Authors: Gavin Smith
I was immobilised with very secure-looking manacles. Heavy chains had been driven into the rock. The manacles had been welded tight over my wrists and ankles. I wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. I hoped this wasn’t going to come down to anything as sordid as soiling myself and attempting to hit visitors with projectile vomit.
The tarpaulin was pushed to one side as a worried-looking Pagan and Mudge stepped into the cave. I tried to form a mask of concern and fear.
‘Guys, what’s going on? Where the fuck are we? Who’s that screaming? And why am I chained up?’
‘What’s the last thing you remember, Jakob?’ Pagan asked.
‘The heist.’ I widened my eyes. ‘The Grey Lady … Fuck! What’s going on?!’ I tried to remember what being constantly afraid was like and put it into my voice.
‘You were captured,’ Pagan told me. The look of concern on his face was so pathetic I wanted to spit at him. I saw his empty skin bulge and move. One of the flies that animated his corpse crawled across his face.
‘I don’t …’
‘Remember anything?’ Mudge said, sounding angry.
‘What happened?’
‘You killed a whole lot of the Kiwis including Dog Face,’ Mudge told me.
Shit, only Dog Face. Why had Demiurge made Dog Face look like Rolleston? Perhaps it was something to do with them both using claws.
‘Morag?’ I asked. The anxious, frightened tone I heard in my own voice made me want to vomit. I almost did when I saw the look of sadness on Pagan’s face.
‘I’m sorry, Jakob …’ he said.
I tried to remember what it was like. The pantomime of emotions I should display.
‘No …’ A touch of horror initially, I thought. I mixed it with the denial. It rang false in my own ears, however. I wanted to laugh as I saw blood start to run down the cave wall.
‘Spare us, we’ve already been through this with Rannu. You can start your tasteful ravings about genitalia in Latin now if you want. We’re not letting you go,’ Mudge said.
My expression of mock pain became laughter. Pagan shook his head in pity. This angered me. There was nothing for a broken old man like him to pity here. He was in the presence of an ascended being. I imagined the pair of them broken down to their constituent parts, kept alive by technology, sewn together, linked to a biofeedback device so they could feel each other, forced to sing in agony. I felt myself getting hard.
‘Well, I cannot be killed but my body here can, so either holding me indefinitely or killing me are your only options.’ I focused on Mudge. ‘You’re not going to kill me, Mudge, are you? We were such good friends.’ All mock pleading.
‘You feel nothing at all for Morag?’ Pagan asked.
‘Yes, I do. I’m not a monster. She was a good fuck. I built her up. I was looking forward to tearing her back down, making her less than what she was when I found her. There’s nothing sadder than a vocational victim who thinks they’re actually a person. Don’t believe me? I bet she makes a pretty corpse. You should use her. The closest you were ever going to get with your paternal lechery, old man.’
Pagan flinched like he’d been hit.
‘Oh please. I’m just saying what we’ve all been thinking. It’s so liberating to finally tell the truth. Don’t you think?’
‘You bastard,’ Pagan spat at me. ‘You didn’t build anything. Everything she was she made herself.’
‘I can see why you’d be uncomfortable with me fucking an abused teenager to self-improvement. It’s almost taking advantage of her, isn’t it? Still none of you ever really said anything, did you?’
I was thoroughly enjoying the chance to be so honest. I was also enjoying the look of revulsion on Pagan and Mudge’s faces because I knew inside they were feeling a kernel of doubt, of self-loathing because they were weak. More to the point, they knew I was telling the truth.
I watched Mudge’s skin peel back as he screamed, then the flesh split and opened down to the bone. He looked like a dissected frog.
‘You keep talking like that, and you’re just going to make Jakob feel like twice the arsehole when we get him back,’ Pagan said.
‘Ignore him. He’s just trying to get a reaction,’ Mudge told Pagan. ‘That’s not Jakob; it’s a puppet with Demiurge’s hand up his arse.’
‘I bet you’d love that, wouldn’t you, faggot?’
Amusingly it was Pagan who flinched when he heard the word. Mudge laughed but it was without humour.
‘That the best you can do? Adolescent classroom jibes? I’ve heard it before. It’s an old word, meaningless. It’s pretty much only used by throwbacks now.’
I smiled at the irony of someone like him calling me a throwback.
‘But you’ve heard it before, haven’t you? Hurt, didn’t it? Used at bad times? Poor Mudge, your life’s just one long bit of overcompensation, isn’t it?’
‘Suddenly you’re so insightful.’ Sarcasm, but I knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t happy.
‘How’s your nigger lover?’
‘Another old word? You sound like that arsehole Messer in Crawling Town.’
But he couldn’t hide a flinch when I said it. I didn’t use the word because of the difference in skin tone between Merle and myself but because of the hatred that it engenders. A racist is a fool who underestimates his tribal opponent. Racism is a position of fear, a racist is someone who tries to buoy themself at others’ expense. Hatred and violence are our natural states, our fragment of divinity. Each of us is an island, unconnected, an unending reservoir of hatred against others, and if we’re weak, ourselves. Total, undifferentiated, constant violence against everyone should be our ambition as it is our birthright. Violence is the only self-expression that means anything. Hatred is the only meaningful, truthful emotion. It is all we truly understand. The rest is a facade we erect so we can play in the lie of so-called civilisation. People sell their children for drugs and they call it civilisation. When will we stop lying to ourselves?
‘Really, how is he?’
‘A little less pretty but he enjoyed kicking your arse. Which reminds me. Pagan and I are the only people keeping you alive here. Mother and her people want you dead and Merle wants you dead, so if you want to continue your existence then you may want to try being a little more fucking co-operative.’
I couldn’t help it, I had to laugh.
‘What do you think is happening here?’
‘We want Jakob back,’ Pagan told me earnestly.
‘Does this sound like someone’s met a rogue program in the net and got their neural ware a bit fucked up?’ I demanded.
Pagan shook his head miserably. I watched his skin blacken and burn. It started to melt and run, the flesh beneath it charring.
‘You’re not going to dress this up in outdated religious terms and try to change me back to the frightened fucking mess I was. We haven’t been brainwashed, you deluded old fuck. It was a revelation. Come to fucking terms with the fact that I am Jakob.’
‘You sure you want to narrow your options like that?’ Mudge acting the hard man made me laugh.
‘Or we could get you out,’ Pagan told me.
‘Really? You know how to do that?’ It was written all over their faces that they didn’t have a clue. ‘There is nothing to remove. There is only Jakob. So what are you going to do? Kill me? Keep me here? Let me go? Like any of those?’
No answer, just grim expressions.
‘Or you can join us?’
Mudge started laughing. ‘Are you fucking nuts? I’d rather suck Rolleston’s cock.’
‘Hey, everything’s possible,’ I told them. Though I really couldn’t see it happening. ‘Think about it. All the pain, all the fear is over. Finally you could be part of something that actually matters, building something instead of being disaffected outsiders raging against it all.’
‘Yeah, that’s not going to happen,’ Mudge said. He was hunched over, forced to stoop as muscles contracted so hard they cracked bone, becoming smaller and weaker as he tried to speak to me.
‘So what are you going to do? Kill your old friend? Possibly the only person in the world who can tolerate you for extended periods of time?’
‘You’d kill me in a heartbeat at the moment,’ he replied.
He was right. I was thinking about opening his throat with my teeth if he got close enough.
‘That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Make us kill the body of our friend? Damage the morale a bit more. Get the most out of their Jakob-shaped weapon? Rolleston and friends are really going for the pain now, aren’t they?’
‘It’s just psych ops,’ Pagan said unconvincingly.
‘No, it’s hate by any means necessary, isn’t it?’ Mudge asked me. I chose not to answer him ‘Well, you’ve had your fun but I’ve got some bad news. When the end comes we’ll have a stranger kill you.’
‘See if you can run far enough that you don’t hear the gunshot, old friend.’
Mudge and Pagan turned and left the cave. I waited.
I was staring at the hunched, blue-skinned hag with the tombstone teeth and the long, vicious-looking black claws that reminded me of an angry Rolleston. I’d failed. She was still alive.
‘How?’
‘You hit me dead centre. On the helmet. One round grazed my head, almost killed me.’ Even reborn, her gravelly, broken-glass voice still bothered me.
Demiurge had shown me the Grey Lady. The Grey Lady does not wear a helmet and I had taken a head shot. Still it must have been close.
‘Why did they lie?’ I asked.
‘I think it was a last-ditch attempt to see if there was something left of Jakob.’
I started laughing when she said this.
‘I am Jakob.’
She laughed back at me. It was like nails down a blackboard.
‘I don’t think so.’
I had fought as hard as I could. I even tasted some of Pagan’s blood when I bit into his arm, clean through his subcutaneous armour. I probably did myself more harm than I did to him but it was satisfying to feel his warm blood in my mouth and over my face. They had still managed to get the jack into one of my plugs. Which is of course exactly what I wanted.
It was a new environment. An open airy room in what felt like an old city. The room was high up, looking down a hill at a tangle of ancient streets and alleys, over rooftops and spires. There was a morning breeze but wherever it was supposed to be was obviously a warm country. I heard morning prayer as the sun rose as a burning red ball. I was pretty sure we were in the Middle East somewhere. Or rather we were in a sanctum or some other well-rendered net simulation of a city in the Middle East back on Earth.
Pagan was there in his traditionalist Druidic icon. He looked like a delusional fool in some child’s viz, a romantic, a wishful thinker. Both he and Morag had glyphs of light appearing and disappearing in front of them. It wouldn’t help.
I was sitting on a simple chair at a simple table. There was a glass of water on the table and that was all. Around the table and the chair was a circle of light suspended about six inches off the floor. I’m guessing that this was the containment program.
Idiots. Invading systems was the first trick I learned. I could break through any security. I sent out just a little black tendril of flame. I was going to lock their minds in here. Play with time compression and put them both into a torture loop while I dealt with the others. Then I was going to come back and play with Morag for a while. Until she understood what she was in my presence. The fools had handed themselves to me.
The circle of light flared and stopped the black fire dead. It was my second unpleasant surprise of the day. Black Annis turned back to look at me with a raised eyebrow over the pools of her eyes.
‘Do you think we’re idiots?’ she asked.
‘Well I only have my past experiences to judge you by. The Maoris’ net?’
They said nothing. Where did he get that piece of code? It had to be the aberrations?
‘Still I’m pleased to see you’re alive after we meant so much to each other,’ I told her.
‘That would explain the shooting.’
‘Love hurts, and at the risk of sounding petty you shot me first.’
‘You deserved it.’
‘What, for fucking Fiona? So you mean you’ll shoot me again if I tell you I fucked Josephine?’ I leaned back in the chair and smiled.
Pagan stopped what he was doing. Black Annis looked up at me and unexpectedly smiled.
‘We’re not killing Jakob no matter what stories you make up,’ she told me.
‘I’ll fuck you in the hag form if that’s what you want, but wouldn’t it be better if you’re the sweet little Maiden of Flowers. Don’t pretend you’re not a victim – it doesn’t become you and we both know I’m not lying.’
Pagan looked at Black Annis uncertainly but Black Annis went back to her work, still smiling.
‘She’s better than you, you know? More skilled, more feeling, more impassioned,’ I told her.
‘Should’ve stayed with her then.’ I could hear her teeth grinding together.
‘No, I had to get back here to you. That’s what you wanted to hear, isn’t it? Fear of abandonment. Your sister left; your mother sold you; I left for a quick fuck with some posh bitch. Poor little Morag McGrath.’
Black Annis looked up at me. ‘Do you think you’re the first guy I’ve slept with who’s said bad things to me? Mudge was right: you’re a fucking cliché.’