Naomi had both hands planted on his shoulders now as he sat on the stool at the workbench figuring out how best to program the antique nanite machine. She was doing more to keep his muscles relaxed and foster the calm state than his mind chip, which had pretty much reached its limits on that score. She was also ameliorating his fear responses; his mind little more than a fear amplifying machine anymore.
“If I can just build these nanites to communicate between Victor’s mandala-configured nanites and the cabbalistic nanites,” Soren said, again speaking aloud more so than speaking to her; he was hoping the sound of his own voice would help him to think through the knot of a problem now that some of his ability to work with subtleties was lost to him.
“If they have just one function—as communication relays—this antiquated device might be able to pull it off.”
“How do you plan to get mandala-reading nanites to talk to cabbalistic-reading nanites?”
“The mindchip, thankfully, has photographic recall, even if I don’t. And it’s writing the algorithms now that are its best guess as to what nanites might be able to speak both languages. It will deselect which of those this more primitive machine is simply unable to assemble. It will be like a first year foreign-exchange student at best, who is a long way from being fluent. Maybe if both sides just speak slowly enough and gesture enough at first, as it were…not sure that analogy works, but you get the idea.”
“Reminds me of how we met. ‘Me science guy, you supernatural chick—now if you can just get past the Tarzan-Jane speak, we’re perfect for one another’.”
“Actually, my exact words were, ‘Me, Science Guy. You, Supernatural Chick. Sounds like a marriage made in heaven to me, if you can just get past the Tarzan-Jane speak’.”
He caught her smile in the reflection of one of his bottles with powders containing each of the elements from the periodic table—the ones that could be bottled, that is—sitting on his workbench.
“If you’re wondering how I’m holding up so well, it’s because you were nearly this insufferable before your accident.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t nearly so handsome.”
“Speaking as a Goth-wannabe, I suppose so.”
“There, it’s done.” Soren sighed relief.
“You programmed the machine already?”
“The one modern thing about all of my devices, the one tweak I bothered to make was to allow them to receive new coding from the mindchip directly by radio broadcast.” Soren stared alongside her at the syringe container filling up with the new nanites.
“Good thing this is a primitive device.”
“Yeah, well, you’d be less impressed if you knew the error rate associated with every hundred nanites made. I may have to cut off your arm and carry it with me to make sure I don’t break the connection with your healing magic.”
“Sorry, no can do. No limb regenerating ability in the toolkit, to my knowledge.”
He was losing the ability to tell when she was joking with him and when she was being serious. Again, the subtleties were lost on his reptilian biological brain, too clouded with fear. He was losing connection with the mindchip again; he just didn’t tell her this time for fear she was already overextending herself. He knew she was weakening, because her healing magic was no longer moderating the pain in his body. The nanites which had gone into dormancy upon being hit by a bolt of her telekinesis yanking them away from what they were doing had evidently shed their skittishness and were back at it, remodeling him as the monster, or possibly something even worse. Naomi was right; it was too early to tell exactly what they were up to.
He could no longer feel her touch on his shoulders; he was too stiff and too sore. The pain too great—it was pushing out every other sensation.
He winced, bellowed, and gasped at once at the agony, which had grown excruciating with the latest spike. That was all the provocation he needed to pull the canister out of the machine even before it was finished filling. Close enough. The canister already had the needle attached; it was how the nanites had crawled into the plunger in the first place—through the needle.
He stuck the needle in a vein just long enough to get about a third of the nanites out of the syringe. He needed those to rush to his brain to kill his pain response. He yanked the needle, shot the rest up the major arteries in his arms and legs—because those would get to his frayed nerves a lot faster.
“There, it’s done. Let’s hope these nanites are better at forging a peace than humans are with one another.” Soren was expecting some response from Naomi, a grunt at the very least, if not a small chuckle.
He turned to find her passed out on the floor.
The beast found her fetching, desirable. It didn’t care that she was passed out; it was all too happy to rape her while she was unconscious.
Soren ran for the door. He had to put some distance on the two of them. Who knew how long before that new communications network was up and running inside him? And what it could do when both parties just spoke a few words of one another’s language? All he knew for now was that he was losing the connection with the mindchip for longer and longer periods. He really didn’t want to wake up in the middle of a rape scene.
And he had that small matter of a wizard to find that could help him decode the cabbalistic magic of the nanites inside him. And Soren had to get to him before he lost sight of his mission altogether.
***
Soren glanced back at his warehouse space the moment he was out of it. Its two-story structure was derelict beyond reason; so much so that the city had condemned it. The place was so booby-trapped with pitfalls and death traps that he’d had to do little by way of security to keep out unwanted guests. Over time, he’d just added to the Indiana-Jones-style temple of doom effects with some supplemental traps of his own. He’d sectioned off a corner of the building for himself, ripped out the first and second story floors to get access to the skylights, and set up shop in the basement.
The world outside his lab was as unexpected as was the world inside. His warehouse was situated in the heart of the Victorian London reenactment district. Syracuse, New York was rife with such costumed districts where locals acted their parts to a tee. Most couldn’t survive the current-day economy, lacking the technical skills to compete with robots and transhumans—the latter coming with any number of neural enhancements to boost cognition. Both androids and transhumans had their own sectors in Syracuse, and wouldn’t be caught dead slumming it in these backwards-era districts like Victorian London.
There were enough people who—like the Amish—had carved out a slice of time for themselves, and were now permanently ensconced there, turning Syracuse into a kind of magic carpet of time, where anywhere, whether it was located in the past, present, or future, could be accessed simply by walking a few blocks in one or another direction.
Of course, all these districts shared one thing in common: magic. Reigning over each individual sector, as if their own personal fiefdoms, was one or another master wizard that had climbed to the top of the food chain by means that probably left their humanity at the door.
Some of the locals passing him by on the sidewalk—the females with their hoop dresses and twirling parasols overhead, the men with their wild, bushy sideburns that ran to their chins and elaborate suits that also required an attendant’s help to don—made the signs of the cross over themselves in deference to his monkish hooded robe and demeanor. He ignored them.
The chip had engaged again the instant Soren was out of his warehouse space, but that was more curse than blessing.
The chip, by housing the entirety of his consciousness that had been uploaded to it as a failsafe backup, had held on to some of his less desirable qualities as well, such as the tendency to perseverate over spilled milk—that he really couldn’t put back in the bottle.
As he strode through Victorian London, in his head, he kept reliving the moment he broke the water’s surface in the tank, threatening to kill the people who were the only
ones he’d ever been able to make meaningful human contact with.
In no time at all, he’d erased all the good work he’d accomplished alongside Naomi, annealing a family that simply refused to be brought together. That one misstep, that one-time loss of control—in which he’d threatened to kill each of them—that was all it had taken. He wouldn’t get another one, not before a lot like this, who’d been traumatized enough by parents who acted just as he did, all nice and sane one minute, and totally insane the next—the human turned rabid animal.
Naomi thinking any differently was just demonstrating wishful thinking, or telling him what she felt he needed to hear to keep him from killing himself in that moment.
The “kids” in their family dynamic—responding to Naomi and Soren as elders, though they were all roughly of the same age, just a few years younger or older than one another—had given too many second chances to people just like him already. They would extend no more such courtesies, and he couldn’t blame them.
“Nice one, Soren. From Frankenstein Reborn to Frankenstein Reviled, with one intimidating sweep of your hand.
“Techa help you if you can’t win them over again. Because you’re certainly in no shape now to go this on your own.”
Letting go of the fantasy of a possible family reunion, he sighed.
“You’re born alone, you die alone. That goes for your rebirths too. The first of many more to come. So fuck ’em.”
That wasn’t him talking. It was the monster. Just hours out of the tank and he was already taking over more and more.
TWO
Victor Truman stood on a tongue of energy formed by his mandala magic, the interlocking geometries combining to shape the bridge extending beyond his penthouse apartment. His suite was located in the Excelsior hotel in the heart of Swank Town—the ritziest district in Syracuse. But he hadn’t exactly come out here for the view.
He hadn’t come out here to look down on the riffraff, either, but to look up.
It was time to provoke the gods; the celestial wizards that had graduated wielding magic on any one world to wielding it across the cosmos.
He’d announced his existence to them once before, essentially challenging one and all to best him. They hadn’t exactly hesitated at the dropping of the gauntlet. Instead, they’d sent the masters of oblivion at him—wizards whose magic was wielded outside of space-time. Victor’s mandala magic, by contrast, was confined to space-time; it was one of the few limits it had. All in all, a brilliant opening move on the part of the celestial wizards that should have ended him before he even got to make a single move on the chessboard.
He’d escaped his fate, all the same, courtesy of his friend Soren and his companions; second class wizards, the whole lot of them. But who doesn’t like an underdog? If Victor could keep his ego in check for five seconds, he’d have realized he was no less of an underdog and he’d picked a fight way out of his weight class. But, that was kind of the point.
The entire planet would be forced to throw their best wizards at defending the Earth. And however many of them it took to stop the masters of oblivion, and whatever came next that the celestial wizards deigned to throw at Victor…. Well, he didn’t mind sacrificing the best warlocks earth had to offer in the name of learning from their mistakes just how to advance on the chessboard of cosmic wizardry. Hell, he didn’t much mind sacrificing the planet. But God forbid that come too soon before he graduated off this backwoods piece of celestial real estate and had grown powerful enough to play with the gods in their domain.
As it turned out, his plan, though admittedly a bit insane, had gone off without a hitch. Master wizards had been sacrificed, yes, but not before Victor could glean from them what was worth learning in an effort to raise himself up to the level of the celestial gods. He had a long way to go to truly play at their level by stealing magic from others, learning how to get around whatever foils the wizards of space-time threw at him next. But then, the planet had no shortage of master wizards worth sacrificing in support of his quest.
One day he’d rule over not just the entire multiverse—but all multiverses, a king of kings. Everyone that had held the position before him was likewise a mandala magician. But to get there, Victor had to master his craft. He was a long way from doing so. And he had to learn things which earthly wizards alone could not teach him. That meant provoking the gods, yet again—and over and over again, until he reached his ultimate goal.
So here he was, if nothing else, being true to himself.
He set down his drink on his “coaster”—a small mandala pattern—the complex geometry screwing with space-time just enough to allow the drink to float by his side.
Still staggering, he extended both arms, hands held palms up, and blasted the sky. The chi energies flowing through him were filtered and amplified by his mandala magic—the ever-shifting, complex, multi-colored geometric patterns adorning the palm chakras of each hand—projecting the colored lights into the sky inside of perfect circles.
He may not have been a chi master. But he could move energy well enough for his mandala magic to do the rest—at least for his purposes.
For the portal to open, he had to bring both light patterns together—get them to align, and of course, he had to pick a convergence pattern between them that would project his very voice across time and space to the sensitive ears of those cosmic wizards. And he had to keep shifting “the dial on the radio” until the signal reached the right party of a mind to be provoked.
Drunk as he was, he could barely see straight enough to bring the patterns together. He had no choice but to let his coverall calibrate the finer measurements for him.
With just a thought, the one-piece outfit responded. Programmed to handle minor mandala magic at best and everything that he needed to clear his mind of, to focus on higher level concerns—it whisked his tuxedo and top hat into his closet, exposing the real suit beneath.
Its maroon color and its many facets gave the garment a decided super-villain look, right out of the comics. A point of no small consternation for him, as he found the role of said character degrading. All the same….
“Well, you puffed up, pompous asses,” he shouted at the heavens. “If you think you can stop me from ruling over all of you, sock it to me.” A bit more softly he mumbled, swilling his drink—the portal opened by his drinking hand remaining where it was, even if it wasn’t yet aligned or calibrated with the other one—“The truth is I’m bored to death playing in such a small sand box. Really, you’d be doing me no small service.” He finished the drink and set it back on the coaster and—returning to business with his portal calibrations—let out an “ah” of satisfaction. Though he was a long way from feeling satisfied.
Yes, it was true there were real limits to his magic, far more than he cared to admit. But no wizard on his planet dared challenge him. So, what good were they really, except to use as cannon fodder in his battle with the gods of space-time? It wasn’t a particularly charitable thought, but there it was.
If he had any charity in his heart these days, it was for Soren. And Soren alone.
Soren seemed born with no other purpose in mind but to show up the holes in Victor’s thinking—before still more nefarious types took advantage of them. He was thinking fondly of his one friend—well, worthy nemesis, really, but in Victor’s playbook such a person was the only one likely to be deemed a friend—when….
The entire planet shook. Not from a massive earthquake. Oh, no…. One of the perks of being a mandala magician was that he could feel the cosmic geometries that enfolded him. Newton’s own celestial mechanics, nay, Einstein’s own space-time physics, were just pale reflections of what his mandala magic showed him of the forces interacting upon one another in this region of the cosmos… in all regions of the cosmos.
Whatever had just impacted the Earth had disturbed its orbit, meaning the four seasons were about to take on a whole new meaning. Such a force, by rights, should also have split the planet in two. That could o
nly mean one thing—whatever had impacted it was as much physics-defying as it was physics-altering.
Victor collapsed the portal he’d so finely calibrated and used as a search beacon, folding the ever-shifting geometries back into the palm of his right hand; the mandala magic had more than done the trick.
Victor was already dancing a jig on his mandala energy bridge. “God, I love these guys. They never fail to disappoint.”
He knew at once what was going on. He’d done the massive calculations in his head which only a mandala magician could do, describing all the forces at play—and the only way to disturb a planet so profoundly without truly disturbing it. The celestial wizards had sent him one more entity that his mandala magic, in all likelihood, wouldn’t do much against. Most people would be quite terrified at waking up with such a feeling of impotence. Not Victor. Why, hell, he’d made a bit of an art out of overreaching himself—at other people’s expense.
He had a few theories over what this latest rival might be made of. He couldn’t be sure just yet, mind you. It would take throwing any number of wizards at the entity with forms of magic much more likely to stop it to be sure. But if Victor had to guess, he’d say they had just been paid a visit by a Dark Matter Man. It was probably wishful thinking, of course. Because while dark matter didn’t interact with space-time much, at least not in ways anyone truly understood—it did interact with it. In fact, as theories went, it was the very force keeping the universe together. Not entirely effectively, mind you, because over time it was losing that battle. Over time, the universe would continue to fly apart, planets spreading further from one another, suns, too, until the entire cosmos was all just cold, lifeless, rock.
Honestly, if Victor was able to get around this Dark Matter Man—if that’s what he was—Victor would discover just how to collapse the universe or accelerate its expansion. Now, that would definitely provoke the celestial wizards to send him someone truly interesting.
Reviled Page 2
