Now We Are Monsters (The Commander)

by Farmer, Randall

  Back in the car, Bobby turned to me and asked “Now what, Carol? What are you going to do in Chicago?”

  “I’m free,” I said. “After nearly a year of captivity, I’m free. I just want to enjoy that for a while.” My St. Peter dream still rattled around in my mind, and left me with something resembling a conscience. No more massacres of innocents. I wasn’t pure good and I wasn’t pure evil. I needed to find out what I was.

  He nodded. “Carol, if you need me to drive, then…”

  “No,” I said, perhaps a bit harsher than I needed to be. “I’m driving.”

  He held up his hands in surrender, then backed away and closed his eyes. He wanted to grouse about losing his job, having to quit night school and having to change his name. I didn’t want to hear it and so he kept his annoyances bottled up inside. Smart man.

  Our rough relationship would soon get worse. He was a strong man and used to being in control. Not anymore. As the miles rolled by and I relived my moments of triumph, my thoughts occasionally turned back to Bobby and his predicament.

  Bobby was beautiful, snoozing as he leaned against the car door, his shaggy brown hair fallen across his face. He was beautiful because he was mine…and because he was a hunk. What would being owned do to a man? American men, trained from birth to be strong, protective and providers, weren’t trained to be owned. Bobby might aspire to be a poet, but the patriarchal provider lurked within, only shallowly buried.

  Not only did I hold all the reins in our relationship, but also a dispassionate observer might say Bobby and his opinions weren’t even relevant to me, unless I allowed them to be. He served as an object of affection, a toy. My toy. Unfair? Well, how many women over the ages had found themselves in a similar relationship? Lots. They learned to cope.

  Or not and went mad. I swore that a quarter of the novels I studied in college dealt with this question.

  “I need a home base and a group of people working for me,” I said, sometime later, somewhere in Pennsylvania. Bobby woke up and gave me a ‘what the fuck?’ look. “I’m planning out Chicago.”

  He sat up and paid attention.

  “What sort of organization?” he asked. He wanted to know whether he would be involved or not.

  “Basically, thugs to start with,” I said. “Once I have some money to work with, higher quality people.” Keaton had made me into a sadistic killer, but I didn’t think I needed to remain one to be a successful Arm. Keaton was a small-time thug, but I wanted to be big time. I toyed with Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler or Stalin as my role models (no, not Jack the Ripper, despite what the tabloids said). They wouldn’t suffice, as they were normal, not Arms. I would take a new path when I went big time, something humanity had never seen before.

  “Why? What for?” Bobby asked.

  His concern came because he was human and curious. “Transform Sickness,” I said. He gave me a puzzled look. “No one cares. The one doctor-researcher I know of who gave a damn got drummed out of the profession because he cared. I’ve read some of the academic papers on Transform Sickness.” Courtesy of Keaton, who said ‘read these or die’. Once I mastered the vocabulary, I couldn’t stop. “The damned researchers have no sense of urgency, just the usual minor altruism of ‘doing good in the world’. No sense that Transform Sickness is any different, deep down, than polio or cancer.” My explanation didn’t cure his puzzlement. Unfortunately, he understood less about molecules than about mobsters. “It is. I’m not sure what’s different, but it is. Many Transforms understand this at a gut level, I’m told. To survive, I need to understand what’s going on with it. We need Transform input into the research process, or we’ll be turned into lab rats.”

  He understood my fears.

  “We have enemies out there,” I said. “Enemies of Arms and enemies of humanity. The FBI. Chimeras and their packs of Monsters. Twisted Major Transforms like Officer Canon. Even the Monsters Die protest organization. I need an organization to help me protect myself from them.” I had counted on the Focus Network organization for help, but Officer Canon’s attack woke me up to the dangers of Focuses. I needed to be strong before I started to play with the big girls and boys. I didn’t expect I would take long to grow strong.

  “I can’t imagine how anyone could threaten you,” Bobby said.

  I could, but the challenge excited me. I gave Bobby a hot smile, and he smiled back, captivated by me. “I transformed only a year or so ago. The oldest Focuses transformed ten to fifteen years ago. They’re a threat simply because of their experience.”

  I survived the sadistic FBI and the psychotic Keaton. I was ready for any challenge. I was tough, and hard, and dangerous. The world needed to watch out, because I planned to take the world by the neck and shake it. I would find out what it meant to be an Arm and find my place in the world.

  I would redeem myself.

  The miles continued to drone past under the wheels of Bobby’s ’59 Chevy, loaded to the last spare inch with Bobby’s belongings. Nothing of mine. I didn’t own anything except what I carried on me.

  I laughed to myself. I was free!

  Afterward

  Arms are no more powerful than the other Major Transforms. Asking which of them is the most dangerous is a moot question. They are all dangerous if you lie between them and their goals.

  “The Book of Arms”

  (Dr. Henry Zielinski, Pub. 1974, Viking Press)

  “All is enemy.

  Thumbs together pressed to mouth

  Eyes averted, unfocused

  Legs to twitch and bunch with passion

  Mind flows with nature abounding.

  Explodes.

  All is enemy…

  …becomes there-are-no-enemies.”

  From “Hidden Watchers” (Annette Sadie Tucker, 1972)

  Books by this Author

  The Commander series:

  Once We Were Human

  Now We Are Monsters

  All Beasts Together

  A Method Truly Sublime

  No Sorrow Like Separation

  In This Night We Own

  All That We Are

  The supplementary Commander Series books:

  The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio One

  All Conscience Fled (The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Two)

  The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Three

  The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Four

  The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Five

  The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Six

  No Chains Shall Bind Me (The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Seven)

  The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Eight

  The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Nine

  Focus

  Other

  99 Gods: War

  99 Gods: Betrayer [to be epublished in 2014]

  99 Gods: Odysseia [to be epublished in 2014]

  Author’s Afterword

  Thanks to Randy and Margaret Scheers, Michelle and Karl Stembol, Gary and Judy Williams, Maurice Gehin, and as always my wife, Marjorie Farmer. Without their help this novel would have never been made.

  After I collected many helpful but non-monetary responses from various other publishing venues regarding this novel, I decided the best way to introduce the Commander series to a wider audience was via the ebook market. I have two traditionally published short stories, one in Analog and the other in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine.

  I hope you enjoyed reading this novel.

  If you enjoyed this novel, you can find out further information about the Commander series, the background mythos of the Commander series, and about other fiction, on http://majortransform.com. You can also follow me on my Facebook author page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Randall-Allen-Farmer/106603522801212. Interesting and helpful comments are encouraged. Tell your friends. Post reviews.

  The Commander series continues in “All Beasts Together”.

  Cover credit to Bill Bob Clarkson for Enkidu, digital trails for Grendel, and Ankur P. for the nature background.


  Randall Allen Farmer