There was a long pause. I said nothing. Presumably there weren’t enough heep in Provisia to sacrifice at shrines to wipe clean my sins. If the Gods were real, I was in worse trouble than I thought. “De gGds be real. Some o’ dem walk in special bodies an looka almos’ like de people. Some o’ dem go an’ choose to be corp-o-rations. An’ some o’ dem choose to be astral bein’s, like de Dread mon.”
“Some of the corporations are Gods?”
He boomed out a loud and triumphant laugh. “Why not? De people make-a de tribute. De corporations be treated like people, wit’ more power. De corporations never done die.” I thought about this. It had always been kind of a murky question, at least as I understood it, where the boundary was between a complex organization and a living thing. A buddy of mine and I got smashed on Rumble Rum one night and spent hours arguing whether ants or ant hills were the real animal. And it couldn’t be denied that a lot of Provisia’s biggest corporations had names reminiscent of the Gods and Goddesses of the Pantheon, and that they had functions similar to their namesakes.
“You done learna ‘nough now. Go do mission!” He pushed me and I was back in the cone. I could feel it hurtling downwards to some impossible doom.
3
Had they physically launched the cone somehow? There were no windows, but I could feel myself falling, the vessel tumbling end over end. No sirens or alarms were going off, but it felt like something had gone wrong.
This went on for an intolerably long time. Finally, there was a splash as the cone fell into what seemed to be a large body of water. I could feel it bobbing along. Was this going as it was supposed to go? I had been so grateful when that pompous prick had buttoned his yap that I had not thought to clarify a dozen points of the training exercise that I couldn’t begin to understand. Maybe this new ‘no questions’ phase was not all it was cracked up to be.
I finally opened the hatch and found that I was indeed floating on a black, still lake of some sort. It was tough to make much sense of my surroundings. Gray dust was blowing everywhere. I got a bit in my mouth and realized that it was ash. There didn’t seem to be much to do outside of swimming for land, so I could try to find the Goddamned psychic talisman and have an end to this nonsense. I jumped in and blindly swam. The waters were murky and cold, and I started worrying that I was swimming towards nothing and for nothing; that the soggy egonaut suit would get waterlogged and drag me down to a burial in the dead sea of another man’s unconscious. The stings and pangs of panic were getting more frequent for me these days. It was hard to tell if it was my new choice of career or the fact that I was getting older, but either way my nerves were losing their steel.
The water got shallow, and I could see struggling water weeds at the bottom. I reached a gray and trashy beach, and sort of patted what water I could out of my suit. Was the suit projected with me, or was it an illusion? What would happen if I got hurt here? Would there be damage to my body? Could an astral presence be damaged? Were there doctors for that sort of thing? Yes, and why did the Gods create gnats when they’re so incessantly irritating? Indeed. The questions were back with a vengeance.
I saw what looked like some kind of post-modern artistic sculpture sitting incongruously on this ratty and forsaken beach, and I made my way through the stinking and ashy mist to get a closer look. It was at least the size of a small bus. A closer look revealed that it couldn’t really be called a single sculpture. It was shattered, as if someone had dropped it from a height. An early conversation with the Creep came back to me, and I realized at once what it was. This was the jar of his father’s ashes that he had broken as a kid. The incident had taken on grotesque proportions in his psyche. All the gray stuff blowing around wasn’t ash, it was ashes. I was breathing human remains. I thought I would wretch until I remembered that none of this was real. Distant sounds could be heard near the vague edge of the beach, and I made my way towards them.
Beyond a pathetic, rusted nod to the idea of a fence, a carnival was going on. I climbed over the fence and made my way towards it. All carnivals are the same; a migraine of noise and lights reflecting in puddles of popcorn and cotton candy vomit. Soon, any carnival-goer with a tenth of a brain is asking themselves how they came to find themselves in such a place. It was populated with tattooed and dirty post-peasants; men desperate to reassert their masculinity in the midst of a culture of poverty that had stripped it from them, and the unfortunate wives and children of these men. Tattoos, ratty shirts with the sleeves ripped off, trucker hats, denim and flannel.
Next to a carousel, four large boys were taunting a smaller one. “Does uwe wanna wide the mewwy-go-wound?” One of them jeered.
“Howwie’s a lil’ baby!” Another put in, as if the first had not quite conveyed this point.
“I ain’t no baby no how!” The smaller boy retorted savagely. “An’ I could shoot yer best man under the table at that there shootin’ range.”
The boys crowed and hooted. I knew this type; insecure, futureless and hormonal—desperate to ravage those weaker than themselves to keep the shield generators on the derelict motherships of their self-concept functioning for another few seconds. Young Howie had fallen right into their trap. Not knowing what else to do, I decided to follow them for a ways.
It was totally unclear how long I would be stuck here or how I would manage to ever get out. Did time pass the same way in someone else’s unconscious as it did in the physical world? This is the problem with shutting down the part of your brain that wonders about shit. You don’t realize how much it’s covering for you until it’s too late.
The four boys had approached a carnival game called “Shoot Them Mutes.” Howie and his rival plunked a coin each on the counter, and a phlegmatic carnie handed them loaded airsoft rifles. At the sound of a bell, two incredibly racist caricatures of Burial people dropped into view. One was a scrawny yet potbellied man whose wings were struggling to hold him aloft; the other was a grotesquely oversexed and wanton mermaid. It made me remember the Goblin Games all over again, and feel a pang of despair at rural Provisia’s downward slope of bigotry and dumbness.
The two boys were shooting as if they were the last two Provisian patriots in the fort at the Battle of Mutant Mountain. I was not rich growing up, but this is a part of the underclass mindset I will never understand. Why did the post-peasants hate the Burialists? Why did they call them mutants? Did they actually believe this horseshit about them having wings and fishtails? How could they possibly feel threatened by people who desperately scraped out a living on a desolate mountain range or at the bottom of the sea?
Howie had the advantage, as his target had a wingspan that gave him plenty of space to open up with pellets. He was also a better shot, and the carnie did not need to deliberate long to name him the winner. He handed him a cheap and doe-eyed heep stuffed animal.
“You best play with this, boy.” He said, flipping the toy to his rival. “Sure to hurt y’self, since you cain’t handle no weapon.”
“That ain’t fair!” The bigger boy protested. “You had the wings to shoot!”
“Them tiddies ain’t big enough targets for ya? Go cuddle that there heep, son.” The bigger boys were guffawing now, leading Howie away with them. How quickly the tide can turn. The carnie had snuck off to sip a beer somewhere. On an impulse, I picked up one of the guns and shot the double ‘M’ symbol into one of the targets. It was just a hunch, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to start leaving it around. It would be insurance in case I couldn’t find this vague psychic talisman they had told me about.
Wandering around, I realized that I was not truly at a carnival. Space here had a disjointed and ambiguous bent. You could be at a graveyard, a schoolhouse, and a carnival all at the same time, and then go around back to find that there was a hayride that would take you to a boot camp. It was like a dream—or like going on a tour of someone else’s dream. The setting was squishy and surreal and indeterminate, but my mind was completely straight. I longed for anything that would f
uck me up and put me on the same footing as this place.
Everything was morbid, ashy, and colorless. Even the ancients knew that everyone’s perception is a little different, that no two people see colors or even shapes the exact same way. But it was disturbing to see just how different the world looked inside Mission Creep’s mind. Everything was shades of brown and gray—utterly low-rent and joyless. This saddened me, because I had come to think of him as a friend, as someone I could confide in and understand.
The one exception to all this was the Provisian flag, which glowed as if it were electrified and billowed heroically even when the air was still and dead. It was far away and flew from a high flagpole. I knew instantly that this had to be the talisman. The flag alone was in color, and it was the only thing that appeared to be fixed and not built on shifting sand. The flag was the polestar in the firmament of the Creep’s mind.
I let my eyes wander down to the boots of my egonaut suit as I was piecing all this together, and I was disturbed to find myself in a house. The dirty sand had given way to old carpet without my even noticing. A middle-aged woman was sitting on a sofa, kissing a man beside her passionately. A door behind me flew open and a teenage Howie burst in. “Momma! It’s the Provisian Guard! They’re a-comin’ for Jake!”
“Get out back, Howie.” The woman said. “Ima set things right.” He obeyed, running past me and out the opposite door of the tiny shotgun bungalow. At this point, I understood that the figments couldn’t detect my presence. I was a bystander, witnessing big moments and psychic metaphors. Since Howie seemed to be a constant, I guessed that this had to be the man who would become Mission Creep. I saw him crouched by the house’s back window, peering inside. He hadn’t given them enough warning. Two Provisian Guard troopers in body armor and gas masks appeared at the door.
“Jacob Rhymer.” One said. “You’re under arrest for collaborating with Ignoble elements.” Jacob went for his gun but the other trooper drew first and shot him in the shoulder. The woman screamed. They pulled Jake to his feet and cuffed him, but not before they noticed Howie squatting near the bushes. “Freeze!” One of them roared. “Don’t move a muscle, or we’ll start firing!”
Howie obeyed. The troopers pushed Jake out the backdoor. “You attempted to warn this man that we were coming for him, did you not?”
He looked them square in the eye, not at all put off by their commanding tone and masks. “I done did that. Jake and my momma’re gonna get married. My pappie’s dead.”
“What’s your name?”
“Howard J. Bryant.”
“Howard, are you aware that abetting Ignoble fugitives is a federal crime?” He said nothing, but this was the first time that I got the sense that the boy was shaken. Jake was silent. He was grimacing from the bullet wound in his shoulder.
“In cases like these,” the other trooper said, “We can arrest all the parties involved, or we can take the collaborator and pardon the abetting parties if they agree to serve in the Provisian armed forces.”
Looking around, I realized that we were no longer standing on the bedraggled postage stamp that passed for Howie’s back yard. He was running through a jungle, but as I followed him, I soon realized that this battlefield was itself a composite of different raids, wars, and missions. Howie lobbed teargas into a warehouse and drew a tripwire across the door. He was wearing the fatigues of a Provisian infantryman. Seven or eight ragged radicals clutching cloths over their mouths and noses fled the building, tripping and piling at the exit.
An officer pinned a golden pentagram near his pocket. “Incredible work, son. I’ve never seen anyone bust up a Leveler nest that easily. I hope you enjoy your furlough.” We were back in the bungalow, with an older, heavier, and more careworn mother. She hugged Howie distractedly and led him to that same sofa where Jake had been shot. Jake was sitting rigidly on the sofa in a threadbare robe, every inch of skin covered with bandages. “The doctors said we can help him off with the bandages now. It’s done. They say he’ll feel better when he can feel the cool air on his sutures.”
Howie knelt by Jake and started unraveling the bandages, starting at the head. When he stepped aside, his mother gasped and burst into tears. Jake, who had looked about as good as any man in his social strata could hope to look, was a patchwork mess of stitches and scars. “Don’t you be cryin’ for me, Sharon-Lynn.” He said. “I was a-taken in by the glamor of the Ignobles and that-there lost cause. I saw the best an’ oldest families joinin’ up an I aped my betters.” He put his head in his still bandaged hands and wept. “Howie, you best join the Dry Men th’ minute they recruit you! Don’t give it no second thought!”
“I’m not cryin’ for you, Jake. I’m cryin’ for me.” She said. Howie looked away from her and started unwrapping the bandages of his step-father’s hands.
Only now he was wrapping them up again—no, we were back on the battlefield, and he was tying a tourniquet for a wounded comrade. “Quit yer screamin’ an limp after me!” He ordered. I could not for the life of me place where they were fighting, or who they were fighting against. I had been on Think Ink trips less disorienting than this. I imagined it must be a black ops mission during one of the dozens of interventions against Kargivian or Burialist factions in the last twenty years. I was unglued in time and place, a shadow chasing a soldier through anonymous carnage. The canopy of the trees burst into flame above us, and Howie was doused in a bath of napalm.
The glow of the fire gave way to hospital lights overhead, and I watched as military surgeons carefully cut away the scalding embers of Howie’s skin and stretched a replacement over his bones and muscles. He was awake much sooner than my inexpert opinion would have thought possible. I started when I saw a familiar little man standing between the two surgeons. It was the guy who had shot me up with cactus juice when I was on probation. “Howard J. Bryan, you are one tough son-of-a-bitch.”
“I don’t hold with no insults to my momma, who you don’t know. If you want to compl’ment me, do it like a man, an’ if you want t’ give insult git your guard up first.” He was ready to fight before his new skin had adhered to his bones and tendons.
“I meant no offense, Howard. I’m Doctor Chaste. You’ve got the stuff of might in you, and I’ve come to invite you to join the Dry Men.” The clinic and bed were gone in a flash and Howie was marching, dressed up as one of the first Provisian Patriots on the Desert Trek. Someone was wheeling Commodore Cactus in a wheelbarrow behind him. The Dry Men had dressed a small potted cactus up to look like the legendary figure. I saw the Provisian flag high above us again, and I ran for the flag pole before my surroundings shifted and I lost it again. I hastily unwound the knotting of the rope around the knob and started pulling it down. They were already reenacting something else—it looked like the Battle of Mutant Mountain. A young Gilbert Gild emerged from the crowd of onlookers after the battle and pumped Howie’s hand.
“It’s a honor to meet you, Mr. Gild.” He said.
“That performance was tremendous.” Gild pronounced with certainty. “It was very accurate, and I know accurate. There might have been some things wrong, but on the whole it was very accurate.”
“I say thank you.”
“What’s your name?”
“Mission Creep.”
I had the flag in my hands now. “Mission Creep!” Gild exclaimed, turning to a well-proportioned woman by his side. “They know how to name people now!” The woman tittered. “Well, Mission Creep, I breathe easier knowing that men like you are working to defend our great country every day. There are a lot of idiots, well, maybe not idiots, but losers, very dumb people who don’t know how to run the country, who seem to be getting more powerful and doing more to run it than they should.” I checked over my shoulder and saw that they weren’t at a Dry Men event at all, that they were at some sort of military ceremony. I started ripping the flag along the stripes. I was amazed at how easily it tore, as if the stripes had been perforated like tear strips. “Mission Creep, I hope you kn
ow that there are people in this land who appreciate you, and respect what you do, and who are going to fight for you every day. And when the time comes, I hope you’ll fight for me, too. We’re not going to let the Burialists and Levellers level and bury good men like you. We’re going to retake control of this great nation, even if I alone can do it.”
I placed the stripes of the flag on the ground in the double M formation. They glowed so brightly I hid my eyes. There was a jolt as I found myself back in the EgoCone.
4
I had no sooner climbed out of the EgoCone than I was mobbed by Dr. Tower and his mousy, high-clearance level attendants. They patted me on the back and shook my hand. “Phenomenal!” Tower said. “You did it in a single try. Your associate selected the right card, thanks to your influence.” He motioned Mission Creep into the room, and pocket the double M card. “Forrest, you’re a natural egonaut. Your performance surpassed our wildest hopes. We’d like you and Mr. Creep to take these commemorative POGO EgoCones as a sign of your outstanding work during the training.”
We took the cones. They were plastic, but on the whole much more attractive than the real thing. Mine had a glittering, holographic POGO decal beside the hatch, which opened into a replica of the chamber. “We had allocated at least three days for training, but you’ve mastered the techniques so quickly that we’ve received permission to brief you right now.” I didn’t know how to respond. Aside from the one screw-up, the Dry Men seemed to shower me with praise at every turn. It should have felt good after years of being known as an ugly, drug-abusing degenerate, but it left me cold. Tower started leading us into a paneled briefing room. Unlike the rest of the building, which was bathed in natural light from the one-way glass, the briefing room was crypt-dark. We dropped into heavily padded chairs as Dr. Tower set up a projector.
An image of the Presidential Palace appeared on the screen. “Egonaut technology is still only accurate at close range, but our operatives have secretly installed an EgoCone in one of the basement rooms of the palace. While the Dry Men understand that war with Kargivia is inevitable, the time is not ripe. The stages of history are cyclical; this is one of the secrets that we keep. The mission will be to escort Forrest to the EgoCone, send him into the President’s ego, and assure that delaying the war remains consistent with his self-concept.”
Fables of Failure Page 16
