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

by Lee Bond

  They wouldn't be able to prove it, because they’d ruined delicate circuitry during the process of pulling everything apart!

  Naturally, anything he did power up with quadronic circuitry was going to have to be very much on the downlow because the last thing he wanted was to wind up before a Federal Committee with all manner of extremely influential politicians and lawyers and whatnot all howling for his figurative blood.

  He wasn’t Tony Stark.

  No one in San Francisco loved him, and if he got into trouble, Special Agent Angela Devlin would be right there, telling everyone she’d told them so forever ago.

  Something small. Something innocuous.

  If he was going to succeed with his real plans –that of stopping Baron Samiel once and for all, even if only in Emperor-for-Life Etienne Marseilles’ simulation- it was going to have to be something that’d be too small to notice at first, then so big that you couldn’t even see it if you were looking in the right direction.

  An idea formed. It wasn’t perfect, not by a longshot.

  But it was a start. And that's all Specters needed.

  “Send me back.” Garth nodded. “I got this.”

  ***

  After repeated failures, dismantling the n-space engine was somewhat cathartic. Garth wanted to tell himself that he’d known from the very outset that the Emperor was never going to allow hytech machinery to exist in this little drama, but he'd've hated himself had he not made the effort.

  Failure to examine every opportunity, look under every rock, consider every single thing, no matter how stupid, benign or otherwise –especially when you were in such a high stakes game- all but guaranteed failure before you even got going.

  Unspooling the silver wiring from the mishmash of things holding it erect, Garth ran through the different types of circuit he was going to experiment with once the workspace was free and clear.

  “Something quick and easy.” Garth pulled another layer of wiring from the display, still dragging over the conversation with not-Antal and hating himself for it. “Like a super-basic AM/FM radio thing? Or, no, how about a charge unit for my phone? That’s super simple. Hmmm.”

  But Faux-Antal, with his heavy face, maddened blue eyes and whispering words loomed at Garth from the well of his soul, reminding him with every blink of thick lids that no matter what else he thought, he had done something terrible to his father.

  Garth wished he could feel the kind of guilt he knew he should feel, but … there was nothing there. The all-consuming goal of freeing the Unreal Universe from bondage and destroying the M’Zahdi Hesh was well worth the cost of doing business, even if that cost was paid in the price of familial blood.

  “Let’s not forget here,” Garth wasn’t sure who he was addressing here, himself, the guy pretending to be his dad or the Emperor, “it wasn’t just you, old man, but my entire family. They all paid with their lives, and Lisa? Well, she wound up paying with considerably more than just her life, didn’t she?”

  Of all the things he’d done to his family, Lisa –in his estimation only, perhaps- had paid more than her fair share to see the road to ruination come about. She, more than anyone else, had known precisely what was coming, precisely what was going to happen and more importantly, what was going to happen to her.

  To stay on track after all that? To be a guiding light when it could’ve been so much easier, so much more refreshing to become a screaming banshee in the night?

  Garth didn’t think he had it in him to come back from the madness she must’ve endured. He wasn’t that strong.

  “I didn’t even make it ten years in this fucking place before I slipped so far down into the blood and the mud that I lost who I was.” Garth rolled the last of the silver wiring up into a neat little package and began assembling the power supply. As with last time, it would take next to no time now.

  Still, though, wearing the skin of his father … what a terrifically low blow. Garth truly didn’t know whoever his mysterious ‘benefactor’ was and when he’d admitted to not caring and not wanting to know … he hadn’t been kidding around. There were too many things in his life that he was suddenly not in control of and so the last thing he wanted was another cypher popping out of the woodwork and displaying levels of power that simply should not exist.

  It was beginning to get tiresome and when they started looking like relatives, it got him surly.

  “I spend considerable amounts of time not thinking about my Father.” Garth said to the empty classroom and to whoever else might be listening. “Were it not for him, were it not for his weakness … things might’ve gone differently. We might not have been at war at all. The Hesh might’ve picked a different world in a different Galaxy.”

  His father had had no choice in the matter. When you were the sort of man Antal had been and you were suddenly offered more power and intelligence than you'd ever dreamed possible, the lure was too great to turn down.

  Just as his son had had no choice in launching him into the absolute abyssal depths of the Unreal Universe, bound by a powerful geas, they the both of them had done things so terrible in nature that there was no simple way to shrug it off. They would carry their sins with them until the end of Everything. And then the both of them could rest, once and for all.

  “Fuckin’ guy.” Garth muttered angrily as he worked on assembling the very first of the electric light pens that would –should, unless Faux-Antal had been lying through his simulated teeth- stretch the cohesive quadronic bond attached to his blood cells to the point where a single drop would be capable of sketching out who knew how many simple circuits; using one of the probe tips from the stolen voltmeter that was more power supply doodad than anything else and working some copper wiring from the extension cord into the mix, this particular light pen was going to be a dirty, nasty piece of work but it should work, all the same.

  He just had to be careful not to electrocute himself in the process.

  Again. Garth didn’t like electrocution. It hurt a lot more than nearly anything except possibly being burned alive. Basically, he disliked anything that caused him a lot of pain. Which was a normal thing for, well, for everyone, everywhere, but as a guy who’d been gifted with an absurdly high level of pain tolerance and then the powers of a Kin’kithal on top of that, being asked to be a normal dude and to undergo those kinds of things was kind of bullshit.

  “Fuckin’ guy.” Garth reiterated the sentiment, harboring all kinds of ill will towards the entity wearing his father’s image. “Got me a in a shitty ass mood. Thinking about things I’ve got no reason to be thinking about. Making me moody.”

  Everything he’d done –even here, even now- had been done with the express purpose of undoing the Unreal Universe in favor of something better, something brighter, because the Unreal Universe was unfair as well.

  From the looks and sounds of things –using his encounters with the Bruush and the Heshii as a basic model- none of the previous iterations of the Universe had been all that swell either. Harsh conditions everywhere, and even if men and women and wiggling things and blobs that floated through space were capable of having bright, happy moments here and there down the long haul that was their lives, it was undeniable that the very nature of the Universe in which they lived was mercurial, precarious, more than capable of sweeping away everything that was bright and wonderful and leaving you with nothing but ash and misery.

  Garth didn’t know what or why or even if they were able of comprehending what was happening, but there were times when he genuinely hated the Engines of Creation. The whole of their lives, from start to finish, was tainted with imperfection because of those machines.

  “But I’m gonna fix all that.” Garth held the modified probe up and twisted the dial. Blips of electricity danced across the tip. Faint tremors of electrical current shivered down his arm. Not enough to hurt, just enough to remind him was playing with the modern day equivalent of fire. Rough and ready indeed. “Gonna fix it all, gonna make my own Sphere of Existenc
e with blackjack and hookers. It will have all been worth it, then.”

  Garth reached out, grabbed hold of the box cutter he’d been using on himself all the live long day and gave himself a nice little nick along the tip of his index finger. Then he busied himself dripping a goodish blob of the bright red stuff off to one side of the worktable, making damned certain that he didn’t drop any of the quadronic material anywhere else.

  “Last thing I need is an accidental circuit. Real fucking hard to explain to the Emperor’s mannequin how the fuck I managed to kill myself when for intents and purposes, there ain’t nothing here to kill myself with.” The dollop of blood was bright red and inviting.

  A prime go-no go situation. Do or die. There is no try, only do. A thousand other corny one-liners about moments like this jostled for attention, each one cornier than the last. He could use the information given to him by Faux-Antal or he could go another way, use only his original –and viable- idea of bringing solid state technology in a bigger, better way to the rest of the world using graphene and aerogel. It’d work, and with that particular genie let out of the bottle, the rest of the world would run with the idea far quicker and far more adeptly than he could manage on his own.

  The wildfire started from that innovation would race ‘round the world in record time, revolutionizing everything. He could steal or improve upon other people's ideas, use those to begin hunting Samiel properly…

  “And then Baron fucking Samiel would catch wind.” Garth clicked the light pen a few more times, watched the brilliant electrical arcs flare. “And come hunting. Fuck my life.”

  Better to do it this way, with something Samiel -everyone- would miss until it was too goddamn late. The trapped Kin’kithal dipped the light pen in the pool of his blood and started sketching, unable to shake the feeling he’d made a deal with the devil.

  For a second time.

  Faint, wispy threads of red light quickly filled the air.

  17. The Different Ways in Which Arcadians Approach Things

  Begging Your Pardon, Miss and Mister, But We Hain’t Got Time For This

  Chevy found himself pacing back and forth, the subtle clicking of his very special, very nearly handmade clockwork cloak the only thing keeping him from losing his shite in an equally special way; upon agreeing to travel with Chassie of the Regilline Crane-Hawthorns, he’d been under the spectacular misapprehension that he were going to be going along inside Stack 17 in a matter of mere moments, as he were now the only one o’ the four sole remaining Arcadians to be on t’other side.

  “Well now.” Chevy muttered to himself, looking ‘round the room to see if the odd Nanny Nonesuch were paying him any mind.

  The nanny –whom the grizzled Arcadian presumed were one of them so-called Offworlders thanks to the odd coloration of her eyes and the strange bits of skin here and there melding her face into a queerly smooth and satisfying plainness- were off on t’other side of the room, looking after Chassie’s wee babby Gerry, a hyperkinetic bundle of energy that would no doubt require looking after well into adulthood.

  “Couldn’t ‘ave been more wrong, hey? Not only can I not see 17 from where I is stood in this building, I reckon we is nearly as far away from it as possible wi’out getting into one of them rocket ships and blasting off towards another planet.”

  Nanny Nonesuch, employed by the Crane-Hawthorns because her kind had hearing unlike any other and because young Gerry had a predisposition towards getting into wicked horrid quiet trouble, quirked her lips a bit at the strange man’s turn of tongue and the discomfort he was working himself up to; she could tell him that the Crane-Hawthorns, Chassie in particular, did as they wanted and that was all that could be said, yet she did not, and for one very good reason.

  For all that Chastity had agreed to supply the strange man calling himself Chevril Pointillier, displaced Arcadian, with more of the same from her personal stock of willing soldiers, she was still doing things the right way, which meant getting her husband Elijah involved. And Elijah was a man who very much did things in proper manner.

  Nonesuch cooed softly to Gerry in her native tongue, a thing of wind chimes and gently blowing breezes, and the wee lad giggled and smiled. He flinched a bit, causing Nanny Nonesuch to turn her head all the way around.

  “That were a neat trick.” Chevy admitted as he moved closer to the child. “Reckon that’s some kind of Offworlder thing, hey? Is it summat all as who’re not from this here truly gigantic world can do, or is it specific to you and yours?”

  Nonesuch returned her attention to Gerry. “Upon a long time ago,” she whispered breathless, the language of humans being difficult to speak any other way for her kind, “my people were like birds, Master Point-er. Long and long. The Trinity fell from the skies and took our worlds, and forced upon us a choice between either remaining as birds and being ignorant of the rest of the Universe or becoming slightly more like It’s pets, the humans, and growing beyond all measure. Our ancient forebears decided they wanted more, and so … here I am today.”

  “That name you called me just then.” Chevy thought he’d never hear another voice quite like the Nanny’s. “Pointer. What prompted that, hey?”

  “Your proper name is too long for me to pronounce without practice.” Nonesuch dabbed a bit of spittle from Gerry’s cheek. “Does it bother you?”

  “Not a bit, lass, not a bit.” The Gearmaster looked about, took in the nearest chair and wondered whether or not it would take his new weight before plopping down into it without care; they were all making him wait, hey, they could bloody well spring for a new chair if he crashed through it, couldn’t they just. When the thing took him and his coat without fuss, he sighed. “Does remind me of the olden days, though, back when I were young and full of fire.”

  “A man who wants to go into Stack 17 to … do whatever it is you wish to do is a man still full of fire.” Chassie said from the doorway. When Chevril started to move, she waved him off. “Stay seated, Master Pointer. We’re the kind of rich that doesn’t need to stand on formality or pretense. If you weren’t here, odds are I’d be half in the nude. Elijah likes the place warm, whereas I …”

  “Whereas my wife,” Elijah Crane-Hawthorn announced boldly as he strode in behind Chassie, “prefers the place to be cold as her mother’s heart. Elijah Crane-Hawthorn, at your service, Master Pointer. You can call me Eli. What can we call you, sir?”

  This time, Chevy did rise, quickly and smoothly thanks to the suit he wore, and he took Elijah’s hand in his own and shook it firmly. “Oh, I reckon as you’ve all taken to calling me Pointer, you may as well just continue on doing that, hey? As I were telling young Miss Nonesuch and your babby Gerry, long ago I were called that. Both a nickname and a play on certain talents of mine, hey?”

  “Oh?” Eli smiled warmly, unable to take his eyes off the metal coat of arms their newest guest wore. It engulfed him from nearly the top of his neck all the way down to his feet and was comprised of miniscule, interlocking gears and who knew what else. It was –amongst other things- a miracle of modern engineering the likes of which no one on his staff had ever seen before, and his AI systems were still trying to work out what it might do. “Such as?”

  Chevy returned Eli’s smile with one of his own, though his bore the tiniest bit of winter chill. He didn’t like wasting time, and when the literal fate of the world and all the worlds beyond the one upon which he were stood was in the balance, well, it were hard to be all warm and fuzzy, hey?

  The old man resolved to himself there and then that if he didn’t get the sorts of answers and action as he were looking for from these people, he were going to have to bugger off and do as he’d been planning right from the start, which were just go in and let the details work ‘emselves out after.

  “Well, Master Eli, Mistress Chassie,” Chevy dipped his head at man and woman of the house, “as this hain’t my first hour outside Arcadia, I reckon one or the both of you’ve been running tabs on me, so to speak, checking out my story.
And as you’re the sort of rich as don’t worry about formality and all, I’ll do you the courtesy of not sugar-coating all else as comes from my gob. The fall o’ The Clockwork Dome hain’t the sort of news as is hidden from anyone, anywhere, so there’s little doubt in my head that you were aware of it from the moment it fell. What? Why should you not be amazed at summat like that standing outside your very homes, so to speak. And as you know that, then news that five Conglomerates of considerable power and influence laid their hands on the only things to survive that collapse, hey?

  There’s me, kindly and grizzled old Gearmaster Chevril Pointillier.” Chevy delivered a stage perfect court bow, the kind of thing his dear old da had had him practice on the off chance King Barnabas Blake the One and Only might stop by for afternoon tea. “The madman ready to leap into Hell’s Own Pit. There’s me old friend and partner, Dominic Breton, who’s off ‘is nut and wont to tear into all as stand in his way wi’ his pearly chompers. He and I got into it quite fantastically e’en as the rest o’ our rotten little world were being torn down ‘round our ears, much to my chagrin. There’s a poor old woman as goes by Mirabelle or Lady of The Weeping Eye. Rack and ruination stole her mind away near the end, there, as she had a most violent encounter wi’ a man who … well, let us just say that ‘ere that moment, Mirabelle believed her kind to be the darkest and most capable of delivering punishments and leave it at that. Her goings on left her wounded mortally yet not dying. King alone knows what she’s doin’ in 17, but she’s on the same path as us all. Then there be Agnethea the Vile, hitherto Queen of Ickford, who was in truth a monster for lo many years. She encountered the same man as did Mirabelle, and just as the former did turn t’other cheek, so too Agnethea, for she fought to save the dying world wi' him at her side, didn't she just? Earned redemption that day, I feel. Now, as I in't see her near the end, I 'as no way of knowing just what is or is not wrong wi' her. And then, of course, there’s Book. The reason for 17’s collapse and the race that I am quite frankly in desperate need to begin proper. If I am not present, to stop all three from laying their hands on Book, everything you hold dear may disappear in a puff of smoke. I know you’ve done all you can to find out if I speak the truth or not, using your thinking machines and your contacts and all else, and I know that if you’d found out summat as were displeasing to you, I would not have been stored here with your child and nanny and while I do appreciate the courtesy of seeing this small part of your lovely home, I need to be off.”