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

by Lee Bond

  “More or less.” Aäl agreed. “He lived through the initial Bruush Incursion thanks to the incongruity. It wasn’t until he’d spent nearly forty years in turmoil on the rotten skin of Earth before he figured out the mechanics of temporal recursion, but yes. ‘Then’ he started. And it wasn’t until we charted this one’s, as you rightly put it, ‘spectacular’ arrival that we realized everything that was happening was never meant to be.”

  "Why didn't you simply undo it all yourselves?" Drake demanded slowly, incapable of coming to terms with the fact that these so-called omnipotent beings hadn't done precisely that, all on their own.

  Garth raised an eyebrow at Aäl's mulish silence. Of course a God wouldn’t want to admit to any kind of failings or shortcomings.

  Or fear.

  That was the real reason the alabaster entity was keeping his marble-like lips pressed so tightly together that you could barely make out the fact that he had lips in the first place. When they'd come to realize that Baron Samiel possessed the power to travel back and forth through his individual experiences, creating or destroying different time lines as he attempted to accomplish the task of destroying the Bruush, the Gods of the Proto-Reality had downright freaked right the fuck out, dropping right down into Full Blown Holy Shit Guys Mode.

  "You wanna cover this, big boy?" Garth asked Aäl, bemused. "Nah, of course, you don't, because you're fucking embarrassed."

  "Get on with it, Dreambreaker." Aäl snapped. It all needed to come out, and in the proper order, otherwise ... otherwise the situation would get much worse before it got any better. He danced a particularly dangerous path at the moment.

  Garth turned to his friends, glad to see that now they were all faced with an all-powerful relic from the other side of the Unreal Universe, Eddie and Drake -more specifically Eddie- were finally mellowing out over the whole situation.

  "The Lords of The Dream couldn't figure out how Samiel was doing his thing, which is why they started fucking with your life, Drake. By the time they discovered the source of his power came directly from the incongruity, it was too late, he was too entrenched, and besides all that ..."

  "That's more than adequate, Dreambreaker." Aäl stepped forward, dark cloak rippling between the three men. "I..."

  Garth held up a hand, grabbed hold of one of the inky black fronds and pulled it tight. "You don't get to pick and choose. You want this whole shit out for some fucking reason or other, so they get the whole of it or I bounce right now. In case you managed to forget, I kind of got this whole destruction of the Universe deal to get on with?"

  When Aäl scowled but said nothing further, the Kin'kithal resumed. "They lacked the power to counter the incongruity on the kind of level they needed. The reason the fucking purple rock is called the incongruity is because of it's very strange nature. They simply couldn't prevent him from wandering around the time line messing shit up. They could throw obstacles into his path, like you, Drake-meister, but that was about it. They were only ever playing catch-up, which was fine-ish, to a degree. They were willing to cope, until they noticed me, barrelling into good old 21st century America. When they caught up to me, they pounced."

  "How we missed you in the first place is something that irks me to this day, Dreambreaker." Aäl ground the admission out begrudgingly.

  Garth wiggled his eyebrows like living caterpillars. "It's a mystery for the ages."

  Eddie broke into the conversation, "So ... you're not omnipotent? You have your limitations."

  "Cease all attempts at trying to outthink this situation, monkey." Aäl shifted his full attention to the one who'd spent thirty thousand years parading around in the skin of a being he in no way equalled.

  Though the false monarch displayed no visible signs of discomfort, his dis-ease thundered through the layers of incongruous energy surrounding them. "In comparison to you and the pathetic uses to which you put the incongruity, I am the sun and you? You are monkeys, staring into the sky, full of fear. You may own a connection to the strange material, but you are not it's master. No one can be."

  Garth put a hand on Eddie's shoulder, literally willing the man to back down. When that failed, he spoke, quietly and urgently. "This is not the place, bro. Aäl broke loose from his ... vacation home ... all on his own and yanked us all out of the simulation. You may not have given this some thought, but the odds are frankly quite high that he's got his own link to it now as well. And given the fact that he's a higher order being, one that's fully realized, it's a goddamn guarantee his is stronger than yours."

  "Is this true?" Eddie asked of Drake, who was far more capable of assessing the situation than he was at the moment; still reeling from the realization -and acceptance - that he'd been grossly ignorant for infinitely too long and the fact that their entire lives had been thoroughly manipulated by Gods, Eddie doubted he'd be good for anything more than being the talking monkey Aäl kept calling him.

  Drake narrowed his eyes and slipped into the depths of Spur's precise intellect, deftly sorting and arranging all the salient facts into an easily understandable list.

  The prognosis was grim.

  "Yes. As the Lords of The Dream are who they are, it's undeniably true that any one of them would be able to forge a significantly more powerful connection to the incongruity. I posit that they were unable to do so in the Proto-Reality because Samiel was fully connected to it across all stretches of time. But here, in the Unreal Universe, our usage of it was entirely different, a ... a linear merger only. So ... I'd suggest you keep calm and let this scenario play itself out, dude. We're clearly not friends, but we're definitely not hostile."

  Yet, he added silently.

  Over the centuries and millennia, Drake had seen more than his fair share of mortals possessing attributes similar in nature to their godly visitor, and there was one thing he knew for certain; people like Aäl were only ever civil as long as it suited their mood. Once hostility became more suited to their needs, all bets were off.

  Drake didn't like the speculative look on Aäl’s face. It spoke entirely too loudly that this was no simple exchange of histories and truths. He suspected that, by the end of things, one or all of them were going to be significantly worse off than they were right then.

  "So what about this deal, then?" Eddie fought to bring the conversation back to what he felt was the most important part of the entire event thus far: Garth's duplicity.

  It seemed that their friend had an almost endless capacity for never telling the whole truth, for never dealing with anyone on equal footing.

  Garth jerked a thumb at Aäl, who was up to his usual, scowling tricks. "These guys, they play very dirty pool. The moment I found out where I was and what was going on, I tried to leave under my own steam. They, ah, prevented that from happening. So, while Aäl here insists that the original conversation between myself and the Lords of the Proto-Reality was an equal exchange, it was anything but. More of a 'you fix this shit you didn't know you caused and we'll totes let you go home' kind of thing than 'hey, could you help us out here and we'll make it easier for you'. Not really all that fair, you ask me."

  Aäl contemplated bringing up just how volatile that 'conversation' had become before they'd reached an agreement that was at least partially beneficial; the conflict, while short, had raged quite brilliantly across the heavens, leaving both sides quite surprised as to the other's abilities.

  In the end, the Lord opted to keep quiet; he didn't want the talking monkeys to get any ideas inside those dim little heads of theirs, not when ... not when the situation wasn't entirely as he was presenting. If Eddie and Drake realized they could make his life -in the short run- more difficult than he wanted...

  "And you did wonderfully." Aäl smarmed. "Waging war through time and space, doing battle with a monster so hideously and terribly warped that it beggared the imagination of Gods themselves."

  "Oh yeah, I had a real fucking good time." Garth countered bitterly. "Stripped of most of my powers in the 21st century, the on
e place and time where it would've been more beneficial than not, forced -just like these cocksuckers forced me- to work my way through the levels of Samiel's bullshittery with nothing more than my good looks and charm. Yeah, it was super wonderful."

  "If you'd proven yourself more amenable to our initial agreement, Dreambreaker, things might have been adjusted to more your speed." Aäl didn’t bother attempting to seem even the tiniest bit remorseful. They'd made a terrific mistake, letting the Kin'kithal 'into' their Dream. "You aren't the kind of being to play nicely with others, and so you were dealt with accordingly."

  Drake broke into the conversation, forehead beetled. "Wait a minute here. ’Initial' agreement? Just what in the fuck is going on here? What is this really all about? Why are we even having this discussion?"

  Aäl addressed the unruly Drake fully. "You have been told that Dreambreaker came close to defeating Baron Samiel, and that just prior to his death, we sent him home, correct?" When the blonde-headed nearly-immortal nodded his head slowly, painfully obvious in his attempts at figuring out what was happening, the Lord continued. "We..."

  "Cheated." Garth snapped angrily, bitterly. "You fuckers cheated. Changed the rules of the game at the very last minute, forced me into a binding contract that I wanted absofuckinglutely nothing to do with, one I've abided by this whole fucking time."

  "Cheated?" Eddie couldn't imagine someone being able to cheat Nickels. “They cheated you. How in the fuck is that even possible?”

  Garth didn’t like thinking about it. Of all the situations he’d been thrust into down the long years, how the Lords of the Dream had gotten one over on him when he should’ve known better was one outcome that bothered him more than anything else.

  He should’ve known better, and yet, when the end had come, they’d sandbagged him good and proper.

  Eyes gazing off into the distant shores of long-ago memories, Garth spoke, quietly. “It was at the end of the conflict with Samiel. It was a great deal harder and more complicated than my memories indicate, especially the ones that were made available here. My forces … my forces were vast and … strange. Poor Jim Seeker had been transformed into a kind of CyberPriest, I guess you could say, something called an ArcLord, and he’d been running around the whole time behind my back, converting people to the Light. The regular armies were there too, forces donated by the major Conglomerates on Earth at the time. Even the Wayfarers were there, in force, all determined to finally defeat the evil Baron Samiel. There were so many of us. Hundreds of thousands of troops, all willing to die to end the madness.

  Samiel’s own troops rose up out of the ground to meet with us in the wide open fields on either side of his stone Ziggurat, feral beasts, the final product of his genetic meddling. Pure human/Bruushian hybrid warriors, with all their strength, all their speed, and all their viciousness. It was a battle that trembled the Earth and shook the heavens.” Garth paused for a moment, wishing he had some water to whet his whistle. Instead, he caught sight of Aäl, positively emanating smugness. It figured. He would love this story. The Lords had come out on top, which was where the true Stalemate arose.

  “We soldiered on, and over the course of a month, we wore his defenses down to the point where one man … me … was able to sneak into the damned Ziggurat to beard the lion in his den. I don’t know how long I was in there for, or the direction I took; the incongruity had warped physics inside Samiel’s stony domain to the point where up was down and down was apples. All I know is that I eventually made my way to the inner sanctum.”

  “What then?” Eddie and Drake whispered the question in tandem. This was a side of Garth they’d never seen before: quiet, withdrawn, unhappy. Gone was the Devil who didn’t care. In his stead, a man who’d seen and done things he wasn’t terribly pleased with.

  Garth gave a half-shrug. “We fought. It was difficult. The Samiel you witnessed there,” he pointed at the virtual rigging equipment, “was a shadow puppet, barely the equal. His mastery over the incongruity and it’s powers was a great deal more than your own. Or maybe … maybe it had more to do with his actual age. By the time of the 25th century, Baron Samiel had traveled back and forth through his own personal timeline so many thousands of times he was close to a million years old.”

  “But you won.” Drake insisted. “You said so!”

  “Of course I won.” Garth shot back with an arrogance he didn’t exactly feel. He’d won, but it’d taken everything he’d had at the time. “But barely. You guys are forgetting. When I fell through into the Proto-Reality, I was a kid. Eighteen or nineteen years old. The temporal compression that I endured … it helped, but really, for a Kin’kithal, I was still pretty young. If I hadn’t lived the years of my life in the 25th over and over again in ever-shortening manner, I can pretty much guarantee Samiel would’ve handed me my ass.”

  “Such wonderful preparation for the eventual fight to come.” Aäl oozed unctuously. “Your very own, real life primer on how to handle the unpredictability of time travel, and how to manage the M’Zahdi Hesh. I sometimes think the Engines arranged it all. All of it.” The Lord added that last bit darkly.

  Drake pushed off from his side of Garth’s gurney and took a brisk walk around the central computers, waving his hands this way and that as he worked over everything he’d heard.

  “So Aäl here and his buddies the other Lords of The Dream, who all sound like real swell guys, you made an agreement with them at the very beginning. You promised to take care of the problem you inadvertently brought along with, and in return, they’d let you return home? Is that right?”

  Garth fired an imaginary pistol. “Bingo. Right on the money.”

  “And prior to that agreement, you lot all got into a screaming fistfight. One that displayed for them just what a Kin’kithal could bring to the table.” Drake finished one lap and moved on to the next.

  Garth looked to Eddie, who just looked … dismayed over everything and nodded. “This guy’s on fire. Five thousand years as a level 11 android really kicked his brainpan into overdrive.”

  “If I could undo that,” Eddie replied hollowly, the repercussions of his vendetta still hammering into him, “I would. I really, really would. That, and … and everything.”

  Garth clapped his redheaded friend on the back. “Meh. We’re over that part now. One thing I’ve learned is that when you get to this level of weirdness, you really got to take the high road. You wanted me dead, you wanted to become Emperor of the New Reality, you lost your chance, blah blah blah. There’s no point in beating a dead horse, friend. Besides,” he jerked his chin at Aäl, who –worryingly enough- was content to stand off to one side, brooding, pale, with his weird flowing cape-costume-thing doing it’s weird flowing thing, “we really aren’t anywhere near the edge of the forest just yet.”

  Drake felt like he was close to an answer. He couldn’t explain how he was getting there, except to say perhaps that as Spur, he’d often been called upon to make sense of things without having all of the facts crystalline clear.

  “Then, you wound up in the future, doing battle with Samiel on more even footing, but it was still a helluva conflict. You yourself were the one to battle the bastard in his home, and the fight took nearly everything you had. Then these guys show up,” here, he stopped right in front of Aäl, who flashed alabaster teeth broad as tombstones, “and change the deal because they knew they could. More importantly, that you couldn’t resist. What could it’ve been?”

  The ex-android stared up into Aäl’s dark eyes. “What is the one things Gods could want that they didn’t already have? Or couldn’t create on their own? What possible thing could the one and only Garth N’Chalez bring to the table?”

  Aäl smiled from ear to ear and deigned to answer, his voice a wintry breeze flowing through a dead forest. “True Godhood, you prattling simian. Our world, the Proto-Reality, it was nothing more than a Dream the Engines of Creation had, a quiet place of reflection to soothe It’s inner turmoil whenever the excesses of the Unreal U
niverse’s slow decline into a food source for the Hesh grew to be too much. This one,” Aäl pointed at Garth, who looked over his shoulder in search of some other scapegoat, “carried within him the seeds of his plan even before coming to our world. We saw what he intended, what needed to be done, what his desired result would be, and we wanted it for ourselves. So. When the end came, when Samiel was dispatched, when this one was nearly broken and weaker than ever, we changed the deal. One of us would ride with him through the portal to the Unreal Universe. One of us would hide inside him until the time was right. One of us would pull the others through moments before the end of Everything came to pass, and we Ushbet M’Tai would go through, into the other side, whereupon we’d become Gods of Reality 2.0.”

  Eddie’s head felt like it was on a swivel as he turned to confront Nickels. His entire body felt attenuated, stretched impossibly long and thin. He could feel Drake somewhere behind him, confused as all hell. Off to one side, Aäl oozed smugness from every pore of his stony body.

  “You agreed to that? What in the actual fucking fuck? I mean, I get that this dude is an actual God and not at all the same as the M’Zahdi Hesh, I suppose, and therefore not ‘bad’, but … fuck. If he’s a representative of the species, I gotta say, his ‘good’ ain’t that great.”

  Garth put a lid on the flash of temper that wanted to burst loose. It wasn’t Eddie’s fault and he certainly didn’t deserve to be shouted at, not when you took the longer view of the agreement he’d been forced to make.

  The truth of it was, the deal was as shitty as you could possibly imagine and it’d taken him a great deal of time to finally succumb to the entreaties made by the Lords.

  “First of all,” Garth said evenly, “you can’t fucking hope to understand the pressure I was under. My only reason for existing was to figure out a method of destroying the M’Zahdi Hesh. Everything that happened in the Proto-Reality was off book. Even though I’d absorbed a great deal of awesomeness from spending time with you guys, I was still a fully committed Kin’kithal intent on returning to my own place, my own time. It was essential. At the time, I was the only one of my kind. In the end, my father’s training took hold and I made the agreement. I would’ve done anything to get home. You can’t understand, you will never understand, and you,” here, he finally did point angrily at Eddie, who flinched like he’d been shot, “most definitely don’t get to judge. Can you even conceive of how complex 2.0 is going to be? Even with Huey as the primary OS for the entire fucking thing, there’s going to be a literal infinity of dimensions. Hundreds of trillions of them, born and dying, over and over again, in perpetuity, throughout eternity. There’s got to be a fucking support group, someone not quite as elevated as Huey, but entities with power enough to be present and able to effect ground-level changes as and when needed. Because boys, that shit ain’t gonna be perfect. It can’t be. Aäl and the other Ushbet, they’re the guys that are gonna swoop around plugging holes and unspooling any messes that crop up. Huey can’t do it all. The structure I’ve conceived of, the one that’s going to house Huey’s elevated consciousness … it’s grand and it’s wonderful and probably the most complicated thing about 2.0, but … it isn’t enough. I … they need to be there, at the end, Eddie, Drake, and that’s all I got to say on the subject.”