by Lee Bond
Also –and this had been key- the ‘load-style pawnshop-bot hadn’t given one ratshit barf-fuck about the rumors that the guy with the dark hair and the ice-blue eyes wasn’t even human at all but some kind of crossborn Wayfarer in disguise, because whatever else that guy was, he brought in the best of the best and Fandoo wanted to buy himself one of the newest in televisions, shit available only to Highlivers.
Garth chuckled softly at the memory on pretty Eloise’s face as she’d digested the curt dismissal. Clearly she’d been well known amongst the other idiots trying to fob their crappy wares off on Fandoo; a few brusque looking wasters –clad head-to-toe in their handmade radgear- kept jostling closer and closer until he’d locked eyes with them. When that happened, they’d dip their heads, grabbed their weapons tighter, and stepped back a few feet.
“What’s so funny?” Eloise demanded from the bed.
“Nothing.” Garth shook his head once, bitterly. He was stuck here no matter what. At least until he engaged properly with the person wearing his dead lover’s body. “Thinking about the first time we met. In Fandoo’s.”
Time to test the waters, then. The first time out, the entity had possessed some pretty intimate knowledge about his father and his memories, but that’d been easy stuff, stuff not locked behind the M’Tai Wall of Forgetfulness or ... or elsewhere again.
Eloise Havilland, Northern Light, all of that? Even he didn’t know everything that he’d been conditioned to forget.
Eloise laughed silkily. “I was too blind to see that you had everyone in that room ready to cry and run away.” She climbed out of the bed, wrapped in the scandalously expensive silk sheets to keep warm. Walking easily through the haphazard trail of clothes and shoes, Eloise made her way to where Garth stood, staring so broodily, so pensively, out the window at Northern Light. She plucked the hand that'd so recently pummeled the window and turned it over in hers, looking for injuries, cooing softly. “I wanted that satchel of yours so badly.”
“You brokered some deals with a few cannibals while I sold some stuff to Fandoo.” Garth remembered being only half-interested in bartering with the crazed android; some vestigial appendage, some minor remnant of being a good guy, had been positively incensed that a normal girl, someone as pretty and delicate as Eloise Havilland, would be out and about in Darkentown, dealing with literal scum of the earth. “Then you followed me through the back alleys of Darkentown like some kind of idiot.”
Eloise rest her chin on the crook of Garth’s arm and stared out at the same stretch of city, though she put on her best scowling-mockery face. “I really wanted that satchel.”
“So you did.” Garth sighed. The feel of this Eloise’s skin on his arm was just as real as anything he could remember, and now he was trapped in this moment, he was full of nothing but memories of her, and the life she’d given him. The life she’d allowed him to live for many, many years, a life where Baron Samiel had only ever been in the backdrop, a festering splotch on an otherwise wonderful existence.
A life that’d been all but perfect, something a Kin’kithal from another Universe had never imagined was truly possible. Why, the two of them together had begun to forge something amazing and unique, an entire life, a vibrant thing putting anything that he’d felt back in the 21st to shame.
Had the Ushbet intended that, Garth wondered? Had they wanted him to fall in love with this blasted wasteland of a world, with Eloise, all so they could rip it away at the last moment?
If they had, they were a pile of impacted assholes and ingrown toenails.
Garth laughed as he recalled what’d happened next. “You learned something very interesting that night, didn’t you?” Just because Eloise wasn't Eloise didn't make the memories of those days and nights any less true, or fun.
Eloise bit Garth gently on the arm. "I learned what true power in the world meant. I thought my own implants and security gear were more than adequate, but the things you did that night were ... impossible."
"They caught me in a bad mood." Garth admitted remorsefully. So long in the Wasteload had left him bitter and miserable. Dodging Samiel's force left, right and center while simultaneously keep away from any other goddamn Wayfarers that might be lunatic enough to come near him had left an almost permanently sour taste in his mouth. "I treated those raiders like Wayfarers."
"The mere fact that you mention that like it's no big thing speaks volumes." Eloise shook her head, bemused.
While it was nice to see Northern Light, to spy down upon the world of Darkentown in the hopes of catching sight of fights large enough to spill their laser light up into the night sky, even to feel Eloise's impossibly smooth skin on his own and to drown in her scent, she wasn't the woman he'd fallen in love with, the woman he'd damn near abandoned everything else for.
The bittersweet sorrow of her presence wasn't something he wanted to feel, even in the slightest, and found himself yearning to be free of this simulation, free of these dreaded memories.
The Ushbet had done him a favor by revoking access to the things he'd done in the proto-Reality. There was no way to get around it. No man should have to feel torn like this, split between a duty to the entire Universe and to the duty of his heart.
Or to remember that his heart really hadn't been in that final battle with Baron Samiel.
Which, in retrospect, may very well have been why the all-powerful Ushbet M'Tai had bounced him out of the proto-Reality and back into the Unreal Universe without so much a by your leave.
Because he hadn't wanted to be there in the first place. Because he hadn't given a damn about anything but himself at that point.
"Well." The word fell out of his mouth like a thousand pound weight.
"Well." Eloise agreed firmly.
"You aren't you, and this isn't us, and this moment never happened." Garth stepped away from the person wearing his love's skin, unsurprised to see that in that second, she'd become fully dressed. “So why don't you tell me who you really are? What you are."
Eloise shared a splintery smile with Garth N'Chalez, the man who would destroy the Unreal Universe. Such mighty responsibility. Such deadly, deadly goals. "Do you recall the agreement we made?"
Garth shook his head, much to Eloise's dismay. The pinched look on her beautiful face was the one she used when bargaining with idiotic raiders and wasters trying to pawn off useless trinkets.
"You need to be aware of what you're dancing with here, N'Chalez."
Garth tilted his head back and cut loose, laughing so hard tears fell down his eyes. "Oh, that says so much, Eloise. So, so much. And it doesn't matter what I'm dancing with here so long as I deal with it on my own terms. Whoever or whatever you are, whatever it is you represent, I just don't care."
Eloise reached out and grabbed Garth's arm with surprising strength. "N'Chalez, the things I do for you on the outside of this simulation..."
"Don't you fucking dare!" Garth snapped violently, pulling Eloise's hand from his arm easily. "The situation is well in hand."
"Is it?" A sly grin crossed Eloise’s lips. "Not too long ago you were concerned that you'd overplayed your hand, N'Chalez. That you'd be stuck in either this temporal rubber band or another one just like it. And you're right. You cannot hope to struggle through the next two months until Drake and Sparks become a feature in your lives. Or ... should I say ... until your plan to defeat Samiel is laid down fully."
One of those fights he'd been hoping to catch sight of down in Darkentown suddenly split the darkness of the night with wild, violent colors. Arctic blue fusion bolters battled against vibrant red maser tuners. A wolfish look crossed Garth's face. Raiders and wasters, arguing over either turf in the Wasteload or over some other imagined slight.
Either way, Darkentown locals were in for a rough night, unless a Wayfarer wandered in out of the dark and felt like dispensing a few redes. Shit like that would shut them right down, have them fleeing back into the Wasteload in the hopes they could outrun their newly forged and inescapable destinie
s.
"There really isn't anything you don't know, is there?" Garth watched the conflict rage for a while. There was no need to rush. These moments were timeless. When he was done talking with the thing that was Eloise, he'd be right back to where he was needed.
The old him, the him from the original proto-Reality, amped up and charged full of Kin'kithal power, would've been down in that slice of Darkentown in the blink of an eye, eager to kick some ass in the name of good. As an added bonus, anyone witnessing his brand of fun wouldn't think twice about what they were seeing. The 25th was home to madmen, monsters and martyrs. No one judged, no one cared.
But not this him. This him was powerless.
"I know everything you know, N'Chalez. But you don't know everything I know."
"Fuck do I hate cryptic." Garth winced as a particularly large arctic blue bolt ripped into where -if he recalled correctly- the Barternic belonging to the all-too-human Chalysee Chooms used to be. "Serious fight. They're using bolt-mounted flingers now."
"Never happened." Eloise waved a hand, and the battle disappeared. "Something to occupy you, to keep you calm, while we talk about what's going on outside, in the Emperor..."
"And I," Garth turned his full attention to Eloise, "told you I don't fucking care. Just like I told you not to do anything. If you actually knew everything I knew, you wouldn't feel the need. But you can't, because you're out there, not in here." Garth tapped the side of his head with two blunt fingers.
"So hostile."
"No." Garth bantered hotly. "You will fuck my shit up. This whole domain is under the Emperor's scrutiny, and I can't run the risk he'll catch wind of something better left unknown. It's bad enough as it is. I'm skirting the realms of being busted every damn second… If he catches wind of what I ..."
"But that's just it." Eloise's triumph was apparent in flush skin and bright eyes. "He won't. He's... preoccupied. Thanks to me."
Garth narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. Preoccupation explained the random appearances of the fancy Emperor-answering machine and the solo presence of Spur alone. Precisely the kind of thing that was of utmost benefit to someone trying to run a double blind con on a man who had the power to do or undo anything he set his mind to.
Eloise stepped closer, ran a hand across Garth's shoulders. "You see? Nothing overt, nothing dangerous. Purely of benefit."
"And why on Earth would you even bother?" Garth's eyes strayed to the lovely curve of Eloise's neck. God, it'd been so hard to leave her, but he'd needed to. The Unreal Universe had needed caring for. He’d known that from the first moment.
Had known it, but thrown himself deep into the wonders that belonged to the proto-Reality.
The Ushbet M'Tai had saved him from his weakness. Had saved the rest of the Unreal Universe, as well.
"You know why." Eloise's eyes were pools of violent light. "You just don't want to remember. The pact that was made at the beginning, to keep you from remembering who you really are so you could function here, in this place, from being discovered, it's gone. You can think on these things here, in this moment. It'll help you understand. Help you be free. But only here. Once Outside, things will slot into place. Spend a moment. Drink deep of the secrets unfurling inside you. Then, when you're ready, you can ... arrange the memories to be a part of your everyday life in the simulation. You can act on them without being aware of them. No complications will arise."
The Emperor's words concerning the things that the Ushbet had done to him, things that he couldn't even remember, even now, played back in his mind. People were always fucking with his memories. Himself, Bravo, Trinity ... there was no telling how many fingers had been jammed into his brain matter down the centuries.
"No. Do you think I'm stupid? For all I know, you could be the fucking Emperor, trying to trick me! I know he's been trying to get me to admit defeat, to ask for some good old-fashioned Kin'kith powers. And just as I know that, I also know that the moment I do that, is the moment the game is over. Nope, I'm going to do things the right way, and that means no help from you!"
“There’s nothing to fea…”
Garth raised a hand to silence the thing that was Eloise. “There’s more than one set of eyes in this place. He might not be as allied to the Emperor as the goof thinks, but ... neither is he a friendly."
“Please.” Eloise rolled her eyes. “The machine man? The thing that was gone for five thousand years? Nothing to worry about there. It, too, is being kept nicely busy. Everyone except you is running around, N'Chalez. My ... gift to you."
So. Not quite as powerful or as observant or even as in control as it imagined. Everyone had their limits and their blindsides, and whatever this thing was –oh, Garth suspected, even without considering it fully, that he knew just who his unwanted host was and supposed he appreciated the Herculean Effort being undertaken here and now- it had it’s fair share of ego.
Unsurprising, considering...
Hah. Garth laughed. The thing calling itself Eloise had gotten him to think about it after all. He waggled an accusatory finger at Eloise, who smiled oh-so knowingly.
“Agree to disagree, Eloise that isn’t.” Garth took a long, pointed look out the window, embraced the broken world he’d called his own for a very brief period when compared to the interminable length of his life, and then made eye contact with the woman who’d almost killed a Universe simply by accepting him into hers. “Time for me to go. Don’t contact me again. You put my plan in jeopardy a third time and there’ll be complications.”
Eloise chuckled coldly, eyes still brighter than they should be. The effect was quite chilling. “Complications? You forget yourself. You forget who you are and why you’re here and before this thing with the Emperor is complete, you will be reminded. Of everything. For now, things are fine the way they are, I suppose. But … in due time, you will do what you were sent here to do. We clear?”
“As crystal.” Garth jerked his chin a single time. “How many times have I died since I’ve been here, with you?”
“A few hundred. The Baron is growing quite frustrated. But I think this time he will not quit, N’Chalez. You will have to do some out of the box thinking to free yourself from this very specific temporal prison.”
“Fuck, man, I got four hours. Took me less time than that to steal a powerful cyborg pirate’s leg. Let’s do this thing.” Garth braced himself for impact because when you were dealing with whatever Eloise really was, you really couldn’t be sure that they were going to place nice, even if they claimed they were on the same team.
The last thing he remembered seeing were Eloise’s beautiful eyes, following him back into the light.
That, and the endless red lines, surging.
Endlessly surging. Everywhere. The whole of the world, covered in lines. Lines that burned against the cruel backdrop of a shattered sky littered with remnants of the moon, black, glittering metals, a sky, burning brilliant, radioactive red, raining carnelian shadows everywhere.
And it was good.
***
“Annnnd we’re back, ladies and gentlemen.” Garth had enough presence of mind to perform a neat little stage bow to any entities that might be peeking over his shoulder.
It bothered him more than he cared to admit that there was a third party out there on the other side of the simulation, working towards goals that it claimed were intertwined with his own, but there was nothing he could do.
The fact that Eloise/Antal was at least powerful enough to bamboozle the Emperor-for-Life in his own domain suggested a very narrow list of suspects to Garth and worry over which it might be fiddling around at was finding far too fertile soil to grow in.
Garth quashed those thoughts.
Destroyed the lingering tatters that announced, if not the identity, then the nature of, the thing keeping the Emperor preoccupied enough for this game to be completed without too many interruptions from that same irritated monarch. Just because the Emperor had essentially kept his nose out of the simulation so far didn't
mean it'd stay that way, meaning that thinking about … Helper McHelperton might derail … everything.
There was no way Garth was willing to start over, not that that'd even happen; if Etienne Marseilles learned that there was, apparently, a ghost in the machine, skulking around in the background playing virtual Ethan Hunt to his synthetic James Bond, it'd be Game Fucking Over. If a reboot -instead of outright death- came as a result of that realization, Garth knew goddamn well that Grief Trial #2 would be infinitely better programmed and that any … help … would no longer be available.
And he didn't have enough power to break free of this version on his own.
So. Best to just forget everything.
He was very good at marshaling his thoughts, so it didn't take very long.
“Still,” Garth said to the empty room, “nice to know I was right all along, that this is all nothing but a simulation of the highest order.”
And then a few hundred additional death scenes bounced into Garth’s brain. His nose started bleeding immediately.
***
“Rommen, I am missing something.” Garth jammed some pizza into his mouth, washed it down with Dr Pepper, then ate some delicious salt and pepper wings, smearing the goo onto his shirt. There was little to no point in holding on to any kind of decorum here. Not until he found a way to end the bullshit.
“Boss?” Rommen shifted uncomfortably. Ever since coming out of the basement –once the police had left, naturally- Garth Nickels had been acting … antsy. Off kilter.
If he didn’t know better, the Securicorps leader’d say the man was high as a kite, but he did know better. In all the time they’d been working together, the only thing Rommen’d seen Garth over-consume was both pizza and soda, and prior to this moment, there’d been none of the usual indicators of illicit drug use.
