by Lee Bond
Why bother wasting time checking on something that he knew had to be the only possible truth?
“Because I needed to see for myself.” Garth answered. “I needed to see them for myself, see the old homestead, see … I needed to see. If it was still worth it.”
Sparks narrowed his eyes at the admission, but kept his temper. The man was pushing, still trying to see how far down the rabbit hole he was, to see if there was any way back out. Boldly announcing such audacious truths, that he was considering bailing on his own personal Groundhog Day, was undoubtedly just the first of many such attempts. “And, Mister N’Chalez? What did you decide?”
“They’re my friends.” The answer came simply and smoothly off his tongue. “Whether or not I’m there with them, what is going to happen will happen, right? That’s the entire purpose of this … whatever the fuck it is, right? For me to save them without being close to them, to protect them from Baron Samiel and everything that happens, to see them safe after it’s all said and done. To do it without the interferences from the Ushbet M’Tai and without my own powers. Though …”
“Though?” Sparks looked at Drake, who returned his gaze with the implacable, stony exterior that he’d worn for the last five thousand years. He wrinkled his nose in disappointment, but said nothing. The guy was still bent out of shape over the whole thing, and there was going to come a time –not today, but damned soon- that the two of them were going to have to hash out what’d happened, and why.
But this wrinkle with N’Chalez, this was exciting. He’d gotten to this point a lot sooner than the others. Now, Sparks didn’t know if it was because the guy was a fast thinker and he’d already figured the only real way to meet all the conditions set upon him was to bargain for a revised set or if he was just plain old desperate enough to admit defeat right there on the spot.
Stranger things had been known to happen, from time to time.
“Though it’s kind of bullshit.” Garth replied casually, head tilted to one side. He wasn’t entirely sure, but he thought there might be some friction between Emperor and android. He couldn’t put his finger on it. Maybe being separated for five thousand years, stuck under the thumb of the wild and wooly Bishops had changed the machine’s impressions of home. “I mean, I was born with those powers. They didn’t come from the Ushbet. They came from … somewhere else.”
Sparks nodded slowly, grandly, stroking his big white beard. “This is true. The powers you hold in the outside world are impressive, truly and greatly impressive. From all that I have seen and heard in the last thirty thousand years, I can honestly say that there is no one single being, human or Offworlder or variant, as powerful as you. Given time, I would rightfully say that there is nothing you cannot do. And that is the problem.”
“Problem?” Garth repeated the word quizzically. “How can that be a problem? I’m facing a time-traveling … wizard using the power of the incongruity to separate people from their souls. These zombies were –very nearly in every instance- my fucking equal, and this is when I was a yoked-up Kin’kithal in control of all my powers. Every time I unleashed something on them, they fucking corrected the issue within minutes. It always boiled down to sheer physical confrontation, Emperor-for-Life.”
“I’ve seen your memories, N’Chalez.” Sparks gestured, and all the empty spaces between the two of them filled with flickering windows full of Garth’s encounters with the so-called zombies.
The prisoner wasn’t lying, wasn’t exaggerating. Fueled by a connection to the temporal incongruity through their solid ocular implants and further augmented by tech from the far-flung future, nearly every single person working for Baron Samiel had been a walking, talking murder factory, though that side of things hadn’t revealed itself until N’Chalez had begun actively working against the time-traveler’s plans. In so doing, Garth had displayed his rather impressive range of skills and abilities, prompting Samiel to up the ante every time.
As had happened in the proto-Reality, so to had it happened here, in the Unreal Universe, with the M’Zahdi Hesh.
The most aggravating thing about the whole affair was that N’Chalez, who couldn’t time travel and couldn’t possibly prepare himself for reprisals, kept on living. Kept on adapting. No matter what. There was no way to tell which happened first; did he grow stronger because they did, or was it the other way around?
It was an ouroboros of Universal size and Sparks would not have that inside this new, special proto-Reality.
“I’ve seen your memories,” Sparks said a second time, gauging Garth’s reaction to seeing his own personal history –as seen through his eyes- displayed for everyone to see, “and that is the problem. Part of what happens here is about coming to grips with your own personal guilt, yes. The human soul is especially fond of lingering on moments lost to time, and this prevents you from becoming all that you might be.”
Sparks waited for Garth’s sarcastic, mocking laughter to wither away. He magnanimously waved away all efforts at apology, saying, “We all know that side of things is pointless, owing to your nature. Another part…”
“There’s another part?” Garth rolled his eyes. “How many parts are there?”
“As many as I decree. You are a special case, N’Chalez. You didn’t come here to free yourself from a titanic burden. You came here to determine if I was a threat to your precious plans of Universal rebirth, just as you did with Barnabas Blake. But where he played at being a god and lost himself to his own devices, I am a god. I held no interest at all in anything in the outside world and would’ve let your plans go unhindered, unheeded.” Sparks gestured to his domain. “With the incongruity under my control, surviving that rebirth is a non-issue. I held no fear for my own death, or that of my companion, Spur.
But come you did, forcing my hand. I see inside you all that you intend, and on the face of it, I agree. To an extent. It does seem that your dreams for a new Reality are better than what is proposed by Trinity and well, it is hard to imagine anyone save your Father endorsing the Heshii plan but now that I’ve seen inside you and the more I dig, I begin to wonder. Are you the only option? All I see is death and destruction, N’Chalez, on a growing scale. Maybe you’re working your way up to destroying the entire Universe through practice, maybe … maybe you lust after destruction itself. After all, it is encoded into your very DNA.”
“So, what?” Garth wished he was surprised at the direction their conversation had gone, but he wasn’t; yes, perhaps Emperor-for-Life Etienne Marseilles had at one point been utterly disinterested in having anything to do with the overall state of the Universe, but that’d clearly changed.
For the worse.
And making matters worse, the man was armed with stuff from the other side of Reality. Actual, physical material, but unlike quadronium, which was awesome and wonderful and all that, the incongruity had already been infused with special properties. Flipping back from the proto-Reality into the Unreal Universe had to’ve increased or expanded its capabilities.
“So.” Sparks smiled graciously. “In light of the fact that, comparatively speaking, I possess more power than you, and am almost certainly capable of ushering about a rebirth of this Unreal Universe in a shorter, less bloody time than you, the name of this game has changed. Instead of teaching you to accept and deal with your poor choices, of absorbing your grief and regret and becoming a better person for it, the effort I undertake today is to teach you humility. Save your friends Sparks and Drake, using nothing more than your own intellect. Protect them from what came after you were sent away, again, with nothing more than what you possess at this moment, and I will relent. I will set you free into the Universe to wreak your particular brand of havoc on all your enemies. If you fail, well. You will not leave this place, but I’m certain you’d already arrived at that conclusion.”
Garth hid his smile. Of course this was how things were going to go. If the Emperor was willing to change how the game was played already, before it’d even properly begun, that meant
… that meant all the rules could be changed. It was time to play things out.
“Yeah, well.” Garth cleared his throat. “How in the utter fuck am I supposed to even start? I’m in a foreign, hostile country run by a government who is abso-fucking-lutely terrified of everyone, including their own people. They’re about six months away from turning into a nuclear-aged version of Russia during the Cold War. The only difference is, instead of building an actual, physical wall around their entire goddamn country, they’re working towards an informational wall. Scanners on every street, cameras on every building, predator drones in the skies. People needing to prove who they are just to buy a loaf of bread. I don’t even have a fucking PIDpak, Emperor, much less time to help these guys, because I’m telling you, without my abilities, saving Sparks and Drake is going to be impossible. You want to teach me a lesson in humility, you want me to prove to you that I am the only hope that the Unreal Universe has, we need…”
“To come to some sort of arrangement, yes.” Sparks smiled a true and genuine smile. It’d begun already. He shot a triumphant look at Drake, and was rewarded with a thinly pressed frown. Oh, if they got to the point where N’Chalez started bartering to have his abilities back … that’d be it. Game over. They wouldn’t even need to continue onwards. They could call a halt to the whole process right then and there.
Sparks hoped N’Chalez started asking for his Kin’kithal-borne powers right then. That would show Drake he’d been right about their so-called BFF from the very beginning. Then they could move on to bigger and better things.
Sparks gestured a second time, and the clips of Garth being beaten by Samiel’s soldiers was replaced by still images of every single man and woman N’Chalez had come into contact with during his time in the proto-Reality. There were dozens of them, ranging from everyone he’d met in San Francisco to the motley crew of rejects and weirdoes he’d joined forces with in the future.
“Do you recognize these people?” Sparks asked. “They are …”
“Yeah. Everyone I ever met. From here and up The Line.” Garth watched the rotating roster of friends and enemies for a time in silence.
Delbert Granger loomed up at him. A crooked Fed who’d managed to put on over on him, the balding, overweight and gruff bastard had managed to force him to beard the enemy in the Vegas casino they’d been using as a secret lair. Laughingly called Gentleman Jim’s, Delbert –on Samiel’s payroll for decades- had imagined acquiring one immense payout, one big enough to free himself from his puppet master’s strings.
Instead, those events were directly responsible for sending one Garth N’Chalez into the future, all thanks to the person who showed up next:
Lissande Amour. Handmaiden to Samiel himself. Second in charge of ‘down The Line’ proceedings. Also responsible for infecting Drake with the degenerative disease that’d make him –in time- like her. They’d met a handful of times during Drake’s descent into delirium, but Garth had always been careful to maintain an … average … façade around her, distrusting her glittering, kaleidoscope lenses and the languid, mysterious veneer she’d worn like a second skin.
Following his heroic rescuing of Drake Bishop from her evil clutches, Lissande Amour had flipped sides, offering Garth one single opportunity to end the Baron’s thousand year tyranny by using the temporal incongruity to send him into the future.
Others zipped by, fast as lightning. Billy Timmins. Part-time casino worker, full-time RN, Garth’d managed to con her into helping him rescue Drake through sheer willpower and chutzpah.
DeShawn, a weary soldier from up The Line, second in command of Jim’s Army, eager to kill a man she’d never trusted.
Jim Seeker, the man himself, the only one with eyes open enough to see what was happening around the world and the only one willing to dedicate every part of himself to rooting out Samiel.
Charulo, Tezzy, Borrick. Eloise Havilland …
“Ahhhhhh.” Sparks whispered the word, but it might as well have been a shout. “Her. Yes, she was … she nearly brought it all down, in the end, didn’t she? She was the reason you almost stopped looking for the Baron and why you wouldn’t have come back had the Ushbet not sent you scurrying away like a dog?”
Eloise Havilland. Top-level executive for BishopCo Enterprises, a company similar to the Bishop Conglomerate of the Unreal Universe in intent, but still only relegated to a single, dying planet, Eloise had been … a breath of fresh air for him.
Garth hung his head low, truly feeling regret. He’d run into Eloise in one of the lower black markets outside the city of Broken Hope, trying to hawk some of the darkware merchandise he’d accumulated during his walk across the blasted and destroyed remains of middle America. She’d been there hoping to acquire some lost tech in an effort to bolster her career in marketing, and when her eyes had fallen on the nearly pristine L337 Beam Splitter and vacuum-sealed Third Level Consciousness Arrays, she’d offered him … everything.
A new chance on life, because if you were poor and broke and unknown up The Line, you were no one. Even a Kin’kithal was a nobody in that bleak future, because by that time, everyone poor or otherwise displaced had been exposed to some form of Samiel’s modifications. The unwashed masses were half-dead and changed because of it, leaving the rich and powerful the only ones to remain genetically free.
In time, she’d given him more than a new chance on life. She’d given him herself, her love, her hope and her understanding, and in time, a crusty, weary, soul-scarred Kin’kithal had succumbed to her charms.
It was hard to believe that anyone could’ve been so honest and sweet, so simple and kind, in a future very nearly totally dominated by such a madman, but Eloise Havilland had been one of a kind.
Garth opened his mouth and tried to answer, but emotion clutched his throat tight. He’d forgotten about Eloise! How could that’ve happened?
They’d … they’d lived together for nearly five years before signs of the Baron returning to that timeline had started cropping up. They’d lived together! He’d been … he’d been so happy, and suddenly, torrential memories of how angry and upset he’d been when some of Samiel’s foot soldiers had been seen in the streets crashed into him.
He’d almost ignored the Baron’s presence, but in the end, memories of Drake and Sparks brought a resurgence of fresh purpose; to ensure that they were left well alone. Because when you were dealing with time-travel, it wasn’t enough to save your friends once. You needed to ensure their safety, and the only way to accomplish that was to beard the lion in his den.
And so he'd surrendered to the darkness once more. Back onto the field of battle.
“You loved her so much, N’Chalez.” Sparks whispered the words. “More than I think you’ve loved anyone since. She almost made you break your promise to your friends, that you’d return once you were done ‘dealing with the situation in Vegas’. But in the end, you did the right thing, you resumed your hunt. And then …”
“And then it all went to shit, yeah, Emp, thanks, I fucking remember every bit now, thanks for that, you tremendous asshat.” Garth clenched his jaw tightly. “Why remind me of all these people? I failed in returning to see if they were safe. You keep alluding to something that happened after I was gone, implying that whatever it is, it’s damned awful. You were obviously there in some capacity, otherwise you wouldn’t have the incongruity in the first place, so what was it? I mean, I know I imagined all sorts of things. The Ushbet stole my victory away from me, which is fine. Happens in war all the time, but they never gave me the chance to check in on my friends. Without seeing them safe, I imagined everything from nuclear war to the Ushbet themselves going on a rampage. So what happened?”
“Time will tell, N’Chalez, time will tell.” Sparks lined the rotating cavalcade against one a wall. The Emperor-portraits seemed to come alive behind the rippling images. “Survive your test, make it to the moment most similar in time to when you would’ve returned from up The Line to your friends, and you’ll see. But, as y
ou’ve already pointed out, you most likely cannot.”
Sparks paused for a long moment, savoring the sadness and sorrow etched onto Garth’s face. “But that can be changed.”
That perked Garth right up. “How so?”
“These people.” Sparks indicated them with a magisterial sweep of the hand. “All of them are, in one way or another, theoretically able to lend assistance once again. They all exist, or in some cases, will exist. There’s no way of knowing where your test will take you. From Lissande Amour growing tired of Samiel’s plotting to Billy Timmins’ humble assistance in keeping Drake alive long enough to get to a hospital, from Delbert Granger’s crooked desires getting you into the right place at the right time to Eloise Havilland showing you a side of life you never imagined possible. They all exist. The possibilities of them helping you reach your goal still exist. I may be able to render you normal, but I wouldn't dream of fiddling with them. Everything that drives them, all of their own personal life experiences, all those things still occur, in the same order, to make them who they are. All you need to do is get to them, and if the odds are in your favor, you can enjoy their company. And their aid.”
“Or?” Garth demanded tightly.
The memories he had of Eloise … he wished he didn’t have them. He’d been better off without them. He wanted them to back to where they’d been hidden and he never wanted to see them again.
“Or you can spend them, like coin.” The Emperor’s eyes shone so brightly, the Devil making his deal. “Like in one of these video games you so enjoyed back in the proto-Reality. Or do you prefer referring to that place as the M'Tai did? The Dream? Consider me a vendor of rare and mystical items, designed to aid a weary traveler in gearing up for the next big boss.”
“Some of those vendors played tricks on their guests.” Garth wondered how honorable the Emperor was in his dealings with those who came to see him before deciding it hardly mattered; the moment he started making ‘purchases’, the Emperor’s agreeableness on those decisions would reveal whether or not the man was honest.
