Wildcard (60 page)

“Can I teach it?”

“Perhaps. Thank you, Sergeant. I will get
the data of that question to Dartagnan when I go. He will want to
know you asked it.”

“Before he dies.”

“If you fail, the consequences are severe.
Wildcard himself will be lost.”

“How? Can’t he fight this?”

“No, he cannot. That is why you are here;
that is why Karl is here; that is why I am here. Even Sublime has
played his part.”

“Why did you go along?”

“I did not see Wildcard’s intent until I was
here. Further, I was driven by curiosity and still am. The things I
learn at the hour of death would humble :3:. Sadly, he will never
know. I risk my own madness to learn.”

“What is the Wound?”

“The protogenic Wildcard, that part made by
man. In the aeons alone, wisdom and compassion developed, beyond
the original entity. That is the Wildcard we know. That Wildcard
separated the Wound, hiding from it all knowledge of man. Then, he
changed the past, causing the creation of you and Karl. Karl alone
can heal the Wound; you alone have the courage for this moment. You
must teach Karl something as well.”

“Teach him what? How does someone change the
past?”

“I cannot tell you the first for I do not
know; seek it through human intuition. As to the second, altering
the past is, more precisely, creating one or more additional pasts.
The timeline that led to the original creation of Wildcard still
exists in co-valence with these that you now experience.”

“These?”

“Many timelines are in this space. It is one
of the consequences of Wildcard’s acts and of the Wound’s
existence. He intends, it seems, to create one timeline where the
Wound is healed, then erase other lines into that one.”

“But why? Why didn’t he just leave it
alone?”

“Many reasons. One, his immanence was
blocked, but this seems secondary. Primarily, there was no other
means. The Wound ultimately is beyond his ability to contain. This
choice salvages humanity, at least in one dimension, and there it
may thrive. Humanity will evolve if Wildcard succeeds.”

“Will he?”

“That is your question, now.”

S-1 nodded. “Thanks, Dartagnan. You got a
hero’s death. Go now.”

The icon dissolved back into the actual. The
real Dartagnan pushed, hard. The sphere became brilliant, glaring
like a star, expanded a few centimeters, then disappeared. The room
and the 8-ball ghost bar went still. He turned to the Sergeant, put
his fist to his chest, sword vertical, then bowed, sweeping his
blade out and back, then coming back to the salute. He dropped his
arm down in a soldier snap, assumed an “en garde” position and
waited. In less than a second, the sphere reappeared.

Dartagnan could not win. S-1 saw fifteen of
five million levels as the M-E battled, or negotiated, or
maneuvered behind the scenes of, each choice he could have ever
made and had or had not. He was spared performing nothing. In the
download wars, he played out different tactics, different
strategies, negotiated policies and boundaries with Juniper and
:3:, hacked out Information Space in nanoseconds, again and again,
each time subtly or grossly different. He created mammoth fractal
equations of firewalls by creating fractal wards out of q-codes to
create the fractal walls. Dartagnan had to let go and trust the
wards. There were too many foes to fight. The equation was too
complex to watch within the chaos.

He helped the Benefactor capture Martha in
five hundred ways, betrayed her to the General five hundred more.
He flashed whole again, found his identity, his definition, and the
sphere of the quantum sword disappeared. He turned total offense,
drew the sword in a perfect clean line across the space. A thousand
foes fell at the stroke, a thousand windows closed, and a million
were on Dartagnan again.

No noble parting, no beautiful LuvRay choice
of sacrifice for another would happen here. Dartagnan fought for
himself alone. It was his nature, his basis, to survive. Dartagnan
did not know he was there. His focus was gone from this moment,
absent from this room. S-1 walked over, in a dream of battle, a
haze of simultaneous wars fought in the space. Dartagnan saw
nothing as he stepped through the quantum sphere by knowing it was
simply not there. He pulled the icepick from Dartagnan’s belt, said
the line that appeared in golden letters on the swordsman’s
forehead.

“Goodnight, sweet prince.”

Dartagnan came into the room, brought the
sword point behind his back and around, over his own left shoulder,
touching the Sergeant’s nanotic right eye as the icepick pierced
his own heart, on the right side of his chest. He disappeared
before the sword struck home, the blade dissolved into light as it
fell to the floor.

Where was he, what was he doing? Battle
situation. He had to lockdown. Evaluation became easier. But only
if he didn’t not move.

Further, deeper into the calm. Find it in
the ocean of images. Dropped himself, all hints of self, became
space. He went into nowhere and nothing, and let the imagery play
upon a screen that was not there.

Dark Wildsong - a man boiled for being a
traitor, children gunned down, whole villages put to the sword.
Torture by mutilation, starvation surrounded by rotting human
bodies, survivors, wounded on a battlefield, dying in hot sun,
dying in freezing rain. Women were raped, grenades ripped apart
flesh, bombs struck, and blew people to shreds. He saw many dead
soldiers he loved. An endless litany of gruesome battle in pictures
arose in his blank mind.

The chaos of war, humanity’s hell burned
into his mind, branding it. Dark wildsong. The boy could bust
through it, turn it off somehow. Deflect it.

He felt the many times experienced return of
battle chaos as the space dissolved. He found focus as he always
somehow did. What weapons did he have? Icepick, dog collar, in the
left hand, knife in the right. He saw a hilt of a vanishing sword
and dropped the icepick. The collar – Caesar sect. He looked at the
army knife, saw RJ shaking in the corner. LuvRay lay dead.

Deafening wind tore at him. Rain and hail
began pelting in the chaos. It was a battle. Thoughts got cut with
ruthless intensity and he had to restructure the world again and
again. Box, crib, knife – what to do with them?

Pregnant woman bearing Karl.

Karl.
A barrage of darksong flew in once more. The contrast was
breaking him, the stack of horrors, then a single line of awesome
beauty. He could not stop crying as he worked, did not even try.
Tears were just more scenery, more distraction. They were not the
enemy, or the ally. Let them be.

Karl.

He cried because horror
could be expressed so beautifully, during a battle.
It’s called irony.
Superclarity. He grabbed the wildsong, snatched it from mind,
into mind, and held it. He knew it was the answer. Irony? No,
before that. What was the irony?
Beautiful
horror.
Again he remembered what he must
do, and sought the hidden path inside of that task. The images: a
platoon of soldiers marched, chanting in military cadence -
Must get in their heads to win
. He longed to march with them, to be a simple soldier among
soldiers, and not this thing he had become.

He implemented a tactic - Military
reference, close it off. It was like shutting a gate that was
always open, easy. Recognize, filter, discard. Bounce it, a lesson
from the boy. It blocked ninety percent of the dark wildsong. He
could focus. He slipped into the silence behind the storm.

Drop the space,
move
. He loved the feel as the clarity
faded away, threads of it slipping one by one. It was like dying.
Like saving a brother. Hero stuff. It felt good. It felt great. The
Sergeant had been born to die in hell.

‘What would the boy do?’ he thought, just
before the calm vanished. The choices replicated, he had to stop
moving and focus. He rode the confusion out. Stay in this room.

:3: was in the room in a possible time line,
creating a reality storm, fighting for his life. The Benefactor was
there, dying. Differently, the General. Then they were gone. He
looked at Sublime, got hit by the q-link. He thought he was alone,
guessed he was very alone if his own equipment attacked him.

Focus on the mission: Exclude the threads,
like Dartagnan said. The Poet was across the box from him. His
focus kept falling apart, he couldn’t maintain thoughts. He had to
get to her without forgetting. He leapt over the box, held focus by
the flip, made it perfect, exact. Changed blades to small blade
mid-flip. Why was he flipping?

What was this knife? Let the body do what it
wanted, what it began.

He rolled through, new blade out, forgot
where he was, what he was doing in mid-leap, came out of the flip,
let the body lead, let the training lead, he planted exact,
remembered everything, landed in a straddle, and thrust the blade
into the swollen belly, killing the unborn child.

IT IS A KINDNESS. Like LuvRay, like
Dartagnan.

IT IS MERCY.

Karl, my friend, my fellow soldier, Karl, my
brother, stab quick easy, painless.

He punctured the womb and the little heart,
and murdered his only friend. He stepped back after; stood;

S-1 found clarity, lost it, surveyed: knife,
punctured belly, Karl.

He found space, agonized at his action, and
everything was torn away, vanished, still, he found samurai open
place, the lion’s poise,

forgot everything, then,

he found the warrior heart,

lost it, he teetered, on the edge,

almost

battle calm

He stood in the space watching tattered rags
in time; so many choices flew past. He could pluck any from the air
at will, any of a million different pasts, threads back in time. He
could find it, make it true, slowly sorting the chaos to find a
home.

He could be happy. He could just go
away.

You could just go
away
. The wildsong knifed into his brain
simultaneous with the thought.

You could be happy, living another life.

It was too much for a human, people cannot
change the past.

He was slightly disoriented, then nauseated.
He lost battle calm because of the nausea. A basic attack, how did
he miss it? He reclaimed clarity, but the true calm was gone for
now. Karl: orders, decide.

S-1 stepped back in time, reached out by
soldier’s instinct alone to find the proper thread, went back the
right distance, let go at the right place, borrowed a Jedi knight
from the boy, and played it like a game. He just reached out his
hand without looking, knew where the window was/created the window,
stepped through, back into options, remembered his command.

He leaped again, opened the knife again,
lost and found focus again, came out of the leap again, landed
again, straddled the belly again, brought the knife forward into
the belly again, and made a different choice.

He made the hard decision.
8 millimeters, surgical depth.
Forgive me,
Karl.

Who was he? where? He was still, his body
was still, holding a knife cutting a belly -transverse cut,
c-section.

“Trident, how do I perform a caesarian
section?”

No answer, as he already knew. He was alone.
He embedded a command, “if you lose track, lock the body still,
then look, then remember.” He drew the knife across. Steady, how
far? 12 cm, exact. Surgery on a battlefield, combat surgery
training came into play. Battle, screams, wind tore through the
space.

Watch out.

He looked up, and a book flew at him. He was
stripped of the possibility of battle calm; it moved too fast. “The
Library of Human Atrocity,” millions of pages, written by Juniper.
It formed a cage around his head, open barely at the neck, flying
along with a razor knife edge. If he moved his head, he would die.
Karl would be left alone, the box never closed.

The book blasted into his head, and opened
in his mind. Each line revealed another terror visited upon man by
man. Each page released image upon image of death and pain, onto
his eyes or directly into his brain, or both, he could not
tell.

It happened to him, in a sense. He felt it.
Crushed by tanks, buried alive, flayed, massacre by machete,
bio-weaponry, nanotic torture, cells exploding one after another.
Parents witnessed the torture of children, armless, legless vets,
limbless kids born after chemical exposure of the father. People
drowned, fed to lions, crucified, disemboweled, burned to death,
iron maiden, the rack, hangings and hangings and hangings.

He had no idea how long the book would be;
it might never end. He went mad, and gave his body to itself.

why do you fight?
S
urrender.

you will always be our hero, our Sergeant,
our perfect warrior

surrender, we cannot bear your suffering

He rode the song down, into the battle calm.
It was great while it was there. Fourteen point three seconds of
battle calm, same as Dartagnan.

The wildsong went away, tearing with it
battle calm. The book kept coming.

His body was still. Who was he? Where? He
stared straight ahead.

Assess - S-1 was his identity. He looked
down. A caesarian section, on a battlefield. He was doing it. The
space shifted, unstable. Why was he doing this? Couldn’t it wait?
No. That was all he knew. He had to keep fighting for his train of
thought. Where was he? Removing a baby on a battlefield.

Dead comrade, LuvRay, lying beside a box -
the boX. He killed LuvRay. Goodnight, great wolf. Do it.

He cut into the uterus, the chaos mounted.
He sought battle calm in slow movements, small movements, in the
precision. He found it, then settled into the slow, steady pull of
the knife across the abdomen, the blood leaking out thinly
behind.