When In Doubt Kick’em In The Nuts
I’ve been here too long. Three days and nights long.
I’m ready—anxious even, to say goodbye to Doyen and his weird world, though leaving Rocky behind is still up for consideration no matter what Doyen thinks.
He’s so small and needy… and what the hell would I do with a kid on my hip? I’ve already helped him as much as I can. It’s time to let go. But Doyen’s world is twisted and I don’t know if I can trust him. Does Rocky belong here?
I’m pretty sure Eli would have a conniption at the mere mention of bringing another human being, let alone a tiny child, into this mess we’re up to our necks in. He’d go on and on about the ramifications...
Taking Rocky across town has completely altered his life. I’m in no position to take on the responsibility of caring for another person when I can barely take care of myself, but leaving him here... well that’s not something I’m sure I can do.
Contemplating this, I stare out the long window at the daytime view of Neutopia. The edges of the city are bordered by pristine white, accentuating the belief that this town is the last. There’s a harrowing thought.
Is it possible to go from billions to thousands? I consider the possibility of the rumors that Arlen mentioned in our only conversation; whispers of other groups of people living happily above ground in a warm nameless land. It was real to him; he believed I was one of them.
It’s sad to think that the last bits of such a complex species are gathered in this one place, depending on technology to keep them alive.
Arlen and his people were ended by the sonic cannon blasting from those unexplained hovercrafts. I can’t help thinking it’s no coincidence that Doyen seems blind to the annihilation of the Mole people, or that I haven’t seen a hovercraft since arriving in this city. The androids here use Orbs. So Neutopia can’t be the last city. The world is too big; there were too many people to end up with so few.
“How did the world come to this?” I wonder aloud and then sense that uneasy presence that means Doyen is nearby, the precursor that means I’ll find him standing somewhere behind me the moment I turn around.
When I turn to find him smiling with a ready answer, I know he’s been here for some time. Watching me watch his city.
“Tell me about when you are from and I will enlighten you.”
He’s also alluded to knowing I’m from another plane. Now he’s alluding to my time loop. What else does he know?
I respond, shifting my eyes back to the window. “It was 2012 when I left.”
“My friend, you and your ideologies are nothing more than artifacts.”
“Is that right?” I think he just called me ancient.
Turning back to Doyen, I find he’s moved to sit across the room on the undersized sofa. The way he’s staring at me makes my palms slick with sweat.
“A history lesson for you. Let’s see... Oh, yes. During the 20th century, the populace was bombarded with choices. This was all planned, of course. There were leaders who sought to take advantage of the citizen’s preoccupation with... what is the old phrase? A dog and pony show?”
Doyen explains that the previous world system had been at a breaking point for decades. “Kingdoms overrun with greed and corruption, but the people took no notice. They fought with one another and soon forgot about important matters; like the state of their leadership and the health of the planet.”
“Factions formed and rose against dissidents. War and pollution ran rampant. The world was polluted and Mother Nature could not course correct. Armies dropped giant bombs. Many millions died from the fallout, billions more from famine and disease.
“All the while, greed flourished as it always does under selfish rule, and resources were hoarded.” Doyen sets his hands together below his chin, palm to palm—his light expression contrasting the dark tale.
“Then what happened?”
“There was no place habitable above ground. Even the hidden caves in mountainsides were polluted by the hostile air. No sun shone through the layers of dust.
“Some men chased the stars in search of another home but the smart ones went underground.” His dark eyes tighten slightly. “We are survivors. We adapted to the changes as they came. We worked while the planet was in its’ heated cycle, knowing that one day, a winter would come. When it did, the atmospheric generator was ready.”
He waves his hand, gesturing out the window. “When the air was deemed safe for breathing, we began rebuilding and fine-tuning our societies and bloodlines.”
He finishes with a look at us now puff of his chest as if he’s done all the work himself. The hubris is nauseating.
“What year is it?”
“Three-thousand-eleven.”
I nod because what is there to say to the fact that I am in a world that’s nine hundred and ninety-nine years ahead of my own?
Wouldn’t it be something, though, if I got here through time travel? But no, finding my little sister alive in World Two proved that Eli had been right all along. Besides, I would hate to think that the future of my planet is as bleak as this one has been in the past.
“Doyen, may I ask something of a more... personal nature?”
The way he nods his head, granting me permission; it rubs like sandpaper over raw nerves. Even if this asshole hadn’t threatened Rocky and choked me into obedience, I’d be hard-pressed to find a redeeming quality in Doyen. There is something about him—a type of darkness—that’s unsettling.
“How do you know about my…” I gesture to the great beyond with wide sweeping moves, “the travelling, and me moving through the multi-verse?”
Doyen’s demeanor casts an unreadable feeling, his face a deafening blank as he stands up and wipes one hand over his round stomach as if making sure it’s still there. His long ponytail sweeps side to side as he waddles away, waving a hand over his shoulder.
My blasé order to follow.
The blank wall that conceals the elevator to the pinnacle penthouse apartment reveals itself and opens as Doyen approaches. He doesn’t have to wait or even slow his gait, the entry just knows he’s coming and obeys on approach.
I follow and listen as Doyen leads the way down into the unknown bowels of the building, the intestinal maze in the middle of the structure.
“I do not come from here,” Doyen says and for some reason, I’m positive that he’s telling the truth.
“When you say, ‘here’…”
“I was not born on this plane, but brought here.”
“From where?”
“From my home.”
Well, that’s informative.
Reigning in the curiosity, I try a different tack. “When?”
“I was a young boy. Ten, maybe twelve years.”
“What about your family?”
Doyen gives a sidelong glance as we turn another corner to walk down another unmarked hallway. “I was a disobedient child—always in trouble with my mother and running from my father.”
To a point, I relate and tell him so. He keeps going as if I haven’t spoken.
“My family lived a primitive existence. They were very religious. My father was akin to the mayor—a trusted leader of our community. We had many rules, but the most important rule was, never let a stranger pass through our land. If we found them, we were to kill them.”
“Brutal.”
“Yes, it was a vicious life that never suited me.”
Doyen stops at a blank wall. One that looks like it should hold a hidden doorway, but nothing appears as we approach. Doyen doesn’t fret though; he turns to me and keeps talking.
“We were close to the harvest feast when I went into the woods to hunt for the first time, as was the custom of all men in my village. Only the women and children stayed.”
Doyen pauses. “My first time out and I came upon a stranger.”
I guess that this is where he expects me to show interest so I gasp; just enough to say I am sufficiently enthralled. “W
hat did you do?”
“I knew what I was supposed to do, but was afraid, so I hid.”
“You were just a kid.”
Doyen nods at my justification, adding, “Yes, only a small boy, too afraid of what his father would do. Though our laws were severe for a reason.”
What reason could that possibly be, I wonder, and let the man that requires my full attention to think he has it.
“If anyone my in tribe had come across that man, they would have killed him instantly. But I followed him and waited for another to find him.”
“So, you didn’t care if he lived or not, you just didn’t want to be the one to kill him?”
“As I watched the stranger march through the forest, I heard him talking to himself. Words of chastisement and grief. I understood many of the same things he felt. He was already grown and I was a young boy, a native of that place. Still, we shared something.”
“You did?”
“You see, my tribesmen were unusual people. One’s like me, who bore the light skin. That was the reason I didn’t want to be the one to kill the man because his skin was like mine, and I had never seen another pale one outside my kinsmen.”
Doyen’s from a light-complected tribe of heathens. “Neat,” I mutter because I can’t come up with anything else.
Doyen eats up the comment, trying to take my pretend interest to the next level when he yanks one side of his robe off his shoulder to reveal a group of crude dots tattooed on his deltoid. They’re set very close together to form lines, which makeup a rudimentary tree. The kind of tree a preschooler who’s into stick figures might draw.
“It is the Tresunus.” He offers, with too much excitement.
“It’s... really something,” I say, matching his excited tone and hoping it doesn’t sound as irritating as it feels because I know I’ve heard that word before.
“It is the mark of my people. We are—or we were—the Keepers. My father was named Guardian to the Sacred Powers.”
Doyen looks to the blank wall in front of us. The doorway hiding inside quickly fades into visibility and slides open.
That mark. There’s something familiar there, too.
The room on the other side is completely white with dozens of bright lights set into the low ceiling shining down on the white, shiny floor. There’s not a spot of furniture, save two delicate looking chairs across the room.
My hand forms a visor above my brow to shield some of the light and hopefully keep me from going blind as we pass through the doorway.
“Have you nothing to say?”
My eyes water. “I’m not sure what you mean, Doyen.”
“What do you think of my history?”
“I don’t know enough about your history to form an opinion. I mean, was the stranger one of your relatives?”
For some reason, he smiles widely before answering. “No, we were not related.”
“Oh. Well, then, I think it’s weird.”
The story’s pointless. He’s left more than a few things out, like how he got here, or how he used to know another version of me or my father and decided after some mysterious betrayal to model a line of androids after him.
Doyen bursts with a wild laugh, touching a hand to his waist and bending into it.
I take this opportunity to roll my eyes.
Once his laughter dies down, Doyen bids me to follow him to a set of chairs on the other side of the intensely bright room.
Remembering my manners, I wait for him to sit and then do likewise, wondering if he’ll go on explaining his convoluted story about this stranger that looked like him, that he wanted to die, but didn’t want to kill, but not caring because what I’d really like to do right now is hit him with the pair of thin metal chairs.
I don’t like this guy. I don’t like his look or his hair, or the sound of his stupid voice. I don’t get why he’s so sure that he’s better than me.
Doyen has terrible instincts. He mistakes my silence for interest as he continues telling how he secretly watched the man at length. It was nothing for the young boy to go into the woods to hunt and stay gone for days at a time, as his father would not permit him to come back empty-handed. He stayed high up in the canopy so the stranger couldn’t hear him padding through the forest behind him.
Doyen describes the man as nothing remarkable. Except for his strange white skin, the stranger looked nothing like Doyen’s family. He was almost the opposite. He was tall and thin with brown hair and eyes.
He seemed very clumsy to young Doyen who watched the man slip on wet leaves and fall over broken limbs. It took the man all day to catch one fish. Sometimes he covered his mouth to keep from laughing at the stranger who seemed to have never set foot in a forest in all his life.
In the days he kept watch, the man had done only one thing right, and that was that he stayed hidden from the other tribesmen, whether by instinct or dumb luck, Doyen was not sure.
On the fourth day, the man spotted Doyen’s father. He had enough sense to stay hidden in the trees as he observed his father performing the harvest ritual.
It was then that the little boy climbed down from the tree to come face to face with the stranger.
“The man spoke to me, and though I could not understand his words he was pleasant enough that I was not afraid.”
He keeps going on and on and I don’t care. It’s like this whole story has been contrived to distract me. But from what?
“My father was finishing the ritual. Rain was coming in…”
His eyes have this far-away look like he’s reliving the experience. I take a deep breath and widen my drooping eyes.
“…Under penalty of death, I showed him the secret path. I revealed the drawings my mother carved on the walls of our temple that told the story of our ancestors and the purpose of our strength.”
He goes quiet and I’m not sure what to think. I wait for him to say something else and when he doesn’t, I figure this is my only chance to bring the matter back around to where it started.
“How did you get here?”
“That same stranger. He brought me here.”
“How?” I ask only to be ignored.
“My fathers’ position was one that required accountability. When he learned what I had done, he alerted the other tribesmen. The elders took council and decided my family should pay for my crime.”
His eyes, holding that faraway look, gloss with wet. “Their punishment was death.”
“Harsh.”
“To die is not harsh; it is what is natural and expected of us all. We are born and we must die. There is no shame in that. What they did to me was harsh.”
“What did they do to you?”
“I was forced to live. I watched my mother, father, and brother tried to breathe with their throats sliced open.”
Holy Mother Teresa.
“I was banished for betraying our secrets.”
“But, you were just a kid.”
“A foolish child.”
Is it terrible that, after hearing his story, I’m still wondering how he got here?
“Weeks later, as I wandered the same places where I saw the strange man, I found him again. That day, he brought me to this place.”
Doyen stands up and gestures across the white room washed even whiter with the sunlight. A white panel I hadn’t noticed is jutting from the floor. He speaks a word I can’t understand and the panel recedes, exposing the wall behind it and my eyes want to pop from their head when I see a set of three beautiful stones—one white, one red, one black—affixed to a golden plate hanging within a depressed frame.
“You recognize them,” Doyen assumes, spreading both arms wide like a savior on a cross.
Or... a bearded man floating down from the roof of a burning building.
That’s it. I know it. The reason I hate him is not only because he is an undeserving, self-serving, sadistic asshole, but because he is Daemon. He is another version of the man that killed my father. Of the ma
n that tried to kill me more than once.
I check myself, determined not to give anything away. Suppressing my extreme desire to dart across the room and take the stones mounted there.
Doyen looks like that is exactly what he expects, which makes me think I don’t have a chance in hell of succeeding.
I’ve got to play this smart.
I’ve got to play dumb.
“Should I?”
His serious face cracks with the hint of a smile. He crosses his arms over his considerable waist. “You are a Traveler.”
“I admitted that much yesterday.”
“Yes, you did. Was that before or after you agreed not to waste my time with lies?”
“Before,” I answer defiantly.
Doyen stares quietly. Dangerously.
“I have trusted you enough to reveal my secret. It is your turn now.”
“My turn for what?”
“To return to the Outlier camp and destroy the goods you left.”
I shrug. “I’ve already done that.”
“When?”
“The day your guards in the Orb found me in the Green district.”
He shakes his head.
“It’s true,” I say, not wanting to use what happened for my benefit, but thinking that in this instance, Arlen wouldn’t mind.
I explain the whole scenario. What I saw and heard, how I got out right before the entire thing collapsed, even how I’m sure that I was the one that led the Neutopian guards to them. “One of your patrol squads must have found my footprints in the snow.”
All through this explanation, my hands are burning, staring at Doyen’s serious face, watching him measure every word. My blood is heating, because the more I watch the way Doyens dark eyes flicker, the easier it is to imagine what he would look like fifty pounds lighter and bald, with a giant black snake head tattooed on his clean scalp.
This whole time, I couldn’t put my finger on it. Couldn’t understand why I hated him, but now it’s so clear that I can’t believe it took me this long to see this whole time I have been standing with and talking to an alternate version of that traitorous snake.
An alternate version of Daemon that said he killed an alternate version of me though the droids look more like my father. Either or, it doesn’t make a difference. He is an alternate version of the man that used me to track down my own dad. Another version of a man that almost drowned me and my murdered my alternate father in World Two before he tried to take what remained of my alternate family.
Doyen—Daemon—sits here on his throne, his pinnacle at the top of the world, and dictates that people be regarded as refuse, as trash, if they don’t meet his standards. People—children—like Rocky.
How many lives has he destroyed? How many more will he offload into the cold, leave to suffer and die alone in the streets?
The first question, I can’t answer. But the second? Oh, that’s an easy one. The answer is none. Zero.
Drawing in a slow, deep breath, I force myself to relax. To smile, even though my hands twitch. Imaging Doyen bleeding out on the city street helps.
“If you are lying…” He warns.
I hold my hands out, palms open. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”
He nods and then gestures towards the door across the room. “You will come with me, then, to check out your story.”
“Lead the way, your Highness.”
By the sound Doyen makes as he passes in front of me to lead the way out, I can tell he likes the title. He likes thinking he’s higher and mightier than everyone else.
I’m not proud of what I’m doing, but it’s got to be done. Not proud of the way my fists come up and bash into the back of Doyens head. A quick one-two and he’s stunned enough to go down, landing on his stomach in the open doorway. I’ve never hit a guy who wasn’t looking before. It’s one of those unwritten rules, like “Never shoot a man in the back.” Because if he’s not facing you, he’s not fighting, he’s leaving.
But I tell myself that rule doesn’t apply here. In this context, my only chance to win is to catch Doyen unawares—when he’s not prepared to fight back because if he gets that chance, I’ll lose. He’s twice my size, and he’s the ultimate authority in this place. Picking a fight with him is win or die so I have to take advantage.
Next, I’m digging my knee into his back, making him squirm, shoving his face into the floor to muffle his call for help. Just until I’ve got his long braid in my grasp. Then, I release just enough pressure to let him lift his head. Quickly swaddling his neck with the shock of waist length hair, my knee comes back down, smashing his face into the cement floor.
Again, and again.
All the while, pulling his hair tighter around his neck, watching the skin go red, blotching, washing purple.
When he relaxes under me I jump up and come down with one foot, thrusting all my weight onto the column of his neck. Once, twice, and then I hear the telltale crack that tells me he’s done.
It feels weird and alien, far-fetched like it’s not real. It’s like I’m not inside my own body, but standing across the room, watching someone else, some stranger, from the outside efficiently overtake and kill. And I want to know who this person is.
One pause after that last kick, and I notice how quiet the room is. The next moment I’m double-checking to make sure he’s dead and then leaping from one task to the next, thinking. Hide the body.
It’s this odd, disconnected feeling that keeps me going in the right direction, the one that’s going to get me the hell out of here.
Hide this.
He’s lying over the threshold of the open doorway, half way between the empty gray hall and the white room with a set of three stones mounted on a hidden panel.
Hide this.
Jumping across the room, I grab the rubber pouch I’ve had shoved down my pants all day and open it just enough to quickly shove the Threestone from the golden plate on the wall inside with the set I’ve got. They’re smaller than the first pair, yet feel heavy by comparison.
Get out.
Should I open the gateway here? I’m not sure if doing it while I’m so high up off the ground is the wisest idea. What if there’s no skyscraper right here in the next world?
Get out of here.
With an ankle in each hand, it takes every ounce of my strength to pull heavyset Doyen back through the doorway and into the white room. The door starts to close on its own the moment he clears it and I have to drop him, leap onto his torso, and then hop across his shoulder to make it through before I’m shut inside with him.
Inside the long gray hallway, I take the first left turn, and then the next two rights only to be stopped at a dead end. It’s a maze of a building and just as I think of turning around, a doorway bleeds into the blank wall before me. The Biolock appears, too, and the doorway slides opens once I set my hand to it.
“The invisible elevator,” I mutter, passing through the endless network of empty halls that seem to lead nowhere. The elevator is the only way back up to the pinnacle apartment and the only way down to the ground floor.
Passing through another Biolock, I run smack into Origin 217. I can tell it’s him by the orange stripe running down the sleeve of his gray jumpsuit. He doesn’t speak as his eyes light up, scanning me, reading my vitals.
“Increased heart rate. Rapid breathing. Perspiration. Anxiety. Worry. You are distressed.”
I start to shake my head, but change my mind and stuff my red hands behind my back. “Doyen ordered me to return to the Outlier camp like we agreed yesterday, but my backpack with my supplies is inside the apartment and I can’t find the elevator.”
Can he tell I’m lying? Does he know what I did?
“Come with me, Alien,” Origin 217 speaks in monotone.
It’s a gamble for sure, but I fall in line because that’s what an innocent man would do. He wouldn’t scramble around like a crazy person, making a show of his need for a clean getaway. But he might be
anxious to obey the supreme leader who promised to let him go in peace if he obeyed one, final order.
Origin 217 points at the next corner. My nerves rear up, wondering if he’s leading me into some kind of trap because I honest-to-god don’t remember ever seeing this hallway before. But when I come around the corner, I see the empty alcove. The elevator-like door appears when Origin 217 sets his hand on the wall.
He waits until I am inside, acting as if he’s going to leave me to fend for myself.
“I won’t be able to get back down if you don’t come with me.”
He steps into the elevator beside me and I have got to stop sweating. “Do you know where Doyen is?”
“Doyen is his own master, he goes where he wills.”
Here is where I make my mark; either keep it together or lose my shit. Calm down. Deep breath, breathe in the calm... exhale.
As I concentrate on bringing my heart rate under control, reminding myself that this droid only knows what he is told, the door to the elevator opens. The sight of the high-rise apartment makes me feel better.
I’m half-way gone.
Grabbing my pack from the corner where I left it this morning, my mind clears enough to ask one important question. Turning towards the familial android, I address him.
“Origin 217.”
He stands at attention.
“What are your exact orders concerning me and my presence in this city?”
“My primary objective is to watch over you and answer your questions until you pass safely out of the boundaries of Neutopia.”
“Am I allowed to visit the infant I call Rocky?”
“No.”
My stomach drops. “What if I wished to take him with me?”
“Then I must arrest you. Doyen ordered the infant to remain apart from you and Doyen must be obeyed.”
Tightening the straps of the backpack in place I feel a small rush of sadness. “Is Rocky safer here?”
“Yes.” Origin 217 pulls no punches.
“Why?”
“Weather in the outlands is not considered survivable for vulnerable human infants.”
I nod, conceding. “Give me time to change my clothes and then we’ll go. Doyen must be obeyed.”
After I’ve gotten into my Demron suit, the trip down to ground level takes only a few seconds.
The moment I clear the building and am out on the street, I turn towards the robot that looks like my father, knowing I’ve got to get my ass moving before someone finds Doyen.
Origin 217 watches as I flop the hood of my suit over my head, fasten it closed, and then pull the rubber pouch from the hidden pocket over my chest. I want to think he’s looking on curiously, but remind myself that that’s not possible.
The second I snap back the zipper before I even get a chance to grab onto either set of Threestone, the funnel cloud shoots up into the sky, tossing me back with the force. From the ground, I watch the cloudless sky above open up. The air seems to tear, disappearing into cloud just before the burst of flames and blue fog.
The heat is amazing, warping the concrete road just outside the invisible field that encompasses me. The ground suddenly slants and I fall on my knees. The rainbow wheel in the vortex calls to me as I get back to my feet.
My mind flashes with anger, thinking of my father lying prostrate in his bed. The moment his bedroom door opened and that wiry beard poked inside.
I know exactly where I’m aiming: into a world where I can catch the one Dad called Nahuiollin and make him pay.
Part 5