Agents of the Demiurge (12 page)

“And he's out there looking for me,” Hess
said.

“Another reason to wipe our memories.”

Instead of answering, Hess got out of the
car. Jerome caught up to him and interjected her emaciated form
between him and the entryway. “What happened last Iteration after I
left? My cheat sheet only says you remained behind for a time.”

Hess shook his head. “Nothing important.”

“A nuclear war happened. I figured that much
out,” Jerome said.

“The people ruined their world. Business as
usual.”

Jerome squinted up at him. “What about you
and Elza? The two of you seemed fine when I last saw you.”

“I understand that you feel a special
connection with all of us because you know so many of our secrets.
But when we look at you, we see a stranger. I'm not going to
confide in you, Jerome. Not now, not ever.”

Drake arrived the next morning, wearing the
body of a tall, skinny white man with an acne problem. He met Hess
and Jerome at a grimy food court nestled between run-down office
buildings and the campus of a fragrant distillery.

Jerome waited at a table wearing a tacky
floral-themed hat so he could identify her. Drake noticed her the
moment he entered, froze in the doorway until someone shoved him
from behind, then moved off to the side. He scanned the room while
chewing his cheek. Finally, Drake approached the table.

“You Jerome?”

She nodded. “Hello, Drake. It's a pleasure to
meet you.”

“Prove you are who you claim.”

“I thought we did that online.”

“Humor me,” he said.

“During Iteration five, you tortured a man
out of curiosity after meeting Erik. During Iteration seventeen,
you became addicted to coca leaves. During Iteration one hundred
and thirty four, you owned a brothel.” Jerome leaned forward.
“Those facts, combined with our previous conversations, should be
more than enough to convince you. If not, you are free to leave
after casting your vote.”

Drake laughed, a harsh throaty grumble.
“Really? You have to ask that with all you know about me? What you
think I'll vote?”

“The Creator wants you to make your own
decision, Drake.”

Hess shifted slightly in his position at a
nearby booth and Drake jumped. “Who is that?” He patted at his
pockets, hastily seeking something. Hess shook his head slowly and
Drake froze.

“That would be Hess,” Jerome said.

“Oh, shit,” Drake said. “Is he still sore
about before? You said he was cool about me coming here.”

Jerome cleared her throat. “Don't do anything
to escalate the situation. Hess only wants to see for himself that
you are not a threat.”

Drake squeezed his eyes shut. “Look, Jerome,
I'm two seconds from getting caught by this crazy Church. You got
to make Hess help me. I know he and Elza figured out some way to
outsmart the people. They'll probably wind up getting rich or
taking over a continent or something. I don't care what they get up
to. Just get them on my side.”

Hess joined their table, sitting with his
left arm draped over the back of his chair so that the upper half
of his half-zipped jacket flared open enough that he could dart a
hand in to retrieve his sidearm if necessary. He stared at Drake,
barely blinking. His voice rumbled from his chest when he spoke.
“If you ever try to hurt us again, I will do things to you that
would shock Erik.”

“It wasn't my idea. I was going along with
the others. Both times. Ingrid and Griff and Erik and Kerzon are
the ones you need to worry about.”

“Shut up.”

Drake's mouth snapped shut.

“I'm not interested in being friends again,
if that word ever even applied to us. You need help because you
can't handle this world. I can give you that help, but there's a
condition. We are extracting Ingrid from the Church headquarters.
You can help us or you can walk now.”

“After casting your vote,” Jerome added.

“You forgive Ingrid but not me? That ain't
fair, man.”

Hess slammed his fist on the table, causing
both Jerome and Drake to jump. He took a calming breath before
letting himself speak. “Ingrid is not forgiven. None of you are.
This is about doing the right thing. Maybe I'm the only one who
cares about right and wrong anymore. Maybe I'm the only one who
ever did.”

Jerome's hand patted his arm awkwardly. “I
care. That's why I kept an eye on you last Iteration. I moved to
live in the same community as you after millennia of avoiding every
other Observer because the internet was full of secret codes from
Elza and you never responded. When you starred on the national news
and the others started to stir, I posed as Ingrid to sabotage their
hunt. I helped you escape. When against all sense you came back, I
opened the sky for you.

“I know you aren't fond of me, Hess, but I
have never been anything other than your friend. When I knew you
needed help, I was there for you. I would have done that for any of
the Observers. That's why I invited Drake into your life – because
now he needs help. And I am going to join you in attacking what is
essentially a military base because Ingrid needs help.”

“You're also trying to end me and the woman I
love.”

“Hess,” Jerome sighed. “Look at the other
Observers. Ingrid lived in misery long before the Church of
Opposition existed. And Mel? No one can deny that death would be a
mercy for Mel. Honestly, Hess, I think you're the only one who
really wants to live. The others deserve a rest. Eternity is too
much for them. Everything that is made must one day be unmade.”

Hess had never moved his eyes from Drake. “Do
you agree to my condition? Or are you leaving?”

“I'll help out with your rescue mission. Just
don't get me caught.”

On the ride back to the warehouse, Drake
voted to die. Hess did his best not to dwell on the numbers. Four
to one so far, with Mel's vote guaranteed to go the wrong way. Two
more votes would constitute a majority in favor of annihilation.
Did Ingrid really want to die? What about Mariana? Who knew what
Erik would vote.

Still preoccupied with his thoughts, Hess
hardly noticed Elza stride up to Drake and break his jaw with a
savage swing of a wrench. By the time he realized what had
happened, Elza had returned to work as if breaking someone's jaw
was nothing out of the ordinary.

Within five minutes, Drake's mild paranoia
was the only remnant of the altercation. Jerome began infusing
blood into their newest member while Hess went to speak with his
woman.

“What was the deal with the wrench?”

“It was the heaviest tool on my workbench at
the time.” Elza barely glanced up as she positioned lumps of metal
inside of an aquarium.

“Ah,” he said. “I guess that makes sense.
Though I'm not sure why you hit him at all.”

“The last time I saw him, he shot me.”

Hess prodded her ribs with a finger. “Then
you should have poked him with something pointy like a screwdriver
or a jackhammer.”

An almost-smile graced her lips. “There's
never a jackhammer on my workbench when I need one.”

“My fault,” Hess said. “I borrowed it to
teach San a lesson after she used a five hundred dollar bottle of
wine to cook my favorite leather jacket.”

Elza spun to face him. “You're joking.”

“Unfortunately. We don't actually
have
a jackhammer, you know.”

“Did she try to cook leather?”

Hess shrugged. “Not that I know of. But who
can say for sure what insanity she has or hasn't done on her own
time?” He pointed at the fish tank. “Are you planning to get pets?
If you remember, the last time we owned fish they didn't live very
long.”

“Nothing is going to live for long in this
tank,” she said. “I'm afraid most of the uranium we've received so
far is depleted. The people of this world have been using it for
armor plating for over a century. That's long enough to make a
sample useless for our purposes.”

Hess stepped closer to her. “So plan B is
killing fish? The Church will never suspect it.”

Elza leaned into him the slightest bit. “Plan
B is improvising. I'm lining the inside of the pipe with Tungsten
Carbide like before, but now I am going to add a layer of Beryllium
around the central uranium mass.”

“I was just about to suggest that.”

“I'm sure you were,” she said. “The uranium
will be surrounded by neutron reflectors and interleaved with
layers of graphene to serve as neutron moderators. I'm also using
more uranium than I planned.”

“The fish will never see it coming.”

Elza pecked a quick kiss on his cheek. “I
submerged my samples to start a minor reaction. I'm going to time
how fast the temperature rises and use that as a rough gauge of
radioactivity.

“We don't have enough time to properly enrich
our uranium. I don't even have time to design an implosion device.
So my grand idea is to build a gun type bomb with the uranium mass
split into three sub-critical masses. It will be a minor miracle if
the thing doesn't go off early and a major miracle if the explosion
rates in the kiloton range.”

“How much time do you have?”

“None right now.” Elza pulled away from him.
“Maybe tonight.”

“I miss you. I miss
us
.”

“Tonight. If you promise not to talk about
things.”

“Sure. Why not?” Hess grimaced. “We always
manage to not talk about important things.”

After a week
spent suspended in the air by his feet, Erik was finally back on
the ground. Unfortunately, the room temperature had been set
uncomfortably low. Cold made the torture less painful, so they
might switch things up soon. But then again, the cold made him
miserable and too weary to fight back against people who were
increasingly uncomfortable being in the same room as him.

Simone didn't seem to mind the temperature
when she arrived. No doubt her burly form was well suited to arctic
environments. “Don't judge me, it's cold.” His voice trembled from
the constant shivering.

When she squinted at him in confusion, Erik
sighed. “Dick joke.”

“I can never understand your fascination with
crudity.”

“Just stupid rules,” he shivered. “Who the
fuck decides one word is good and one word is bad? You people make
those rules. I'm above them.”

She began to pace. “They are moving you to a
new facility tonight. Church members will be able to make a
pilgrimage to the site and torture you for their grievances. My
request to continue our interviews after the move has been denied.
I was told that any further visits with you would require me to pay
a tribute to strike you for fifteen minutes.”

Erik forced a smile. “What, you'll only visit
me when it's free?”

“They are monetizing you. Whoring out the
Church! Our whole religion is built on dignity and we are selling
out.” Simone knocked a tray free of a table, sending scalpels,
pliers, belts, scissors, razors, hammer and nails, and a curling
iron scattering across the floor. “Is this the Creator's plan? To
undermine everything we believe by sending two Agents as
sacrifices?”

Erik stared as the normally staid woman
marched back and forth, hands shaking in rage. “Is that the
Creator's plan? Tell me, Erik. Tell me the truth.”

“The truth is the Creator doesn't care.
Worship. Opposition. None of that matters. The only purpose that
there has ever been is replacing nothing with something. You
pathetic creatures don't have a fucking clue how honored you are
just to exist.”

Simone shook her head. “They're whoring out
the Church. Like there isn't enough money in the coffers already.
Sessions with the two of you are booked out three months in advance
already. People can't wait to punish you for all the wrongs in
their lives.”

Erik cackled. “What do you think Deispite
is?”

“I'm not sure anymore.” She lowered her
voice. “I am starting to wonder if blaming an external force is
counter productive.”

“It's a coping mechanism,” Erik said through
his shivers. “You direct your self hatred outward onto another
target.”

“We don't hate ourselves.”

“Been around hundreds of thousands of years.
Everybody I ever worked on asked to die. They ask to die. Then I
ask my question. Then they die. I don't prompt them. Never even let
them know death is an option. They have to ask. Has to be their own
idea.”

Simone stared at him. “Maybe you're right
about us wanting our own deaths. Maybe. But if so, there's another
part to us. A part that wants to live. Just because you only see
one side of the coin doesn't mean it doesn't have another.”

“Instincts tell you to live. Instincts put
there by the Creator. You people decide between those instincts and
embracing death. And you choose wrong. Every. Fucking. Time.”

“We don't have time to argue about it.”

“So sad.”

“What was the question?”

“You mean
my
question? The one I ask
my victims?” Erik smiled. “Only one way to hear that question,
chica. If things work our for me, I'll be sure to let you know what
it is.”

After a minute of silence, Simone moved
closer to him than she had ever before come. She spoke just above a
whisper. “Could you deliver a message to the Creator for me?”

Erik cocked his head to the side. “You got me
intrigued.”

“Is it possible?”

“I couldn't withhold something from the
Creator even if I wanted.”

“Will the Creator know what I ask
immediately?”

“I make my report after a world ends.”

Simone sighed. “My message is for the Creator
only. I want you to treat it as confidential. Agreed?”

“You got me dying of curiosity, cupcake.”

“I need your assurance.”

“Scout's honor.”