Soul Jacker Box Set

by Michael John Grist

  Access hatches remain though. I pull up to a stretch of open wall where the night sky is brilliant with stars, and there is no walkway and there are no Skulks. I tether the speedboat to a docking ring and climb up shadowy dimples spotting the wall's flank. Soon a subglacic-like hatch appears beside me, locked by triple combination locks, and I dial in the number written down in Ruin's folder.

  The chute beyond is narrow and still and smells of mold. Already I feel the thoughts of the engineers who built this place welling up from the poured concrete. These were grand dreams of a greater future, now abandoned.

  I lock the hatch behind me and proceed by flashlight through a series of flood-proof doors until I emerge into an oval-framed, solitary station on an unbuilt line.

  The rails have been laid and bedded with gravel, but they end in solid concrete walls at either end. A platform rises up at the side, where there are red metal seats still covered in their factory plastic. A few unpowered vending machines line the wall, interspersed between tile plates announcing this lost station's name.

  ERRAL RISE

  I climb to the platform, leaving trails in the thick dust as though through snowfall. The bonds here are different from the godships and the Skulks, left by scientific, detail-oriented minds driven with purpose.

  Now abandoned. I sit on one of the wrapped metal seats and crack open a can of beer, one of twenty-four I brought along with a bottle of godship vodka. I set down a halogen lamp and flick the switch; it surrounds me with a globe of warm light.

  I could go back to my home on Skulk 47 now, even reclaim my jack-site, but what kind of life would that be? I have started down this path into ruin, into a world of bonds and unfathomable power, and I can't stop myself now.

  I drink. I see again the look in Zachary's eye as all pretence fell away and he understood who I was, and what I had come to do.

  Don't hurt my children.

  The memory makes me ill. Am I the man to enjoy that? I don't know. Mr. Ruin said I was a predator, but I don't want this. The Don's rheumy eyes haunt me.

  I drink. I take another beer and I drink, because it is the only way I know.

  Much later I walk along the tsunami wall's top, to an abandoned lighthouse. It's in the folder. They built these years ago to transmit signals out to ships on the incoming tsunami waves. There wasn't much they could say by way of warning; when you're on a tsunami wave you don't have a lot of control.

  'We're sorry that you're going to die. Please try not to smash our wall.'

  Crazy, pointless, but kind. I've heard stories of volunteers who patrol these places now, trying to talk down any lost souls contemplating suicide. I wonder what they might say to me, and how I would respond.

  "Are you all right? Do you really want to be out here alone?"

  "I'm not alone," I'd say. "I can see all the Souls of the city. I see your Soul too, and all your bonds stretching out."

  "Maybe you can, but you're still alone. Here, I want to help. Will you let me? I don't want anything from you."

  "Get away."

  "I swear."

  "Get away!"

  I push him and he falls off the edge. His clothes tear off on the inclined wall, then his skin, until there is almost nothing left to hit the water but bone. The rest is a long red smear stuck to the tsunami wall, like a wound in the concrete.

  Another feverish dream.

  I climb down and ride my stolen speedboat around the whole jagged isthmus. Skulks race by on my right and I'm just waiting for the boat to hit a hard wave and throw me out so I can drown. I am nothing good for this place. I am back where I was ten years ago, with nothing to live for at all. Mr. Ruin lied.

  I don't want to be a predator. I don't want power. I don't want to cause the kind of pain I saw in Don Zachary's eyes.

  The folder leads me on, to a sunken subglacic on the open ocean. If the coalitions knew it was wrecked here they would retrieve it. Ruin's guide tells me there are mindbombs aboard still. The ship is full of the dead, according to the notes. The captain was infuriated by the suspicion that his girlfriend, the first lieutenant, was sleeping with another woman, so he fired a mindbomb on his own crew that instantly Lagged their every memory and left them to die in their sinking ship.

  If I dive deep enough I'll reach the airlock and be able to enter.

  The thought of it intrigues me. It makes me want to go piss on the captain's rotten head. I pull up to the coordinates and toss myself into a barren stretch of gray water. It's freezing. I take a deep breath then kick down into the darkness, toward the undersea crags that clutch the subglacic like a bear's teeth closed on a fish.

  I reach the hull as my flashlight sputters, shorted by the water, but never mind, the subglacic has its lights on still after all these years. Nuclear bonds go long. I grab the hatch panel and twist, it hisses open, and in I go with a rush of water. Orange lights flare and the hatch closes itself behind me, then pumps drive the water out in seconds, cycling in oxygen. The air is good but stale.

  I look at the pipes and metal fittings here, gray and dreary. I have been in so many places just like this, subglacics in my own personal slice of the Arctic War.

  Through the airlock I walk the metal corridors of this vessel like a ghost. This place is tilted on a diagonal, so I walk with one foot on the floor and one on the wall. The dead lie as skeletons below, like rains collecting down a river valley; here it is a river of bone, hair and uniform. All the skin is gone. My footsteps send up puffs of dust and I breathe in the old crew.

  I find the captain by tracking back his jealous, raving bonds to his ready room off the bridge and I piss on his bony bald skull. I find nearby his note explaining this revenge. Perhaps he hoped one day his ship would be found, and what, future generations would sympathize with his pain?

  I burn the note.

  On the bridge, the sub responds to my touch. It has been lodged here for twenty years or more, a model older than mine, but it was built for the duration. I raise it to the surface and steer until the periscope is nudging up against my speedboat.

  I am too drunk to be allowed to do any of this, really. I am red-eyed and beyond the reach of normal minds. I take what I need from the subglacic's munitions bay then set a dry-ice bomb on timer in the engine room and sit on the surface of the sub, just above the waves. It is like a private, temporary pier in the middle of nothing. I sit by the periscope, my elbow on its tubed lens, and sip illicit subglacic vodka brewed from CSF, recovered from the hold.

  When the dry-ice bomb blows below decks, the repercussion trembles through the hull and the ship quickly begins to sink. I step into my speedboat, watching as the captain's final message of hate says goodbye forever. Thanks to me, nobody will know what he did; how he turned on his own crew and savaged them for selfishness, greed and petty jealousy. Nobody will have to find this reminder of our sad War, nobody will recover the mindbombs or dry-ice bombs or other deadly tools of our trade. They'll be forgotten and pass into legend, just like Napoleon.

  That is something good I have done, I think. I stroke the bonds of the dead as they go down, as though I can offer them some comfort, drawing nothing from them. I don't want what they have to offer anymore.

  The sub disappears beneath the smothering waves, a secret that will surely never be found. Bubbles rise up for a time. I tear off in my speedboat.

  Around the edge of the island, I take refuge in an abandoned amusement park at the edge of a tiny town called Brink that smells of burned sugar, built beside a candy refinery. I feel myself getting fatter with every breath.

  I beach the boat off the eroded blacktop parking lot and look across at the park looming against the stars. There are funfair rides here that my first batch of foster parents once took me to. I have only the dimmest memories of coming here. Perhaps I gave them to the Lag too.

  By their silhouettes I identify a towering swing carousel, a gravity drop and a tall wooden roller coaster that stands still like a massive epitaph.

  CANDYLAND
>
  A faded yellow and red sign declares the name at the entrance. A tram pulls up to the station in the candy town. Two people get off then the tram pulls away again, like a yo-yo on endless repeat, headed back for Calico.

  I climb over a barbed wire fence and in, over the silent parking lot. Past turnstiles I wander through this forgotten place, swollen with memories that are not my own; of families coming together and enjoying their fleeting, ephemeral lives. Perhaps I feel a little of myself here, too, as a child.

  I climb the wooden roller coaster and stand at the top looking over the ruins. This is a new memory for me, now, and a new place to stand. It is a beautiful view back along the line of cities at dusk: Saunderston, Tenbridge Wulls, Calico, like hot beads of amber on a necklace.

  In a hotel with a cracked façade I find an untouched room. Little packets of shampoo and conditioner remain at perfect positions in the bathroom, like marines awaiting cabin inspection. I stand at the balcony window and look out over a swimming pool that is filled with jungle, a mini-golf course succumbed to tropical bush.

  "You're not who I thought you were," comes the voice from behind.

  I turn, and there is Mr. Ruin. He isn't smiling anymore, he isn't smug. I still have a little strength from the last bonds I cut on Don Zachary's Skulk, and through them I feel that he is angry.

  "I never was."

  He stares at me. It is like staring into an empty sky and trying to resolve something of meaning, but there is nothing there. He is as lone and vengeful as the dead captain in his sub.

  "I don't want to see you again," I tell him. "I don't want to know you. I don't want to even sense you've come near. You're poison. You're sick. You made a man dress up like Napoleon, for what? To get my attention? You broke Napoleon himself, and for what? Your amusement. If that's what it means to be a predator, then I am not one. I am not like you. I don't even want to remember any of this."

  Mr. Ruin inclines his head. "That can be arranged."

  I laugh. "Go ahead and try. They couldn't Lag me when I was a baby and they couldn't Lag me with a mindbomb, so what do you think you're going to do? You're not a shark, you're a spider, and I'll crush you underfoot."

  Now he smiles. Those gleaming white teeth shine like bulls' eyes in the dark.

  "Ritry, I am so glad you've said these things. It will make it much easier, when the time comes. I'd always hoped to sample a seven-toned soul, and now you're offering me the chance."

  I take a step forward. "Try it. Jack all you want. I'll drown you in your own fucking mind."

  He laughs. "Oh, no. Do you really think I would come at you so directly, when you've just said I'm a spider? Ritry, you are so right, and I will savor this. Your fall will be long, and low, and hard. I will grind all the juice out of you like I did Napoleon, and at the end you'll still jack the Solid Core for me, because I'm strong and you are not. When that day comes, remember what you said here. Remember your arrogance in the face of things you can not possibly understand, and remember that you did it to yourself."

  "I'm not afraid of you," I say. "You're a coward."

  He sighs, and I feel something different in him despite everything he says. Sadness. Loneliness, stretching out like the empty Arctic waters. "No. I'm just hungry, and bored. But I have forever, and nobody will stop me." I catch waves of regret ebbing out like a tide. "Ah, we would've had such times, Ritry, you and I. You've given up so much. But no matter, I have all the time in the world. I'll come for you when you're ready. We'll ride together at the last, whether you want to or not."

  Then he is gone.

  I think about chasing him, taking the fight to him and killing him now like I've killed before, but I am too tired. I don't want to hurt people anymore. Besides, I'll be ready.

  I slump onto the bed and a cloud of dust whuffs up around me. I feel light and not drunk enough. There are tiny bottles of liquor in the fridge.

  I drink them all.

  The world is different when I wake. The last strength of the bonds I cut on Don Zachary's Skulk has gone, and what remains is only the swell of nostalgia, love and happy memories rising off the park.

  I rise and throw back the curtains to a golden dawn, falling on the jungle and ocean beyond like manna, a heavenly glow so bright I have to shade my eyes.

  I have been a thing of the night for so long. I have fought and jacked and screwed and hustled in the grime, and I am tired of it. I have lived on a floating platform waiting every day for a tsunami to come, big enough to rub me out completely and wash all trace of my existence away.

  But enough. The taste of these past ten years is sour in my mouth. That could be the liquor, but it's also the past. It tastes foul and I spit it out. I scrape my tongue with my sleeves and rub the fabric around my teeth.

  I want to be clean.

  The glow in the park fades, but it is still alive. The trees sway in the sea breeze. The bushes fluff out seeds, ever hopeful, seeking a solid place to sink into and grow. I feel like a seed that has been drifting for thirty-five years, waiting for the moment to put down roots and reach for the sun.

  So I let it go. I drop it all in that room, along with the alcohol, the bonds and the dark promise of Mr. Ruin. I don't need it now. I'm ready to begin again.

  ME

  K. CALICO

  Doe kicks out the gumball with a loud schlock and we pour sinuously into another pulsing tunnel. The worms are on us at once and I toss out fragments of our ancient past like dry-ice grenades as we run; they burst but other worms replace them, while every piece of ammo is a memory permanently lost, trading mass for speed.

  "Incoming!" Ray cries, and fires one variation of the orange rattle.

  We run, we turn, we run.

  "Incoming!" Doe cries and hurls out first family with enough force to tear a gaping hole in the maze itself. So's route abruptly shifts in my HUD, guiding us through the ruptured organic tear into another room where another book lies, but I don't need to read it because now I remember it all.

  CALICO

  I go to Calico.

  It's a surprisingly easy thing, crossing this barrier I've built in my mind for so long. A tsunami wall always stood in the way, but nobody forced me onto the Skulk-side. I didn't commit any crime, I wasn't banished there; I just exiled myself.

  Standing in Calico Central station, beside the wall-top train line that carried me from the little town of Brink, I look over this city that comprises the last of humanity. Fifty years ago all this was a slim mountain range hidden by ice; then the ice was blasted away in the resource wars, the waters rose, and it became a foundation for that remains of humanity. Anywhere near the equator is a burning inferno of sand and tornados. Much of the northern climes are inundated with meltwater and battered by storms.

  Only here in the Arctic Circle can we really endure.

  Calico rises before me in skyscrapers of glass and steel. Neon lights race up and down their teetering flanks. There are parks and highways, libraries and a stadium. While the dregs in proto-Calico lapped up their shark arenas and brothels and waited for the final tsunami to come rub them out, Calico has been growing.

  It is beautiful to see this much hope. These people still believe there is a future, and it brings tears to my eyes. I can feel them dimly through my remnant strength in the bonds. Here they follow laws, and get promotions, and raise families. Here they work their way up the hierarchy, and marry, and it is so different from proto-Calico that I can almost not bear it.

  I always used to think that these people were the ones lying to themselves. The inhabitants of the Skulks were the only ones seeing clearly. Now I see that the people in the Skulks have just given up. I was one of them for the longest time. I think back on my ten years at the jack-site, drinking to shut up the voices in my head, jacking minds to drown the guilt in my own.

  I can see it clearly now; if a new world will come from anywhere, it is from Calico, and I want to be part of it. I've had enough of despair. If Mr. Ruin has taught me anything, it is that
some people are worth saving.

  I descend into Calico. They check my records and admit me with a smile. I'm a kind of hero here, I suppose, one of the few Soul Jackers to survive the war. I walk into streets that are clean and shiny with fresh rain. You don't see the boundless, hopeless gray of the ocean here, ever-threatening to rise up and crush you. You just see other people; the things that people built and are building.

  This place is alive. The air fills my lungs like never before.

  I track down Carrolla. At least three months have passed since our encounter with the Don. Through the sense of him in the bonds, I find the hospital he was admitted to, then the apartment he took and the job he found.

  It's a bar near the wall. He's working on the counter when I walk in, favoring his hand with its fingers re-attached. The place is nothing like the bars of the Skulks, built out of flotsam. Everything here is sheer and shiny, clean and new, with fake bleach pine and brushed chrome.

  I stand in front of him. He looks at me for a long moment before he realizes who I am. Then he gasps.

  "What in the hell? Rit. What are you doing here?"

  I look at his hand on the bar. You can hardly see the scars; tiny suture lines at the knuckle. He pulls it away as if ashamed. His teeth set tightly and he pales a little.

  "I know you're angry," I say. "I would be too. But I want you to know Don Zachary will never come looking for you."

  He studies me. I can feel his disbelief. That I'm here, that I'm telling the truth. He eyes the door nervously. Probably he thinks I've sold him out? But what sense would that make, when the Don only wanted me?

  "Did you kill him?" he asks.

  "No. I Lagged him."

  He stares at me. "You Lagged the Don? How? How would you even get close?"

  I shrug. The moment cracks open, and he starts to laugh. "Ritry goddamned Goligh. You are one crazy son of a bitch."

  I smile. "How are your fingers?"