Fables of Failure

by Gregory R. Marshall

  I cut into the duck right away. It was delicious, and I hadn’t had a decent meal in days. I looked down towards the stage. The red curtain reminded me of Commodore Cactus. “May the Gods protect me from ever becoming a legend,” I thought. I looked up and was so startled that I dropped my fork in my food. Three disembodied heads were floating along the side of the theater. No, they weren’t disembodied, they were just wearing dark clothes. After a moment I realized that they were the puppet men, the same ones who had excoriated me and sent me on my penance. They pulled black shrouds over their heads and floated up to the rafters of the stage. The lights grew dim.

  The curtains pulled back on darkness. There was a startling crash of sound and a burst of color. An enormous alien flag filled the entire backdrop. It looked a bit like the Provisian flag, but the colors were wrong, there were too many stripes, and the pentagrams were tilted the wrong way. Many people were walking across the stage and past each other, their heads down. The jarring sound had resolved itself into frenetic music. It seemed that this was meant to be a busy street.

  I studied the people on the stage. No, they weren’t people, just realistic puppets. The proportion and detailing were perfect, but the arc and coast of their movements revealed them to be marionettes. I glanced up towards the rafters. They were puppets being controlled by puppets. Though there were no visible strings, the puppet men were twiddling their fingers, manipulating everyone on stage. “Centuries ago, Provisia did not exist.” A booming, Godlike voice was intoning the narrative. “Its precursor did exist: Previsia, or as its inhabitants called it, ‘America.’” The flag backdrop disappeared, replaced by a field of colorful little boxes. I studied the stage puppets more closely, and saw that almost all of them were tapping on their palms. “America was a study in paradoxes. It was a divided country that prided itself on unity. It was an oligarchy that cherished its democratic values. It was a free country that feared self-expression. It was a land where everyone had access to wisdom that now only the mighty enjoy—yet they squandered their power in vapid vanity. It was an information society based on insularity and ignorance.”

  The palm-tappers were now circling a man on a podium. For a moment I thought it was supposed to be President Gild, but then I realized that this was impossible. The central figure was mouthing words, but I couldn’t hear anything. He was gesturing wildly and making little owl eyes with his fingers as he spoke. “These contradictions gave rise to an odd union; the marriage between traditional conservatism and what was then called post-modernism. The lines between fact, fiction, and opinion were erased. Though everyone knew that disaster was imminent, everyone was powerless to prevent it.”

  The screen played a montage of chaotic confluence. Sickness, poverty, and massacres filled the screen, as tides of fury led to protests, riots, and crackdowns. The central character who looked so much like Gild threw a temper tantrum and faded raving into darkness, replaced by others like him. Everything was a boiling pot of rage, and finally it overflowed to consume other nations. I could see ancient bombers and tanks that reminded me of the techno-biological dinosaurs from my trip to the Time Zone. The empty stage became a hellscape of destruction. Mushroom clouds filled the backdrop screen, smoke billowed out, cascading like waterfalls off the edges to dissipate as it reached the audience. “Each new crisis, when it comes, is unimaginable to those who eventually have to face it. The war pulled every nation on the planet into conflict…in those days, there were almost two hundred of them. Nightmarish weapons were loosed upon the world. Geoengineering methods and psychological warfare were used alongside bombs, soldiers, and drones in a fight to conquer a changing physical and psychological landscape.”

  On the stage, a complex moving set was used to demonstrate this chaos. Mountains crashed into each other. The sky cycled through a series of unnatural colors. Soldiers and machines fought and destroyed each other. “When it was over, desperation and trauma had deleted the memory of the old nations. The elites were free to emerge from their bunkers and begin anew. But they had realized that if a ruling class was going to survive, it had to make peace with the fact that empires were not eternal, that they were merely vehicles to be driven until they broke down. Though they had always survived in the past by inducing patriotic fevers, they now realized that no nation was immortal. The rulers were determined to learn from the past’s fables of failure.”

  The elite puppets returned from their bunkers, now dressed in colonial garb as Provisia’s founding fathers. “The ruins gave rise to the kingdom of Provisia, so named because like all empires, this one could only be provisional. The empire would die someday, but transhuman technologies allowed the politicians and industrialists to transcend mortality and become our Gods and Goddesses. Nanomachines, augmented reality, and quantum computing brought them divine power through the lost Mysteries of the ancient Internet. They established the Knights Tempus to protect the ruling class through the ages and to keep their secrets.”

  The stage emptied of the players, replaced by a levitating pyramid with an eye at its center. “The Knights Tempus studied the ancients. They learned how paranoia could be weaponized and how conspiracy theory could protect the powerful. Anxiety and prejudice inverted the world; it transformed the marginalized into the beneficiaries of a monstrous globalist plot. Ethnic minorities were treated as we treat nonhuman races. Religious bigotry replaced compassionate faith. Every act of violence became a false flag event.

  “The ‘Illuminati’ deflected criticism from real power. Illumination—enlightenment—became something to be avoided, ushering in a voluntary dark age. The concept of ‘predictive programming’ nullified the subversive power of literature and film. No artist could be prescient or insightful, only in on the plans of the cabal. The Knights Tempus needed to instill these American fears in the coming generations of Provisians. The pyramid and eye vanished, replaced by a spotlight. “Today, we witness the next phase of this enterprise. Forrest Cromwell: approach the stage.”

  5

  I smiled and put down my fork. It would be unfair to expect my journey into the abyss to be all dinner theater. I put my hands in the pockets of my robe and strolled confidently down the stairs of the private balcony, taking my time walking down the aisle towards the stage. A spotlight followed me until I climbed up and stood in the circle of light facing the small audience.

  Dr. Tower stood just in front of the stage, looking up at me. “You’ve just seen a truth reserved for the chosen. What do you think?” He was stage talking, projecting his voice out to the audience. I followed suit.

  “Interesting, though there are still parts of it I guess I don’t understand.”

  “We’re going to go ahead and try to clear that up for you right now.” His foot stepped on a pedal, and my arms shot straight out at my sides. I tried to lower them, but they were immobile. The metallic cuffs on the sleeves of my robe must have been magnetized.

  The other members of the audience got to their feet, standing solemnly behind Dr. Tower. When I looked up, I could see that the puppet men in their black shrouds were drifting down towards the stage. They were joined by others—bag men, like Reverend Burstin’s old suit. “I’m guessing that you were confused that Provisian Dawn mentioned the Knights Tempus, but not the Dry Men. Is that correct?”

  There were a lot of things that confused me about the play, but that was as good a start as any. “Sure.”

  “You disappoint me, Forrest. You used to be a writer. Can you not tell that everything we do for Provisia is a matter of stagecraft? And that a good staged production is nothing without conflict?” He climbed onto the stage and produced a pirate sword and a shield from a bin of props. From the way the sword gleamed, I suspected that it was not made of plastic.

  “Seems to me that there’s been enough conflict to go around in Provisia of late.”

  “How old were you at the start of the Schism? Twelve? Thirteen? Did you think that the Schism was real and everything else was fake?”

  “M
y fight with the Ignobles yesterday was real enough.”

  Tower held up the shield, showing me the Dry Men insignia emblazoned on its surface. He tapped the wyg tree between the compass and the pentagram with the tip of his sword. “How well do you know our iconography? Do you know why our insignia carries a wyg tree?” I was getting sick of being pompously interrogated, and I declined to answer. “The Schism was planned and rehearsed a century ago at a secret meeting referred to as ‘the cutting of the wyg.’ That was when the Knights Tempus agreed that they would eventually divide into the Ignobles and the Dry Men, so that our production would have the necessary conflict.”

  “So all the Ignobles can just peel their scars off?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. The rank and file of the Ignobles really did receive the mandatory disfigurement. Only those at the top were spared. And at the top, the Dry Men and the Ignobles know of the plan to reunify into the Knights Tempus.”

  “Is this the reward you promised, Tower? To be lectured on a stage?”

  “Not at all, Mr. Cromwell. You are to receive a unique honor in Provisia’s history. The first cutting of the wyg marked the division of the Knights Tempus, and the second cutting of the wyg marks its reunification. The Schism can be healed now, with your help. The war with Kargivia can be delayed no longer, and this war will provide the masses with all the conflict that they need.”

  “Why start a war when we just prevented one?”

  “A new war is inevitable. We planned it that way. We worked to mold Kargivia and their allies the Burialists into the perfect ‘Other,’ a total enemy. They are every separatist, illegal immigrant, terrorist, communist, and subversive element rolled into one. Outrage will fire upwards if it does not fire outwards, so we will give it an appropriate target now that we are ready. The Kargivians have their purpose, and so do you. You have always had a special place in our plan. You are a Retrotype. Just like Selectman West. Just like the Dark Messiahs and Gild, and even Mission Creep and Crystal Crowne. You are an echo of what worked in days past. You were born to serve a purpose—to be a voice in the wilderness until we could make you a lightning rod for paranoia and lies.”

  “And you have to kill me to do this? Can’t you just chop down a wyg tree?”

  “Forrest, you are the wyg tree. Who do you think created the sexually transmitted enchantment to give you your bark? Who infected Ms. Deadwood with it? Who surgically smoothed down her bark, and directed her into your circle? Why, it was Dr. Chaste, the same man who lost his medical license for performing an illegal cosmetic surgery to mask a contagion, the same man that you killed during your penance. The only man who could ever hope to cure you, to give you a semblance of a normal life.

  “You did not fail us by refusing to kill Ms. Deadwood. In fact, you passed our test by using violence to protect a mate, just as a real wyg tree does.” He put his arm on my shoulder. “We had to make you into a tree of knowledge before we could cut you down.”

  “Tree of Knowledge?” I scoffed. “I don’t know anything. I don’t know why you bothered with all this. I don’t know why you went to all this trouble. Seems to me that there’s easier ways to control people. You’ve got the weapons, right? You have the government and the big businesses. You have the black markets—the snuff films and that adrenochrome shit. Why do you rule this way? It’s so complicated.”

  Dr. Tower shook his head. “Adrenochrome isn’t real. Or—it is, but not in the way we want people to think. It’s not some vampire supplement to keep people young. Why would we need that when we can make our chosen into Gods? That ship you fed to Eye-Jaw-Kull was empty. We don’t want to control the supply line of some obscure chemical compound. It’s just an urban legend that we protect and cultivate, a bogus blood libel to fixate the minds of the masses and deflect criticism. Many of our projects are like that. We scare people with the specters cast by our shadow puppets. We’ve turned the whole planet into an incubator for conspiracy theories. A confused and frightened mind is one that we control.”

  “But why? That doesn’t—”

  “Why? Because we possess the lessons of the past. Bad conspiracy theories build pseudo-worlds, fake cosmologies that lead to an enslavement of the mind itself. So we baked them into our design. The true masters are safe—they project their consciousness into hollow vessels like the puppet men or the bag men and give us our marching orders. They are insulated from criticism. And the real rebels—people like the Levellers or the Panarchists, honest investigative journalists—are viewed as pawns of the insidious cabal.”

  These bastards had fertilized every hateful idea in the world like carnivorous lichen farmers. I was nothing but a sacrificial heep to them, a wyg tree to be cut down in some patriotic circle jerk. Mission Creep had not known all of this, but he had tried to warn me of what he did know. He had that much honor, at least. But I knew the score. They had me beat.

  I looked Dr. Tower in the eye. “Who am I to question the masters? No doubt you made the right choice. Timber, Doc.”

  He raised his sword, and cut straight through my right collarbone and down towards my heart. I could feel the blood flow up in my throat, and I choked as I tried to scream. My head dropped, my whole body hanging limp from the magnetized shackles. An alarm sounded overhead.

  “Fellow Master Dry Men!” An announcement spoke over the alarm. “The Water Purification Patriot Protocol has been breached! Damage control is necessary immediately! All Master Dry Men must return to home Lodges!”

  Dr. Tower jumped from the stage and stepped on the pedal. I collapsed. “Don’t worry, brothers!” He said, though his voice sounded shaky. “The wyg has been cut. Reunification can commence, and we can resolve this new challenge. He’s dead. Take him to the tomb. We have other problems to deal with now.”

  I was carried between three or four men. I couldn’t see anything—my body had been so badly damaged by the sword slash that I had been driven into a vegetative state. I was only conscious of sounds and voices, and the horrible blade still wedged in my body. I heard something roll aside and I was tossed into a tomb and locked within.

  6

  I was in the dark for at least an hour, submerged in a healing sleep. The hubris of the Dry Men, or Knights Tempus, or whoever the hell they were, was overwhelming. They had invested so much in the power of symbols, they had done so much to make me into a tree. But who brings down a tree with a single chop? I might not be able to shoot vines out of my fingers like I could in the ego realm, but I had grown to be more and more like a tree the older I got. Trees are tough, trees are rooted in the earth, and trees are hard to cut down.

  When I had gathered enough strength, I pulled the sword from my collarbone, gasping with pain. I could hear blood and sap splatter on the floor. I couldn’t see anything in the darkness of the tomb, but after twenty minutes of feeling around I stumbled on a lever that rolled aside the stone that guarded the opening. Best thing about being put in a tomb—no one worries that you might escape. They probably installed the lever after some drunken Dry Men locked themselves inside for a weekend.

  Now there was enough light to see what I was doing. I pulled off the stupid robe and threw it aside. I transferred the disguise ring from my shirt to my pants pocket, and pulled off my shirt. What a thing to become an expert in makeshift bandages in a few days. I tied the shirt across my bare chest, doing what I could to limit the flow of blood and sap pouring out of my wound. The collarbone seemed to be mending, my right arm mostly functional.

  I smiled, thinking that I must look like a Previsian (American?) caveman. I took the sword in hand and raced for the exit. The tomb was at the end of turning corridor that branched out from the central lobby of the Grand Lodge. Two Dry Men were in my way. The others must have left these guys to hold down the fort. I clobbered one in the face with the handle of the sword, sending him flying into a display of ceremonial Dry Men cufflinks. The other was screaming for help. I slashed him in the thigh, kicking him in the head as he dropped. I was in no mood for kil
ling. It was time to get out of the Lodge and then out of dodge.

  The sword jammed nicely into the handles of the front door. They couldn’t follow me out this way. Outside, I saw that no one had moved my POGO craft. I jumped in and fired it up, roaring into flight. I felt so good that the agony in my collarbone was barely noticeable, the pain like one broken instrument in an orchestra of happiness and victory. Cruising through the atmosphere, I wondered where I could go. This was not the world of the ancients. There were only three countries, not almost two hundred, and I wouldn’t be safe anywhere. It looked like I was a fugitive in this new chapter of my life.

  It was time to go back to writing. Not everyone would believe the story I had to tell, but the truth deserves a hearing. Setting this all down on paper would also give me some leverage, a way to threaten my enemies and keep them at bay. “Stay back, or it gets published. I don’t have the only copy. If anything happens to me, I doubt you’ll like the result.”

  But I had to give up on these fantasies of future confrontations to face the ones in the present. I had three enemy craft on my tail. In my haste to escape I hadn’t tried to locate the tracker on my craft. It didn’t matter. They wanted me, and they would have scanned every blip in Provisian airspace to find me if that’s what it took.

  I dropped lower, slowed, and zipped under them, but it didn’t come close to shaking them. Another bad miscalculation. I could not depend on my skills. I was just a guy that occasionally flew in a craft, and my pursuers were probably hotshot pilots. A jet of red light sizzled over my canopy. Frantically scanning the controls, I didn’t know if my craft was armed, or exactly how to fire if it was. It looked like my dangerous little book was not going to be written after all.