Beware the Well Fed Man

by Chris Capps

me books, taught me the principles of math, and found me to be an exceptional student. When he died, I was freed and became an engineer. Of course I also had other talents. My real skills turned out to be planning for the future. Kitchains, that fat puppet you met, was not in charge of the city. No one was. Well, I guess the machine was. The machine and whoever was worthy enough to truly operate it."

  “So when you heard of the Plexis, you rode here and decided to take it all for yourself,” I said, “Is that right?”

  “No, I didn’t ride here right when I heard of the Plexis. First I told Kitchains and a selection of the city guard that we’d need to get rid of the vagabonds following us around. After that, I told them to lag behind. I was to infiltrate the Plexis and gain its trust, then when their heavily outgunned militia started fighting with your tribe, I was to sabotage your weapons stockpile - most likely by blowing it up with the facility’s stockpile of gunpowder. When they saw us crafting the Serpentine, they knew the trap was being set.” He rapped his fingers against one of the barrels of gunpowder, then pulled the stopping cork from its side.

  Golden sand poured out from the barrel into his upturned palm, “Only the gunpowder never made it to our weapons stockpile, or to our reactor. It was placed instead at the Achilles heel of the walking city. That explosion was enough to break what was left of the huddled peoples’ will to survive.”

  “What about the Thakka Cluster?” I demanded, eyes transfixed on the harmless sand spilling through his fingertips onto the tiled floor, “The sending away of my tribe?”

  “Eventually the Plexis and the Thakka Cluster would have attempted to vie for supremacy over the region. You were, after all, the only two fighting forces to speak of outside of wandering bandits and the non-native spider city. But neither of you could save the region the way I needed. There was nothing inherently dangerous about the Plexis tribe, so I sent them on their way - after they helped me in taking care of the city. As for the Thakka Cluster, they’re animals. I can train them.”

  “Saved the region?” I asked incredulously. Euclid clucked his tongue,

  “Ah, you probably think I’m doing this for personal gain, but I’m not. And your brother would never have done something like this unless he understood that the future of humanity was at stake. He knew you’d see reason as well, eventually. He knows you. Do what you will now, but you will eventually see things our way.”

  The door slid open. Crassus, as timid as I had ever seen him, walked in. His eyes were on the floor. And he was holding a gun.

  “Crassus,” I said, enraged. Spittle was flying from my lips and I took a single step forward and stared down at him, “Was it worth it? Was it worth betraying your family? After everything I’ve done for you. I’ve protected you, raised you, taught you everything I learned. Why? What is your goal?”

  “What was your goal?” Euclid said, a note of shock entering his voice, “You were given the most incredible advantage imaginable, a city that makes everything its citizens could possibly need. What were you going to do with it? Sit inside and wait to die? This is bigger than us, bigger than any single tribe could possibly be. This windfall requires a grand vision. You won’t like to hear this, but you were destined to become like the citizens of the spider city. Parts of the machine rather than masters of it. They had more in common with you than you realize. They had inherited a wondrous item from another time, and yet they used it to further their own short sighted appetites. Now that arsenal will be put to proper use. Repairs could take years, and it will take at least that much time to build up a force with a back broad enough to build a nation on. But empires must be built. Humanity must be allowed the opportunity to emerge from the wild untamed land. The land should cower before the might of mankind, not the other way around. And so must we betray your little sedentary tribe.”

  “I’m sorry, Ebon,” Crassus said, his eyes never leaving the tiled floor, “You have no idea how much I agonized over this, but the logic was unavoidable. It became the only thing to make sense. In time I know you'll see the reason for it. And you’ll forgive me. If you don’t join us, you’ll be kept comfortable until you change your mind. I promise you that. We’re brothers.”

  “No,” I said, dropping my rifle and staring him dead in the eyes, “We’re not.”

  “What?” he said. There was a deep fear in him, one that had never been acknowledged between us. I watched the pillar at the core of his spirit shake slowly with his head. There was a look in him, one begging me not to say any more. It was the desperate look of fear only family could recognize. And me.

  I told him.

  “We’re not brothers. I found you when we were very young. You were hugging a dead ripper dog. You have no family. You’re alone.”

  It was a pregnant, tense silence that followed - that rare silence where you swear time might stop forever.

  Euclid stood, his hand leaning on the nearest barrel. I could feel him calculating this turn of events, trying to factor it into the vast and flawless equation he had made a home in.

  “You told me there’s nothing more important than family,” Crassus said meekly. His voice had an undercurrent to it, but in that moment I couldn’t identify it, “And I’ll never know what family is.”

  “You do know,” I said, “They’re in the hills now. You sent them away.”

  The equation was playing out, shaking Crassus’ hand and making him nod as it entered his deepest thoughts.

  “No. They’re less family to me than you are,” Crassus finally said raising the pistol and aiming with reddened wet eyes. There was a fire in those eyes. It was a deep fire, eating away at him. The kind of fire that leaves nothing behind, “Cover your ears, brother.”

  I did. And it did nothing to shut out the tremendous thunderclap that filled the room. In a brilliant flash it all shattered. I turned and saw Euclid holding his gut.

  Sputtering, with blood bubbling from between his lips, he shook his head. He was trying to say something, looked almost like he would smile. He grabbed at one of the barrels to steady himself, but it tumbled over, spilling sand beside him. The sand and blood spilled into one another, blending the all too familiar colors of the thirsty land. And with that, Euclid spoke his last words, as his eyes focused in on something we couldn’t see,

  “Will you look at that?”

  Holding his empty hands over his ears, Crassus sank to the floor shivering. The gun had already clattered to the ground. I didn’t hear the sound I expected. It wasn’t metal hitting metal, or Crassus sobbing, I heard the familiar hiss of a door opening. Ignoring the departure from the reality I understood, I rushed over to Crassus and knelt down, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him violently,

  “Crassus!”

  I thought about striking him. Every muscle in my body was constricting, ready to throttle the life out of him. And then he looked up, resigned to the fate he had sealed for himself. The fire that had been eating away at him was now gone, and I saw what was left of him in those eyes.

  When we were young, only a few years after I had found him I had come back to the hovel we had taken residence in. It was an old dusty adobe structure, three full rooms piled up with refuse. But it had a table, chairs, and even two flea-bitten cots. I had told him to stay in, to remain hidden from the skies, in case there was rain. After a long day of hunting without any luck, I finally found my way back to the house. Crassus, in my mind’s eye was no older than nine. It was early spring, in a year when rains would kill and poison most quarry we could find. They were desperate times.

  After leaning my rifle down against the door, I spotted Crassus. He had a small bowl of water next to him, and something else on the table.

  “It’s a turtle,” the child Crassus said in greeting that evening, “A great big one. I found him in the shadow of a great fallen tree.”

  “Well done,” I remember saying, “At least one of us had luck today.”<
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  But when I pulled out my hunting knife to kill the creature, to sustain us for a few more days, I felt Crassus’ small hand on my wrist.

  “Don’t,” he said simply, almost scientifically, “I’ve figured out a way to communicate with it.”

  “Crassus,” I said, ready to dismiss his childish fantasy in the name of our collective survival, “If you don’t eat, mom and dad are going to be mad when they come back and find out I haven’t been taking care of you. You’re skin and bones as it is.” That was another lie in those days. We had never addressed it as he grew older, the fact that we weren’t looking for parents, it simply eroded away over time.

  “Look,” he said dipping two of his fingertips into the small bowl of water, “Turtles can understand what we say. Isn’t that right, Turtle?”

  Before I could protest further, he had taken his fingertips and gently touched them against the turtle’s head. With its gold and black eyes staring out dumbly, it rolled its head backward, letting the water trickle down the scaly landscape of its elongated neck. It looked upward, then back down. To the eyes of a child, it did look much like a nod. I remember hearing Crassus laugh, clapping silently to himself that he could now share his discovery.

  “Ask it any question,” he said, “He’s a traveler looking for his