by Lee Bond
The ordinary people. The regular folk. Men and women who -for one reason or another- found themselves serving Baron Samiel and his perfidious interests. Garth had only ever had dealings with one of them -Special Agent Delbert Granger, of Washington, DC- and it'd be putting it mildly to say that the man had been a complete and utter bastard.
And where there was one, there were many. No way to know how many, either, not that it even mattered at any given moment. With time under his literal grasp, Samiel could reach backwards into time and turn anyone into his puppet. The people thusly influenced -or infected, for that matter- wouldn't even question the manipulation. How they became was how they would've always been.
Which was why, at the end of the day, Garth had decided to add the full-bore data rip into every electrical device on his property sooner rather than later. It'd put an immense strain on the singular almost-AI box he had running until there was time in the day to build another, but it needed doing.
Above his head, the invisible drones drew unwavering, stately lines, connecting themselves to the overall diagram the property had been wired with. Once they finished adding their own programmed circuits to what already existed, they'd fly themselves to carefully chosen areas around the property and then …
And then they'd turn their solar panels on.
And then? The whole property would burn. So brightly.
"Has to be done." Garth turned his eyes away from the progress, wiping tears of pain from the corners of his eyes. "Has to be. Anyone of these guys could get turned in a second. Warned them about their conversations and emails. Only makes sense, right? But didn't tell them about the rest of it. Had to give them enough trust so they wouldn't call me out on the rest. This way any one or more of them can be flipped, can know what I’m doing up to a point, but won’t know that this new system can detect technology as well. Can’t go on Zigg coz the biometrics will pick up on the changes, which is good for me, and can’t carry any of Samiel’s gadgets without getting busted, which is bad for them. Then there's the temporal warble surrounding Rommen. Too faint to be persistent, might be nothing more than a peek-see. Might not. Fuck, is this difficult."
The ideal response would be to forbid any of the core team from leaving the compound. That was the only way he could be one hundred percent of their loyalties at all time, because the moment they were identified as people working on his team, Samiel would begin the process of manipulating them from birth.
That wouldn’t work, though. For about a million different reasons. If he wanted to start a riot, or a revolt, that would be the outcome.
Garth knew he was just going to have to count on a few different things.
One, that he’d remain cognizant of any alterations made to the timeline. It wasn’t a thing that he was holding out for because he couldn’t imagine Emperor-for-Life Marseilles being so forgiving, it was just something he’d like to think the monarch hadn’t really considered.
Two, if he wasn’t capable of remembering different timelines that no longer existed, that those changes wouldn’t keep him from devising this particular system of checks and balances. Garth didn’t think it was likely that Samiel would be able to influence him personally, which meant that creating the quadronix system and manipulating his security team in this manner was still the only viable option, but it was still possible. If he forgot the reasons behind why he was doing all of this, Garth hoped –was banking on it, in fact- that he’d recognize the signs and react accordingly.
Garth really, really hoped Samiel wasn’t as smart as he was being given credit. Hoped that in all earnestness, the time-traveler’s skills and abilities were born only out of his primary talent of traveling through time. Given enough time to do things properly, you could transform yourself from an ordinary dude into the kind of Gods other Gods whispered about in the corners of their lofty realms.
The phone in his hands chimed softly.
The drones had completed their task, and in record time. Garth opened his eyes and turned to behold the beginnings of what he’d wrought with two aching, worn down peepers. The whole of his property, nearly every square inch of land and air, was crisscrossed with what appeared to be an endless sea of glowing red lines.
The minor power-up was a side effect he hadn’t considered when beginning the design, but it was one he could work with in the future, when the augmented reality game came online; unlike interior quadronix circuitry, which could –if unmonitored- draw power from nearby energy sources like wall sockets or light banks, exterior circuits could leech low levels of power directly from the air itself, drawing just enough energy to possibly be detected by any sensitive machinery in the area.
“Meaning,” Garth thumbed the next ‘GO’ button on his phone and prepared himself for what'd happen next, “that I’ve got to be very careful and extremely knowledgeable about what’s going on where when I design the global circuits. Can’t have the guys in CERN or wherever picking up on my invisible machinery. The whole world would freak the fuck out and Samiel wouldn’t miss that.”
The twenty drones, hidden across the compound, opened up their batteries and let the power flow through them into the quadronix, transforming the well-lit –something Rommen and Securicorps had demanded on once they’d gotten the go ahead to add their own security measures to the property- soon-to-be Arcade of Awesomeness and associated funtime type stuff into an almost ghastly, lurid echo of itself.
Each flare of light was a dagger into his eyes, a burning, searing blade that left behind tiny droplets of pain that threatened to overwhelm him. Didn’t matter. He knew the layout of the entire grounds by now and could walk end to end blindfolded, so getting from the parkade back to his offices would be child’s play.
The pain and the reaction to the quadronix was only temporary. It was as Rommen had accidentally implied earlier; since the discovery that his dealings with Sketch had been recorded by some unknown third party, he hadn’t slept. Working on getting the almost-AI up, all the coding involved, designing the drones and getting their prohibitively complex circuits in place –a task that’d involved an awful lot of trial and error and up close, personal work with a light pen to get right- was the effort of more than two days of zero sleep and dogged relentlessness.
“Alls I need is some proper sleep. Don’t like to sleep as a rule, even less here, but I need it."
Eyes still shut, Garth chose the safest path back to his offices, pondering the likelihood of what’d come to him in his dreams, should he actually sleep
Other than his usual, understandable dislike of sleep because of the downtime in Alpha, there were even greater reasons for wanting to avoid it here, under the Emperor’s control; the last time he’d been between this world and the next, it’d been someone pretending to be his father. Luckily for him, the necessity of his actions during the War against the Hesh far outstripped the profundity of his guilt over Antal's treatment.
But here, in the sim … Garth didn't appreciate the visitation. It smacked of things beyond his control.
While there were precisely zero indications that whatever mysterious entity –the Emperor himself was still not yet thrown out the window as a culprit, just … less of one because it struck Garth very firmly that Etienne Marseilles wasn’t exactly that … subtle … in his gameplay- would show up a second time, there was no ruling it out, either. The Kith Antal that’d appeared to him during the weird stuttering effect between dying and being reborn had been more than the echoes of guilt and pain.
There’d been real intellect in there, staring at him from behind his father’s sparking eyes.
Garth didn’t think … no, he knew … he would not have been able to deal with the guilt of his father’s transformation thrown back in his face, time and again. There would be no ‘getting it right’ with the most ancient warrior the Universe had ever seen, because while there was guilt over what he’d done, you couldn't get around the fact that without Kith Antal and the immortality given to him by the M’Zahdi Hesh, there�
��d be no need to destroy the Unreal Universe.
It was as simple as that.
Would the Etienne Marseilles’ version of the Hunger Games have even been able to handle such a clean cut dichotomy? The division between remorse and necessity was even. Antal’s treatment had been of the highest priority, yet filial guilt was a thing all the same.
As he made his way out of the parkade, eyes still shut, mind still drafting the location of everything that might get in his way, Garth decided he’d be able to handle Antal should he show up a second time. The … thing … was nothing more than echo, a shadow cast inside his own mind, so not like the real thing at all.
"Fuck my life." The Kin'kithal muttered as he continued navigating his way with eyes sealed shut against the vibrant red circuits surrounding him on all sides, an invisible burden. "Just fuck my life forever."
20. We Only Just Talked About This…
Gwyleh Ronn wished -not for the first time since inheriting the sentient and far too talkative Suit and sadly, most certainly not for the last time- that he was more human than humanoid; his species had never really developed the kind of stress-relieving gestures as standard Human beings had, and it was never more missed than when he was dealing with a sentient suit of armor possessed by the spirit of Chadsik al-Taryin.
It was ... there weren't even any words. In any language. That had ever been spoken or invented by any kind of beings, anywhere, in the entire Universe. The feelings he had when Suit -he refused to think of Suit as anything but that, especially since Suit refused to respond to anything other than Chad- acted up or got otherwise out of control was a complex palette of diverging emotions that threatened to drive him completely insane.
"We only just finished talking about this, Chad." Gwyleh massaged the sides of his head. It was the only thing he could think to do.
"Worl, that in't entirely true, hey?" Chadsuit demanded from his reclined position in the copilot's chair. "Like, if we is talkin' about the actual, literal truth of things, it were like, summink like a few weeks ago. I is not entirely up to speed as to how proper time works yet, but I is fairly certain it weren't 'just'."
"But you do understand the concept of time, and that we did have a conversation concerning your ... tendencies towards ... flagrant displays of ... flagrant displays." Gwyleh couldn't even look at the monitors, or the reports streaming from the data buoys in this sector.
It was incomprehensible. Just ... terrible.
Chadsuit's metallic head nodded. "Sure, yeah, orl right. I is remember that convo. Like it were yesterday, now I fink on it."
"And?" Gwyleh took a peep at the reports. They were not encouraging. The only thing going for them at the moment was Trinity's inability to deploy Enforcers anywhere quickly. That could change at any moment, though, which was why Chadsuit needed to get it into his ... it's ... head that the kind of behavior he was displaying was going to get them both killed, and quite messily.
"Wot?" Chadsuit looked over at his friend, who were quite honestly looking positively aggrieved over summink. He watched the insectoid Offworlder for a moment, furiously pummeling the old melon to find out wot it might be. He came up short until his eyes fell on some of the screens that his old friend were doing his level best not to look at, and then it dawned on him as to exactly wot had Gwyleh Ronn’s alien underpants all twisted. “Ohhhhhhh. I is get it now.”
“So what happened?” Gwy winced as –on one of the monitors- a large battleship blew itself to smithereens. “Exactly?”
“Oh, it’s not bein’ my fault.” Chadsuit offered calmly, glad they’d gotten that out of the way. Now that were done, they could focus on the more important task of firing their ship up and getting one step closer to the edge of The Cordon that’d be closest to Chadsik al-Taryin. There weren’t nuffink more important in the entire world, as far as Chadsuit were concerned.
“It appears that it might very well be entirely your fault, Chadsuit.” Gwy brought up a news report from one of the local planets.
On it, a Ferrelarian politician was discussing the practical realities of existing in a Trinity-run solar system and, in the process, was attempting to calm the population down by reminding everyone that in such a system, having an Enforcer run rampant doing terrible things to … everyone … was precisely the kind of thing one should hope never happened but should also expect.
“Wot?” Chadsuit squeaked, riled up and indignant. “I is not rampage nowhere. I were … sightseein’. Whilst you were, you know, asleep. Takin’ in the local sights, sort of fing. Weren’t no harm in it. Weren’t no rampagin’ neither, I swear. I feel I ort to go on back down there, right, and ‘ave a word wiv this politiccy fella.”
“Sightseeing.” The pressure behind one of his compound eyes was going to cause it to burst. Gwy was certain of it. The pain was right there, right at the point where the entire cavity was just going to pop right out of his exoskeleton. “An Enforcer Suit. Sightseeing.”
“Never been to Ferrelar.” Chadsuit answered meekly. “Hain’t anyone been to Ferrelar in over two thousand years, not even to swing by and say ‘Oi, you is still a part of Trinityspace, yeah, so just be on your best behavior or we is come back and turn one of your planets into glowing dust’. So yeah, sightseein’. Ain’t nuffink wrong wiv that. Got some well wicked photos for me scrapbook.”
“Ignoring for the moment that precisely one of their planets is in fact ‘glowing dust’ and the fact you don't even have a scrapbook at the moment in favor of figuring out what really went on, could you please tell me what happened?” Gwy’s voice –always somewhat reedy and possessed of other insect-sounds- was barely understandable.
It was imperative he discovered the underlying root cause of the mayhem occurring in Ferrelar; even though Chadsuit was in the ship and hadn’t been seen by a single member of the species in over two hours, the remnants of the Ferrelarian Space Corps were still tearing around the solar system, blowing up anything that looked remotely suspicious.
Occasionally this proved –just as now- to be one another.
There were talks in the works to formally announce their secession from Trinityspace, something that –if he had hair- would have Gwy pulling his hair out by the roots. Trinity might be too indisposed to deal with very nearly everything happening in the Universe because of the war against the Latelians and It’s hunt for Garth Nickels, but an Offworld species wanting to secede would bring It out of hiding, that was for damned sure.
“I is see this is important to you, Gwy, so since you is callin’ me Chadsuit, which is pretty cool, I is goin’ to tell you wot is startin’ this whole fing off.” Chadsuit shifted a bit, trying to find a more comfortable position for story time and failed. He were a metallic suit. It were going to always be well difficult to get comfy, weren’t it just?
Gwy took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, and released it in a long, slow exhalation that was most calming. Good. They were on the right track at long last. “Excellent. Thank you.”
“Well, as you is know, you is organic, meanin’ you is need sleep, right?” Chadsuit waited for some kind of signal from Gwyleh that his friend was following, then continued on when he got the slightest of nods. It were enough. “And I is a Suit, so I is need none of that at all, hey? Right, so. You is asleep, you is ‘do not touch any buttons or anyfing as blah blah blah’. I’ll be honest, after you said that first bit about me behavin’ I sort of stopped listening, right, as it were boring.”
“Of course you stopped paying attention.” Maybe … maybe he’d made the wrong decision all those years ago. Maybe he should’ve just allowed his rotting, festering hatred of BishopCo and most of Humanity kill him from the inside out. Maybe he should’ve said no to Trinity Itself, turned down the opportunity to become an Enforcer.
Of all the things to dream about!
“Well, yeah. It’s weird, but your voice, right, it just sort of goes ‘wonk’ in me ‘ead after a while.” Chadsuit held up a calming hand. “But only when you is lecturin’. I
is not remember you bein’ so lecturey when you was an Enforcer, hey? Is this a new fing? Or an old fing as come ‘round again now you is not wearin’ me?”
“You were telling me about what happened while I was asleep.” Struggling to remain calm was going to kill him. It wasn’t about eyes popping free of exoskeletons now, it was about complete and utter systemic shutdown. All his organs were just going to spontaneously fail from sheer frustration at Chadsuit’s perennial inability to stay on point and focused.
It was precisely like dealing with Chadsik, only the real Chadsik had been able to see the reasoning behind not doing something if it were properly explained. Chadsuit possessed all of the worst behaviors of the original and none of the wisdom.
“Rightrightright.” Chadsuit nodded apologetically and tossed off a two fingered salute. “So I were. Right. You is asleep, I is in a solar system I is not been to before, the planet wot is accidentally burning to a radioactive crisp right now was like, an hour away, so I is fink ‘let’s wing on down an’ ‘ave a looksee at wot these Ferrelarians are like’. Which is wot I did.”
“And how did the people react to your presence?” Enforcers were Universally known and just as equally loathed. Even if one hadn’t been to your solar system in thousands of years, the natural response was to become guarded, secretive, and passively aggressive to any questions they might have.
The Ferrelarians –one of Trinity’s ‘fresher’ acquisitions in the last six thousand years- undoubtedly had not gotten over their original not-quite-invasion by Trinityspace. As those sorts of things were generally done in a very fast, decisive and usually overwhelmingly destructive manner, it would not be unrealistic to expect generational rage to still be very much a thing.
