Trio

Death Valley

November 1^st, 1am

It had all played out, then – my attempt to destroy the Core had failed, and they had chased me to this remote spot in Death Valley, and I had just one last desperate hope.

The three of them stood there and looked at me. Demon was apparently the designated speaker, and the hatred carried through in his voice as he spoke in his deep, gravelly voice. “Okay, Peter. You are going to hand over that fucking grik, and if you do it right now you just might not receive the most hideously painful death you can imagine, and I just might not wipe out your entire gene line going back three generations, and I am fucking tired of this. Hand it over.”

I wasn’t afraid of dying any more, not at that point. I had been living on the edge in an adrenaline-tinged existence for the past three weeks, and in the end, all I really wanted was for it to be over, one way or the other. But for this last bit… I wanted him mad, wanted him angry and striking out and vengeful.

“Xavier. You cannot have this ring. Neither you nor the other bumbling incompetents and immature malcontents that you call the Core. This grik is now mine. It now belongs to humanity, and we’ll actually try to do something useful with it rather than jack off with little party games. You guys are pathetic little technological parasites living off the human race, and don’t deserve the power that you have.”

His brow furrowed, and his mouth grimaced as he looked at me. “You are a transient. You’re a fucking cow to us, Peter! HAND IT OVER!”

I shook my head. “I’d rather die.”

Xavier had finally had it. “Fine, then.”

He raised his hand, and at that moment I switched into the Overnet, mercifully managing to do it the first time; and perceptions slowed, and I could sense everything. My heart was in the middle of its contraction, about to beat, and he was raising his hand slowly, and I added a layer or two to watch protocol transmission and energy flow between my grik and the Overnet. He triggered a high level interface, and I was accelerated so much that I could almost see the protocol handshaking between him and the Overnet, and then at another level I began to feel the energy cascade around.my grik.

He was doing exactly what Leonardo had warned against. He was going for an overload.

This all came so slowly, like it was a chess game, and I could see the scheme he was using, and although he probably couldn’t have described it at a conscious level it was incredibly clear to me the particular transmission patterns and how he was trying to overload the ring, like the pieces to a wooden puzzle, and I knew that stopping him would be straightforward: I just needed to block it off here, make sure he didn’t try to interface with this port, and for the first time I had confidence that I could actually block off anything that he would try.

But I didn’t. In the real world I told the fingers of my right hand to extend, and I had my left hand move over to my ring, and it looked just so odd to my accelerated perceptions, to see my hands moving in slow motion as they slowly crept to do my bidding. Xavier was running through a sublevel scan of my particular grik configuration, and I watch him iterating one by one through the possibilities, like trying to find the right block for a particular hole. I watched my hands as they moved along, and calculated how long it would take my left hand to get the ring, and then turned my attention back to Xavier; he was taking too long, amazingly enough, because my left hand had finally reached my right and grabbed the ring, and he was still there metaphorically fumbling with the circular blocks when any idiot could see that it was going to take a square block of 1.32” square with a 12 degree segment taken off the top, so I helped him along, then: changed the hole, so to speak, so that he block he was trying to squeeze in would fit, and then finally he was in and he sent the overload command as I grabbed the ring…

… and threw it in a carefully planned trajectory directly at him, and I don’t think he knew what I was trying to do, because the expression on his face was just one of surprise, not of anything else…

As that silver circle flew through the air in gentle apogee, I bent down, tightened the bungee cord around my ankle, and then flung myself backwards through the air with all the strength that I had. Everything was still moving deliberately and slowly through the filter of my accelerated perceptions as I gradually turned a somersault in mid air, and the last thing I saw as my head dropped below the level of the cliff was the bright circle of my grik tumbling towards the three Core members.

I had just barely jumped in time, because as soon as I dropped below the horizon, Xavier’s overload command finally kicked in, and I felt the air vibrate as if God himself was strumming the Earth like a guitar, and I heard a huge explosion, but muted as if it were in another universe. As I slowly fell I could see a bright light flare up on the cliff above, and the tall mountain ranges all about Death Valley flared up in conjunction with the power of that burst, snow reflecting the actinic white glare. A bright ring of ejecta flared out from the cliff, leaving faint tendrils of smoke in its wake, and my face was hit with flaring hot pieces of something, and it took me a couple of milliseconds before I realized that they were glass droplets that had formed from the sand and the heat of the blast.

And still I fell, bungee cord now beginning to tighten on my ankle as I reached the end of the slack and started to slow as the bungee stretched, and my perceptions suddenly dropped back into the real world, and the wind whistled in my ears as I fell towards the second bungee cord that I had placed in the middle of the cliff the other day. I could feel the bungee cord constrict on my ankle as I fell… and I couldn’t see the other bungee cord, not at night, yet another case where I hadn’t planned correctly, although the odd thought came to my mind that I could hardly have jumped with a flashlight in hand… and the bungee reached the end of its extension, and started pulling me back, and I still couldn’t see the second damn cord.

This is what came of trying to save the world on a limited budget. If I could have found a larger bungee cord, picked a better place, or something, but this was the best that I had been able to come up with limited time and resources: a Rube Goldberg scheme of a bungee cord pinioned into the middle of the cliff that I had to find, and if I couldn’t find it I was really going to be in trouble.

I tried to lock into the Overnet, to see what had happened to the Core above, but I couldn’t reach the right state of mind, not without the grik and not while I was desperately trying to find that second damn bungee cord that I had placed in an oh so obvious place the other day. It wasn’t until I was at the top of curve was the rebound that I thought I saw a familiar bush.

I finally clicked into the Overnet, then, but couldn’t make out what was happening there, it was still a haze of static and transmissions and overrides, I couldn’t even tell if any of them were hurt, but did manage to call onto my link with the grik, and with a tug and pull and I managed to fling it off the cliff and in my general direction. It was still glowing white hot from the power of the overload, and I could watch it tumble towards the desert floor below as I started to fall again. The bungee cord stretched, and I started to slow, and my hands clawed into the side of the cliff as I tried to pull myself over to the bush where I was sure that I had placed the second bungee cord, but it wasn’t there, either, dammit, and I tried to hold onto the bush but couldn’t get a good enough grip before the tension on the bungee cord started to pull me back again.

The bungee dragged me up the cliff, scraping away my skin and fingernails like sandpaper, and by that time I had lost the momentum from my fall, which left me in this position: upside down, ankle constricted by a bungee cord, bleeding, and ten yards above a second bungee cord that I still needed to find. Not thinking of anything better, I used both hands and started to climb my bungee cord, trying to get high enough that I would be able to drop down again.

“Nice. Fucking. Trick.” said a familiar voice, clear in the desert air, and I looked up at the cliff and could see Roberta staring down at me… and she looked like something out of hell, half her body was burnt and bleeding and charred, I could see bone in a few places, and her face was half Roberta, half some hideous creature out of nightmare. She was flickering with Overnet static, St. Joseph’s lightning dancing around her skin, as if it was taking almost all of her concentration and power to stay alive as she was. She looked at me with pure hatred and spite. “Nice. Fucking. Trick. Have a nice fall.” She reached down and touched the bungee cord and I saw a brief flare of light… and then the bungee was cut, and I was started to fall, and the only thing that I was able to do was try to feebly kick with my legs so that I fell towards that other bush, and really, I hadn’t noticed so many bushes when I was securing the bungee cord in place.

Desperately, I tried to secure a hold in the cliff to slow my fall, but all I could do was scrape and rip yet more skin as I started to fall… and then my outstretched hands hit one of the spiny and scraggly bushes that grew in the side of the cliff, and I finally, mercifully, had a death grip on the bungee cord with one hand as I started to fall towards the ground, faster and faster. The bungee cord started to stretch, and I still held on as tightly as I could, and I heard an odd pop and a pain ran through my shoulder and I realized that I had dislocated my shoulder as I finally reached the bottom of the bungee cord’s slack, still 12 feet above the ground, but I didn’t let go in time and instead only let go as I once again started to cast upwards, which stupidly meant that I traced a graceful arc in the air until I fell 20 feet to the ground and hit with a resounding thud, and to make things worse I landed wrong and heard a cracking sound from the ankle that had been bearing all the stress

My ring was somewhere around here, but I didn’t know where. I could see massive quantities of blood from all the skin that had been scraped away, and in my painful and quick examination it looked like my right shoulder jutted out from my body at an abnormal angle; I couldn’t move my arm at all, and doing any close examination was too painful to contemplate. My ankle was sending searing waves of pain to my brain, making it almost impossible for me to tap into the Overnet. I was stuck, pretty much.

From the cliff above I could see Roberta looking at me, and she uttered a scream of frustration that resonated and echoed all throughout the valley, and then she jumped off the cliff and with a barely controlled fall hit the ground, and once again I saw the lightning dancing around her limbs as she maintained her link with the Overnet. She took a few steps towards me, and I could see that she was in incredible pain as she walked towards me, and with every step she said another word. “Why. Won’t. You. Fucking. Die?”

I tried to bring up the Overnet, but couldn’t reach it, not through the waves of pain that were throwing static upon every thought. While she walked towards me, I cast about frantically for Monitor, trying to establish a connection.

Yes?

“Now. Kill her.” I broke my link with Monitor.

Finally, for once, Monitor did something, and it wasn’t much, a simple attack. It wouldn’t have worked against even the most basically prepared Core member, but Roberta was using everything at her disposal to hold her damaged body together, and Monitor’s attack was enough, it tore through Roberta’s last reserves and I saw her collapse inwards in front of me, flesh burning and charring into carbon as I watched. She was gone completely within a second, nothing but ash and two silver rings. I crawled over towards the rings, picked them up, still wished that I could find mine. It had to be around here somewhere…

I could hear footsteps to my right, and I looked over. My vision was tinged with red, and through the red I could see Snide walk up, and he started to speak to me. It was the first time I had ever heard him sound so relaxed. “That was ingenious, Peter. How did you know that would work, throwing the ring at Xavier?”

“I didn’t really,” I answered honestly. “But you guys survived the best that I could do with conventional means. I hoped that you would be vulnerable to anything done with the Overnet. I was right, although I didn’t expect it to work.”

“Well, it did. In spades. Roberta, of course, she was greedy, she was more worried about trying to get Xavier’s ring than in surviving the blast. Well, well, well. This will change the game substantially.”

I felt something under my left hand. What was that? No, just a rock. I shifted my body slightly, ignoring the pain, search through the sand with my hands while being careful not to look with my eyes.

Snide continued. “Which leaves me with the problem of what to do with you. You’ve caused an amazing number of problems for us.”

I smiled at him, trying hard to make sure that it didn’t turn into a grimace from the pain. “Well, maybe we can come to an agreement, and I won’t have to kill you.”

He laughed. “Do you really think that’s possible?”

“Do you think that was the only trick I had up my sleeve?” I asked.

That stopped him for a second, and he started thinking. “But you don’t have your ring.”

I palmed one of the rings that I had gotten from Roberta, showed it to him.

“That’s not your ring,” he said.

I just smiled.

He was hesitant, and unsure, and I decided to press my advantage. I told him, “Here’s my offer: You leave North America and recognize it as my province forever and henceforth. I don’t care where you go as long as you don’t stay here. I give you an extra ring.”

He considered it. “Even if I recognize it as your territory, that doesn’t mean the rest of the Core will agree. My personal agreement doesn’t bind them.”

“I know that,” I said. “But I’ll handle that.”

He looked at me, unspeaking, while the wind slightly blew around us and traced delicate patterns in the sand dunes.

“You know, there are some that would say it’s my duty to kill you. A human with a grik sets a dangerous precedent, and I’m not sure that the precedent doesn’t pose a long term threat to my race.”

I almost had him, could almost convince him. “Agreed. But look at my motivations. All I care about it is the long term survival of the human race. I don’t care if you build your quantum tunnel and leave the Earth – in fact, I’d prefer it, and will help you achieve that goal as long as it doesn’t threaten our existence.” Gods, I was a politician. “Moreover: I’m not against you. I don’t care about your game, don’t plan on going to your home planet, and don’t need to compete with you. As long as you let me pursue my interests, I won’t be competing with you. Far from posing a threat to you, I’m less of a threat than anyone else.”

He started at me for a long time, and after a minute finally came to some internal decision. He nodded at me. “Okay. It’s a deal.”

I picked the other ring from my pocket, threw it at him, and he caught it one-handed.

He laughed slightly. “A human in the game will be very interesting. It will change it in unpredictable ways. I can’t wait to see what happens.”

I sat down in the sand and watched as he slowly gathered his power together, floated up in the air and flew in the direction of civilization. The pain from my shoulder and my ankle had ebbed into a dull roar that only flared when I moved, so I didn’t move, just stood there and watched the moon traverse the sky. Unidentifiable small creatures skittered about the sand dunes, never coming close enough to the strange mammal that was just sitting there. Incredibly, I had done it, had beaten the odds and achieved the impossible. I had taken on three of the Core and had beaten them. Oddly enough, I hadn’t really planned for this scenario – I hadn’t considered it likely enough to worry about, considering it to be “one of those problems that it would be nice to have.”

And now I had it. In my pain and solitude I had time to think, and the more I thought, the more I came to conclusions that I didn’t like, but were inescapable given everything that I remembered. So, even though I had beaten the Core, had done everything that I had set out to do, there was yet one more thing that needed to be taken care of.

I summoned Monitor.

You are to be congratulated. You have dispatched or forced out of theater three of the Core. This is very impressive. It is a most… unexpected result.

One last chance to back off… but everything pointed to one conclusion, and I was certain

“Thanks, Gwen.”