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

by Lee Bond

  Fake Sidra wasn't holding out. She doubted the Horsemen knew what it meant to love anything.

  “Er, all right. Shall I … just … lounge?”

  Fake Sidra hung her head. He wanted to watch her dress because of course he did. That was the sort of mildly naughty hijinks a normal couple got up to.

  She raised her voice just a little. “You’ll do nothing of the sort, my love. The door is open.”

  The door to her dressing room popped open so quickly the man must’ve had his hand on the handle the whole time. Sa Herrig DuPont hustled in, momentarily framed by the enormous Threesie deployed to ensure that the Chairman’s private property on the water wasn’t attacked. The door shut itself –the Threesie’s face echoing sheer disinterest in seeing a naked short person, for which Fake Sidra was pleased- and Herrig stepped a little further into the room, face shiny.

  “Er, that’s a lovely dress.” Herrig watched as Sidra slipped the dress over her head, marveling as always at the unbelievable beauty a single woman could possess. “And it matches what I’m wearing.”

  Fake Sidra shivered the dress down and looked over at what Herrig was wearing, momentarily nonplussed to see that yes, her choice in evening formal wear did indeed match the Chairman’s antiquated choice; clad in black tux and tails with silver highlights in the form of a cummerbund, pocket square and sparkling platinum cufflinks, the two of them looked as though they’d planned their attire together.

  Fake Sidra smiled, holding her arms out and beckoning the smaller man to her with an inviting wink. He stepped forward and into her embrace as he always did and –as always- she commanded her traitorous flesh to ignore the displeasure of his touch just this once.

  Tried, and failed.

  When his tiny hands reached around her and caressed the small of her back, Fake Sidra felt awful curlicues of something –disgust, revulsion, fear … there was just no way of knowing until her body decided to give her the answers she sought- shiver this way and that.

  She bent down and gave him the smallest of kisses on his cheek, ignoring the mild hunger emanating from him. “Later, for that. It takes forever to put on this makeup, Herrig, I’ve only been doing it for a few years. I don’t have the skill to repair it as quickly other women.”

  Herrig inhaled Sidra’s scent. Heady and as intoxicating as when he’d first laid eyes on her, so long ago. “We could always, you know, skip this thing. I am President. And Chairman. That basically means I can do whatever I want.”

  Fake Sidra disentangled herself from Herrig’s warm embrace, linking arms with him instead. “You could indeed, my love, but consider how all those powerful men and women at this gala tonight will feel. UMDT is the most influential Conglomerate in the system and does have more power than it ought, but that is only because you play fair and nice with the rest of the businesses still operating. If you snub them once too many, they may organize themselves against you. I’m reminded of the time we were deployed past The Cordon, on this tiny little world called Haen … just a small group of Goddies. Five, in fact. Intel had it that the entire population was broken up into literally thousands of factions, none of which could bear the presence of the other, so we decided to go at them, one after the other. That lasted about three days. They merged forces overnight and would’ve destroyed us had we not been better at the art of war than they. Had they united sooner, understood the practical difficulties in working together, that story would’ve ended much differently. So, as much as I would love to be anywhere but in the spotlight and under social scrutiny, my love, this isn’t the kind of thing you can risk. Not with Fenris and his brood still sore. They take every opportunity to scamper around behind your back, whispering poison into the ears of your enemies.”

  Herrig clenched his jaw at the mention of Fenris.

  Every day.

  Every day, the man challenged his right to rule, his authority.

  Every day, Fenris questioned his power, dancing a fine line between respectful discordance and downright insulting behavior, literally doing everything possible to trick him into responding with the kind of force everyone knew he possessed.

  The Chairman sighed. “I suppose you’re right. I just … I really wish that we could make sure Vasco’s coterie of pals weren’t going to be there. They stare at me. All the time. It’s just … weird.”

  They started moving towards the door, Fake Sidra laughing and saying, “Ah, true, but it is also true that you love those finger food things that they serve at these events, and with you having lost so much weight, you could undoubtedly eat them all night long without suffering even a little bit.”

  Herrig patted his nonexistent belly happily. He’d lost all of it fairly quickly, but the rest of his body –face, neck, legs and arms- seemed reluctant to shed the unwanted chub as readily as his gut, but the Chairman wasn’t overly worried. The stresses of his job and all else in his life would assuredly see to that soon enough.

  As they arrived at the door, Herrig asked a question he’d been promising himself he wouldn’t ask, no matter what. He knew it was poor form to brace the love of his life like this, just before they were going to be under intense scrutiny, but … he couldn’t help himself. “Sidra, I … er … that is … I have a question. There’s something I need to know.”

  Fake Sidra had been waiting for this. They all of them had been. Fenris was unhappy with her behavior, her … queer inability to stand as close to her target as the real woman did on a regular basis, but they’d all come up with a viable answer, one that could –and would- be easily proven should the Chairman dig for deeper answers.

  “As you wish,” Fake Sidra turned and looked down into Herrig’s watery eyes with all the compassion in the world, “you know you can ask me anything at all.”

  Herrig wanted to pull his pocket square out and dab at the sweat leaking from beneath the ridiculous hat perched on his head but didn’t. Not yet. Licking his lips and rubbing his hands nervously, the words tumbled out on top of one another. “Are … do you. Is there … do you still love me? Do you want to be here with me still?”

  As Sidra processed the question, The Chairman prepared himself for the worst: Sidra was four thousand years old, had been through countless relationships. She claimed to love him as much as always, but how could something like that possibly be true?

  He was ordinary. He was mortal! She held … Herrig’s eyes fell on the device around her neck, watched the lights ebb and flow.

  What a fool!

  Before he could open his mouth to apologize for having missed something so obvious, Sidra responded, running a finger lightly across the metal device that allegedly held apotheosis at bay.

  “I’m not entirely here anymore, my love. All of who I am is behind a barrier, a soft, penetrable barrier that gets harder and harder to dig through the closer I get to the core of what I am. I’m trapped in stasis, yet conscious. Harmony is still just on the other side of me, waiting and wanting to turn me into a Fivesie. This device is the only thing keeping me alive. Sometimes … sometimes … I forget where I am. Only for a second, here and there, but when I do forget, I’m … gone. This … it’s … it’s a side effect no one could’ve anticipated. I wish it were any other way. The pressure is so strong, my love. I cannot explain it any better. If not for this device, though, I’d burst apart at the seams at the speed of light, all the atoms of my being transformed into vaporous essence. Better to be half here than starlight dancing in the void."

  Herrig shook his head apologetically, feeling foolish. He was so embarrassed that he’d somehow managed to forget what the woman of his dreams was going through, he could scarcely find the words. “I will never forget this moment, Sidra. Until you are whole and healed, I will remind myself daily that you suffer in silence. Come, let’s go and eat a ridiculous amount of food and make everyone nervous.”

  The Chairman opened the door to allow Sidra through, gently guiding her across the threshold with a gentle pressure at the base of her spine, feeling a sorrowf
ul zing jolt right through him.

  There. There it was again! A small … a tiny … shiver. He was sure of it. It didn’t always happen, but it was happening.

  What was happening?

  Sidra looked over her shoulder and smiled warmly at him, so Herrig returned one of his own before stepping through himself.

  He was real. He was real. He was real. In an Unreal Universe, he was real.

  Did that mean … did that mean that Sidra wasn’t? Was anyone else real? Garth N’Chalez was real. That much was true. But if they were the only two…

  Hewasreal. Hewasreal. Hewasreal.

  I Think Maybe We Found Our Quantum Tunnel…

  The Latelian Supership Honor Your Offer floated quietly through space somewhere between Hospitalis and the sun itself. That was all anyone knew about it’s location and that was just fine with Captain Horace Homolka; these days, it seemed that filthy Trinityfolk were showing up in the damnedest of places and the last thing he wanted was for one of them to mysteriously arrive on his vessel.

  Not now, not when they'd finally gone dark enough to do some proper listening.

  For that was the LSS Honor Your Offer had been designed to do. Never fully used, mind you, not since it’d been mothballed just three short months after rolling off the construction room floor –as they said-, and all thanks to what was now known as a ‘changing of employment structures’.

  Many of his captained colleagues thought it disgraceful, this dirty secret about them fighting across The Cordon for Trinity Itself, smashing and crushing whole worlds and solar systems into the dust so that the unthinking, uncaring Artificial Intelligence might cause It’s already inconceivably vast realm to grow that much larger.

  Captain Homolka didn’t care one way or the other. He was enlightened. Had been for decades. When the news had come through –from one of his very own Twoesies, as a matter of fact- he’d merely blinked and asked Goddie Cark what was on the menu for dinner that evening.

  Because it didn’t matter.

  It’d never mattered, not in the long run. Yes, obviously, AI wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be, that’d been made very evident during the earliest years of his schooling, but … they’d all gotten what they’d wanted from the machine mind, hadn’t they? They’d gotten five thousand long years of quiet, five thousand long years of peace and solicitude, five thousand years of technological and militaristic development.

  So what did it matter that the very first Chairman had cut one of those legendary backroom deals with the evil and horrific machine mind? So what? They were the oldest civilization in the entire Universe because of that deal, and now …

  “Now Trinity’s come knocking.” Captain Homolka said into his teacup.

  “Sir?” This, from a Tech Specialist staring moodily into her readout devices. They were presently tasked with the fairly impossible mission of locating their missing Quantum Tunnel.

  Yeva had never really considered how big empty space really was. Sure, yes, okay, a Quantum Tunnel was a fairly big chunk of metal, but comparatively speaking, they were looking for a heavy metal grain of sand in a big effing beach.

  “I was just thinking, Specialist, er, Specialist Yeva, is it? Yes, I was just thinking,” Captain Homolka took another thoughtful sip of tea and continued regarding the huge Screen displaying … empty space. “That I can’t help but believe the deal we made with Trinity has come full circle, has it not?”

  If the Captain was aware of the subtle, awkward shifting from the other crewmembers on the deck, he chose to remain ignorant of such. He was Captain. He was allowed to have thoughts that the people below him were not, unless –as in this situation- he invited one of them to have their own opinions on the matter.

  So long as they were all meshed together in their slightly-less-than-appropriate beliefs, that is.

  Specialist Yeva blipped the avatar she’d been working on into standby mode while she ran another series of diagnostics. The code and the machinery they were working with was proving to be a bit dodgy the further they scanned, and in the last hour, she and Relen had come across a few different areas of deep space that made everything go wonky.

  It was a big patch of space, huge, really, something like three million square miles, so it had to be the machines or the avatars running the machines. They hadn’t had any major conflicts as of yet, and even though they were designated as a listening post, they would’ve received that kind of an update.

  If Yeva didn't know better, it was like something weird was happening out there.

  A countdown timer popped up on the screen. Five minutes until the checkup was done.

  Specialist Yeva turned in her seat, much to the quietly mortified dismay of her colleagues. She liked Captain Homolka. He was a bit of an odd duck in that he was of purest IndoRussian stock –like her- but was choosing instead to emulate FrancoBritish General Morrison Hampstead’s tone, attitude and penchant for tea and biscuits.

  Had to be the fact that he was a Captain of a deep space vessel. Living out every boy’s fanciful dreams.

  “We’re talking about the Pact?” Yeva asked. When Captain Homolka nodded over a sip of tea, she shrugged. “It was a difficult time, five thousand years ago. We’d only just made planetfall on Hospitalis. From what I’ve read of the history books, it was a … rough landing with an even rougher start to things. The Horsemen’s destruction of the initial city only complicated matters.”

  Captain Homolka raised three cautionary fingers. “Careful, Specialist, when it comes to them.”

  Yeva looked at the timer. Four minutes. This time, she shrugged nonchalantly. “They know what they did, Captain, they’ve never made any pretense otherwise. I believe The Engineer even gave them grief over it.” The specialist grinned inwardly at the sudden, shocked inhalations of breath.

  The Engineer.

  Yet another man you couldn't bring up in polite conversation without people getting all bent out of shape.

  “Anyways, as I was saying. It’s not in any history books because of course not, but I’m led to believe that Trinity made promises and offers to the Chairman and his advisors, an agreement that if we were willing to send our God soldiers across The Cordon to do It’s dirty work for It, It’d not only leave us alone in perpetuity, It’d give us … a bit of a hand up.”

  “And how do you feel about that?”

  Yeva put a hand on her chest to feel her beating heart through the uniform. “Well, I wouldn’t be here, would I? You wouldn’t be there, drinking tea and eating cookies. God soldier Yertzi lurking over there by the blast doors wouldn’t be thinking about eating an entire barbecued shubin stuffed with Yarbofries,” she flushed when Yertzi started laughing so hard her eyes might pop loose, “in fact, none of us would be here. You, me, us, them. Well, the Horsemen might be here, but other than that? Odds are depressingly high we would not have made it.”

  Two minutes left on the timer.

  “You are,” Homolka uttered thoughtfully, “quite the gloomy Specialist.”

  Yeva turned back to her console. “I’m a realist, Captain. Most Tech Specialists are. Deep Range Scan Techs, even more so. Comes from looking into the deepest, darkest parts of the … hello, what’s this? Apologies, Captain, I need to focus on my task." Yeva tapped her screen. The avatars had finished their checks of the primary codes running the system early –possible, if extremely rare- and had come up with nothing. One of the check-vatars, though, was doing something … weird. “Tremax, can you come over here and check this out? One of my mini-avatars is doing something.”

  Tremax was the on-deck avatar Specialist, and he was up and out of his chair in a shot; unlike the Deep Space Techs, or the Comm Techs, or any of the other Techs in the entire Latelian Army, Avatar Techs rarely got called on to do anything because very nearly one hundred percent of the time, the original Coders were so good at their job that avatars … did what they were supposed to do and that was that.

  The only time the nearly-sentient bits of coding went ha
ywire was when the users plugged in a little post-processed mod to the script or if they ran into something they weren’t capable of handling on their own and tried to rewrite themselves in an effort to ‘understand’ what was happening.

  Super, super rare, and Avatar Techs the system over kept those moments to themselves. They couldn't take the risk of anyone putting deeper scrutiny into their coding languages.

  Tremax plopped down into the empty seat, synced his prote –which contained some of the most sophisticated software this side of Hospitalis- with Yeva’s scan system and took a look at the feisty little jotling of code.

  “Hmmm.” There was nothing in the primary structure of code, so he authorized his prote to dig a bit deeper. Under his breath –so Captain Homolka wouldn’t hear-, he whispered, “Awfully brave of you to state your opinions like that.”

  Yeva whispered right back at him, “Homolka invited the conversation, Tremax. Only way I could get in trouble is if I said I thought the whole idea had been terrible from the start or something equally stupid.”

  “Like casually mentioning the wanton destruction of nearly the whole city of Hospitalis, as done by escaping and marauding Horsemen?” Tremax felt a small frown creep into his forehead. The secondary and tertiary layers of the check-me avatar weren’t quite wrong, but they were … wrong.

  Somehow.

  His personal-branded avatars were detecting miniscule fluctuations in the logic paths. “You do something to your codes?”

  Yeva snorted. “That’s a surefire way to a reprimand.”

  Captain Homolka’s voice rang out through the room. “Is everything all right over there? You two look thick as thieves in the night.”

  Yeva rolled her eyes at the metaphor, giving Tremax time to wave his prote in the air. “No, sir, everything’s fine, just some minor avatar hiccups. Happens when we run the code for too long without a refresh from the original software. I’ll make certain everything else is fine, then I’ll do a forced refresh. It’ll put Yeva on time out until it’s done, about an hour to get everything back to factory.”