Emperor-for-Life: DeadShop Redux (Unreal Universe Book 6)

by Lee Bond

Drake looked thoughtfully at his friend, wondering if they were going to have ‘the’ conversation right then and there. The vibe in the room certainly said so. Thing was, Drake wasn’t entirely certain he was up for it.

  Then again, it wasn’t like he’d was an innocent, was he? He’d been caught red-handed digging into something that Eddie no doubt felt was private.

  “Yeah,” Drake said at last, dropping about five thousand years’ worth of frustration into his voice, “it really fucking was, Eddie. It really fucking was.”

  Eddie put a hand to his chest, ready to defend himself, but Drake’s angry voice snapped through the air.

  “Don’t even. Don’t even try to come up with some reason to explain yourself. You were unhappy I was leaving. I remember that argument like it was yesterday, bro. You wanted me to stay and help you build Latelyspace, but you knew I had to save BishopCo. You wanted me to sacrifice my offering to Garth to help you with yours, knowing full well that there'd be a time when he'd need the limitless resources my Conglomerate can provide. But you wanted that to fall by the wayside, man. It took forever to get BishopCo across every point of the Universe. Butting up against Trinity all day every day was a goddamn pain in the ass, but I did it, I got it working. So of course I’d leave when it was starting to fail. How could I not? Without the resources BishopCo can pull for him, the war, when it hits the inner galaxies, will be lost. Yes, sure, he’s got your fucking God soldiers now and all of that, but that’s only thirty million. Against three hundred million or more. Don’t forget, Eddie, Antal was working on clone replication thirty thousand years ago. I’ll bet the goddamn farm that he perfected that a long time ago. And I’ll also bet that Antal’s got a fucking shit ton more in the way of resources than we do.”

  Eddie looked sideways at his friend, the words tripping out of his mouth colder than dark stars. “You done?”

  “The fuck I’m done. The fuck I am, bro. My fix would’ve taken less than a year to implement, man. Genetic corrections in the family genome were easy as pie to repair, it was just weeding out the bad seeds, and there were a lot of those. Something of my father showed up far too goddamn frequently for my own liking, and I needed to make certain that every last Bishop … cousins, uncles, aunts, brothers, bastard children … all of them that were carbon copies of Derek Bishop were gone.” Drake could scarcely believe how angry he was. Oh, he’d known he was angry, how the fuck could you not be? His voice rattled off the walls, his lungs ached, his throat was already growing hoarse. “But you decided to sic Trinity after me because you were upset. You locked me in that Spur-body for five thousand years because your feelings were hurt? Who the fuck does that, man?”

  “I did.” Eddie replied calmly. “I did that. Because the ‘Have You Seen God Lately’ project was infinitely better than yours. Still is. I provided Garth N’Chalez with a solar system full of logical, rational people and seeded them with hy-tech equipment that they’d just run with. And they did. They created a civilization out there in the blackness of the Universe that's like Ancient Rome to the fucking hillsmen of Scotland, Drake. They were prepped and ready and able to accept someone like Garth N’Chalez without blinking a fucking eye. The whole thing was flawlessly executed. Your BishopCo thing … small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, bro. Those thirty million Goddies you turned your nose up at? Enhanced now with Harmonic signatures, thanks to the converted Harmony soldiers' influence. Each one of them is the equal of a million warriors. What can your company do by comparison? Launch a few million warships? Pull together a few billion extra soldiers? Your ships and your peoples are gonna get turned into confetti during the first conflict. So of course I warned Trinity you were loose. I wanted you to see the error of your ways, man. My dream, my offering, was big enough for the both of us to give to him. Why can’t you see Latelyspace was better? Why can’t you see I was better?”

  The heated question hung between the two of them for a long time, filling the air with a dreadful silence that begged to be filled with apologies and reparation, but both men stood there, fists clenched, faces red with anger, breath coming fast and furious.

  Eddie gave a lazy smile and unclenched his fists. “But it doesn’t matter now, does it? Garth is here, Garth is learning his lessons. Latelyspace is trapped behind a bubble that can’t be broken, the people and the soldiers and everything that would’ve won the war against Kith Antal sealed away for an eternity because brother, Garth ain’t getting out of here. Not at the rate he’s playing.”

  “What did you do to Naoko Kamagana?” Drake demanded, still heated, but with just a tiny hint of plaintiveness in his voice. “I need to know. There’s something else going on here. Something that doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “Is that why you were down here? Digging into my daughter’s history to find out if I did something to her?” Eddie smiled, bemused. “I didn’t do anything to her. She was born perfect.”

  Drake slapped his head. He dropped back into his comfie chair, literally gobsmacked. “Of course. I missed it. The father. You did something to the father. Beyond the whole breeding scheme I looked at. What?”

  Eddie was surprised at the intensity in Drake’s voice, and how quickly his concern over Naoko had overridden his –frankly- justified rage over being trapped in a body not his own for five thousand years.

  ‘Old’ Drake would’ve been raging for hours, if not days. Lord knew the two of them had had some high intensity, long-lasting arguments down the years.

  Looked like being Spur had given him a little perspective.

  “I don’t gotta tell you anything. Your decision to leave me was more than enough argument to prove that we were going down different paths to help N’Chalez.” Eddie raised a hand when Drake looked ready to start shouting again. “That being said, I’ll tell you anyways.”

  “Don’t make it sound like you’re doing me a favor.” Drake snapped, shifting to get comfortable and failing. He was angry as hell. The last thing he wanted to do was remain sitting, but he also knew that if he started pacing and throwing his hands in the air, the argument would catch fire once more, and that was the last thing he wanted; he needed to be able to prove –not only to himself, but to Eddie as well- that they were headed down a very dark corridor. “You’re gonna tell me because you’re proud of what you did.”

  Eddie nodded, slowly at first, but then with a little more enthusiasm. “You know, you’re right, I am proud. And if you’d been with me from the beginning, helping … okay, yes. I won’t go there. The wounds are still fresh. Anyways.” Eddie waved his hands around in the air, erasing the last few seconds. “Tomas Kamagana is me.”

  Drake could barely believe what he was hearing. He opened his mouth, but words failed him. Making matters worse, Eddie stood there, wiggling his eyebrows like he was some kind of fucking magician who’d just pulled a rabbit out of his nose. It took a few seconds to find his voice, and when he did speak, Drake chose his words very carefully.

  “Are you out your goddamn mind?”

  Eddie let the insult slide. He was proud of his work. Sending a clone of himself, right down to the very last bit of DNA –with a few incongruous tricks to ensure that the daughter came out just as desired- to Latelyspace had been the only way to make absolutely certain that Garth’s offering would be perfect. “I don’t see the problem. The solar system is just what Garth needs. An entire solar system, built around a non-AI tech that is, at base, just as powerful –if not more so- than anything Trinity has to offer, plus all those God soldiers… Tomas Kamagana was instrumental in turning that system around. He was at the base of a technological revolution. If only Garth hadn’t ruined everything!”

  “This clone of yours.” Drake said slowly. “He’s got your memories?”

  “More or less.” Eddie shrugged. “But not available to him in any meaningful manner.”

  “But they’re there.” Drake pushed the point. “Maybe they show up in the form of dreams or something, but they’re there. I’m also assuming you … chea
ted a bit? To guarantee that Tomas would survive in Latelyspace and that Naoko would be, well, Naoko?”

  “Obviously.” Eddie furrowed his brow. “What the hell is this all about? Look, Tomas has no voluntary access to my memories, and even if he did, there’s nothing he can do about it. Nor would he. He is me. If he did come to, he’d realize he’s right where he needs to be and stay there. He’d be wrong, now, of course, but… what’s with the look on your face? Why are you shaking your head?”

  “Two things.” Drake knew what they were talking about now was only a stopgap measure, that sooner or later they were going to have to fully and completely deal with what’d happened between them, but this new problem was of a more immediate nature.

  “One. He’s you, with your memories, with some minor temporally incongruous fiddling. Mostly, I presume, to keep him alive and healthy in a solar system stuffed to the tits with insane people. Even without access to your memories, Tomas Kamagana is probably one of the smartest men in the Universe because you are. I’ve never met anyone as handy around tech as you, excluding Nickels, of course.”

  Eddie narrowed his eyes. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “You shouldn’t. Here’s why.” Drake flashed Eddie a false smile. “He has a daughter. Who’s missing. Out there in the Universe somewhere. So … for a second, just one second … just imagine what he’ll be willing to do to help her. I mean, here we are, in the incongruity, and you’re running a pocket Universe complete with a being capable of time-travel and everything that that implies, to punish the man you blame. You fucking bargained with ADAM to keep her alive for a little while longer, at the fucking expense of all the people in Jade Whisper! You’re full of rage and anger and hate towards Nickels. Now, Tomas only knows …”

  “Not possible.” Eddie forced the words out. “Not possible. The shield wall is hy-tech. Not only that, it’s advanced hy-tech, developed by Huey himself. Even I can't figure that fucking thing out. He’d need access to all kinds of different things…”

  “Something just occurred to you.” The look of guilty realization that’d slammed across Eddie’s face was hard to ignore. “So what happens if Tomas Kamagana makes it out of Latelyspace somehow, Eddie?”

  “I … nothing.” Eddie stammered. When designing Tomas and preparing him for Latelyspace, it’d never occurred to him that things might go so fucking sideways. He’d been so certain of everything, that Garth N’Chalez –when he arrived, drawn to the system by the siren’s lure of Bravo- would instantly begin preparing for the end that there’d been no room to think of failures.

  What would happen if Tomas Kamagana made it free of Latelyspace? Even peripherally in control of who he sort of was? The implications … the threats … were enormous.

  Eddie cleared his throat and repeated his words. “N…nothing. I’ve got to go.”

  Drake watched Eddie all but run from the room, frowning as he contemplated the very near future.

  A single Eddie Marshall with a hate-boner for Garth N’Chalez was bad enough; his friend had no desire to leave the confines of the temporal incongruity, so all was good.

  But one out there? In the wilds of the Unreal Universe?

  Drake shivered.

  Some things were better left unimagined.

  The Thing in The Box and Holy Shit, This is Bad

  While heading down into the storage area where he was keeping the thing he'd pulled straight from Garth N'Chalez, Eddie paused to see if Drake was going to be bullheaded enough to follow him any further; his lifelong -literally- friend wasn't in the best of moods and was having the sort of temper tantrum that was best treated by a bit of distance and quiet.

  The surfer-turned-android viewed the five thousand year expulsion from the kingdom as a personal attack, but Drake couldn't be more wrong.

  It was what you did when someone was being a child. You treated them like one. Drake was acting as though five thousand years in Zanzibar had been the worst thing ever.

  BishopCo was stronger now than it'd ever been…

  “Problem is, Drake-o,” Eddie nodded, satisfied when he felt Drake heading back to his own quarters, “is that you don’t think what you did was wrong. You thought only of yourself. Again.”

  It was becoming kind of major theme in Drake’s life. It looked as though the behavior was endemic of the Bishop line. Until this latest bit of arrogance, Eddie’d been under the impression that Drake had somehow managed to skirt the megalomania and narcissism that plagued the Bishop Line like receding hairlines and alcoholism hit other families.

  The attitude needed correcting, only …

  Only Eddie didn’t know what to do.

  Oh, if Drake Bishop were a EuroJapanese citizen… There were hundreds … thousands … of things you could do to a disloyal citizen. You could confiscate their lands, take their money, kill their family and friends, so on and so forth, always leaving the principal violator alive to fully understand and appreciate what their ignorance cost.

  But that was for people.

  Eddie didn’t want to do that to Drake. Drake was a good guy. The best guy, really, he just had his head up his ass.

  The Emperor-for-Life Etienne Marseilles pushed his way into the secret room saying, “I guess five thousand years of home life can have a negative effect on just about anyone. Couldn’t imagine sticking around my family for that long. I …”

  The thing in the box stole Eddie’s words right out of his mouth.

  It was miraculous, to be sure, least of all because he'd become certain the weird blob was, in fact, the tattered remains of an Ushbet. Not much, just … thin strands. Remnants of the power they'd exerted on him, but … enough all the same.

  When he'd been here last -just before Garth’s inaugural victory over Baron Samiel, in fact- the wispy splotch had been as always; an odd, inky extrusion, like some kind of exotic deep sea monstrosity exposed to light and new surroundings for the first time, pecking and poking it’s way inside the confines of it's prison.

  That … thing … was gone.

  Now, though … it slumbered, or seemed to, in the center of it's home, curled in and around itself, a jet-black, white-lightning streaked ouroboros.

  The inchoate Ushbet nematode –tattered, barely tangible- had fleshed out across the length of it’s body, showing real signs of solidity and an ability to interact with the ‘real’ world. The main part of the body was a black so dark it would’ve hurt Eddie’s eyes had exposure to the incongruity not fortified him against such things. The rest of the wriggling body was shot through with brilliant white streaks that pulsed and throbbed in time to each fretful stretch. Eyeless, the sensitive devices connected to the box had yet to determine how the Ushbet nematode perceived it's environment. Limbless, the thing's movements could best be described as 'maggot-like'.

  It was marvelous.

  The Emperor tapped a wall of the box thoughtfully.

  Inside, the creature reacted first by rearing back –presumably in an effort to fix his location through echo-location or some similar sense- and then by launching itself forward to ram against the unbreakable wall. It proceeded along this course this for several more seconds, gaining considerable momentum with each ram attack.

  The Emperor was impressed. Were it's prison not formed of purest incongruous power, it was all too likely he'd be dealing with a monster on the loose, only he doubted a quick burst from a fire extinguisher'd be enough to put it down.

  “Your size belies your strength, little curiosity.” Eddie watched on with interest as the thing from the proto-Reality gave a few more half-hearted thumps against the wall before resuming it’s quiet introspection. Retreating to the middle of the cage, it coiled around itself like an ebony snake, white luminous streaks cycling down until the pale patches were nothing but smudges of chalk.

  “Results.” Eddie demanded.

  If the thing in the box truly was an expression of Godhood that'd been with Garth since his adventures in the Dream, then it'd most likely keep any a
nd all expenditures of deific power on the down-low, making surveillance -and subtle surveillance at that- of utmost priority. Even animal cunning would keep a beast from playing all it’s cards at once, and Eddie suspected there was a great deal more than animal cunning lurking behind that eyeless, mouthless face.

  Surrounded by data, Eddie watched an extremely detailed recording of the creature’s alone time, almost absentmindedly absorbing into himself the reams of data the room had attached to the recording.

  The Emperor-for-Life realized he almost preferred the peculiarity's previous incarnation, because at least then, it'd done considerably more than just lay in the middle of it’s prison; the weird, herky-jerky, nearly frantic manner in which it’d tipped and tapped against the walls, it’s barely formed body little more than wisps in spots … that had been intrig…

  “Play that back, data too.” The rippling transformation from inky spot in the box to the worm or snakelike thing it was now had been nearly instantaneous. Certainly quick enough to miss if you weren’t paying attention and so fast that it left you wondering if it’d been anything but what it was now, regardless of what you knew. “Slowly.”

  The footage slowed to a glacial crawl. Eddie leaned forward, wondering if the thing in the box possessed any special senses his machines were unable to detect, and if so, wondered what it thought of this moment.

  “Enhance.” Eddie pointed to a section of the ink spot’s most embryonic body. There was something … “Enhance again. Dig down as deep as you need to. I need to see what this is, clearly.”

  There was a perceptible dip in power as the room pulled in more energy from the incongruity. Eddie cursed.

  Not only would Drake notice –and therefore start asking questions- there was a small chance the dip would manifest in Garth’s pocket Universe. There was no way of knowing if any errors would crop up inside Garth's pocket dimension, or in what form, but the damage was done. If whatever happened proved to be exploitable, they'd deal with it then.