Chapter 15
The sun was hot, a wonderful, luxurious hot on her naked skin. She wriggled and dug herself deeper into the sand, massaging herself against its cool, abrading yield. Oh yes, that was it. The water was warm, coming in gentle waves to tickle her feet. And it was quiet, so quiet, quieter than she had known was possible. Not a sound except for the gentle lapping of the waves and the crush of sand on her back. She dozed and woke and repeated. How long had she been there? Forever of course. There was nowhere else to be. No distracting hunger, no worry, no need to piss or shit—was she even breathing? Yes, her lungs moved in and out in a long, slow, relaxing rhythm, but she sensed this was merely a feature for her comfort, that the action served no purpose other than its absence would be frightening.
It was annoying when she realized this would have to end, that this wasn’t life, and it wasn’t death. There were memories, distant, from ages ago, but they were there, nagging, poking her, prowling the edge of her calm. They were becoming aggressive. She’d have to do something about it. She sat up and opened her eyes. Her other senses had been right; she was on an island. It was tiny, a hump of sand with a single palm tree amidst an infinite blue ocean beneath an infinite blue sky. She marveled at the blue, how it blended flawlessly from shade to shade, light where it touched the ocean and steadily darkening until directly overhead it was almost black. She could see stars amidst the darker blue, scattered silver freckles in the sky.
“It’s beautiful, is it not?”
Friar, of course. She’d known he’d be here. Known he’d find her eventually. He was standing next to her—had he been there the whole time? He was naked too, she noticed, observing this simply as a fact without any of the baggage of nudity imposed by society, no judgment or breeding urge. He was naked, the sky was blue, the sand was white, and the ocean had no end.
“Yes,” she said. “Did you make this place?”
“No,” he said sadly. “You did.”
“I did?”
“Yes. A part of you. This is your margin, where your existence,” he gestured to the water, “intersects with all the existences that are. It is your atomic memory, the memory of your atoms as they were born, when they were part of the super-universe before our own universe was born. They remember their brothers and sisters and welcome them.”
She remembered herself, knew on an intellectual level that this kind of talk bothered her, but there was no anger or annoyance. She accepted what he said as fact, even if she did not understand. The sky was blue. The sand was white. The ocean had no end.
“Friar?”
“Yes.”
“What am I doing here?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I think you are making a decision.”
“A decision?”
“Yes,” he said. “You’ve met the enemy.”
“Yes,” she said. It was strange to call it an enemy. “He told me things, told me I’d be happy, that others were happy. Is that true? He said that the women made him torture them…that it was their humanity. He said we saw him as evil only because we ourselves were evil.”
“Yes,” Friar said, “It is true. The UausuaU is truth. In our world it exists as we would have it. And if we are monsters then the UausuaU is merely a reflection of that.”
“Then what’s the point?” she yelled, and there was anger now, a familiar feeling, comfortable. “Then it’s right! We’re the bad guys here, we’re the shit heads. We should just join it, become part of it. Be happy.”
Friar said nothing. He looked out across the water.
“It may be that in the end it is our only option.”
“Well thanks, Friar, so glad you stopped by, fat lot of good you are.”
“I’m sorry, Saru, I can’t help you.”
“No shit. God, I have to do everything myself.” She stomped around the island, kicking at the sand. She picked up the single coconut and hurled it into the sea, where it made a satisfying plop.
“Rargh!” she yelled. “Let me out of here. Friar!” She grabbed him by the shoulders and shook. “I know you’re doing this. You were in my head, weren’t you, fucking around, and now you brought me here.”
“I was trying to warn you.”
“Of what?”
“From coming here.”
“You are useless!” she said, pushing him so he stumbled back. “Some friend you are; I go looking to you for answers and then you go and die—no, you make me kill you—and then you camp out in my head like some squatter and when I really need some help, some fucking coaching, all you can do is vomit out this fatalist bullshit!” She yelled again, beating her chest, screaming into the bored air. Ah that felt good; there was the real joy, the real warmth. That instinct, the inside touch. That was who she was and God she loved it, relished it, every lick of it. Fuck this other shit, this alien bullshit and Friar’s cryptic dithering.
“Fuck this,” she said aloud. “I’m out of here.”
She walked into the ocean, resolute, wading out to her hips. The water was warm.
“That’s not the way out,” Friar said.
“Whatever,” she called back. She kept going. The water was up to her neck, then over her head and her feet no longer touched the ground. She paddled forward awkwardly, she didn’t really know how to swim, but it didn’t matter. This wasn’t really water. She kept paddling until the island disappeared, realizing it was accomplishing nothing and she wasn’t getting tired. She let herself sink, let the water fill her lungs, and at last she felt a pain, a pressure, a panic as the blue sky disappeared under the darkness of the water, sinking, sinking, sinking, and the pain growing and morphing into a body pain, and then a face staring at her, some broken mask of a face, Jojran, cackling at her, and she saw that they were holding hands, standing in his kitchen.
She whipped the prod from its holster and slammed it like a club into his temple. The soft bone crumpled and the prod sank half an inch into his skull, crackling at full power. He closed his eyes and opened them slowly, sighing as if impatient.
“How disappointing,” he said. His right hand blurred forward, too fast for her response implants to follow, and formed a vice around her neck. In a casual, whoopsie-daisy motion, he lifted her up and dragged her across the counter; the tiles cracked as he slammed her into the floor. Stars floated across her vision—why was she staring at the ceiling? It was hard to breathe, like one of her ribs had gotten lost and wandered into a lung. Ow. The prod wriggled in her noodle grip, still sending out sparks and arcs of electricity. Jojran, broken-mask, crumpled-skull Jojran stood over her, massaging one hand in the other. He laughed and threw up his hands.
“Why is it so hard with you, Saru? Why can’t you just be happy?”
She tried to spit and blood dribbled out the side of her mouth—had she bitten her tongue? There was something to say to that, something witty and defiant, but it wouldn’t come. She seemed to be having trouble keeping a single thought in focus, it kept getting pushed out by the pain in the back of her head. Sitting up was impossible, but an arm managed to flop up and poke at the wet sensation in the back of her head. Her nails came back painted red. How pretty. She should paint her nails more, treat herself more. It was okay to spoil yourself every once in a while, maybe she’d even enjoy it. But first she needed to live.
She tried a leg sweep, a half-assed affair that didn’t budge his foot, didn’t even make him look down. Then she tried to kick him in the testicles, but he swatted her boot away like it was a humping terrier. He reached out a hand, presumably to help her up, and she tried to stab it with her boot knife. He evaded easily, grabbing her wrist and pulling her to her feet, where she swayed, tottered, and then slammed the flip dagger in her heel into his foot. Of course he didn’t react. She was beginning to realize that pain was not a useful negotiating tool in this scenario. The Jojran impersonator didn’t seem to care—didn’t seem to feel it.
“Is there nothing you want?” he asked, grabbing her by the shoulders. “Do you really want to be like this? Angry, sad, afraid, fighting without knowing why? You could be so much more.”
“I…want…” she had the hiccups for some reason, perhaps a result of the meandering rib bone. “I want to kick your ass.”
“Yes…” he said. “You do…you really do.” He let her go and spread his arms wide, vulnerable. “Do what you must, Saru. It doesn’t make any difference, really. Today, tomorrow. Seven years or a million. You will know our love and—”
She shot him, a real bullet this time, right in the chest from a foot away.
“…you will be happy…”
Again.
“…you will know peace…”
Again.
“…and joy…”
And again and again, she emptied the whole automatic clip, closing her eyes and screaming. When she opened them it was quiet. Jojran, his body, the alien impostor, or whatever it had been, was lying on the ground in front of her in a puddle of blood, riddled with holes. He looked peaceful, happy even, somehow, and that annoyed her. The blood was pooling around her boots, soaking into Jojran’s white fuzzy carpet, splattered on his nice white couches. Her head was killing her, she couldn’t focus, her feeds and her implants were scrambled from the touch or the trip to the island, or the blow to the back of her head. Her hair was wet and she could feel the wet trickling down the back of her neck, sliding down the channel of her spine. She swayed to her knees and pried the vial of blood from Jojran’s fingers. Then she limped and rummaged and gasped her way around the kitchen until she found a plastic baggy. She dragged it through the blood pool until it was full and put it in her pocket along with the vial.
The music in the elevator was a tropical melody, blue skies and white sands. The doors slid open at the lobby and she sucked in a breath and tried to look normal as she walked to the doors, ignoring the security guards. She’d washed as much of the blood off as she could but there were still splatters on her coat and jeans, and she couldn’t really walk out naked. She pushed hard against the doors, leaning in to support her body weight. They wouldn’t open.
“It’s only a matter of time,” the security guard called. There was a click and the doors swung open. She stumbled into the night.