by Project Itoh
As they pummeled each other, and as they wrecked each other’s faces, Snake—and this may sound strange—began to forgive Liquid. Each strike was a display of his forgiveness.
Snake neared the place Naomi had already reached.
To find complete forgiveness and acceptance.
With his half-ruined arms, Snake reached out to that land.
Then came the final punch. Snake’s fist brushed past Liquid’s. Almost simultaneously, each man’s cheek was smashed by the other’s clenched hand.
Neither brother could move. Almost as if they were checking each other’s temperature, each man’s fist remained embedded in the cheek it had struck. After an endless moment, one figure fell slowly backward.
One man stood, and one man dropped. Fate had reached its end.
Here, at the last, no clear difference was to be found between victory and defeat.
“This is only the beginning, Snake.”
Liquid lay on Haven’s bridge, his face to the sky. His body pulverized by Snake, Liquid’s voice was feeble, and Snake strained his old, worn-out ears to listen.
“America will descend into chaos. It’ll be the Wild West all over again. No law, no order. Fire will spread across the world.”
What Snake had destroyed was not only a prison, but the chains that tethered the beasts called humans. The Patriots had attempted to restrict and control the world. They had guided and used the people, so each was compelled to action under the pretense of free will.
Yet in a certain way, the Patriot AIs were only possible as a projection of ourselves. The AIs, as the ultimate storytellers depicting the world around us, were our very own norms, customs, and lives.
People, as a group, followed customs without thought. That was the true stratgey of the Patriots.
“Through battle the people will know the fullness of life. At last, our father’s will, Outer Heaven, is complete.”
Liquid beamed proudly. The new era, the world Big Boss had sought, was to be created by his sons, Liquid and Solid, the two Snakes.
Big Boss reviled no place more than he did heaven. Absolute peace and total happiness only came about by the theft of thought, action, and responsibility. He deeply felt it his duty to break the reign of heaven, the world of Major Zero and the Patriots—that grotesque heaven he himself had helped create.
Big Boss fought against the system of control he had unknowingly helped build. He had taken responsibility for what he had begun. Unwittingly, Snake had repeated his father’s battles.
Liquid whispered, “Somewhere out there, I know he’s laughing.”
His eyes were distant, perhaps not seeing Snake any longer. He stared blankly at the sky, as if searching for JD, still up there, in the coldness of space, having lost its heartbeat of information.
“We are beasts created by man,” he said. “Unless the light is extinguished, the shadows will remain. As long as there is light, erasing shadows is futile.”
Something was odd about Liquid—at least as far as anything could be considered odd about a man who had hijacked someone else’s body. He now gave the peculiar impression that he wasn’t being himself—like an actor losing his grasp on his role.
“I am Liquid’s doppelgänger. And you are Big Boss’s,” Liquid said, then thrust his trembling hands toward Snake. “You’re your father’s son. You’re … pretty good.”
A small sound left his throat, and his arms fell to the floor.
Snake knelt beside Liquid and put his fingers to the man’s neck. He could feel the body losing warmth, and the carotid artery delivered no blood from Liquid’s heart to his brain.
Snake lifted his hand and touched Liquid’s cheek. He closed his brother’s open eyes.
You don’t need to see anymore. No more binds, no more fate.
This was Snake’s final parting from his cursed brother.
Sunny’s program destroyed JD’s brain but left the brain stem intact. She had analyzed Naomi’s black box and separated the Patriot control system from the vital lifelines of society. Water, air, electricity, food, medicine, communication, transportation—Sunny cut off the Patriots’ control while preserving modern civilization.
Maybe it was her way of avenging her mother, Olga. Or maybe she wanted to shape the future into her own ideal image.
Or maybe it was just one big defragmentation.
The Patriots’ reign had crumbled away. That which we thought to be control, and a prison, was destroyed. But that was a large part of our world. With such a considerable loss, nothing would ever be the same.
Some was destroyed, and some remained. Ironically, we ensured the survival of civilization’s oldest cultivation since the times of Genesis: war. I can only pray that the world you make will be better than the one we fought.
What did we lose? What did we save?
To tell the truth, even as I compile the telling of these events, I still don’t know. I suppose those questions come at the end of any battle.
In any time, in any war. In all the past, and all the future.
EPILOGUE: NAKED SIN
HAVEN.
The sea breeze came in from the ocean at the end of the runway. By straining to listen, I might have faintly heard the waves. Seagulls flew overhead, perhaps thinking something was on the island.
This was a haven. Businesses buried their roots here to escape national taxes and located their servers here to ensure the physical safety of data they didn’t want in their own countries. This was a tiny island, a nation only in name. The tropical isle, home to a scant few thousand residents, had been recognized as an independent state by the global community of nations who sought an air pocket outside the complex array of their interconnected interests.
The sun’s gaze was strong here, but not uncomfortably hot with the unobstructed breeze blowing across the tarmac. The country provided little reason to visit, and the runway usually remained unused.
The airport itself was wholly adequate, paid for by taxes of corporations that had rushed to the island for its low tax rates and lax information laws. The locals seemed to be living comfortably. Where our society squeezed too hard, the benefits trickled down to this haven.
In the shadow of Nomad, prominently parked on the runway, we awaited the bride, who was changing into her dress inside the heavy transport plane. The scene was surreal.
Our intimate wedding party hadn’t come all the way to this tropical island because the bride had wanted some flashy wedding. The ceremony was held here so that Snake and I might attend. Even though the Patriots had perished, the lengthy rap sheet they had framed us with lived on.
Yet the bride wouldn’t hold the ceremony without us. Snake and I declined, many times, but she insisted on having us two fugitives present, always saying (with such obstinacy as to make her father proud), “I can’t imagine the wedding without you two there.”
One month had passed. As for how much—and how little—the world has changed since those events, you probably have a better sense than I. As a wanted man, I flew around the world, apart from it. The outcome of our battle was only truly found amid the laughter, the tears, and the lives of the common man.
So, how about it? How much did the world change?
Or has it hardly changed at all?
The next time we meet, I hope you’ll tell me.
Sunny told me what happened later. At a full-length mirror set up in the cargo bay, Mei Ling and Sunny adjusted Meryl’s wedding dress. Her body was built to handle the terrific recoil of her Desert Eagle, with wide, firm shoulders and a well-muscled back. But replace Meryl’s uniform with a dress, and her firm, utilitarian body flourished. Her well-honed figure was fundamentally beautiful.
“You look amazing,” Mei Ling admired in wonder, her eyes tearing.
Campbell stood behind his daughter, cane in hand, watching over her as she prepared to embark upon her new life.
After Meryl returned from our battle alive, the colonel continued to avoid any opportunity to talk with her
. Tortured by doubt—Can I say to her face what I was able to over remote video? Would she even listen to what I have to say?—Campbell remained unable to speak out to his daughter on her wedding day.
Perhaps acutely sensing the colonel’s timidity, Meryl faced his reflection in the mirror. She took a step forward, her face devoid of expression. Intimidated, Campbell reflexively lowered his head.
There was something in his face. I can’t look away, not now. Somehow Campbell found the courage to look at her face, ready to accept whatever she had to say and whatever words she would use to rebuke him.
What he got was a gun barrel pointed at his head.
Mei Ling and Sunny gasped. The Desert Eagle’s frame formed a straight line that pointed directly at his temple. Campbell’s eyes widened in astonishment, but after a moment, he closed them and waited for the muzzle to erupt.
“Colonel,” Meryl said. “You’re going to walk me down the aisle.”
With the faint sound of metal rubbing past metal, the magazine released and dropped into Meryl’s open hand. Campbell’s eyes fell to the container. Not a single shell was inside. She slid open the action and displayed the weapon’s empty chamber.
Then she took Campbell’s hand in hers and gently deposited the Desert Eagle there.
“You’re not angry anymore?” the colonel asked. The gun felt heavy. The pistol had a recoil strong enough to break the wrists of an average woman. Thick metal provided a frame and chamber suitable for powerful cartridge rounds. When considered in the context of modern close combat situations, the firearm produced excessive force and was too hard to wield. The Desert Eagle could only be called an unnecessary weapon.
To continue her soldier’s life, Meryl had to carry such a thing. This was the weight she had borne until this moment.
“Oh, I’m still mad,” she said. “But now … you’ve got a chance to win me over.”
Campbell looked up from the pistol and returned his gaze to Meryl. Yes, there was still hope. As long as he could make that first step to change something. And this was his first tiny step—toward a new goal, and a new life. It was never too late for a new beginning.
“You’re right. We have plenty of time now.”
Campbell tucked the gun away at the small of his back, took Meryl’s hand, and walked with her down Nomad’s cargo ramp and onto the tarmac. A wide red carpet led from the plane’s hatch all the way to Johnny Akiba, waiting in a white suit, flowers in hand.
Johnny first met her nine years ago on Shadow Moses. Yet I doubt she even remembered. As a member of the Next-Generation Special Forces participating in Liquid’s action, Johnny had been assigned guard duty on Meryl’s holding cell.
The soldiers of the Next-Generation Special Forces had been brainwashed by FOXHOUND psychic Psycho Mantis. Because their participation in the Shadow Moses takeover had been unwilling, the Genome Soldiers were never officially prosecuted, but all either faced discharge or transfer to inconsequential duties. Johnny drifted from one armed force to the next, including a Russian mercenary group, until finally landing with the Army CID’s PMC investigation unit, where he was reunited with the detestable gorilla of a woman who had once knocked him out and stripped him of his uniform.
Of course, she wasn’t really a gorilla, and the moment he saw her again, he realized his feelings for her. But, hating needles, he ducked out of the mandatory nanomachine injections. Without the SOP, he could never keep in sync with the team. With Meryl only ever angry at him, Johnny remained unable to reveal his feelings.
If only he’d had the SOP, he could have controlled his weak bowels, and he wouldn’t have been the target of laughter and disgust whenever he rushed to the toilet. His alienation from his squad had been a direct result of his refusal of the System.
But ultimately, his exclusion from the SOP saved his comrades—including Meryl—in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Only Johnny kept his head through the chaos of the Guns of the Patriots tests.
During the fight on Outer Haven, Johnny was finally able to confess his love. After Snake disappeared behind the portal, Johnny woke up and helped Meryl defend against the Haven troopers. There, she realized that this man—who had already once rescued her in Eastern Europe and, only moments before, flung himself over her, snipers be damned—could be someone she could spend the rest of her life with.
Trailing the bride and her father, Sunny and Mei Ling descended from Nomad. Jonathan, Ed, and I stood on each side of the aisle and greeted Meryl with applause. Some distance away, on the side of the runway, a young boy watched, having been drawn in by curiosity. He must have been coming or going from the ocean and carried a fishing rod and a basket.
I noticed bells ringing. Was there a church on this island? But then I realized that the peals were growing louder. Ed and Jonathan also heard the sound and were looking around.
“The bells are getting louder,” Johnny said. Then he saw something and surprise entered his voice. “It’s coming closer!”
We turned to face the oncoming sound, and above the tarmac, the shimmering heat waves seemed to bend. Then, as if teleporting in, an armored vehicle appeared, first spreading from a single floating point, then quickly revealed in entirety as its OctoCamo deactivated.
The bell rings came from speakers on the outside of the Stryker APC. Having dropped its camouflage skin, the vehicle barreled straight toward Nomad. Just as the wedding party began to step back in alarm, the Stryker’s mighty bulk turned into a drift and slid to a stop beside the red carpet.
I caught sight of the words EYE HAVE YOU! stenciled on the vehicle’s side. The hatch opened, and Drebin appeared.
“Just in time,” he said.
The green of the APC’s armor was a little out of place amid the celebration. Though astonished by his showy entrance, I frowned, thinking, Couldn’t you have done something about that car?
Drebin pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and said, “And I brought gifts.”
He waved the cloth, and the Stryker’s green became the pure white of a UN vehicle—a wedding-themed OctoCamo pattern. Even Drebin’s slogan changed to read DREBINS—WE HAVE YOURS. He touched the vehicle’s rear hatch and looked over his shoulder at us with a smile.
Flower petals burst out from the open hatch.
“Incredible,” Mei Ling admired.
They were white roses. Fans inside the APC sent white petals rising through the tropical sky.
Flowers blanketed everything around us—the runway, even Nomad; their pure white standing out all the more where they settled on the red carpet aisle.
“A shower of flowers, compliments of DREBINS. And—”
Drebin caught a single fluttering petal and closed his hand around it. He opened his fist again to reveal a dove, which took to the air.
“—a little something extra from me.”
Then, Drebin’s words a signal, in an instant the fluttering petals all became doves. The flock flew together, through the blue island sky, toward some distant place.
As the white birds danced past her, Meryl looked around for Snake. She wanted him to witness this moment over anyone else, but among the faces there, his wasn’t to be found—even though she had the ceremony held in this Pacific haven, where no nation’s laws would reach, so that Snake and I could be present.
Amid the applause, a trace of unease tinged Meryl’s expression, and Mei Ling, the sole other woman here, was the only guest to notice. Mei Ling moved close to my ear and whispered for no one else to hear.
“Where’s Snake?”
I faked a wry smile. I couldn’t tell anyone he was still fighting a battle. This time, his opponent was himself, and this battle was far more difficult, tragic, and lonesome than any that we’d made it through in the past.
Now, Snake was about to face his last battle alone.
And so, just as Naomi had done, I lied—to keep secret Snake’s battle; to let Snake slip off alone. This was our toughest choice, but we both understood it was for the best.
/> “Who knows?” I said. “That guy always keeps you waiting.”
I didn’t think for one second that Mei Ling believed a lie like that. I did my best, but I’m not an actor by anyone’s standard. I made an attempt at a grin, but I couldn’t help my lips from going taut. Only Campbell saw my oddly rigid smile and knew what meaning it held.
Campbell gave his unspoken words to the doves to carry with them to the heavens.
Thank you.
He spent the entire day in bed, gazing at the light that came through the blinds. The only time he ever left was when he needed to use the bathroom.
He was told he would be leaving the hospital soon, but he didn’t know where he should go. Much might have changed in the world. A great many things out there might carry an entirely different significance, or may even have been rebuilt anew. But as far as he could figure, nowhere in that new world would there be a place for him. He spent the days lying in bed, unfeeling, taking a detached notice of Maryland’s soft sunshine.
If only tomorrow would never come.
That might sound like a trite expression, but to him the dilemma was grave. How damnable the existence of time. Things came, then adroitly slipped past you, darting off to some distant place behind. With consciousness came the imposed nature of time.
To him, each day in this hospital was like a battle. A fight of not fighting. A fight of not doing. A fight of not feeling; of not thinking.
Troubled that tomorrow might be the day he could no longer keep up that battle, he slept on the bed, surrounded by the medical machines.
That was why, when the nurse came in and said he had a visitor, the man didn’t do anything in response. When someone came, all he did was reaffirm his conviction that ultimately there was no place for him. Of course, even when the two passing through the door were Rose and a young boy he’d never met before, his reaction remained exactly the same.
