by Lee Bond
“But?” Antal’s eyebrow quirked.
“But none of that matters, because you aren’t him.”
“How would you know that, boy?” Antal shifted in his seat, took a sip from a coffee cup that hadn’t been there before. “When you barely know who you are yourself?”
Garth smirked at the small display of power, yet said nothing about it. “Because even though I’m under the Emperor’s influence, because even though there’s the slightest possibility that you’re an underlying effect brought about by the incongruity’s raison detre, you aren’t Antal. The only person who might even have an inkling about what you look like now is me, and since you aren’t a reflection of that notion pulled out of my brain by the Emperor, you are something else, something that can’t access that.”
Antal’s eyes twinkled with admiration. “So wise, so cunning, so insightful. I could be your father. I could just be using this shell as weight on your soul, because this is how I looked the last time you saw me, before you lost me to the Heshii, before you burned what you wanted from me into my very soul. So deep not even they could find it. So cruel it’s hooks gouged into my innermost essence with relentless passion until I was finished. You kept me a prisoner inside my own mind for nearly thirty thousand years, boy. And when I was free, oh, the anger and wrath… when I find you, boy, I won’t just destroy the Universe for the Heshii straight off. No. I will…”
“See,” Garth interrupted firmly, absolutely disinterested in hearing what faux-Antal had to say on what would or would not happen when the War finally came to a close, “the only things I think you could be are; the Emperor, fucking around, me fucking with me or possibly the OS running my blanked out implants.”
“Are those the only options?” Antal mused. “Are they really?”
“Except, you can’t be the Emperor, because the Emperor thinks that my guilt here and now is failing to ensure Drake’s absolute safety once Samiel was, in theory, defeated by the Ushbet.” Garth felt comfortable enough in admitting to the tiniest bit of subterfuge in this place; he knew for certain it wasn’t the Emperor, because the Emperor wouldn’t do something like this. He couldn’t say how or why he knew this to be true. It was just one of those things.
Antal leaned forward, cruel eyes glittering with interest. “Oh? Then what is your guilt here? What passion play are you acting out?”
“And you can’t be me, because,” Garth laughed mockingly at himself, “let’s be fucking honest right now. If this is something cooked up my by my own goddamn subconscious, I think we could both guarantee it’d be a lot more fucked up than a nice café chitchat complete with magically appearing coffee. I mean, there’d be a lot more fucked up shit going on. I’ve kinda sorta got a lot of baggage in the old melon.”
To drive the point home, Garth tapped himself in the forehead and pulled the trigger on an imaginary gun.
Antal leaned forward suddenly, blue eyes glittering with the kind of madness being stuck on a thirty thousand year course of action can do to a guy, and then he smiled. “You don’t know who I am yet. But not to worry. You soon will. And then we can end this.”
Immense, unexpected pressure closed in on Garth from all sides, making him feel as though he were being suffocated. Speaking as if from a very great distance, Garth addressed Antal’s odd statement, “I don’t needa know who you are. You ain’t real, just the same as everyone around me. You’re a bit of undigested potato.”
Antal flicked a hand. The pressure diminished. “Matters not. It’s inevitable. And when you figure out who I really am, you will understand the necessity. You did once before, you will again. There are certain things in this Unreal Universe of yours that are inscribed into the very fundamental matter of the machine. You are one. I am another. I’d hoped you’d be further along than this, but it appears as though you are genuinely interested in completing this foolish mission.”
Garth shelved the foreboding soothsaying deep in the back of his brain along with all the other fucking weird shit that he still hadn’t had time to properly process. Soon, he was going to run out of space and when that happened … now that he thought about it, Garth wasn’t entirely sure what would happen, just that he didn’t want to find out.
“Okay, sure, fine, whatever. You obviously didn’t yank me here first to pretend to be my dad to see how I’d react, you sure as shit ain’t the Emperor because this kind of thing is boring for him and I really don’t actually give any kind of fucks either way because as you said, I’m committed to the path. Emperor-for-Life Etienne Marseilles is in possession of protomatter. A chunk large enough to keep him alive and sane and in good health for thirty thousand years. Beyond that, it’s also capable of creating perfectly rendered pocket dimensions. As near as I can tell, the place he’s parked me in is Earth circa 21st century AD. The people in it are as real as real can be, and minus a few alterations to the laws of physics to make my personal life a little bit more hellacious, everything’s real. That kind of power represents a real and direct threat to my own goals. And that is something I can’t let remain in play.”
“Careful, boy. Hubris on this level can lead to your downfall.”
Garth wanted to slap the sly smile of faux-Antal’s face. He didn’t, because he wasn’t an idiot. Whoever or whatever the being was –the Kin’kithal was kind of holding out against hope that it was the OS being weird-, it was powerful enough to inveigle itself/himself into the Emperor’s processes.
“Why am I here?” Garth hissed, tiring quickly of the whole thing.
“Your hytech devices will not work.” Antal replied plainly. “They cannot. Etienne has removed that level of functionality from the dimension. Persistence will only be met with fruitless endeavors and more death.”
Garth slammed a fist on the table. The people nearby jumped but said nothing. They weren’t programmed to interfere. They were window dressing. “I fucking knew it. I knew it.”
“You are also correct in your suppositions concerning your quadronium implants. They are not functional, but they exist within you. Attempting to override the Emperor’s directives will bring the simulation to an end, and he will kill you.”
“Is that something he can do?” Garth admitted he’d only ever really considered that side of the Emperor’s involvement as an afterthought.
Antal nodded very seriously. “Boy, it is as you said. He possesses the single largest chunk of protomatter this Unreal Universe has ever seen. The Emperor claims to be using it to it’s fullest, yet even he is not entirely aware of how powerful it is. He certainly commands more of it than Baron Samiel did, and that is enough to end your life if he so wishes.”
“That’s the thing that bugs the fuck out of me.” Garth shouted, vexed. “He’s got some kind of wicked bad hate-boner for me, clearly wants me to not succeed in just about every way imaginable because let’s be real, Baron Samiel is definitely top dog in this neck of the woods, and here I am, not dead.”
“Emperor-for-Life Etienne Marseilles, no matter his motivations or desires, still clings to some shreds of decency, boy. He will abide by the rules of the game he’s played with his people for thirty thousand years for quite some time yet. He hasn’t yet been given a proper reason to abandon what has worked for so long, so as long as you choose to play the game, so will he.”
Garth sat there in silence for a few minutes, simply content to watch the world go by. Not-Antal thankfully did the same, giving him a few precious seconds to decompress. When he was ready, he spoke clearly, and with no illusions.
“Look, I am in a lot of trouble here. I get that. Etienne hates me, me personally, and is, whether he’ll admit it or not, intent on killing me. Either by pressuring me into invalidating the terms of our agreement or by making things so difficult I tap out. The fact of the matter remains that what I am doing here isn’t what he thinks it is, and except for one other thing I’m working on right now, that is the only ace in my sleeve. So long as I am able to work towards the actual target, the actual source of my re
gret and guilt without him being aware, I can come out on top. I can defeat his bullshit gauntlet and he’ll give up.”
“You’re very confident.”
“Got no other choice, bub.” Garth jerked his chin forward. “Got a plan. Something is hinky with my blood in this place, but I bet you knew that.”
“Of course. I was watching you work on it.” Antal caught the calculating flare in Garth’s eye and held a smile on his face. “By now you know that, on the short scale, massive amounts of electrical discharge can disrupt the substrate circuits, yes?” When Garth nodded, Antal continued. “And you’ve also come to the conclusion that dilution won’t work.”
Garth held up a cautionary hand. “Well, now, whoah there partner, let’s not get ahead of ourselves there. I’ve tried tap water. Clearly not strong enough. I just need to find something a little stronger. I can find something that’ll keep things cohesive enough to keep the quadronic … yeah, I just made that up … quadronic link effective yet incredibly fluid. Right now, it’s just all … goopy … with atomic-level connectivity. I need to reduce the linkage from a dogpile of stuff to, like, one atom per … you got this look on your face, not-Dad, that I don’t like.”
Antal rolled his shoulders. “In just under three months, the situation with Drake Bishop heats up to the point where you will need to move actively against Samiel if you are to save him. That’s if, of course, you don’t already have some kind of an inkling how to protect the man before then. Three months after that, give or take, the ‘bad thing’ Etienne Marseilles has been hinting at since your arrival occurs. Shortly after that, everything … in your own colorful vernacular… goes to fucking shit in a big fucking hurry. If by some miraculous occurrence you fail to save Drake and the Emperor still permits you to live on in the hellhole that awaits, you will have infinitely more pressing things on your mind than messing around with discovering the proper method of diluting your quadronic essence.”
“You know what happens?” Garth seized on the moment to be properly ahead of the Emperor. “What is it? What …”
Antal’s demeanor suggested very clearly that he could ask that question in varying degrees of intensity for the next thousand years and that he’d get just about as far as the Emperor was in cajoling him to quit, so Garth went in a different direction.
“Your mocking tones about dilution tell me you have something better in mind.” At least the guy wasn’t being cryptic. He’d spent most of his life running into people who were professional cryptic mutterers, and it was the kind of thing that got on a guy’s tits pretty fucking quickly, especially when he was trying to accomplish some pretty important shit in a very limited amount of time.
Antal pressed his lips together. “Let’s just say that I have a vested interest … everyone … has a vested interest in you being out in the Unreal Universe doing the things that you set out to do, and waiting for you to come to the proper realization in here serves no purpose. Besides, I plan on telling you nothing you won’t realize.”
Garth leaned back in his chair, inhaled the fresh -well, fresh-ish- San Franciscan air and looked the man pretending to be his father square in the eye. No flinch, which was both good and bad. Good, because it let Garth know that whoever had the kind of mojo to futz with the Emp’s incongruity was also the kind of guy that wasn’t afraid of someone who planned on destroying the Unreal Universe.
It was also bad for that same reason. Someone who didn’t fear a guy who not only wanted to but had planned and activated an actual, straight up legit ‘Call All Marvel Superheroes’ supervillain Universal destruction gambit into play was someone who couldn’t be trusted. At all.
They were either planning on stealing the game for themselves or had a method of surviving that destruction. Or thought they did. Because if whoever ‘Antal’ was, he surely knew enough of the plan to comprehend that the majority of the absurdly powerful beings in the Unreal Universe were not going to get their hands stamped when they went out for a quick smoke before the biggest bang.
They weren’t coming back in.
Garth saw a small, knowing bit of emotion wind through Antal’s craggy, heavily altered face and said nothing about it. ‘Antal’ wanted him to discover who his new, unexpected benefactor was on his own terms, only his own terms had absolutely nothing to say about learning someone’s secret identity. He couldn’t care less.
“Sooo, say I believe you.” Garth said slowly, watching the man’s eyes for signs of deceit or too much interest. He was getting nothing now he’d engaged on the primary topic. “Say that I believe you’re someone interested in getting me out of here and back on track, prepping the Doomsday Machine and gearing up for the title fight against Dear Old Dad. What happens if the Emperor catches wind of this little tete-a-tete? That’ll invalidate the whole trial. He flies into a rage, flips his shit and the switch running this little simulation and I’m standing before him and Spur, the alabaster android with amazing fashion sense, being told that I ain’t ever gonna leave. That doesn’t sound like a win-win for either of us, does it? Especially since people who find out my precise plan … or enough of it to satisfy curiosity … have this weird tendency to want to pick up the mantle for themselves. I mean, shit, we already got Trinity out to do the same, the ‘Priests, well, okay, they wanted to do it for themselves since forever. We had the Platinum King, and lemme tell ya, we’re all lucky I did him in. Etienne claims he’s not interested in anything that happens in the outside world, but I call bullshit because if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t have more than seventy-five percent of the EuroJapanese population Universe-wide calling him Emperor any longer.
And that’s just listing the peeps I know about and not including Fenris and gang. I still haven’t quite made up my mind as to what’s going on with those fucking guys. They kind of keep everything really close to their chests. Prolly has a lot to do with their time hanging out with Lisa. But yeah, I get that I’m not in trouble talking with you yet because if I was, this place would be full of ninja assassins and, like, a stern-looking Emperor with this big old shit-eating grin on his face but what about later?”
Antal mimed looking at a watch. “I do believe that’s the longest monologue you’ve ever done, N’Chalez. I thought you were going for the whole ‘stoic, strong and silent gotta get things done’ guy these days.”
“I’ve got a lot on my mind, dude.” Garth snapped his fingers. “Satisfy my concerns and we can get down to your ‘suggestion’.”
Antal watched Garth staring rather abrasively at him, toying with the idea of revealing who and what he was before deciding against it. Discovery at this point in his journey would do nothing to advance the timetable and everything to derail the entire operation. He needed to relive as much of the moments in this 21st century proto-Realistic environment as possible, needed to understand … everything.
And the only way to do that was to see.
“No.” Antal replied brusquely, much to Garth’s visible surprise. “You aren’t in the position to dictate any kinds of terms, N’Chalez, and neither am I predisposed to holding your hand. The irony here is that you are trying your best to get information from me in precisely the same manner as the people in your life try from you. Therefore, to satiate your needs, imagine I am you, and Herrig DuPont is pressuring you for answers about whether he is real or not.”
Garth clenched and unclenched his jaw methodically, working down the impulse to slam not-Antal’s forehead right into the table. It might work, it might not, and from there, they’d be having a big huge fight in the middle of a San Francisco coffee shop and there was just no way of knowing if they were in a kind of temporary holding cell before he returned to the school or if they were in the ‘real’ world right that moment.
One large and burly American immigrant who was allegedly in town to make the entire country a better place getting into a serious fucking combat situation with some kind of iteration of an entity that’d directed the course of the Unreal Earth’s history for five thousand years
was probably the kind of activity that might maybe just pull Etienne Marseilles away from his very important scrapbooking assignment.
Garth N’Chalez took a deep breath, fixed his attitude, and locked eyes with not-Antal for the last time. “Okay. Fine. Shoot.”
When you make a deal with the Devil, jump in with both feet.
And look for the exits.
Antal was all amiable happiness now. “Electricity in high enough amounts can utterly disperse anything generated by your quadronic self, but … low level amounts can … stretch an atom’s quadronic signature quite a far way before failing. Like …”
“Fingerpainting.” Garth nodded slowly, already distracted by the idea blossoming in his brain. If he could develop an electric pen and introduce a microscopic drop of his blood to the business end as and when needed, it should be possible to sketch invisible circuits whenever and wherever he wanted. Loop those circuit boards into nearby power sources –plugs, electrical wires, really, the sky was the limit- and they could be powered up without anyone being the wiser.
“I would’ve gone a different way, but the imagery is apt.”
Garth barely heard what not-Antal had to say. He was staring off into the distance, playing with the little bit of scruff on his chin, formulating and plotting the usability of quadronic circuits. They might not be as powerful or as influential as actual hytech devices, but … with the 3D printers and the 'grown' graphene circuitry and everything else that was and would continue to be delivered to his front door, the first thing he needed to do was get himself a proper netLINK setup to take advantage of this burgeoning technology.
The benefit of invisible circuits is that if anyone in the industry or tech-geek got into their heads to poke and pry, when they took everything apart, no answers would be forthcoming; they'd be presented with a bit of machinery that did things that made no sense, only...
