by Lee Bond
“One. Your pals the CyberPriests come out on top and they use you to destroy this entire Unreality. For added shits and giggles, they swarm the other remaining actual Spheres and destroy them as well, transforming ‘Existence’, which is vaster and broader and way more interesting than you can possibly comprehend, into … nothing. Actual nothing. No,” Huey waggled his finger, “no. No metaphysical discussions on the nature of nothing being something. Actual, legitimate nothing.”
Somewhere deep in the recesses of his bizarre new AI mind, Huey could see the representation of that possibility. It sickened him, filled his flesh and blood body with ice and dread more profound than when he thought about Garth trapped for all eternity inside Bravo. If the ‘Priests were successful… Huey shut his eyes. It wasn’t going to happen. The ‘Priests were low on the list, yes, but only because they seemed to be having difficulty getting off the ground. Garth was going to take care of them before that happened. He had to.
“Yep.” Chad sucked at a tooth. “Me and the Electric Friars are currently on the outs about that. I reckon you is knowin’ they built me to assist in that, yeah?”
“Yes.” Huey’s heart thrilled at confirmation that Chadsik wasn’t on board with the ‘Priests and their nihilistic goals. Ever since leaving Latelyspace to hunt the FrancoBrit down, he’d had suspicions, if for no other reason than nothing was happening; of all the players in the endgame, the dysfunctional holy men with their warped Harmony were the closest of all to realizing their goals. With Chadsik at long last in their grasp, well, Huey wasn’t ashamed to admit –only to himself, and only in the bathroom- that he’d basically been shitting bricks the whole time.
He held up a finger. “Two. And this is the Big Bad Wolf, the worst of them all, the whole reason why we’re here, the whole reason why everything sucks, why everything has been happening the way it’s been happening, the Numero Uno Reason to fight for your life, the Great Grandaddy …”
“Oi, mate, get on wiv it.” Chad rolled a hand. “For a fella wot says everyfing is in danger, you chat like a girl.”
“… The Monsters in the Dark, Chadsik al-Taryin, I give to you the M’Zahdi Hesh. Extra-dimensional beings with the powers of actual, literal Gods, monsters hiding in the shadows, born out of the mists of the very first iteration of this Unreality, beasts capable of consuming and using the powers of creation for themselves. They squat above and below, guiding and shaping the birth of an entire Universe, coaxing things along until some Golden Mean is met and then wham. Lights out. They consume the energies from the Unreality and they grow in power. There is nothing they cannot do, Chadsik al-Taryin, nothing. They’ve been doing it for hundreds of trillions of years. They have seen and done it all in ways you can’t imagine. Except…”
Chad knew somewhat about the M’Zahdi Hesh from the brothers, but they were notoriously close-lipped about their … counterparts. It seemed they were terrified of these Heshii even more than they were of Garth Nickels. He suspected that these extra-dimensional leeches were the whole reason he was the way he was; the only way to counteract monsters who’ve had trillions of years of experience was to provide a being who’d had similar amounts of lifetimes. “Except?”
“Except for Garth, they would’ve succeeded thirty thousand years ago. Their goal is to destroy this Unreality as they’ve always done, destroy it and let the Engines of Creation spit out another one so they can do it all over again. No one knows what they actually intend. If I was them, I’d be doing this so I could get enough power to do as the ‘Priests intend, and for exactly the same reasons but I just don’t know. I don’t want to know.”
“Orl right, so we’ve got two different groups as wot are just really fuckin’ batshit bonkers an’ they all wanna blow everyfing up.” Chad took a bit of a stroll around, pausing to knock on the Enforcer’s Suit. A barely audible shriek of rage welled up. The cyborg chuckled. He cozied up and took a bunch of selfies with a camera dug out of a pocket before continuing. “I is liking being alive, me. I is enjoyin’ the absolute fucked-upedness of this whole fing. It’s summat that the brothers ain’t understandin’. Now, wot makes your fella-me-lad worth rescuin’? Is he gonna stop all this from ‘appenin’?”
Huey’d thought long and hard about how he was going to answer this particular question. It’d be easy, and believable, given Garth’s track record, to lie and say that all the ex-Specter planned on doing was defeating both the Heshii and the CyberPriests, but … it was a lie and … there was every possibility that they were all going to need Chadsik later on. Lie now, get the man on board for a quick and dirty rescue, but lose the man’s admittedly terrifying powers later on. Tell the truth and possibly lose him right off the bat.
It was a tough call.
“No.” Huey said bluntly. “No. He plans on destroying everything as well.” He threw up a hand and shouted incoherently when Chadsik turned to leap off the edge of the building. Huey couldn’t let Chad go. He’d traveled too far, had left too many of his friends in the lurch in pursuit of whispers and lies to meet with Chad. He couldn’t let the assassin leave. “No. Listen. Please.”
Chad stopped at the edge. Most of the fires were out now, and whatever remained of BishopCo’s automated defense systems had managed to stop all but the most ardent of ransackers. There were a few Voss_Uderhell scows milling around, but the majority presence right now was Tynedale/Fujihara. Bishop was getting what he deserved.
The … man behind him was filled with desperation. And fear. The wavering tone in his voice spoke volumes. For all his bravado, for all his power –stopping that Enforcer in his tracks had been a neat trick, all right- Huey was terrified. That and no other reason was keeping Chad on the roof. He turned, crossed his arms high on his chest and said. “Two minutes, mate, two minutes.”
“I don’t need two.” Huey replied stridently. He took a deep breath and started talking quickly. “As you well know, Garth N’Chalez is an unparalleled engineer. A designer and builder of things. Most of those things involve machinery capable of destroying everything across a very large landscape, but he’s a genius. He loves to build. The nature of this Unreality has forced him into a very specific form of creation, but even that has been turned to his benefit. I won’t go into details right now, but … experiences in his early life showed him what Existence is supposed to be like.”
“Runnin’ out of time, mate.” Chad warned.
“Fuck you. Fifteen seconds added for interrupting.” Huey resumed when Chad nodded, a wry smile on his face. “He is here, now, in this time, because he devised a plan of creation that needed thirty thousand years to prepare. He plans on defeating the M’Zahdi Hesh, and he’ll probably kill anyone who gets in his way and yes, part of those plans involve the absolute and utter destruction of everything everywhere. But what you don’t know is that he also plans on giving everyone and everything that ever lived up to the moment of destruction another chance. He plans on using the energies of the defeated Heshii and anything else he can find to push Reality 2.0 through the extra-dimensionality and into truth.”
“Not possible.” Chad countered. He knew that much from the brothers. They were most cogent on that. “The brothers…”
“You’re going to listen to broken down cybernetic religious men who want everything to be erased?” Huey couldn’t believe his ears. “You’re going to listen to the beings who made you mad, stuffed one of their own inside your brain, and set you loose with the mistaken belief that you were not only a sociopath but a hackneyed serial killer?”
Chad opened his mouth to deliver a quick retort, but snapped it shut. “You is right. But ‘ow in the great fuck is your man gonna do it?”
Huey smiled shiftily. “Trade secret.”
Chad scratched his nose thoughtfully. “’ow is I knowin’ you isn’t lying to me right now?”
“Because, Chad, there’s a really good chance we’re going to need someone to come along and blow the absolute shit out of stuff and I figure if I lie to you now, you’ll just join
the other side out of spite.” Huey contained the urge to jump and shout and high five himself. Chad was on board. “And frankly, I’d rather drink hot lava than fight you.”
“I is ‘avin’ one more question.”
Huey’s expanded mind, roving to and fro through Bishop’s remaining AI networks, went on full alert. He hung his head, if only momentarily. Trinity had figured out that something was desperately wrong with Gwyleh Ronn’s Suit and had decided to take further action. The space around poor old Zanzibar was alive with the signature arrivals of ten … fifty … no.
A hundred Enforcers had come to Zanzibar. The AI turned man knew he and Chad could count on the cataclysm boiling beneath their feet and the scavengers raiding Bishop’s storehouses to obfuscate things, but not much, and not … not for long. “Make it fast, Chad, we got company.”
Fear trickled through the cyborg assassin’s neural networks. Many thought him immune to the sensation, but he wasn’t. It was that he was usually too high and busy being insane to let his feelings show. “Why is everyfing be destroyed in the first place?”
Huey rolled his eyes. “Holy fuck, Chad, you could’ve asked anything else in the entire Universe, but you pick the one question that has, like, a seventeen hour discussion involving slides, charts, diagrams, and a monologue on the True History of Everything.”
Chad tapped a temple. “I is always cuttin’ right to the chase.”
Huey considered the approaching Enforcers. There was Kallam Singh, Deven Tryi, the Scourge … Trinity was pissed. He hoped he could get the answer out briefly, but succinctly enough. “Because, Chad, there is no other choice. The … mechanism that created this place is on the verge of collapse. If Garth doesn’t assist in the birth of this Unreal Universe so that things go, heh, smoothly, then it will break. That birth involves destruction, but guided, ordered, orchestrated. And then there will be no more chances at life for anything anywhere and there will only ever be six Spheres. And I’m pretty sure the dudes who live out there in those other Universes won’t like that. I dunno what they’d be able to do about it, but Reality has a way of being able to do whatever the hell it wants. So it’s a big bang and all our deaths so maybe everyone has a chance to live again in some form or other or nothing. Nothing but the Heshii.”
Chad stuck out a hand. He gripped Huey’s hand tightly. As far as answers went, it was technically pretty piss-poor, but he wasn’t in the mood to push for a better one. “Let’s us be clear on summink, mate, just so there is no confusion later on. I is willing to try and ‘elp you wiv your little problem, but I ‘as been a psychotic nutbag for a very long time, and unfortunately, even in more lucid moments, I is still really enjoyin’ killin’ fings for no real reason. So yeah, I might be around to ‘elp out later on as well, but wot I is not wantin’ to see is anyone comin’ around to stop me from doin’ fings wot I is enjoyin’, all right?”
At this point, Huey was willing to promise the man a gold-plated pony that shot rocket-powered unicorns out of its nose just as long as Chad got Garth out of Bravo. “Good. Now. Take a deep breath.”
“Why is that? I is not breathin’.” Chad pursed his lips. Huey was breathing deeply and standing like he was about to lift something very, very heavy.
“It’s not to keep you from asphyxiating.” Huey answered somberly. “It’s to help you scream when we get to the other side.”
“Wot in the fuck is you talkin’ about?” Chad looked around. The atmosphere above his noble head was alive with a hundred star-bright pinpricks. The Enforcers were coming right this way, and they were in a hurry.
“You …” Huey reached out with his mind and hopscotched at the speed of Unreal thought to the other end of the link he’d been maintaining since leaving Latelyspace and gave the order. “You ever … jump through a Quantum Tunnel Chadsik al-Taryin? It’s … it’s the ultimate in extreme sports.”
“Wot …”
Chadsik al-Taryin, Savior of the CyberPriests, FrancoBritish cyborg assassin, culmination and physical manifestation of every iteration of himself that could’ve ever been, had no time to ask his question one final time.
A brilliant and starry shaft of light five kilometers wide and gleaming the colors of the stretch of space between here and there sliced through the heavens to bathe Huey Barnes and Chadsik and poor Gwyleh Ronn in a radiance unlike anything anyone on Old Earth, Trinity Prime, Zanzibar, had ever seen before or since. The effulgent shard slammed into what remained of the true heart of BishopCo with an accidental fury, ripping through the hundreds upon hundreds of floors between the two men and the ground so very far away.
The blaze, a seemingly endless and violent incandescence set about by Chad’s unspoken desire to frighten the CyberPriests away from harassing him further and propagated by those trying to steal from Jordan Bishop, whooshed out as though a God had clapped His hands together. Powered machines faltered and crashed. AI minds were snuffed out.
The very world from which all Humanity had sprung to spread across the stars seemed to tremble and quake.
The light winked out. Chadsik al-Taryin, master assassin and impossible cyborg had left in a manner befitting one of his stature, temporarily bound to the service of the one who would one day, if everything worked out all right, become a God in truth.
But between here and there, well, there was a great big pile of stuff to do.
There
Very nearly a year had passed since Huey had last spoken to him, and in all that time, Herrig couldn’t help but worry. Worry that the powerful AI turned man had met his demise. Worry that Garth Nickels was going to be trapped inside Bravo until the Universe was destroyed. Worry that Fenris and his minions were going to overrun the system. Worry that Admiral Politoyov and the assembled might of Trinity’s very nearly endless military would find a way through the shield.
Worry. His constant companion. It shook him loose out of bed and put him to sleep at night with gentle promises that it would be there the next morning. Herrig loathed Worry and vowed often that he’d find a way to throttle the smug bitch before too much longer, but Worry was a crafty cohort and always found a way back.
Twice a day, Herrig was free from his concerns over the state of Existence, and he struggled to keep those moments as brief as possible, lest his unwanted babysitter figure out a way to steal those remaining freedoms from him.
The first was when he visited the site of Huey’s Grand Departure. The ‘LINKs still burned with the epic moment and Herrig also found time once or twice a week to revisit the footage. Someone else’s achievements had finally outstripped Garth’s … at least when it came to viewership numbers.
In a solar system where Gods ran rampant and the most amazing things still seemed to be happening on a regular basis, it was awe-inspiring to imagine that there was room left for surprise. And what a surprise!
Huey had originally intended for his departure to be a secret, but when one of the inner ring of members responsible for ‘new’ Latelyspace plans on leaving, very little stays secret for long. OverCommander Vasily had learned of the man’s departure in the usual way that the military leader learned of everything; through spies, cameras, cheating and lying. Where Herrig had tried a simple ‘please don’t leave’ approach, Vasily had used the full might of God soldiers and tanks to prevent Huey’s departure.
And thus they’d all learned precisely how powerful an AI could be, though there was some argument that this particular AI was as he was because of his connection to the Sigma Engine; everything that Vasily had brought to bear had frozen in their tracks. Some few machines still remained inoperative, Huey’s ire at his goal being threatened breaking them permanently.
No matter what the case, Herrig remembered the look on Vasily’s face when everything surrounding Huey T. Roboticus had shut down, to be replaced by a grinning smiley face. Herrig remembered that, and the roaring approval from Fenris and his brethren.
And then he remembered the scintillating shaft of light piercing the heavens, a burning brigh
t pyre of illumination cast in colors no man had ever seen with the naked eye before, a shifting column of brightness a mile wide.
All Herrig had to do was close his eyes and he could see, clean as day, Huey’s donated body shimmering like a desert mirage a heartbeat before a thunderclap of noise and a burst of light that’d turned everyone blind for a second.
And then nothing. The … Fenris was calling it a ‘teleportation beam’ … the beam had scoured everything beneath Huey’s feet and for the entire radius of the shaft, obliterating everything to leave behind bedrock so smooth it was almost glass.
The area was off limits. It had a permanent, rotating shift of God soldiers that’d already passed through the rigors of Fenris’ Harmony training. There was a death toll associated with Huey’s Debarkation Point, but thankfully, reporters and citizens alike were growing less curious day by day. They were content to revisit old footage or to waste their hard-earned money purchasing spEyes that got no closer than two miles.
Herrig came by every day and did his job at a small desk for a few hours, looking up every few minutes on the off chance that he’d somehow become so absorbed in the minutiae of running a solar system that he’d missed a heavenly beam of light depositing one of his friends back to earth. He came because they all needed Huey’s help with Politoyov and the others, he came because, at the end of the day, he wasn’t entirely certain that the Harmony-trained Goddies would let Huey leave the area alive.
A timer beeped on Herrig’s proteus. Two hours had passed in the blink of an eye. The Chairman looked up from the Sheets on his desk to gaze speculatively at the mirror-smooth surface of rock not fifty feet from where he sat, then turned his eyes on the half-dozen God soldiers standing at attention. “No sign?”
