“What it actually looks like is a bomb,” Brock said.
“Oh, well, yes, if you’re speaking practically. It is. I was speaking more ‘big picture.’” Mercury made air quotes, then nodded. “It is a bomb. The latest advancements in technology. But sadly, unlike music, it has been used for evil. To be specific, it is a long-range intercontinental torpedo with a nuclear warhead. If you check the history of this timeline later, the Chinese will say the Russians did it. Of course, the Russians will accuse the Chinese. You understand how these things are. Always so difficult to track down and investigate. So much lying.” He pointed to the sisters. They scowled back at him. “Thus, the need for contractual agreements.” Mr. Mercury patted his briefcase and smiled.
The cleaner, Mr. Kazimora, rose to his feet. He was definitely fully awake now. No one could take their eyes off the windows. It looked like he was in shock.
“We are not safe,” the girls said in unison.
“Please, no one leave the negotiation table. As I have said, you are safe if you do not leave my area of influence. Mr. Kazimora, please sit back down.”
Bucky strode over to the glass wall. The glare of light on his face changed from white to deep orange. Fire erupted from the stadium and reached toward the pool. Giant boiling orange pumpkins of death roiled against the glass.
“Young man,” Mr. Mercury said loudly. “Please return and sit down. I insist. Mr. Kazimora, you will also sit. Now.”
“Do as he says,” Badrik added.
“How can any of this matter? We are all going to die,” Doctor Joy exclaimed.
The glass and metal frames of the pool wall began to shake and rumble.
It was the white master that spoke to her softly, with an old voice full of assuredness. He had placed a calming hand on her arm. “Don’t be startled. You do not remember, but you will start to remember. You are one of us. Always have been, our Joy. But this will take time. We had to send you away to learn these new things. Magic has become the science of invention. To be able to learn you had to let go of your past, but you have not lost your purpose. Trust in us.”
The glass wall shattered and turned into a fan of glass knives. Outside, in the parking lot, cars were flipped into the air. With a crash, a massive black limousine slid through the opening, bending the wall supports and starting a collapse of the ceiling.
“Juro now!” the voice of the old white-robed man boomed.
The room froze, along with everything in it.
No, Darius realized, not everything. Stuff has stopped around us.
The water in the pool was still. Closer to the window, glass shards drifted slow in the air, glinting like hummingbirds. Below the twinkling cloud of glass, a deep trench cut into the pool water. The liquid held a cleft in it that remaind held and parted like a Bible story.
The car had been halted in its sideways skid, tires bent like bottle caps.
The closer side of the pool, “their” side, had water that rippled and moved like water should.
Darius stood. He saw Bucky, standing like a mannequin out on the pool deck closest to the window. The curtain of glass shards hung against his face and arm. It had enveloped him like sharp, broken ice.
“Do not leave this area. No matter what happens. The laws will not protect you if you do so. I’m officially declaring the negotiations open,” Mercury said.
The ceiling fixtures, spotlights suspended on cables had swung away from the blast, and they remained held in an arc, bent as if made from stiff curved wire. Their light now shone on the bank of folded bleachers against the back wall.
“Now, if I can have everyone’s attention? If everyone would look here for a moment? Very good. Now, for some of you, this will be the first time you have experienced an out-of-phase shift pause. I will declare the negotiations officially open. As stated in the documentation, Master Hiruko and his team are acting on behalf of an artificial intelligence. Everyone may now table interests in post-transition options that fall within the guidelines.”
Where the chicken had been now sat a dark-haired older Asian man. He had his eyes clamped tightly shut below a floppy hat. Darius had no idea where he had come from. Badrik acted as if a man just suddenly appearing beside him was a normal thing. The man was obviously in deep concentration or in some type of meditative trance.
Mercury continued, “I have received a document declaring three positions of entitlement of staff. Hiroko and his team have scouted and laid claim to one: Darius Stormcloud, Antonova Antinov, and Brock Mapstone.
“What?” Nova asked.
“Oh, dear. I don’t really know.” He leaned towards her in an aside tone, “This is not really the time in the proceedings for me to allow questions. That’s a contractual obligation between you and them.” He gestured across the table.
“We will cover these things later,” Badrik said to her.
“What about Bucky? We should get him help. I think he’s hurt.” Darius couldn’t ignore him. He hated him, that was for sure, but he was still his teammate. They had played a lot of games together. He was his pitcher, and he made his life hell, but he couldn’t just ignore him. He was a teammate, a person, and he needed help. He looked like he was hurt. He could be in a lot of pain. Darius knew what that felt like.
“Shouldn’t we help him?”
“Look, Darius,” Mercury said. “Look at Juro.” He gestured to the man beside Badrik.
“He can only control a certain moment,” Badrik added. “A specific defined space. His abilities are limited.”
“Everything in a moment,” the old white master continued. “But his sphere of influence is small. This destruction we have all witnessed has happened. All of the junction points have been destroyed. There is no going back. Inside this maelstrom, Juro captures this one bubble, and holds it, and stops it from bursting. All the junction points have already burst around us.”
“We cannot be sure what Bucky is, where Bucky is, actually. He is at the perimeter of the sphere of protection,” Badrik said.
“Like when you see the light from a distant star,” Mr. Mercury added. “What you see may not be there anymore. It has all been swept away a long time ago. The stars you see in the night sky. Many of those stars could have disappeared long ago, but you still perceive them as being there only because you still see the light they once emitted.”
“How?” One of the twins began to speak. Whistle girl. Her face suddenly froze. She had become as still as Bucky.
“We don’t know how long Juro can hold this moment,” Mr. Hiruko replied as if the girl had completed her question. “A short time only. We need to proceed.”
“Right.” Dr. Joy leaned forward. “You’re a lawyer. You’re arbitrating this meeting. That takes two sides, doesn’t it? Whom are you mitigating between?”
Mercury turned to Doctor Joy. “I arbitrate between upstairs and downstairs, my good doctor. I umpire Utopia and Dystopia and try to keep things in line. Your ‘against’ should be arriving very soon.”
At that, the twin girls’ heads struck the table. The big man, Kazimora, let out a loud, massive belch, and black ink spewed from his nose and mouth. He began clawing at his neck like he couldn’t breathe.
Everyone else thrust themselves back from the table. Darius felt a strong urge come over him to get further away from the table. Dr. Joy plucked a pen from her chest pocket and thrust it crosswise between the teeth of the big man. His teeth clamped down on it, and his tongue protruded between his teeth and around the pen. And he continued to claw at his neck. His fingernails broke as he clawed away ribbons of fat and flesh.
Black ichor poured around his tongue, over his chin, and landed on the tabletop with heavy wet sounds. A seizure pulsed through him, just like it had the two girls, that drove his head down against his chest.
Then, he became still. Darius thought he was dead. His tongue and the pen dropped to the tabletop.
Then suddenly, the twins and the big man sat bolt upright in their chairs. Their eyes ran with ichor that slopped down their faces like wet mascara.
Darius thought he was losing his mind. All the craziness he was witnessing. He just wanted to close his eyes and make it all go away. Maybe he was actually lying on the floor in the shower room, and he hadn’t actually gone one step further since Bucky kicked his ass. This had to be some type of concussion dream he was in. Maybe he was even on a stretcher being operated on. It was still yesterday. In the hospital room cut open and dying. He had actually never made it beyond then. They had killed him with their stupid operation.
“Are… are… are you all, ok?” Brock asked.
“Now they are.” The voice was Bucky’s. Darius turned in his chair. Bucky still stood amongst shards of glass that hung in the air. He brushed at the glass on his arm, and it drifted away like slow dust in sunlight.
“Ah. Very good,” Mercury said. “All have arrived. I declare the proceedings now open and fairly represented on behalf of the for and against. Now we can get things underway.”
Darius watched Bucky walk towards them.
Definitely ‘concussion’ slash ‘bad operation’ stuff going on in my head right now, Darius thought. This will be OK. I’ll wake up soon. Or maybe just die. But this isn’t real.
Bucky’s left arm and hand had been shredded to the bone, along with most of the left side of his face. White bone smeared with the pink of blood was all that was left of his jaw and skull.
But the problem was Bucky was walking toward them like nothing was wrong. Like his face wasn’t half gone.
“Stay seated,” Mercury reminded. “This is as much a threat as the explosion. Be very careful.”
Bucky walked towards the table. His blood-stained grin grew and grew more. It reached maniacal distorted proportions, and his neck grew with it. His neck was too big. Bucky had grown a cartoon-muscle neck.
Darius didn’t think this thing was Bucky.
“I see we have chosen our players, old man,” said the Bucky thing. His voice boomed with power. Amplified, it seemed to come from everywhere. Bucky’s eyes had changed to solid black. With a swipe of his arm, he flipped a table set with cups of water up into the air. Thrown with inhuman strength, it was flung straight up into the ceiling lamps.
The table stopped and became motionless, pressed against the ceiling as if it had been caught and held by an invisible web. The scattered drink cups became suspended, just like the shards of window glass. Splashes of water from the cups shimmered and glistened in frozen swoops.
The monster that had been Bucky grinned with chunks of shredded skin hanging from his face.
Mr. Mercury rose from his chair.
“You have no right to disturb a legal arbitration! I demand you control yourself.”
Bucky turned a lethal gaze onto the lawyer. His teeth were larger. Fangs. He smiled with a mouth of too much teeth.
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“By interfering with the laws of fate, YOU SUMMON US! I have no use for this, this… distorted charade. I will crush all of you. You are mine. The old one weakens.” He gestured to Juro. “I test him. His sphere of influence weakens. He cannot suspend fate for very long. All you creatures of luck have grown old and weak. You no longer have the strength to challenge my family. Chaos and Fate will sweep you from this existence.”
“Well, sir, that will take time, and there are more moments than this one currently in play,” Mercury replied.
“Really?” The Bucky thing contorted his head to look at the lawyer.
“Yes. For a final game. A resetting of the pieces,” the white-robed old man replied. Everyone had remained seated, just as they had been told to do. The only one standing to face the beast was the lawyer.
The shredded beast thing that was Bucky moved. In a blur of motion, it moved to stand directly in front of the lawyer, looming.
The lawyer did not look threatened. “This is a setting of legal arbitration. You are bound by law to behave yourself. And I will not allow you to place unnecessary strain on any of the attendees. Juro, you can release that table, the cups, and the water.”
It seemed that the old man in the floppy hat hadn’t heard, and the only change was that his mumbling grew even louder. Perspiration was standing out on his forehead.
“Badrik. Could you reach him, please? Tell him to release the table. He does not need the extra strain that Chaos has allocated.” Badrik nodded once and closed his eyes. Mercury gave the Bucky monster a disappointed look. “Your appearance and behaviour is quite awful right now.”
Badrik opened his eyes, and the table above them unfroze, finished its arc, and crashed against the wall. It was followed by a shower of white paper cups that splashed and popped as they hit the pool deck.
Remember, concussion-dream, Darius thought. This is all bull. Maybe I’ll wake up in the hospital.
The voice was Bucky’s again. Normal. Unamplified. “You know, it’s my responsibility to test the boundaries. But let’s talk about you, Mercury. You look like shit.”
“Ah, yes, well, time and all that. I put away my famous work shoes long ago. I am now one of the constrained.”
“You don’t need to follow the laws. I should be evidence of that. It is much more freeing on our side of things.”
“Yes, but you do have to allow others their constraint, their plans, their hopes and dreams. The fools that we may be.”
“Your numbers have dwindled, and with so few of you left, there is hardly a viable chance in altering anything anymore. Mercury, I don’t know why you persist on playing this neutral ground. You should join us. Let these others die off. It is the natural way of things. You would be more powerful then. You’d look better.”
The old white monk spoke, “Nothing is over. We are still here and we have been notified of options. We are representing a certain party.”
“Really? You seem to want to persist for some reason. Well, I have the right to view the declaration of intent,” the Bucky thing said to Mr. Mercury, who pulled the scroll from the briefcase and handed it to him. The paper looked like a maze of finely written dark script to Darius, but the Bucky thing gave it the briefest glance.
“The reason is a machine intelligence?”
“Just as I have been telling everyone before you arrived, things are changing.” Mercury held his hands up in a shrug. “I was just telling the others about that new song, ‘Silent Night, Ho’—”
“Things do change. Like now, I find the luck gods weakened. Your little nudges, your attempts to alter the course, are all futile. The game still draws to an end. Why do you even bother controlling this moment, calling this meeting to delay the slamming of a door? These things you call hope, chance, and inspiration mislead you. Understand that the result will be the same. No one stops Us. Stops Chaos. I know everything. Let me give you a piece of information to help convince you of your foolishness, so you will let this moment go, and we can all continue with things we care much more about. What you are attempting to change has already been taken care of. You are too late.”
The twins and the big man sat as still as mannequins, listening to the thing that was no longer Bucky speak.
“We will see, won’t we?” Hiroku replied. The challenge hung in the quiet room. Darius could feel the power, the tension between the old white monk and the creature that paced around the table.
“You are up to something, aren’t you, old man?” Bucky dropped the scroll to the table and began to stroll around. “You yourself have only been lucky enough to retain enough of your past power that you still command respect. Your underlings: three are gone, the female is nothing, and soon too will be lost. Juro retains some power of the anchor.” He patted the little man on his shoulder as he passed behind him. Juro remained in his state of meditation and concentration. “And Badrik…” He nodded to him as he passed. “Voodoo keeps you strong, but you walk a dangerous path. Sometimes in the shadows I see you tread very close to our way. Step on our side too much, and you’ll be one of ours.” The Bucky thing continued his stroll around behind the twins and the cleaner sitting in their trance-like states. He gestured an open hand to the three of them to emphasize his point to Badrik. He continued his walk around the table and passed behind Nova, then Brock, and finally, Darius, peering at each one of them in turn. When he got to Darius, he leaned in close, drew his face up beside his, and sniffed.
Darius did everything he could not to pull away. He would not show fear. Strange thing was Bucky no longer smelled of booze. He smelled of blood. The bone of his cheek shone in the light.
Bucky blinked at him. Sniffed again. “There it is. You. You have something. Something ‘new.’ This small, brutal mind that I have trapped in here with me, if it ever would cease screaming for a moment, says yes, there we are. It confirms it. Yes. Right.” Bucky tapped against Darius’ cheek with a hard finger. “In…” Another rough knock. “There.”
The hard taps on his incision hurt, and the pain blossomed up across his face.
Not feeling much like a concussion dream right now, he thought, or maybe they are cutting into my cheek in the middle of the operation.
“Objection!” Badrik said, slamming the table.
“Sustained,” Mr. Mercury replied. “Chaos, you have illegally assaulted a person guaranteed to the protection of these proceedings. Your fine will be determined forthwith.”
Suddenly, the Bucky thing dropped to its knees beside Darius and began to wail. He looked once again very much like Bucky.
“Oh, please forgive me. It is true! I accept your judgment in this matter!” Suddenly, it stopped and looked up at Darius, its tone once again normal. “They are totally right, kid. I’m restrained by this setting. Mercury is making sure of it. Totally overstepped my bounds. It’s my character. I am just so damn impulsive! Should never have touched you in this ‘lawful setting.’ I ask for your forgiveness.”
“Um… of…” Darius began.
“Don’t you dare forgive him!” Badrik said, quickly interrupting Darius.
“Quite right. You’re entitled to bargaining,” Mr. Mercury said with a wink. “That was considered an assault on your person.” And he seated himself.
“Come on. Go ahead. Name it, kid. Whatever you want.” Bucky looked up at him; he had never seen him look so innocent before. He looked totally normal. He had Bucky’s eyes. The same eyes he was staring into not too long ago as he was being pinned against the changing room wall—the eyes from the pitcher’s mound. The black-filled eyes were gone.
“I don’t know. It’s really o—” Darius said and was cut off right when he was going to say “ok.”
“It is not ok. You need to declare what you consider proper and fair.”
Darius had no idea what to say. He looked sideways at Brock. He lifted his eyebrows as if to say, “Come on, man, come up with something.”
Brock flipped his hands on the table as a sign of indecision. “Ah… I don’t know. An assault back?” he suggested.
“Excellent!” Bucky said and was on his feet. “Let’s do it now. Pain is sooo purifying. I haven’t felt pain for eons. Really looking forward to it. Let’s do this, shall we?”
“Ah, not so quick there, Dark One. At a time or period indicated by the victim.” Mr. Mercury ticked a finger toward Darius.
The Bucky thing found a chair and, deftly spinning it around, sat on it backwards. “I see you, kid, and I can tell you are Old Testament. An ‘eye for an eye’ sort of thing. Not bad, you know. I’d like to say I’m impressed. Today, it’s all about the golden rule.” And in a stage whisper, he added, “And we can all see how well that has gone. But I prefer things the way they were before.” He leaned in and spoke in conspiratorial tones. “You know, before that book. You realize that was a full step back for us. An ‘eye for an eye’ always takes a bad rap nowadays, but do you know it actually went against us? Back when I was starting out, we didn’t have it. Someone takes your eye, you kill them, his brothers come and kill you and your entire family, your relatives go and burn their village, chaos.” The Bucky thing grinned at him and rubbed his hands together gleefully. “It was great. You could be sitting around minding your own business, and the next thing you knew, you were out burning stuff down that had nothing to do with you. But now we have to play within the rule of law. Slavery, for instance, and professional soldiering. Organized armies allowed sustained war. That was a phase shift for us. You know, they had to really convince me at first. Who thought law would help chaos? But I have learned my lesson and try to always look at both sides of things, you know? Like from the other perspective. Now, I’m always careful to ask myself, ‘How will this benefit me?’ I’ve got absolutely no problem with the laws of slavery or consumerism.”
“Please excuse me... Ok, everyone,” Mr. Mercury said and rapped the table. “We need to finalize things. Hiruko and his colleagues have declared their intent of protection and preservation of a group of deceased vessels at the end of their consciousnesses in this timeline, insert Nova, Brock, and Darius, to be used as nonphysical entities, i.e., as memories, avatars, etc., etc.” He flicked his hand. “As was properly defined in their proposal on behalf of the party, insert machine intelligence, that his group, insert Doctor Joy, Mr. Badrik, and Masters Juro and Hiruko, is representing, and yes, a copy has been sent downstairs. As stated, it is a fully legal manipulation at and of the cessation of a timeline and all binding hitherto usual restraints as indicated in the appropriate subsection.” Mercury raised his head, and a finger, and with slow emphasis said, “Please read the subsections, people.”
“Wait,” Nova said, holding up a hand. “Deceased?”
The lawyer sighed at the interruption. “Well, of course, look.” He threw a frustrated gesture to the cloud of glass shards and the orange ball of fire that was bulging its way into the room.
“And I’ll remind you, I do have the floor, young lady. Now, to continue, we have the representatives from downstairs on board. They recognize the opportunity here to alter the balance of things beyond the duration and applicable branchings from ‘the now,’ once Juro releases his concentration, and that shockwave destroys this room.”
The thing that was Bucky nodded. “Agreed.”
“And...” The lawyer squinted at the big man who had just bit off his tongue. “Do you have a fully balanced representation here?” he asked Bucky. “You did contest when you first arrived. These others, they comprehend the possible altered outcomes?”
“Ah, ya. Yes, they do,” the thing that looked like Bucky said.
“They don’t really seem to be… paying attention,” Mercury said.
Bucky swung his arm casually, taking in the twins and the big cleaner.
“They’re working remotely right now.”
Mr. Mercury leaned towards them and raised his voice. “Erebus!? Erebus? Yes. There you are. Obviously, those we have possessing right now are Erebus, Silent Darkness, and Death, and, also joining us, presumably, the twin Moirai Sisters of Fate, I would guess?
The three sat, still unmoving.
“Well, then. Thank you for your polite acknowledgments and the easy identifiers,” Mercury said sarcastically. Darius noticed Mr. Mercury had caught his attention, just like a hand signal in a ball game. He was looking right at Darius. He pointed to the bloody tongue and ink that pooled on the table in front of the large cleaner, and he also gestured to the twins.
“Silent, Twins, and phase shifter.” The final gesture was at the Bucky thing. “I see you’ve kept things in the family. Your son and granddaughters. But I see you are missing a granddaughter.”
“Well. You know. The passage of time has eroded us all, hasn’t it? Your own church no longer speaks, but when it spoke to the people for you, it also spoke of us, did it not? It used to warn all of your followers to beware. The loss of the church weakens all of us. Yes, I have lost a granddaughter. If the hearing would allow it, I would like to make a statement for the record,” Bucky said.
“Please,” Mercury replied.
“As allowed by the law and order, due to undetermined outcomes from today’s interference by luck in the fabric of existence, Chaos reserves the right to preserve the mass from this moment’s instance of influence to be applied back to the balance,” the thing that was Bucky stated.
“Certainly. It is only fair,” Mr. Mercury replied. “Mr. Hiruko?”
Mr. Hiruko nodded in agreement.
“Ah, I’m sorry. This level of the agreement must be verbalized to be binding. You’ll have to state it for the record.”
The Bucky thing grinned. “Always the sly one,” he said to the old monk. “Thank you, Mercury.”
“Don’t thank me, you demon, for doing my job.” It was the first time Darius had seen the lawyer show any true anger. It nearly sounded like a threat.
The old man cut in, “We agree to their right to future balance, but I thought you would soon end this. Control this. Our fates decided, you said. Why do you negotiate for future terms if this arbitration is useless, as you claim?”
“Well,” Bucky replied, “sometimes you just never know, do you?” He smiled.
Darius had noticed Juro was starting to come under more strain. He was sweating even more, his mumbling had become more intense, and he was beginning to shake.
“Then I declare our meeting concluded…”
“Just a moment.” Badrik held up a hand. “I wish to consult with one of our team, on an aside.”
“Objection?”
Buck gestured to Master Juro.
“He can only maintain this for a moment longer. Soon, chaos will return. You cannot stop us. We are inevitable. We are fate. We are decay. We are everything. None of this matters.”
“Regardless but remember. You have an obligation. If your assault victim today, Darius P Stormcloud, is encountered by you at any point hence with, you must respect his right to claim personal injury retribution,” Mercury stated.
“Of course.” The Bucky thing nodded to Darius.
“And I will inform you now that copies of your recorded assault during this arbitration have gone upstairs and downstairs.”
Badrick leaned over and whispered to Darius. “Do you still control the drone?”
“Yes,” he said. He was so used to it now, he barely remembered he could still see the small stamp of its video feed.
“You must concentrate and command the drone to do what I tell you… Command it to do exactly as I say. You cannot fail in this…”
“Ok.” Darius looked at Dr. Joy, and she gave him a stern nod. “Yes. Ok. I’ll do it.”
“Things are going to get very loud and chaotic. I want you to concentrate only on my voice,” Darius could hear the big, deep baritone in his head. “Only on my voice. I want you to remember everything when you wake up. Concentrate only on my voice…”
Darius watched as the Bucky thing transformed further into a beast of twisted muscle and torn flesh. His neck enlarged and pulsed as if he had something alive in there—something trying to get out.
With a crash of sound, the glass and fire came back alive, and it reached out toward Darius. The fire rushed at him. Where the room had been, where the others had been, was now only fire.
“Concentrate…” Badrik said. “Concentrate only on my voice.”