Trism    

   Roe sat quietly, wondering about the decision he'd made to quit his government job, to move back north, to civilization. He imagined the new domed cities, tiny shops along a main street, lined with lush, smartly trimmed vegetation, the open market filled with pedestrians, and his young son walking beside him.
    Sliding the neural stinger from its concealed holster, Roe examined it carefully. He now understood why he had chosen to stay in the wasteland for so long, amidst the sun scorched remnants of the old world. It was a longing for what once was, his childhood memories like ghosts in the shadows of a city his father had once helped design. Roe wondered how his wife would react to his unannounced arrival, emerging from the desert after so many years to join civilization. A single, powerful deed could set a new course for his life. That's why he was sitting there, in the sleek, tear drop shaped getaway car, on what would hopefully be his last day in the blinding light and blistering heat.
    Roe had a young face, but a well seasoned soul. His hair had been dark, but was now bleached, his skin splotchy, red and brown from exposure. Maintaining physical and mental strength were important, but Roe was a team player, his life always depending on others in some way. He wondered about Salgo though, why someone with such a brilliant mind had chosen a life of exile, doing everything in his power to destroy the infrastructure of the northern cities with stolen military ordinance, then fleeing from one desert outpost to another, the authorities always one step behind. Roe had tried to learn more about Salgo after taking on this one last job, but Salgo had proven an elusive subject.

    Salgo jogged from the government armory in calculated haste. An acoustic energy beam swept fiercely through the air, deafening sirens and police warnings projected just over his head.
    Salgo's hair was blonde, cut close to the scalp; there was a deep cleft in his chin. He wore a long reflective cloak with its breathing fabric clinging to his lithe frame; the skin of interwoven micro-tubes went all the way up to his neck. His face was exposed, but he had reflective, gold irises. With the stolen prize safely tucked into his coat pocket, Salgo stood next to the moaning hover car and watched a paltry hand full of security officers scatter out from the tunnel entrances of their subterranean barracks, wielding spring loaded electric batons.

    "Piss ants; pathetic piss ants!" Salgo said out loud.
    "Get in, damn it! Those beams can cook your eyeballs!" Roe hollered.
    "They're too weak to kill anybody," Salgo remarked. "It's just a psychological ploy." Salgo stopped just short of the car and lit a cigarette. "That crap never works on me."
    "Are you nuts? Get in!" Roe said, raising his voice above the engine winding up.
    "You seen anything around here to warrant even a shred of doubt?" Salgo answered reflexively. "We'll be long gone from those ridiculous toy soldiers before they can even get their turbines started."
    Roe accelerated hard, pushing them both into their seats. "I was thinking that I'd like to make it through this job in one piece."
    Salgo took a drag on his cigarette, smiling. "I was thinking too; various angles for instance... How you might be scheming to take this damnable thing away from me and use it yourself. But you don't strike me as the shrewd type."
    "What ever it is, I'm not interested; only the money you promised. I'm planning a move up north, to hook up with my kid," Roe replied. He thought for a moment. "Haven't seen him since he was a tot. Guess I'm goin' soft or middle aged crazy. Don't know if my ex will take me back though."
    "Can't imagine why a lovely wife would have left a handsome guy like you, and such a wonderful place to raise children too; plenty of dead foliage." Salgo uttered wryly. "What line of work did you say were you in? Maybe you were just boring."
    "Work? You either work for the government or you starve out here, unless you're a sand rat, living off of what you can salvage from the ruins. You're right about the wasteland; not a place for family. My wife didn't care for it."
    "How nice." Salgo said, looking smug. "And you did manage to evade my question. I'm one of the rats, by the way."
    "You sure as hell don't work for the government, but I'm not gonna dig." Roe said.
    "Might hit a landmine," Salgo remarked.
    Roe continued. "You ever been married?"
    Salgo smirked. "I don't see the point of procreation. And in spite of my successes as a privateer, I failed. I was outvoted; the paradigm of doing business changed, the world pulled out from under me. And who could have foreseen this crap?" He gestured to the barren landscape.
    Roe regressed into dull monologue. Salgo was not interested; he glanced at Roe, mashed the remains of his cigarette into the dash, then lowered his head and closed his eyes.

    Salgo awoke; his head jerked upward. Roe was still talking.
    "We keep hidden armories out here, but for what? An invasion? If there were some key resources to fight over, maybe." Roe maneuvered the hover car closer to the ground, reducing speed. "I see nature taking everything back is what I figure. In a generation there won't be a living soul this far south."
    Salgo became animated. The landscape rolled under them, lumps of lifeless nothings, a palate of earthen colors blurring past the window. He faced Roe and began to speak.
    "You drop me off, then draw any pursuers away. Follow the coastline as far as you can; understood? It's up to you to evade them after that; part of the deal."
    Salgo tossed a roll of plant fiber bank notes on to the floor beside Roe's seat, as the dusky silhouette of Old Atlanta appeared on the horizon, like a row of broken, decaying teeth.
    "My bitter sweet home," Salgo said.

    Under a marbled sky of translucent yellow and pink, a hollow desert wind sang softly to the parched earth. A flock of frail birds tumbled like surrogate water and settled in the eternal summer skeleton of an abandoned office tower. Shards of thick, laminated glass remained in the sides of the building, acting like a prism and transforming the setting sun into liquid pools of green and blue. Roe squinted with the light dancing across his face, while maneuvering the hover car into a landing, deactivated the engine and listened to the fluttering turbine blades come to a stop.
    "What's going on?" Salgo said, looking surprised.
    "I'm a government Agent, and you are under arrest, my friend," Roe stated flatly.
    Salgo sat expressionless and frozen.
    Roe shifted in his seat, faced his passenger and spoke again. "There's a transponder in this vehicle. Police units will be here in a matter of seconds, so you'd best sit tight."
    As Roe reached into his jacket to ready his neural stinger, Salgo mirrored him, reaching into his own pocket, gripping the pliable handle of the stolen device, carefully aligning Roe's face in the glowing crimson arrows before pressing a large trigger on the end. Roe blacked out.

    "Now, what was it you were going to do? Salgo taunted. "Who's under arrest?"
    Roe was disoriented, ran his fingers along his jaw and slowly across his brow, then looked down at the stolen device, which now took on a frightening appearance. Salgo swiped it from Roe's hand and chuckled softly.
    "If you try to turn me in now, they'll think you've lost your mind," Salgo said, looking satisfied. "Who'd believe anything you say? He said, then paused, smiling.
    "What the hell is that thing? What's happened? Roe asked himself, then sat still, looked down at his hands. "You're me!"
    Salgo beamed. "Pretty amazing, you have to admit."
    Roe became tense. He moved his head from side to side, looking at his feet, then finally spoke. "They should've destroyed that device a long time ago, along with the other experimentals. God knows what else is in that vault! You realize once they figure out what's missing, they'll take us both into custody."
    Roe glanced at his new face in the warped plastic mirror on the sun visor. An ordinary looking fly buzzed along upper edge of the windshield and landed on the dash.
    Salgo started the hover car back up. "You expect anyone in a police uniform to know about this?" Salgo said, holding up the device, then sliding it into his breast pocket. "Just face it; they won't know how to deal with me, even if they are aware of it's existence. It's the perfect weapon."
    Roe felt a subjective chill penetrate his mind, the predicament just now sinking in, that he was his own adversary.
    "How did you know about that thing?" Roe asked in a weary voice.
    Salgo continued. "The Trism is a most amazing tool, a means of acquiring covert influence. It's tricky; that's why this prototype was never put to use. Truth is, I was on the team that developed it and therefore understand its potential. I'd envisioned many scenarios, but I must say, the fact that you turned out to be an agent will make things interesting." Salgo pulled out Roe's neural stinger as three speeding government cruisers converged on their hover car.
    "You realize of course that I can outrun those government junkers. Just like before, ey?" Salgo stated with satisfaction. "Perhaps I won't have to..."
    Roe lunged at Salgo and went for the handle of the stinger, but it was too late. Salgo had anticipated his move, catching the offending hands in a set of automatic cuffs. He held the ominous needle of the stinger above the soft flesh of Roe's palm.
    "I'll be planting seeds of mistrust, to transform your prosaic world into something exciting, where deception will rule over ignorance, just as before," Salgo said, in a gentle, mocking tone, while slowly inserting the needle. "Of course I can't have you around explaining everything to the police; so you won't object if I have a little chat whith them first, ey?"

    Roe found himself at the bottom of a vast undulating trough of hot green oceanic liquid, spray and steam obscuring most of the dim light shining from above. Lightning flickered and revealed something in the distance. Roe went towards it and after an exhaustive swim, came to rest upon a foamy beach, covered with debris and saturated with a mixture of noxious odors. After resting briefly, he began exploring and found an abandoned plastic, suburban bungalow. There was a large bubble window facing the shore that had been blown out. Partly buried, the derelict house lay tilted on the shore like half an idol head with a single, vacant eye.
    Inside, Roe found a pen phone that sputtered to life, but then went dead. There were locked doors, but finally he managed to break one down, which set off an alarm. He sat down and waited. A hissing mini-cruiser shot down from the sky and two security officers emerged, armed with pneumatic grapple claws with which they could apprehend their subject if an escape were attempted.

    Gazing out over the remains of other corroded office spires from the top of a deteriorating high rise hotel, Salgo looked down into the abandoned streets a hundred stories below. He imagined subtleties, the smell of food, the ambiance of countless voices that had once been there. But then he considered how much they had all been like termites in a fragile mound that had baked in the sun and turned to dust. The mini-cruiser landed and Salgo approached as Roe was led out on to the roof.
    Salgo beamed. "Tried to run away, no? Or did someone just decide to drop you off at the edge of town? Lucky for you these officers managed to pick you up before the tide came in," Salgo said, laughingly.
    Looking formidable in their black uniforms, the three security officers stood, strong and alert. One of them conferred with Salgo while the others attended to their captive. Roe noiticed that they carried the much longer neural sticks, so familiar to government security officers.
    Roe began to struggle. "The Trism is a mind switch!" He croaked. "Get it away from him, he's already used it on me!" But long before any of the officers could digest his meaning, the needle of a stinger was inserted into the base of Roe's neck, delivering a powerful neurotropic into his system. Roe melted. Everything became oozing, liquid and strange. When he closed his eyes there was an amorphous hole where Roe had been standing.
    Salgo felt uneasy, but approached Roe and whispered into his ear:
    "You're kid will never recognize you, and your wife..."
    Roe tried to reply, but the words would not come.
    Salgo continued, still speaking softly. "I've been considering the confusion I'll create. The next person I trade places with will have your original body, you'll still have mine, and I'll have his. If I keep it up, in a few months there will be a real identity crisis, no?" Salgo's expression became sadistic.
    Roe groped for the Trism in Salgo's jacket. He was lethargic and slow. The other officers pulled him back. Salgo calmly walked to the end of the terrace, turned around and held out the Trism, looking into Roe's eye to measure his reaction.
    "Is this what you were looking for?" Salgo taunted. "What an enterprising individual could do with such a magnificent invention..." He spoke proudly.
    Roe let out a primal yell and broke free from his captors. He willed the poison that streamed through his body into submission. Though unsteady, Roe managed to ram into Salgo's shoulder. The Trism spun to the floor while the momentum of Roe's charge slammed them both into the outer railing. Salgo broke loose; Roe fell back to the hard deck.
    "Don't either of you move!" One of the officers barked. "What is this thing?" He said, reaching for the Trism, which had come to a stop near his boot. Salgo produced his stinger and leaping, plunged the long needle into the officer's solar plexus, causing him to slowly fold.
    "It's already spreading," Roe said hoarsely, trying to get to his feet. "Like a disease..."
    "I am the disease," Salgo said.
    The remaining two officers were visibly angered. One tossed his helmet down.
    "What the hell do we do?" The helmet-less officer asked the other.
    "Take 'em both," the partner said.
    "Finally," Roe said, hoarsely, still groping on the deck, his face becoming reddened.
    The security officers approached Salgo from both sides, each with a pair of writhing, automatic cuffs, but Salgo picked up a second stinger from the downed officer and attacked with both weapons simultaneously. Adroitly and mercilessly, he injected neural venom and watched the men wilt like leaves over an invisible flame.
    Fighting to stay coherent, Roe summoned another rush of psychic energy. He tackled Salgo just above the knees, bringing them both perilously close to the edge of the roof. Both stingers broke loose from Salgo's hands and became lost to the world below. Salgo began breathing heavily, salty liquid running from his forehead into his eyes. He shoved Roe hard, then kicked him out of frustration. Roe stumbled back. Salgo reached down, picked up the Trism and looked at Roe with intensity.
    There was a tremor in Salgo's voice. "The hunted cannot quell the self serving biological instincts of the hunter, not with compassion or understanding, not with technology... Not without becoming hunters themselves."
   "So it's just survival?" Roe replied, with little strength in his voice. "Maybe it's a struggle inside that makes us what we are..."
    Roe steadied himself, fighting the neurogenic distortions of time and space, and began walking toward Salgo; all at once he accelerated into a full-on charge. Salgo reacted with mindless spite. Without warning, he tossed the Trism over the edge, but Roe was already diving after it. Gaping window frames streamed past, massive lines of steel converging into the earth. Roe looked up to see Salgo's receding outline. There was silence. He began to feel regret for what was about to happen, but mostly sadness. There in front of him, falling at the same rate, was the Trism. He reached out and laced his fingers around it.
    Tarnished girders were modulated shades of gray. There was a residual warmth from the approaching ground, a radiant energy that penetrated the skin. Roe peered into the viewfinder of the Trism. When he saw his own face, more and more distant, yet perfectly aligned in the glowing arrows, he pressed the trigger deeply into its recess and changed places for the last time.

    Roe's colleagues wished him well; his former commander gave him a little pocket hologram of everyone at the department. One of the young female agents, probably the one who would take his place, gave him a hug.
    "You're sure none of the circuits can be recovered?" Roe asked.
    "A mangled heap," the commander replied.
    "And there aren't any more of those things out there?"
    "None. But it'll always be something. The blueprints are still there." the commander said.
    "Good luck!" the young agent said and smiled.
    "I'll miss you guys, but don't count on me visiting any time soon," Roe said, unconsciously rubbing the back of his neck, though there was no scar.
    Roe fed a fuel pellet into the hover car. His friends stood and watched as he sped away. Flowered thistles bent lazily with the wind as the car whispered past. Gaining speed, Roe looked as far ahead as possible, into a featureless and extraordinarily bright sky.

Copyright 2005 Schuyler Hupp All Rights Reserved

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