Wildcard (58 page)

Dartagnan paled and ran for the door. The
door opened, but there was nothing outside.

The crying became a wailing, moved closer.
One voice, screaming. and screaming and screaming. It gradually
became deafening, drowning out all other noise, and any possibility
of speech. It was the noise of something forever alone, begging
mercy for endless years with no one to hear. It told a wordless
story of pain which wouldn’t end.

A nauseating smell, old garbage, eggs, meat,
and feces filled the room. RJ fell, heaving. A wind blew from the
box, taking the senses to pieces. Patches and visions of his past
and different possible pasts arose, each as real as the room.
Trying to navigate the stream of different selves rapidly devolved
into psychosis, and he crawled into the corner, trying to escape
this thing. It invaded his thoughts and made him many people at
once. It pushed mindlessly at him, forcing him into the different
RJ’s he could have been. The reality of madness chilled him and he
could only shake like a child in fear as his mind dissolved in the
streams of separating time.

Escape, he saw a way. He looked a strange
devil in the eye and made a stranger deal. He didn’t fight; he
didn’t cling to sanity. He caught the time wind screaming from the
box, and he rode it away. He left the room and the fear behind.

He was different people, different RJ’s.
Time shredded, past became present, false pasts worked into his
mind. All the many things he could have done, the decisions he had
made, crowded into his mind together.

RJ Sublime stepped back in time.

He stood, leapt up and back, instinctively,
opened his coat, and caught the wind. He sailed back as far into
the past as he could. When he landed, and as he moved forward
again, he had a vision of millions of RJ Sublime’s stepping forward
into their unique futures as he did. They faded away in a few
seconds.

Not all received a clean death or a lucky
future. Some died darkly in a room with another box. Some expired
in gruesome manner in black pockets of wildspace. Some experienced
drawn out aeons of pain or aloneness; there was a stiff price paid
for all those second chances, for all those RJ’s to stroll again
through time, splitting the universe as much as one man ever was
able with the help of an omniscient and insane wounded god.

But the ballad of RJ Sublime was writ large
in many realms. His spirit did well, and often. He became kings,
governors, and statesmen; won lord’s ransoms; fell deeply in love.
None went to the center again. Somewhere, however, they each had a
memory of having been there in their future, a choice they would
not be allowed to make. RJ engaged against Dartagnan many times as
well, instead of working with him. Throwing his luck and his name
against Dartagnan’s processing strength.

RJ Sublime won the chance no one has ever
had. He got to do it all.

The boy Sergeant edged his body against the
menace, but it came from all around. The windows turned grey. The
room became smaller somehow, darker, a dungeon. It smelled like
panic, tasted like a wish to die. It was a prison.

The wind slid from the box, and intensified.
It reached out, knocked him back against the wall. The objects of
the room passed through and disappeared. The wind approached
hurricane velocity. It blew through the walls and kept going, but
more wind came. It scalded, then froze. Hail pelted from nowhere.
Ghosts, lepers, demons, anything from the imagination appeared,
flickered, flew at him, and disappeared.

The wind pinned him to the wall. He curled
semi-fetal to protect himself. It blew at two speeds, a pinning
speed, holding him to the wall, and, like a silhouette around him,
a shredding speed. The wind roared at many thousands of miles per
hour outside the boy Sergeant’s pocket of relative calm. He worked
himself so his remaining left eye looked out, peeking through
fingers of his hand. He covered his right ear with his other hand,
pushed the finger in and mashed it against the wall. His left ear
fell deaf in seconds.

Dartagnan appeared untouched by the wind. He
held an “en garde”, waited, then began, gradually, to fight. His
sword flicked occasionally, then returned to alert readiness after
each stroke.

Something struck the Sergeant violently in
the forehead, leaving a mark and fracturing the bone. He grabbed
out instinctively, lost some skin to the outer wind, and snatched
the object from the air. An eye. He held it in his hand.

Fifteen minutes, the wind stopped cold.
Sound deadened, an anti-noise. The others were having their own
experience, unrelated to his. He looked at the glass eye, and
accepted the enemy’s gift before either of them could change their
mind. It would be no fun, but was the only way to live.

It was a quantum interface. It hit hard,
deep, into the bones, into the cells. The molecules of his body
seemed to turn inside out and explode like jelly. Then, it was in
his mind. He screamed against the pain.

“C’mon. I’m just a kid.” He tried to reason,
useless. He found it, just for a second, the battle calm, an S-1
thing, not his. The brass ring of combat, he had never felt it. It
was pure and real, then gone. It flickered in and out, through the
agony. Hellish pain, then gaps of calm, back and forth with no
control. He knew the calm could come by extreme pain, or fear, or
love. Anything could take you there, if you could ride it in. If
you could immerse into it. He knew theory, now he found reality. He
had no choice but to immerse. The totality of the pain cut off any
retreat. He fought on death ground.

The contrast magnified the pain. If it had
been steady, he would not have suffered from the release and
re-attack. But the calm was the best thing he had ever felt. He had
had sex, General’s orders. But it was nothing like this. Pure
bliss, pure pain.

“I must know what it means to lose what i
love the most.” The line popped into his mind, and the pain
stopped. He brought attention to the space again. He was a soldier.
The chaos offered a thin rope of sanity. The wind blew, but only
150 km/hour approximate. He moved toward the box, and lost track.
He surveyed. Sublime had gone into the corner, lay sobbing, and
stared catatonically. Stress collapse. And something else; he
flickered, not fully there. Dartagnan, sword drawn,
fought…something invisible. The screams rose. The Poet was
unconscious. LuvRay looked crazed, almost frothing with fear and
another feeling the Sergeant could not name.

Thoughts came, so
fragmented. Memory flashed, the old couple, he killed them this
time. He changed, became harder, tougher, like the old Sergeant.
Then he was back in the room, with the chaos, wind, colors, light,
open box, and a baby bed. It was a shrinking prison cell.
Get to the box.

Memory came, as real as anything. He was
with Karl, on the ship. Karl lived, somehow, he saved his friend.
He stopped the quantum ghost. He tried to make that choice, but he
couldn’t see what it was. He watched Karl die a second time.

He was alone with the box again.

The wind had been easy. He could do the
wind. And that dark wildsong bullshit. He could kick that aside. No
problem. That was for amateurs. He could just bounce it, let it be
noise, pop it off plates that he visualized his hands into for
flashes of time. Bend the physical laws. It was easy here. He just
had to use the wound’s own power. The normal laws were already
twisted beyond recognition. He mentally blurred the wildsong away,
constantly changing the particular tactic, as the wound broke each
of his defenses. He grabbed a phrase and held it, rearranged the
letters as a game. It blocked the other wildsong to hold one
piece.

He watched Dartagnan peripherally engage
with his sword. Dartagnan steadily increased his combat velocity,
and the acceleration was accelerating. He increased not in a line,
but in a curve, doubling his speed every 3 or 4 seconds.

The hallucinations, the chaos, the freak
show were basic training, old school. He shunted it at the level of
reflex, let the body do what it knew how. He stayed alert, played
defense without analysis.

But the fractured time stuff was rough. He
kept losing track of the room, kept falling into other situs, which
seemed so real. Maybe they were. No simulator he had worked in had
ever let him train in this. He saw different lives, knew he could
make those choices, but should not. He needed to do something with
this box. He almost blew back in time, had to shake off the
time-wind. He had to be lean for that. He had to slide sideways,
between the rips, slip between the winds. He stepped back towards
the box, one step, when the time pushed him back. Right back into
the room, he faced it. Somehow, he had to close that fucking box.
If he didn’t, no one could.

Never let it get you back
to the old couple. You will stay there if you go there, and this
situation will be lost.
‘A light goes out
in the world.’ The wildsong knifed into his
consciousness.

He was in the center.
Hazel let him stay. Memory built to reality, and he experienced
different lives.
No, get to the
box.
Too many lives at once, more than he
can handle. The boy Sergeant fell to his knees, sobbing.

Wolf-fear.

LuvRay looked up, into the eye of a dark
desert god. The thing he met had never had a home. It came from a
fathomless blankness far beyond the extreme of man’s knowledge. For
the first time, LuvRay could not smell the face of what he met.

wolf-fear
.

He did not know if he wished to protect it,
or to destroy it. He could not leave it alone. He could not speak
at all. His guide was gone. He lost the direction to turn, where to
go. LuvRay was trapped. He howled, not knowing why, unable to stop.
Unable to tell if this beast was part of his pack, returned after
being lost forever, or if it was the worst enemy he could ever
know.

Unable to know if he should ally himself
with that pain, or flee into death.

wolf-fear.

Images flooded his mind - buried alive,
fire, drowning, swept away, pounding, water. He found the desert.
He found the space.

Space.

No, too much space, all
space, NO.
Wolf-fear filled him – falling,
hunted, packless, betrayed, wolf-love – find the pack, find the
pack.

Pregnant woman and Karl, as a pup. But this
box. He howled, and kept howling, howling and howling forever.
Cradle, Karl, but what could he do?

The spirit blew through his mind direct, and
he saw the Sergeant’s horrible task.

He bayed at the pup Sergeant, baying because
he will fail, he cannot save Karl from this horror. Wolf love for
Karl shot through him, wolf-fear for Karl. He must try. He will
fail. Howling, he leapt upon the boy Sergeant…

…who stood as a man and cut his throat with
the Swiss Army knife, lay the body down soft with the other. One
clean stroke, deep, but no muscle. In at the artery, through the
larynx, out the jugular. Surgical and perfect, it was a
mercy-killing. He wanted to spare LuvRay what was about to happen,
so he put him down quick, like a wolf should die.

Goodnight, wolf, we were ever your
friend.

The wildsong hit him, fast.

I mourned you as I arrived, knowing before I
remembered my name, that you would be first to die.

Wildsong - received as thoughts. He
evaluated. He came in cold and blind. For a moment, he knew, took
LuvRay’s life because of what he saw. That was all he knew now. The
chaos took the knowledge. He forgot why he killed LuvRay. Perhaps
there were no words. He could have knocked him unconscious with
little more effort. Why hadn’t he? He wore the boy’s clothes, baggy
pants, red sneakers, tight tank top, happy skulls shirt. He was
choking, and cut it away with the bloody knife. A dog collar,
Caesar sect written on it.

He was beyond any possible tactic, nothing
stayed in his mind. He was buried in wildsong, a mental attack.
Line after line, poem after poem, hundreds of lines at once knifed
into his mind. It became his thoughts, inserted by hypodermic
needles.

The Swiss Army knife, the crib, and the
pregnant woman passed out in the corner, he knew what to do. He
took a step.

What was happening? Where was he?

Hidden is the way into the
wildsong.
Find it in the chaos. Trident
could find it. He cannot. Box, crib, woman lay in the room.
Close the box.
He fought
to the box, and tried to close it. It was impossible. He strained,
focused, tried with the will of an undefeatable soldier who never
had a name. Broken Boy, he remembered, laughed, and pushed. He
brought his mind completely into the task, became the box, and
sought the other solution, the always present impossible odds
second choice. He stabbed at the top, lost in the fury of battling
a foe he could never defeat,
could never
even meet.
The line of poetry knifed into
his mind, driven by the storm, taunting.

Lose your mind, abandon your façade

you are not the soldier who wins each
battle, you are the broken boy

i have named you, now surrender

Trident: “Boss, I got the
big boss.
He’s online.”

“
Le fait, Sergeant,” the General said. “Deplace
Karl sur le Boite.
Je vous command.
Find a way.”

They were gone, leaving behind the hard
knife orders, toughest orders ever. Put a baby and a friend in hell
forever, alone. No. It was still possible to find another solution.
Not alone. If the pregnant mother goes with him? He rejected the
option. Soldiers code, not that way.