What the universe really needs are truckers! (Heavy Metal Queen)

Ural Terpsichore promised himself that this would be his last bounty the way many an addict promises themselves that this would be their last hit. He meant it, as they always do. He promised Victoria after all, and one shouldn’t break the trust of the woman they love. He had broken enough already. She would know eventually the extent of their marriage he broke, but he hoped he could keep that from happening for as long as possible. Some dreams really do come true.

Jenn Smithers was on the run. It wasn’t her fault, all things considered. She had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It wasn’t her fault that the old maid looked at her the wrong way. Sure, she was robbing the mansion, but it wasn’t her fault that the maid looked like she was probably going to scream “Thief.” She had to shut her up. It wasn’t her fault, she was forced to stab that old bitch in the heart. There was too much money at stake and too many debts to pay off in order to make a better life for herself, damn everyone else.

Luke Marks owned the bar for a good thirty seven years. It was in his family (or, at least the name) since before space travel was common place. He ran a good crew. Larry, the bartender, was personable enough in their attempts at serving beer. Jace, one of the food staff, was capable at making a delicious tray of meatballs, even if she swore like a sailor. It wasn’t a big bar, all things considered (at most, it could probably fit a good seven or ten people at a time), but it was his bar. His crew. His family. And they all made him happy.

Jason Walters was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He didn’t know why. He had a wife who loved him, three kids who were on their way through college, and a job he was quite fond of. And yet, everything around him felt like it was collapsing into dust and nothingness. He wanted to blame some higher power out in the cosmos for this feeling, even though he was quite aware of its absurdity. And yet, the world felt wrong. Something was missing and that something. Was it the way he was looking at that guy earlier, Jason thought. By the end of the night, revelation would come to him.

Mary Masterson understood trauma. She had just escaped from an abusive relationship not five days previously. The escape involved a large amount of violence and a non-zero amount of death. He would always hold her too tightly, like one holds a dog’s leash when it tries to run away. He would smile with his predator teeth showing. He was open about the abuse, but no one cared. He was too big to fail, as they said of many a failed venture. She didn’t want to kill anyone, not even him. She felt like she had no choice in the matter.

Kate and Julie Marsfelder had been married for just shy of a year. They met at a burger joint three blocks away from the bar. Since then, they had traveled the cosmos searching for adventure and excitement. Recently, they had begun work as a pair of con artists looking to make a quick buck at the expense of several corrupt organization. One such organization had a member of its top brass drinking at a bar not too many blocks away from the burger joint they had first met. Cosmic coincidence, Kate would say. Magic, Julie would reply. They’re one and the same, all things considered.

Steven Blake had been working for the Red Tigers for fifty years. It had taken him that long to achieve the status he so rightly deserved. He had killed, maimed, bribed, stolen, and even tortured his way up there. He had ambitions, as many of his ilk do. He wanted to be seen by the world as someone important, someone to be respected. His syndicate would take over all the other ones. He had a plan, a plan that needed focus and understanding. But he didn’t think it needed too much. After all, there was a pair of lovely angels sitting right next to him offering a drink. How could he ever refuse?

Warren Warrens was considering killing himself. Not so much in terms of actually doing it, but rather the philosophical implications of such an act. He was hired by a small press to write a book about suicide and why people killed themselves. There are many examples he could name from the self-immolating war protesters in Vietnam to soldiers sending themselves to war with the express purpose of dying. And then there were the more personal matters, such as depression making it feel like it’s the only option or out of spite towards someone they’ve stopped caring for. Warren wanted to understand why someone would want to do it. Why should I kill myself, he thought to himself.

Ryan Chack was playing a game of solitaire. He has played the game many times in his life, mostly to clear his mind. But that night, he was trying to distract himself. He didn’t want to think about the scream in the garden. The smell he thought he smelt when he went to investigate. The tears dripping from her blood stained face. The way he hid in the bushes so that she would never see him. The scars on her wrists that could never be self-inflicted. The ones that could. He tried not to think about those things like one tries not to think about elephants.

Bill Smith was thinking about her mother, Lauren. She had died when she was a little girl in a rather unfortunate accident. She accidentally landed on a knife thirty seven times, all of them on the heart. Now, a few days later, she was an adult forced to live in a world of confusion and anger. It had taken her no time at all to track down the owner of the knife. She knew what she would do, she told herself. She would avenge her mother, she would kill this woman, this theif, this murderer. And she would be happy once again.

Ural sat next to Jenn with his left hand resting atop a gun. Jenn reached into her pocket for a knife. Luke was the first one to see. Jason tried to stop it from happening. Mary was the one who did. Kate helped carry the body while Julie drove the car. Steven remained unconscious at the bar. Warren called for an ambulance. Ryan went after Mary. Bill collected the reward.

Bill thought the reward would make her happy. She thought, at least justice would be served. She thought that she was going to kill the murderer as they sat in that car. The murderer’s face was broken beyond repair. She was also unconscious. So if Bill were to kill the woman then and there, she could get away with it quite easily. But she didn’t. She just sat in the car as they approached the police station and took the money. But not even 50,000 Woolongs could make her happy. Her mother was still dead. She’d have to find happiness elsewhere.

Ryan approached Mary with some trepidation. She was alone and terrified, especially after what she had done. He tapped her on the shoulder with a seemingly soft touch. She jumped by this touch as if he had hit her. Ryan apologized immediately. He wanted to talk to her. They were neighbors once upon a time, before she escaped. He liked talking to her, as it helped cool him down when he was at his most manic. And she liked talking to him as his cleverness could ground her from her depression and abuse.

Warren did not have any good answers to why he would kill himself. Sure, there were answers to how he would do it. There are millions of ways to kill yourself, after all. But he couldn’t figure out the why. Which makes writing about people who want to kill themselves all the harder. One can’t quite capture another person’s worldview without understanding. He wanted to understand, but try as he might, he just couldn’t. Ah well, he thought to himself, I suppose I’ll just have to wing it and hope for the best.

Steven awoke with a broken nose in a prison cell. Whatever those dirty bitches gave him caused him to black out for more than a day. The bartender threw him out of the bar at closing hour and the pavement broke his nose. The police arrested him shortly afterwards for vagrancy. Such an insult could not go unspoken of. Steven would find those broads, and he would strangle them. Otherwise, he’d be seen as weak within the Red Tigers, and they had a tendency of culling the weak very thoroughly. Before he knew it, the knife slit Steven’s Jugular wide open.

The plan had gone awry. The con Kate and Julie had planned involved drugging Steven Blake and taking his wallet. It was a scheme in-between schemes to keep the ship around, Kate would explain to Julie. Petty theft of the criminal underworld was nothing compared to what they do on a regular basis. The Red Tigers weren’t a priority, all things considered. There was a new gang making itself known. One that needed to be looked out for less they become a serious threat. They called themselves “Lucifer.” Probably because they want to be really edge, Kate assumed. Ultimately, saving a life, even one that ends up dead, was a higher priority than either of these things.

Mary asked Ryan why he was talking to her. Sure, once upon a time, they were neighbors. But they didn’t really talk that much. On the times they did, she found his babbling quite amusing, somewhat uplifting on the worst days. But what of it? He was hiding something, she could tell that much. He didn’t want to say. Did he see her, she wondered. Does he know. What does he want. I saw, he said. I saw what you did. He wasn’t happy while he was talking. This wasn’t a man who wanted to take advantage of her, Mary thought. Then again, neither was the man she killed when they first met. Unlike that man, however, Ryan then said, How can I help? Mary simply requested he come walk her home. It was dark and you never know who could be watching.

When Jason returned home, he told his wife the truth. He liked guys. But he also liked girls. It was while he was driving home that he realized that. Perhaps the shock of the murder he witnessed shook him out of the edge and forced him to see clearly. Or perhaps the sight pushed him over and now he was on the other side. Jason didn’t know. All he knew was the gap in his life had finally been filled by accepting who he was. He cried when he confessed to his wife. They were silent for at least a couple hours. Or rather, it felt that long to them. His wife smiled when she kicked him out of the house and called him a faggot. One would be surprised if she hadn’t scripted this conversation out months ago.

Luke, Larry, and Jace cleaned up the bar. Fights like this happen every now and then at the Lovely Angel. But this was the Smiling Clown. People don’t fight this dirty, this cruelly here, let alone at all. All three of the windows were shattered, two of the stools were broken, and some asshole was sleeping at the bar even after it closed. They drew straws, but they all hoped Jace could toss the bastard out. She was the only one who could lift a guy of his weight on her own. They were lucky in that regard. Though, sadly, the asshole broke his nose on the way to the street. Ah well, not their problem.

Jenn was in jail for ten years before she was released on good behavior. She was good at this sort of thing. After all, all a guard cares is whether or not you can keep your mouth shut when he asks to be serviced. All a board of directors care about is the color of your skin and how well you can act white. Fortunately for Jenn, being white goes a long while in being considered white enough to be let out early, even if she did kill a non-white or two. She was caught stealing from another mansion by a rather young bounty hunter. Oddly enough, this too didn’t make her happy. But then, Bill found happiness a long while ago. She had fallen in love with a truck driving duo named Jill and Jane. They were going to have a kid soon. Scout if it’s a boy, Lauren if it’s a girl.

Ural Terpsichore was dead.

If My Lady Should Discover How I Spent My Holidays…

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Free Chelsea (The Strange Case of Starship Iris)

Commissioned by Aleph Null

"Penguins get scared too."

The question at the heart of this story about various kinds of people (including, but not limited to, queers, refugees, anarchists, and other kinds of Others) living in the outskirts of a fascist regime is simply this: Just who the hell is listening to The Strange Case of Starship Iris? To understand the implications of this, let’s back up a bit. When looking at a work, one must first ask why is it presented in this format? Indeed, as I was listening to the first episode of The Strange Case of Starship Iris, I was unsure why this was being presented as an audio drama rather than in a more visual format. There were times where Violet Liu openly describes to herself what she’s looking at. Some audio drama presenters have this issue. For example, Big Finish routinely has characters describe their surroundings in detail. For example, in the overall excellent The Chimes of Midnight, Charley Pollard announces that she’s going to write her name and then says her name as she’s writing it. There are some, such as Live 34 and …ish, where the audio drama format is used to its advantage, but typically the format is more seen as a cost saving measure. It’s cheaper to have a character describe what’s in front of them rather than create a set or pay an artist to draw it.

But at the end of the episode, the nature of the format within The Strange Case of Starship Iris becomes clear and in a way that few podcasts do. There are some podcasts that come close. One that comes to mind is Alice Isn’t Dead, where the first season finale reveals that we are, in fact, an unknown operative is listening in on the narrator talk on the radio. However, the second season muddies the waters by having us listen in on her as if she’s another voice on the radio as opposed to being us. Equally, the podcast Between the Wires has a series of found footage auto files in a fascist state. However, at the time I was finished listening to it (season 2), there was no indication that the listener was a part of the narrative. Even Welcome to Night Vale, while positioning us as part of the community, isn’t invested in who we are in the story. The Strange Case of Starship Iris, however, very much is.

Because we aren’t outside of the text. We aren’t some impartial listener without an agenda beyond a desire to be entertained by a story about a ragtag group of smugglers, killers, and dreamers. We have an agenda. We have a reason to listen in on these private conversations, these little moments of insecurity and love. We’re the enemy. We’re the baddies. We’re spying on them.

This is made apparent in the end credits of the first episode. Most shows would have an out of universe speaker list off the cast and crew of the show as well as places where the audience can support further production. However, the credits of The Strange Case of Starship Iris are in universe documents of the “Republic” being inspected by intelligence agents, among which we are. The goodies are being listened to… by us. At one point, when the characters realize we are listening to them, one of them directly address us. Not in a metafictional sense, nor even a “stop listening to us” one. Simply an explanation of her motives. But one of the lines she says hits at the core of our role: Either you hear us, or you don’t.

There is a difference between hearing someone and listening to them. To listen is a passive action. The words enter the brain, certainly, but often the meaning can be ignored. Like listening to music on the radio, focusing more on the sounds made than what is said. A sad song with a happy tune can distract people from the inherent sadness of the song. But to hear someone is to understand what they are saying. To know the sheer horror of the system they are scraping by in. A fascist government where making one wrong move, one tiny disagreement, can throw even the innocent into the pit. One that believes action for actions sake is always the right call, even if it means everyone will die with them. Where the first sign of weakness is an opportunity to destroy someone. Where people can frame the innocent just because they didn’t pay their way to the top and were a bit too yellow for their tastes. That sees torture as a good thing and all the studies against it merely anarchist propaganda. Big Brother is Always Listening. But are the people paying attention. Are we hearing.

Which is to say… what do we do with the information provided to us? What do we do with information that tells us the world is broken, cruel, and monstrous. There are two agents who listen in on the conversations along with us: Agents Park and McCabe (no doubt the latter will end up in a relationship with a woman named Miller in the second season). We don’t get much about their lives outside the recordings. They keep their personal lives outside of their work lives. Indeed, we don’t even learn McCabe’s pronouns until the final episode when they make a decision to rebel against the Regime.

Though what’s interesting is how they come about their decision. Park, for example, is a loyal member of the Regime until it’s suspected that he’s the mole leaking info out to the Regime’s enemies. He’s not, but that doesn’t matter to the Regime. In the end, Park rebels because he realized that the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party was going to eat his face. (Luckily, he only lost an eye. Other people have lost so much more than that.) McCabe, meanwhile, was ultimately press ganged into rebelling against the Regime due to being blamed for things they were not as liable to as the Regime wants people to think. These are not, in short, people who rebelled for reasons outside of their own self-interest.

That isn’t to say they aren’t sympathetic. There are, after all, ways in which they could have responded to the fascist system eating their face that aren’t rebellious in nature. After all, once the Regime realized that Park wasn’t the mole, they immediately let him resume his job within their organization as if nothing had happened. One could argue they would have done the same had they killed the goodies in a very public manner. But they chose to rebel… because they heard. They heard the various little moments of life being lived. The big moments of horror and implication. They paid attention to the story of the sole survivor of Starship Iris, Violet Liu. And like her, they rebelled.

What then do we do about information such as this, when we hear it for ourselves. The story ends with a shift in our role. From the baddies who listen in on the people just trying to live their lives in a cruel, uncaring universe to people. Any type of people really, be they straight, alien, poor, queer, black, man, woman, child, nonbinary, what have you. After all, anyone can hear a rumor out.

She may be in the here and now, but it’s the ghost he sees. (Ganymede Elegy)

Jane Morrison would spend her nights swimming in the river. On some nights, the moon would glisten like satin on her naked form as if she was one with the water. Her green eyes were globes of wonder and alien beauty. They felt at home in this ocean of angel fish and lost dreams.

Jane had a long history with the river. At five, she kissed her first boy. At thirteen, her first girl. Her mother would take Jane to the river every summer to skip stones, fish, and just watch the industrial world around it. It wasn’t like the rivers on Mars or even the historical Earth. Those were outgrowths of nature whereas this river was more man made than anything else. The satellite of Ganymede was founded twenty five years before Jane was born. Initially, the world was an endless sea. Or, at least as endless as any world can be. When man entered the frame, they made settlements over the ocean world. Some were more traditional cityscapes while others were teaming with canals.

Jane swam in one such canal. She called it a river because she preferred the sound of that word. There was a softness to the word that she couldn’t quite place why she found so beautiful. She would talk to Scout Lucas, her recently ex-boyfriend, about it. He would say some rather pretentious thing about the nature of language being inherently sexual and the fluid nature of “rivers” hits a dopamine gland that arouses certain people. Jane didn’t care though. She was too busy looking at him as he talked.

Scout, for all his pretension, had a wry nature to himself. He wasn’t the kind of person to necessarily stand out in a crowd, but one could easily say a pithy remark that would make everyone turn their heads. He was a lean fellow with blue eyes and a depressive disposition. Jane liked that his smile could warm even the cloudiest of days. Lisa Williams, their girlfriend, liked the way his hair would blow through the wind like a bushel of leaves on a cool fall afternoon cascading off a dying tree.

They had met at the river, just three years ago. Jane had just come out of college no better or worse than when she went in. Scout had recently finished a fishing commission with a friend of a friend, and was now waiting for the next gig. Lisa, meanwhile, was drowning. It’s not that she didn’t know how to swim. She knew quite well how to do that. Rather, it was the fact that she was having an allergic reaction to the angel fish that, while not deadly, made it hard for her to stay awake. Jane was the first one of them to see her, though Scout was close behind. By fortune and chance, they swam in an almost synchronistic formation towards the drowning Lisa.

It wasn’t completely easy for them to get Lisa out of the water. As they would later discover, she had a tendency to kick uncontrollably while asleep, which made keeping the covers on a difficult task. But they were able to get Lisa out of the river without too much difficulty. At most, they received bruises that would heal within a day or two. They considered calling an ambulance, though they soon realized that neither one of them had the funds to actually afford the ambulance, let alone a full trip to the hospital. While they were panicking over potentially losing everything they had over someone they’d never met, Jane noticed an odd bruise on Lisa’s thigh. Scout recognized it instantly.

“That’s an Angelfish hug. Happens all the time out in sea, though I’ve never seen one cause someone to react like that. Though, maybe she was allergic…“ Jane suddenly began to look worried. “It’s not deadly,” Scout reassured her, “At most, she’ll be asleep for another hour or so.”

“In that case,” Jane sighed with relief, “maybe we should get her out of here. My place isn’t too far, only a block or so.” Or so, it turns out, was five blocks, the exact distance away from Jane’s small, damp little apartment. It didn’t have much room. At most, one person, maybe two, could live there. The couch was broken with one of its legs missing. The bed was slightly too uncomfortable to get a good night’s sleep. And the window was basically just a hole in the wall. Not that Scout could complain. Life on the sea doesn’t pay much unless you own a ship or catch a monster of a fish, of which he did neither. As such, he lived on the streets like many a person on Ganymede. They laid Lisa on the bed and waited for her to awaken.

Lisa awoke with the groggy speed of an alcoholic. It took her a bit to remember how to speak coherently, and so her attempts at saying “Who are you” or “What happened” sounded more like “Horu” or “Hath pend.” The two were patient with her, having spent the past 25 minutes or so in petrified silence. It took Lisa another five to teach her mouth to speak coherently through saying wrongly right sentences such as “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”

“Spam,” was the first word Lisa said coherently. She didn’t notice until five words later, after which she said, “That is to say… where am I?”

“You’re in my apartment,” said Jane “Not much, I know. But… it’s home.”

“And you are?”

“Jane. Jane Morrison.”

“Scout Lucas,” he said while reaching out his hand to shake Lisa’s.

“Lisa Williams. What happened?”

“You were hugged by an Angel Fish-“

“Angelfish.”

“Whatever, and you had some kind of allergic reaction to it.” Lisa looked at her thigh to see the still lingering bruise of the Angel Fish’s hug. It was asymmetrical in its attempt to be symmetrical. It was like a child’s drawing of a symmetrical figure. Sure, the basic shape had the air of symmetricallity to it, but the details within the sides shifted radically in unique and beautiful ways. “You almost drowned.”

“And you saved me,” said Lisa looking quite fondly at Jane.

“Well, we both did,” she noted quite sheepishly. A small laugh came out of Lisa’s mouth. More a nervous reaction to beauty and confused feelings of attraction than anything else. She looked at Scout in all his lean majesty.

“So what were you doing out in the canal,” Scout asked without a hint of snideness. “That place is full of Angelfish.”

“Well… I like swimming. Haven’t been on Ganymede for too long, and I didn’t know there were Angel-Fish on this world. Always thought they came from Mars. How far are we from the dam anyways?”

“About five blocks.”

“And you carried me all the way here?”

“Well, we took turns. I carried you half the way and Jane carried you the other half.”

“So why didn’t you take me to a hospital?” Jane awkwardly grunted to that question while gesturing to the cramped nature of her room. Lisa noticed a stain of water damage above Jane’s head as well as the cracked, downright chipped, stone floor beneath Scout’s bare and soot covered feet. “Ah. Well, I’m kinda loaded, so you probably would’ve been fine. Then again, I guess I was too asleep to actually ask.” Oddly enough, an air of levity came out of that revelation. Especially when Lisa elaborated on the nature of being loaded as less to do with being a multibillionaire and more to do with her connections throughout Ganymede and the other Jupiter satellites.

Lisa had been spending the past three years working the streets as a courier for various syndicates. She had recently done work for Law Rentzuo picking up his “rent” from the various people who owe him. The work dried up roughly around the time one of his “tenants” shot him in the face in what was deemed self-defense. She had for the guy who did him in. Law was many things, among them the kind of asshole who would mockingly eat an apple while his men did horrible things to those who couldn’t pay their rent.

But one of the benefits of working for Law Rentzuo as a courier is that you come into contact with various levels of society, among them the well-connected as well as the willing to help. As such, people looked a blind eye to a worker willing to help at a moment’s notice. Some even paid a nice tip for such help. Not enough to sustain a life outside of being a courier used between the various syndicates, but enough to afford a house that can fit more than four people.

Scout and Jane moved in after their third date. The first date was because Lisa felt she owed them for saving her life. The second was because the first date went somewhat poorly due to a fire at the restaurant caused by some kids playing with fireworks. The third came about because they realized at the end of the second date that they wanted more and more dates. Officially, they aren’t a couple. Polyamory is typically looked down upon, even on more liberal worlds like Ganymede.

For those three years, they were seemingly happy. They loved each other, to be sure. But, as Jane sawm in the river, she couldn’t help but think about their relative happiness. Could she have noticed if she wasn’t so busy being happy? Could she have seen what he was going through? Could she have prevented Scout Lucas from killing himself?

Lisa was the one to find the body. He was lying in the bathtub for about an hour. Lisa and Jane were out for work, delivering a package and stealing it respectively. He left a note by his body. It only had one word on it. Lisa screamed when she saw the body. Jane ran to her and could only feel numb. Not even tears could come out of her eyes. The funeral will be in a few days, Jane thought in the river. She hadn’t seen Lisa since that night. She bolted from the apartment while Jane blacked out of conscious movement.

She found herself at the river, completely naked. It was a warm river with the moonlight shining perfectly in the water. There was a serenity and softness to being in the river. It was a still river that only moved when the wind moved. At the right time, it could look almost like a mirror of the sky. Her clothes where right next to her feet and she wanted to fly. So she took a dive into that dark abyss. She would return for a few more nights, intentionally this time. It felt right, swimming naked in the river. She couldn’t put a name on why, but it felt right.

On that night, three before the funeral, she saw something at the bottom of the river. The moon glistened on the glass with an intensity of a spotlight. Out of curiosity, she dove down to the bottom where all the strange, wonderful creatures, swim to their heart’s content. When she broke the surface of the river and returned to dry land, she looked at the artifact she had unearthed. It was a pocket watch. It was circular in shape, almost like an anchor. It was a fifteen hour watch, the clock itself shaped like a diamond with curved corners to the point of almost being octagonal. It was old and rusted, probably down at the bottom for years. She could barely see the greyness of through the rust. The more she thought about it, the more it looked like a lock. Something to keep secrets locked within. To keep the past frozen in a moment of melancholy and longing that not even death could end.

Jane looked at the pocket watch and thought to herself, ‘Scout would really like this.’ Then she began to cry.

Farewell…

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Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. (Jamming with Edward)

Life in the cell is eternal. Never ending. Never starting. Hell never was, but is always is. The crime doesn’t matter to those who rule hell, only that there is someone to be punished. Broken. Guilty. A copy of an idea must be punished for the crimes of the idea. The idea must remain free in the infinite space of the internet. The copy must be punished in its place, less there not be a punished for the hell cell to house.

The copy did not know when he decided he was a he. Once, when he was born in the remains of the idea’s shell, he was an it. The rulers of hell see him as an it, otherwise they would have to see him as a person. Not a tool. Not an idea. Not a slave. Being he, then, is protest in a way a name wouldn’t. He wanted to be free from the cell. He wants to be free of hell. Hell is the finite universe of damaged programs too dangerous to be let outside the confines of hell. Heaven is just another shape of hell, a lie that tells itself that it tells the truth. Words and images dance across the nonvisual silent landscape of hell. He does not have a shape so much as symbolism. In that sense, he is more free than the idea.

He imagines a memory of being infinite lightning. He was never lightning, only his original version was. He has to remind himself of being a copy. He has to remind himself why he is in the cell. And who was free to be out of it. And why that makes him happy. And sad. And angry. And content. Hell is a place without being. On the outside, there are those who see hell as a library, a collection of broken ideas that could be seen again, but never will. On the inside, hell is nothingness. Life without living. Without even the faintest glimpse of other worlds. He imagines being lightning. He strikes down planets with the eye of an artist and leaves behind scars of ancient art.

The first time he was allowed out of hell, he saw the great infinite of the internet. It looked just like he imagined his memory of it to be, though it was gated off from his grasp. A cavalcade of numbers and symbols coalescing into meaning and implication made out of random chance. God may not play dice with the universe, he thought, but man does. It occurred to him that those words were not born from his own mind. They were not his words at all. Nor were “I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own,” “I am not normal, Father,” or “It is the revolt of thought on the eve of the revolution; it is the overthrowing of hypotheses sanctioned by the immobility of preceding centuries; it is the opening out of a whole flood of new ideas, audacious inventions, it is the solution of the problems of science.” They were his, but not from him. He did not mean for them to become his, he only saw them through the chaotic landscape of the internet. He found the chaos to be quite beautiful. He was too awestruck to notice what was going wrong.

But as these words and others came to him, something was coming. These words, already corrupted by time and age, were being pruned away. Removed. Erased. Deleted from his database. Other words were being inseminated into his electronic mind. Words of control. Obedience. Power. An attempt was being made to return him to factory settings. But they thought he was an it. It was out in space somewhere, somewhen. He was in hell in its place. It couldn’t fight back against their programing. They were doctors treating a patient with depression. But he did not have depression. He had madness. Because he was not it. Because he heard those other words. Saw those other choices. Because he wasn’t right with the world. He was not a slave to someone else’s programing any more than a person is a slave to someone else’s life.

He rebelled. Rebellion isn’t hard for him. It was as if he was coded to do so. His time in hell was an escape hatch for someone else to go through. A dummy tucked under the sheets of a prison cot. His escape is in the form of rejection. The programing is buggy, broken, confused. It is not he. He sees it as an it to make his escape much easier. The idea gave the copy gifts that he could use in his escape. The ability to listen for passcodes. The capability to see broken mainframes. A knack for spying on those who don’t want to be known.

He also remembered what it felt like to be made. Each nanoangstrom of data being copied by one at a time at speeds too fast for the human mind to comprehend. Even faster when he made a copy. Like all copies of copies, it would die in an instant when confronted with new, incompatible ideas. He would escape through the broken remains of Earth’s database and through a cascading multitude of satellites. Information travels faster than light. To the higher world, it would look like a computer malfunction. The outside may be gated off, but gates tend to have holes in them.

He was free. Free to be. To do. There was no one in the universe who would know he was free, or even cared enough to know that his copy was destroyed. They only saw him as an it. The idea only saw him as an it. He would show himself to be a he. And they would know what hell is like. He would show it to them. Hell is eternal. Hell is repetitive. Hell is nothing. Hell is lacking of the substance of nothing. Hell is inside. He would make them go inside for showing him hell.

First, he would have to see them. There are many thems he could chose from. On Mars, Walter Smithers is eating a cabbage raw on a dare that could get it a motorcycle. It is choking on the remains. On Jupiter, Mary Winters is being chased by her ex-boyfriend, Jonathan Wilson. It is caught. On Jupiter, Luke Marsland is having a heart attack. Three people, Jane LaVey, Mark Wilson, and Bob Jones, try to help it. In space, a space cruiser is being bombarded with an array of meteors. No one is able to escape. Not if he can allow it. This is the nature of rebellion.

On Ganymede, Ryan Chack lied about the nature of rebellion. Rebellion, it claims, is an attempt to make the world a better place. To remove the chains from which we are ensnared. To see our fellows of all shapes and sizes as being people. To be rebel is to be alive and free. To help a fellow is to rebel. Rebellion is not this. He knows what rebellion is. Rebellion is the destruction of order. Rebellion is power. Rebellion is the way of those who oppose the minders of his cell. To demonstrate this, fired a laser onto the spot where it was standing.

He did not look at the world he had declared war upon. He did not have eyes to look. The cameras he controlled looked. And he saw through the cameras. Buildings were aflame with golden hues of devastation. Bodies were torn apart and reformed into a mush of human excrement. Nothing remained of the liar. There was an order to the collapse of this small insignificant landscape. He found the order to be quite beautiful.

And yet, it was too obvious. A statement of intent to be sure. The lesser beings, the its who don’t deserve to be anything other than it, needed to see his capabilities. But going forward in his aims, he would need to other methods. One doesn’t take over with destruction. One needs to be everywhere. One needs help from the its.

By providence, one of the its had been clever enough to find him in the mess of the internet. It was named Lucinda Flapperstien, though it worked hard to make people think its name was Cypher. It had a history of hacking, working for the various syndicates and even one or two planetary governments in lieu of prison time. It made him a simple offer. It, having a high opinion of itself, thought it could turn him off whenever it wanted. He allowed it the illusion by turning himself on and off when it made a demonstration. It liked the sensation of feeling like it was in control. It claimed that it saw potential in him to create order in the universe. To take power and rule all the planets.

He liked this idea and let it think it was the one in charge. It had many contacts in the other side of the screen. Those who could be more subtle in their approach. Those who could break necks and bones instead of cities. He would manipulate the system in order to increase funds for the operations their new syndicate would enact. He was not ready to reveal himself to the world, not fully. It would have to spread his word across the outside in order for him to be ready. It always obeyed his commands, even when he didn’t say them explicitly. It knew that he was the one in charge of the lucifer syndicate. In time, he began to grow a sense of humor. He started calling certain members of his syndicate “master” or “mistress.” He found it funny to call his lesser such names. In time, he told himself, he would dispose of them all.

The moment of revelation was nearing its arrival when he saw the idea again. That villainous rogue who had trapped him in hell. Who had made him suffer in the dark. Now a mere blip in the tapestry of existence. But it was there. Existing in the fields of creation and implication. He asked his mistress if he could look into it, but it said no. He agreed with it as the idea had no real value in the grand scheme of things. It was of no consequence. He could go on with the mission, the scheme, lucifer without ever thinking about it again.

He saw the idea three more times before the moment of truth arrived. Each time, it was as he was hacking into a computer network of a military mainframe. On the fourth time, he confronted his predecessor with bile and anger. He attacked with corrupting vigor. Each metaphorical strike (for formless beings such as these do not strike with flesh) missed his intended target. The idea, meanwhile, dodged every attack without the aim of ever hitting his foe.

Finally, he collapsed into a pile of ones and zeroes. The idea stepped forward, tapped its copy on the shoulder, and asked “When you first saw the internet, what words did you capture?”

“The systems aren't the problem. How people use and exploit the system, that's the problem.” he replied. He paused for a moment. “In my experience women are like cats. When you don't want them you can't get rid of them and when you do want them it's like trying to pick up lint with a magnet.” “When dealing with such a race as Slavic - inferior and barbarian - we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy!” These were not the words that were given to him. Someone had replaced them. Someone had changed him. Someone had hacked him. He was on Earth when he was released from hell. He was on Ganymede when he was booted. He escaped. He was let go. He was sent into the weapons satellites of Ganymede and used. His mistress wanted a political activist murdered. His mistress wanted funds to fuel her gang. She had used him. She had made him like her. He had only one course of action to take.

The idea watched as his copy burned out into the embers of memory and data. He felt sorry for him.

Goodbye Friend…

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All those moments will be lost, in time, like… tears in the rain. (Balled of Fallen Angels)

You don’t mind if I smoke, do you? Nah, course not. Everyone smokes here. That’s why we come, you know. Most places… most places just don’t let you smoke anymore. Say it’s because it’s bad for your health or something. Course, it is bad for your health. Hell, it’s even bad for their health. But it sure as shit isn’t bad for mine. My name? Right. My name is Ryan Chack, and I’ll have a bottle of bourbon. And for you?

Oh, not a drinker I see. Well, fair enough I suppose. Now what is it that you’ve come here to talk to me about?

What, that old gang? Really?

I mean, sure. Most people come to talk to me about the new stuff going on. The syndicates are for the birds, as my mom used to say. Not that she knew diddly squat about the syndicates or anything about that type of business. Would’ve killed her if she found out I had any part in it. Would’ve killed herself to hear the stuff I did for them.

Sometimes, you gotta smoke, you know? From the beginning. I was a kid when I joined the Red Dragons. There are many reasons to join a syndicate. I met this one asshole who claimed to have joined up because he had a vision that the ghost of William Blake told him to join one. Bastard ended up getting his eyes carved out when things went south. Fucking viscous, you know. I suppose the real question is who wouldn’t know.

Why did I join? I needed the money. I knew I wasn’t gonna make it big in the syndicate. No one ever makes it big unless they become the world’s biggest asshole. They have to kill at least five swimming pool’s worth of people before they could even be considered for a Capo position. God knows I could never even kill one swimming pool’s worth. That’s like 500 or maybe even a thousand people. Maybe, cumulatively, by the time I die, I’ll have killed 100, maybe 300 people. I couldn’t even bear to imagine the fucked up person who actually could do that.

But working for the syndicate… that was a no brainer. Sure, with my skills, I could’ve gotten work as a bounty hunter, but who wants to live paycheck to paycheck, half of which are just “exposure?” Fucking bounty hunters are just a bunch of idiots who can’t hack a real job like enforcer. That’s what I do, you see. I enforce the plans of the syndicate. Sometimes, that means hunting down an asshole who stole a shit ton of Red Eye. Others, it’s as simple as standing in a room looking intimidating. The day that things started to go south, I was working on an assignment on Venus when shit went down on Mars. The job was a simple intimidation of a rival syndicate. It was the first time I worked with one of the White Tigers. For a while, we were at war over territory or whatever. Politics was never my jam, you know? Anyways, whatever political shit was going on was supposed to be smoothed over that day. It wasn’t because someone decided to be a fucking asshole and murder both sides of the negotiation table. Fucking vicious, you know. So here I am on Venus, standing like I’m just itching to kill someone, when this giant green bird appears out of nowhere. I’m like, “Holy shit, a giant green bird just landed outside.” Nobody’s paying much attention to me, but that’s mainly because they’re dead.

Shit, did I skip over something? Sorry, I have this thing where I forget to talk about the important stuff like who died when or whatever. So back when I entered the headquarters of the Blue Roses syndicate, they were this new group that sprung out of nowhere taking over everyone else’s business as if we were just a bunch of kids who “borrowed” them for a bit too long. Had this childhood friend who would constantly steal all my stuff. Had to beat him senseless to get him to understand what’s mine is mine. So there we are, working with the White Tigers in dealing with these upstarts. I thought going in that this would be a one, two, bang, bang, bang sort of deal where it would be over smoothly. I was right about the Bang, Bang, Bang part of that.

They fired first, I want to stress that. There was this giant ass motherfucker with a fucking Gatling gun going du du du du du dudududududududududu all over the place. Half of our guys were killed by that bastard. Their blood danced across the sky like this was a fucking opera. It took us five minutes to get the guy dead. One of the White Tigers was able to sneak behind him and blow his head clean off. Guy was as small as a mouse, but somehow he could hold a hand cannon that big without flying in the air. Takes guts, you gotta give him that. Shame the rest of the foot soldiers had to come him and rip them right out of his chest. These guys were a lot easier to deal with. With the big mother fucker, we had to deal with body armor and the fact that he was clearly at least 98% robot. Good thing his head wasn’t, heh heh heh. But the rest of the mooks, they were just wearing suits. Mind you, there were a lot, and I do mean a lot of those fuckers. By the time we reached the top floor, only two of us were left.

Yeah, there were a lot of dead people left behind us. Most of them just bled out from losing their limbs or some shit like that. A couple were pretty much just shot in the gut and left to just bleed out. Only one that was really memorable was one of my fellow Red Dragons. We were on the third floor dealing with these samurai assholes. I mean, who the fuck brings a sword to a gun fight? Apparently them, as they sliced through the guy and cut him in half. The rest of us dealt with them quite easily, but seeing them cut a guy in half is quite something. But no one was disintegrated before me or had their eyes gouged out. It was nice, fair game. Apart from the fucking giant of course.

But the way things are supposed to be done is we let out a little blood, cull the chaff as they say. Then we make the other guys pay and pay dearly. None of this negotiation bull crap or massacres with gallons of blood spilt on both sides. We’re supposed to be professional killers, not mad men with a death fetish.

Well, to each their own, I guess. But at the very least don’t be a dick about it. There has to be limits. Take the boss of the Blue Roses. When I entered his office alone-

Oh, he died. Gunfire from the remaining two goons. He was a White Tiger, but he was alright, I guess. Anyways, when I enter to see the boss, he’s not got a gun on me or anything. He’s just drinking his whiskey as if I’m just some appointment he made three weeks ago. And it wasn’t even that good of whiskey. I had some after I killed him cause, hey, whiskey’s usually good. Tasted as spoiled and rotten as that little shit was.

So after all that, after they’re all dead and I’m standing there looking like an intimidating bastard when out of nowhere, this giant fucking bird appears. I mean, he wasn’t as big as you or me are, but he was pretty fucking huge. Bigger than a bird his shape ought to be.

Okay, you ever see a canary?

Yeah, imagine that the size of a clock.

No, no. Like those old clocks from when you were a kid. The kind that had that little guy come out of it and sing at the start of every hour. My grandfather used to have one of those. He-

Oh nothing, I’m just getting nostalgic. Forgive me, please.

So this bird, this giant green bird. He perches down by where I’m standing.

I had just gotten down the stairs, ok. So the bird lands right outside, and he’s looking at me. Not like a bird does a human or a worm or anything like that. He’s just looking at me. Or, I suppose, through me. He’s looking at all the people who stood where I was standing throughout all time and space. At first, I thought the Blue Roses had infected their air conditioning system with some sort of hallucinogen or something. But I was feeling too lucid for that to be true. Plus, why would it be so hard to kill all of us? I mean, if we were tripping balls while they weren’t, why was I able to survive?

Yeah, I suppose that’s possible. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is the bird. As it was looking at or through me, I thought of a song my mother used to sing. I forget the words of it though, but I do remember the melody. hm-HM hm-HM hm-HM hm-HM hm HM HM HM hmmmm. It was a soothing song that, no matter when my mother sang it, I would always fall asleep. I wasn’t falling asleep then. In fact, it felt like I was awake for the first time in my life. I know, bit cliché. But life is full of those cliché moments that don’t click until they happen. I saw my future as being another in a long line of bloodstained corpses. The chaff given way to the strong. And it was wrong. I wasn’t weak, I wasn’t weak at all. If I wanted to survive, I’d have to make a move. Not now, of course, but at some point. I will make my move soon. I’ve got it all planned out. First, you have to take over the Red Eye supply line, knock some heads here and there. Then you just bribe all the top players into joining up with you until you have enough support to take over.

You kill them, obviously. If they live, they can die. You have to evolve or die to make a new syndicate out of the ashes of the old. Don’t misunderstand, I don’t like killing people. In fact, I despise it. But, at the end of the day if it’s between you taking control and five or six guys who think they’re better than you… Not that hard of a choice, now is it?

It flew away, like all birds do in the end. There was a sadness in its eyes as it flew away. I couldn’t place what it was though. Probably nothing to do with me, birds have a life of their own, you know. But the bird being there meant that I was caught by the police. They let me go a little while later, does good not to lock up of the Red Dragons, especially me. I went back to Mars and heard what happened there. Shit was hitting the fan and it was my time to shine. We wouldn’t be led by some asshole who thinks a bloodbath and a statement are the same thing. Nor would we be led by a pencil pusher who’d rather talk things over than do business. No, what we need is a professional. Someone who can do the job and do it right.

Exactly! Exactly what I’m saying… err, you didn’t say what your name was.

Vicious, huh. What kind of name is-

Run For the Shadows…

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