Lawless Sign Part Ten (Fiction)

Chapter 16: Time In A Bottle Part Four

To the people in the little building in the alley at Chicago and Avers it seemed as if I had disappeared one second and then reappeared an instant later, both times in a blinding flash. The Major whirled, his automatic barking fire twice in my direction.

It seemed like overkill to me.

I was already on fire. Glowing red patches spewed streaks of smoke from all over me. What seemed to be a two gallon can of beans had half eaten the back of my head. Inch thick metallic hoses were constricting my limbs. Each hose from the can ended in  razor sharp spikes. I spilled forward.

Stan vaulted at the Major, his arms coming out wide. His tackle erased the Major and they both went spiraling to the ground. Joyce raced after them. The doctor had snatched up one of the casket lids and trailed after the rest.

Joyce’s boot struck the Major twice in quick succession, both quick kicks to his ribs. The Major and Stan rose from the floor as one, all of their hands converged upon the gun. Doctor Colbert rushed in, slamming the lid against the Major’s torso. Stan loosed his grip on the gun and stumbled backwards.

“Gotta be easier than this gonor naroteen,” the can on my head yelled, as it sprang at Stan. “Meat! Come to me, meat!”

Its tendrils vanished like noodles from around me. I saw the ribbons trail the can as it arched into the air. They came down in a web, all over Stan.

Joyce went for the gun. Doctor Colbert went for the Major’s knees.

My baton hissed through the air, ending at the Major’s jaw. He spilled backwards, but didn’t let loose of his automatic. Joyce jumped up and landed on the Major, her feet rebounding off his chest. Colbert got under the Major’s arms and sent him backwards. They all fell, piled between the two open vats.

My baton bounded off the ceiling and made a boarding house bounce in front of me. I plucked  it from the air and sprinted for the vats.

Joyce joined the pile on the floor, putting her entire body down on the Major’s gun arm.

“No doubt about it. Should have gone for the girl,” the can’s high pitched mechanical warble conveyed. “Much more lively.”

Stan let out with a blood chilling howl. The can was at his shoulders, its hoses twisting Stan’s limbs. He folded to the ground.

I dove into the head librarian’s vat. A gunshot struck Konano’s vat and ricocheted. It was then I noticed that there was something very strange about the bullet. It was leaving a visible trail through the air.

I’m not sure if it was the glycol or the librarian’s body which smothered my flames. I twisted the baton’s end, summoning the rotating lightning balls. The unintended effect of this was to cause the vat’s sides to burst outwards. After a lurch, the vat’s contents flowed out in all directions.

Colbert sprang up from the floor beside me. He grabbed the back of my belt and helped me gain my feet. After first slipping (on what, don’t ask), I raced three strides to Stan. I brought both of my arms back and swung.

The can sailed off Stan, its suddenly splaying arms flowing after it. It hit the wall and dropped,  exclaiming “I’m so sick of that thing! I’m gonna shove that thing straight up your—“

“—I lost him!” Joyce shouted as she swayed to her feet. Both her and Colbert were scanning for the missing Major, who they initially thought was lost amidst the librarian’s soup.

The Major was under a section of the walls of the vat I had just disintegrated. He reappeared erect with this convex section held aloft in his hands. I thought that meant he had lost the gun. I don’t know what he intended to do with the wall. I didn’t want to find out.

I loosed a radial blast from my helmet splintering the section into chunks. The Major staggered back two steps, drew the gun from his uniform’s coat pocket and fired wildly.

Joyce, Doc and Stan wisely dove back to the soup infested ground. I just stood there, watching as the projectiles from his gun streaked smoke, taking twisting trajectories through the air.

I had no idea what he was shooting and, at the moment, I didn’t care. I triggered another radial blast from my helmet with the clear intention of killing him.

He slipped before the blast hit and it landed a glancing blow to his padded midsection. The force hoisted him up and back. He spilled to the ground before the autorec array. 

“I have allies! Come to me, my bitches! We’re making a break for it!” yelled the can from its position somewhere near the wall. All around, small rectangular objects skipped into the air, converging like a rain in its direction.

The door snapped open. I saw the can bounce before the door and then out to the alley. It rolled and then scampered away, dozens of flailing boxes zig-zagging after it.

The Major’s arms rose to defend himself from the cascade of tiny flying objects. At first he was involuntarily backing off, but then he took hold of his senses and bolted out the door too.

In a second the can and its companions were clear of the fanged opening. The Major whirled from his position just outside, bent down and began firing anew.

I closed the door. We heard shots bouncing off the panels for another second and then nothing.

I asked “We didn’t leave the keys in the Magnum, did we?”

Colbert said “In this neighborhood? Are you kidding?”

“Is everyone alright,” I asked.

They all said no, but at least they were all talking.

“I hope I didn’t lose the keys, because I would really hate to have to search for them,” Colbert said, fumbling through his pockets. “I am a doctor and I will not throw up.”

Joyce said “I will throw up enough for all of us. Can we get out of here?”

“I have a spare set of keys in my wallet,” Stan said.

They came to gather around me. At this point, what remained of my gloves, boots and other uniform sections was the only substantial source of light.

“Anyone else besides me bleeding?” Colbert asked.

“I got rope burns,” Stan said. “What the hell was that?”

“An Assembler Brain Box,” I said.

Colbert asked “Anything we need to worry about?”

“Define ‘we’,” I said. “It’s just a potential menace to every computerized thing on the planet. We have other concerns. On the other hand, it might just be having a bad day. It could potentially be of use to us, providing it snaps to its senses. Given Countess Rezvulga’s luck, I’m not counting on it.”

Joyce said “I think I twisted my ankle. My back hurts. My back was hurting before. Back when I was packing for Chicago. Now it’s hurting again. I think I bruised my knee. Both knees. And my right instep hurts.”

Stan asked Joyce “What were you packing for Chicago for?”

“I was going to see you,” she said. “I think.”

I said “Good, you’re starting to remember things.”

“I had packed your birth certificate, Stan. I had packed our marriage license. Your dental records. I was going to report you… I was going to report you missing,” she said and then turned to me. “Captain! Your face! Your skin has melted onto your shirt!”

I raised my blast shield.

Joyce screamed “Your eyes have melted into your cheeks!”

I removed Cody’s face and then she really let out a shriek.

Stan grabbed her. “It’s alright. It’s alright, peaches. That’s just what he looks like.”

“Although your eyes aren’t glowing anymore, Captain,” Colbert added. “Let’s get to a gas station restroom and check over ourselves. Then it’s probably green soap time. I have my kit in the car.—Did you find the keys, Stan?”

I asked “How come that guy’s gun was able to fire? He’s been in the liquid for eight months.”

“I found the keys. I found the key ring,” Stan said. “You must have given it to me.”

Colbert said “You are about five minutes behind us, Captain.”

“My bad,” Stan said. “I should have just trusted that the gun worked.”

Joyce squeezed herself against Stan “He was going to shoot me. He said ‘That’s it, Streaks here gets it.’ Then poor Stan jumped in front of me. I was so scared!”

Colbert said “He said it was a gyrojet automatic he had picked up in Germany.”

“We’re not going to find a gas station bathroom in this neighborhood,” Stan said. “We should just bee line to the bank. It’s not that far away.”

Colbert said “It was part of an initiative to produce low maintenance weapons the West Germans were developing. Then the wall came down and the Germans inherited a two thousand year inventory of AK-47s, so they cancelled the project.”

Joyce said “The guy said he was some sort of arms buyer, but not for the regular services.”

I asked “Did he say what he wanted?”

Colbert commented “Easily the fastest talking person with a southern accent I have ever heard.”

Joyce said “He wanted to talk to Royce Cole.”

“He had one hell of a shotgun drawl,” Stan said. “I had to ask him to repeat himself.”

“He wanted to kill Royce Cole,” Colbert said. “And us, too. Nothing personal, though.”

Joyce said “The first words out of his mouth: ‘I hope y’all don’t mind doing your patriotic duty by dying for your country, because that’s about what you’re gonna do.’ Only, like, at light speed.”

Colbert said “We showed him Royce Cole’s caskets, but he wasn’t buying it.”

“And we couldn’t get them open, either,” Stan said. “I think that’s what he wanted. We kept asking him to repeat himself.”

“We’re kind of getting this out of order,” Joyce said. “He was actually sort of polite, in an I’m-going-to-kill-you-anyway kind of way.”

Stan said “And then he wanted us to show him the way out.”

“He was nearly incomprehensible,” Colbert said. “He started to get testy after we told him we didn’t know how to open the door.”

“You can open the door again, right” Stan asked me.

“Yes, I can,” I said. “How did he get out of his bonds?”

Joyce asked “Do you think he’s still out there?”

I answered her “His last thoughts before the door closed dealt with how he was going to navigate without a wallet or money. And he doesn’t know where he is. Perhaps like yourself, he was abducted in Miami.”*

Stan said “I know he walked out of the leg manacles.”

“I don’t know how long he had been out. He just said what he said to us and had his gun pulled,” Joyce said. “He had our backs turned to him. We were looking for where you went.”

Colbert asked “Where the hell did you go, Captain?”

That was a good question. 

Chapter 17: Time In A Bottle Part One

I am no longer convinced of the one second in real space equals one thousand seconds in scab space interval, at least when it comes to the universe which I had entered. Royce Cole’s subsequent urgency is as likely caused by the diminishing of this resource as it was my own activities. It was not merely a pocket universe, it was a collapsing pocket universe.

Those are the conjectures I feel sound enough to go with. The first few times I reported this, I became so bogged down in guesses that the actual event became obscured. Therefore, I will be limiting my speculation only to those places where it helps describe my course of action. As Vrecky Tomlinson suggested after I related these events to her the first time, “Noodleface, just tell them what you saw.”

Once the purple flash faded, I felt an immediate pressure all around me. I was no longer on my feet, but rather floating. The world about me was gold, glowing and liquid. It was not churning, nor were there currents to speak of. It was stagnant. It was also 374 degrees.

My helmet was reporting that there was no oxygen present. Gravity was at 84% of Earth’s. Radioactivity was ten times that of a standard medical x-ray. I had four minutes worth of air, if I didn’t boil to death first.

My outfit is a dress uniform. At best, it’s a light environment suit, suitable for wandering Tiamore or Rega or any place on Earth north of Antarctica or south of the Allution Islands. Cold, it deals with well. Heat, not so much. Its radiation deflecting abilities are negligible, with the gold and yellow areas being somewhat reflective and the navy blue areas actually being absorbing. To put it blunt, if I am not instantly dead, I am not for long.

Due to the prevailing conditions, I shut down my tactile sensations and had to rely on an extended tactile sensation system. This gave me the ability to cop a feel of anything within half a football field of me. Once activated, I realized that I was at the bottom of a five foot wide shaft which was one hundred feet long and slanted upwards from my position at a perfect 45 degree angle. I pressed my palms to the walls and started my climb up.

By the time I reached the top of the shaft, my helmet informed me that I had died. My organs were inundated with radiation and all suit systems should be considered failed. It was now recording the death of portions of my anatomy. I still had four minutes of air left. So much for the suit’s systems. They didn’t snap back until I got out of scab space.

The systems are actually functioning, they just don’t believe it.

I emerged from the shaft onto a ten foot wide stone terrace. Ahead of me was a wall, coming up to about waist level on me. The ceiling of the room was ten feet above me. The exact dimensions of this terrace were beyond sensor range, so this straightaway went at least fifty yards in either direction. Over the wall, ten feet down and jutting five feet further out, was another terrace straightaway. These step-like terraces, one after the other, headed downward into infinity.

Like the interior of a Hyatt in a funnel, to borrow Ms. Tomlinson’s summation.

I already knew what the building was. It was four pyramids conjoined at the tip. I am at the four sided base of one of the pyramids. This  pyramid is upside down and I am in the interior looking down from the perspective of the base. The last one I had seen had the base section removed and was being used as a staging area for pirates. This one was  enclosed.

By context, I thought that this was a library. They are not generally flooded. Given that the Corona Surfers are aquatic, it might make some sense for this area to be filled, but the golden substance was not water nor had it ever been water.

I pushed myself to the wall’s top and looked down. My helmet was effectively playing Taps. Life over. Roll credits. Tactile sensors said it was a long way down. I fully expected to bump into terraces on my way down, no matter how far I was able to shove myself off.

It wasn’t a great dive, in any estimation. I fell and tumbled, anticipating hitting the next terrace. I didn’t. Instead, I traveled at a perfect 45 degree angle to the center of the vast space and then straight down from there. My descent was at a constant speed and not at all fast.

I half suspected that this was a part of the death process, that perhaps I had been disintegrated by the flash and had entered some limbo realm. Per myth, I should have heard a door open and a voice welcoming me to the long table of my ancestors. My parents would soon be greeting me, along with my siblings and grand parents. I had never met my fraternal grand father and was looking forward to doing so.

I suppose they wouldn’t have any news. All of my immediate family had reached the destination at the same time. Maybe that was good, since they could have kept each other company.

I wish I could pretend to be more deep, but I’m not.

I had for the longest time been haunted by a dream. In the dream I am walking down the weirdly jungle lined streets of Arsenal. (That is not dream imagery. The streets of Arsenal are covered in a planted rain forest.) I have just come off the crawler. I am in my uniform. I start down the curve of the street where my family cluster is housed.

There it is, half way down the middle of the street: my family dwelling, all three stories of it, with its brown hexagon bricks. I approach the covered archway before our front door. A voice, usually my brother’s, calls out from inside “Who is there?”

“Captain Meteor.”

“No Captain Metoer lives here. We don’t know any Captain Meteor,” he says.

In the manner of dreams, I am next inside, in the family meeting room, with its green square awnings and bulging concave stained glass windows. The couches are in a curve, as they always were. And the whole family was there, as they always were when I was on shore leave. Because this is where I am when I am on shore leave. Because this is where I go when I am home from space.

But they aren’t sitting on the couches and they aren’t chattering as they always were. And I was never the center of attention. With six grandchildren out of the nursery pool, no one is the center of attention. Everyone is on patrol for toddlers. Not this time. They’re not lounging or chasing tykes. They’re all standing, motionless, even the toddlers, glowering down at me as I sit at the meal table.

Only the vat of green keystone soup before me is right.

Then my brother says “The warrior lives. We vanish. We’re all dead!”

End of dream. The dream is wrong. It has details wrong. First, we aren’t the type of folks who shout out into the streets at people. We were much more Anglo than Saxon. Second, my brother doesn’t live with my parents. He lives at his wife’s family compound. The reason I am eating keystone soup is because it is quick to make and I am leaving very shortly with my brother. My being home on shore leave gives my brother the opportunity to be single again for a day. That means going hunting, which he lives for. Finally, my brother saying even these last eight words to me is two more words than he is likely to say. Time spent talking is time spent not hunting. In reality, I would have been wolfing down my soup and then my brother would walk in, wave at everyone and grab me. Make profound accusations? Not a chance. Wrong guy, even dead.

My brother is the one who took me to see the Shadow Fleet recruiter. Being in the Shadow Fleet gives you a trade as a spaceman. That’s a nice ticket. You can cash that in and get all sorts of snazzy hunting gear. He was all for it.

When I met the woman who was to become my fiancé, my brother introduced me as “Captain Meteor, the chief executive officer of our fine Shadow Fleet. My kid brother,” which for him was an extended monologue.

They weren’t afraid to call me Captain Meteor. My mom picked out the name. When you join the fleet, they make you change your name so that the pirates won’t go after your family. (Countess Rezvulga had it wrong.) When I made officer, suddenly my rank was my first name—and said with considerable pride. I can’t tell you how many times my mother’s voice sang out when I hit the door “The Captain’s here!”

When I lost my arm, my father visited me at the hospital. If he had any reservations about my service in the Shadow Fleet, they would have surfaced then and there. Instead he told me “If you still love it, don’t let this stop you.”

I could have mustered out with an injury award. But I didn’t, because I listened to my father. My parents may have been peaceniks, but that had nothing to do with me. It had nothing to do with my finding something that I loved and was good at. That, they were all for.

And my mother didn’t think of the Shadow Fleet as being in the army. It was more like the police. (Mom was a big revisionist.) The last trip the whole family took was to my induction as executive officer of the fleet. That’s a three week trip for a two minute ceremony on an army base. But they had to be there, all dressed up, the whole clan of them. You see that nice patriotic family waving from the grand stands—that’s Captain Meteor’s family. Peaceniks? Government haters? Not here. Not now.

My last communications back home dealt with preparations for my wedding. Quite the societal event, I understand. My parents  had some objections to the match, but were too nice to voice them. (My fiancé was the best friend of the task master who had married my brother.) There was some sort of scheduling problem with her relatives and I would have to rework my leave again. Trivial stuff. Everyone yelled ‘hi’ at me. One of my sisters, in the background to another one of my sisters, mealy mouthed that my future wife was a stuck up, haughty so and so and that she shouldn’t be yanking us all around to accommodate distant relations, just so she could say the impressive so and sos attended her wedding. That’s when I cut off the communication. I would be right back to them.

An hour later Arsenal exploded. Arsenal had a three hundred year history of industrial accidents. I thought nothing of it, even when I was told the entire town had gone up. They would be back to me any minute, no doubt complaining about roof damage.

I can’t blame Arsenal or my parents for wanting to live there. Food was subsidized. Housing was very affordable. Where else could you support three generations of people on the earnings of a monetary day trader and an architectural sculptor who sold three pieces a year? Before he found the task master, my brother hunted three days out of every week. Without that place, they would have never had the lives that they so loved.

Arsenal was rebuilt, not that I ever went back. My fiancé had survived, was out of town. After a time I stopped answering her communications.

There was a point where I should have snapped out of it. I’m not going to blame the dream. I’m not sure when it started.

My parents would have dug the whole monk thing. I could have cashed out, made big bucks in some paper shuffling job, trading in on my career. Instead I was using my skills in service of what I thought was a higher cause. They would have very much approved. As for my current situation, I have conducted myself within the bounds of the morality that they taught. I am doing what I feel is right. There is nothing more to ask for.

Dad would have given me crap about leaving Toovy behind when I took the trip to Tiamore.  Just jumping through that transmat borders on the hateful. If I was going to issue a final transmission to anyone, it should have been to her. One last time to explain myself or, at the least, a last “I love you.”

Of course, had I brought Toovy along, this would have been a very short story. Two seconds after spotting the first dead bodies, Toovy would have erupted with “Looks like the Countess massively screwed up. We are not the Space Police. We are political refugees. We are leaving.”

And she would have been right. And we would have left.

Having just more or less resolved about twelve years worth of psychic baggage, I discovered that I was still not dead.

I still had four minutes of air and was only half way down. It then occurred to me that making a slow motion descent through the middle of a pyramid filled with golden liquid was as about as void of cosmology as it gets. One’s metaphysical death sequence should not be quite this meaningless.

Then I met the zombie. You can thank Ms. Tomlinson for that term. We really don’t have a word for them where I come from.

I’m guessing it took about a half an hour before my sensors felt the ground. It was a flat plane, roughly the size of a football field. At first I thought the zombie was a statue. It wasn’t moving much, just sort of floating a few inches above the surface. As I got closer, the feel of my sensors increased in sensitivity. At the twenty foot mark, I discerned that she had the shape and give of a human female. My guess is that she was at the center of this field for the same reason I was now converging there. I would have landed on her, but I made every attempt not to.

A human female is standing at the bottom of five thousand feet of liquid—liquid which is both devoid of oxygen and 374 degrees. Whatever could she be doing?

  

She was drowning. What was left of her was drowning. Like every other zombie I was about to meet, she had fist sized holes pounded through her body. All of the zombies have been shot several times at close range by a weapon called a Thompson Submachine gun. Without going into greater detail, just based on these injuries alone, this woman was well beyond the drowning state. Like most of the zombies, she was dressed in a blue lab coat with a leather apron over it. Not to disparage the human form, but if this person had been here for any amount of time, her flesh, bones and clothing would have been reduced—dissolved into the golden broth around us. Had she shown up just as I felt her first, she would have rationally been completely non contiguous by the time I landed.

Instead, her green eyeshade isn’t even running. She’s in bad shape. She will never play the violin again. The sea of peace has embraced her, but her body twitches on. Due to the nature of her injuries, I was not checking for a mind. She was swallowing and convulsing.

Which brings me to the nature of Outlaw Matter. Outlaw Matter is created during the destruction of scab universes. In its action, it restores groupings of molecules to an ‘average’ previous state. It can remove rust, but not repair dents. It can replenish simple substances, such as air. In my opinion, it is the reason I was still alive. It is probably also the reason for the zombies.

Strike that. Royce Cole is the reason for the zombies. If he hadn’t shot them, they would still be people. The Outlaw Matter is the reason for their zombie-like state and my not being dead. It could also account for the pyramids not having succumbed to the enormous forces of compression they were continually assaulted by. Explaining more is beyond my pay grade.

If this zombie was all that was here, then this was one depressing trip. There wasn’t anything in this vast chamber. All of the terraces I had seen were empty. The surface of this field was a form of poured ceramic, utterly featureless except for the presence of symmetrical arrangements of small holes here and there.

I knew there was a chamber that connected the four pyramids. That did not mean that there had to be a door to this chamber. Two of my belt compartments vibrated to life. I could not read them. The tactile network was doing me no good. So I wandered.

Part of the floor shot up at me. A large slab started rising, as if hinged on one end. There was no motion through the fluid. I felt no rush of bubbles or sudden downward current. It was more like a slow moving superimposed image than anything else.

Within seconds the lid had opened and then vanished. In its place was a glowing white hexagon, about ten feet on a side. I went to touch it. (Got me why.)

Suddenly everything was different. I went through my entire Space Monkey routine.

Ambient temperature is now 45 degrees. There are no patches of heat emanating from any part of my armor. My uniform is 45 degrees and it is entirely bone dry. Moreover, ambient temperature means that there is air. I cancel my sense of vision. Lumen level is four times blinding for me and I can stare into your sun indefinitely without blinking. Radiation levels are the same as is gravity at 84% of Earth’s.

Testing the air. Oxygen rich with industrial particles. Tiamore or Gary, Indiana. Gary air has pollen in it. This does not. It has tiny animals in it, who serve the same purpose as pollen. All plant life on Tiamore depends on microscopic animal forms for reproduction. The god and gods in their heaven and heavens above and below will change the simplest of all rules of life at whim, because they can. It is Tiamore air and it is kind of stale. The microforms are starting to perish.

There are six sides to this room, all of which have 84% Earth gravitational fields. You can walk on the walls. You can walk on the ceiling. Directly to my right is a wall with a grease pencil marking on it: a large circle with a dot in the center. This is one of the few ancient intergalactic navigational symbols to have carried over to present day. It is ‘singularity’ as in ‘Do not go here. You will be crushed into a singularity.’ I am no handwriting expert, but it is the same type of grease pencil Sulfur has been using.

I hop up, spin, land on my feet on the ceiling. I can’t tell you how many times I have done that before. Multi directional gravity areas are common on the ships I used to fly. It was at this point that I took note of an circular splash of liquid hovering at the exact center of the room. The device was fashioned from something akin to mercury. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was an extended tactile sensor, very similar to the system I was using but set up for remote perception.

What I did know was that I had just said hello to someone or something. I was content that whatever it was would find me, probably sooner than later.

There was no way I could know what it was or who left it. This was the work of an Assembler Brain Box. It had fashioned the sensor from materials it had found in the pyramids. That’s what Assembler Brain Boxes do: make things. They are very artsy-craftsy.

Across from me now was another access-way, in the form of an automated airlock. It was oval and its surface was made from layered strips. In action, it functioned something like a photographer’s shutter. This is about as small as an airlock can get. It doesn’t really lock air, but rather just opens and closes the door very quickly. They are temperamental, but easy to install. I wasn’t sure if it was original equipment. My inclination is that it wasn’t.

Basically you had to jump at the thing and then trigger the lock. Chances are, the thing was going to clip your heels or backside. If you do it right, you’re on the other side of the door. I crouched down and sprang.

“Wait meat! Wrong way!”

I heard that very clearly as the door snapped behind me. What I wasn’t sure of was whether it had come from behind me or in front of me. In front was a relative term at the time. Having just jumped laterally, I found myself falling backward linearly. Again, it was an experience I was used to.

I landed on my rear end and sprawled out. This was a similar space as the last pyramid, the exact same dimensions. Terraces ran up the sides of walls angling outward at 45 degrees. My position was at the edge of a flat football field sized area. I had apparently just jumped through the floor. I sat there and listened for a moment, but I did not hear the tinny little voice again.

I heard distant constant thunder and chatter from a thousand points. Lumen levels were uneven, but standard for Earth at evening or your average movie theater. Well within tolerance, in any case. I summoned back my sight.

My helmet informed me that I died again. Massive dose of radiation. Thank you for playing. It could not identify, however, the frequency of radiation. Probably cosmic in origin is all it could speculatively conclude.

It might have had something to do with what was going on where the ceiling should have been. Five thousand feet above me was a churning, angry mass of deep purple and violet, hurling balls of orange plasma and forked streaks of white lightening at formations within itself.  Was this the edge of a collapsing universe or was it what was pressing in on it? Thus far, it was keeping its distance, all of its discontent confined to that plane right above the highest terrace.

I later found out that climbing the terraces to touch the thing was something of a zombie sport. Touching it created a bug zapper effect. All I could tell at that moment was that there were odd and pretty flashes bouncing off the top terrace levels.

Unlike the previous pyramid, this one was fashioned out of a dull metal. The previously stone terraces and poured ceramic floor were now entirely Outlaw Matter, which looks and feels like iron.

The area I was sprawled in was a pond shaped indentation in the floor. Unlike the last pyramid, this lowest section was not a featureless plane. At one time, back when it was ceramic and stone, it had been set up as a series of interconnected pools and islands. What had been planters were still present.

Air here was clean, although ozone doused. It was in the forties. There were occasional quick breezes, which occurred without preamble, swelled in from random directions and whistled past for micro instants. Voices and noises seemed to be carrying, but nothing above a pervasive mumble.

Not all of the objects in here were Outlaw Matter. Beyond the scattered herd of zombies, there were blinking suspension chambers, similar to the ones we had found in the alley, lining every terrace level above the second. They had not been transformed and seemed, at first sight, operational. At the least, their triangular panels were still illuminated. There had to be tens of thousands of them.

Also blinking at the center of an island on the bottom level was what seemed to be a gigantic television set. It was actually several television sets, arranged in such a way as to produce part of a shared image. I understand these are common to trade shows. It wasn’t common to me and seemed very out of place.

The televisions were at the center of a plywood stage, which itself was of about two feet in elevation. A podium was present in front of the sets as was an unmoving human figure. Other figures were before the stage, sitting in straight-backed metal folding chairs. I climbed out of the bone dry pool and headed in their direction.

“Meat! Come back! You don’t want to be in there!”

That, I was actually hearing—that and the occasional swell of music and muffled commentary from the televisions. Most of what I was hearing I was not actually hearing. I was being hit by stray thoughts, which intruded with the urgency of a stench and then departed quickly.

They never really knew what hit them or why. The Corona Surfers and Meteor Beasts  started bringing the injured and newly deceased here only after the local hospital and schools had been filled. Day one: the stars vanished. Day two: the asteroid’s sensors fry out. Day three: the dry dock’s atmosphere dome cracked. By the middle of day three, they are no longer loading the injured or dead into the chambers. No one is coming for them. No one is likely to be revived.

It’s not unanimous. Those that wish to can load themselves into a suspension chamber. The librarians have settled on trying to preserve what is in the library. To power the scheme, they remove the base of this pyramid. It all ends in a flash.

Bouncing off the walls forever. Regrets for time squandered on petty aims. Despair at the fate of children not allowed to grow. Hope for something better in the afterlife. The occasional telling someone off for the last time. Curses of every kind. Memories of times much more pleasant. Realizations that there is no one last thing to do. It wasn’t me who threw Snuffy out the window. Laughter. Singing. Try not to think of anything at all.

“Meat! You really don’t want to be in there!”

No, I do not. The zombies are all human and of recent vintage. More of Cole’s workforce of the displaced, no doubt.

I’m guessing the transmutation to Outlaw Matter happened over a period of time. Again, it’s above my pay grade to be certain on this issue.

“Pussy! Drugs! Cash! Food!—You-hoo, meat! This way!”

“I’m not making it easy on you. If you want me, you can come and get me,” I said, without much projection.

Two steps out of the pool I found three plastic spools lying on the iron ground. Each were marked ‘Ace Hardware Extra Heavy Gauge Chain.’ Obviously not original furnishings.

“You talked! Fresh meat! Ok, now back out of there. Back the way you came. Come on, talk again. Talk.”

The voice hadn’t come from the zombies. The zombies were paying me no mind, whatsoever. Most of them were on the terraces, either climbing up or meandering the levels. Only the bodies near the television were stationary.

I took a telepathic scan as I closed in on them. This turned out to be an utterly hideous idea. I froze, stunned. I was being bombarded by random thoughts as it was. Opening the spigot is a good way to get your bell wrung—or fry the helmet. I narrowed the focus, scanning based on visual acquisition, starting with the zombies furthest from me.

“Not talking? At least you’re moving. Let’s see what we have here. Not human. Hey! Warbird? Doesn’t say anything about dead Warbirds in inventory.”

Some of the zombies did have thoughts, generally their last memory playing over and over. Royce Cole assembles his workers. Gets up on a mobile lift platform, having announced some sort of surprise bonus. Then he pulls out the Thompson. Everyone gasps. Cole rolls his eyes, starts talking about the cash bonus. Everyone relaxes. Mid sentence and without warning, he levels the gun and fires again and again. People run, but there’s nowhere to go. They are confined in what seems to be a warehouse without doors or windows.

Cole halts, reloads. Starts talking about the cash bonus again. Again, he resumes fire in mid sentence.

Royce Cole is a  wiry man dressed in a black, slightly blousy business suit. His slicked black hair is parted in the middle. A very thin, ‘pimp-like’ mustache lines his upper lip.

There is something wrong with the way Cole dresses. Something out of the ordinary. Barber shop quartet? Old west? It’s out of its time in some way.

Royce Cole is the figure on the stage in front of the televisions. Or what’s left of him.

“You-hoo, Warbird, come and get me. I am on some of your territory. I am defiling your territory, even as we speak. Oh, I’m stealing from you. Money! I am stealing your money, Warbird! Come and get me!”

“That’s quite beneath contempt,” I said.

I am looking back at myself through Royce Cole’s eyes. He has no thoughts, only perception. That’s a new one on me.

“Why the grease living muck sucker said something in human using a vocal synthesizer. That’s a bit much for a Warbird. You muck suckers aren’t that clever. Let’s get a good look. Yep, it’s a mini mucker male Warbird alright.  Gold helmet. Wings on helm. Blue uniform. Duh, Space Police! The Space Police are here!”

“Show yourself,” I said. “Where are you?”

I was now behind the line of chairs. Royce Cole was on stage, smiling in a sly way despite missing the entire left aft portion of his head. In four of the five chairs were men in various uniforms. All were chained into their seats. Two were headless, their heads having been deposited in their laps. One had its eyes torn out and its tongue distended. One had a bag over his head. It was struggling against its chains. The man’s entrails were knotted around his neck.

Flashing on the screen behind Cole were images of Colonel Mustard and Sal Lieberman getting into the cockpit of their A-10 Warthog. There was a detail shot of the blue mind destroying tubes mounted at the plane’s sides. This was followed by a scene of the vehicle flying in the skies, first over Seoul and then Gaza City. Some garbled commentary about the system’s capabilities was playing over a disco beat. 

I thought I saw Cole twitch. Blink. Move his head. Something. On second look, he seemed perfectly motionless. I checked him telepathically again. I was looking right at myself. Again, there were no thoughts—not even standard zombie thoughts.  

I telepathically scanned the man who was still moving. Overcome with sickness, I instantly bolted for him. For a moment, I thought my own guts were on fire, felt as Cole yanked them from my chest. I seized his chains, unsure of what to do with them.

They simply slid off him. He was no longer being held fast. All of his struggles were against nothing: the memory of having been bound. His name was Major Phillip Brinks of the United States Army. I found out so much more in a rush, but those are the essential facts. I went to snatch off his hood.

He was gagged. I was pretty sure the grey haired man was dead, was just another zombie. His eyes were lolling in different directions. I hadn’t heard any of them talk before, so I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. I removed his gag.

“Stop him,” hissed out of his drooping lips.   

“Count on it, Major,” I said.

I shot a glance back at Cole. He had moved.  I couldn’t tell how. He hadn’t changed his position an inch. But he had put his straw hat on. It was the hat that people had found so out of place about him. It was white, with a black band and a broad bill. Balanced at the edge of the podium was the hook of a too thin to be useful tan cane. I froze. Cole didn’t move.

“You-hoo, Space Police. Wings on helmet and boots. Flight officer. Hoops on shoulders. Supreme Operational Commander. Eek! Ok, Admiral, you might want to back off that guy.”

The Major was getting back on his feet. His eyes were now looking in the same direction, but not at me. Instead, his gaze was lifted, drifting quickly up to the ceiling. All of the zombies in here did that.

“Which guy?” I asked—easily the stupidest question of my life.

“Cole!”

“You were expecting maybe John Phillip Sousa?” Cole said. He still hadn’t seemed to have moved. The cane was now in his hands. On the screen behind him were the words ‘Modern Osiris’, which at the time were meaningless to me.

“Yeah, that aspect can still be active. You want to back as far away from Mister Cole as you possibly can. Damn. Forget it. Forget I said anything. You’re done.”

Cole was now smiling broadly. He hadn’t started to smile more broadly. One second he was just grinning and the next, full teeth. His eyes hadn’t moved. He didn’t blink. He wasn’t breathing.

The screen showed split scenes of the Warthog diving. In both scenes the tube weapon flashed as it deployed. In one scene an entire crowd of armed men in turbans dropped to the street, seemingly dead. On the split screen, another similarly situated group simply halted in their tracks. Then the scenes replayed. This time the scene on the right showed just one person suddenly convulsing and then spinning to the ground. On the left screen, one of the Asian troops holds up, starts shouting.

Words appeared across both screens:

AUAQ CONVICTION 3.4

No Physical Traces of Deployment Left On Target

Up to Six Kilometer Range Indirect Fire

Tight Area of Effect or Single Target

Lethal or Permanent Change in Target Orientation

CHANGES MINDS. ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.

I had to ask “You’re selling it?”

“Sold out, actually. And at six million dollars a pop plus development cost, not an easy sell. Sadly, they never used them so I can’t sell anymore. It doesn’t deploy on drones and that’s all the rage today, I’m told.--You seem much more interested in my presentation than my audience was. Well, this audience, at least,” Cole’s voice said. As for Cole, he was gone from the stage. I thought I heard something from behind the television display and took a proximity telepathic scan of the area.

I, Saint George, an Arab serving as Roman ruler of Palestine, and weirdly the patron of men who would slay my descendants, do hereby un-christen thee and declare thee unholy and standing on unholy ground--

--Nice. Mister Cole has telepathic defenses, seemingly natural.

The televisions suddenly went out.  The word ‘Alcibiades’ was on the screen. A musical flourish warbled into nothingness.

“So you’re what Joe Blow has sprung upon us? Whatever it is you’re up to, you certainly have Sparky and Fatso chasing shadows. Why confuse you? Let’s get your score card straight. Sulfur is Joe Blow. Fatso calls him Skeletor. Joe is a long term issue. Fatso is Leon,” came Cole’s voice from behind the televisions.

Then, he was right next to me. He said “Bad timing, Mister Space Policeman. The old man would have been absolutely thrilled to meet you. Sparky won’t care. To Sparky, you’re just another cockroach, complication, anomaly, collateral damage, an unforeseen grape to be squished. Pity is, I see his point.”

“Why did you murder the people of Tiamore?”

“You have no evidence of anything, officer—and you know it. Factually, actually I have no idea what Sparky might have done, nor why. Hint: the guy with half a head is not in charge.”

For some reason I was suddenly looking down. My helmet and gloves were at my feet.

Cole handed me back my bandolier, saying “This Charliq intrigues me. A shame, shameful that you know so little about it. The old man would have had so many technical questions--that your answers could have disappointed him with. Sparky lacks the initiative, much less capacity, to do the little dowsing into you and your culture that I have. If there is a Space Police, why isn’t there a Space Red Cross? We’ve been attempting to aid thousands of people from hundreds of species for forty years without an instant’s extraterrestrial assistance. Only now does some fatuous space authority show, and to level charges. Through the agency of the quite past his use-by date Joe Blow, no less. ”

I slammed my helmet back on and snatched up my gauntlets. I was already airborne by the time he said “No one is going to ask me, but I always knew Myron Feldman was deeply useless. I have half a mind not to clean up after the good doctor’s mistake. I have half a mind, period. ”

Twelve miles an hour may not be fast, but it was good enough to put distance between myself and Cole quickly. Cole, for his part, seemed merely amused, saying “Where the hell is the moron with the gyrojet pistol when you need him?”

Cole, thankfully, could not fly. He was also no longer blinking from place to place. From afar, he was actually quite zombie like, barely able to stumble a straight line. I had now achieved an altitude of sixty feet, which I still wasn’t sure was safe. But I wanted to see if he would perhaps spill something useful. I asked him “What is this about?”

“Come on down and beg ‘pretty please’ on your knees and I will whisper the whole soliloquy through your ears,” he shouted. He then pointed his cane up at me and said “Bang! This most distinctly is not the gun cane. I must have a gun on me. I wouldn’t be much of a gangster without a gun.”

“Is that what you are? A gangster?”

“Take some time to get to know me. To become admirers or my enemies,” he sang. Then he pulled a very large silver revolver out of his coat, which he waved about. “I’m curious. Very intriguing mechanisms in your chest and the base of your neck. I fear this is all I have for anesthetic. It will be quick.”

At the sight of his gun, I decided to gain some more altitude. For some reason, I was being pulled towards the center of the space.

I was also losing sight of him. I saw his hat as it progressed to an area beneath a terrace on the right. I faintly heard him say “Why chance what you can be certain of.”

I tried tracking him with the extended tactile system. He had climbed into a shaft behind the terraces and was attempting to negotiate the 45 degree incline. Far ahead of him up the shaft was Major Brinks. Cole was considerably more spry than the other zombie, and was soon right behind the Major. He shoved the Major forward when they made the landing.

At this point I thought about making a break for it for the first time. I remembered where I had come in. I compelled my belt to float in its direction.

The Major had regained his feet. He was heading to the terrace’s short inwardly facing wall, no doubt to use it to climb up as the other zombies were doing. Cole was at the inner wall, facing one of the suspended animation chambers. Then both Cole and the chamber vanished.

I might have been at the edge of my sensor’s range—or the Outlaw Matter may have been interfering with them. Both of these erroneous thoughts occurred to me as I dropped ten feet to reacquire him.

A bright light flashed from behind the Major. My flight suddenly wobbled. I dropped a foot. Worse, I felt a flutter in my chest.

Just as I regained my composure, I spotted Cole peering up from the terrace. He shoved the Major off the wall. Cole pivoted and then stumbled back under the terrace. This time he and two chambers vanished utterly.

Cole had seemingly turned a low powered freezer unit into a pulse device. That would take me hours, even if I had instructions. He had done it in seconds, without tools, apparently off the cuff. Having seen what one flash had done, he was going for two.

I didn’t know what two would do. I should be shielded from this. I’m guessing Cole knew something that I didn’t. Losing the flight belt was the least of my worries. If he did this right, he could shut off my heart and lungs. Not that my life support systems should have been working in the first place.

Up is always a good direction if you can use it. The next two flashes dropped me twenty feet and the belt’s flight controls were no longer responding properly. I had gained enough height that Cole was completely out of sensor range. I was twenty feet from the flaming gusting vortex when the second flashes hit. That confirmed it: there was no running from the pulses.

A zombie on the terrace to my right was leaning over the wall, reaching up to touch the mysteriously violent ceiling. He was still a level too low. It was tempting. I thought about it, but my god has long scruff and carries books in his arms. I might have prayed to it, to see if it changed colors or reacted, however this did not seem the time for a conversion. Besides, if that was God, I will take my chances with secular remedies.

I knew what Cole’s next move was: a cascade of flashes. If he puts out enough flashes, long enough, I am one beached fish. My options for going on offense were limited to the point of exclusion from consideration. The helmet had range, but what was it going to do. Scrambling the internal organs of a man operating with half a head seemed pointless. Both my baton and the charliq mines are effective only up close—and are dependant on targeting systems.

There was one long bright flash that didn’t seem to do anything. A swell of smoke swirled up from the lower reaches. I thought he might have done himself in.

I was now plummeting. The belt kicked back on about one hundred feet before the surface. I jammed the controls to send me in the direction of a terrace landing. It was a flailing flight which deposited me upside down just barely over the wall of a terrace.

I heard a crackle. Zombies ejaculated off the terraces, sprawling as they fell. I dove over the wall. The flight thingy was still on, but I can’t say how well it functioned. It wasn’t a free fall until I had tumbled to a height of twenty feet. I recall seeing the pool, my boots, the pool, my boots and then the world went white.