Gen had first brought her here one of their adventures when they first got their drivers’ licenses. It had been on a stifling June afternoon at the peak of the bloom. The main field had been green and lush, and the long, shallow ponds that surrounded it were overflowing with majestic blush and hot pink lotus blossoms. They spent hours admiring the flowers, peeking into the tranquil pools for frogs and turtles, and lounging under the shadowed side of the willow’s weeping branches, intoxicated by the exotic fragrance that permeated the air.
Being in the garden had filled Aislen with a deep peace that she had never experienced before. She felt free of every expectation, content to just be—rather than have to do or think. After that first visit, she came back often, when she found herself feeling overwrought with the pressures of school or needing to tune out the chatter of her own head.
Today, large, rotting lily pads blanketed the scummy water. Dry, brown stalks jutted upward from the bogs toward the stark, gray expanse of the sky, seed pods dangling at their tops, as if mourning the loss of the sun. Aislen walked across the burnished fawn of grass toward the river’s edge, past ornate, stone statuary and a golden, laughing Buddha that hid in the midst of a bamboo thicket. She walked up a grassy staircase toward a large, wooden water tank that had been converted into a shrine, opened one of the red doors, removed her shoes, and stepped into its pure stillness.
Crepuscular rays beamed down through window panes that encircled the top of the tank, alighting upon sacred objects that graced the room: a brass gong, prayer scrolls written in Chinese characters, and banners with woodcut drawings depicting mythological creatures. One in particular caught Aislen’s eye, a dancing chimera with an elephant’s trunk, a tiger’s body and paws, and the tail of a cow. It seemed to gaze directly at her with wide and benevolent eyes.
Although the gardens were soulless this afternoon, someone had been in the shrine earlier and had lit the candles on the altar in the middle of the room. Aislen took a stick of incense from a vase and went to the altar. She lit her incense from the candle, then placed it in a brass holder, watching as ethereal wisps of smoke spiraled up and fingered out into the waning ladders of sunlight and filled the room with the soothing scent of spice and wood.
Aislen sat down in the center of the temple on a straw mat, took a deep breath and, finally, let herself weep. Wracking sobs and streams of hot tears poured from her, releasing the fear, uncertainty, confusion, and frustration that had been gripping her all day. All that she knew herself to be—composed, independent, and confident—felt like an illusion. She didn’t know who she was. Yesterday, she knew herself. Today, she did not.
She wept for a long time, purging herself until she was completely spent and felt heavy with exhaustion. She laid down on the mat and rested her head on her arms. “I’ll just rest my head for a second,” she thought to herself.
The quiet of the shrine was absolute. It held her gently and the weariness that burdened her melted away. She began to feel light and let herself float, rising above herself, cradled in a blanket of serenity.
She allowed her mind to wander, staying clear of the mundane aspects of her life and the profane land mines of the day. She slipped into her imagination and saw herself driving in her car. She wasn’t in her hand-me-down Honda though. It was a shiny, new sports car, fast and smooth. She was speeding down slick, city streets of a town she did not know, trying to get somewhere. She felt a desperate need to get to her destination, but she couldn’t figure out exactly where that was. It wasn’t home, it wasn’t school, it wasn’t work, but it was someplace very important. She whipped through the asphalt grid, but every time she came to an intersection that felt familiar, there was a roadblock, signs and barricades denying her access down that avenue. She kept having to turn around and drive another direction, only to be met again with an obstacle: an enormous sink hole in the middle of one street, a decrepit, old lady crossing another in infinitesimal increments. She made U-turns and detours, until she finally came to one, open junction. There were three roads she could take; she could turn left, right, or go straight, but she didn’t know which one led to where she needed to go.
She sat in the car contemplating each direction. Each way looked exactly the same. She was about ready to play eeny-meeny-miny-mo, when she noticed a homeless man standing on the corner. He was watching her intently, holding a cardboard sign with “The Father Knows The Way” scrawled across it in black Sharpie.
Religious freak. She shook her head and looked down each street again, then looked back toward the homeless man. She jumped. No longer standing across the street, he was now standing right at her passenger window peeking over another handheld sign that read, “Can I wash your windshield for you?”
She mouthed to him “No, thank you.” But the man paid no attention and set about washing her windows that were perfectly spotless and didn’t need cleaning.
She rolled down her window, stuck her head out, and shouted at him, “Sir, no! No, thank you...really...the windows are fine. Sir, please...it’s already clean.” But he kept squirting fluid on her windshield and rubbing it with a filthy cloth. Soon the window was completely smeared with a grimy film and she could no longer see through it at all. The man came to her open window and reached his palm in to her, waiting for his pay.
“No,” she yelled at him. “I didn’t need my window cleaned! And look, you’ve made it worse!” She looked at the mess of her windshield with dismay.
“You don’t know where you are going, anyway, Buttercup.”
She gasped and looked at the homeless man’s face peering at her through the open window. Underneath a veil of greasy hair, a pair of green and golden eyes gazed back at her intently. It was her father.
She reached down toward the button to roll the window back up, but the man reached inside and grabbed ahold of her hand in an intense but painless grip.
“Aislen,” he said tenderly. “Just give me one second. I know what you are going through. Believe me, I know. And you are going to need my help.”
“Leave me alone!” She screamed at him, her eyes clenched shut, refusing to look at him. “I never needed you before; I sure as hell don’t need you now!”
“Ah, but you do.” The soothing calm of his voice made her breath catch in her throat. “You have always needed me, but you need me now more than ever.” She tried tugging her hand away from his viselike grasp, but he held her steadily. “I understand why you feel the way you do, but I can’t explain anything to you in a way that you would understand right now. You wouldn’t believe it—especially coming from me. But listen to me, Aislen. You are waking up. You need help and protection, and I need you to let me in to help you.”
Aislen tried again to pull her arm away from him, but his strength was supernatural. Tears slipped out from her sealed lids and rolled down her face. She felt his other hand reach up and gently wiping one of them away.
“Aislen,” he whispered, “just do one thing for me...for yourself.” His voice was right next to her ear. “Ask your mother about the tea cups.” He released her hand.
Her eyes snapped open. She was laying on her back staring up at the roof of the shrine. Her face was soaking wet from crying. The sky beyond the windows had turned from heather to steel; the fading light barely illuminated a ceiling thick with cobwebs.
She jumped up, grabbed her shoes, and ran barefoot through the darkened garden to her car.
CHAPTER 10
Raze jumped up out of the chair without waiting for himself to reintegrate. He was full Beta now and he needed to break shit, bad. He wanted to tear the fucking place apart. He looked around for something to destroy, but everything in The Womb was too valuable. If he broke anything in here, it would compromise the work.
He stormed out of The Womb and back upstairs, scouring the house for any object he could smash to smithereens: a mirror, a window, a painting, a vase, his own fucking hand into a cement wall. He couldn’t find anything insignificant enough that he didn’t mind shatt
ering. This only further enraged him. Since when did he give a shit about anything? He kicked a chair over. Very, fucking unsatisfying. He needed to get out.
“Away,” he told the house, setting the security system as he stalked out into the street. He walked for blocks trying to cool the fury. His blood was boiling, his brain on fire with a rage beyond anything he had experienced in years. Back in his youth, after years of suffering bullying and abuse at the hands of his peers, anger had been a problem, but once he gained control of his life, he gained control of his emotions.
He didn’t start out as a rageaholic. Quite the contrary, he’d started out an exuberant little boy, growing up in a typical, Midwestern family: the second son of an Air Force reconnaissance pilot and a stay-at-home military wife.
Raze had been a delight to his family, with an easy laugh and a stunning intellect. When most kids were just learning how to talk, he was already reading. While they were playing with their Duplos, he was taking apart all the radios in his house and separating the wires into color-coded piles. When he was supposed to be watching Sesame Street, he would stand precariously at the edge of his top bunk to balance the finial book on one of his elaborate house-of-books constructions.
His downward spiral didn’t begin until his mom and dad dropped him off at Kindergarten. Once he was left on his own in the world, he was met not with the adoration that his family had showered upon him, but with disdain.
Raze made people uncomfortable. He was preternaturally beautiful, with flawless, alabaster skin, jet black hair, and unearthly blue eyes framed within luscious, thick eyelashes—astonishing in a way that scared people rather than attracted them. Intimidated by his gloaming looks and wicked intelligence, his classmates—even his teachers—kept him at arms length.
Keenly aware of others’ anxiety around him, Raze attempted to assuage their nerves by withdrawing and keeping his distance. But this only made people more uncomfortable and their insouciance turned into aggression. His peers began to bully him with simple name-calling: “Creeper,” “Damien,” and “Zombie.”
Hurt, Raze retreated even further into himself. But the more aloof he became, the more vicious they became. By middle school, although he had pretty much succeeded in making himself invisible, even the lowest dregs of the caste system snarled and rolled their eyes at him, while the assholes shoved him and provoked him into fights.
With nowhere to turn, Raze sought asylum in his room where he could play with his erector set, read his favorite chapter books again and again, or just lie on his bed and stare out into blank space.
Then one Christmas, his grandparents gave him the Quantum3. It was the latest, greatest gift that season. People stood in long lines in the freezing, pre-dawn hours of Black Friday, hoping to get their hands on one. They physically fought each other in the aisles over the last boxes; and at one Midwest department store, a stampede to get at them killed a shopper—a poor, old lady who just wanted a George Foreman Grill.
The Quantum3 soon occupied every moment of his free time. He mastered every arcade and racing game and began asking his parents to purchase more challenging games. They obliged, happy he wasn’t moping around anymore. Raze began with fantasy games like DragonSlayer and XCaliber, becoming an expert at those before moving on to Matador, Reaper, and KIA.
He stopped doing his homework, opting to play Morph and 12th Commandment instead. He stopped completing assignments at school and doodled in a spiral bound notebook, drawing game characters and creating maps of his own game worlds. He began failing his classes. But because his teachers didn’t want to see him again the next year if they flunked him—no child could ever be left behind, after all—they passed their F student along with generous C’s and D’s.
His home life began to deteriorate. His parents, who had so much pride and hope for him when he was younger, couldn’t hide their disappointment. But even though they always threatened to take the Quantum3 away, as punishment for bad grades or fighting, they never followed through. Gaming kept Raze in his room, and when he was in his room, he wasn’t around to remind them of their own failings. So, instead, they continued to buy every upgrade and game that he requested.
For his sixteenth birthday, he convinced them to buy him the new and improved Q3 console. The Q3 was a solid, onyx cube, a perfectly square monolith, seamless and shiny as an oil slick. There weren’t any openings for game disks, because disks were no longer necessary. The wireless console came with access to Quantum’s NOW Network, an online service that allowed players to connect and play any game on the network, 24/7.
Once a four-walled prison that locked him away from the world, his room became a sanctuary—his gaming console, the portal through which he made his escape—and the game, AnnihilNation, his new world.
Christened with the tag “CrazE,” he became known as the most formidable player on the NOW, not just because he attacked his enemies with vengeance, but also because he was gifted with an almost psychic ability to predict another player’s strategy. He pre-maneuvered them, rather than just out-maneuver them. He took his opponents totally by surprise, used their own tricks against them, and destroyed them before they ever had time to react.
Raze began playing in, and winning, tournaments. While most trophies consisted of cases of soft drinks, sample boxes of junk food, and other gamer staples, some were actual cash prizes. Raze started getting checks in the mail. Soon he was able to buy himself a cheap, little beater to get around in and he began traveling to area tournaments, winning even larger cash prizes, putting money away in a savings account and finally getting his parents to stop calling him a slacker.
Besides gaining an income from winning competitions, Raze acquired fans, a live following of people who borderline idolized him. They showed up when he played, emailed him love letters, and asked him to mentor them in learning to play the game better. Girls actually wanted to meet him, hang out, and have some real-time game time. In gaming circles, his dark, brooding looks made him mysterious and alluring, bringing him the kind of attention that had evaded him all his life. He quickly grew accustomed to it.
His mercenary alter ego rubbed off on him, and some of the mettle he found in the game followed him into the light of the real world. He decided he wanted to look as badass as CrazE did, so he started working out—running and lifting weights in his garage every day. Although it took a couple of hours away from his gaming practice, there were side benefits that made it worthwhile.
It helped him burn off the overpowering itch he got to beat, break, or destroy shit. Raze had countless holes in his bedroom walls to show for that rage.
It also gave him the to-die-for six pack and massive guns that the bimbos at school started to cream over. Sure, they were the same hos that used to turn up their noses at him, but now they were all over his junk and he wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to get his dick wet. That helped his game, too. It relaxed him and he played better relaxed.
He also liked knowing that most of the ass he was getting belonged to the fucksticks who had tormented him for years. When fucking their bitches didn’t provide him with enough gloat factor, Raze started returning the favor of whooping their ass for a change. This led to suspensions, of course, so Raze had to time his fights a few weeks out from a big tournament, which afforded him more practice time.
Everything started to turn in his favor. He looked awesome. He had money and a ride. He got pussy whenever he wanted. And nobody fucked with him anymore. Raze felt invincible. The complete opposite of how he felt at this moment.
He stopped walking. Therein lay the problem.
The full realization of his situation dawned on him. He had lost control. He lost control of the viewing; his energy had been swatted out of the space like it was nothing but a pesky gnat. He lost control of Blake; the option-lock Raze had initiated in Demesne wasn’t effective, as evidenced by Blake’s signature practically evaporating, only to completely resurface in the presence of that girl. He’d lost control of Demesne�
�his very own construct—when it disintegrated around him this morning. And he was on the verge of losing the control of the Project, which could mean the loss of everything he had worked for. The chaos of the day revolved solely around one thing...that girl.
A murderous desire to crush something returned and he looked around for something to take it out on. Just as he started kicking the shit out of an old, metal trashcan that already looked like it had been on the losing end of several such ass kickings, a flicker of light caught the corner of his eye. A neon green martini glass of the local dive sizzled into full illumination. He let up on the trashcan and considered a stiff one. Drinking was completely against his personal standard of operations; it dimmed the wits and made views less controllable.
Fuck it. It couldn’t make anything worse. Raze walked through the swinging doors into the sticky, sweet stench of the tavern. It was packed with bodies, the new working class of the financial and dot-com era getting their Friday night happy hour on before taking a ferry home.
Raze bellied up to the bar and scoped out a bartender. He spotted a dishwater blond with a weak energy field, cranked up the magnetism in his own field, and directed it at her. It worked just like a tap-tap on her shoulder. She immediately looked up and over at him. She handed a customer the beer she had just pulled from the keg then bypassed 20 waiting customers to wait on Raze first. That was more like it—the world should bend at his will.
“Mark Manhattan, lose the cherry,” he demanded. “I’ll be at the corner table.” He walked away and sat down with his back turned to the crowd. She was pretty prompt on the service, too, setting his drink on the table within a couple minutes.
“Start me the next,” was how he thanked her.
He didn’t savor his drink—he slammed it—feeding fire with fire. The heat of it burned down through the center of him, settling into the pit of his empty stomach. He closed his eyes as the warmth spread from his belly into his blood stream, down his shoulders into his arms, into his brain, slowing down the synapse explosion that was creating havoc in his head.
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