Prologue I: Apologue
March 4, 2037 A.D. [16 years, 11 months since End Day].
Praise the Blue Queen! Soon I will get to talk directly to one of the Holy Ones! It was an honor, but certainly one she deserved. She pressed the injection pen against her thigh and counted to six, just like she'd been taught in church.
Both the coffee table and Roberta's hand wobbled as she set the injection pen down, right next to her MyBle, with its digital display. She'd stolen the gadget just the other day. Looming over the holy device, she tried hard to not think about the corpse she'd lifted it off—the tang of burnt meat and gasoline.
Still, the dead man's MyBle contained a deluxe prayer...prepaid! (and it wasn't doing him any good); so, she took it. Like all the other municipal clean-up crew-persons, Roberta was a first-class scavenger.
Harder was procuring the drug. Since her prayer would be for Angie—poor heathen girl—Roberta, the building landlord, had stolen into Angie's unit and taken one of Angie's appliances to hock for it. Angie was too busy with her life of sin to notice. Nearly sixteen and still not married! For shame.
Roberta never had children of her own, but all her tenants were her kids.
The MyBle display read “downloading 12% complete”. She could hardly wait. The deluxe prayers were answered in person. Trying to be patient, Roberta rocked in her easy chair, Praise the Blue Queen, Praise the Blue Queen...
Through the walls, Roberta heard the cries of Kenny, her neighbor's youngest. Kenny was always sickly, coughing and calling for his parents. His Dad would yell something back at him—she couldn't make out what. Sometimes he'd smack Kenny until all the yelling stopped.
Roberta imagined the father's pain so acutely—having to deal with an ungrateful child. She knew how that felt, like how most of her tenants didn't appreciate her. It touched her soul like a bruise.
Kenny's cries were just one note in a symphony that permeated The U4oria, the downtown Omaha apartment complex Roberta was paid to manage. Another note was Johnny's next door. He was stomping around and cursing, lost in his latest vreal session (reliving his glory days in the military). He worked from home during the day and gamed by night, never sleeping.
Above her she could make out the Ivanovs, the old couple, arguing again about...something. Probably it had to do with their latest hustle. The previous one was a 'child recovery service' that Roberta was pretty sure was just a ham-handed attempt at a covert child trafficking company. There had been a lot of ambulances parked along their apartment complex the last few months. The emergency vehicles never took anyone away, though—they just dropped kids off. Then, one night, cops showed up, and that all stopped.
But the Ivanovs and Kenny's family attended The Church of the Blue Queen. So, she felt confident they understood their narrow mistakes and repented them.
Johnny, on the other hand, was incorrigible. He would never go to church. But he would cry out the Blue Queen's name like a true believer just fine as he worked off his rent in Roberta's bed, so Roberta found it in her heart to forgive him.
The weather outside crashed with a strangely muted, staccato chirp as though somebody needed to change the battery in the sky's smoke alarm.
More gunfire, she decided. The Church's military rolled through, on the regular.
Her MyBle display showed “downloading 50% complete” right as her injectable finally kicked in.
She shivered, pulling the sides of her unbuttoned cardigan sweater closer around her chest, even as it couldn't reach around her belly. Her eyes and head both tilted to the ceiling, which helped the happiness flow back, and back, and back again, up past her warm face, beyond her face mask and the fogged-up glasses, up, up farther towards her straight, stringy, dishwater blonde hair.
She felt the tension grow between her legs, too, while she shut her eyes and reached downward. This part doesn’t always last that long (at least, not long enough) and she wanted to enjoy it—
Sure enough, just as suddenly, the rush stopped.
It's just as well. I need to focus. As the drug coursed through her, the pulses in her temples were ancient war drums, marching orders in a crusade already won. The familiar taste of metal and pineapple tingled her tongue. Oh, my Queen...
It wouldn't be long now. I will get to talk directly to one of the Holy Ones, soon!
The Angel was coming.
###
Five Days Prior.
The raven-shape called ŸllRuss sat atop the wind turbine like a warning. Turning his obsidian head side to side, he reckoned any Poe-like attempt to elicit a response from him would, indeed, have been met with a foul reply. It was his way.
Or it would have been if he hadn't been so entirely alone.
Before he came to this realm, back in the rubicund world, his brethren among the Regnant didn't accept him, either. He was different. They all felt it. His light followed the same patterns as the rest of them as they swarmed through Timespace; but, his path was always along the edges.
It was why he joined with The Regnant Lord's rebels. The Regnant Lord promised a new freedom, as an individual, on this material world of "Earth".
Before the Regnant Lord recruited his cadre, hardly any Regnant had ever set foot on Earth. And interactions were strictly limited: dJinni, Fravashi, Angels, Devas, Mala'ik—they were called many names, but they appeared to only the humans who were extremely sensitive to Regnant visions of the future: Clerics.
And Madmen.
But then on End Day, ŸllRuss followed The Regnant Lord in an attempted invasion of this world. And, like his leader, he paid the price.
At the memory, the raven cried his outrage to the heavens! But, instead of words, his break opened to yet another gurgling cronk. God's Hooks! He trilled and snapped his beak to emphasize his displeasure with this form's limited language.
This was the price his brethren had paid. These limited forms! The shame of being ensorcelled thus, by The Blue Queen's Church and her meatbag Cleric, "The Precept".
He had trapped them all: ŸllRuss, the Regnant Lord...every single one of them who had tried to invade, all magically enticed into the seductiveness of the so-called Astral Plane and its perpetual dreams. Meanwhile, their physical forms, whatever form they chose to take, sleepwalked through this world—still available for visions and prophecies to the meatbags, as before—but, now, mostly numb. Lacking agency.
ŸllRuss's metallic collar, covered in runes and high-tech plasma sensors, glimmered in the prairie sun as he picked at a nit beneath his wing...he was drifting off into another happy nap, no doubt another one where he was revered by his brethren...
In this latest waking dream, he reconsidered his reality: despite his grousing, he truly did enjoy this particular, supple, ebony form.
Oh, and the flying! The best was startling the gaping meatbags who'd ordered a prayer with his entrance, through the open window of an abandoned skyscraper, or landing right in one of their tent-city campfires.
Before he revealed his true form, sometimes they thought he was a crow. One guy called him a rook. He always presented as a raven, though, looking down his crooked beak at the meatbags this one will be called "Angie"—
He cawed another outburst. It's happening again!
Like his brethren, ŸllRuss lived in all moments. He saw pasts and futures as clearly as he saw these colossal, white blades on the wind turbine, slowly rotating back into the same position, again and again, over the horizon.
Such was Timespace; if you weren't riding on a blade, that is, like all the meatbags.
A maelstrom of images and sounds bubbled into his consciousness and then disappeared like fish breaking the surface of a pond. He saw a final battle. And then another, the white cape on a different human this time. He saw a child kept in a bed until he left to save the world. He saw his own death, at a small gas station. A group of heroes, fighting among themselves. An impossibly ancient bronze-skinned human, smoking a joint. Is that happening now? Something about that one is hard to see. Peckerwood, someone said. The raven danced in place, lifting first one talon, then the other, as more images splashed across his being. I should fly! No, not yet. Still not sure where to go. God's Hooks!
ŸllRuss spent a few seconds really thinking about his Great Ally, here on this world. Oh, the irony of it. But, he felt accepted by that one. She knew what had to happen.
The Regnant had to be freed!
Now, in his native form, he was looming over a small, frightened girl named Angie in a narrow hallway filled with junk—he will be there in five days. With this "Angie".
To make it, he had to leave. Soon!
He turned his head one last time and dipped it downward, as though listening for if the rubicund world had any special, last-minute instructions. Or objections.
He knew better. Feeling none, his future came into sharper focus. Yes. This may happen, has happened. Must.
He mentally activated his specially-fitted collar, broadcasting a message, notifying the Church's main servers. The prayer was queued for him to answer, now ("Source ~ User: holyroberta123")—Ugh! Such a lack of imagination. The singsong, waterdrop noise from his beak was a strange copy of the confirmation chimes that emanated from his collar. First him, then the collar, then him again.
Yes. It was time, he and the collar agreed.
But, even if he had wanted to refuse, the Hegira Calls of The Precept's spell, and the Blue Queen, the Unity Herself, demanded obeisance.
So the demigod leapt and caught the wind, flapping his black wings as though he were free.
###
03/04/37, again.
Angie stood in her kitchen and poured herself some more gassum tea. Without her recently stolen microwave, she had to use the stove-top to heat it. As she waited, she was hard at work, angrily devising a proper booby trap for her nosy landlord. What would maim, but not kill, and still look like an accident?
Suddenly, Angie's MyBle pinged a familiar notification.
A prayer was about to arrive?
Her mouth gaped. It had been ages...heck, all the way back to when she was a preteen in the Mazon labor camps since she'd received a prayer. Her parents had preloaded several dozen before they died and they used to arrive every two months, like clockwork.
Usually, they were just happy messages of love and poems, with a small, discrete vision—and that vision was always the same. It was the very scene of the next message arriving, two months hence.
It was a very clever use of the prayers. It was a way for her parents to send the message: 'It's okay. You're going to be all right.'
Suddenly a black shape hit her face as she screeched "AAAGH!" What had flapped in through her open window? She stopped flailing long enough to look past her outstretched arms. A blackbird!
The raven screeched something right back at her and then veered off into the rest of the apartment. It flew around the wall, moving down her hallway toward her bedroom, it's fluttering wings caused all the picture frames on the walls to shudder.
Oh great! I'll probably miss whatever this prayer that's coming because of this. How am I going to this blackbird out of here?
Another Cronk! came from down the hallway. A line from her Mom's favorite poem, Take these broken wings and learn to fly, rushed past Angie's mind as she gathered herself and ran after the interloper.
As she turned the corner her breath caught in her throat. Right then the air made a popping noise and there was a flash of amber light. Like one of Mom's old photo-negatives in her keepsakes shoebox, the empty spaces in the air around them glowed a dark orange, while Angie and all the shopping carts and laundry baskets of her belongings that lined the hallway looked black as night.
So, too, covered in shadow, was the horrible monster at the far end of the hall.
It was an enormous silhouette, something like a gargoyle or monkey demon, with large wings that scratched the ceiling. The floor groaned and complained against its enormous weight.
Its leathery wings stretched forward, lining the ceiling of the hallway; but, those wings were no longer the shiny, ebony, almost mystic featheriness of the tiny bird that had interrupted her vigil. These wings were the opaque, stony obsidian of graveyard markers, lit only by the barest glow of whatever reflected light it could snatch from the barely living world around it.
Then it took a step forward and she saw the monster's eyes.
Those were most horrible of all: they didn't glow, or glare or have any ominous effects.
They were just...normal. Animal. They could've been her mother's eyes, dead from the drugs that the Mazon camp's medical personnel had administered—or maybe her disappeared father's eyes, which she almost remember from bedtimes ages ago, or the eyes of the screaming abused child downstairs...
The eyes regarded her, and as she met them the monster's seemed to mist up, as though it were about to shed a tear.
###
Then Angie sneezed.
Her focus still on the creature, she recovered and sniffled, lifting her sleeve to wipe her nose. The creature just stood there, not moving, not even breathing (did it breathe)? But something about its arrival had kicked up plenty of dust and so her allergies were fighting back. Already she could feel her eyes watering.
I've Gotta Get Outta Here, one of Angie's favorite memes, popped into her head. Usually she said them out loud, like a tic; but this one was stifled, out of sheer shock.
She remembered her mom taking her to an allergist when she was younger to find out what she was allergic to. The results came back: everything.
The gargoyle thing just stared at her.
"Yeah, This Is Big Brain Time," she murmured. She couldn't help that one.
After a few seconds of the staring contest, she recovered a sense of calmness. Now it all was like standing next to a sinkhole that had just missed her.
She started to say something to it when ŸllRuss began:
"ROBERTA HAS SPOKEN TO ME. SHE HAS DECIDED YOU WILL ATTEND CHURCH. ATTEND. ATTEND."
It wasn't language, precisely. It was feelings directly imprinted onto her mind—
Wait! That meant this was...geez, she couldn't process it, even as it was self-evident. It had touched her mind! This was one of the spirits! An Angel!
The Angel's words echoed in her mind, over and over, like it was another one of her memes. Attend attend you will you will church attend church attend church church church...
The smell of feces and the feeling of warm moisture running down the back of her leg woke her form her trance. Returning to the moment, she suddenly realized her bowels had evacuated themselves into her jeans.
What? How long was I out? How embarrassing! I'm making a mess of this! Angie couldn't believe she shit her pants—just like those dead bodies after the military battles that Kenny told her about, during one of their many trysts.
Wait—was she dead, right now?
That thought alone forced her to go stop everything and go into the bedroom and clean up. Giant Gargoyle Angel Guy would just have to wait.
Unless...Angie really was dead. Well, then, she reckoned it would interrupt her, anyway.
It didn't. After the shower, she dried off and looked for clean clothes. She settled on a different pair of gray sweatpants and a low-cut purple blouse that she usually just used for Kenny's visits.
How does one dress for an ugly Angel?
###
Minutes later when she emerged back into the hallway, it was gone.
No, wait—there it was. It was a Raven again. Standing on her coffee table.
She knew the rules. It couldn't hurt her. And until she spoke to it, it couldn't leave. It might not have been wise to keep an Angel waiting; but, she was smart enough to know she only had one chance at this, so she took her time.
While the holy corvid squawked again and looked on, she did her best to ignore it. Crossing over to her tiny kitchen, she poured herself another cup of gassum tea.
Then, in a flash of inspiration, she poured one for the raven, as well.
As she attempted to set the second cup down on the coffee table, there was a popping noise in the air and her hand was grabbed by another one, a human hand, fair-skinned and strong. "Thank you." the Angel said, in a cheerful voice.
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Then a lightning strike lit them both. Outside, it had gotten very dark, and started raining.
###
From her easy chair, she regarded the Angel, in his human form, sitting on her stained, pitted sofa. Her furniture had never looked so sad and normal.
The holy one was a perfect physical specimen. A swimmer's body, underneath tight-fitting jeans and a marble black and gray t-shirt. He wore a button-down, maroon, long-sleeve shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal his muscular forearms. He had something on his wrist that was shiny. Black boots with multi-colored, checkerboard socks completed his own look. And a strange, thick metal necklace that glowed in spots was visible above his t-shirt's neckline.
His hair and beard were both black and middle-length, unkempt, with streaks of gray along his temples. Its temples, she had to keep reminding herself. The Angel wore a slim smile without appearing to be particularly happy.
Only the eyes had remained unchanged. A deep green, with flecks of golden brown along the edges of the iris.
She would lose herself in those eyes.
"You don't believe in The Church. You haven't since your parents died," he, she meant it, said.
Nor did I believe it before then, either. I just used to lie on the Mazonschool questionnaires, like my parents taught me. "That's right." She took a sip of her tea. It was a good a story as any.
"Your landlord wants you to go to church."
"Yeah. I heard you before. Fine, I'll go."
"I know." The Angel smiled. "That was of no real measure. Your attendance at church is such a mundane request. Far less expensive than what was spent for a deluxe prayer. I have some...discretion."
Angie waited. She didn't know what he, it, was getting at.
"There is a credit balance from the prayer."
Angie still didn't get it. "Doesn't the credit go to back to Roberta?"
"Is wasn't properly hers to begin with. She stole the device from a corpse."
"Whose corpse?"
The Angel paused. "A high ranking government official."
"You mean Church official."
The Angel shrugged.
Angie couldn't believe how forthcoming the being was. "How did he die?"
It took a deep breath, for effect, because she was quite sure he hadn't breathed up to that point: "A human prayer, what else? You meatba—humans are always praying to speed each others' demises." He couldn't hide the smile in his eyes at that.
Angie noticed. "But, you help that along, don't you? You don't mind that we die?"
"You will always die. It's just a matter of when."
Angie shook her head, "Yeah, no, I mean, you enjoy it. I've heard that you all are trapped. That, where as before you answered prayers only once in a while, now you're trapped and you have to. Maybe by those collars?" She pointed to his necklace.
Now the Angel's eyes were unreadable. When it didn't respond, she pressed on.
"You know, my mother was injured in the work camp. Those camps, those are a form of slavery. You go in debt because the economy is set up that way, and the only way to work it off is in the camps. Then, once you're injured, as you inevitably will be under their conditions, you're transitioned to a medical facility, where they pump you full of drugs until your organs shut down and you die. No need for rehab or long-term care. All very efficient, economically. Don't you agree?"
The Regnant sat up straighter and answered Angie with a question, "What is the real reason you don't believe in The Blue Queen?"
"It's not that I don't believe in what she's said. I love her old stream-casts. She was amazing. But I just don't agree with The Church. The Church has taken it all and turned it...sideways."
The Angel looked at her a long time, and then said, "I have discretion in this area. If you were to honor the rest of the prayer, what would you pray for?"
At that, Angie sat for a long time. Then she smiled and walked over to the kitchen. She opened her everything drawer and took out a small, folded piece of paper. She had written this on the day her mom had died. She stood before The Regnant and read it. It started in with the traditional first line:
"Dear Spirits: Purchased by Life and Limb,
Please discontinue Mazon camps. Millions of people are
being bound into slavery until they fall and then
are drugged, sleepwalking to an early death.
The Blue Queen can stop this. Some say that she, and her Sorcerer,
The Precept, bound you the same way. I don't believe that.
But if it's true, I pray for that to end, also.
KTHX!
Amen."
Angie smiled again. She was proud of her writing. It's only a fourth as long as the Gettysburg Address, she wanted to brag.
Meanwhile, ŸllRuss held completely still, as the sleek, preternatural grin disappeared from his handsome face.
###
Like a kaleidoscope, all of Timespace shifted into a new shape. Or did ŸllRuss imagine it?
This one is sensitive. She would make a powerful Cleric. Is that why I'm here? "Purchased by Life and Limb...," the Regnant repeated out loud, in a stern tone.
For the first time, Angie's facade of nonchalant teenage swagger was replaced with a look of full-on fear. It was so amusing to the Regnant, Only just now does she note the possibility that she is in over her head.
His first instinct was clear: her prayer was impossible.
He took the barest glimpse at that future and it screamed back at him until his mind verily shut down—it meant untold, unprecedented amounts of death and destruction. A clash of new technologies and magicks, an arms race across Timespace. So many dead. So much chaos...so many new experiences and sensations...
He brethren among the Regnant would be so pleased with him for that.
But that no longer mattered, he scolded himself. His loyalties lay elsewhere these days.
"Sleepwalking to an early death." The Regnant continued, turning his head side to side, like he was still in raven form. Angie started to say something, then thought better of it.
Meanwhile, the prayer continued to echo through the Regnant's mind as the flood of visions continued. It was so direct. So pure!
Had no one, really, ever thought to simply ask for a better world? He tried to focus on just one or two visions...but he was so tired. The fog behind his human shaped eyes would not lift.
He blinked slowly, three times. This could perhaps work. Maybe maybe maybe. But, he couldn't see far enough ahead. He couldn't be sure.
All he could think about were the sensations of this scene: this annoying girl's scratchy voice hurting his head, the stench of her apartment stinging his nose, his back starting to hurt from this awful sofa. It was all so wonderful!
And he was so sleepy, this had taken too long...his mind started to hurt, now. A 'headache' it was called. Yes, yes! A new pain.
That decided it. This girl is good for me. I must help her walk this path.
He drank the last of his gloriously disgusting tea and stood up, dropping the teacup and saucer to let it shatter on the floor.
Angie nearly jumped out of he chair. She looked really and truly afraid now.
A good instinct. Perhaps I should be, as well. My Great Ally should be consulted. Then I will know for sure.
ŸllRuss sifted through the bubbling possibilities until he chose the future that was needed. Yes, yes, there we go. Now, his ally would be waiting.
ŸllRuss used the collar to signal the prayer as "complete", after using the credits to purchase travel tickets for Angie and himself to take a bus (more uncomfortable seats!). They would soon be heading to the city where he now knew his Great Ally would be waiting.
He held out his hand palm down, as though offering to lead her onto the dance floor.
Angie would, indeed, be going to church.
###
Angie had never before enjoyed the pleasures of public travel—one of the many luxuries only the wealthy could afford since End Day and the last World War. The bus trip especially was a revelation. She had never before left Omaha.
Seeing mile after mile of open land whisking past her bus window expanded her soul. It was like taking full breaths for the first time.
Similarly, days later, the AutoAuto in their destination city ("Seattle" it was called) was so clean and fragrant, it reminded her of the break room "lounges" at the Mazon camps. After each two hour mini-shift, they were allowed twenty minutes of play time in the luxurious lounges, which far, far exceeded the comfort of their own spartan sleeping quarters.
Although they were all so physically exhausted, the smartest among her workmates learned to pace themselves on the assembly lines so that they'd have energy for the games at break.
The AIs that ran the camps knew all this, of course. They allowed it because they had long since calculated the maximally efficient work-to-play ratio for manual laborers.
She spent a lot of the travel thinking about the camps. She wondered how many of her workmates also made it out.
Finally, "Illruss" and her arrived at what he said was their final destination. Out in the country stood a large, multi-floor complex. It was two or maybe three times as big as her apartment building.
Angie's jaw opened farther and farther the closer they got. As they approached from the side, they could see that three sides of the building were mostly brick with scattered square windows that didn't seem to let any light in or out.
But the front was a different story. The front wall and the entryway was almost entirely made of glass, some shaded either blue of silver for effect. The walkway was covered by a long, ornate roof held up at each corner with a different statue of the Blue Queen.
The final circular drive where their AutoAuto pulled up to the front of the complex curved around a huge working fountain, that shot water into the sky higher than the building itself reached.
As they stepped out of the back of the transport, Illruss paused for a moment while his collar flashed a few colors Angie hadn't seen before.
"The way," he said with his usual grin, as he took her hand and led her around the building, to a side entrance. It was a rare sunny day, with blue skies and puffy white clouds. Despite the cheerfulness of the weather and her companion, she couldn't help but feel something terrible was about to happen.
###
Besides its sheer size and the fireplace (which was larger than her apartment was wide) at the far end, behind the stage, the chapel was actually pretty nondescript. Just rows of chairs. A few pictures on the walls of figures she didn't know.
The defining feature of the chapel, besides it being nestled in the very center of the complex like a thoroughfare, was the glow. Unearthly blue, it came from the natural light outside streaming in past the thin, mostly blue, stained glass that stretched along the tops of the walls on all sides.
On the far side, opposite the wall with the fireplace, was a thin balcony. On that balcony, backlit by the blue glow of the window behind it, a silhouette stood.
It was a stocky figure, perhaps female. Long hair and a bulky jacket were barely visible. The jacket seemed to deflect some of the blue light off itself in a shimmer of hazel possibilities.
A deep, but indeed female voice came from the figure:
"You risk everything for her?"
The figure on the balcony was talking to the Angel the same way the AI used to talk to Angie at the Mazon camps. Direct. Emotionless.
"This girl would risk everything for it all to end. Should we not do the same?" The Angel didn't look up as he spoke. To Angie's horror, he had taken what appeared to be some kind of knife from a pocket or something and was slicing it against one of his palms. The blood was welling up. Both him and Angie just stared at the blood.
What the? was all she had time to think before the dark figure addressed her with a single statement that rained down from the balcony like manna, and ensured her loyalty, forever.
"Angie, I think it's time you met your father."
Prologue II: Prelude
“Why is this world good for me?”
—Leo Kalrajan, The Scion of The Church of
The Blue Queen
###
November 1, 2039 A.D.
The other airshifters, the idiots, had learned to ignore the gangly, elder black vagrant who so often slept on the couch in the great room. He paid them no mind; except he was proud that, at one point or another, he'd overheard nearly all of 'em repeat his latest adage: Community Radio made quite the comeback—all it took was a few nukes.
He didn't see well and he was nose-blind to his b.o.—but his ears worked just fine. He always made sure of that. He never let himself lose the music. The voices. Language.
Wiping sleepy sand from eyes that were perpetually squinted, the old, old black man did what he did best: he lived in the moment. Glancing around the room, he enjoyed seeing all the old CDs on the numerous shelves, their array of colors, and their text far too small to read. Jewel cases. That's what they used to be called. Few people knew this lobby of an abandoned bank building held such antique riches: the music of the ages.
When he first arrived at the station seven years before. he scooted the great room's couch to just below the "World Music" section of its library. That was his station-approved genre: World Music. Ever since, he's perpetually perched there, like a dragon guarding his hoard.
He sat up. The couch's creaks matched those of his joints. At his age, movement was just trading one pain for another. My joints could use a joint.
He reached for a blunt, but then remembered—the new ownership frowned on lighting up indoors. Damned holier-than-thou Blue Churchers. He almost cackled out loud, Don't I know it?
He paused a moment, imagining the smell of burning marijuana, and effortlessly entering into a sort of trance state without it. He could smell the sickly sweet savor of weed, growing near the shed where they slept, the burning bodies of his fellow slaves, their sweat propelling his golden palanquin. He was their God. He's a shining knight, fighting for freedom, while The Mad Angel laughed, at that time he forgot to register his latest shopping cart with the authorities...I am the authority! he spat at them.
He blew his nose into a Wendy's napkin, then put it back in his pocket. All he knew was this: Master or slave, it didn't matter. Death was a gift he could only give, never receive. Not until he was done.
Done. He leaned back against the wall and started to mentally gather the energy for his show—the show within a show. Every day, between the music tracks, he sent veiled messages over the airwaves. Every night for seven years. Sooner or later, The Nembrot would come. A girl. He had felt her presence so many times in his dreams.
Dreams. He wasn't subject to the effects of Marshall's banishing, but he might as well have been. Hell, he was always in a dream. And that was by design. Quare hoc mundo mihi bonum est?
Another of his adages. He was still surprised that one never caught on.
Despite the spells, anticipation was his only real fuel. He really. couldn't. wait. for The Nembrot to find him. Take the gift. So he could finally be done.
Done. He rested his gnarled hands in his lap as he let the warmth of the thought run through him.
“—Hey, JC, I'm talking to you! You up?”
Without changing his expression, the old man cringed. It was idiot Barry, gently shaking his shoulder. Barry was a chubby, twenty-something townie whose shift was right before his. A trust fund baby of nouveau riche rednecks who'd done well in the uprising, Barry rebelled against destiny by dressing like a street raider and playing non-traditional music—random sounds, mostly—from one to three AM. This was instead of studying for his college exams. He took the attitude that doing well in college was pointless since there were no jobs, which was wrong in every possible sense.
“Hrrrm?” the old man said.
"I said it's time, JC. You're up. It's time." Barry was pointing back, over his shoulder, to the LCD clock above the booth door. It read 3:33.
Barry shrugged: “Sorry, man, I ran over. I was on the phone with my girl, y'know? Plus, you were sleepin', so...”
The old man looked around, ignoring Barry. He lifted himself and his knapsack pillow and shuffled into the booth. In the bag was the future of mankind and a few CDs. In his head, the message.
He slid into the chair and put on the headphones. The booth still smelled like Barry's bootleg cologne. He briefly tried the imagine the sorts of people who were awake at this hour listening to the sounds of moose mating calls being broadcast from their connected low-power FM transmitter.
Nope, he had nothing.
He brought down the track's volume and turned on his mic as he vomited up his chest voice:
“Good evening, my children. This is JC. And welcome to Tenebris Sonos, music for the the despicable and...their...despised. All you other undead, you know who you are...,” the old man grabbed a CD from inside his bag and queued it.
“...You are the future.” he continued. “You feel the power. Real power. Not the promises of The Church or their feckless political flunkies. You aren't like the rest. You are drawn to the Truth. It's okay. Come to it. Follow your fears. Let the vibrations touch you and you will find me...
“Here is a cello meditation from Vassily Kordmann. Think about time. Is it real? Are you?”
This song was the accompaniment to a 1940s two-act theater play first performed in what used to be called Latvia, in response to their democratically elected government being overthrown. That show was, in turn, cropped from a cabaret of Romani folk tunes that had been widely performed three hundred years before. And the tale of those tunes was largely based on a true story of a famous Baghdadi caliphate's daughter who was tragically killed during the Dark Ages. It still made him sad.
This track was over twenty minutes. He got up to go to the bathroom to sponge bath in the sink.
Just as he was about to close the bathroom door, there was a sudden knock on the front door.
And then another.
Barry must already have left. He walked back into the booth and buzzed the visitor in. He wasn't afraid of being anyone's victim.
But, instead of a water raider or some other vagrant, his tired eyes made out the shape of a teenage girl striding in—looking all around as she walked.
He forced himself to stay calm. Could it be?!
She wore an expensive hand-me-down overcoat over ratty leggings and a brown t-shirt that read "meh" in big white letters. Her eyeliner and fake choker tattoo matched her black stocking cap, while the one real tattoo she had, a small barcode on her left cheek the size of a birthmark, indicated that she had been born in the offshore Amazon camps. He thought for a moment. She looked to be about fourteen. Only three camps were in existence that year.
Her bearing was the unearned confidence of a youngest child. Her eyes blinked overly fast, betraying a life that had already seen its share of horrors and so, therefore, needed to divide them up into smaller pieces, so's she could handle them.
He sensed something else about her, too. Something familiar. At that, he reached behind his back to firmly grip the bouy knife inside his waistband.
If she was another possessed cleric he'd slit her throat just like all the rest.
She marched right up to the glass of the booth window and gazed in. She didn't seem scared or troubled, just intensely curious. She saw him but didn't register him in any major way. Instead, she just kept shifting her gaze, side to side, all around, looking for something.
Eventually, her eyes settled on his duffle bag.
At that, the old man's own eyes finally opened wide, but not as wide as his smile.
She met his gaze. Reflected his relief and his smile, she knocked on the glass and said knowingly, “WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY.”
The old man, still smiling, released his knife and flipped a switch on his control panel so his voice boomed out throughout the great hall in response: "DO YOU ALWAYS SPEAK IN MEMES?!"
The girl looked all around, startled for the moment, and then regained her composure with a smile, one hand akimbo. “I think I'm supposed to be here!! To do something with whatever you've got in the bag!!” She was still shouting through the glass.
The old man emerged from the booth, waiting patiently.
The girl looked at him, fidgeting for a while, and finally said, "Um, I'm Angie. What's your name?"
And then he told her.