Authors: John Koetsier
I heard his voice around the corner.
“Geno, Geno, Geno … I saw your battle against Rast. At least, until you killed him. He had a little video transmitter, you see. Do you really think you’ll succeed where he failed? Your body is three generations out of date, and I’m five times faster, stronger.”
I loosed a bolt right at the corner where I thought he was, hoping the savage weapon would chew through the wall and hit him too, but his laughter proved me wrong. Then he appeared, and his movements were like lightning. He didn’t walk, he flowed. But he flowed like light would flow, if it was liquid, and if it was confined to some sizable fraction of its usual speed. My bolts flew behind, beside him … anywhere but where his body was. It was not as if he was faster than light, but he was faster at moving his entire body than I was at redirecting and aiming my weapon.
I was failing, just like Rast had.
So I changed tactics. Ancient scientist Einstein’s rule: repeating similar actions expecting different results is insanity.
Instead of firing at Hermes, I fired away from him. If he was left, I fired right, or above, or below. At first I missed wildly, and Hermes’s laughter, rich and full despite his exertions, echoed in the room. Then I got lucky.
Hermes jumped, tucked, rolled, just twenty feet away now. A laser blast aimed at nothing in particular milliseconds before his movement reached out. I could almost see the progression of photons racing towards his form. The red line intercepted Hermes, intersecting the crazed geometry of his twisting body near the end of one wildly gyrating leg.
There was a mini pink explosion as super-heated water in the blood and other liquids in the cells of his foot expanded too rapidly to be contained by the fragile barrier of his skin. And Hermes lost a foot from the ankle down.
He swore, slumped. Lay on the ground. Suspicious, I kept the rifle trained on his body. He started to laugh regretfully, wildly, angrily.
“You utter fool, Geno. You complete and total idiot,” he said viciously. “Your plans would have ruined our City, ruined our lives. All I ever wanted to to keep things as they were, and to keep our way of life — and indeed our lives themselves — safe. I guess now you will—”
I never found out what he was going to say as mid-sentence his body convulsed, leaped off the ground. My hasty shot sprayed the metal floor where his body had been just a millisecond ago while Hermes landed like a cat just ten feet away on one foot and two hands, continuing in a roll to my feet that became a leaping tackle under my rifle, lifting me off the ground, and slamming me down to the deck with a one-footed Hermes on top, hammering at my head and neck and chest.
I fought as best I could, warding off blows, pulling Hermes into my guard, remembering hours of groundwork, endless jiu-jitsu lessons. But nothing sufficed; he was simply too strong. If not five times my strength as he had boasted, he was easily twice. And I was taking damage — too much damage.
Hermes paused the savage beating, staggered to his foot, balanced. Bent down and pulled me up too.
“Stand up!” he yelled hoarsely.
Looking at him through the blood that dripped from my forehead and obscured my vision, I had to give him credit. One functioning leg, fighting against a trained and veteran warrior. He had done well. I slumped against him, in pain, confused, beaten.
I looked up at his face, triumphant, exulting. Cast my eyes down again. Drew a deep, staccato breath.
“At least tell me, Hermes, what you had us doing through time and space,” I asked. “Not all of it was fighting or finding your enemies.”
He looked at me, laughed.
“Some of it was creating the future that would lead to more power for our city, Geno,” he answered. “You might remember that was why I supported creating the machine in the first place, if the pieces of your brain ever find each other again. Others were … more complicated.”
He laughed, sure of himself. Unwilling to explain himself further. But I saw him now. Saw through him.
“You want more power for our city, I can see that,” I said, shaking my head. “But more than that you want more power for you. This has never been about safety. This is about you owning everything, controlling everything, deciding everything, like the old-style tyrants we got rid of.”
Hermes laughed again, and shook me like a lion with a lamb despite his missing foot, despite the pain.
“Enough,” he said, triumphantly. “Now it’s time. Finally, I can do what I have wanted to do for years. But first, tell me ... how does it feel, Geno, to be used to undo all that you wanted to accomplish, to kill those you loved, to destroy your own dream with your own fingers … and then to die?”
I half-turned, looked in his eyes, took in his thin cruel smile.
“Everything you’ve worked for is dead,” he said, looking at me almost with pity. “Everything. And the one you love … she will be mine at last. After, I course, I adjust her mind a little.”
“I always knew you wanted her,” I said. “Somehow.”
He straightened, adjusted his grip on my neck. I dropped my head, despairingly. Defeated.
“Any last words? We were friends, of a sort, many years ago. You could almost say I owe you—”
Once again I was destined to never know what he would have said.
This time I had the jump on him. As my head dropped I loosened my muscles, slumping even more, twisting down towards the ground as if I was giving up, and bringing my head down between the arms that held me. Then I uncoiled violently, bringing my right foot around, hitting the cauterized stump of Hermes’ left foot, continuing on like a battering ram with all my remaining power behind it and driving through his one remaining good leg, knocking him off balance.
As he fell, his arms and grip tightened, and rather than fighting it I went with it, added to it, and as he pulled my head and neck towards him in a useless attempt to stay standing, I leaped up, elevating my lower body and legs, falling and crashing down on him like a piledriver missile with a staggering head butt, forehead to face just as his head impacted the steel floor, all my body weight behind it from a full six feet of height.
We both blacked out.
Seconds later when I came to, dazed and now even bloodier, Hermes was still under me. I struggled to rise, and he started moving. I was fuzzy, muddled. My brain seemed to not be working properly, or at any reasonable speed. My arms and legs were not doing what I wanted them to do.
Hermes twisted away, and crawled, then hopped out of my tiny, reddened field of vision. I squeegeed clotting blood out of my eyes and shook my head, willing myself to rise and failing. Some part of me said concussion, and I stayed there, shaking, on my knees.
“Appropriate! Finally, you assume the position,” Hermes voice cut through some of the fog. I raised my head slowly, creaking like a rusty hinge, to see the godling sitting, holding my laser rifle in his hands, muzzle pointed straight at my head. I gazed down the barrel, saw black pitted death there, and sank to my haunches, still on my knees.
A look of pure hate filled his face and his fingers tightened on the weapon. But injured, sore, still dazed and bloody, I smiled, then laughed. It was suddenly so clear.
“Hermes, Hermes, Hermes. The psychologist on our team. To be so obsessed, so filled with hatred, so focused on me. You don’t see how you, the ‘god,’ are actually being controlled by me?”
“Physician, heal thyself.”
I laughed again, quieter, just sad this time. Hermes’ face spasmed, then he got himself under control.
“We’ll see about that, when you’re dead,” he said, softly, dangerously, almost sadly. “Or, I suppose I should say, I’ll see.”
His finger was white on the trigger. He squeezed a little more.
“Goodbye, Geno. A very, very, very
good
bye.”
And his head exploded as a thick red beam slid right through his cranium and into the wall behind. His body fell down, decapitated, and his weapon discharged uselessly into the ceiling. Hermes’ one remaining foot twitched twice, then was still.
Disbelieving, I turned slowly. There, in the doorway, I dimly saw Livia, dropping a pulse rifle to the floor, running to my side, calling my name, cradling my head in her arms, and lowering me to the floor. I smiled at her as if from a great distance.
“You … saved me,” I said with broken smile.
“We saved each other,” she said. “Now we can begin again.”
She half-carried, half-dragged me through the halls to the transport room, over to our mound of equipment in the center of the room. Propped me up against a crate, and ran around the room, gathering up last little bits and pieces, dumping them on the pile. Checked her chrono, gasped, and ran to my side.
“Thirty seconds,” she said. “Are you sure that no-one will be able to follow us?”
“No-one,” I answered. “Ten seconds after we leave the virus starts eating. Five minutes later your AM grenade detonates. There’ll be nothing left for anyone to find.”
An almost subsonic humming noise began. The transfer started.
I reached up and pulled Livia down next to me, and kissed her through time and space unending.
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
- John Milton, Paradise Lost
Do two broken people equal
a single whole person? Can torn fragments of identity, shredded by betrayal and molded by malignant design, be remade?
I had no clue. But I knew I had a home to build, and a life.
I picked up another board, and bent to nail the wide plank onto the logs that formed our floor joists. Only about seven more to go, and the first and only floor of our new house would be complete. For now, the roof was scraps of canvas held aloft by makeshift poles stayed by guy wires.
I stood up, walked over to what would become a deck. Where we planned to put a few chairs outside, and sit on an evening when all the work was done and the moonlight was shimmering on the waves, and our love was blossoming.
I raised my head and looked out.
The sky was clear and blue, not a cloud to be seen, but it was out-blued by the ridiculously cerulean ocean. Waves rolled in from thousands of klicks over the horizon, recklessly spending their power on a reef some hundreds of yards out from shore, then gently sliding up onto the beach, just thirty feet down from our homesite. Schools of small fish trawled back and forth, seeking food in the clear calm waters, while white shores with powdery soft sand we had already sampled beckoned. The warm air was filled with scent and sound: the salty tang of ocean, the rich and complex flavors of tropical flower and forest, the soothing roll of surf, and the happy singing of colorful birds.
But all this beauty paled before the one I loved, walking up the beach, returning with wild fruits from the jungle. Highlights in her dark hair caught glints of light off the waves, and her limbs glowed golden in the gentle, rich sunlight of the evening equatorial sun. Her body moved under the simple white sarong she had fashioned on our second day here, and her smile lit the coming night with promise.
My wife, Livia. I tasted the words again on my tongue, and smiled. It had been a week.
We were on a deserted but not desert island, somewhere in the Tahitian islands, circa mid 1900s. Far enough from civilization to be free from awkward questions, at least for some time, and close enough to be able to seek supplies and diversion when needed. Theoretically, we had everything we needed to survive, but the hours before departure had been frantic and chaotic. Safe was indeed better than sorry, which is why we had not jumped to prehistoric times, which might have fewer people and fewer questions, but would also no safety net.
I stepped down the still-rude steps we had cut into the gentle slope, thinking of the stones I planned to set there, kissed Livia as we passed with a smile, and walked out on one of the arms of our bay to get the main course. The baited hooks had indeed attracted some attention, and our supper flashed and glinted in the rapidly darkening waters. I released two smaller specimens, but accepted one large gift from the sea. I gutted and scaled it right there on the rocks, rinsed it in ocean water before walking back to our homesite.
Flames were crackling in the firepit that we had built our very first day here, ringed with volcanic rocks that accepted and radiated the heat of the flames. I laid the fish open on a skillet at the center, and Livia added some oil and spices. The pleasant smell of cooking food filled the air.
“It’s not going to be easy, you know,” Livia said.
“What’s not going to be easy?” I asked, although I had a feeling I already knew what she was about to say.
Livia smiled, rolled the fish around in the skillet and flipped it while I chopped up some of the fruit that she had gathered.
“Our entire lives as slaves to Hermes were about constant violence: missions, fighting, training. Our lives before that as scientists? Dimly remembered, at best. Now we’re starting to build a home together, and a life. But what do we know about normal?”
I grinned, then sobered. It was a valid question.
“Truthfully, I don’t know. I’m not sure.”
I stepped around the fire, picked her up, and bounded up the steps to our home. We sunk to our knees on the bit of floor that would be our bedroom, kissed her passionately. We came up for air, and Livia, grinning, opened her mouth.
“But honey, the fish!”
We laughed, and I kissed her again, and we lay down on the mat that served as our bed, and loved each other.
“Restart, Livia,” I whispered. “Restart.”
We would figure it all out. Somehow. Of that, I was certain.