“Let me see it,” said Wodan. “What did they tell you?”
Wodan saw images of rough-looking men and women in black uniforms marching across a wide plain of pitted concrete choked with dust. Their eyes were hard, and some had long hair or beards. They did not seem like soldiers fulfilling a duty, but more like fighters grieved over a personal injustice done to them. They carried black banners with the symbol of a steel fist ringed with arrows projecting skyward. Wodan was shocked. He had never seen such determination, such single-minded purpose in such large numbers. He knew that demonkind would fall if he had such an army under his command.
He was shocked still more to see the soldiers enter black steel airships as large as buildings. On another part of the wall, an older man with black hair and beard lined with silver and a cruel hooked nose gave a speech in a language only vaguely similar to Wodan's. He was dressed like the soldiers, and his speech was militant, an ice storm of rage welling up from a species arming itself with something pulled from its darkest depths. As the speech continued, the airships rose from the sand-blasted plains with surprising gentleness, ascended until they passed into darkness, then entered the bellies of even larger ships that were so dark Wodan could only make out silhouettes that hid the stars. He could not believe the sight.
“B-but,” he said, “they can't be… I mean, that's outer space! That's impossible! But if they're soldiers, then who are they going to fight? And… does that mean… does it mean that...”
“Keep in mind,” said Setsassanar, “the Ancients were masters of propaganda. Try not to lose yourself in the narrative.”
“But… but if it is real… but it's impossible! But… but what if...”
Wodan could hardly wrap his mind around the idea. In his childhood in Haven, he'd been taught that space was a radioactive death-zone, empty and off-limits to any human who wasn't surrounded by a dozen feet of lead or possessed by a death wish. He felt deep-seated revulsion at the idea of being sealed in a canister and launched into space. He would never forget one especially famous drama about one of the Ancients who dreamed of flying among the stars, to the point of neglecting his family. In the end he finally received his spaceship, but it crashed soon after launch. His wife and daughter pounded on the side of the burning ship while the man screamed and his flesh melted off and the credits rolled.
But then he remembered that his education had been filled with many taboos against exploration. The world outside of Haven was filled with monsters, evil humans, diseases to which Havenders had lost immunity, city-states that would imprison or kill any outsiders – there were countless lessons, films, stories, rumors about wide-eyed Havenders who left the greatest nation in the world only to be immediately crushed. He considered that there could have been a grand conspiracy crafted by Haven's elite, then decided it was most likely a matter of weak people reinforcing and legitimizing one another's cowardice.
I know better than anyone in Haven that the world is a dangerous place, he thought. But there is no truly safe place in the world, or the entire universe. It's absurd to believe in a special place where a person can hold on for dear life until all trouble passes them by!
Wodan's mind quickly followed the chain of ideas now that yet another illusion fell.
This is why my species has always been such a disappointment to me, he thought, allowing himself to feel the thing he'd always suppressed. Our great fighters, explorers, leaders, thinkers, the most fearless among us – they left! The only people who stayed were...
He remembered all the slimy gangsters and politicians of Pontius, the mindless brutes in the Ugly or Khan Vito's horde, the marching followers who fought for San Ktari, the cowering civilians in Haven and Pontius.
We're the ones who were left behind, he thought. The ones too weak to go over the horizon.
“Where did they go?” said Wodan.
“Calm yourself,” said Setsassanar, frowning. “Were you not here when I clearly said that the rulers of that era were master manipulators? No record, no information, no form of art lay outside of their control! And here you are, nearly brought to tears by what may well have been created in a studio.”
Wodan's speculation had lasted no more than a few seconds, and yet the Master had read him perfectly. Wodan slowly placed a lid back on his well of emotions. But it may be true, he thought, surprised at the power of the loneliness that had struck him, which he had denied for so long. And if it's true, I should have been with them. My ancestors should have gone with them.
“You're right, Master,” Wodan said finally. “I let myself be jerked around. I embarrassed myself.”
“Don't bother,” said Setsassanar. “I'll show you the true face of humiliation. You see, in my time, there was a sense that the best and brightest had left. They had gone to play among the stars. The people needed a new example. So our leaders gave the world a hero.”
All four walls changed to hundreds of different images, some static, some moving, all featuring a handsome man from the time of the Ancients. He had dark pomaded hair, an endless supply of elaborate, expensive, brightly-colored suits, and a relaxed, carefree, cocksure “we’ve made it” attitude. In one image he stood on the front of a sleek white ship, in another image cameras flashed as he strode down a red carpet, in another he leaned against a desk that was, for some reason, in the middle of a dark, neon-lit bar filled with classy go-getters who had clocked out from their high paying jobs. In many of the images the playboy had at least one or two ladies on his arm. Wodan had never seen such women, even in Haven. Their skin was flawless, teeth shining in perfect rows, hair sculpted by artists. All of them were surely models, their smiles too practiced and camera-ready. But the playboy was noticeably better looking than anyone around him. He cracked jokes before a crowd who gushed with laughter.
Such a man had absolutely no appeal to Wodan. He was handsome, a natural leader, fine – but what had he done with it? Wodan noticed a distinct lack of images showing the man working, doing, helping, striving, or even incorporating a little grace into his routine of doing nothing. He seemed to exist for the purpose of being idolized, or to be the living embodiment of affluence.
Realization struck him. As the images came one on top of the other, Wodan looked from the playboy to the Master. His heart sank. The short cowl was replaced by pomaded locks, the cruel wolf-smile with a condescending leer, and the bearing and posture were completely different, but there was no mistaking that the playboy was none other than-
The images came still faster, insistent on being seen, indicative of a frantic culture wearing itself out. He saw the playboy on advertisements, his taste in phones and ties and coffee was a blessing, a divine decree that money should be ritualistically exchanged in this or that manner. The playboy posed with a watch without numbers, hands, or even any digital interface at all, sleeve pulled down with hand on chin, eyebrow cocked as if to say, “Didn't buy the wrong brand, did you?”
Wodan's eyes went back and forth from his merciless Master to the playboy simultaneously modeling underwear and giving a friendly speech before a line of automobiles. He just said they could manipulate any image, he thought. Yet that is… it's him! It really is! Why would he make up something so utterly crass?
“Mister Sanjaraa!” said a reporter. The superbeing in a finely tailored suit had been caught by a group of reporters. Wodan could see short, pudgy reporters leaning against overweight security guards in a clean room – either a set, or perhaps just a fantastic world without flesh demons. “Mister Sanjaraa, sir! What do you have to say to people who believe you're an unnatural spawn of science that goes against nature?”
For a split second Wodan saw pain written on the playboy's face, a childish smile after an accident. With sitcom-scripted speed the superhuman winked and said, “Against nature? Can you imagine walking in on half the people you know making babies the old-fashioned way? Now that's a crime against nature!”
In a wash of laughter, the scene ended and was replaced by propaganda, a s
till image of laborers in coveralls carrying toolboxes and ladders to a row of skyscrapers. On the horizon, the pomaded superbeing stood with arms crooked and fists on hips, glowing as he stared into what must have been a glorious future. “Keep on keepin' on!” the image read. “It's hard work that builds the bridge between ape and overman!” Then the superhuman playboy turned to the viewer, ruining the illusion that the image was static, then smiled and said, “Be sure to watch the season finale of “Summer Vacation with Tronko” this Thursday night at eight!”
Wodan felt a wave of vertigo. “Turn it off,” he said quietly. “I… I get it. Enough.”
The images grayed-out and the various sound channels grew dim, revealing Setsassanar laughing uproariously. “ 'Had enough'?!” he said. “Come now! I lived like this for years. Surely you can stand a few more minutes?”
“No!”
“But I lived the life everyone dreams of living! Nice cars, big houses, beau-u-u-u-utiful women...”
“So that was you, then? You were… you were really a...”
“A complete waste of space, yes. The most expensive polished turd on planet Earth.” Setsassanar's laughter slowly died. “Those were desperate times. We'd just gotten through one apocalypse, rebuilt, and then everything was falling apart again within the span of a few years. Nearly all the money and resources were owned by a handful of families in banking, defense contracting, and automated manufacturing. What was left for everyone else? Nobody had any ideas, but the hunger of the economic elite wasn't going away anytime soon, so they wanted to jump-start a worldwide deadlocked economy by creating… well...”
“You.”
Setsassanar nodded. “I don't think they knew that's what they were doing. They spun a web of idealistic words around the thing, but that was the truth of the matter. Get people spending money. Get people working again. Give people a hunger for things that other people can make.”
“I can't believe it,” Wodan said quietly. “But you're… you have greater strength and wisdom than anyone I know! How could you be that… that living commercial!”
“You haven't even seen the worst of it. Let me tell you a little about my creation. Mankind has always had a deep-seated taboo against genetic manipulation, but in my time, that was outweighed not by grand, Faustian hubris, but by fear of cultural stagnation. The wisest men and women of the time spoke of “species decay”. Whether the pioneers left us, or were killed off, who can say, but humanity needed proof that the inventive spirit of the pioneer was not gone forever. My biological father was the CEO-for-life of the Sanjaraa Corporation, and I was brought to term in the womb of one of his trophy wives. I was raised by several highly paid midwives and state-approved baby sitters. The world's greatest intellectuals were my private tutors. But my true father was a man named Cecil.”
Wodan saw a grainy photograph of a blond, round-faced man with a slight, knowing smile. He remembered seeing the portrait weeks ago, when he'd first broken into the Tower.
“He was a scientist,” said Setsassanar. “The greatest mind of his era. His will was undaunted by the palpable atmosphere of nihilism that surrounded him. He deeply regretted the fact that he had not been born early enough to leave with the exodus into space. But without him, neither of us would be here today. He is your grandfather, Wodan. I think you might have gotten along with him famously. But we… sometimes I wondered if he despised his creation.”
“Can you blame him?” said Wodan, immediately regretting the outburst. “Do you realize how difficult it is for me to think of you like that?”
“Wodan, I have a complete record of your life. Do you realize how difficult it is for me to accept the fact that the world's foremost demon-slayer once let himself be pushed around by unintelligent, emotionally stunted civilians living in the world's softest nation? And yet I accept it, Apprentice, because it happened. It is not a nightmare to be woken up from. It is reality.”
Wodan said nothing, but nodded.
“You wanted to know. Now you know. I would not have accepted you as my apprentice if you were not the kind of person who wanted to know. But knowing is difficult. Ideals are continually smashed on the shores of reality. The world I showed you, with its skyscrapers and flashy commercials – it was a fantasy, of sorts. You see, before my time, there was another era filled with skyscrapers and flying machines and long work hours and wars fought behind computer terminals. It fell apart. So why was it rebuilt in my era?” Setsassanar sighed and rubbed his chin. “Man wants to build a glorious throne on which his ego can place its ass. He doesn't want to live in nature, to work a few hours and then sit with himself in the quiet calm of the evening. He doesn't want to hear himself think. No, the skyscrapers and the engines and the bomb shelters and the malls were rebuilt as quickly as possible. Man wants the full schedule, the endless treadmill, the fantasy of no-death.” Setsassanar thought for a moment, then said, “Do you want to see another thing they made? I wasn't the only strange thing they created. This is a secret, very top secret, Apprentice. You'll like it.”
Wodan nodded. He was afraid, but he had to know.
“Slave Circuit,” said Setsassanar. “Show him something from the Garden of Eden Project.”
The walls covered themselves in still images of a squat, hairy man with wide, powerful shoulders. His head was shockingly simian, a grotesque, scowling, hairy thing taken straight out of a fever dream. He sat in what seemed to be a jungle, but some images showed people in lab coats standing behind glass walls around the contrived environment. The beast wore modern-looking short pants but they were covered in filth. He looked at his hands for a moment, then up at the sky, then scratched himself, apparently bored with his own existence. Wodan saw illustrations of a similar beast-man wearing an animal skin thong and carrying a club.
More images flooded the walls. Similar glass-covered synthetic jungle and forest environments were filled with similar creatures, some like humans covered in thick hair, some like animals that could only barely stand upright. One photograph, which did not seem to mesh with the others, showed a line of soldiers in dull brown uniforms holding massive automatic rifles. The scowling soldier all had massive beards that covered their faces. One of the beast-men squatting in his private zoo caught Wodan's attention because he was labeled with a name.
“What's a homo blouswael?” he said.
“We knew a great deal more about the origin of the human species in my time than you did in Haven,” said Setsassanar, “though there were still enough question marks and blind spots to make most people throw up their hands. But one thing we knew for sure was that there were many branches on the human tree, especially early on. There were wars for dominance of the Earth, and the species that gave birth to us wiped out many other competing species. Homo blouswael was one such species.
“This tough little monkey man – you can see him there and there – was shorter than our forebears, much stronger, less intelligent, and had only a crude culture. What you see here is the result of a scientific project to recreate a member of his species using repaired genes taken from bone marrow preserved in ice. The project was carried out by a rival of Cecil, my father. The Garden of Eden Project came under fire. The idea of recreating a species of victims who had been wiped out by the Earth's genetic overlords proved too morally taxing. The group was disbanded, and the blouswael specimen retired into obscurity and lived out his life in an underground military base. But my father’s rival went on to do further work.”
“Why?” said Wodan. “What saved his career?”
“Those in power uphold popular morality only so long as it serves their quest for power. If it doesn’t, then they drop it. My father’s rival shifted his focus to government contracts. Specifically, military research and development.”
The photograph of the bearded, brutish soldiers came into clearer focus as Setsassanar continued.
“With only a little tinkering, the blouswael genetic matrix yielded a creature far stronger than homo sapiens. The neocortex, alre
ady stunted, was further retarded. Some of the more ape-like physical attributes were smoothed over so that they could blend in a little more readily with standard humans. Empathy was bred out of them. Cecil's rival was able to give the state its perfect super-soldier, a tireless thug more than willing to kill in the name of its master.” Setsassanar paused while Wodan watched an image of the soldiers running over an obstacle course with large backpacks and guns. They dropped, aimed, fired, rose, ran, and repeated the process. They did not seem to struggle at all. For a moment Wodan saw one smiling through his thick beard as he ran, his hundred-plus pound backpack shaking violently. “Anything about these creatures look familiar, Apprentice?”
Wodan could not say. He was mostly disoriented from seeing an unknown era revealed as easily as watching one of Haven's televised dramas. Of course he had never seen such strange soldiers. But then something about the posture, the chest held outward, the way they challenged one another by jerking their head upward… his eyes widened in realization.
“Yes, Wodan, that's it! You know them, don’t you! These are the genetic forebears of the dogmen! Neo blouswael soldiers were carefully controlled by the state. No females were allowed to leave quarantine, the males were closely monitored, and they were purposely made unable to breed with humans. Of course, when the world fell apart, all control was lost. And now the dogmen are a constant thorn in the side of the human species.”
Wodan saw the truth of it. The soldiers in the recordings had straighter teeth, the eyeteeth were less pronounced, their beards were better groomed, but it was obvious. It's just like the ghouls, he thought. All these horrors that people imagine were spat out by the world in order to torment them are actually distorted mirror-images created when the human spirit stumbled along the way.
Wodan's mind raced to the possibility that the flesh demons were also created by the Ancients. He opened his mouth to ask, then stopped. He was afraid that if he asked Setsassanar too much, he would stop speaking entirely. Another time, Apprentice, another time, he might say.
[Demonworld #6] The Love of Tyrants Page 34
