Gods & Legionnaires (Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars Book 2) Read online

  He wondered if he might throw the filter of the jailbaity actress and his fleeing biker drifter across some reality and take a vacation in there sometime. See how things turned out between the two of them.

  “Think of that horrible thing you did!” she’d ordered him in their trailer. The actress who would become great and marry the Chinese autocrat. Both of them coked to the gills. “Now, don’t tell anyone that secret. It’s yours. And that’s how you make your characters real.”

  He never did. Never told anyone.

  That was how he’d made this world inside the Pantheon. It was his own secret place. And he never told anyone about it.

  He never even told himself the secret of the biker-drifter from the reboot. Kept it from himself until eventually he forgot it ever happened. Just knew, deep down inside, that he was fleeing. Something.

  Like now? he asked himself. Or was that Bad Old Self.

  In real life the jailbaity farmer’s daughter had trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in jolly old England before it melted down and became a cesspit of jihadis. She’d played Lady Macbeth and had a crush on him all through the shoot. Except he’d been with the other actress playing the lead, doing candy and having sex between takes.

  He died.

  In the movie.

  He and Jailbait Lady Macbeth.

  And then the movie went on and he wasn’t interested anymore because he wasn’t in it. So he turned it off and went upstairs and got ready for bed. In his room was everything he’d ever prized most from childhood. His catcher’s glove. His collection of Mad Magazines. The Fantastic Four issue when they flew the space shuttle and crashed, which had been his first entry into comic books. Again, it was a thing he’d lost after his youth and paid big money to track down to have once again. Protected behind cases and covers inside climate-controlled rooms accessed by thumbprint locks. Like they were the antiquities of a pharaoh.

  The household items of a god.

  Someone had tracked down all those lost treasures for his tomb.

  They were already the Fantastic Four when they crashed the shuttle that time in the comic book. Not like the first time when they went into space and got their powers. Became gods… as it were, when you really thought about it. Like some foreshadowing of the Uplift movement that was to come. What hokey old religions called “prophecies.”

  Superheroes were gods. Hadn’t that been the message someone was signaling all those decades ago? And that superheroes were ordinary people with ordinary problems just like you and me… except with superpowers.

  What if you had superpowers?

  Then you would be…

  Was the Path already whispering to humanity then? Preparing them, preparing the way in the desert, for what they would one day become.

  Gods.

  Which again, like the silver starbursts-shifting-to-hyperspace thread in his mother’s postmodern couch that matched perfectly the rest of the house… the comic book of the Fantastic Four going into space and getting their powers was a kind of prophecy too.

  In its way.

  In the grand view of what really happened during the Great Exodus and the Big Uplift.

  In his room his collection, and it wasn’t much of one, of Hardy Boys novels was on the nightstand next to his daybed. His Oscars were on the windowsill. A window that looked out into his parents’ perfectly kept garden. They had a Japanese gardener. Beyond that were the houses of their neighbors. And his best friend’s house on the hill above.

  Every night going to sleep, he watched his best friend’s window. No matter how late it was, there would always be the holy blue glow of the TV from his best friend’s high window.

  Watching it at night before he faded was like some kind of constant North Star for him by which he might navigate.

  On his desk was the copy of his film. The masterpiece he would spend the last years of his life before the Pantheon trying to complete, and never would.

  His opus that explained it all. His Kane.

  It was in an old film can, instead of on a flash drive as it really had been. But in this representation of nostalgia… it was in a can. A film canister.

  Written on the canister, on a piece of tape, with a black marker, were the words…

  Blue Highway.

  He didn’t want to think about that and so he got into bed with a dog-eared and yellowed copy of a Conan novel. Conan the Unconquered, and he read until late. The sacred blue light of the TV in his friend’s window still on when at last he turned out the light and closed his eyes.

  His parents still weren’t home by the time he went to sleep. They never would be.

  In the dream he has, he is lying in a state-of-the-art machine shop. Not like a garage. But like a high-tech clean room where they once built the mighty starship engines that would throw the colony ships far from dying Earth. Where the techs wore white lab coats.

  There is a monster on the operating table. In the dream.

  Not like a werewolf, or a Dracula, like the afternoon classic movies he sometimes watched while he built model airplanes from World War II. The Corsair, which was hard because of the folding gull wings. The P-47. The Spitfire. The Zero. Never World War I planes because they had two wings, one above and one below which was really four wings when you thought about it. And those were always hard to match up and hold with glue. Hard to get just right.

  The monster on the clean-room table in the dream was like a Frankenstein.

  But a giant metal Frankenstein lying on a state-of-the-art operating table in a lab that made monsters like a factory makes war machines. Machine-like tentacles did all the work of salvage and making him new once again. Making him Crometheus. Coming in quickly to drill and laser away rivets. Other arms with claws grasping to pull away battered and blasted plates of armor from himself. Or take away whole limbs that had been ruined beyond repair. The monster was very badly damaged. Shot no less than twenty-eight times over the course of the battle for New Vega. The battered chest plate scored by pulse fire from Coalition rifles and dented by fragmentary explosive impacts. Metal gashes seared into the hyper-alloy exterior where heavier weapons had left their marks.

  He felt sorry for whoever it was lying on that table in the dream. And then he remembered it was him.

  Crometheus.

  Uplifted marine.

  Holly Wood, the head cheerleader from his school, held his hand all throughout as he watched himself being operated on. That was kind of her. She was genuinely sorry for him. Just as she had been when she left for the last time years later. Somewhere along the Blue Highway, halfway between Reno and Rome. Maybe he was crying a little. Crying for all that he’d become. She squeezed his hand, still wearing that forever-for-him sexy cheerleading outfit he’d tried to dress up so many other women in. She was telling him, “Don’t worry. It’ll all be okay now. You’re starting over again.”

  Her voice was soft and kind.

  He wiped his eyes and felt ashamed. In the dream.

  Two priests came in. Faithful masters of the religion that had made them who they would become. They spoke the sacred words of Science. Telling each other how they would remake him this time, again. Upgrades and new tech. Developments from Super Mind Six.

  Super Mind Six was the combat super-intelligence they’d discovered out in the dark between the stars when they’d been at their lowest. Super Mind Six saved them all.

  Bad Thought Bad Thought Bad Thought. The Pantheon said developed. The Pantheon had developed Super Mind Six. But rumors along the Forbidden Decks said discovered. As in found. Out there in the dark. On the long haul from ruined Earth to Sirius Two. The first world they ruined along the Path to becoming. Had it been Sirius Two? Or some other world deleted to make room for the next step along the Path?

  Super Mind Six was the giver of gifts to godlings who would kill to become gods. Super Mind Six h
ad developed a new targeting diagnostic. Advanced weaponry. And the omni-shield.

  Super Mind Six is Bad Word Bad Word Bad Word. Use Maestro. Super Mind Six is now Maestro. Maestro has always been. There never was a Super Mind Six. Use Maestro.

  Holly Wood turned to him as they cracked the carapace of his Frankensteinian self on the table. Damage repaired. New weapon systems installed. Dynamic Targeting 6.0. Active cloak upgrade. And something called the Shooting Stars weapon system.

  “Time to wake up, gamer,” gentled the priests.

  Holly Wood had long blond hair and big blue eyes. Tanned skin from lying out on the beaches of Southern California. Long lashes.

  “The Pantheon needs you,” she said expectantly. “There’s a new game at the arcade, Crometheus. A new game that’s called… Britannia Attack! And we need you there. Badly.”

  He moved forward until he was standing over himself. And then with the help of the priests, he lay down like some noble being prepared for immortality. Laid himself down into the metal Frankenstein like some fallen hero who must rise again in the most desperate of hours… or a pharaoh… becoming a god at the last of himself.

  Finally. And again.

  Gods: Chapter Three

  Inside the Pantheon, the main reality for all, the colors are always a little brighter. That was Crometheus’s first thought. Every time it was his first thought as he once more re-entered that constant reality that was the Pantheon. Always.

  A message appeared inside his HUD.

  Report to General Maximo. In-game. Report to the arcade. He received that message within his own world. In the private simulation of his past. His parents’ home. The home he never should have left.

  It was a blustery fall day in school back there in the youth of his past. Inside his world. The world he had created for his very own. The little slice of reality that was all his and connected with the Pantheon. It had rained all that fall morning and when he woke, there had been bacon cooked in the microwave and his coat lying out. His parents were gone. Off on some important business. He ate the bacon and turned on the TV. The Great Space Coaster with Gary Gnu was playing. And then a few minutes later he knew he would be late if he didn’t leave and so out in the wind and the rain of that simulated morning he left for the long puddle-laden walk to school. Cars passed and he heard their tires on the wet streets below the path he walked. A concrete strip ran along a hillside to reach his school. And for some reason, watching the leaves shake and hurl themselves away from their soft skeletal tree bodies, becoming winter’s bones, he heard the music of some pianist. From long ago.

  Just soft, gentle, melancholy and still happy at the same time, music. The music was in his head and it was the music of… Vince Guaraldi. And the music of a famous cartoon strip called Peanuts. There—he had it. The name of the composer. Some things are too important to be deleted, Crometheus told himself as he continued to move from puddle to puddle. Soon he reached school and all the other children, kids, and the long-dead people he’d once known who hadn’t changed in the least in his sim-world within the Pantheon all these centuries later were there and school was beginning just as it once had. Just as they all had been all those years ago.

  They watched safety films because it was too wet to go outside for recess. Made projects out of thick, multi-colored construction paper and pasty glue, and at lunch it was cheese boats from the cafeteria. His favorite. A simple slice of French bread with tangy marinara sauce and topped with melted industrial-grade cheese of some white variety. That had been enough for the nutrition guidelines of the day, way back then. Or so it was in his memory when he filtered and layered his simulation just the way he wanted it. Then more safety movies hosted by a talking cricket in the afternoon. And with just ten minutes left Crometheus got the message from General Maximo’s avatar. Report to the arcade. He was needed in-game. Which meant “combat duty” for the Pantheon.

  The Uplifted marines were being sent forth into battle once more.

  A little electric thrill ran up his spine. He never would have guessed that war would ever make him feel this way. Not when he had been the exact same very boy who sat in these same plastic seats in front of these carved and marked desks from long ago. That boy had dreamed of other things. Not being a rock star. Or the thing he’d eventually become. But he was heading toward it. Definitely. Whether he knew it or not.

  The clues had been there if you knew where to look. And that was the thing about hindsight… you always knew where to look after the fact.

  The love of danger.

  The dirt-clod fights down near the train tracks.

  Building model airplanes of old World War II fighters.

  The clues had been right there, but he, along with everyone else, had never bothered to notice that war was something he wasn’t just attracted to… it was something he loved. And was quite good at. It was, he’d often reflected during these long sojourns inside his reality, inside the arcade, a kind of sport to him.

  When the final bell rang, which happened sooner than he liked, all the other kids donned their coats and it was time to go home for the afternoon. But instead of heading out across the soaked and muddy field under leaden skies where sometimes they all played football, he headed back across the quiet neighborhoods and wet streets that would bring him to the strip mall. To the arcade. To Lazer Command.

  To report for combat duty.

  Walking because he did not have his bike. He had not taken it that morning. Moving fast because the Pantheon was coming back into focus all around him. It was time to leave this reality. This truth. The truth he had made for himself. His truth edited to perfection. Time to enter the Pantheon. For just a little while, and then he would be back. He always came back.

  He walked quickly across the rain-wet streets as the clouds turned to silver from the last of the afternoon sunshine and the sudden puddles became mirrors that looked into the many realities as the Pantheon began to assert its dominance over his domain. Switching between worlds had been mastered years ago during the famine, and of course the long trek after the failure at Sirius Two. And the world that had come after that.

  It was dark inside the arcade once he reached it, as it always was. Except for the machines that played their same digital ditties, happy or ominous. Eight-bit playlets ran across screens, showing how you would fly this super-cobra through this underground cavern, shooting aliens and their weapon emplacements, or how you would run through this maze away from this giant bouncing ball of death while an early computer-voice shouted Kill all humans. And all the other noises, happy or sad that announced the joy of playing in all these little contrived worldlets. All for just a quarter. Or a token. All of them a kind of prophecy of what was to come.

  A cheap price for all that unlimited fun.

  That was the wonder of the Pantheon.

  There was so much to do. So many worlds you could live unlimited lifetimes in. So many things you could become. So many places you could jump to from the anchor of your own world. A place of your own creation.

  Lazer Command was his anchor. His bus terminal, his airport, his star port, to all those other worlds the Pantheon required him to serve in. Fight on. Destroy.

  His… point of departure… was the arcade.

  Old Man Webb wordlessly took the rumple-crumpled dollar and gave back five tokens. That was the rate of exchange. Opt for coin of the realm, as it were, and get an extra play. What a wonderful and brilliant thing. Crometheus thought about warming up on something else before trying out the new game that was occupying pride of place at the very heart of the arcade this afternoon. The place he was clearly being told to report to via General Maximo’s avatar.

  The new machine was called Britannia Attack!

  He scanned the other machines. Tempest. Scramble. Biological Genocide. Spy Hunter. Theater of War. Full-Scale Assimilation. Concentration Camp. Q*bert.

  But
the message from Maximo had been urgent and therefore important.

  Crometheus took his token, a faux golden disc stamped with symbols he’d never really studied. The word fun was repeated three times like some kind of magical phrase. He hadn’t really studied the token all those years ago…

  How many, he wondered?

  Uncountable, the background apps of his mind answered in return. Unknowable because of all the lives one could live inside the Pantheon in mere seconds. He’d once fought in all the major battles of World War II and got the second-highest score on the ship. All of it in five seconds of real time. Someone once said that being in-game inside the Pantheon was like being “in forever.”

  Time had little meaning inside the realities of the Pantheon. Their ancestors, the Animals, or simple mindless pastoral humanity, had no concept of what it was like to be Uplifted.

  But not no meaning. Time. It still passed. Because time was relentless that way. It could be fiddled with, but not made to disappear entirely.

  He was still holding the little golden disc the world of his youth had called a “token,” thinking about all these things in the quiet and yet subtly noisy arcade in which no one else was playing any of the other fantastic games, when he had another thought.

  Except this felt more like a message from Maestro. A directive. A prompt. No… a better way to think about things. That was how one was supposed to view the wonder that was Maestro. An assistant to improve one’s lot. Like Siri or Alexa had once been. But better than. More, in fact. Which, of course, always indicated better.

  Right?

  That was how it worked.

  Where had he first heard those words…?

  More is better.

  He was sitting in a chair. In a large conference room. A hotel conference room… and there was an airport nearby, because the sound of the jets roaring for takeoff shook the windows at a certain point and they’d all gotten used to pausing their conversations at these dire moments of life and death for those out there in the jet. But inside the hotel by the airport, rows and rows of seats were filled with desperate people who’d come to improve their lot. And that day too had been a rainy afternoon just like this one had been long ago. And was inside the reality of the arcade now. A rainy weekend at the beginning of everything after he’d come to the end of himself.