Winchester, Paul knows for certain, would prefer to see him lowered into the ground with Allen. But then why go through the trouble of destabilizing my family and driving me mad?
Perhaps the better question would be: who doesn’t want to screw me over? If he was theoretically capable of inflicting damage on or destroying the CLOUD, there’d be a mob with pitchforks lined-up at his door.
Shouta and the man who called himself Gibson both claimed to be allies. Tomorrow, I narrow down the list.
Something beside the bed beeps. Paul falls back into the embrace of the plush, hypoallergenic comforter. What is it now? The beeping persists.
Paul looks through ruffles of blanket. It’s the hotel comm.
“Yeah?”
“Play message for Mr. Kerner. Yes or no?”
“Sure, what the hell.”
“‘Hey Mr. Kerner. It’s Fergus. Couple Outland ‘Sels came by asking about you. I said you were out. Thought you’d approve.’ Would you like to hear this message played back?”
“No it’s fine.” Nice kid. Hopefully doesn’t see any blow-back for helping me out.
Paul closes his eyes, wishing he could have his life played back differently.
Chapter 16: ON THE VERGE
MORNING SUNLIGHT licks the Outland Citadel, which dwarfs the rest of the jagged Los Angeles skyline, similarly sinking in the rear-view mirror. Someone’s found Q by now. Called it in as a suicide.
Across town, Rachel is getting dressed for work, assured that yesterday was a bad dream. Whether or not she believes it herself, that’s what she would have told the girls—that is, right after bandaging her partner’s brutalized hand. The Citadel disappears, virtualizing all of the tragedies dialed under its shadow.
A red projection flashes a warning on the dash. “HEED LOCAL TRAFFIC LAWS, SLOW TO ACCEPTABLE LIMIT: 50…” With a boot heel steeped in Q’s blood, Paul kicks the accelerator—what his generation still calls “the gas.” The old truck’s tires wrench back the asphalt, unraveling Highway 15 into the kaleidoscopic, desert wilderness, barbed with mesa, dunes and unyielding greens
With the soldered-on maglev panels stabilizing the drive and with the shitbox’s governor disabled, Paul careens past the last of the signs for Partition checkpoints to the PIT. It’d have been nice for Shouta to have at least sent me back on a charter under another pseudonym. Kernel, Colonel, Kurtz. Whatever. Suppose beggars can’t be choosers, but I’d rather beg for a quick flight than have to drive for six hours.
A two-speaker system with a subwoofer, embedded beneath the hood, simulates the growl of an old, gas-fed engine. It plays a gross, synthetic lullaby through the dash. Paul is comforted by the sound. It offers him something besides his lonely, acidic thoughts. He meditates on its gravelly crescendos, and reacts in turn with heavier depressions on the pedal, flooding the engine with charge.
His knuckles are swollen and roughened by a bloody crust. He grips the wheel harder. The pain fires a renewed focus back up his arms. Paul shakes his head and glances out the side, glimpsing a man crucified to a MAXIMUM 50 sign. He double-checks, but the man is gone. Paul’s sanity usually finds him whenever he’s stationary, sitting in his safe room at the retreat or anchored on a barstool. The last few days have already taken their toll—knocking him around like a pinball in a scoreless game. Granted his current rate of speed and trajectory, his sanity is likely not catching up anytime soon.
A volt of turkey vultures corkscrews in the distance. The spiral breaks, and a swarm of Wasp drones power through the gap. They glimmer for an instant in the morning orange, and disappear again into oblivion. Paul shifts into a higher gear and watches the vultures collect again, and funnel to a pinprick.
The faux-engine sound now competes with the grind of his molars against one another. What to do with a virtual pansophist? Pray to it? Author another?
Paul leans into the steering wheel, thinking on his pending meeting with Katajima. He lapses as driver and lets the tires trespass over the yellow divider. Drumroll.
“WARNING,” announces Paul’s deep-voiced dashboard co-pilot. “ALIGN VEHICLE TO ROAD. CHECK: FATAL SEQUENCE OF EVENTS.”
An animation of the car flipping plays on loop in flashing green and red.
“Sounds about right.”
Paul grips the steering wheel tightly, creasing the cultured leather, and pulls back into his lane.
On the seat next to him: an animated photo of his family as it was before the Fall. Anything for them. Anything.
A staccato beeping in his ear seizes Paul’s attention. Securitas’ atonal voice fuzzes through his Monocle: “Perimeter breach.”
The AI attempts to pinpoint the intruder, scanning camera views, one by one, sending screenshots straight to Paul’s heads-up-display. The camera input blurs slightly, catching reflections off of the solar panels decaling the natural walls outside of the retreat, as well as the glint off of the active-camo LEDs simulating continued desert floor.
The security program announces a successful scan with a digital flourish and zooms-in on several Outland Sentinels skulking around the house, knocking over shelves and tearing apart furniture. Paul’s dogs run nervous circuits around the intruders, barking and growling. One figure approaches the camera, raises a spray can, and bam! The feed cuts out to popcorn-like static.
“What!” Paul whispers, returning his attention to the road ahead. Either Katajima’s got a death wish, or Winchester’s tapped his Monocle. “Deploy incapacitating agent. Protect Zeus and Apollo. Initiate Alcatraz Protocol.”
“Defenses remotely deactivated. Cannot accomplish task.”
“Log feed,” Paul orders the security system, “and send a copy to Dr. Shouta Katajima.”
“Video file sent.”
Paul comms Shouta’s link, but the Monocle projects an “Occupied” message.
“God-damn-it,” he says, frustrated.
He draws his revolver, and plops it on the dash. Paul could give a damn about the house, save for the almost-finished Empty Thought hidden-away in his cellar. His dogs, on the other hand…If someone lays a finger on them, he’ll go nuclear.
THERE IS SMOKE ON THE HORIZON—mammoth pillars of black teased eastward by the wind. Although he knows his mind is playing tricks on him, Paul nevertheless shudders at the sight of the devil spreading gloomy wings above his retreat.
He pulls to the side of the road. The only friends I have left are in that inferno. He’ll save them or he’ll avenge them. Regardless, Paul fully intends to spill blood. He checks his revolver to make sure its cylinders are plugged, and pulls back onto the road, lightning quick.
A wide, tan maglev van whips by him with the Outland pyramid on the side. That’s them, Paul concludes, watching the tan box shrink in his rear view. Whatever they came for they’ve found. He badly wants to pursue them, but is holding out for the possibility that Zeus and Apollo are still alive and need his help.
He veers up the secret side-road to his retreat, and parks behind a thicket of creosote bushes. He closes the car-door quietly, fearful the retreating van left someone behind, and runs into the gulley, just below the patio. The windows above hiss and pop at the heat as fire carves improvised exits through the second storey.
The patio ladder is still locked into place. Paul mounts it, but hears footsteps above. Someone’s still here. Not for long. Quietly and quickly, Paul ascends the ladder. He peeks over the top rung, and sees matte-black boots, reinforced with titanium strings. Paul looks up—it’s one of the mechs from Q’s.
Before his mind can catch up to his reptilian impulse, he’s already plotted his revolver beneath the armor at back of the mech’s head.
“Nice place you got here, Sheffield,” says the mech, stiffening.
“You were just leaving.”
Paul pulls the trigger, painting the patio in CLOUD tech.
He immediately turns, and kicks the French doors in. Covering his mouth with his collar, he charges through the smoke and flame. During thunder storms, Apoll
o and Zeus would hide at the foot of Paul’s bed. That’s where they’ll be.
Struggling over to the base of the stairs, Paul entertains the remote possibility that they’re o-k. God, they’ll be happy to see me.
At the top of the stairs—now sporting bonfires for banisters—he sees them. The mechs overturned the room looking for something. Two still forms lay in the tracks left by their search. Apollo’s sprawled over on Zeus, cast in a defensive position like a lava-rock Pompeian.
“I’m so sorry, you guys,” Paul babbles, weeping. Despite the carbon monoxide choking him and the flames blistering his skin, Paul drops to his knees, and slams the floor with his hands. “No, no, no…my little ones.” His tears don’t track far before evaporating in the hellish heat.
One of the reinforcing timbers cascades into Paul’s bed, obscuring the little bodies.
“God, why?”
He crawls backwards, down the stairs. Fiery tornadoes consume his possessions and throw out flurries of cinders. Waves of blue and red flow across the ceiling like an inverted tidal pool. The retreat is caving in, piece by piece.
Paul feels dead inside. Like an automaton, he reflexively opens the passageway to his secret lair, and shimmies down. He bolts down the tunnel, yanks up all the hard drives and data slips that he’ll need to deliver the Empty Thought, and hurries up and out.
Passing the mech bleeding-out on the patio, Paul puts down his armful of gear, and grabs the mech by the lid of his helmet. Furious and fresh out of opponents on which to exact his revenge, he drags the mech to the edge of the patio, and flips him over. The crunch of the saboteur’s bones against the gully floor doesn’t make Paul feel any better, but it also doesn’t make him feel any worse. He grabs the gear and slides down the ladder, away from his premature funeral pyre.
THE MESA CONTINUES to heave black into the blue. Paul, caked in soot like a coal miner, watches the destruction through teary lenses, sitting in his newly acquired red shitbox—his alternative transport, the ’29 Rapid FürE, having been rendered defunct by a volley of plasma bursts. Winchester is going to pay, he promises himself. Katajima too, if he had any hand in this.
An incoming message turns his wristband red. Monocle plays it for Paul. “Couldn’t make it out, Paulie. I’ll be at my place in San Joaquin.”
Shouta.
Paul replies, “See you real soon, old friend.” Empty thoughts and empty promises.
Chapter 17: THE DEVIL WITHIN
PAST GUILDS of rusted grasshoppers pumping out dregs of oil from under parched Californian skin, the GPS on Paul’s Monocle bids him pull up an ostentatious side road. The cracked yellow sides are soon replaced by vineyards, wetted by little hydro-drones. Like a question mark, the road bends, and then hooks in front of a large concrete wall. Glint off the centre of the wall catches Paul’s eye. Paul zooms-in on the glint.
“There you are,” he mumbles.
Bumps in the transition off the highway push Paul’s revolver into his side. He grunts, adjusts his belt, and accelerates forward along the compact mix of sand, gravel, and retired asphalt.
Paul’s Monocle indicates another incoming message from an unknown caller on his visual feed.
“Put it through,” Paul orders his Monocle. He slows the truck just enough to make his divided focus manageable.
The caller opts for audio-only. It comes on fuzzy, with a lot of background noise. “Glad to see you made it out of the fire. Now, about the frying pan…”
“Gibson?”
“Yeah, doc?”
“You knew about the fire and didn’t warn me?”
“Our mutual friend had me clip your security system for updates. By the time I knew, you were already playing cowboy…”
“Comm me later. As I am sure you know, now’s really not a good time.”
“Tell me about it. You have any idea what’s going on downtown?”
“Call me back in an hour.”
“Listen up, doc. The super AI’s taken over the CLOUD. Anyone who’s synched today is trapped—they can’t get back to their flesh.”
Paul swears, and slows the truck down. “It’s not an AI,” he says definitively.
“Pardon?”
“Assuming you’re not the one master-minding the CLOUD-takeover, I think we can help each other and get the Anomaly responsible.”
“Anomaly? How’s that?”
Sucking his teeth, Paul deliberates on how to deliver the Empty Thought if he ever manages to get his hands on a fragmentor. “We’ll need someone with access to the Citadel.”
“That’s a tall order…Maybe ask to borrow Katajima’s executive deck.”
Katajima’s deck is hypothetically one of the few devices outside of Outland Labs that can remotely interact with and manipulate the CLOUD.
“We’ll see. Look into alternatives, anyway…You send me the coordinates to your place?”
“Camp Mud? You bet I did.”
“Alright, well, I’m currently working on a solution. Let our mutual friend know I’ll be in touch.”
Paul terminates the comm.
The glinting structure—a gap in the one-hundred-foot-tall concrete wall—is a grey gate, initialled “S K” in heavy steel. A guard house flattered by a double roof, all corners curved upwards, is situated off to the right of the dip in the wall. Paul pulls up to it, and leans into the horn.
Outside, there is a loud, crackling sound. Paul opens his window, and pops his head out. He scrutinizes the air just above the barrier. It sizzles, with little white specs revealing not all is what it seems. A majestic albatross appears out of nowhere, and flies unperturbed through the crackling air.
“Well, isn’t that something.”
Haruto, the large, ogreish man who’d shadowed Shouta at the Indian in the Cupboard, shuffles out of his aspiring pagoda, decked-out in dragon-scale armour. The armour is painted a cobalt blue, offering a contrasting background to his white, custom-assault rifle. He bows, ever so slightly, and approaches the passenger window, which Paul powers down, halving his inner monologue to possibility.
“Good morning, Doctor,” Haruto routines to Paul in an affected movie-English with a Japanese lilt. “Dr. Katajima is currently occupied. You might try calling him or come back later.” This dismissive lie animates the curled wings of his thin moustache.
“He was very clear about wanting to meet me today. Was actually supposed to come by my place this morning.”
Paul’s words fail to affect the guard in the slightest.
“His world is going to come crashing down if I don’t help him shoulder it...”
Thumbing his lip in the shadow of the gate, Haruto shakes his head. “I’m sorry, unless you have an appointment.”
“I do! ‘Bright and early’, his words…”
The ground trembles beneath the car, jostling Paul from side to side. Silt and sand rain down from the pagoda’s valleys. Similarly thrashed by the quake, the guard recomposes himself against the side of the truck, rippled forward in its tracks. He regains eye contact with Paul, and attempts to hide his frustration.
“What the hell was that?”
“Perhaps an omen, sir.”
“Yeah, or the Big One…Mind just letting Shouta know I’m out here? Trust me: he won’t mind the interruption…We have serious business to attend to. Lives depend on it.”
Looking over Paul’s mask of confidence and charred clothing, the guard poises as if to speak, and then hesitates. He ticks with a visible change of mind, and redraws his lips. “One moment, please.” He turns to whisper into his feed.
Paul eyes the guard’s rifle. Fully automatic, armour-piercing, heavplast extrusion. Shouta’s not fooling around.
The guard’s monitor fuzzes back a prompt and crackly order. With a surprised look and a shot of indignation, he bows again to Paul. “My apologies, sir. Dr. Katajima will be delighted to see you. One moment, please.”
“S” and “K” separate, freeing to sight the long, winding driveway hemmed behind the iron. Pau
l waves out his window to the guard, and accelerates down the Gatsbian parade. In Paul’s side mirror, behind the shrinking blue and white figurine, a gargantuan Locust drone uncloaks, standing guard with enough firepower to harrow Hell. Paul cracks a nervous smile, thankful he hadn’t played it tough at the gatehouse granted the bad omen.
Encircled by the concrete wall is a spectacle of green and glass sublimity: a seeming Shangri-La; an oasis blessed by a man-made and controlled micro-climate, teeming with myriad species of flora and fauna. Giant birds thrash the canopy, and well up into the zenith of the fantastical compound. Stabbing the feathered swarm, built on a hill in the very centre of this splendid ark, is Katajima’s stronghold.
It looks as though it’d once been a neoclassical mansion that was later swallowed up by functionless, Gehrian forms. There’s a splash of red brick shadowed maroon beneath curvaceous sheets of crystalloid glass that seem to defy gravity. The sheets—at points bending to form tubules—cord around the structure, and flow out, rolling down and around the hill like tentacles, blurring natural/inorganic distinction.
Sequestered in the deciduous forest behind the mansion is a tall, black tower, braced by metal supports—Shouta’s own cypulchre. Even the CLOUD has a first class. A long glass hallway stairs down the hill from the mansion, cuts through the canopy, and connects with the tower.
Paul, committed to the task at-hand, stops salivating over the beauty of the reserve—plenty of room for Apollo and Zeus to explore—and disembarks. He leaves the car running just in case he has to make a quick exit. He strides past the garage doors to the right of the garish staircase, and up to the vaulted front door, curiously left ajar. Paul pushes the door open wider.
“Hello?”
An operatic male voice trills off in the distance, and somewhere a drawer slams emphatically. In the lull of the song, a frenzied yell trails on, mimicking and distorting the melody.
“Shouta?”
Paul ventures into the building. A little Mosquito drone flies over and past Paul, taking pictures and scans.
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