Anti-Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  He’s visibly upset. “But that’s my point,” he says. “Do you see, Arthur?” 2.0 shakes his head. “Probably not. Not yet. I’m probably making a hash of it all. Wandering up the conversational garden path. And garden paths have their merit, they can be quite beautiful, but I brought you here so you would see. In the hope I can be clear for once in what I shall refer to as my life. I came to you as this child so I could.” He taps his chest. Her chest. “I saved this girl. And it was an awful monstrous way to do it, but in the end it was the only way. The problem is awful and monstrous. It demands that kind of solution. Humanity, you see, Arthur, is that kind of problem.” He sweeps an arm up and around. The girl is wearing dark nail polish. A crimson that is almost black.

  “This is humanity’s legacy, Arthur. This place. This girl. Not to be dramatic, but all that will be left in its wake are death, and disease, and pestilence. And do people throw their hands up and wail at their inadequacies? At the horror they have wrought on the world?” The girl’s face is contorted, is nothing but rage.

  “No,” she spits. “It is an inconvenience. A fucking inconvenience, Arthur. This! History! The future! It’s an aggravating afterthought. People poison this planet. They tear it apart. They take, and they take, and they take. And this is what they leave behind. These temples of shit. Like ugly signatures. They kill themselves, poison their children. And they do it because it’s convenient. Because it’s easy. Because they are fucking monsters, Arthur. People are awful and monstrous.”

  Her breath is coming hard now. She’s sitting up on her knees on the day bed, spitting invective.

  And I realize that he has never once said, “we.”

  “So what do you think the solution is, Clyde?” I say. “Are you the solution?”

  I know this point in the movie. This is when the hero talks quietly and pulls out his big stick. This is when he takes his friend to the river bank, sits him down, nice and calm, and puts a bullet through his brain.

  I can see Kayla edging wide, finding the most direct route of attack, the predator starting to circle.

  “The solution, Arthur?” The little girl looks at me with sad eyes. “The solution is just maths.”

  Not exactly what I was expecting. So far Clyde has been throwing some pretty big guns at us. This had better be some pretty terrifying calculus.

  “I know I’ve never been the bastion of steadfast opinions that so many others are,” the little girl says. “I could always see around a problem, I suppose. See the other side. Not trying to brag. I think it was a bit of a flaw really. But I am certain about this, Arthur. Maybe I was waiting for this. Waiting for the thing to be certain about.

  “Humanity’s burden upon this earth is now so great,” Clyde says, “that it simply cannot be undone. You are taxing it to its breaking point, and even if governments were willing to force it—and whether your brain is a supercomputer or not, I think we can all agree that they’re not—absolutely no amount of deceleration will stop the damage fast enough. It has to just stop. The pollution. The overpopulation. The deforestation. All of it. It just has to stop. I’ve looked at everything. Everything, Arthur. I just want to do the right thing.”

  And there would be a reason. I knew there would be a reason. I had just really hoped I’d like it.

  “What is the right thing, Clyde?” My voice isn’t quite even, though whether it’s anger, or sadness, or just confusion, I don’t know anymore.

  “The hero saves the world, right, Arthur?” he says.

  “That’s right,” I nod. And how much has he been spying on me? Those words sound too close to my own.

  “The problem is, Arthur, we’ve been lying to ourselves. MI37, I mean. All of you. Me. We don’t save the world. We never did. We saved humanity. We always saw saving the world from humanity’s selfish, selfish point of view.

  “I’m beyond that now, Arthur.”

  Clyde’s voice coming from the mouth of a little girl. A girl whose mind he ripped away. And no matter what her situation, you can never convince me that was a kindness. Yes, I think we can agree Clyde 2.0 is beyond humanity now.

  “To save the world,” Clyde tells me, “I have to sacrifice humanity.”

  27

  Oh shit. Oh shit and quite spectacular balls. Clyde has not so much gone off the deep end as he has buried himself somewhere in the bedrock beneath the base of the Marianas Trench. And how the hell do I talk him around from there?

  “It’s not like the species is going to last much longer anyway,” Clyde says, as if realizing he’s punched too hard, and is now regretfully holding out a jar of salve. “Honestly, my most generous estimate gives humanity about a hundred years. And I really do want to give you all the benefit of the doubt. But by the time humanity is scientifically and politically ready to do something about the problem, it’ll be too late.” The girl shrugs apologetically. “It’s already too late right now. And I realize this sounds harsh, but well, that’s the nature of the beast at this point—it’s just a question of how much collateral damage occurs.”

  And, God, it’s all delivered so calmly, so simply. I so often wanted Clyde to just speak to the point, to just spit out what he had to say, but I never imagined it would be so many terrible things.

  “So that’s it?” I ask. “There’s no hope for us?” There has to be a way to change his mind. There has to be. There has to be hope here.

  “No,” Clyde says, irrevocably. “Just hope for every other living thing on this planet. It’s maths, Arthur. Sacrifice seven billion, to save so, so many more.”

  I open my mouth, but…

  What if he’s right?

  Of all the things going on here, that’s what really damages my calm. Because he does have a supercomputer for a brain. He will have done the maths. He will have given us the benefit of the doubt. And everything is probability, I know, but… God, what if he’s right? What if humanity’s death is the only way to save the world?

  Aren’t I meant to save the world?

  What does the hero do? What does he sacrifice?

  No. There has to be hope. There has to be. I won’t just accept this. I can’t.

  “Can I feckin’ kill it yet?” Kayla asks again.

  “No!” I say at exactly the same time as Tabitha says, “Yes.”

  “Tabby,” says the little girl.

  “The fuck up,” she spits. “Shut it.”

  The Clyde version shakes her head. “I wish the world had more time, love. I wish that I could make you understand.”

  Tabitha’s hand reflexively goes to her head.

  “Not like that. Never like that. Not you.” There is such heartache in the little girl’s voice. “I know this has got very morally complex. Labyrinth metaphors and bumping into wall metaphors abound, I’m sure. But, I just…” The girl hesitates, shrugs twice. “You will always be my biggest regret, love. I know you can’t forgive me, but I hope you can understand me.”

  “Bringing a gun,” Tabitha says. “Next time.”

  “That won’t stop me.” The little girl even looks apologetic.

  “I will hack you to hell. Then back again.” Blood makes Tabitha’s dark cheeks bright.

  But the girl’s big eyes meet Tabitha’s. And the sadness in them seems capable of drowning all the hate Tabitha pours at them.

  “I love you, Tabby,” she says. “But I will kill you.” A sad, simple truth.

  Sacrifice. Personal sacrifice. God, Clyde is utterly convinced he’s in the right on this one.

  And then I realize Clyde’s planning to kill Tabitha far more imminently than I realized. The girl puts her hand to her mouth. “Ashat mal corlat—”

  “No!” I yell.

  From the corner of my eye I recognize Kayla hitting hyperdrive. “No!” I yell again, at her now. We need this girl. We need Clyde. There is too much information here. There is too much of a chance to understand him, to have him understand us. Talk him back to humanity.

  Humanity. He’s declared war on all of humanity.
/>
  God, he even has a convincing argument.

  I need time. But Kayla moves fast enough to break the sound barrier, and I don’t know if my words can even reach her now.

  “Wait!” I yell. But it’s all over except for my screaming.

  Kayla stands behind the girl. A fistful of hair is in her hand, holding the girl a full foot off the floor. The sword, in her other hand, is at her throat.

  “Another feckin’ word,” she says. “Please. I’m feckin’ asking you to do me the favor of giving me an excuse.”

  The little girl doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even squirm.

  From the look on Tabitha’s face, I think she’s going to be sick.

  “Look, dudes,” Gran says. “This is getting, like, pretty heated. Why don’t we all just choke down the chill pill, dial it back a notch—”

  Kayla flicks her gaze at Gran. “You keep feckin’ talking and you’re next.”

  No matter how much nice she makes to me, Kayla will always just be a little too much in touch with her rage for me to be one hundred percent comfortable with her.

  OK. I try to take a breath, to take stock. Whatever Gran’s phrasing, he’s right. It’s time to get out of here. There’s just a few last things.

  “Search the place for a hard drive,” I say. “Any sort of digital storage.”

  “While I kill it?” Kayla nods at the girl she still holds aloft by the hair.

  “No.” I say.

  Both Kayla and Tabitha turn on me.

  “We take her… him… her. We take her back. We question her. We talk more. We learn what’s going on. And then we debug her. And fix her. Save her.” I’m gabbling now. Trying to hold it together in the face of all these revelations. And Clyde always did know how to pull the rug out from under my expectations. “Just clear this place out and then we leave.”

  I don’t want to talk to Clyde anymore after that. I don’t want to look at the girl he’s possessing.

  Instead I look at Felicity while Tabitha and Kayla search the rest of the rooms. Gran keeps his gun trained on Clyde. Felicity has a large bruise on the side of her head. I push her hair back around it. She moans, blinks her eyes.

  “Hey,” I say. I can’t keep the relief out of my voice.

  She blinks harder, faster. I put a hand on her chest, over her heart. “It’s OK,” I say. “We’re safe. We found him.”

  Felicity takes a breath, calms herself. “Everyone OK?” she asks. And while her voice is a little shaky it’ll need more than a bout of violent unconsciousness to keep Felicity Shaw from getting down to business.

  “Physically,” I say.

  Felicity closes her eyes. “OK.”

  Except it’s not. I take the time to explain why to her.

  I’m just wrapping the story up when Kayla re-enters the room. “Nothing,” she says.

  “Just batteries.” Tabitha stalks at her heels.

  Felicity stands up with the curse. She is surprisingly steady as she advances on the girl. “Why did you have us come here? Why the trail of breadcrumbs?”

  There is a sinking feeling in my gut. We should get back to New York.

  But this Clyde isn’t wearing Mercurio’s Cheshire cat grin. Just sadness. “I just wanted you to understand is all,” the girl says. “I felt I owed you that.”

  “Fucking machine.” Tabitha can’t bite back the bile. “You are. Owe nothing. Just delete yourself and be done.”

  The girl’s smile is rueful.

  “Where are you, Clyde?” I ask. “Where are you hiding?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  Or won’t. But even if I was as amoral as Clyde seems to have become, I don’t think I could torture it out of him. And he knows me well enough to know that.

  A waste. It’s all a waste.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I say.

  A HUNDRED FEET UP

  We stand at the temple entrance. The five of us and the girl. Outside the massive trash squid is still smashing the remains of the mecha.

  “Goddamn.” Gran stands framed in the doorway. “I knew those guys. Joel had a wife and kid. Goddamn.”

  He doesn’t sound like a hippy in that moment. Just a very angry man.

  I look again at the girl. At the merciless killer in her head. At my friend.

  Gran advances on the girl. “You said you wanted these dudes here so you could explain. And you’ve explained. But that squid is still there. So now you call it off?”

  The girl looks a little shame-faced. “Well…” she concedes. “Having done the whole explaining thing, I was sort of moving forward with the killing humanity part. Which, I mean, not to beat around the bush, you’re part of.”

  “So it kills us?” I’m horror-struck. Again. Truly and fully. I keep saying cold-blooded in my head, but there’s a difference between hearing it and being faced with it. Maybe it would be better if hate was motivating Clyde. Megalomania. If it truly were madness. This cheerful, apologetic logic makes everything so much worse.

  The girl shrugs. “Like I said, Arthur. It’s just a question of how much collateral damage there is.”

  Shit. Just shit.

  “OK,” I say, turning to Tabitha. “Weak points. Flaws. Anything. There’s got to be a way around this thing.”

  Tabitha looks at me, her face pale but her voice steady as a steel bar. “Animating force. Quickest way to remove it: kill the summoner.”

  She looks right at Clyde. Right at the little girl.

  But we need her. We need to talk to her. I need to talk to her. There is another solution to this. We can find it. We can.

  And I’m about to say that, but Gran’s gun is already drawn.

  I’m about to say that, but Gran has already shot the little girl.

  28

  Her head snaps sideways as a great flap of blood and bone hinges open. A mess of skull, and brain, and fluid bursts out, sprays the wall. Her body folds, small, and tired, and useless. An empty shell of a thing. Even Clyde is done with it now. Even us.

  She’s dead before she hits the floor.

  Outside I can hear the squid collapsing. Raining down in its constituent parts. Just as dead. Just as useless. But I don’t look at that. I just look at the dead girl.

  Weren’t we meant to save her? Isn’t that what the hero does?

  “Good feckin’ riddance.” Kayla spits at the little girl’s corpse.

  Jesus. Just… Jesus.

  Am I the one wrong here? Am I seeing this all skewed. Is this just another villain lying defeated at our feet. Is this victory?

  Shouldn’t I know that?

  I look at Gran, tucking his pistol back into his holster.

  “You said we’d talk,” I say. “You said we’d rescue him.”

  “We talked.” Gran doesn’t look at me, but there’s no hint at remorse. “Now I need to go and talk to Joel’s wife.”

  And that’s it. No more to be said. Just a trash pile to trudge across, and an extraction point to reach.

  The flight back to New York is long and quiet.

  AREA 51 SLEEPING QUARTERS

  “You’re not looking overly happy, Arthur, old chap.”

  I stare at my computer screen. There’s a chance this isn’t going to help. Felicity would probably tell me it wouldn’t. But she’s off doing a debrief with CIA top brass. And I want to understand.

  “Evil-You had a chat with us today,” I say. And I tell my version, 2.2, about what Clyde 2.0 did and said in the Bordo Poniente Landfill.

  2.2 is quiet for a while at the end. Then he says, “That’s rather cold logic, isn’t it?”

  I nod. That it is. “But it is logic.”

  Version 2.2 thinks about that. “So he’s right then,” he says. His voice sounds tinny through the speakers. “We join his side, and execute humanity?”

  For a moment I’m worried he’s serious. But just a moment.

  “What does that make us, though?” I ask him. “If he’s right and we’re fighting him.”

 
; “I’ve done a lot of reading recently,” says Clyde. “Think I mentioned that. Since this whole non-corporeal thing. And I’ve done a lot of reading about global warming, and climate change, and environmental stuff. It was always an interest of mine. I always was of the opinion that recycling was a good thing to be doing. I mean, we do it with ideas and fashion trends, so why not with refuse too? Stands to reason, I thought, though admittedly my thoughts are not always the ones that one should put a yardstick next to, but I don’t think I was entirely alone on the general positive nature of recycling.”

  I sit and wait for him to get to the point.

  “But something that did rather come to my notice was that there are a lot of differing opinions on this whole environmental end-times scenario thingamajig.”

  I mull on that. “So Version 2.0 is wrong?” I ask. “There is no global warming?”

  Clyde shakes his head. “Of course there’s global warming, Arthur. You don’t melt half the ice caps in a few decades and claim it’s just business as usual. Well, not unless it would cost you a lot of money to change from business as usual. But even disregarding the more inane political aspects, it’s not like there’s a universal voice shouting, ‘no more questions, chaps, we’ve got it all figured out.’ Assuming all scientists spoke like me. Which they don’t, thank God. Still be waiting for someone to get around to the Enlightenment if they did.”