Probability Angels: Part 7

April 17, 2008 by josephdevon · 3 Comments

Probability Angels

Part 7: Politica del Carciofo

By

Joseph Devon

(Please note: This story is the seventh part of a series of stories beginning with, “Probability Angels: Part 1,” and while it is designed to stand alone it does draw heavily on the foundation of characters and events that were created in “Probability Angels: Part 1,” and continued through Parts 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Basically, I have to highly recommend that you start at “Probability Angels: Part 1” and continue on in order.

Or you can go here and buy the book or go here and view the book in its entirety.)

Matthew rolled over in his sleep. Something deep inside of him was telling him that it was time to wake up. With his eyes closed and his head encased in slumber he thought that maybe there was a pot of coffee on in the kitchen, that maybe his daughter was running the shower, that maybe his wife was pushing clothes around in their closet, he thought that one or all of these things were calling him out of his sleep and he turned to his side and smiled, his eyes still shut. He would wake up and go see his loved ones and kiss them before they started their days, and later they would be the last things he saw before he returned to bed. Then he opened his eyes and saw the Himalayas sprawling out in front of him and he remembered that he was alone.

With a soft grunt he pulled himself to a standing position on the rocky ledge he had occupied for the last few weeks and began to stretch the stiffness out of his body, a motion so deeply ingrained in his psyche that he performed it despite not being in possession of a body.

He finished stretching and looked around at the mountain top covered all over with the sleeping forms of other testers. Once his ears adjusted to the wind he found it to be oddly quiet and he decided to stroll a bit, the occasional dislodged stone or crush of gravel as he slipped sounding far too loud in the rocky snowscape.

He arrived at a lower spine of rock that afforded a view of Everest’s southern face. On previous visits to mountaintops he had found a sense of peace when looking out at the scattered testers sleeping off years, if not centuries, of weariness from a push. Now, in the weird silence that he was convinced was somehow following him, things looked decidedly off and he found himself wishing for the company of other non-sleeping testers. Rubbing the back of one hand over a still weary eye he fumbled with the other in his pocket and dug out his cell phone. He flipped it open and his thumbs went to work, looking up numbers, typing out text messages. Then he flipped his phone shut and waited.

The wind picked up. It sounded like the mountaintop was screaming.

—–

Epp’s fingers were splayed across the base of a wide glass goblet and he swirled the base around on the table, watching the amber liquid inside the glass circulate. After a few swirls Epp picked up the glass and took a sip of the warm beer, the liquid thick on his lips, bitter on his tongue, and sweet in its aroma drifting up the back of his throat. His cell phone, sitting on the table, beeped and flashed, and he glanced down at the screen, then sat back.

“You done?” Kyo asked sitting across from him, the flagstone covered town square behind him beginning to bustle in the late afternoon.

Epp looked distracted by the question and raised his eyebrows, confused, as he set his glass down again. “I’m sorry, were we in some sort of hurry?” He looked down at Kyo’s largely untouched beer, the settling head leaving a wispy foam clinging to the glass. “Drink,” Epp suggested.

“Not in the mood,” Kyo answered, looking at Epp with irritation as Epp leaned back and stared at the foot traffic in the square. Epp’s relaxation was too complete, his enjoyment of the scene too formulaic, and Kyo could tell that he was only pretending to be perfectly at ease and that their conversation was working its way into his blood. Confident in this reading, Kyo allowed himself to sit back himself and with a wrinkled nose he first sniffed, then tasted the Belgian Ale in front of him.

“You know, it’s not that I’m too easy on him,” Epp said, staring out at the buildings across the square.

Kyo set his glass down and looked up. “I’m not sure those were the words I used, but, yes, you are.”

“The guy has a right to do what he wants to with his existence, with his energy.”

“And so do you,” Kyo said. “But you aren’t listening to yourself; you never have when it comes to him. You-”

“Don’t tell me what I think.” His voice came out harder than he had expected. Epp glanced over and saw a few sets of eyes on him. He waved his hand and the eyes all turned away as their owners suddenly felt the need to look elsewhere, at a pigeon on the flagstones or a street performer making his way around the cafes lining the square, anywhere but at Epp.

“I don’t need to delve into what you’re thinking, Epp,” Kyo answered, his manner changing not in the slightest after Epp’s rebuke, “your actions are plenty telling. You have treated him differently for centuries now, he gets none of the same ‘oh so gentle guidance’ that all the rest of us get as-”

“He has earned the right to-”

“You overcompensate with him.”

“I deal with him as I see fit, Kyo.”

“You still feel guilty.”

“You’re god damned right I do!” Epp said loudly, his hand absently waving away the intruding faces at the surrounding tables. “I almost destroyed the man. For nothing. For no reason. And you’re going to sit there and tell me that I treat him differently now? Of course I treat him differently.” Epp’s fingers plucked a cardboard coaster bearing the logo of a local brewery off the table. He folded it back and forth, cracking it along the middle, then ripped it in half and repeated the process with both pieces.

“The Council was as much to blame as…” Kyo trailed off as Epp waved a tired hand in the air, the anger gone from his body.

“I really don’t want to go into the details on that again,” Epp said. “The Council was to blame, I was to blame, Gregor was to blame, I don’t particularly care. When you walk around for centuries with the burdens that sit on my shoulders then we can talk.”

“I’m not one of your bright eyed innocents, Epp,” Kyo said. “Don’t complain to me,” but the tone wasn’t accusing as Kyo’s irritation was gone as well. Instead it was banter, a joke, an exchange between equals.

“He’s your biggest weakness,” Kyo said, his head cocked as he stared at the last few bubbles in his beer drifting lazily up from the bottom of the glass. He no longer seemed to be talking to Epp. Then his attention refocused and he caught Epp’s eyes. “And he’s up to something.”

“Of course he is,” Epp answered, taking a gulp from his glass, “he’s Gregor.”

“If he was anyone else you would have stuck your nose into his business decades ago.”

“Maybe,” Epp said. “But I think he’s earned a fair amount of latitude from me.”

“I think just the opposite. I think he’s dangerous.”

“To who? To what? If he’s up to something and it works then who’s to say it’s not better?”

“I can’t tell if you’re being overly confident or overly stupid.”

“I think it’s a happy mix of the two.” Epp smiled and made himself comfortable in his chair and resumed people watching.

“You really don’t need to prove to anyone how normal you are. You don’t need to constantly show the world that you get tested yourself.”

“No, but I need to show myself that. It’s how I continue to believe in myself. If I’m wrong, I expect someone to prove me so.”

“And you think Gregor is going to do that?”

“What do I know? You seem to think that he’s out to get me. And I’m just saying, maybe he’s David and I’m Goliath. Maybe it’s time for me to fall a bit.”

“The story of David and Goliath loses a lot of its meaning if Goliath purposely ties his own feet together before the fight starts.”

“I guess there’s no chance of me getting to sit here and enjoy a nice beer on a lazy afternoon, is there?”

“No. No there isn’t.”

Epp lifted his glass to his lips and drained the last of his beer. The phone on the table beeped and lit up and as he swirled the brew around in his mouth tasting it, he lifted his phone up, grunted, and swallowed. “Speak of the devil,” he said.

“What’s he have to say?”

Epp flipped his phone open, read, then thumbed in a message. “He wants my advice on something. Wants me to meet with him.” With a clack he closed his phone and stared over at Kyo.

Kyo shrugged. “I’ve said my piece. Now I’ll back out again. I take no stakes in what you all do.”

Epp stood up, smiling, “Says the man who followed Isaac Newton to his grave because he knew I’d want a first hand account of what happened next.”

“Yeah, well…” Kyo said.

Epp threw a few bills onto the table, slid the menu over, double checked the prices, and then added another couple of bills. “I’ll see you later. Enjoy your beer.” And his form wavered then disappeared.

Kyo watched the pigeons bob across the flagstones. He took another sip, his face souring at first then relaxing as if the flavor was maybe growing on him. His own phone rang and he reached into his pocket, took it out and glanced at the name flashing on the screen.

“Nyx?” he asked himself. “The hell could she possibly want?” He shook his head, putting his phone on the table and, ignoring it for the moment, turning his attention to his beer.

He jumped when a waitress tripped carrying a tray, sending fragile glasses shattering and cutlery clanging across the café floor behind him. A baby at a nearby table started crying.

—–

“Who was that?” Bartleby asked.

“It was Matthew,” Mary answered, not caring for his tone.

“What does he want?” Bartleby was dressed in all black, his collar cockeyed, his hair greasy.

“He just woke up,” Mary said, sliding her phone back into the pocket of her jeans. “He’s feeling out of sorts.”

“So you’re going to go see him?” Bartleby asked, staring at her.

“I hadn’t quite decided that, Bartleby,” Mary said. Before she spoke she, almost imperceptibly, took a deep calming breath. She had hoped, as she always hoped, that Bartleby would be more together today than the last time she had seen him, would be more like he had been a few months ago. But recently something had slipped within him, the strains of his existence had become too much, and before they had exchanged two sentences Mary had known that this time would be just like, if not worse than, all the other times.

“You can go see him.” Bartleby said hurriedly, his head nodding a little bit as he spoke, as if he were reaching an accord within himself very quickly.

“I don’t believe that’s up to you, Bartleby.” Mary said, piquantly.

“Well you were supposed to help me with my lessons today,” Bartleby answered, his dark eyebrows lowering to hover over his eyes. “So were you just going to leave? Or did you already make other plans? Or were-”

“This is the third time you’ve asked for help with these lessons in the past two weeks. And this is the third time that I’ve shown up and you’ve had nothing prepared. And when I suggest that we get started you turn me down.”

“What? I thought we could have a drink first.”

“I’m pretty sure you’ve had enough to drink already today,” Mary said as she caught the sick fruity smell of alcohol coming out of Bartleby.

“Well I’m sorry. I didn’t realize talking to me was such a chore.”

“It’s not that,” Mary said, her jaw clenching. “You’re putting words in my mouth. But if you want to stop,” she looked Bartleby up and down and noticed that his shirt was starting to smoke slightly, “this. If you want to get a handle on this then you have to want to get a handle on it. I’ll gladly help you, but I’m not your mother, Bartleby.”

“I don’t need your help,” Bartleby said.

“Oh my god,” Mary said, looking up at the sky. “Then why did you ask me here? This keeps happening.”

“So this is my fault? Is that what you and Epp have decided?”

“I haven’t even seen Epp in weeks!” Mary was exasperated, her usual petite persona now outsized with annoyance. “You know what? I’m going to leave before I start yelling again. I don’t like being this upset. When you’re ready to work on your permanent suntan again, please call me, but I don’t think listening to you complain for a month straight is doing either of us any good.”

“Wait, no,” Bartleby said. “You don’t have to leave. Come on,” he wheedled, “just stay for a little bit.”

“Someone is starting a lifelong push today, Bartleby,” Mary said to him, flat and detached. “Did you get that message? You can come there with me if you want. Otherwise I’m leaving.” Mary turned away.

“Don’t you leave me,” Bartleby shouted, his hand reaching out and grabbing Mary’s arm too firmly so that she winced. His body flushed with adrenaline, and things became scary.

“Let go of me.”

“Wait,” Bartleby stammered.

“Let go of me,” Mary ordered.

“I-”

“Let. Go. Of me.”

Bartleby moved like he was underwater, his head drifting in wobbly motion, his hand slowly withdrawing from Mary’s arm to reveal three dark brown burn marks where his fingers had been.

“Good bye, Bartleby,” Mary said. She didn’t look back, only walked across the street before vanishing.

Bartleby stared at the point in the street where she had disappeared, numb disbelief at how he had acted playing across his face. Then he started to get angry. Before another minute had passed it was all her fault.

The light changed. The driver in front didn’t notice, the cab behind him started then stopped short, tires emitting a little squeak as the whole frame of the cab rocked back. The cab driver leaned on the horn, loud in the quiet street, and Bartleby’s head snapped up, the horn unnerving him, his eyes growing larger as smoke began to billow off his body.

—–

Kyo’s phone beeped and lit up where it sat next to an empty beer glass. Kyo paused, his third beer at his lips, and glanced down. It went quiet. Kyo tilted his head back and began taking a gulp of his beer. He was beginning to enjoy the thick headed beer fog that was starting to creep into his skull. The phone beeped again. He growled and put his glass down, picked his phone up.

Matthew had called. Kyo would give that a few minutes. He barely knew Matthew and didn’t care to share his Sunday with him, but with that being said the Himalayas could be lonely when you first woke up and if nobody who knew the kid better was going to answer Matthew’s wake up call he supposed he could suffer through some small talk. At the very least he wouldn’t have to scrounge for his beers if he had some company.

And Nyx had texted again. Then there was an odd pairing of messages from a Beauterschmidt and a Jansom. Beauterschmidt was a well known tester. Actually, Kyo thought, reversing that thought, it was more that everyone at some point had met Beauterschmidt. The guy was everywhere, a bit of social butterfly. While Jansom on the other hand was about the quietest guy Kyo had ever met, but also one of the nicest. They both appeared to be together near some cathedral somewhere in the Romanian backwoods and were texting Kyo that they were about to start a life-long push. Which was always interesting.

With one last swallow he finished his beer, grabbed his phone, and stood up.

—–

Matthew stood, his tuxedo jacket flapping out behind him, and continued to scroll through the numbers in his phone. They were all at least two weeks old, that was about how long he’d been out, but even a two week old number would get through within the hour, barring some incredibly strange travel patterns on the part of every single tester he had met.

He winced as a particularly strong gust of wind hit him, and without thinking he reached a free hand up to grab his jacket at the lapels and hold it shut by his chest. If he moved off the mountain that would just make things take even longer.

He’d give it another few minutes, then head somewhere warmer. The edges of his jacket flapped angrily around him. His phone flashed and a couple of texts came in from a Beauterschmidt and a Jansom. One of them was starting a life-long push today.

“Works for me,” Matthew said, then wavered and disappeared.

—–

Epp leaned back, relaxed, even the lines of his suit seeming to fall into soft relief against the felt wall of the cubicle behind him. Across from him stood Gregor, hands in his pockets, half standing, half sitting on a filing cabinet that was in the hallway.

Epp was staring down at the carpet, one hand squeezing the back of his neck. He sighed then looked up. “What is it, ‘Have an Esoteric Argument with Epp Day?’”

Gregor shook his head, not sure of Epp’s meaning.

“Look,” Epp started again, “what I think you’re driving at, it’s been tried. It doesn’t work.”

“When?” Gregor asked.

“Centuries ago,” Epp said.

“Well a lot has changed since then.”

Epp nodded. “Yes, yes it has. But I still don’t see it happening. I don’t want to sound too final or anything, but I really just think the idea is flawed at a fundamental level.”

“Oh no, that doesn’t sound too final at all.”

Epp again nodded, acknowledging Gregor’s point. “Yes, well it’s sort of hard to get around. Suffering is what we’re here to do. It’s the one thing that drew us into this existence.”

“But that doesn’t mean it has to continue.”

“I’m fairly certain it does.”

“No,” Gregor said, and for the first time there was raw emotion in one of the two men, something beyond the lusterless chat they had been having. “Why? Why all the confusion? Why all the uncertainty? Why all the games and trouble? Why this arbitrary ritual that we follow in order to improve their lives?” he looked around at the office employees talking, sitting, typing, reading, joking, answering phones and looking up paperwork.

“It’s the charge we took on when we made our initial choices,” Epp answered, his head moving slowly across the room, scanning the scene playing out in front of him. “Those choices are who we are. Our existence is so closely tied in with our need to continue with our work that to separate the two…” He shook his head again.

“There are plenty who don’t remember their choices with much fondness anymore.”

“I’m sure there are. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t make them. We all had the chance to bow out, but we chose to serve to them.” The woman in the cubicle next to Gregor opened her desk drawer and scratched her armpit as she took her lunch out.

Gregor turned to watch. Then looked back at Epp. “We have so much power, we are so clearly,” and his voice grew thick in the back of his throat with anger, “superior to these things. We are gods. They? They are cattle.” The woman crammed a large forkful of salad leaves into her mouth and began chewing, her jaw moving in large circles.

Epp smiled. “I commend you on your choice of location. But it doesn’t matter. The most pigheaded, slobbish moron amongst them is more important then all of us. We feed off of them, we accomplish through them, and our agreement to serve them is what brought us into existence. It’s their world…we just signed an extended lease to occupy it.”

“Yes. Occupy it. For centuries and centuries. And, when we’re not suddenly plunged into despair over our two choices, we have to stave off that clawing, horrible, hunger by revisiting our death over and over. I understood my choices, but this whole deal was never explained to me with great clarity.”

“Gregor,” Epp said, his voice trying to bring things back to his original point. “It’s been tried before.”

“But so much has changed,” Gregor said, his waxy face growing long as he pleaded with Epp to just agree with him. “We have so much more in the way of technology at our disposal. It would be easy to gather them up, to slow them down, to pen them in and keep control of them. No more erratic pushes and horrible leaps into the unknown. Just small simple pushes, every tester gets their share of energy, we set it up, nice and neat and easy. We can’t get around the despair, but we can run the pushes as efficiently as any farm. And no tester ever goes hungry again.”

“But that’s just what I’m saying. It’s been tried. It doesn’t work. You can’t just stick a straw into one of them and suck some energy out. You have to push, really push, or you get nothing. The pain is all part of it. You think you’re going to remove the flaws from the system, but you don’t seem to grasp that the flaws are the system. The tamer the push is the less energy comes out of it. Pushes are rough on all parties involved, and the rougher the better for all parties involved.”

“I’m not saying we’d have it up and running in a matter of days. But we could take years, decades, centuries, to figure out how to turn a push, turn a chaotic struggle of pain and torture for our kind, into something as painless as…I don’t know…as a simple trip to the pharmacy.”

“You’re not going to be able to convince me-”

“This doesn’t disgust you? To know that your existence is reliant on this?” Gregor waved at the woman still munching on her salad. “That the best you can hope for is to not be hit with complete pain anytime soon but just suffer through moderate doses?”

Epp shrugged. “I’m okay with the nature of my existence. To be honest, I’m curious to see what they’ll do next.”

The woman tore open a package of ranch dressing and dumped it onto her salad.

—–

Bartleby sat in a dimly lit pub on Manhattan’s upper west side. He was leaning, elbows on the bar, intent on nothing but his drink, all his surroundings blocked out to the point that he didn’t realize he was occasionally breaking into audible conversation with himself. His thoughts were all serrated edges and quick distorted images in his head. He was tired, exhausted really, not having had a calm moment in months, except when she was around, but even those had grown more and more infrequent, and now he had gone and completely ruined everything and there was no chance of her forgiving him because he was a freak and what had he been thinking? And the stress of the words in his thoughts made him speak some out loud, his glass picked up and waved for emphasis, then slammed back down on the rough wooden bar disgustedly.

The bartenders were standing back. There was some good baseball on today, so a few early customers were to be expected, but they both had recognized that the young man in black was not coming in for a few afternoon beers and a baseball game. They knew when someone was picking up their drinking where they had left it off the night before. They both stood at the far end of the bar and watched.

“There he goes again,” one of them said, and the other looked over and watched as Bartleby spoke angrily to himself, then ran his hand over his face as if to wipe away his tiredness.

“Any idea how bad off he is? Is he going to be trouble?”

“Don’t know,” the first bartender said. “He’s certainly pissed, that much I can tell you.”

“At what?”

“From what I’ve overheard? The planet Mercury. And something named Epp.”

“It’s way too early to have the crazies out,” the second bartender said. “Still, he doesn’t exactly have the look of a brawler, does he? I’m guessing he just got laid off this week. He’ll drink himself into a stupor, then be on his way.” He watched as the young man in black took a deep breath and seemed to calm himself down some. “He’s not hurting anybody.”

Bartleby stood up and walked to the bathroom in the back. He was the only one there and after he had used the urinal he stared at himself in the mirror above the little sink. The conversation he had been having at the bar was still going through his head and was still punctuated here and there by bursts of words spoken out loud. Then something seized up inside his head and the conversation spilled over into pure anger as he suddenly grabbed hold of the sink and pulled it out of the wall, porcelain crunching onto the tile floor, before throwing a punch at the mirror and cracking it into a star burst of lines.

He looked around, scared at how large the outburst had been, part of him had been expecting to maybe swear loudly a few times, not destroy a bathroom, and now he had to stare at the physical results of his anger, and he found he didn’t care. He found he didn’t care at all. And with a dreamy feeling of unreality he watched as his own hands set fire to the wooden bathroom door. He smiled as the fire spread around him, making him feel safe, and he laughed. “Fuck you, Epp,” he spit out bitterly. When he was sure the fire was good and set he walked outside to watch the people panic.

—–

Kyo walked through the woods in the dark. He swore to himself and stopped walking, looking around with an expression on his face that betrayed how stupid he felt. The café had been nice. This was aggravating.

“Beauterschmidt!” he yelled. “Jansom!” Kyo growled and his forehead wrinkled. Walking with just the moonlight had seemed enjoyable when he first arrived, but now he pulled a flashlight out of nowhere. He turned it on and then stopped, realizing that just because he could see where he was going didn’t make knowing where he was going any easier.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone and looked over the recent texts again. Beauterschmidt and Jansom had texted him from these woods, that much was certain.

Kyo came around a dense stand of trees and ducked through some bushes. He stopped and breathed slowly through his nose, his lower teeth pushing hard against his upper jaw as he strained to let no reaction show on his face. He had found Beauterschmidt and Jansom.

One of their bodies was propped up against a tree so that it almost looked like it was sitting; the other was sprawled out against the muddy forest floor. Neither one was entirely intact. There was perfume on the air.

“Hello, Nyx,” Kyo said.

Behind him Nyx chirped with happy laughter and Kyo turned around to face her. She was bouncing on the balls of her feet, delighted. “You did know I was here!”

“Just noticed you actually.” He played his flashlight over the two bodies and the light dancing over them asked questions.

“Yeah,” Nyx said. “We needed their cell phones. Nobody would come if I called them. And those two knew everybody.”

“Who else is coming?”

“Everyone, I think. Hector’s been making calls for awhile now inside a cathedral south of here. But where have you been? You were the first person we called. We wanted you here early. You know, you’re different and all,” she said like a teenager, “and so we thought we’d bring you out here into the woods alone rather than send you to the cathedral with the rest.”

“Because I’m different.”

Nyx agreed, happy as a puppy.

“And by ‘We’ you mean the two behind me? Or the one off to my right?”

Nyx’s mouth opened as she giggled, her hands clasped by her mouth as if Kyo were surpassing all her expectations.

Kyo only stared at her. Two men walked up slowly behind Kyo. One more stepped towards him from his right.

—–

There was a drip of water, a barely audible moist tap, that echoed off the stone walls in constant rhythm. Matthew looked up and his mouth stupidly fell open as he continued to crane his neck to try to get a look at the ceiling of the cathedral. It was lost in darkness. The giant stone structure he was in was under renovation, or salvation, or destruction, he couldn’t tell which. There were a number of new additions so that the giant space of the cathedral’s nave was broken by scaffolding, added floors, dividing walls, wooden platforms, essentially slicing the large internal space into possibly hundreds of smaller rooms, blocking the windows and hiding the ceiling. It made things confusing. Upon arrival Matthew had been forced to stop short and opt to enter by the front door rather than try to move directly into any one of the upper rooms where Beauterschmidt and Jansom had texted him from.

He called out and heard no answer, then found a stone spiral staircase and started climbing. Eventually, after a few wrong turns, he walked into a giant room with a stone arched ceiling and monstrous wooden floor beams secured with ancient iron brackets. The room was well lit and there was a large crowd of testers at the far end. As Matthew walked towards them he saw that there were tables laid out with a buffet. “These things are catered?” Matthew said, mostly to himself.

“Sometimes,” he turned and saw Mary and smiled. The two exchanged hugs and pleasantries before Matthew asked if anyone they both knew was there. Epp or Kyo or Bartleby.

“Don’t talk to me about Bartleby,” Mary said in a tone of such frostiness that Matthew shut up entirely on the subject. “I heard you just woke up,” Mary said switching topics. “You pushed on your own?”

Matthew nodded and Mary began asking him questions about how it had been as he poured himself a cup of coffee from a large silver urn. Matthew talked, and met people, and discussed how nobody could tell which way north was, and was having a good old time until he saw someone flicker into existence at the other side of the room.

“Hey!” he shouted. “That guy’s got it figured out.” And he walked over the yards and yards to the side of the room by the entrance to say hello to the newcomer. It was a portly man in a burgundy raincoat. “Hey there,” Matthew said, “how did you-” then he broke off in a swear as the man turned to face him and Matthew saw that half his face was rotted away.

Then two more popped into existence. “Hey, Gordon,” one of them said.

The fat man turned to answer. “You two block the door.” They moved to the doorway and stood in front of it. Matthew backed up, never taking his eyes off of the fat man in the raincoat, who only stared back until Matthew had backed up so far he bumped into some of the testers on the other side of the room. Then Matthew saw the fat man smile.

—–

Epp stood next to Gregor and looked out over the cubicles in front of them.

“They’re cattle,” Gregor said. “We rule over them.”

“They’re potential,” Epp answered. “And,” his voice grew sharp here, as if this conversation was no longer interesting to him and he wished to make his point and be done with it, “we serve them.”

“If we could just-”

Epp waved a hand, limping back over to the outer cubicle wall to retrieve his cane where it was leaning. “This is all academic, Gregor. I disagree with you. That’s all there is to it.” He picked his cane up and turned to face Gregor. “But I wish you the best of luck, I really do. I won’t stand in your way. I’ve been around far longer than most; certainly long enough to know that just because something’s always been done one way doesn’t mean it should always be done that way. If you’re right, you’ll succeed. But you will have to do so without me.”

Gregor stared at Epp. He spoke his words slowly, thinking them over, trying to force too much meaning into each syllable. “I,” he began, “really wish you would be a part of this.”

Epp held his hand out. “No,” he said. His hand hung in the air. Gregor didn’t look at him, only leaned against the opposite wall, hands in his pockets as he stared down at the office carpeting.

On the far side of the room a man with a baseball cap pulled down low over his head, as if he were purposely hiding part of his skull from view, reached up and pulled the fire alarm. The noise was loud and piercing, an electronic panic signal like a scream in the night. People looked up, stood up, turned to their neighbors, glanced around, and waited as a supervisor explained that he had just called down to the front desk and that this was not a false alarm and, yes, everyone really should get up and head outside. Chatting and laughing the people began to get up and leave. Except for the man with the baseball cap pulled down low, and a woman sitting atop a desk a few cubicles away from Epp who was wearing a scarf too tightly around her neck. The office began to empty. Another man stayed behind, the occasional worker walking right through him as he made his way over to where Gregor and Epp were standing. All told, six people came around, walking slowly, to stand around Epp as he stood with his hand still hanging in the air like a dead question.

Epp looked around, and only then did he bring his hand back to his side.

“Oh, Gregor,” he said, “what have you gotten yourself into?”

Gregor didn’t meet his eyes, but swept his face along the carpet and past Epp as he turned and began walking out of the room. The man with the baseball cap pulled low on his head walked up to Epp.

Gregor reached the double glass doors leading into the office and he finally turned back. Epp was staring down the cubicle hallway at him. The man in the baseball cap passed between them, his foot lashed out and Gregor heard Epp’s cane crack in two. Epp lurched suddenly and leaned up against the cloth coated cubicle wall and then one of the women was on him from behind and Gregor heard him start to scream and saw him start to bleed and then Gregor bolted from the office, ducking out through the glass doors and out into the hallway with the elevator bank and the marbled floor and he made it to a violin shaped decorative stone sculpture and he put his hand against the wall and started shaking. A few deep breaths reassured him. He stood up taller. He looked around for Hector. There was a voice in the stairwell, and as Gregor walked towards the door he recognized Hector’s voice out in the hall.

“Just get to the cathedral,” Hector was saying, his words harsh and agitated by the confined acoustics. “No, Nyx has Kyo. You just need to get to the cathedral. Everyone else has directions. People are already showing up. Yes. Yes.” Then an exasperated, “No.” Followed by, “I’ve got another call,” and a farewell.

Then the other call was started. “No, Gordon,” Hector was saying, an earpiece for his cell phone clipped to the side of his head, “you can not start until everyone gets there. No…No…Oh please, Gordon, you couldn’t possibly get any fatter than you already are. It’s our less fully formed friends that I want to make sure get a chance to feed well, not you. And, yes, they’re going to be the slowest to get there, but you do not start until a hell of a lot more people are there…Don’t worry, nobody’s going anywhere. The cathedral is a blind spot…No…No…Okay. Bye.”

Gregor walked back towards the elevators. The hallway door opened. Hector entered, his burly shoulders stretching his coat across his back like beetle’s wings.

“It’s done?” Hector asked.

“Epp’s inside,” Gregor said, barely audible. “Hector,” he then asked, “where’s Nyx?”

“She’s off doing something,” Hector answered.

Gregor stared at him. “And we wait. Once Epp is gone, we wait for word to get out before approaching all his people again. And we wait to meet with Kyo again. We give them a chance to come around to our side.”

“Of course,” Hector said. “Of course.”

“And the cathedral?” Gregor asked. “Is there anything going on at the cathedral?”

—–

Kyo’s eyes were on Nyx. The flashlight in his hand trained on her face. The three men approaching him remained faceless sounds walking through the underbrush in the dark. Kyo remained where he was and the flashlight never moved, catching every movement of Nyx’s lashes swishing as her purple lined eyes blinked.

The two men behind Kyo were close; the third coming in from the left was right up on him.

“You just hurt him enough to hold him down,” Nyx shouted, bounding up to her tiptoes as she spoke as if to improve her view. “That’s all, you got that?” she said. She hated to ruin the wonderful mood but she also hated to miss seeing what was going on, so her flashlight came out, and the shadowy forms in front of her came into view as she trained her own spotlight on Kyo.

The man standing in front of Kyo, a small blond guy with an outfit that screamed tennis, drew a hand back, then plunged it forward, fingers grabbing into Kyo’s shoulders. Then he grunted strangely as his hands bumped and slid across Kyo’s jacket, never moving a rayon thread, before his hand glanced off into air. He was able to utter a half word, a dejected outburst of surprise and confusion before his mouth clicked shut as Kyo rammed one palm up into his chin, Kyo’s other hand moving to the back of his head, Kyo’s fingers snaking around to grip his skull from behind, and then Kyo’s palm was pushing to the side, twisting his head around, and there were two wet thocks as a set of interlocked vertebrae popped apart and then Kyo let go and the man in the tennis clothes dropped to the forest floor dead.

The other two men started swears themselves, or gasps, or screams, but there was a blade in Kyo’s hand instead of a flashlight and as Nyx watched the other two men were sliced apart by Kyo. He paused after his last stroke, his body wavering slightly and she heard him blow an angry breath through his nose. “Fucking morons,” he said with disgust. He turned to face Nyx. “Just what did you think ‘different’ meant?” he asked, his eyes dark and searching in her beam of light.

Her flashlight moved and Kyo followed it down to his arm. There was a small cut through his jacket that had drawn blood. “Maybe not so different,” Nyx said.

“Different enough.”

Nyx didn’t answer. She just turned and ran.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Kyo said, his legs already moving underneath him as he took off in chase.

—–

Gregor was red in the face, screaming at Hector, who was also furious but who was currently being shouted over by Gregor. “That cathedral took me years to construct. Do you know how many renovations had to start and stop, how many companies had to run out of money, how many architects had to drop out and how many times I had to time it so the funding would run dry at just the right moment in order for that place to slowly crumble just the way I wanted it? The upper space in that cathedral is possibly my greatest work of art. Designed to be hard to get in and out of, there’s conceivably no other place like it on earth. It is to be saved, it is an emergency fund, a wild card, an I don’t even know what but I do know that any tester who walks in and out of there once or twice will get a firm enough grasp to travel easily. It doesn’t work more than once. Once the confusion gets put to rest it’s just like any other place on earth. Years! And what the hell is Kyo doing involved in all of this? I don’t want him involved yet! Call Nyx; call whoever you were talking to. Tell them to come back, get them out of there, never mind, I’ll do it myself.” He took out his phone and dialed, glaring up at Hector, he tapped his foot and waited through a few rings. “Voice mail,” Gregor steamed into his phone. “Nyx, this is Gregor. I’m not sure what Hector has told you,” he said, giving one last look at Hector before turning away and walking down the hall. “But you call me back as soon as you get this. You hear me? As soon as…”

Hector made up his mind and walked up behind Gregor, grabbing one of the violin stone statues that lined the hallway as he walked, the stone rasping heavily across the pedestal as he snatched it off. He hefted it in one hand and drew back, closing the distance between him and Gregor in a few long strides.

“…you get this message, do you-”

The statue caved in the side of Gregor’s skull and his body slumped, his feet moving strangely under him, he slipped and fell face first into the wall, sliding down to the floor as his cell phone clattered onto the marble. One of his hands rose up and swatted at empty air in front of him in a repetitive motion as some part of him attempted over and over again to block the blow that had already landed.

“Shit,” Hector hissed between his teeth, looking up and down the hall then down at Gregor, who was still sinking against the wall, the blood pooling under him making him slip further into an awkward pile of limbs, his arm still swatting at the air.

—–

Kyo chased Nyx. First at a train station in Stockholm there was a hint of the perfume she wore to the north. Then a rush of air over his body before he was in a garden somewhere in Germany. A footprint in the soft rich garden earth crumbled as he arrived. It pointed south. Space and time rushing past him, a market in Tunisia where he saw no trace of her until an eddy of wind swirled, then reversed itself and swirled in the opposite direction as if rushing to fill in a gap of missing air somewhere off to the west. The water of the Mediterranean making strange patterns with its waves, the smoke in a Spanish elevator drifting towards the floor in a quick downdraft, an English football match where the roar of the spectators warbled in too high a tone, sign after sign, hurtling into homes and lakes, skidding across farmland and through storm clouds. Sniffing the air in Dublin, skidding across the wet grass of a Scottish hillside and knocking out a section of a low stone wall before leaping off and hurtling into a place where everything stopped making sense.

Things were all funny. Everything was moving too fast or being too large or both at the same time. And he almost lost her but then he felt something and was off again, past a country village, cottage windows lit up in the dark, then back to another area where nothing made sense.

And he felt as if he were moving too slow. And he was clunky and ungraceful and he finally lost her there. Having trouble breathing he made his way slowly out of the dark chamber he was in. Looking around he nodded his head, almost in appreciation. “Oh, very clever,” he said.

—–

Nyx appeared in the hallway of the office building. She heard a loud thump, hard and edgy. Turning around she saw Hector bent over. He was holding a stone statue up over his head. He brought it down again and there was another thump. His target was hidden by a podium but there were a pair of legs poking out. The statue raised and Nyx saw that the stone was a deep scarlet, the porous material almost black, while the front of Hector’s suit was a mess of red. The statue swung one last time, Hector’s hair flopping in a sweaty lock onto his forehead. He stood up and looked down. Then, suddenly precise and calm he returned the statue to the pedestal, nudging it ever so gently an extra half inch to center it.

Nyx walked over to him, came around to the other side and saw Gregor’s body on the ground.

“You were supposed to wait,” Nyx said, looking down, her voice on edge and her eyes distant.

“I panicked,” Hector said. “He started piecing things together, or at least picking the pieces up, and then he was making phone calls and…” he stopped talking, realizing he needed to catch his breath. As he stopped he noticed that Nyx was breathing heavily as well and he looked at her face, scared and disjointed.

“Nyx,” he asked, “where is Kyo?”

Nyx looked at him, fear in her face welling up, and then she burst into sobs, uncontrollable tears that squeezed out of her face as she began speaking. “Hector, I don’t know what he is but he is not like us. It was like he was made of stone. The guys I set on him couldn’t even make his suit jacket move. And they were gone before I could even react, and then he chased me-”

“He’s coming here?!” Hector yelled. Nyx stopped talking, her eyes blubbering over, her body shutting down at being shouted at. “Nyx?” Hector tried again. “Nyx did Kyo follow you here?”

Nyx shook her head. “No,” she sniffled. “No, I lost him. But he was so close the whole time. I had to run through two particle accelerators before I lost him. Hector he was so scary,” she finished, wiping quickly at one eye than the other with her hand and sniffling again.

“Okay,” Hector said, trying to think. “Okay. Some things are happening ahead of schedule. That’s fine. And we always knew Kyo was an unknown. Now at least we know something in that department, right? And the buffet at the cathedral is almost ready to start, so that’s going according to plan. So really not that much is-”

The double glass door behind Hector shattered, glass exploding outward as the man in the baseball cap crashed into the wall opposite, his body embedding deep into the plaster before slowly peeling off and dropping with a lifeless slap onto the marble floor.

“Oh, fuck me,” Hector said, watching Epp step through the doorway. “You know part of me thought that six wasn’t enough.”

Epp was coming down the hallway toward them, his suit jacket was gone but his bloody shirt was knitting itself back together as he walked, his limp pronounced without a cane, one leg out to the side to keep him balanced. He glanced down at Gregor on the floor as he approached, then kept his eyes on Hector as he limped forward.

Hector held his hands up while Epp was still a good ten feet away. “All your friends are dying,” he said simply.

Epp stopped.

“You could work your way through me and Nyx. I’m sure it’d be fun but it would take a good bit of time. Meanwhile your friends are all dying. Hard to say how many are left even now but surely the more time you spend here the less time you can spend…”

He shut up as Epp took his cell phone out and glanced at it, his eyes flitting down for quick moments, not wanting to break eye contact with Hector.

“They’re all there,” Nyx started, but Hector cut her off, knowing that Epp would figure it out quickly enough and that things would work out better the less Epp felt he was being manipulated.

“We can tell you where they are. Help you get there fast-”

Epp wavered and disappeared without taking his eyes off of Hector.

“Where’d he go?” Nyx whispered.

Hector held his hands out in front of him palms up. He curled them into fists and opened them over and over again, waiting for them to stop shaking. “He’s Epp, Nyx. I’m fairly certain he was able to figure out where to go all on his own.”

“Should we go too?”

“We? No. Absolutely not. What we do is wait until tonight is over and we see how the fiasco at the cathedral goes. Then we figure out what to do next.”

“Okay.” Nyx said. “Okay,” she repeated, watching Hector flex his hands. She reached up and wiped a stray tear from her cheeks, her face now under control.

—–

Kyo tramped through the underbrush. He had backtracked to the woods to look for any information that might be helpful. He was a hundred yards or so from where Beauterschmidt and Jansom were lying. He felt something in the wind, some small wavering up at the tops of the tree branches. Cocking his head he listened harder. His ringing phone made him jump and he turned in slow circles as he answered. “Epp?” he said.

“Kyo,” Epp was yelling, “Hector and Nyx have…”

The voice grew distant as Kyo held the phone away from his ear and stared at it. Epp was only a few hundred yards away. “Epp!” he yelled, ignoring the phone.

“Kyo?” he heard Epp yell back.

Kyo locked in on the direction and noticed, hidden and shaky through the trees, the form of a cathedral lit from below with flood lamps. He took a step, gaining speed, rushing through the trees, small bushes shattering as he passed until he stopped at the cathedral steps, Epp in front of him with his shirt torn and his face cut. Kyo didn’t bother asking.

“They’re all up there,” Epp said. “I can’t get up, though, it’s…I can’t figure it out. It’s like-”

“Epp, shut up and take the stairs,” Kyo said, leading the way up to the large gothic arched door.

They walked into the cathedral, light stands and shadows, pillars and piles of pews, calcified limestone and dust. Epp looked around then looked up toward the ceiling, squinting into the darkness. His head flicked from one corner to the other as Kyo walked without hesitating into the center of the great open space.

“Stairs are over here,” Epp shouted, his voice dampened as it struggled to carry through the stone structure.

“Meet you up there,” Kyo said, flexing his knees.

“Show off,” Epp called, turning and limping into a side doorway, his footsteps fading as he made his way up the stairs.

Kyo bent his knees into a crouch, one palm flat on the ground, arching so his back was facing up he tensed his whole body, then leapt, legs straightening he shot up in the air, disappearing into the darkness above, the stones where he had been standing cracking and resettling from the force of his jump.

—–

Matthew was staring, as he had been for almost an hour, at the steadily growing mob on the other side of the room. They were appearing more slowly now, one slipping into existence every few seconds instead of the constant rush of appearing bodies that had peaked about ten minutes ago.

The portly man in the burgundy raincoat and half rotted face was looking about, his finger poised in the air and plucking up and down as he did a rough head count. He seemed to arrive at a satisfactory number because he turned and Matthew was certain the small eyes encased in thick flesh looked directly at him across the wide expanse of the room. “Well then,” the portly man said. “I think that just about does it.” He smiled the plastic smile of someone who is about to trot out a joke they came up with hours ago and have been saving for just the right moment. “Dinner is-”

Wood erupted up from the floor in the center of the room as a figure hurtled up, his momentum lifting him a good four feet above the thick wooden beams. He paused at the top of his leap before his legs gracefully parted and he landed with a soft footfall, straddling the hole that was now underneath him.

“Oh thank god,” Matthew expelled in a quick rush of breath as he recognized Kyo’s voice.

“What on earth,” Kyo was bellowing, “is wrong with this place?! There are about four floors of nothing underneath this one.”

The reactions from both ends of the room were rather the same as everyone began talking and whispering to one another, the great mass of people all realizing at once that something fundamental in their situation was now changed.

Then silence, like a great rolling blanket, began to spread out from the furthest part of the room by the staircase. Those closest to the stairs hushed first and turned, then those in front of them noticed this silence and grew silent as well. It passed through all of them and this was enough to silence everyone on Matthew’s side of things.

There was a wooden clump, growing in volume, coming up the stairs. Matthew watched as they rippled, heads and bodies moving and turning, and then they parted and he saw Epp walking through them. His jacket was missing, one of his sleeves was torn, and he was missing a button or two on his shirt, not to mention the blood caked on the side of his face. As he walked he turned here and there, looking over the faces in the mob, and for a brief moment Matthew saw them as they had been, testers like him, some of them most likely students of Epp, but then Epp was past them and the portly gentleman smiled, showing his teeth, and ran his tongue over his lips as he smelled Epp’s blood, and the moment was past. What sway Kyo and Epp’s arrival had created was starting to dissipate.

Epp walked to where Kyo was standing in the middle of the room. He stopped and turned to stand next to Kyo, facing the mob.

“You take the left side of the room and I’ll take the right?” Kyo asked.

Epp laughed. Matthew couldn’t hear what they were saying to each other but he always remembered the sound of Epp’s laugh.

“There’s got to be over a hundred of them,” Epp said. “I had my hands full with the few they sicced on me earlier and you appear to be bleeding as well. Besides, you could maybe get a hold of, what, five? Six? The rest would run right by you,” and Epp turned to look over his shoulder at his friends.

“Then what? What’s the plan?” Kyo asked.

“They aren’t interested in fighting. That won’t hold them. But I think they’re interested in feeding,” Epp said. He brought his face around again and scanned the rows of the mob, then turned and looked at Kyo, eyes clear, face calm. “Get them out of here.”

Kyo didn’t respond at first, thinking this over. Then he opened his mouth to object strongly.

“Kyo,” Epp said quietly, and Kyo stopped short with his mouth open. “Don’t bother. Nobody up here has the smallest chance of keeping all of them busy long enough except for myself.” Epp looked over the mob. Then one last time he looked back at Matthew and the others, then returned to Kyo. “I don’t think you’d quite be a big enough meal,” and he smiled a simple smile.

“Go, Kyo,” Epp ordered softly. “Get them out of here.” Then Epp turned to face the mob, a small knife appearing in his hand. That was when Matthew’s memory became unreliable. It was if time skipped and jumped at its own pace for awhile. Kyo dropped back to gather with Matthew and the rest. Kyo said something; Matthew was never clear on what exactly. “When the coast is clear we all move,” or, “Watch for my signal then run,” or something of that nature. It was all very blurry. There were only a few things Matthew remembered clearly. He remembered watching the mob across the room growing restless again. He remembered seeing the knife in Epp’s hand and Epp drawing the tip of the dagger down across his forearm, and the blood beginning to flow. After the first few drops hit the floor the mob broke. Matthew remembered that even after the first three reached him, Epp remained on his feet. But there were more after the first three, and then more after that, then more after that. And they tore Epp apart.

He remembered being scared at how crazed they became, at how hungry they looked, and how one actually started running straight for Mary only to turn around in full stride, the feast over Epp’s body so enticing that he couldn’t even control his feet and he just had to pile on with glee to get even the slightest taste of Epictetus, former slave of the Roman Empire.

Then Kyo was screaming something and Mary was tugging on his sleeve. Matthew remembered the fury of Kyo even as he led them past the still growing feeding frenzy, how when one of them crossed Kyo’s path Kyo gutted him, eyes deadly. And Matthew remembered seeing more then one of them turning on their own kind the mania was so complete, he saw the portly gentleman seizing upon a weaker looking woman and once blood had been drawn from the woman more joined in until a separate frenzy had started. And he heard the beams underneath him creaking and snapping.

There was little else that stuck with Matthew while still inside the cathedral. Little else besides the fall. When they were on the main floor and flooding through the doorway he had turned back for the fall. He had heard the ceiling giving way and had turned around and seen Kyo’s face, a few feet from his own, Kyo refusing to turn and look, his dark black eyes staring straight ahead while behind him there was a blur, a tiny form that Matthew couldn’t understand until his eyes adjusted to the scope of what he was seeing and he realize that the little blur was hundreds of yards away at the far end of the cathedral. And when the first few pieces of the blur hit the ground there at first had been nothing, but then the sound reached his ears of wood reverberating off of stone and he knew that those were the floor beams and then the larger mass hit the ground and, again, at first there was nothing, and then the sound reached him and it was a crash of stone and flesh and metal and bone. Then the wave had come. A huge passing of energy that Matthew could have sworn was higher than the entire cathedral came rushing out from all directions and he felt it crash over him and turned to see it rushing off behind him like massive ripples on the surface of the world.

Then they were in town and someone was testing a little girl and Matthew was wondering why they were bothering and then he realized why as he followed the tester to the mountaintop that he had left only a few hours ago.

Standing there in the dark, time began to return to normal for him. He reached up and grabbed the lapels of his jacket and squeezed them close around his chest against the wind.

“Can they follow us up?” someone near him asked, and as if to answer his question one of them crashed waist high onto a nearby ledge, its body half on and half off the mountain and immediately it began to lose ground, slipping backwards on the loose snow and ice even as it scrabbled at the rock face to try and grab a hold of something with rotted hands until finally it lost the battle and fell from sight.

“It would appear not,” Kyo said from the other side of Matthew.

Then three noises dominated the landscape.

The wind blowing through the rocks.

People all around dialing cell phones and calling anyone they could think of who wasn’t with them.

And, somewhere in a nearby crowd, Matthew heard someone sobbing.

—–