was nowhere else that it could be.
Unless their time here at the Edge was at an end, and things were disappearing like before, those final days at the saloon.
But Jack said things were different this time.
Maybe not so different after all. Maybe their time here really was at an end, different or not. All things pass away in the end.
Ellen scanned the workbench, but her missing sneaker was not there, not lying askew, not propped on a box of assorted nails, its laces snagged on a tool hook. She got down on her hands and knees, looking underneath at a couple dozen cans of mismatched paint, wondering if maybe it had fallen behind them. She pulled out one can after another, dragging each out and shoving it aside to see behind. But the more she pulled out, the more apparent it became that her sneaker would not be found.
In a world where reality was reduced to a single greasy spoon and an abandoned garage in the middle of absolutely nothing but bone-white dust, how does one lose a shoe?
The stress a person will cope with, the volume that can be endured, is made all the more incredible by the sheer banality of the last straw, and how utterly insignificant the breaking strain can seem to those outside, to those who do not have to endure. Something as simple as spilled milk, a forgotten lunch, misplaced car keys, or a lost shoe.
The paint cans were no longer being pushed out of the way; they were being thrown. One can lost its lid and ran a swath of white straight to the wall where it splattered against the cinderblocks. A can of black paint crashed beside it, spreading lines across the white like scrawls on a page. More cans thudded and rolled behind her, leaving odd tracks as they slid and rolled through the puddles of paint, the smooth concrete offering no resistance.
And then there were no more cans. She pulled the last one from under the workbench, as though a sneaker—that final straw, the target of her misdirected rage—could hide itself behind a single can of sunrise orange. She stood up, knees aching, face red, on the verge of tears. Once again, the anger was exhausted, leaving her empty and sad. No more stoking the furnace; she was spent down to the ashes. All this over a goddamn shoe, she thought, knowing full well the sneaker had nothing to do with it.
She was still angry, but she could forgive him. Better that than lose him.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Hammerlock standing a few paces away, staring with his expressionless face, head tilted slightly as he held something out to her.
Her left shoe.
Ellen reached for the offering, taking it from him as she leaned towards the robot and placed her forehead to his. “Thank you,” she murmured. And she finally allowed herself to cry.
In time, she would forgive him. Better that than lose him.
* * *
It was almost noon before Jack went looking for Ellen. He wanted to give her some time to herself, time to remember he had protected her and always would. But mostly he wanted to give her enough time to stop hating him.
All good reasons, he told himself. And the more he told himself, the more he believed it, truth through repetition.
Mostly though, he was afraid. There were things he needed to explain, things he knew. Things Ellen wouldn’t like.
His greatest fear was that she might interpret these things as a distance between them she could not overcome, a sign of inevitable disparity. One sha
ttered expectation opened the house of glass to closer scrutiny, secrets like rodents; where there was one, there were surely others.
How comforting these idioms will be for you after she leaves.
This was not about before; this was about now. And tomorrow. This was about the future, and Ellen was only just beginning to discover her place in it; a place he’d neglected to tell her about.
You could lose her.
So he wandered aimlessly amidst the debris, wasting time examining things already examined, elements of his junkyard once cherished, now forgotten, that served only to delay the inevitable.
Jack eventually climbed the back stairs, and up the rung ladder to the rooftop over the garage. There he found Ellen seated on the narrow, pebbled roof over the Scarlet Cinema, legs dangling over the edge as she stared out past the diner into the emptiness beyond. Ellen always liked high places. Hammerlock sat beside her, having adopted her forlorn posture, her empty stare, and together they looked out into the nothingness, their thoughts a mystery. I should never have tried to bring him back, he thought. It will only hurt more when I leave.
“You knew he was coming, didn’t you?” Ellen asked, not looking away.
“I knew he would eventually find his way here.”
“That’s the same as saying you knew.”
He didn’t think that was true, but knew better than to argue the point. He sat down beside her on the edge of the wall … but not too close. “Some things are inevitable,” he said cautiously. “Even here. A part of me hoped Kreiger would lose himself in the madness of the Edge, become lost in the clouds—lose his way or his mind or just his will—and fall. But Kreiger is a hard one to dismiss. He’s an exceptional sorcerer—”
“He’s psychotic.”
“Yes.” And so much more, so much worse than you could ever imagine. “But he knows more about the Nexus than anyone. He knows how to find it, and how to find his way back when lost. The world I sent you to, the one that kept you safe, is where he hid to avoid being destroyed along with the Saloon. I let that world punish him. I let it remind him that he lost the Nexus on his own, and that he can never take it away from me—not now, not ever. But there was always a way out, so that you could find your way back. I left the door open, and when you came through, he followed. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I hoped we would have more time. I thought if you knew, you would have been miserable waiting for him, and that’s not what this place is about.”
The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) Page 44
