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Seven Days: Part One of Seven
Date: 1 March 2005, 4:50 PM

Seven Days: Part One of Seven



When I first died, Ben, I went through a brief stage of denial, then grief. Then, after weeping for a day or two, I realized that I had grown wings.

They are white, glowing, covered with clean, pure feathers. I first noticed them when I tried to scratch my back- funny, how even when you're long dead, you still sometimes get a little itchy- and I ended up pulling out a few feathers. I screamed, then; the pain is excruciating. It is like having your finger nails pulled out with pliers.

I was annoyed with the wings for a few days. Then, I accepted them; now, I love them. It's not that I always think of them, and hold them in my mind: I love them as you would love your hands. You have good feelings for them, but you don't neccesarily think about them.

I started to fly, then. I flew for quite a while, watching the once-pure seas get scorched and finally dry up with the constant bombings. I saw the imported Terran dolphins go belly-up in the oceans. And finally, I watched as the native sea squids, whose thousand tentacles often stretch out for miles and are visible from the sky, died away, their flesh and skin simply melting away.

I got pretty sad about all that, Ben. And that was when I finally had enough of flying. But I had nothing to return to; the world was dead, and no one knew about it. The dream that was New Hawaii was gone.

All I have left are stories. Mine, actually. About how I died- and perhaps, Ben, you might hear this from your bed in Reach. Maybe in your dreams you might hear the echoes of my story. I don't know if this will simply get lost in the winds, or if it will drift through space, echoing from star to star until it slowly disappears. All I have is hope. Hope that someone will remember it. And sing the song, Ben, sing it til' it's on everyone's lips, of how the dream fell. Dreams of heaven on earth.

I get an urge, sometimes, to simply fly and fly upwards, you know that? But I can't. Not yet, until I tell my story. Maybe it's a way to empty myself, so that I can prepare for whatever lies ahead. The story anchors me down, Ben.

Remember grandfather, Ben? How he always used to tell of his stories in the army? He always started with "and so it began..."

A killer is loose.

It is noon, and the sands are grimy with dried blood. Chunks of rotting corpses, an arm here and a leg there, dot the beach. And the sun shines over them all, scattering hot light over them like an oven, cooking the pieces slowly, until the air smells of crackling pork.

My first thought was that there had been an accident. A fuel leak, perhaps. Oil is plentiful here in New Hawaii, and as this is outside UNSC jurisdiction, people use it liberally- pollution is a long-gone memory for settlers, used to living inside cramped asteroids and underground bio-domes.

But when Jimmy and I got there, I realized something eerie about the whole thing: all the bodies had been severed by something wickedly sharp. Something so sharp that the bodies, as ruined as they were, were parted cleanly- it looked as if God had taken an giant scalpel and had dissected the poor bastards.

"Someone ran them over with a fucking chainsaw," Jimmy said. He sounded choked.

My own mouth tasted like bad vodka. "Nah," I said. I tried to keep my voice steady, and level. "Too neat for that."

"What about lasers?"

It was possible, but very unlikely. There must have been about thirty or so people here, judging from all the scattered limbs lying about. A laser weapon is incredibly heavy, and unwieldy. To have killed these people with the lasers would not only require a squad of soldiers to do it, but it would also have to require the victims lying about like a pack of sheep, docile and ready to die.

That left only one explanation.

"Occam's Razor," I said. "Some psycho shot them down, and then ruined the bodies for fun."

"A psychopath?" He sounded skeptical. "Dude, Dave, we don't have any psychos here. Remember? The colony consuls ran psyche-checks on all of us, to watch out for these kind of things."

"It's the most likely explanation."

Jimmy looked unconvinced, but he nodded, and then pointed towards the bodies. "Wanna start loading them up?"

I said yes, and so we got our gloves on. The latex clung to my fingers as we started hauling arms and torsos and sliced-open skulls to the 'hog.

There were hundreds of small and large pieces, but we only collected the parts we felt were the most important. But even then, it was tedious work, so we stayed there til' about four o'clock. Once we were done, we got on the 'hog exhausted and badly sunburned. I was still very pale, and so was Jimmy, from our stay inside the asteroid camp. The back of my shoulders were peeling off as I drove.

Roads were still unpaved, but nonetheless, as we cut through carefully planned-out jungles, I could see slowly the towers of New Honolulu rise above the clouds. They shone in the now-moderate sunlight, their black-glass surfaces wrapping the scenery around them and distorting them like some crazed Van Gogh painting.

It was our dream, Ben. New Honolulu. Clear waters, good people, lovely world...

After about an hour, we passed the checkpoints, and, badly sunburned and nearly retching with the stink that rose from the corpses, we got off the 'hog and stumbled inside the lab.

The doors parted open for us, the lights on them turning red to green; there was an automated welcome from the servitors, and we stumbled in, stinking of burns and rot. The white hallways, sterile and sparkling clean, beckoned cold comfort for us. Forgetting about the carcasses aboard the 'hog, we went in to our quarters, stripped down, and took a shower.

Of course, when I had washed and dressed in clean clothes, I immediately regretted leaving the bodies in the warthog. We had bagged them up, of course, but the 'hog was going to need a wash pretty quick. And after hauling the stinking load into the lab's freezer, I would need another quick wash, too. I tried to get Jimmy, but he was still washing up, so I got on
some fresh gloves, and went outside to the 'hog.

I could smell the bodies from ten feet away. I stopped and took a deep breath- then, holding my breath, I sprinted towards the car, hauled the limb-filled bag up, and ran towards the lab.

My air ran out before I reached the lab. I had to take a deep breath- and I gagged. I threw up onto the concrete, bile burning up past my throat and spilling out onto the ground. I retched and vomited until my stomach was empty. Then, still tasting the vomit in my mouth, I picked the bag up and went inside.

My arms and shoulders were cramping by the time I reached the freezers. About thirty dead people equal about three tons- and even though we only managed to find and recover maybe about one-fifth of their body parts, that was still alot of weight. The freezer door slid open on command, and I tossed the bag in.

Let me explain this, Ben.

I know I've been lax in sending letters to you- and now, I can't send anymore, now that I'm dead. But know that I've been working for what passes as the police force among the settlers, and that I've been assigned with Jimmy, my short-time friend, to CSI.

It all sounds terribly important, doesn't it? But it isn't. To tell you the truth, I don't think anyone expected murder of this magnitude and mystery here. We are a naive bunch, I think- we have all the innocence of early-day socialists. I think the Consuls believed that by escaping the reaches of UNSC, we would also escape the evils that plague mankind.

And because we didn't expect much in way of mysterious murders, two very inexperienced individuals were sent to solve it.

That's us, by the way.

Night came, and with it the New Hawaiian chill. I sent for some fried shrimps done spicy over the comm. channels, and kicked back with Jimmy with some beer. The beer was new and awful, more like brown piss then anything else, but we drank it all down anyways. After today, we needed the intoxication.

The stars were new, and strange. It's like that every time I travel- the sky changes. I had been born at first on Earth, and grew accustomed to the constant sight of the huge, beautiful moon hanging over me at night. Then, at Reach, I started gazing at the stars.

In the prison camps and the asteroid colonies, there were no stars to gaze at.

Now, at New Hawaii, the stars were strange, their positions wrong.

"Great." Jimmy seemed pensive. Or drunk. The small, white light we kept on painted shadows on his face, which was long and sharp. And he was now frowning, and grimacing, and making strange faces at no one in particular. He took a drink. "Great."

"What?"

"A psychopath, man. A fucking psychopath." He took another drink, and shuddered. "Horrid booze, by the way. But a fucking psychopath!"

"I'm as surprised as you are." I should have expected something like this. No colony made with human will and human hands is perfect- there is always a small, malignant individual in every group, a cancer who, at times, bursts out and disrupts the entire scheme of things.

"I thought it'd be different, here." He was starting to slur his words. The only good thing about the beer we were drinking was that it had lots of alcohol. "A blank check, man. Goddamn beautiful thing I thought we built here. No fuckin' murders. But now we got this' shithead runnin' loose, and it's all gone, dude. No more goddamn heaven here." He shuddered again. "So mcuh fr a drim..."

When the food came, steaming and smelling delicious, Jimmy had fallen asleep. I dragged him to his room, and managed to lift his limp, drunk body up to his bed, and left him sprawled there, his arms and legs tangled at odd angles. We all look so ignomious when drunk; and even worse, I've found, when we fall asleep that way.

The shrimp was good, the chiles were old, and all of it was made so spicy as to disguise all flavor. I loved it.

      Johnny Reb we're comin' for ya,
      down south we come marchin' for ya.
      Johnny Reb we're comin' for ya,
      to hell we'll come marchin' for ya.

That's based off an old song from Earth, Ben. It's what the UNSC played through the comm. channels when they routed us at Apotrops.

Remember Jonathan Severn, Ben? The guy who took us on our first trip across space? When the UNSC came, he killed himself before they could take him. I watched him die, his mouth filling with blood as he chomped away on his tongue.

Remember Lini, Ben? She died in the prison revolt. She was
moaning and naked, Ben, bloody and screaming.

Memories haunt me right now, Ben. When I started to tell you the story, all these things started coming back. But I have to do it.

Seven Days: Part Two of Seven
Date: 11 March 2005, 3:14 PM

Seven Days: Part Two of Seven

The strips of light seeping through the serrated blinds shone on the Consul's bright bald head, and it made my eyes water. I wiped them away with the back of my hand, and started examining my shoes to avoid the shining cone of skin and bone.

The Consul, seated behind his huge mahogany desk, was currently dictating his orders to the A.I., who looked suspiciously like the popular M.J. Fischer AI Models. I could not begrudge him of this little flaw, however, and I tried my best to ignore the rising sense of disgust as the naked A.I., whose characteristic 'skin' usually consisted of scrolling lines of binary code but now featured a flawless brown skin, wiggled and squirmed as she took down the Consul's orders.

Finally, the Consul finished speaking, and the AI vanished away. I let out a sigh. And the Consul then turned towards us, his long, thin fingers now steepled before him like the transplanted Eiffel Tower on New Bastille.

"The vids came in yesterday. I've watched them, but to tell you the truth I can't make heads or tails out of the damn thing." The Consul said. His head glinted.

"Bad quality, sir?" Jimmy asked.

"What vids, sir?" I asked.

The Consul ignored both of us. He went on. "The boys at Intel thought that they might be able to figure it out, but after a hour they gave up. Said nada. Nothing. Might by lyin', of course, but what the hell- I think it's time you kids got a chance."

"If I may ask, sir-"

"The scene on the beach is clear, and we know that whoever did it didn't do it with anything we know about. Might be some stolen ONI tech the Intel's been keeping mum about, but I doubt it- I've seen nothing like this."

"But sir-"

"So take them, and get out of here." His eyes seemed to flash. "I got work to do."

"Aye, sir." I said.

"Wait, sir." Jimmy said.

"What is it?"

"Sir, about the vids... why the hell do they exist?"

The Consul looked pissed. "What do you mean, son?"

"I believe, sir," Jimmy said, "that surveillance was to be restricted to New Hawaiian government properties. No recordings were to be made of public areas. In fact, this is the first time I've heard of such a thing-"

The Consul closed his eyes, and sat back on chair, while sighing wearily. "Listen, son. I know what we've told to the civilians- that we're not watching them from restrooms, beaches, whatever. But we need it. The threat's still there, kid, regardless of the fact that New Hawaii's located in a god-forsaken corner of the galaxy that most people don't even know exists."

Jimmy would have replied, and the Consul would've gotten reallypissed, had I not bowed, snatched the disks off the mahogany desk, and grabbed Jimmy by the shoulders and hauled him out of the office.

He shook my hands off, looking angry and ashamed. He muttered, then, outside the Consul's office, half to himself, half to me,

"Thought we weren't in Kansas no more, Toto."

I have no idea what he was talking about, Ben. Maybe you know- you're a history buff. Or at least, you used to be.

But I know the sentiment behind his mutterings, Ben. When illusions are stripped away, it hurts. At Calibani, as I executed the last of the O'Connor brothers, I realized for the first time that the movement- to which I had dedicated the entirety of my life to, then- was flawed, filled with men not immortal and prone to corruption. They were good people, Ben, the O'Connor brothers: four of them, all bear-like, shaggy and bearded with good humor and even better cooking.

I hunted them through the streets of Utiga, the capital of Calibani. Ben, I shot David O'Connor right through the forehead, when I held his daughter in my hands and he knelt in front of me to beg for her life. Blood had showered all over the little girl's dress. I let her go, and all she could do was to look at what remained of her father's face.

Remorse. Why do they haunt me so? I paid for my crimes at Apotrops. Paid for them hundred times over in that asteroid prison.

The O'Connors had done nothing but try to expose the corruption of the Securidad branch of our movement, Ben. The Securidad had been smuggling detrimeth in secret. But I had been ordered to kill them, and believing every lie told to me, I killed them.

Only when Ben O'Connor- same name as you, brother- choked out a explanation did I realize my mistakes. By then it was too late; the rope had crushed his windpipe.

By the time we got out of the Securidad building, Jimmy had calmed down, and we spoke no more of the incident in the Consul's office.

The 'hog having been entrusted to a car-wash down by the sea, we walked back to the lab on the sidewalks of New Honolulu. Palm trees, laden with soft-shelled coconuts, lined the streets, and they provided a pleasant shade over the walking pedestrians. The sidewalk itself was beautiful, the color that of obsidian, shining and glistening even beneath the shade of leaves.

There was a restaurant on the corner of Aberra Avenue, and it's name was Jojola's. The owner, who had the misfortune of having being named Hitler Jojola, was a pleasant man to hang and drink with. We went in and ordered some lamb-chop enchiladas, and Jojola added on, for free, a bottle of lemon vodka. So we drank that down also, the liquid burning down our throats; and Jojola talked, and told jokes, and we laughed along with him. .

"So, y'know, I says to myself that this ain't the right set of hooters, and right enough, the ol' woman appears and says to me, 'get the fuck out of there, you cock-suckin' urchin!'" Jojola said, laughing all the while. He had an infectious laugh. The sip of vodka I had taken swirled up to my nose when I laughed, and it burned- I started choking and gasping. Jojola called for a cup of water, and a pitcher of the awful beer- Le'Guinness, it had bee called- came instead. I drank that down. It tasted like horse piss.
.
Our talk then turned to politics, the UNSC mishaps that seemed to go on and on and on, and finally our days in Apotrops. We all turned silent then: the politico prison wasn't something you could easily laugh about.

Jimmy and I were finished with the food by then, and so we took leave of Jojola. I never called him Hitler- mainly because the name has a bad vibe to it, but also because, partly, Jojola loathed the name. Normally, I wouldn't have let that bother me. I'd have burned the little man time and time again. It's just that I didn't want him to start pissing on the food.

Alright. That was a lie. I liked him, and respected him.

The funny little man. God bless his soul.

By the time we got back to the lab, I was a little buzzed, while Jimmy was nearing the state of drunken-ness he liked to call cataconia.

"Goddamn lightweight," I said as we walked in. The doors slid open for us.

"Fuck you, Rubashov." Jimmy staggered once; I decided not to help him, should he fall.

We turned the lights on, and I walked over to the kitchen and started brewing some cheap instant coffee. Jimmy padded over to the restroom and started splashing water all over his face, then came out, drying his face with a towel. I handed him a cup of the coffee, and he downed it in one shot, not minding the scalding heat.

I got my cup, and sipped it black as Jimmy popped the vid-disks into the players. I dimmed the lights a little, too. Then we sat back, waiting, expecting gun-toting psychopathic murderers and bloodbaths. We prepared to be disgusted out of our minds.

Grains of sand glittered beneath New Hawaii's small, icy moon, and the green waters of the ocean seemed to glow with a verdant light.

There was a woman, sitting on the sand, shoulders and back slouching comfortably as she watched her daughter run to the ocean. The others, all parents with kids and all comfortably middle-aged, slumbered on the warm sands. They were all full of good food and satisfied with their newfound lot in life. The fires they had lit for the dinners had by then died down to nothing but embers, glowing with faint red light. All the children were in the waters by then, splashing, playing, and the adults slept or dreamily watched. It was a jolly good scene.

Then it all begins.

A little girl slides into the waters. There is a tense, choked silence as her body falls into the waters, blood darkening the green sea, and then the screams begin. Her legs remain standing for a while more.

The other children are also hacked apart, arms flying and legs falling. Blood turns the waters red. The attackers are coming from the sea, but nothing can be seen of them. They are, for all purposes, non-existent.

Some of the parents rush for their dying- dead- children. Some run away. But all are hunted down, screaming and choking and pleading to God for help.

And then, there is only silence. That, and the waves lapping into the beach, stirring the corpses as they floated away.

There was a pause. Then:

"Holy shit."

"Any possibility of them being invisible samurai warriors?"

"Not a chance."

I think I would have appreciated the familiar, Ben. The unknown frightened me, then.

Seven Days:Apotrops
Date: 12 April 2005, 2:22 PM

Seven Days: Recollections

I've never told you about Apotrops, Ben. The asteroid prison camp-cum-mining facility was, as cliche'd as this might sound, hell on earth. When our movement fell flat on Narkos, most of the political prisoners were sent there, to labor on til' our sentence was completed.


"Oy, Dave."

The sound of the other's voice surprised him. Talking was not permitted while manning the picks- and the guards, who strode through the ranks of the prisoners with shock-prods and hellwhips in hand, enforced that rule with animal brutality.

Dave did not reply. His back still burned and festered with the last taste of the hellwhip. The nerve-frying weapon, although it could not kill, inflicted excruciating agony to the victim- and left a searing wound that hurt for days onward.

"Oy, Dave. Know you're there."

The stranger, whom Dave did not know, started to prod his back. Dave knew he could not keep silent much longer: should a guard notice the other poking and prodding him, he would automatically assume that the two were engaged in some secret communication that involved brazenly poking the other in public. Then the beatings would began; Dave had seen and experienced enough of them to know the pain, and to fear it. The shock-prod to the genitalia, the hellwhip to the back, and steel-toed boots applied liberally to his other body parts would not only make him scream, but it would also make him grovel. Dave didn't think he could endure the humiliating trials that came after the beatings- the groveling, the boot-licking, the-

"Shut up," Dave whispered without turning.

"Got your attention, didn't I?" said the other. He whispered, also, but not as quite as Dave.

"Shut up, idiot. You'll get us killed."

The other giggled. Dave clenched up in fear, when he heard that.

"I've no fear of the whips, Dave. No fear at all."

Dave decided to try ignoring the other, once again.

"But you do, oh-yes-you-do. I'll start crying and laughing, Dave, if you don't answer me- the guards will beat me up too, but you'll be screaming the most."

Dave wished for the feel of his M6B pistol in his hands again, the compact piece of steel curved and conformed to fit his grip. Dave wished that he had the pistol in his hands, fully-loaded, and that the other was kneeling before him, hands tied, and that he could simply level the pistol, aim, and pull the trigger- hear the sweet crack of gunfire, smell the blood, feel splattering bits of skull shower over him-

"Got it, Dave?"

"Yeah." He whispered back.

"Good. Come to the left corner of the mess hall. Quad the greeting: Kaishakunin."

Dave had no intention of doing that. "Sure."

The other giggled, once again. "Better keep your promise, Dave- I'll be watchin' ya."

Dave did not reply.

------------------------------

He looked at his hands again- small, and pale- and stared at his reflection in the mirror. He looked horrible. His skin looked like a corpse's, and his wide, staring eyes- gaunt and hollow- scared him.

Dave heard the thwack of a shock-prod smacking flesh, and smelled the stench of burnt flesh, sweet as fried bacon.

"Get going, shitheads!" The guard yelled.

Dave hurriedly splattered water over his face, wiped his hands once or twice in the streaming water, turned the faucet off, and marched outside, fearing always the sting of the prod. He wasn't hit, this time.

After washing, the prisoners were herded over to the mess hall, and waited in milling lines for the food. One by one, the prisoners received the bowl of nutrition soup- tastelss and milky- and a cup of foul rum, which had been spiked with Prohypnol, to discourage any rebellious thoughts from forming.

Dave welcomed the oblivion of the drugged rum. He lifted up the small, paper cup, intent on spilling it down his throat, when someone- a stranger he did not know- smacked on the back as they passed by, making him miss. The rum showered instead all over his face. Cursing, he turned.

Dave realized that he had sat with his back to the left corner of the mess hall. A small, inconspicuous group of prisoners sat spread a little way apart from each other, grimly spooning down the soup. Their cups appeared to be empty; then Dave realized that they simply poured it down the drains, right below the tables.

The group did not talk amongst themselves. They simply tapped on the tables with their spoons.

What the hell. His night ruined by the absence of the cup of rum, Dave took his bowl and went to left corner of the room, heart starting to beat faster and faster. If the guards saw him, and thought something was amiss...

No one stopped him. No calls went up, to stop him. The sting of a hellwhip did not grace his back. He sat down, next to a large, heavy man whose muscles had slowly turned to loose flaps, and started tapping away.

First, the code. Dave tapped out, at first slowly but with each letter gaining confidence, Kaishakunin.

Lone Wolf and Cub, the man next to him replied. Welcome.

What's going on?

The movement. Listen.

Dave could have snorted. The movement was dead. It died with the last battle on Calibani, when the ONI poured down the shitstorm on them. And Lone wolf and Cub? The operation had failed quite spectacularly. He himself had commanded it.

Dave then remembered the meaning of the word Kaishakunin. Executioner. His former profession, in the movement. This chilled him. He had many enemies, even among the brotherhood, and now, in the prisons, they all had nothing to lose. Sentence in Apotrops was a death sentence.

He wondered if he should just get moving.

But Dave stayed. He didn't know why, but he stayed. And listened as the conspirators- as this group of motley men and women seemed to be- tapped away, plotting.

Victory is near, comrades.

The person who tapped that out- Dave recognized him. He was the former Consul of Calibani.

Aye, aye Someone tapped out.

Dave then noticed something he hadn't before: all the prisoners inside the mess hall, maybe a thousand strong, were clattering and dropping and tapping their spoons against the table. He felt like smiling.

This prison cannot hold us. The agony of our sentence cannot stop us. We fight for freedom.

Aye, aye! Again, the same answer, but from a different person. Dave looked around again- the general chaos of clattering spoons pretty much drowned out the conspiring taps here on this table.

The tyranny of the UNSC- their slow descent towards the pits of corruption, decay, and ultimately, the death of the human republic- must be stopped. The Consul tapped out.

But present goals first, comrade! We gotta get the hell outta here! Someone else tapped. How are we gonna do all that if we're stuck in this hell-hole?

The Consul answered: Thank you, Brian. Yes, I am aware of that. Even now, our agents among the guards-

The guards? What the fuck! Where are our agents when Rigs got beaten to death? Huh?

Or when Han got a shock-prod up his ass?

Calm down, comrades! They cannot act, yet. Only at the moment of our uprising can they act, opening the cells and handing out the weapons. The Consul looked frustrated. Dave realized, then, that he must have repeated this same conversation many, many times, until he reached out to all the prisoners here.

So wait, I ask you. And take those you trust, those you knew in the movement back on Calibani and Prospero VI, and tell them of this. We wait, for now. We wait, and bear the pain. But when the moment comes, we act, brothers and sisters. We will rise once again.

It was over, then. Dave found himself clattering his spoon enthusiastically on the table, also- then realization swept cold over him, like a pitcher of icy water.

No way in hell that the guards hadn't noticed this. Cameras, vid recordings, whatever- the guards must have seen these gatherings. And did nothing. Perhaps one of the agents among the guards was blinding the rest to these tableside meetings, but Dave doubted that. In fact, he doubted that there would actually be agents among the guards in the first place.

The Consul's gatherings were a trap, to attract and lure out those still not broken. It became so logically clear- these were things he himself had done time and time again, to take out the spies in the movement.

And with that came a memory, unbidden, uncalled for, but rising from deep within his mind.

Snow sweeps over Calibani, outside the habitats. The bio-domes, buried in snow, glimmer white in the pale light of the sun.

Two men outside in cold suits. One standing, the other kneeling. Tempests blow against them, rippling fabrics keeping out the cold from their bodies but not their heart.

One screams. And screams, for his daughter, for his mother, for his husband, for his country- calls the other a traitor, a killer, murderer, and a thousand other things that the other has heard before.

The other asks him if that is all.

He says no.

The other pulls the trigger. A tiny little bloodstorm erupts from the kneeling man's head. The scent of blood lingers for a quick second, and then blows away with the winds.

The supper-period was then over, as the guards began to lash out with the prods and kicked out with their boots, yelling and screaming for the prisoners to get moving. Dave docilely stood, his bowl in hand, and began to walk along with the crowd.

The cells. Sterile white walls, a thin, hard bed, a old-fashioned calendar hanging on the walls, and Lini.

She sat on the bed, her skinny, bony body angling sharp against the harsh white glare of the LED lamps. Dave walked to her, unsure. He didn't love her.

She smelled like sweat and blood and burns and cigarettes, and Dave knew, as Lini got up and hugged him hard, against her skinny body that had once been sleek and graceful, that she had suffered more on this day alone then he had during the whole course of the imprisonment.

Bodies interlocked, they moved to the thin, hard bed, and held each other as they slept, one seeking love, the other seeking comfort.

Author's Note:Seven Days was a disaster in making.
That's all I'm going to say. I'll be concentrating on Invasion of the NOOBS now- so until I am done with that, and improve my writing skills, Seven Days won't be updated/continued. Sorry- but although I like the plot, my skills just weren't up to it, yet.

Seven Days:Part Three of Seven
Date: 12 April 2005, 2:26 PM

Seven Days: Part Three of Seven

Memories.

Sometimes, as I wander along the dead corpse that is New Hawaii, memories strike me; not mine, no, but memories of those deceased who have already crossed over to the other. This one that I will tell you about, Ben, is one of those.

Hell; maybe God existed, maybe He didn't, but Mary thought that it all didn't matter when the food was so good and the kids were so happy and the air was so clean and- so damn good, all of this, all of this sand and the stars and the moon, this freedom, this heaven, and so, who cared about lives after death? There was now, and then, and maybe later if you had some room. She wanted to enjoy herself.

Which was why she found herself curling like a glittering snake around Katsuo, his flabby brown muscles managing to gleam in the roaring campfire. They were old, both of them, and both had the scars to prove it; but their lusts were young. Not that young, of course, or they'd been boffing each other like a pair of bunnies, but young enough to feel desire, heat, passion.

"Heh..." Katsuo said, stretching his arm around her shoulders and drawing her close. His stubbly chin, half-covered with thick fat, rubbed against her cheeks. "Want some chips?" He held up some of the fried potatoes to her.

"Thank'ya," she said, as she took the chip. The grease still felt hot on the chip, and when Mary popped it into her mouth and crunched it all up, she thought she could hear her blood veins clogging.

Katsuo grabbed the fried potatoes by the handful and shoved them into his mouth, little crumbs falling off the edges of his thick lips. He grunted in enjoyment as Mary cackled with laughter at him- he looked just like a pig. A damn adorable pig, at that, but still, pigs were hilarious... until they were stripped down for bacon, that is.

Katsuo glared at her as she laughed, and said when he swallowed it all up, "I suppose you think it's all terribly funny."

"It is, yeah. You look like a pig."

"I do not," he said indignantly.

"Nah, you don't I suppose." Mary brushed back some of the wispy

Katsuo laughed. "Or maybe my lady, too. Wonder what they're doing? Sitting at home, worrying?"

Mary smiled. "Hell no. They'd be out like this too, loving, playing- tis all the same in the end. Think it's the air, though, Kat- the air's making me giddy and young again."

"You know," Katsuo said reflectively, "I used to go to this church, tall and white and all shiny windows- priest said that we'd be going down a hell of a long way if we do what we're doing now. But I see that the kids don't mind- and ain't the kids supposed to be the most innocent of them all?"

"Hmph. See nothin' innocent bout them kids," Mary replied. "Look! Jillian not ten years old and already tryin' to kiss ol' Henry."

Katsuo laughed. "Henry's not so bad. My son, after all."

"And Jillian ain't a daughter of mine," Mary said. "Glad, too. She's going to turn out a slattern or whatnot, see true."

"Heh."

They both sat like that for some time. The moon above shone. The sands were warm. The fires slowly died out until nothing remained but embers. The kids played out in the waters.

Mary could see others doing the same that she was, or sleeping, or resting, or merely enjoying the sight of their children having fun; perhaps, she thought, perhaps everyone sees their children and sees ahead a good future in a good land. Perhaps they all see what I can't see. Maybe what they see is greater then anything I could see.

She thought about the years in Apotrops. The guards. What they had called the electric-poontang, which had been a hair curler. The nights, spent in agony. The result, sterility.

She shivered, and Katsuo held her tight, lending his warmth to hers. Mary leaned her head against his mammoth chest, smelled the mingling scent of lotion and sweat, and thought again that for all its supposed beauty, heaven couldn't compare with the sense of contentment that now lay here.

The surroundings grew slowly darker, minute by minute, as the fires went from embers to ashes. People slept, rested, sat, thought.

"So," Katsuo said softly, "wanna do it, after all?"

"What?"

"Want to go through with it?" Even in this darkness Mary could see his glittering white smile. "My wife, she's good, we're friends, but we're not lovers. She wouldn't mind."

"Maybe, Kat, maybe."

"Wanna give it a good thought first?"

Mary nodded. "Yeah, suppose so."

They huddled even closer. The children were starting to tire, Mary saw. One by one the kids began to clamber from the waters to the sands.

But some still remained in the waters, ceaselessly playing. She smiled, when she saw that. What she and the others had gone through on Calibani and Prospera VI and Apotrops- this was the culmination of their efforts. What a end. What a beautiful end to it all.

Katsuo was nodding off now. Mary laid him back onto the sands- he muttered a thanks to her- and she lay beside him, warm and comfortable.

The nightmares would slowly go away, with time. Mary thought she could live with that. She would live with Katsuo, still be friends with her ol' man, and maybe someday she could adopt a cute little girl. Or get a surgery done. Either of them would be fine.

The stars dimmed above, and Mary felt the Sandman's gentle sprinkling on her brow. Katsuo's cushy flabby arm lay beneath her head like a warm pillow. Sleep it would be.

Then it all fell apart with shattering finality; the high-pitched screams of children frightened echoed from the waters; Mary woke, startled; and then she saw Jillian the future slattern fall to the water in two halves, blood spewing from her severed waist and dampening the sea with crimson. Screams, screams; Katsuo rose up, and ran for Henry, who tried desperately to wade in from the waters onto the beach as his friends fell in bloody ruin all around him-

A guttural scream from Katsuo, as Henry died. Tears blinding Mary's vision, as Katsuo's giant torso was ripped in half by unseen knives. Her dream falling around her like a house of cards, as the cold icy blade ripped through her, past her, and left her on the sands, her eyes blinking but not feeling, her legs somewhere else, and all thought rapidly draining away with the blood- and her last words, not spoken but reverbrating deep within her mind, was 'Why now?'

Memories that I glimpse are all like the one mentioned above. They are of tragedy. None of them show the simple delights of everyday life.

Beautiful endings. How I long for them, Ben. I wish that I could lie and fix one up for you- that I lived happily ever after, that I solved the case, got smashed with Jimmy, married the waitress at Jojola's, and after all that, had a dozen kids and lived in pleasure and peace and harmony.

Of course, you know I'm dead. So much for happy endings, even fake ones.

Author's Note:Seven Days was a disaster in making.

I'm sorry, but this series won't be continued, for now. I'll be concentrating on Invasion of the NOOBS- and when my writing skills have gotten good enough for the plot, I'll return to this story.

Seven Days: Part Four of Seven
Date: 20 May 2005, 1:48 PM

Seven Days: Part Four of Seven




Again silence reigned. The air inside the room suddenly seemed to be thick, soupy, and as chill as a winter crypt. The vid played on, and displayed the aftermath of the carnage: the corpses lying here and there, the waters gently lapping the sands, and the moon shining brightly over them all. It was a lovely scene, if you could ignore the gore.

It became hard to breathe. I choked and spluttered, and clutched my now-cold cup of coffee with a claw-like grasp and sucked it down. It tasted awful, bitter and acidic; but it managed to clear my throat. And in my mind went over and over, in an endless loop, Oh God Oh God Oh God...

I was confronted with something that (as Jimmy put so eloquently later) was so bamboozling it reduced my mind to just a fraction of its former self. There is, in every human being, a innate fear of the supernatural, of things that should not have happened but did. Ghosts, demons, possessions; when things go bump at night, no matter the progress in hyperspace travel or interspatial colonization, one finds himself huddling, shivering as he jerks his eyes from here to there. And he sees what is real and corporeal; the walls, the furniture, the paintings. And in the utterly normal he finds proof that there is something not normal, something that does not fit into his daily life. The vase which once held the flowers may be overturned. In the distance he may hear the sound of a door being opened, then closing. Music may suddenly play. Toilets may flush. He might hear footsteps padding on the roof: the thump, thump, thump of heavy boots clip-clopping on the tiles, each step sounding like a marching drum. And, as if hearing a echo, he may find himself listening to a small, insistent voice, calling and calling like the Sirens on a rocky beach...

The death of the people on the beach was a particularly brutal one... the moment I laid my eyes on those baking corpses I knew that to be true. But it had been, before this vid, a normal incident. It was disturbing and in essence evil, of course, but it had still existed in the realm of the definitely possible. It was now something more. The fear of the supernatural overwhelmed me.

I have always been afraid of ghosts. The image of the Virgin Mary forming on the seas of Amaril as the native planktons died away from human contamination is a memory that always haunts my sleep; for me the lady represents not a figure of peace and radiance but a form of unknowable chill, a suspicious, slow forming terror that creeps along your bones and freezes your marrows. Spectacles of gore do not frighten me. The subtle and the unseen do.

Those hidden knives... I wondered how they felt.

"That's a horrorshow, alright," Jimmy muttered.

I did not reply. It occurred to me that I should turn the vid off.

"Want to go eat?" Jimmy asked me.

I said yes.

Jojola's wasn't exactly booming, at this time of the day. By the time we arrived the restaurant was in the small flux of time between lunch hours and supper; this is a period in which the employees go smoke, the cooks eat any special 'leftovers' from lunch, and the manager gets drunk on unpaid wine. Good times.

We found Jojola himself reading a print copy of Leaves of Grass. He sat on the steps that lead from the back door, legs crossed and eyes busily crawling over the text. He mumbled the words out as he read.

"Poetry?" Jimmy asked him, curiously. "Since when did you read poems?"

Jojoly looked offended. "There's great beauty in art, m'friend. Just 'cause I got this speakin' like this don't mean I don't appreciate poems."

"Who are you trying to impress?" I asked.

Jojola's eyes bulged out; he sucked his cheeks in; and bit his lips as if to stop himself from screaming. He looked like a blowfish. "What you talkin' about?" He said. "Why can't people just see that I read poems?"

"Fine, fine. But which one is it, anyhow? I've always liked that one about the steamship," Jimmy said.

"Well, see this one h're." And Jojola recited:

      I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
      And what I assume you shall assume,
      For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

"Ain't that great?" Jojola said, grinning.

"Too sentimental," Jimmy replied disdainfully. "Sappy shit."

Jojola must have been pissed: without bothering to reply, he plowed straight on to a different verse.

      I understand the large hearts of heroes,
      The courage of present times and all times,
      How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steamship,
            and Death chasing it up and down the storm,
      How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch,
            and was faithful of days and faithful of nights.

"Better," I said. "Damn good stuff." I shook my head at Jimmy as Jojola smiled and went back to his poetry.

Jojola's restaurant wasn't too spacious; it always managed to feel cramped even when it had only one or two customers. The walls were red and the lamps were white; the tables were of sleek, oaken plastic and the chairs were of synthesized foxmink fur. The room smelled right now of leftover food and cigarillo smoke. Three doors stood on the back; one lead to the kitchen, the other lead to the back alley, and the last lead to the basement wine cellar.

Jojola's restaurant served galactic cuisine; that is, it transcended cultural barriers. It had no particular origin; it wasn't odd to see broiled herring marinated in tomato sauce, sprinkled with oregano smothered in green chili and cheddar cheese. I preferred more regular fare.

I ordered chicken and rice, with a side of roasted chili and beans. Jimmy called for beer; a giant pitcher, dripping with condensation, was served. We didn't bother with mugs. I took the first giant sip; the sour, yellow liquid fizzed down my throat. I could feel it going all the way down to my stomach, and churn there nastily as my body decided on whether to throw up or not.

Jimmy took the next gulp. He must have gotten used to the drink, for he smiled widely, and without bothering to ask took another stomach-wrenching swallow. I sat across from him queasily, wondering if he would start throwing up-- I tensed my muscles to spring, in case Jimmy started hurling vomit over the table.

Nothing of the nature happened. Good God, I thought; he likes it. Desperate times call for desperate measures; yet I do not know how he could have gotten used to Le'Guinesse. The beer was sour, acidic, and didn't contain enough alcohol to get you drunk with four bottles. The last would have been reason enough to turn me off, and with the first two combined... horrific.

"Damn, that's some awful stuff," Jimmy said. He wiped his mouth off with the back of his hand. "Want some more?"

I shook my head, and called for some tomato juice.

"Pussy." Jimmy commented. "I think I'll get some of those veggie burgers."

"I just have discerning tastes, that's all. Unlike you."

"Desperate times, Dave, call for-"

"Desperate measures, I know." The chicken and rice was almost gone. I wondered if I should order some more, and decided against it. "Still, it seems like you're becoming a masochist."

"Nah. Never went for the kinky stuff."

We finished the lunch. After bidding farewell to an absorbed Jojola, we decided to go back to the beach. God knows why; we had seen enough horrors upon those sands to last even the fabled de Sade a lifetime. We took one of the few buses that were running in Honolulu to get to the car-wash.

As the bus smoothly rolled over newly paved streets, I saw again the city. It was quite memorable. It was a city like any other, I suppose; the tall buildings, the smooth white streets, the slick roads, the gleaming signs. Yet there was this knowledge that this was something I had helped to build, that I had paid a hefty price in order for it to be possible. I had helped create something beautiful. And for that, as the bus rolled past empty buildings and shining black-glass windows, I smiled. And I wasn't even drunk.

The car wash was located sea-side, where they rinsed off the vehicles with the green ocean water. The facility was called Pequod's. Its nearest competitor was called QueeQueg's, and that was located in the nearby city of Oahu. The green waters were perfectly safe for car-washing, and they made sure to filter through the excess water to comb out the detergent and such before it was dumped back into the sea. The theory was that since New Hawaii had been a entirely different eco-system, totally isolated from Earth until we came, we might, if we dumped our waste into the vast green oceans, cause undesirable chemistry-- perhaps in the next ten million years some green-eyed monsters might rise up and kill us all. Most people did not take this seriously as ten million years were a heck of a long way from now, but still the theory had been popular enough amongst the elite to have been made a law: Thou Shalt Not Dump Shit Into the Ocean. Not the exact wording, of course.

The owner gave me a searching look as he handed the keycards to the 'hog back over to me. I noticed a distinct lack of a left hand. A veteran? Most likely, I thought. And so he must have smelled the scent of corpses. That is a smell that never leaves you, a strong, horrifying scent of pork and fat and blood. It is heavy, this stink.

I showed him my Securidad badge. It quelled his fears enough for him to tell me that he had notified the very same Securidad of the 'hog.

"You told them the registry code, right?" I asked. It would be all right if they did; the AI in charge of communications, Armads, back at Securidad would be smart enough to figure out the small details provided that they had the number.

"Well... yes. I did." He nodded emphatically. "Of course. Sir."

I wondered why he trembled so much when he saw the badge. Though I wasn't a particularly important cog in the machine that was the Securidad, I was still enough of a part to know that this machine did not kill, kidnap, or torture in the name of security. Those were the trademarks of ONI.

We drove off to the beach, then. Jimmy insisted on taking the wheel, to my fear.

Then we made a small detour; and that proved, in the end, to have quite a significance.

We were driving to the beach. Jimmy had taken the wheel, and he wasn't quite drunk enough to be a serious danger. I was looting around the various compartments in the 'hog, taking note of what was missing and thus was surely stolen by one of the shifty bastards back at the car-wash. The guns were still there, along with spare ammunition; but the little minted coins, pitiful as they were, had disappeared. Either they had all simultaneously evolved little silver legs and had marched off, or one of the employees had pilfered them. I also couldn't find the hypnol in the medkits.

Jimmy was driving relatively straight. The 'hog occasionally swayed from left to right, but I wasn't too alarmed. Not much traffic passed on the New Hawaiian highways, what with a whole world and only two hundred thousand people living in it. Some had clustered around in cities, like New Honolulu, but most had opted for small-town life. Perhaps it was the warren-like existence that most had experienced back at Apotrops that swayed them to such a life. A few even chose the life of a hermit-- there were many places where one could go and settle down by himself, hunting the many animals that had been seeded before the first settlers landed. Moose, elk, deer; all were to be had in abundance. Bears and tigers, also. There were even rumors that some idiot had introduced dinosaurs into the biosphere.

"Hey-- check that out," Jimmy said, pointing with one hand towards a newly-erected sign. "Never seen that before."

Welcome to Wapei, it read.

"I never knew there was a town here," I said. "Wanna go check?"

"Why not? S'not like the beach is any good to swim in." The waters were clear, of course, but the blood would never wash off. "Wonder if they have good beer?"

"We should give it a try, at least," I said. "Not only for the beer, if they have it. Might as well--"

The car bumped up a little; there was the sound of cracking bones, muffled almost to mute under the roar of the engine. I looked back to see a trail of rather crusty looking blood running from the wheels. I told Jimmy to stop, and back the car up.

It was a corpse. Or what remained of one. The effects of a warthog's wheels on the human body was proven quite effectively here. It must have been a man, perhaps thirty, judging by the small lines that still remained on his face and the beard that must still be growing. His skin had taken on the plastic-like cast of a bloated body in heat, and it shone-- or gleamed, rather, beneath the sun. The wheels had ruined most of his chest and legs, and those were now nothing but bloody wrecks of mushy muscles and cracked bone.

"Not again..." Jimmy groaned.

By the time that the Securidad mop-up crew arrived and took the body away (we did not carry the necessary equipment for the job) while bitching about the mess we made, night was starting to descend and the moon was beginning to shine.

"Erinyes," one of the crew said.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

He said, quite smugly, "they finally decided on the name for the moon, man. Erinyes-- sounds like some fucking elf, neh?"

"I suppose it does," I replied. Erinyes. The goddamn idiots. They were short two moons, there.

Wapei held maybe two hundred people within its confines-- it was quite a large town, Ben, by Hawaiian standards. Lovely place. Small white houses with flat roofs and square windows surround the middle 'hub,' in which stood the church, the town hall, and some stores that sold the usual necessities of life-- food, clothing, vids, and more-- with also a small storehouse of weaponry. The Militia, it had been labeled.

The streets were empty, deserted, and the warthog's wheels kicked up a constant cloud of dust as we rolled through the town. The doors were all shut, the windows all covered; the whole place had a feeling of mourning.

"Weird," Jimmy commented. "You'd think that these people would be happy, being so close to the beach."

"It's like they're having a funeral," I said. "Has that feeling of a hearse passing through."

He shrugged; the 'hog swayed dangerously close to one of the small houses. "Doesn't look like it's a good time to visit," he said. "I wonder who's dead?"

We drove through the roads, which seemed to have been laid without any particular plan in mind. It was like a maze; one moment we'd be sure we were heading towards the center of the town, the next we'd be at a dead end, cursing and bitching at the idiocy of whoever built this place. After thirty minutes of being hopelessly lost, we finally gave in and stopped before one of the houses.

This house was identical to the ones next to it; white, flat-roofed, looking rather squat and small. Jimmy kept the engine running as I clambered off and walked towards the door. No alarms or bells in this place; there was a heavy brass knocker in their place, in the shape of a grinning, cartoon shark. I lifted it up, and let it go; it slammed against the wooden door.

At first there was but silence, and after a while I decided to knock once again. The brass shark was in my hand and ready to be smashed against the wooden door again when the door opened. I took a step back, and with one hand held out my Securidad badge while holding out the other to be shaken. "How are you doing?" I asked, politely.

The man had bulbous eyes, like that of a blowfish. He had baggy cheeks and a squashed pig's-nose, with a shock of unruly brown hair that looked thatched and charred. His eyes were also bloodshot and rather yellow. "What is it?" He demanded.

"Just wanted to ask you, sir, about how to get to the stores."

"What? Couldn't find it, could'ya?" He peered at me with his fishy eyes. "What'cha want, anyways?" He didn't shake my hand.

Well, sir, I just found a dead body on the road just outside Wapei, and wanted to investigate... remaining silent won't do you good, because Miranda has no reach here. The Office of Security now holds direct authority over all your actions, and refusal to follow may result in some time spent moping in a cell, sir, I wanted to say. So get your fishy little head out of there and show me how to get to wherever the mayor or whatnot lives, you sonofabitch. I said instead, "Private matters, sir."

"Well," he replied, "guess I gotta help you out, right? Hospitality and all that shit. I'll be right out." Then, yawning, he shut the door.

I walked back to the 'hog, and told Jimmy that our guide would be with us shortly.

The man introduces himself as Ruben; he shakes both their hands with a limp, sweaty grip and nervous, fidgeting eyes. Dave feels a slick wave of discomfort when he touches the man. He dismisses the feeling as nothing but a sudden onslaught of latent superstition, but cannot shake off a growing sense of unease as the man climbs onto the warthog and perches himself like a peering raven in the back.

They all exchange mindless platitudes and observations about the weather. There is a storm cloud approaching from the ocean, and they all comment that it looks like a giant, grasping hand. They bitch about the beer and Ruben recommends to them the Tafleuthil wine, which has begun to be brewed on the eastern vineyards.

The wino-- for Dave is sure that this Ruben is a drunkard and a sop-- starts barking out the directions. The roads are a tangle of turns and crooks and hidden pathways. Dave is already lost. But Jimmy seems to be doing fine, eyes intent on the road, his mind obviously committing the layout of the town to memory.

After five minutes of driving through the tangle of streets, they arrive in the central square of Wapei.

The central square was paved with concrete; on the west side loomed the church, in the middle stood the Hall, and between and around them were the little stores.

The church was ugly and imposing, and it stood like a fort, with thick metal doors guarding the entrance and a wall rimmed with suitable holes for machinegun turrets surrounding the entire structure. It occurred to me that these people had expected some kind of trouble from the start, judging by the look of things.

Ruben pointed out to me the city hall. It was a structure of classical pretensions, all gray marble pillars and high, rigid lines. It tried to appear powerful, but appeared rather small and diminished next to the church.

The stores: I doubt I need to recount to you their variety, Ben.

What caught me and Jimmy's interest was the bar that stood next to a clothing store called "Harakiri." There were no signs bearing its name; instead, there was simply a sign that said "home-brewed beer for the whole family." Below it in a tiny script was Over Sixteen Only.

"I wonder if they have one of those things brewed with orange peels?" Jimmy mused happily. "They taste pretty damn tangy-- what about almonds and coconut brews? Damn, Dave. This brings back memories... remember the Ol' Baron down at Central, back on Utica?"

"My favorite was the number seven, dark," I replied. Delightful, if rather hazy, memories of time spent drinking and listening to some shitty band butchering another classic song came to mind. "What did they call it? Bittersweet brews for the discerning gentlemen?"

"Yeah." He looked like he was about to cry. "Oh, yeah."

Ruben then cut in. "So, uh, fellas-- since I showed you here, y'know, think you can afford me a--"

"Why not?" Jimmy replied, smiling. "What do you want?"

"The bloodiest fucking Mary you've ever seen," Ruben gulped out. "Just tell them that."

"Why don't you go in yourself?" I asked him, puzzled. "Order whatever you want. We'll pay, as long as its not something extravagant."

"Well, y'see..." He looked nervous. "I mean, the boss in there... he don't like me, y'know?"

"You mean you got raving drunk one day, and wrecked some chairs, huh?" Jimmy said, wryly. "And I'm guessing that the people inside beat the shit out of you. And you called them some names, they chased after you, and you've been sopping yourself on awful wine ever since."

"Well..." Ruben looked very embarrassed. "Yeah. You're right."

I said, "You'll have to go in with us if you want a drink."

He sighed, and agreed.

The sun had begun to set by then, and the storm clouds approaching from the seas did indeed seem to have come closer. It looked like a giant seven-fingered hand, and was rimmed with blue thunder and green lightning. It was dark, and even the orange-violet light of the setting sun did not stain its black depths.

We walked in; the bartender, a young man of maybe twenty, turned towards with a bright, interested smile. He had on a pair of thick black glasses, and wore rather jauntily on his head a dusty beret. But when he saw Ruben, his smile morphed into a ugly scowl.

"I'll be glad to serve you two--" he gestured towards me and Jimmy-- "but he's gonna have to leave."

"Ah, come on," Jimmy said, grinning. "Let the poor man drink. Whatever he might have done--"

"Whatever he might have done?" The bartender looked furious. The other patrons-- there were several, perhaps ten or twelve of them-- were starting to rise, murmuring, all wearing ugly scowls of hatred and fear. "Whatever he might have done? Do you have any fucking idea about what he might have done?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"That bastard--" he pointed a finger at Ruben, who cringed-- "is a murderer."

"I didn't kill no one!" Ruben yelped out. "I swear! I'm tellin' the truth! I found them, but I didn't kill no one. I swear!"

"A murderer?" I asked the young man. "How do you know?"

"Found him all covered with blood over the bodies," he said. "A gory-ass chainsaw in his hands with the most disgusting look on his fucking face. I saw him with a couple of buddies of mine-- we were all ready to kill his little ass, but decided to hand him over instead."

A chill ran up my spine. "Wait... how did the bodies look?"

"All chopped up like pork. Arms there and legs there." He suddenly got teary. "They were the kids, man. We had a school outing-- they had a field trip to the beach. We never did find the teacher."

"I have a feeling it wasn't ol' Ruben here, fellas," Jimmy said gently.

"What do you know?" The young man replied bitterly. "The law says he's innocent. The law says we gotta leave him alone, can't run him out of town. But it was the law that broke my parents on Calibani, man. It was the fucking law that sent me to Apotrops."

Without saying a word, I flipped out my Securidad badge. It was becoming more and more indispensable quite rapidly.

The young man's eyes were transfixed on the floating hologram; I said quietly, knowing that I was lying through my teeth, "We came to investigate, you know." Inside, I felt tired. I wanted to get drunk but somehow this little outing of ours had become another wary, soul-drenching day of work. "Consul sent us down-- we need your help."

Jimmy sighed. "And I'm Dave Rubashov's sidekick, James Hetfield. Named after some drunkard my dad used to like." He too flipped out the badge. "Forensics, that's us. Death is the name of our game, fellas. Get me a bottle of beer and I'll tell you the secrets of the dead." Jimmy grinned, then. "But the beer comes first. And get this poor guy here the bloodiest fucking Mary you've ever seen."

Seven Days: First Half of Part Five
Date: 18 November 2005, 2:31 pm

Seven Days: First Half of Part Five



Many stories were told. Ruben had his say, which didn't matter since no one in his town was willing to believe him and we already knew that he wasn't the killer. We had the proof, of course, with the vid of the slaughter on the beach. But that was classified still, so he was 'taken under custody.' I decided that he'd be better off sitting in a cell for a week or two, then to stay here and be lynched one night. Besides, doing so gave the so-called trial a semblance of justice, which was nice.

We talked to the bartender, afterwards. Or should I say that he came up to us, first. And we talked about Ruben and the murders, and somehow that led to our pasts, and more importantly, Apotrops and Utica. New Hawaii really was a remarkable place. There was something that linked all of us together, a shared remembrance of pain. We were almost like the Jews, living with the memory of purges and Inquisition and the Holocaust, and finally, most recently, the nuking of Hebron.

His name was Horn, and he had been born on Prospero II, the second asteroid mining colony in a series of colonies named Prospero. Nothing remarkable: went to school, did work, and by the time his father died of skin dioxi, a unmentioned side effect of manning one of the mining guns where your skin bubbled up and retained too much oxygen so that you eventually seeped and exploded in a burst of gas and blood, he had already killed three people, two kids and one woman. He was fifteen at the time and had chosen to run with gangs— that was really the only choice afforded to him. It was either join something or be preyed upon.

No one had minded the kids; they were trash, scum, redneck miner brats scurrying around stealing and breaking. They had died in knife-fights. But when he mugged the lady— he hadn't meant to kill her, just a nice knock to the head so he could relieve her of her possessions— all hell had broken loose. He was turned in by his mother. Being only fifteen, he was given just ten years.

In prison he grew tough and accustomed to the usual violation. He did well and after seven years he got out on parole.

By the time Horn had gotten out of prison, the revolt had already started and the police was purging the streets of Utica. It had been his luck that he had been rounded up again three days after his release, beaten, tortured, and then sent to Apotrops for criminal conspiracy.

Then, at Apotrops, he had had the luck to become chamber boy for the Superintendent. Basically, he cleaned the blood off the bed when the super was done with his pastime. Sometimes there'd be acid stains on the sheets, too, along with something that looked like pus, but Horn was smart and so he kept his mouth shut, ignored the screams that often crept out from beneath the doors.

When the second revolt at Apotrops began, and blood started spilling, Horn went into the Superintendent's room. He had a hellwhip in hand. He told me that when he saw this tall, quivering piece of shit, blond hair soaked with sweat, he couldn't do it. He couldn't bring himself to whip the man before him. So Horn dumped the whip onto the ground, and turned round to leave, when the Superintendent crawled over to the weapon, switched it on, and flayed him on the back with it.

When he became conscious once again, the revolt was over and the asteroid prison was launched into a new path. And two years later, here he was, standing before me with a bottle of beer in hand.

I took the beer with a smile. It was good, actually, nice and clean, and I found myself drinking more then I had planned to. I was starting to become bleary-- my vision was slowly becoming ragged, and there was the spinning, shithead feeling of euphoria.

"Heh," I said.

"Heh," Jimmy said.

We were enjoying the booze. Cigarretto smoke formed a thin misty cloud over our heads. I had ordered a plate of meatloaf, and now there was a half-eaten plate of pizza before me. I knew I had ordered meatloaf; I remembered quite clearly me telling Jojola that I wanted meatloaf and I wanted it now, that goddamn midget...

I was drunk. I realized that as soon as I realized that I was mistaking this place with Jojola's restaurant. This is Wapei, I told myself. Wapei. Wapei. Wapei...

I didn't vomit. I really didn't. For I wasn't feeling the effects of alcohol, not at all, I was perfectly in control…

Jimmy leaned back on his chair with this big, drunken grin on his face. "Jesus," he said. "I love this place."

"Yeah." I replied.

"Oh, God, when I die I wanna come here and drink and have fun... What do you say? When we die..."

"...I'll tell God I'm coming here, you sonofabitch," I said. I laughed again. There was something hilarious about our conversation, but I couldn't put a finger to it. And when I laughed Jimmy laughed too, and we both started laughing then, two drunken lunatics braying in the corner of the room, and they Securidad at that.

"Wonder if Ruben's enjoying his tomato juice," I said, musing.

"He is," Jimmy said. "He'd better be. That bastard. If he isn't I'll kick his ass." He burped.

Then Horn, the young bartender, came over. His glasses glinted beneath the light. "Uh, guys..."

"Yeah?"

"Whatta you want?"

"You guys aiming to drive back to Honolulu?"

"That's the plan," I said. I didn't giggle. I laughed. There's a difference between the two, Ben. As a man you should never giggle. "That's... the... plan!"

"Yeah!" Jimmy screamed.

"Yeah!" I screamed. Then I slapped my hand hard onto the tabletop. The bottles all jumped up, slightly, and Horn, with a strained expression on his face, had to catch them to stop them from falling.

"Guys, I know you two are in Securidad and all, but I can't let you two drive drunk."

"You kidding me?" I asked. "You fucking kidding me?"

"He's kidding you," Jimmy said.

"No I'm not," Horn replied.

"Now he's kidding me. Let's kick his ass!"

I held Jimmy back. I wasn't drunk, so I knew when to stop. "Wait... he has a point here."

"I don't see a point."

"But I do," I said.

"No you don't," Jimmy replied, sobering up slightly. "You're as drunk as me."

"I'm not a fucking lightweight like you."

"Oh yeah? Horn!"

He looked nervous, pissed, and worried. "I'm right here. Probably three feet away from you. I can smell your breath, for God's sakes."

"Listen up..." Jimmy said, then trailed off, searching for words. "Listen up..."

"Bring us, dunno, three per pint, right?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"Then I want ten pints, all lined up. Got it?" I was making perfect sense, at the time. But in retrospect I was probably getting a bit drunk by then.

Horn sighed, and shrugged. "Whatever, guys... as long as you don't drive."

And that's all I remember, of that night. It's a pity because it was also my last night breathing.

I woke up sometime at midnight with a giant headache. Rain still pattered outside, on the windows, and thunder occasionally cracked the air.

Where was I? I groped along the walls in the darkness, trying to find the light switch. Then lightning flashed, cutting through the pitch-black tar of night, and I saw in the momentary glance that this was not my room, but rather somewhere else. The room was small, more a cell or closet, and it had inside the bed, on which I slept, and a table and chair, on which were nothing but a fine sheen of dust. Then memories slashed their way through the fog of beer and nausea, and I realized that I was still in Wapei.

Horn had given me room to sleep in the back. Jimmy was bunking over at Ruben's.

I lay back down on the bed, but I couldn't sleep. Thunder still roared outside, and I wondered when the storm might pass.

Then unwelcome specters crept up, stole their way into my head—

I sat back up. In the darkness I tried to calm myself. Lightning flashed once again, threw everything in stark contrast for one bright second. Shadows flickered on then off. In that moment I saw myself distorted, hunched, slumped, my shade cast onto the wall, enlarged and grotesque.

Unnerved by that image, I stood up, and again searched for the light switch. My hands palmed their way across the gritty concrete wall. I found it, turned it on— but no relief came, just a feeling of postponement.

Beneath the light hanging from the ceiling I lay back down to sleep. I counted sheep. One, two, three… forty-six… ninety-eight….

Something exploded in the distance, and I was roused from my sleep by the sound of the blast. I sat up in the bed, and waited, listening: and sure enough, a few seconds later another explosion sounded, a giant drumbeat echoing over the rain and thunder that still fell.

I left the light off. The explosions were giving out enough light for me to find my way through the room. I found my shoes and a jacket with a hood on it. I left the room. The ground shook slightly as I walked, a tremor, and it felt like a giant worm sliding underneath, throwing all above into chaos.

There were people in the bar. Perhaps twenty in number. They were all frightened and milling in unconscious circles, like sheep. I looked for familiar faces, but in the dim smoky light I could make out nothing. They were all faceless, their visage fleshy rubber.

"What's going on?" I asked. I still had a distant hangover, but I'd always had quick recovery. "I heard some blasts, and that woke me up."

"That's all you've heard?" I heard a woman say. "Count yourself lucky, then."

"Why?"

"You haven't heard the screams?" This time a man.

"No! I told you, I was asleep—"

We all fell silent as another blast shook the earth. Then that man said, "I was sleeping too, but I came here when I heard screams…"

"What screams?"

"Just, I dunno, screams. It was coming from my neighbor's house. It sounded like those you hear in movies, you know? And I got up, heard this sound— like something wet slapping against the wall— then the bombs went off."

I was puzzled. "Bombs?"

"We had bombs," someone else said. "In the armory."

"But who's setting them off?" Someone asked.

"And why are they doing it?"

Another blast, in the distance. And this time it was followed but a trailing groan sounding from some distance away from the bar, cut short by a gasp and a sound like that— like that of something wet dropping sloppily onto the floor.

"What was that?"

We waited in the dim light for another explosion, but it never came. Murmurs slowly rose, questioning, probing, and seeking reassurances. I walked up to the door, and saw that someone had nailed it shut, had piled before it stacked tabled and chairs.

"Who barricaded it?" I asked. Jimmy was out there. You had to watch out for friends.

"Don't open it!" Someone shouted.

"But I have a friend out there. Besides, it sounds safe enough now…"

"But the things might be out there still."

I asked, "What things?"

No one would answer.

Shrugging, I took a hold of a table and hurled it aside. It fell to the ground loudly, and that roused this mob up— this frightened, desperate group of people— and I was grabbed, wrested to the ground, as they screamed:

"Don't!"

"You'll kill us all!"

"You can't open it!"

I tried to resist, but there were too many of them. They were starting to punch now— one thing led to another, and now I was the witch, the scapegoat, and if I was killed, sacrificed, everything would be all right.

I tasted blood on my lips. Someone kicked me in the stomach. Fists and feet pounded me. I tried to roll away, to squirm out, but I was held fast to the ground.

It was all silent. The beating, the killing, was done in the quiet darkness of night. Then—

"God, someone help!" Bang-bang-bang. Someone was pounding on the door, from the outside. "Help! Open the door!"

Bang-bang-bang. The pounding outside went on, becoming faster, more desperate. "It's coming closer! Open it!" Bang-bang-bang. "Help!" Bangbangbang. "Open, plea—"

The sound of wet cloth slapping against a wall. I looked down. I was still on the ground. Blood was starting to seep in from under the door.

Prayers.

The door splintered in; the tables and the chairs were flung away, smashed into people and walls, dropping the people, knocking them out, denting the walls. I could hear screams, but I heard them distantly, like the roar of the sea.

I saw it, then. I was on the ground. A woman was cleanly sliced, and her eyes blinked, surveyed the slaughter, dead yet still seeing, still feeling the horror. Her blood spurted and soaked the invisible form, gave it substance and form. It was writhed in crimson.

A reptilian thing. It grinned.

Seven Days: Second Half of Part Five
Date: 8 December 2005, 5:51 pm

The beast lurched forward. Blood sloughed off of it as it moved, and soon it was once again out of sight, hidden in darkness. In the back— to where everyone had fled— I could hear moans, screams, prayers; then that sickening sound of a butcher at work.

I scrambled up, and started running. I passed through the shattered doorway and came into the night. The town was burning. Flames ate hungrily at the ruined buildings even as rain fell. The houses had the look of tombs. Thunder and lightning still roared through the skies.

A sound: a footstep: I looked back, and saw an old man stagger out of the bar. He looked like one of the dead, soaked with gore, mouth open in a silent scream, eyes wide and goggling; for a brief moment I considered walking up to him, to help him, then I realized that the thing was still in there. I backed away; the old man walked forward. He started clawing his way towards me, mumbling something incoherent, and I turned, started running—

Something smashed into me, and I fell down. It felt heavy and limp. I shouldered it aside, and it was on the ground— the old man. Blood spurted from his chest, and his head lay at a very odd angle. I realized that he had been tossed.

Then I was the mouse and it the cat; prey and predator, and it toyed with me, chased me, played a grim sort of dodge ball with me Another body flew towards me, and I dodged it, and another, then another, and the corpses would land in awkward, unnatural angles, would smash and splinter and burst against the buildings.

I turned a corner— I heard a thud behind me, like a very thick, goopy water balloon— then came across a 'hog, split cleanly in two. In it were two people, also split, much like a banana for an ice cream sundae. Red coated them like chocolate syrup. I then became aware of two things: first, that it was a grossly inappropriate metaphor, and second, that I had stopped...

A growl. Something rumbled behind me. Three fingers— three very long, thick fingers— gripped me round the neck. I was raised to the air, a tad overdramatically. It wasplaying with me; there is no doubt about that, about the way it had chased me through the tangled maze of the village, of the way it held me now, by the neck, dangling, struggling. It laughed— a hard, alien bark— then:

Crack.

Someone kissed me. I woke in time to see a woman— clad in something bright— fade away before me. I closed my eyes and slept, once again.

I'm sorry if I cannot tell you much of the afterlife, Ben. I'm sure you'd love to know— anyone would— but the problem isn't my reluctance, it's my ignorance. I don't know enough about it. I don't understand much of what I saw. And most of all, in that sleep— or was it truly sleep?— much was lost, and I do not remember all that happened. I remember black, and I remember white, but that is all.

The Lady of Shalott. That was her name, I remember that at least. Look for her… she's by those stairs, those silver ones leading downwards.

The storm had passed during the night and my murder. I got up, shakily, and tentatively reached for my neck— it was straight, unbroken. I was confused for a second: was I dead? Then I saw my hands, beneath the sunlight, and they were spectral, bleached bone-white. I needed no more proof. That, and my returning memories—

It broke my neck and tossed my corpse aside like a dirty rag. For a split-second I was still alive, the heart pumping despite the severed connections and the broken bones, and I –saw-. This is one of those things that I do not understand, Ben: this is too strange, even now when I have wings and have seen the full folly— and treachery— of men. I suppose that anyone might see this before they die, in that moment when your heart stops and your sluggish brain struggles to catch up in that race for oblivion. Which is a pity; I'd hoped to see mother's face again.

Let me tell you; I'll explain what I saw. Make of it what you will.

Four statues stand in a courtyard: dry dead leaves pile around them. The first statue is of obsidian; it is a bear, rearing up, snarling.

The second is of green, something bright like emerald. It is a sleek jungle cat, sitting.

The third is a wolf. It is of rough-hewn granite.

The fourth is of a giant, coiled worm, a earthworm, but its face was that of mine. It seemed to be carved out of something like wood. Its color was of pallid pink.

That is all. I did not understand them then and I do not understand now. Does it even have any significance? Any relevance?

I wandered through the ruined streets and the charnel buildings, looking— or so I told myself— for survivors. I wondered where Jimmy might be, then decided that I'd rather not know, or see. I passed the ruined wreck of the church, the dark remnants of those shops, the dank tomb that was the bar: I toured the houses, surveying the corpses as a distant voyeur.
      
In one of the houses, I walked in, and saw a little girl curled up in a corner. I wondered if she was alive, then saw the dirty-black pool of blood beneath her body.       
I approached her. Something about the corpse touched me.
      
And it said, "daddy?"
      
The corpse didn't stand up and talk. It didn't move its jaws, or flutter its tongue. I didn't understand it— what was going on?— then I suddenly saw myself, standing high and tall before me, and only after a moment of panicked confusion did I realize that I was now looking through her eyes, from her point of view, and when I saw myself standing there bleached-white and faintly see-through, I wondered— do the dead still see? What would it be like, to be buried thus, and to see only the dark interiors of one's coffin for the rest of eternity?
      
That train of thought lastee only for a minute.
      
It was night. I could hear the blasts, and felt the earth-wyrm rumble below, slithering its way through loam and rock.
      
I was her, then. Or should I say that I was a rider, a spectator, hitching a ride on her body. I saw through her eyes, heard all that she heard, and what I said was in truth what she uttered.
      
And she said, Where are you?
      
It was night. I watched as she peered out the window. Another tremor shook the ground. She started crying. She was crying out for her father. I wondered where he might be. In the distance lightning flashed, threw all into stark contrast, and moments later thunder rumbled.
      
Her father must have gone out at the time of the attack, I thought. Hearing the commotion he must have left his daughter alone. I watched as she tried to open the door. I guessed that it had been locked from the outside, to prevent her from leaving. And all of her efforts yielded nothing. She was turning the knob the wrong way.
      
The girl gave up; as she turned I caught a brief glimpse of myself—herself—on a mirror, and saw her in the half-light as she had been alive, a cute little girl of five or six, hair brown and tied into two ponytails, the sort that always gets yanked on. She pattered over to the window. The blasts had ceased, and when she looked out the window I saw that right across from the house was the bar—my tomb—and kneeling before the doors was a man. He pounded on it with his fists.
      
Then she started screaming, pounded on the window herself, tried to open it, screamed for her daddy to come: and I realized that that man was the girl's father. Some things are unfit for children's eyes; death is one thing, yes, yet death personal and brutal in its significance is another, and the dread I felt gloomed over my thoughts.
      
He was pounding on the door when it came. A moment's worth of bloody work and he was sprawled before the door, arms flailed out, legs numb. I watched as blood gutted up from a sudden slash across his chest. He trembled a little on the ground. Then— still within the girl, who had stopped screaming— his face was weighed with something heavy, then, slowly, it was crushed.
      
Then I was back. I gasped, shell-shocked; and the girl's head stared into my eyes unnervingly.
      
I was dead, and this was my hell. And afterwards, I started tripping over dead memories of dead people like they were landmines, a stumble and boom... there'd be me, trapped in another's soon-to-be corpse. How many, I don't remember. I might have went a bit insane, Ben.

At noon the curious and the official flocked in, gawked, gaped at the horror before them. Many things were said and noted. Soldiers marched in and assisted in the search for survivors, of which there was none. When the sun started to paint the sky red, they left, and I hitched a ride on one of the trucks, an unseen passenger paying neither fare nor homage.
      
To Honolulu, and the end to all this madness. To Kassad.

Seven Days: Part Six of Seven
Date: 30 December 2008, 6:31 am

Seven Days: Part Six of Seven
      (advance apologies to Russ, about those dashes)


The buildings were left untouched, and the only details that marred the otherwise beautiful scenery of Honolulu were the bones. Bleached-white under the sun and wind, stripped of flesh or cloth, big or small, small-framed children curled around large-framed things charred blackened scarred and broken. That was the future as I imagined it, years removed from my present existence, where the bones still have flesh and skin attached to them, where the remains of those dead can still be identified by face and shape, this one Raymond, this one Luna, Felipe, Jonathan, names all of them with histories behind them.

I noticed that as I narrate this story to you, Ben, I sink into it, also; that my memory blurs with the present, and as I walk the bleached streets, empty streets, I also walk behind Kassad as he makes his way through the halls of the Securidad. Slightly disconcerting, especially in light of the contrast offered by such double-vision, ruins one moment, living buildings the next. Yet I suppose such is the fate of those dead, which should be warning enough for you not to die. Ha--you better laugh, Ben, I just made a joke, and it'll be a long time before you can hear it again. Which I hope you do, because by then, if there indeed is such a thing as heaven, and those wings strapped onto my back like jetpacks should be proof enough to such a place, I'll meet you there. Unless--you haven't been sacrificing pregnant women or children, have you?

Kassad. What an interesting man. New Hawaii was never a large place, and a hundred thousand people, though a large number when crammed into a single ship, tend to dissipate like too few paint-strokes applied to a canvas when that same number is applied to an entire planet. Kassad. Never knew him until the day I saw him, the last day, the sixth day--and on the seventh he rested, if death can be called so, but then, everyone else was dead too, so I suppose it was more like a siesta then anything else.

He looks busy, filled with purpose, the K10 in his pocket a heavy weight in his mind. The suit he wears, slightly wrinkled, barely covering the large bulk of the man. Dark skin, black-framed glasses obscuring large brown eyes. Short hair, reddish, tussled, dirty, slightly greasy from long time spent without washing. He walks, and the crowd parts for him, as did the Red Sea for Moses. Perhaps it is his rank, or his bulk, but I think everyone has a piece of the dreaming within them, and they felt the gentle darkness within him.

Excuse my faulty metaphysics, Ben. But I can't help it, and I have the perfect excuse to be so--I'm dead.

The halls of the Securidad are long winding things, and when empty, feel like hollow throats of something giant, something ancient and dead, as if we were simply tunneling through some dead giant's corpse. A sense of violation, as if we had just desecrated a grave, smashed the headstones and dug up the caskets. The building stands tall, on the surface; yet it reaches up only so far, and goes so far down below. Maybe we sought security in the deep confines of earth. Yet this was no homeworld, this was New Hawaii, what they called Sanctuary.

Remember those fantasy stories, Ben, the ones we read for class? How the hunters traipsed through the forest, found a deer, and as they were starving, the times being Winter, they shot it--but too late, they realized that they were passing through the King's Forest, and soon the story delves into each man's mind as they are hunted down by the wardens, the dogs nipping at their heels, anticipating the arrowhead digging into their backs. We did much the same thing. We came, we saw, and we tried to conquer; yet the world refused to bend under our will. Or rather, we simply were not given enough time to even try.

Now the questions. We knew. Actually, they knew. The Consul, the Trust, the Board--the trifecta of leadership that led us to the guillotine. They knew, knew from the advance scouts, the diggings, the ruins uncovered--they knew, yet they led us to New Hawaii. Yet is it so unforgivable? Our ship was in danger of falling apart, the passengers were splintering into a hundred factions, each staking out territories, water contaminated, supplies running short--all of those things must have factored in somehow to them deciding that yes, we should walk into this trap, for we have survived worse.

To me, that decision is an unforgivable one. Friends dead. Home destroyed.

I'm dead.

Kassad walked through every one of the checkpoints without a glance; the men manning them let him through, some of them fearfully, others without a care, just another higher-up passing through. Detachment. Is this what Kassad felt, that day? The most supreme detachment, removed from all other human beings, assuming the mantle of God, or Judge--casting down his verdict, damning all others. Perhaps, as he walked, in his mind the full plan of what lay ahead already made, he savored over his decisions--or agonized, which I hope he did.

I know I should describe to you just what he did, yet I can't help but muse on just what he did. I think that his individual acts, especially before what would come later on, lack significance when compared to the overall whole. Kassad was the perfect murderer, in that he completely lacked premeditation, and his actions before the act was absent of any foreshadowing. He simply killed.

The Consul's chambers, located on the third-floor, was but a sham. His work-place was located four floors down, and he traveled between the two via an advanced transportation mechanism called stairs. Kassad walked out onto the stairway, and leaned against an wall, between that flight of stairs, his hand slowly tightening around the K10. He had called the Consul up before, asking for a meeting about something named 'Setebos.' I'll be right there, the Consul had said.

When the Consul met him on the staircase, they talked of various things, then when the Consul turned his back and led the way up, Kassad snaked an arm over his throat and punched the K10 into the small of his back. A muffled shot, and blood started leaking, the Consul tried to cry, Kassad's arm provided the gag. Slowly, the Consul's body began to sag, and eventually went limp, ceasing the frantic flapping. And there the killer moved the body against a corner, hiding the wound, closing the Consul's eyes, perfectly at peace save for the blood pooling around his pants, like urine, save its deadliness.

That was the first of the killings.

Systematically, Kassad eliminated the Consul, the first, then the members of the Trust, the three, and the Board, also of the three. He killed by himself two people--one a Trust member named Diane Takeshi, another a man named Kovacs Morgan--and for the rest, bombings, snipers, poison and a knife in the dark. I wonder if his operatives knew the full scope of his actions. Probably not. You don't question the motives behind the assignations, as that leads eventually into doubt about the morality of the assignations. Which in turn leads to religion, alcoholism, and death, in that order.

Now Honolulu was in chaos. Though most parts of the city lay untouched, the bombings unleashed plumes of smoke and dust that could be seen from miles away. The earth did not shake, but the ripples of the attacks could be felt. The sparsely populated city, the human beings, all swarmed out to look upon the destruction with apprehension.

I told you before of the detachment that Kassad may have felt, but never about the detachment that I feel. I can summon up the appropriate feelings now and then, yet, I can't help but feel distant from it all. 'All' defining the dead, the ruins, the doom; perhaps it is because I am currently in a state called 'death,' and know that it isn't all too bad, just a fading away with wings and remorse in tow.

Death sucks, Ben. Here's to you dodging that little bitch.

I'm sorry to disrupt the narrative with my preoccupation about my own death. Death, death, more death, such a grand word, really. You: you know you're dead, 'you' defining me.

You are telling a story to your faraway brother, in hopes that story will save his life and of many others. But you don't know if he can hear you. You don't know if you are just talking to yourself.

You don't know if this is heaven, or hell.

You stumble into other peoples' memories. You trip into visions of gore, feel every cut, every burn, every wound. You feel the fear and the pain of all that has passed, all the ruin and destruction that has been scarred upon this land.

Yet you do not care, because--even though you are not sure about the nature of this existence--death, as you feel it, know it, isn't all too bad.

You are detached. You are removed from that world.

I am not of your world.

One more day to go, Ben. One more night. Then it will be time to say farewell. I know you are not there. That farewell is for myself. Me, and myself, before I sleep, or die, whatever may come, I, not of this world--goodbye.

Some cameras left intact tell a strange tale. A picture is worth a thousand words; a film is worth only ten. Somewhere in between, the tale is told.

That tale is a short one. Fire in the sky. Fire on the ground. Burning stone, burning meat; no sound but that of fire crackling, feeding on air and wood, on bones. It eats. It grows. It spreads. The fires, now coalesce into one. Then it dies. Ashes remain.

That tale ends; silence makes for poor stories. Silent, the city sleeps, watched over by eyes that tell no tales, that hear no commands. Recording each hour, each day. Lacking purpose.

And in the heart of the planet, a man named Kassad died at last. He lacked a smile to go with the wine.

Lovedog: A Seven Days Story
Date: 30 April 2009, 9:02 pm

Lovedog: A Seven Days Story
      In which memory fails our narrator.









      Watching my life pass before my eyes, Ben, was like watching a movie with good intentions but bad actors.

      My teacher lived in the outskirts of Praden, a city famous for its Whoretown, which, as you may have guessed already, was a collection of brothels catering to mostly legal tastes. Next to the tall buildings where men and women stood naked against the glass windows like mannequins, his house was a little thing of red bricks and ship-grade insulation. Admittedly, that appearance was quite deceiving, for he had a large basement under the house that was easily three or four times the size of the home itself--like onions, it had layers. There were cells down there, along with the dentist's chair by which I'd learned my craft. Not fixing teeth, although I did on occasion pry them out of some unfortunate bastard's mouth. You did it with pliers and a little hammer, Ben, and there was a certain trick to wiggling them out of their sockets. He had taught me to start with the canines... but I digress.

      I arrived there at dawn, after a long train ride across half the planet; aboard the Rhaetian express, the fare had cost me most of that day's wages. The train ride itself had been quite dull, although I felt tired, having been unable to sleep at all. The purpose behind my trip to Praden wouldn't let me; it made me wonder, think, wonder, imagine, obsess--all the small details, the gun in my bag, the dominica, the letter, the invitation, all those things catalogued over and over as I tried to avoid thinking about the real reasons behind me making the trip. Then I would go--yes, I am here to kill him. Or rather, I would send him on his way. I could probably refer to it as an involuntary walk under the ladder, with the destination a hole six feet deep. Looking out the window, seeing the ruins of Plessur pass by, the sky dark and empty of stars, the winds carrying snow and ashes.

      The thought of killing my own teacher was very depressing. It wasn't that I had no experience in such things. Naturally, it was because of the bond we shared, teacher and pupil, and although the subject he taught me had at times left me numb to the sight of blood or death, still, he was, as he was fond of saying--oddly, as he was a black man from the Ethiopian conglomerate--my sensei, or in Korean, sunseng. And I liked him, as a human being. He was a good man in his own way, and even to the very end,

      I got off the train and was struck by just how cold it was. Utica, as you may have expected, was the kind of place where 'summer' is but another word for more snow, but still, it always made me stop for a second to breathe in the knife-chill air.

      So the sun was setting, but my day was just beginning. My boots chomped through the ankle-deep snow, and the wind swept up loose flakes of snow and sent them through the streets like a flurry of white confetti. The train station was conveniently located next to Whoretown, which, in turn, was next to my teacher's home. I appreciated the subtle genius behind the decision to let those looking for good times do so efficiently. In my mind, I again went through the contents of my bag: my pistol, the bottle of cheap wine, and his letter, handwritten with black ink on a yellow sheet of paper, asking me to come. Requesting my services, as it happened to be.

      Would you like the tea buttered, sir? I couldn't help but remember my train ride, and the tea service at noon. This was so absurd--me, coming here like some hitman, with a gun in my bag and dread in my heart, here to deliver a piece of lead to someone's head, shatter that skull open like a watermelon.

      It took me half an hour to reach his house, a long walk through the slush and snow, through the colorless streets and the long rows of empty buildings, some boarded up and others nothing but rubble.

      I looked around, and noticed a young girl staring at me through the window high up in her building, with no shirt on. She mouthed something at me--beckoned me to come up--but I pretended not to notice. I knocked. There was no answer, and I knocked again, my knuckles hurting a bit as I rapped it against the plastic surface. It was getting hard to ignore all the other windows around me, with their merchandises displayed so prominently. Tall, sleek buildings, the brothels of Utica, high-tech places catering to the modern human being with low-tech services. I don't know why I was so bothered by them. Maybe, as I sit here now thinking about it, me dead and you still alive--probably, hopefully--I was just horny and they were there, in my reach. So simple to get up there and be satisfied. No fear of ostracism because there were hundreds of other patrons doing the exact same thing to men and women and dogs and god knows what else.

      Finally, I heard footsteps lazily coming up to the door. It creaked open--and there I saw that old familiar face. My teacher hadn't aged--or rather, had aged remarkably well. A small black man. Wrinkles. One eye. I bowed, and he motioned for me to come inside. As I followed him in, I was struck by two things--the casual formalness of what were his last living moments, and also, the smell of hotcakes. He led me into the kitchen, and there they were, little things the size of my hand, still steaming in the cold air.

      Their smell made me pause, remembering all those mornings where I'd wake up to the scent of breakfast and the sight of dead men hanging on bathroom hooks. We did much of our work in bathtubs. The tub kept the waste in and the showerhead made it easy to wash after the work was done. I would wake up on the bathroom floor because I'd faint, being young and accustomed to such misery. After waking up, the work would begin, and I would clean out the past night's work with one hand on the showerhead and the other firmly clamped on my mouth, trying not to vomit.

      We didn't exchange pleasantries, because nothing that day was pleasant to us, and we didn't talk about the weather, because weather on Utica was always shit.

      "Trying to bribe me, sir?" I asked as we walked to the dinner table. It was scuffed with knife-marks and there were holes where restraints had once been screwed into it. But now there was a plate of hotcakes and a pot of coffee, simmering on the little candlemat, smelling like cheap imitation beans.

      He laughed, and I with him. I wonder now at the dignity with which he faced me. "Not at all, Ruba." He asked me to take a seat, and as I settled in on the comfortable high chair, he set up some plates and poured out a cup of coffee for me. "Eat up," he said. "You won't be having those ever again, I bet."

      "Which I will regret, sir." I took out my knife and cut a piece off. Syrup oozed out when I cut into it, like blood. As I ate, it dribbled down my chin and onto my jacket.

      "As always, you make such a mess."

      "A drop of syrup, sir, never hurt no one."

      He nodded. There was a bit of silence as I ate. Then:

      "I wonder, Ruba, if you ever thought about... the things you do."

      "The things I do, sir, as I was taught to do. By you."

      "Of course. And I suppose we can talk philosophy and such until the time comes when you must leave, and when that times comes, I'll have the choice of sitting still or trying to resist." He smiled. "I'm too old for this shit, don't you think?"

      I finished eating the hotcakes. They were, as usual, good. He always got the syrup within the cakes while frying them up, and as a result they were always hot and had the consistency of honey. I sipped the now-lukewarm cup of coffee, and as I did so, it occurred to me that he might have poisoned me--but I dismissed that thought. After all, where would he go if he killed me? None of his old contacts would help, for they were either loyal to the new cadre or dead, and there was no way to get off the planet. And I trusted him to do the 'right' thing. To submit, which he himself had initiated by sending me the letter. Getting your student to do it, I suppose, is like suicide, just one step removed--like, perhaps, the red-headed stepson in a family of black-haired Germans.

      Perhaps, when I said I did not find the prospect of killing my teacher pleasant, I was lying to myself.

      "How will it be done?"

      'I was told to use my own judgment."

      "A laser cutter, then? Perhaps you'll shoot me. Or maybe a bonesaw, although I didn't see you bring any big bags in."

      I can't remember what I said to him here.

      He laughed. "Who could have known? Always so imaginative." Mocking me. "Although you always left such a big mess. I remember all the shit you put me through--you never did have the patience to make it a clean job."

      Perhaps he was referring to the time I botched an interrogation by confusing arsenic for hypopenta, although, it had not been an mistake and I was glad to see her die fast. I never did try such a thing again, because the second and the third and all the times that came after it numbed me, and after a while, all their agony blurred together into one meaningless mess.

      Once, he'd said to me in the aftermath of such work, that people should stop asking him to find out the truth; that we were, in the end, nothing more than disciplinarians with knives. Torture, he told me, works as punishment, but for not much else.

      "Would you like me to put the plates away, sir?"

      "Hmm? I can--oh, I see what you mean." He shrugged. "Leave it for the dogs. Or crows. Or the whores. Do we still have them around here?"

      "The whores, sir? It's probably too late to arrange a meeting with one."

      "Should never have banned them," he said. "We bent over backwards for the Christians, and what'd we get?"

      "Their support?"

      "Their support consisted of prayer meetings and the occasional sniper support," he replied, wryly. "And the sniper support didn't even matter, considering how bloodless the whole thing was."

      I said, "still, it certainly lent weight to the movement." Then, uncertain, I asked, "the whores, sir?"

      "Too bad we don't have them around here anymore. They had plans to build a big old town of them, you know?" He frowned. "On one hand, I'd love a good old-style house run by someone respectable. None of that city gutter trash. The problem, Ruba, is that bitches and whores don't have much sense of space." He started to laugh. "No sense of space at all. A cell might as well be a room, and a room a house, and a house a mansion, and a mansion a fucking city, that's how they are. Don't concern themselves with space, they just sit and bitch and moan."

      I was rather confused at this point, because my last conversation with him had been nothing like this. So here my teacher became the kindly black man to whom I often attributed the voice of authority. No longer was he that biting, bitter fool; now, he was someone I loved.

       "Funny thing, ain't it? Found God while you were away, Ruba. It's all sorts of comfort, believing in some spaceman who's all ready to sweep me up and away." Smiling, he poured syrup over his cakes, then cursed. "Well, hell, forgot about that damn coffee. Be right back--"

      "No need, sir." I asked him to sit back down, and reached down to pull the bottle of wine out of my bag. "Got us a drink, figured you'd want something to wet your throat."

      "Why, that looks like some wine." He looked surprised. "Where did you get that? Looked like you pulled it out of the--why, out of the thin air."

      It was much like a magic trick. I'm sure I did something ingenious. I actually did the deed with either the pistol or the dominica, and I'm leaning towards the latter.

      "Shit for tastes, sir." I grinned, and he back at me. "That amaretto and orange juice stuff smells like a trashcan, if you know what I mean."

      "That's 'cause you have shit for tastes, son. Best damn drink in the world."

      "Sadly, sir, all I got was this wine." I put the bottle up on the table, then stood up to fetch some cups. I noticed him examining the bottle, and his eyes, flickering up to look at the broken seal, signs of it having been opened before. He was quiet as I got two cups and poured out a good half for each of us.

      He held the cup in his hand, contemplating, perhaps, the rapidly shrinking amount of time left to him. Then: "Figures," he said with a small smile to me, "that I'd go out like this. Why not--why not a gun?"

      I shrugged. I didn't know what to say. I just wanted him to have an easy end. A quiet one, something normal that some old men have, a gentle fading away. He would slowly fall into a deep sleep, and then, as he slept, the poison would work through his veins and still his heart. I hoped he wouldn't feel a thing.

      He drank. It started as a sip, then he gulped the whole thing down. "Man, that tasted bad. You really do have shit tastes, don't you?" A laugh. "Well, guess its over now."

      I tried to grin, but something got caught in my throat. The hotcakes in front of me had grown cold, the syrup congealed on top of them like chunks of sticky pine tar, and the ignominity of his death was oddly comforting. For someone who'd ended so many lives in misery and agony, this was a blessing, perhaps. At the time, as I chatted with him, watching him slowly lose his grip, I wondered if I would have a gentle death.

      As you probably know, I died very violently, but at the very least, it was quick, and we must all be thankful for small mercies.

      He mentioned his son. I remembered him, a little dark boy born to a mother who didn't want him. I'd held her down at the moment of conception. I had been fourteen back then, and the sight of the rape had aroused me. Something about it made me sick afterwards. You could say, Ben, that it was one of those defining moments of my youth.

      "He's coming, sir?"

      He nodded. "Sure is... coming now, probably, you know, he wanted me to run?"

      "And--why didn't you, sir?"

      "'Cause I'd already asked for you to come, that's what." He closed his eyes, leaned back tiredly on his chair. "Think your wine is working already, cause I can feel sleep coming up on me. Just wanted to... warn you."

      I asked him, gently, "You don't need to worry, sir."

      "Of course I worry... don't let him see the basement, Ruba. Don't let him down. Let him see me... but not that."

      I promised him that I would not let his son see his father's works. And there, I watched him die. It was slow, but eventually, he fell asleep, and then, a sudden stiffening of his body as he tried to breathe, then his heart stopped, and he crumpled to the floor off his chair, and there, I was reminded of that old comparison, one that so many others have made, at how, when a man dies, he looks like a puppet with cut strings, limbs losing all will.

      He never did finish his hotcakes, and I never did start eating them. Leaving my cup of wine untouched on the table, I walked to the back of the house, where the door to the basement was, and down the dark stairs I went, down to where much of my education had taken place, skills that I hoped I had no more use for. I passed a long shelf filled with bonesaws and hammers and chisels and nails, then three cells and the dentist's chair, then at last, I came to the furnace room. I checked to see if it still ran, and it did. Although it took a while to get it started, get it started I did, and soon the flames were roaring. I was surprised, as there was no way it should have worked, and now I stand puzzled because I can't quite ever remember a furnace being there; it would have been quite an unreasonable thing to have in one's home, not to mention impractical. Utica was, like many planets in the process of colonization, had much empty space. Enough space to hide a million corpses. No need to burn them.

      I went back up to where my teacher lay, dead on the floor. His body was light. A small man. I carried him down to the basement, past all the instruments with which he practiced his craft, and fed him to the fire, as we did with... not many others. I want to say many, but it would be a lie to say that I remember any particular incident where we actually did so. But I'm certain that we did.

      So, he burned. Fire caught onto his skin and seeped into his bones. Soon, he'd be nothing but ashes.

      I waited outside the house for his son. It was a long wait, filled with empty thoughts, thinking about random things--the weather, food, wine. All around me the empty houses and the empty towers. Utica, fiercely cold, and--what was I doing here? Freezing my ass off outside a dead man's house waiting for his son to come. Utterly without purpose except for the orders that came in once a week. Not a sound in the wind, the town unnaturally silent, because the brothels were out of business and the whores were now soldiers and the soldiers were dead as well. But I remembered the young girl staring at me through the window, when the town once bustled with business. Climbing up, waiting anxiously in the elevator, opening the door, the welcome embrace, the lights turned off save for the few cheap candles burning on the shelves. Wax dripping down to the floor as I sat up on the bed and stared out the window and tried to ignore just what I had done, so young and so lonely, ignorant, really, stealing my teacher's stipend to go fuck a whore. I looked back, and Ben, she lay on the bed with her eyes closed, thankful that it had been so quick.

      We all make our wages, we all make a living. It was with such a thought in my mind that I stood in the cold, waiting.

      A car pulled up. Small, black, and out came a young black man. He recognized me, and I believe that he realized he was too late. Grief on his features, he looked very much like his mother, who I'm sure he never knew. I was silent as he walked past me without a word and went inside. Outside, I stood, then I followed him in, closing the door behind me as I pulled out my pistol.

      After all, Ben, I had to finish the job.

      I feel tired now, Ben. Sleep tugs at me, but I'm frightened, because no matter how exhausted I am, sleep would mean something far more permanent than a nap here.

      I have trouble remembering your face.

Seven Days: The Unwelcome Guest
Date: 26 June 2009, 5:59 am

The conversation died sometime around noon.
We sat doing nothing, said nothing,
uncomfortable in the silence but capable--of nothing.
The helplessness and the numbness
that sat heavy on our hands stilled the air
until all the doors had the look of tombs.
Thunder of approaching calamity
met with silence, not out of some dignity
but rather the meek acceptance of the wary.
Weary, we sat and waited. In the silence
the dim gloom of the tomb--the doors
leading to nowhere far enough, the approaching
hand, fate, whatever, disaster heading our way,
to fall, fall back again, then onward.
The optimist that he was, he sat up and said.
Something. May have been nothing.
I wasn't listening.

Art Holstein: Custard & Ego (Ravel Publishing, 2315 LLTP)





Seven Days: The Unwelcome Guest






      I watched Kassad die, and I watched what he saw. Fragments of memories emerged from his cooling head like bodies floating head-down in the ocean. They stayed up only for a short period of time, just enough for me to get a glimpse at them. Some things surprised me—and some did not. It was all oddly human.

      He felt strange, to be so excited. Kassad sat up on the couch, his hair tussled from sleep, and thought again about the ruins discovered beneath Honolulu. About the trip he would make tomorrow, down below to where the miners had found strange monoliths in their search for veins of gold, tall buildings in artificial caves inscribed with strange, alien glyphs.

      He called for the light to be turned on. The sudden brightness made him blink; then, the trophies of his career stood on shelves all around the room—a plaque here, medals there, a piece of the Loss after the destruction of the prison-asteroid—his history in display for all to see. Kassad had once felt pride about such things, but now, he felt nothing. He wondered if he should have the golden ones be melted down for ingots or something. They might come in use, he thought, as he looked around. Turn them into cash, and hide them all over the planet, in case of emergency... then Kassad laughed at himself, for being so absurd. Those days were gone, and he lived now in a peaceful time.

      Still--tomorrow, he thought, with a childlike smile. Aliens. So strange, to feel so excited.

      Kassad remembers. Blood dots the earth behind him, a little trail of red marking his path towards the excavations. He's losing strength. And in the bitter clarity of thought afforded by his own impending destruction, Kassad thinks—why was it not enough?

      Because it never is, he thinks. It never is enough; the present always lacks satisfaction, and we look towards the future in search of a better solution. And his solution in this case had been to doom the rest of mankind, and to do so with gleeful finality. But while he expected triumph, he feels only a hollow lack of it, a emptiness in his heart that refuses to go away. It's a curiously familiar feeling that serves only to make him more bitter.

      He's heading to the excavations, where the ruins of a civilization long past gone sit, in their strange and silent glory. He never was able to figure them out, and he knows that he never will. Save that they were harbingers of doom, and their discovery coincided with the first death—a fisherman missing on his own boat, his emergency comm relay emitting a SOS over and over into the Hawaiian night—and that these unwelcome guests would now be unleashed upon them all. A week ago, such thoughts had made him smile. Now, as he walks to where it all began, dying on the way there, who knew that he had such a big heart, to accommodate such emptiness? Like a cavern, emptied of everything but air.

      He never does get there. It starts with his right foot. He tries to take that step but all strength leaves it, goes numb, and he stumbles and falls forward. Kassad reaches out but can't stop his face from crashing into the dirt. He tastes dirt and blood, and something like tears, bitter salt on his tongue. Now the rest of his body goes numb. All feeling, gone, and in the absence of feeling he lies on the ground, and before he blinks for the last time, he can't think of anything important, only the sheer disbelief that he is dying like every other man. It occurs to him that he had, after all, believed himself immortal.

      "Good god," said Kassad, as the Golden Fool slowly braked to a stop. "This is... rather amazing."

      Before him stood a giant monolith, a strange tower that stretched all the way up to the roof of the cavern. Perhaps fifty meters high, and half that in width. There were no visible doors on it, and although it glowed yellow under the pale artificial lights, there were no signs of it actually doing anything.

      "Nothing coming out from it, sir. No heat, no energy, it's pretty much just a piece of rock as far as function goes."

      Feeling giddy, as if he was once again a child, Kassad stepped off the Fool. The 'hog was named as such for the purple paint job the Vehicle department had given it; it wasn't royal purple, as had been intended, but instead was candy-purple, the same shade as that of cartoon dinosaurs. Kassad didn't know where the Golden part of the name had come from—probably some inside joke, all governmental divisions had such things.

      "And the ruins stretch for... thirteen kilometers, you said?"

      "Yes, sir." The tech in contact with him was obviously in high spirits. He responded efficiently to Kassad's questions. "At least, that's what we've been able to uncover so far. We only stumbled into the cavern when the diggers accidentally lit a Semtex mining charge near a gas vent."

      "What happened to the diggers?"

      "Uh, no clue, sir."

      He shrugged—nothing to worry about. Kassad turned back to the ruins, and once again, the spectacle awed him. It lit something in his heart—like a candle, a lantern, a torch? Curiosity blazed once more, and a smile lit his face. Something, finally, to be excited about.

      Climbing back into the Fool, he looked around in awe again. The 'hog, remote-controlled, approached some kind of a cliff, ringed with gray railings of an unknown metal.

      "You know," he said to the tech, "I don't exactly see a bridge there." For the Fool was gaining speed, as it neared the edge of the cliff. He could see on the other side of the gap more strange buildings, but between them lay a giant crack, a hundred meters long, stretching deep into the earth.

      Not again, he thought, as he prepared to jump out. Kassad sprang out of the Golden Fool tut-tutting at the sheer amateurism of the assassination attempt. It was laughable, how they expected to drop him over the edge, when it had been so clear what would happen--

      He watched as the car continued to roll over the air, and reach the other side. Too late, he saw, in the faint light, something glimmering where the Fool's wheels has passed. A force-field of some sort.

      Feeling foolish, he jogged over the abyss—feeling under his boots the firm surface of the force field—back to the vehicle, where it stood, idle. The tech was laughing his ass off, and Kassad felt a grin stretch over his face as well. The laughter bubbled out of him, and it felt good as it ran echoing through the ruins.

      The memories churn up with the darkness around him. He remembers struggling through the streets of Utica, his legs forcing their way through knee-deep snow, his teeth chattering and in his ears the sound of the gunshot, still ringing. That had been his first time, like losing his virginity, almost, and it's funny how he's remembering it all over again, the twelve pounds of pressure applied to the trigger, then the bullet punching through bone and meat. Lots of pulp and blood. Waste matter seeping out of the corpse, soaking the once-white sheets. Funny, how some memories don't fade but rather grow sharper, thanks to constant recollection.

      What was it that the man had said to him? Old guy. White hair crowning a bald spot on a shiny red head. Eyes wide. Pleading. Kassad remembers enjoying the sudden rush of power. There had been him and his gun, and he had, for a little time, been the sole focus of the victim.

You have it wrong.

      And he had replied,

Not my concern, sir.

      That had been the extent of the conversation. Then the pistol raised up, aimed at the forehead, the gun barrel steady, the sights set in the spot right above where the man's eyebrows nearly met--then the pressure applied to the trigger, the feeling traveling up his arms as he watched the aftermath. The dead man falling ungraciously back onto the bed, still in his bedtime clothes, a neat little hole in his head, the stink of his last gift to the world staining his shorts brown.

      Kassad wonders if all men died this way; slowly, with too many memories.

      Some space-cults venerated the Stranger. He was, they said, the avatar of the void, the spiritual representation of the unimaginable distance separating the children of Adam and Eve—the god, they said, of the dark and the unknown.

      Remnants of that oddball faith still existed on New Hawaii, and a few of them worked for the Securidad as well. Kassad stalked out of the meeting, steaming still—to think that otherwise reasonable men and women would rely on supernatural explanations for what was inflicting such damage to their outlying settlements—sometimes, or most of the time, the human race as a whole exasperated him. The Stranger, they had muttered to themselves; he has come to harrow the human race.

      Personally, however, Kassad could not help but think of the alien ruins deep underground. Research on them had been going slow—not enough resources or the knowledge to handle completely unknown artifacts—but still, something about them bothered him. He remember seeing in the deep of space a sleek nothingness that contrasted with the dull black of the space around it; no one else had, but there also had been reports of lights on the moon, bright purple lights gleaming like stars on the icy surface.

      The Stranger—quite an unwelcome guest, if he indeed was here; obviously, being just another product of religious fantasy, he didn't exist, but the concept of just a stranger appealed to him. It clicked together: the ruins, and now, people dying in mysterious ways, bodies left in pieces, all of them severed with surgical precision.

      "Sir! Hold on, there's a message for you!"

      Kassad turned to see a young woman struggle to catch up to him. Her tight shirt meant what was underneath were doing interesting things involving physics. "Yes?"

      She caught up to him; her name tag, in bronze with black lettering, read Omel. "Sir, the... the Consul, sir. Said he'd like to talk to you after the meeting."

      He recognized her—she had been in the room, assisting councilman Evans. Kassad supposed that she reported to the Consul as well, and that this fact probably wasn't unknown to Evans. Perhaps it was done with tacit approval from both sides; one side content to have a spy, and the other, content to be spied on by someone they knew. "The Consul? Did he tell you what for?"

      "No, sir. But he did ask you to be prompt and on time."

      He frowned, but nodded. "Well, take me there then—or I guess you'll have to get back to your real work, huh?"

      "Ha, yes, sir." She had finally caught her breath, and bowed before jogging back in the other direction. Definitely, Kassad thought, someone tolerated not for her abilities. He reminded himself that it was also a very sexist thought, but then, hadn't his rise in the ranks been triggered by his looks, as a child? Such a pretty young boy. He squashed those memories, for they weren't necessarily pleasant, and went to visit the Consul.

      It was sunny outside, and the light shone through the blinds and cast a serrated glare. They striped the Consul's bald head, as he toggled the personal A.I. on. Kassad noted the model: M.J. Fischer, Mark One. A ball of inky black that peeled open with a mouth whenever it spoke. It looked like a Pac-Man, almost, one of the old revisionist models.

      "And tell him to stop fucking the mail boy," the Consul said to the A.I. "It's unhealthy, and it's bound to cause a scandal, which he certainly can't afford—and that will be all for today."

      "Good afternoon, sir."

      The Consul was a big man, bald head and all. His muscles were fast on their way to becoming flaccid from lack of use, but they were there, all the same, and old age and fat couldn't obscure his once-formidable bulk. "Think I called you here for a reason," he said to Kassad.

      "The murders?"

      "Right. I want you to stop obsessing over it. It's unhealthy—and it's bound to fuck you over, which you can probably afford, since you don't really give a shit—but still, I'd like you to let the professionals look over it."

      "With all due respect, sir, we have no professionals, unless you're talking about the pair of dimwits over in S-Sec."

      The Consul paused. "That's a thought—Rubashov, correct? Wasn't he a killer like you?"

      "Never as good. Or smart, for that matter."

      "I'd call you arrogant, if I didn't agree with you. Still—it'd give the impression that something is being done."

      Sighing, Kassad said, "if you intend on making the pair of them investigators, you should wait a bit—until it becomes absolutely necessary."

      "Necessity—I'm going to assume that would be when shit hits the fan. Or when it hits in near proximity to Honolulu itself. Hopefully, whatever the fuck this is, it'll stop soon."

      "I highly doubt that, sir."

      "Didn't take you for a loony, Kassad. You with that cult? Christian or whatever?"

      "Certainly not. However, I'm beginning to favor the view that it's the aliens."

      "Ha!" The Consul slapped his desk, laughing. "All the years we've worked together and this is what it comes down to, huh?"

      "You the power-hungry diplomat and I the lunatic conspirator?"

      "Exactly, exactly. We'll become, in the end, just like everything we thought we were against... oh, the good old days."

      Kassad grinned. It had no mirth in it. "You seem to be suffering from selective memory—or maybe you have no memory to choose against."

      "We all did, back in Utica. Still, let's get back to happier things—"

      It was a few months down the line, when the decision to put together the Dekanet-relay was made. The killings had reached a point where even the most stubborn of men were forced to admit that something inhuman was at work. The religiously inclined were inclined to believe in religious explanations, and those believing in extraterrestrial origins were inclined to believe in that. Yet they were only that, beliefs, until, one day, a rare footage of the slaughter was found.

      Many of the outside townships on New Hawaii were isolated, disconnected from the rest of world by choice. A lot of the people valued privacy; they had suffered much under bureaucracy, and trusted them no longer, no matter who was at the helm. This meant that often, security footage did not exist, for there were no surveillance networks to take advantage of.

      It happened at a sleepy town, half the planet away from Honolulu. The town was called Golden. Footage recovered from the ruins showed a woman crawling away from the wreckage of her home, bleeding, blood chugging out from the carved stump of her leg. Then something stepping on the small of her back, and crushing, until at last she died, back caved in, the pressure forcing a fresh stream of blood to erupt from both her severed leg and her nostrils, her ears, her mouth.

      Whatever had killed her—it couldn't be seen. Invisible.

      A few select individuals within the Securidad were informed of a presence in orbit; some craft, not of human origin, that passed in and out of visibility as it drifted around and 'round New Hawaii. All attempts to communicate with it had failed.

      Moreover, 'shooting stars' were starting to be seen in great numbers. Many of the calculations pointed to them landing near the equator, around the Isa jungles.

      The news of the killings, however, were suppressed and the general public went uninformed. Yet, the truth was, they--whoever, whatever they might be—were drawing in, closer and closer, in a swiftly cinching ring. It was like a slow-moving sweep, or a hunt. Certainly, the corpses left revealed a ruthless satisfaction in their manufacture.

      Kassad had, over the last few weeks, given away all his possessions. It wasn't because he wanted to make friends or valued the idea of charity—it was because he wanted to, and wanted to prove, too, that he could. And who was he proving it to? To no one, but himself. But to him, himself—or the idea of self—was too abstract to truly satisfy, so to whom did it matter? No one, but himself.

      He chuckled. Philosophically, he was a mess; he couldn't make heads or tails out of what he considered philosophic babbling, and what he couldn't understand, he condemned. As something unworthy. Kassad recognized that about himself—knew well that to dismiss such a vast thing was foolish—but he was human. Being foolish, was to be human. He savored that thought; to be human.

      His office was empty and his affairs were all neatly tied up. Moreover, all of his pieces were now in play—the men were sent, the knives were on their way, their destinations the dark places in the city. All the fine men and women of the ruling elite, condemned by him to die. He'd used all his authority and all his contacts for this one final task. Death, in such numbers. It wasn't human to take joy in such things, he knew, so he tried to be solemn about it. But sometimes a smile broke out on his face and it'd widen and tighten up his lips until they arched up in a U.

      Another memory, of a distant time.

      The conversation between the two died sometime around two o'clock. By three, one of them died as well. He blinked as he tumbled to the ground, then it hit him that he had just been seperated from the rest of his body. Then the lack of oxygen and everything else registered up in his brain, and his consciousness cut away.

      The spool of razorwire in Kassad's hands were free of blood, so sharp they were that not even water clung to them. He liked them. Not much cleaning was required for something like that. Guns were messy. Not that decapitation wasn't, but there was something symbolic about it. It sent a message, which was more then what a bullet to the head said. It was also like a calling card, like a playing card left at the scene, or some graffiti scrawl painted on the walls. I was here. Then the corpse. How dramatic.

      Kassad, big and dark, with dark hair and a big nose. He thought about the other man, the one whose head was on the ground. Not a bad guy, he thought. Not a bad guy--no, he hadn't been a bad guy at all. He thought about the conversation they'd had, which had started with the coffee crisis and had ended with discussions about the validity of Terran rule.

Imperial ambitions, Kassad had said to the other man.

No, just common sense. Some hand-waving. We're all humans. No point in this, you know? Crazy shit some people here are trying to cook up.

      Kassad had looped the razorwire around the man's throat before cinching it close. The wire had cut through the meat and bone like they had been soft, wormy cheese. He had felt almost no resistance as the wire bit then sliced through.

What do you mean by 'crazy shit'?

Rabble-rousing, you know? The thing is, you know it and I know it--it ain't going to work, because--

Because we're too small and they're too big. Pure logistics.

Right! You know it, that's good, you know? No matter how much you--or, that is, them, well, no matter how much them may want it, it just isn't going to happen.

Yet, Kassad had replied with a lazy smile on his face, we must all strive for the impossible every once in a while.

Shit, son, tried fucking without my pills the other day. That was impossible enough, I'd rather not kick the bucket for this shit.

      Figures, he thought.

      The thrill of the hunt was gone. He stood in the darkened room, holding in his hand the modded G5A, and pooling around his feet was blood, trickling from the half-skull ruin of Engineer Berle. His corpse lay half on the bed and half on the floor, arms flung out, legs all limp and tangled like the ruins of a spider's limbs.

      Before him, on the bed, was a little girl. She was naked and light from the little orange lamp pooled on her chest, gathered up by the mixture of sweat and oil. Berle had been mounting her when Kassad has shot him from the back. The bullet had punched through the Engineer's head before ending up right between the little girl's eyes.

      Figures.

      Bitterly, he wondered—why? Why bother?

      Such a human moment, for such a monster. Because monsters feel no remorse, for other monsters. He stood still as his world tumbled down around him, and the unwelcome guests made ready for the final push. The gun was heavy in his hand, too heavy, and he let it tumble from his limp fingers. It dropped with a solid, wet thunk into the pool of blood. Still, Berle was dead--along with any hopes of reconstructing the Magellan. The Dekanet relay would never again be rebuilt. Perhaps, one day, in the distant future--but not now, not with such a dearth of time.

      He left them in there. Closed the door behind him, and walked through the dusty shelves stacked with scraps from busted commsats. Berle had not kept a neat shop. His passage stirred wisps of dust to swirl in his wake, like snow disturbed by the passing wind. Kassad had set out that afternoon with the intention of getting his hands bloodied once again, and he had certainly achieved that goal. But it had lacked the thrill of old, and killing, he now knew, no longer appealed to him. It wasn't that the thought of shooting people disgusted him, but rather, he had dulled himself to it over the years. In the few years since the colonization of New Hawaii had begun, he had ordered a fair share of clandestine murders and casual executions, by agents he knew only by their ID numbers. All those dead, combined with those he had buried in Earth, in Reach, then to Utica and the asteroid hell--a butcher of men.

      Truth was, he had gone there to kill one man and had come upon the little girl by accident. The files had mentioned the pederast's special appetites, but Kassad had not known that the man was still indulging himself with the occasional treat plucked off the streets. But--not many children running around the city. Where had the little girl come from? The empty eyes, the lack of... feelings as he shot her. He wondered if the little girl had been a flash clone. Readily made to indulge old men and women, to cater every taste and every whim.

      Curious now, Kassad accessed Securidad's database of genetic laboratories, or more specifically, the cloning vats. Honolulu had been built with feeble clone hands, and the farms were staffed with replicas of the ideal Frontier man. Although the production of clones for prostitution purposes was outlawed on Hawaiian soil, he knew that what inspectors he had checking over the labs often kept their silence thanks to a well-placed appeal to their own appetites.

      Hong, Alice. Hono, Alex. Honpokuwo, Nzih. Honpute, Souta. Honroe, Henry. So on and so forth the long list of those working as geneticists and vat-men. Kassad logged out of the database, giving up on the search. After all, it would be a pointless task. They would all die. Every single one. Harrowing the human race, indeed--the detachment of the executioner. Perhaps there was some justice to be found in all this.

      The pain roars at him.

      What he thinks of as 'the beast'--it continues to lurch through his head, marching with earth-shaking steps through the folds of his brain. Mind-shattering and bone-aching, the pain continues to parade outside the edges of his consciousness--it roars, yet it can't break through the soporific haze of the numbness creeping through his veins.

      This is what it means to die.

      This is how he died: eyes open, staring at the ground, tears and snot mingling with blood on the dirt. So much regret in a human heart.

      I'm tired, Ben. I stepped away from his corpse, and the memories that bobbed up out of the waters faded out of my sight.

      I wished him rest, and a not-so-fond farewell. One more day, I thought. One more day, and for forevermore, the oblivion, the void which awaits me at the end of my dreams--the rest of those that do no longer exist.

      A fond farewell for you, in advance.

Seven Days: Conclusion
Date: 10 December 2009, 10:01 pm



You see, when one goes blind, it's not just about losing sight--it's also about losing what makes you a part of humanity. That shared experience, of seeing, is lost, and in turn you join the small fraternity of the sightless. Your world loses all luster and gains in echoes and scents; sounds from distant places and smells from small things all permeate and envelop you.

Let yourself sink into the earth, that you can no longer feel. You remember, once upon a time, how it looked: brown, green, clumps of living things growing on dead things, the feel of dirt and grass in your hands as you wrest the leaves away from the earth--but that memory is just that, a memory. Your skin disappears. You sink. Slowly, inch by inch, you sink into the dead ground, a dead thing yourself, and even the world of sounds you inhabited for that short period of time you spent as a blind man, it disappears too. Soon, sound is sucked away by your descent into the earth. Soon, the smell of leaves and the world around you, is gone, replaced by the smell of bones and worms.

Soon, it occurs to you that there is but one more step, before you are gone--for good.

Seven Days: Part Seven: Conclusion


Just who is you?

You stagger out the building with a wounded heart. Not physically--just the things you've seen. All men experience horror, as they experience love, joy, and happiness. It's a part of the human experience. It's what they call life.

Life is a bitch.

You see, Kassad is dead. And the thing that was you is dead too. Once upon a time, wings grew upon your back. But those wings are gone, burned away from existence like cigarette ashes dumped from the ashtray. Dissipating, into the wind. Fade away. That is, was, you. You died, then, you disappeared.

Let's look upon the world you left:

      The fires burning along the forests, where stray beams of energy caught the trees in passing, and lit them like matchsticks.
      The dead, in all their mute permanence, lying or sitting where they died, some in halves, some in wholes, some in parts divided thrice or more.
      The crumbling towers that topple and crumble with clockwork regularity.
      The cities, dead.
      The villages, dead.
      And underground, the last attempt at communicating with the rest of humanity--dismantled.

Enjoy the alien menace, mankind. Enjoy what detests--hates--you because you are not a part of their covenant.

Scene:

      Some were carried alive into the ships.
      Their language, hemorrhaged into strange machines, then discarded like husks of corn.
      Purple ships idling near the horizon, blasting in a garbled accent the human tongue--
      Hello, hello, hello.
      We are here.

Get a flamethrower and set the moths alight. Watch their wings burn in glowing embers, as they fall to the ground, charred and dead, leaving trails of glittering sparks behind.

Get a ship and set the world alight. Watch the lands burn and bubble under the heat. The rocks turn polychrome into sleek glass.

When I first died, Ben, I went through a brief stage of denial, then grief. Then, after weeping for a day or two, I realized that I had grown wings.

They are white, glowing, covered with clean, pure feathers. I first noticed them when I tried to scratch my back- funny, how even when you're long dead, you still sometimes get a little itchy- and I ended up pulling out a few feathers. I screamed, then; the pain is excruciating. It is like having your finger nails pulled out with pliers.

I was annoyed with the wings for a few days. Then, I accepted them; now, I love them. It's not that I always think of them, and hold them in my mind: I love them as you would love your hands. You have good feelings for them, but you don't necessarily think about them.

I started to fly, then. I flew for quite a while, watching the once-pure seas get scorched and finally dry up with the constant bombings. I saw the imported Terran dolphins go belly-up in the oceans. And finally, I watched as the native sea squids, whose thousand tentacles often stretch out for miles and are visible from the sky, died away, their flesh and skin simply melting away.

I got pretty sad about all that, Ben. And that was when I finally had enough of flying. But I had nothing to return to; the world was dead, and no one knew about it. The dream that was New Hawaii was gone.

All I have left are stories. Mine, actually. About how I died- and perhaps, Ben, you might hear this from your bed in Reach. Maybe in your dreams you might hear the echoes of my story. I don't know if this will simply get lost in the winds, or if it will drift through space, echoing from star to star until it slowly disappears. All I have is hope. Hope that someone will remember it. And sing the song, Ben, sing it til' it's on everyone's lips, of how the dream fell. Dreams of heaven on earth.

I get an urge, sometimes, to simply fly and fly upwards, you know that? But I can't. Not yet, until I tell my story. Maybe it's a way to empty myself, so that I can prepare for whatever lies ahead. The story anchors me down, Ben.

Remember grandfather, Ben? How he always used to tell of his stories in the army? He always started with "and so it began..."

And so it began.

I know you didn't hear a single word of what I said, but that's fine. The story always was meant for myself--as all stories are, in the end.

Do you live, Ben? Do you live your life as you were meant to live it, bound not by some aimless purpose, some fucking political cause beyond your understanding, some fucking war--or did you live an ordinary life? We lost contact when we were young. I hope for your sake, that you did.

This is a memory. Back on Earth, when I was nine and you were eleven--going into the Lochaber Caves. Artificial rock formations glinting with nanotech lights embedded into the stone. In the complete darkness of the echo chambers. Then the darkness suddenly split by the living lights, little globes of squid-eye halogen lamps. Pulsing jellyfish formations swimming along the dark man-made rivers.

The time we shared, compared with the time we spent apart, seems small and insignificant. But we still have the memories, and more, we identify ourselves as family--as brothers--and though I'll never speak to you again, that fact will always remain a fact, instead of it dissolving into fiction.

This story was meant for myself--and here's how it ends. There was neither a bang or a whimper. The sound that it made as it ended--it was like air hissing out of a balloon. Slowly, deflating. Like a cosmic fart, with God grinning in the end, half-moon smile hanging sickly and stupid above the universe.

What an oddly beautiful sight it was.

Firestorms bloomed and rippled across the surface of the planet, terrestial acne bursting and popping, emerging from the mantle with a fiery heave. The continents split and were torn asunder as purple and vermilion ships hovered above New Hawaii, sending down to the ground wave after wave of blistering light.

There went Oahu, and Mouse-Cow-Vladivostock.

And above them I went soaring. Into space I went. It was quite a strange experience, like a bad hallucination, yet real--but perhaps afterlife is just one vast dream. Like the vision the dying have as they, well, die.

I blinked. Then there was silence. Fragments of my memory split into little threads, then those threads burst into dust, and the dust into insignificance. I tried to touch one and nothing was there, then I had no hand; I was insubstantial, and after a moment, that loss of control--like drowning, like drinking, like dreaming--spiraled into oblivion.

There are no dreams in the end, because dreams lie, and lies have no place where everything is dealt in absolutes. And nothing is more black and white than the dead and the dying.

It all ended in a little basement, below a restaurant. They didn't notice him there, huddling underground like a little rat. Maybe he was too insignificant.

Mr. Jojola sat in the pitch-black dark, unable to see, one hand groping the bare concrete floor feeling nothing but the harsh sandpaper texture grate under his fingers. The other hand cradled a bottle of whiskey, old Hong-Oreille, fifty years old and bought for a fortune before planetfall, in the dark halls of the colony ship. He had planned on keeping it till he was old and dying, and popping it open to drink it then, before he died, to savor once more the layers of smoke and fruit and peat and time--dust and age and rot mingling and bursting, old sour alcohol taste gone and driven out by the textures underlying every sip, the appreciation for the keen and the onion-like layers of flavors. Something like that. Something like that. Something, like that. Something he'll never feel. How angsty, he thought to himself. I was never like this.

But he's about to die. He knows, and he trembles in the dark.

Jojola had barricaded himself in the basement. But he was realizing now that it was as much of a prison as it was a shelter. Truth was, he didn't know what was going on outside, and the possibility of going outside to be gutted wasn't a pleasant one. He also knew that the sight of whatever devastation that might lie above would be too much for him, too much for his frail little heart. Some people have boundless energy, passionate, like matches that refuse to go out: burn away they must, but till the end, they burn bright, and Jojola knew he wasn't anything like that, he'd flicker into nothing at the first breath of wind.

Hey, he thought.

Hey.

The bottle was chill and silent in his hand, and in the dark, he felt for the top. His fingers found the seal, a mixture of wax and plastic. Clumsily, blind, he tore at it until it came loose. Whiskey doesn't age in a sealed bottle, he thought. At least, not well. A taste from fifty years back, a peaceful time, when he was but an infant. The time of giants and heroes, the time where his parents were alive and there was no such thing as nightmares or death or horror or despair--

Oh, fuck, he thought. Why am I crying?

Just enjoy it.

He finally tore the wrapping off and twisted off the cap. It came off with a satisfying pop.

Something was wrong.

He sniffed it. It smelled like rubbing alcohol.

He drank. It was a small sip. It burned his throat and he coughed in the dark, and he cried, because shit, he'd gotten robbed like the little fool he was.

And so it ended.

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