The Worldshift Chronicles: Monday

Chapter 5

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Chapter 5

The bar buzzed with fresh stories about my arena fight.

Over in a corner, Bard tended to Viz, who had come around, woozy yet smiling. He saw me and nodded.

I walked over to him, sheepish. “You okay?”

Viz grinned. “That was a heck of a move. Custer told me Mister Crackers is gonna pay me off too. You’ve got ways with some, don’t you?”

“He’s a donkey,” I groused.

“Was there truly a need to get so dramatic?” Bard asked, clearly irritated.

“It was a lucky punch,” I insisted.

“I’m sure,” Bard said. “You’ll be fine, young man. Dinner’s on me. Go set yourself up at the bar.” Viz stood, saluted me, and headed for the counter. “Monday, let’s talk in my chamber.” He beckoned Custer over. “Take the bar, Cuss. Monday and I will speak before she heads out. Serve the young man whatever he wishes, on the house.”

“You got it, boss.” Custer hustled away.

I followed Bard into his private room located in the back of the roadhouse, down a hall filled with empty kegs, spare chairs, and tabletops. With an annoyed flick of his forefinger, he unlocked the magical ward on his chamber door. A flash of light lit up the doorknob. He thrust the door open. After I followed him in, he shut the door behind us with a telekinetic wave of his hand. I looked around his chamber. It was small and tidy, a single bed in a corner, a meditation mat set out to one side. A lantern wrought in tarnished silver arched over an antique desk buried in books and parchments. The rest of the room was filled with crates of faux arcane paraphernalia. A scepter with a headpiece of honeyed diamond stood tall in a battered wooden box filled to the brim with totems, wands, divining rods, talismans, and speaking stones. All fakes.

Everybody wanted to practice magic. Few could actually do so, yet a number of folks had found vocation in selling items they claimed were ingrained with arcana. Bard had made it a hobby of his to acquire dummy knickknacks from merchants who sought to prey on the gullible. Once in a while, he would discover a genuine article among the parade of knockoffs. Most of those precious few pieces were squirreled away in a warded safe beneath his desk, but he’d displayed a few of the legit pieces about the room, including four speculum windows fastened to the walls. Their vacillating images shuffled like decks of cards.

The star attraction in his collection of maverick commodities was an imposing monolith he’d titled Black Mariah, his ‘queen of spades.’ It rested on a stone shelf in a recessed enclave, a telekinetic, spheroid apparatus of unknown origin. Its porous, central disc invoked an impression of both a speaker and a camera eye. The sphere was surrounded by gravity-defying parts, small matrices and miniature circuit boards floating and oscillating, phasing in and out of normal visual spectra, disappearing and reappearing, held together by an inscrutable amalgam of maglev tech and spell craft. Brightly colored pulses of light glimmered between gyrating parts, flashes of blues and reds and greens fluxed between phased circuits and vibrating microchips in random patterns.

The strange piece of cyclopean mage-tech fit no known properties of mechanics. It often broadcasted a litany of unintelligible telecommunications, chirping in robotic birdsong, issuing guttural drawls, bursts of nonsensical hyper-code, and incomprehensible snippets of outland dialects. Its default setting emitted white noise, a dead air of chaotic radio wavelengths, transmitting from never-gods knew where, its hypnotic mecha-breath ever inhaling and exhaling. Bard negotiated its considerable cost from a sub-T trader in San Francisco, who’d professed he had no idea what it was and had been eager to give it up before House Li’s paladin guard discovered it in his keep. Bard believed it was an echo chamber, gathering arcane reverb, a magnet attracting rogue necromantic energies, constructed by a techno-mage of great intellect and power. He’d spent countless nights trying to create a codex for the thing to no avail. He claimed it presented no danger to its users, and it wasn’t a source of bleeding rads. His assurances were little satisfaction to me. Implicitly trusting mad scientist wizardry seemed foolish.

The specula portals surrounding Black Mariah were more interesting to me. I often took time to peer into their depths, trying to determine whether people might, eventually, live better lives elsewhere, or else-when. Unfortunately, more often than not they showed scenes that did not affirm that hope. One of the nearest ones presented a dismal vision; a hillside of dilapidated slums inundated in an impossibly huge blaze. The fire was a fearsome sight. Its smoldering maw consumed all in its path.

“Ugh,” I murmured, grimacing.

“That might happen, or is happening, in a country formerly known as Brazil,” Bard said, his gaze lingering on the firestorm. “According to recon, the former South American continent has lost nearly all of its jungles and forests to fire. Supposedly a Bronze Age tier human society still dwells in isolated areas at higher elevations. The Amazon Forest was a region which once provided most of the oxygen for the planet.”

“No longer?”

“No longer,” Bard said, mournful. “You cheated.”

“So did Viz! Pharma-ice on the ends of his stick.”

“That doesn’t pardon your response.”

“It was nothing. He was going to take me down.”

“What of it? It’s only a job. Another would’ve come in due time.”

“I don’t need stories going around about some boy getting the better of me in a sawdust corral.”

“In your case, taking a dive would serve your greater good.”

“I’ll be fine, mother. Nobody saw nothing. You only knew ‘cuz…you’re you.”

I wandered over to another of the specula. It showed a hardened young man with deep sable skin and opaque, white eyes with no pupils, a kind of albino aberration. His thick hair was draped about his shoulders in long, dark dreadlocks. He sat cross-legged in the depths of a quarry, sketching a drawing with a piece of charcoal, all the while surrounded by hundreds of screes howling and crying. I was confused. How could a blind man draw? And I wondered why the devolved creatures around him, usually mindless and ravenous, weren’t tearing the guy to pieces. They ignored him completely.

I considered the boy’s drawing. The speculum responded to my thoughts, zooming in on the picture. It was a spot-on depiction of a street market in Tiwan, but its avenues, normally bustling with shoulder-to-shoulder outlanders, were filled with lifeless bodies. A raggedy burro stared at a trio of shadowed figures standing in the middle of a road.

“What’s this about?” I asked Bard, pointing at the speculum.

“Another random future,” he said, his brow furrowing as he studied the vision. “Never the same tomorrow twice. To business. Time presses, and your fare awaits. I think the next time we see each other, won’t be here at the store.”

“But you never leave this place.”

“Never is too strong a word.”

I turned to him, quizzical. “Are you taking a trip? Why not let me run you?”

“I neither need nor desire an escort. I must attend to something in the dragon’s den.”

“The great monk of the glass lands will brave the wicked world?”  

“On occasion. Your short span of years knows precious little about my travels. Listen. There’s something in the wind. I’m not sure what it is yet. People like us have radar others do not. Have you not felt anything off kilter of late?”

“Can’t say I have. If you know something I don’t, I’m all ears.”

“I’m uncertain of what it portends. But it’s time to track down your clan.”

I stared at him, incredulous.

“I have no family.”

“That you know of.”

“And you do?”

“Only what rare whispers the universe has issued in my meditations.”

“And what might those be? You’ve never mentioned anything like that before.”

“What little I know, and that is very little indeed, was pointless and quite dangerous to tell you earlier.”

I grew edgy. “Why is that?”

“It’s difficult to explain. Suffice it to say, it’s my belief you needed to reach a certain age before those issues could be addressed.”

“So, what…I’m finally old enough to sit at the adult table?” I chided, annoyed.

“There’s no need to get irked. The powers that be would’ve led you to your own imminence.”

“Ain’t no powers being, Bard.”

He studied me, disappointed. “You are not so unwise.”

“How do you know now’s the time?”

“If it were left to me, I think another year or two would’ve been preferable. You’re still unpracticed in the disciplines I’d hoped you would’ve taken more seriously at this point.”

“Whatevs,” I grumbled.

“Had you considered your abilities with other than passing disinterest, you might be in a better position. If the cosmic wheel spinning at hand is more than dust and rabble, we can no longer put it off.”

“How mysterio. It’s nice to know I was hooded without knowing it.”

“Would you have searched the far corners of the world while you were still under the care of House Cheyenne, toiling in the factories as a child?”

“I’ve been couriering for years. If I’m good enough to wrangle rigs across the outlands, I think I can handle looking up…what? My long-lost cousins? The parents who abandoned me in the ghettos of the ‘Del?”

“As I think you will soon discover, it’s not only you involved,” Bard said.

“Instead of the riddling, maybe you crack the bottle all the way,” I replied.

“Madison holds answers you’ll need to explore this further,” Bard said.

“Maddy? What’s she got to do with this?”

“She is First Chair of House Cheyenne and she possesses something that belongs to you…and your kind.”

“Not once has Maddy ever told me she owned anything of mine.”

“I insisted she must wait to give it to you until the right time. You need to start listening to the world, instead of reacting to it. You still think magicks are a joke. They are not. The universe itself speaks through you. It is mostly silent to its inhabitants. But not to people like us. Mind its voice.”

“Woof,” I said, exhausted. “Okay, yes, I’ll keep an ear to the ground.”

I’d had enough for the day. Bard’s waxy musings had become tiresome. Thinking around corners, after a long day of hoofing clicks, topped off with a brawl, wasn’t in my wheelhouse.

“Let us palaver with Madison before you leave,” Bard said.

He stood and walked to Black Mariah, beckoning me. I joined him as he peered into its morphing face and studied a random arrangement of floating tech. Three pyramid-shaped chips rotated around each other. They lined up in a linear pattern, and it was in that cycle he reached to the center piece and grasped it, turning it to the left, then the right. The other two chips froze in place. A low hum reverberated from the machine. Bard closed his eyes and focused. Suddenly a warbling portal opened in front of us, no bigger than a man’s head, black at its core, gleaming red at its fringes.  

“I didn’t know it could do that,” I murmured.

“I daresay it can do a number of things we don’t know about, but this aspect is known to me. I have determined less than ten base functions of our friend here. I’m sure there’s far more.”

“It creates wormholes?” I asked, now curious. “I thought that was impossible.”

“It does not offer a transit junction for matter displacement. This operation is limited to remote communication.”

“Uh huh. Pretty much a telephone.”

Bard rolled his eyes. “A far sight more than that.”

Matter and energy displacement technology was sought by all four cities and their respective houses. None had managed to perfect it. The wherewithal required to maintain wormhole stability had so far eluded their best minds. The energy required to harness a stable wormhole was considerable, megawatts that couldn’t be provided by any of the four cities’ main power sources. Tiwan held 200 square clicks of solar fields down the southern strip of the Baja Sur barrens to power its city. San Francisco, far and away the city with the most juice at its disposal, boasted solar fields in its southern marshlands, geothermal plants in its Subterranea, as well as a number of oceanic wind farms along its coastal shorelines. New Angeles’ massive, geodome city was powered by a sprawl of several hundred square clicks of solar fields about the Red Desert. The Citadel’s inner concourse and main tower were powered by a skimpy hybrid plant of wind turbines and solar fields, its outer barrio boroughs making do with power cell batteries and gennies, or nothing at all. None of those factions could spare enough juice to sustain displacement tech.

House Li was the premiere power of the four cities. San Francisco itself was a tech haven of considerable resources, but its populace had embraced, or had been forced to embrace, an old religion of a single god. House Li’s military was made up of avowed paladin soldiers, bolstered by an impressive sub-fleet of automaton botware. If any residents were discovered blaspheming, they were deemed insurgents, routinely rounded up and put into ‘education’ centers. More often they were slain, usually dumped into the bay’s cold seas from Black Gate, the bridge connecting the main city over the bay to its northern highlands, an imposing landmark straight out of antiquity. It boasted a pair of immense black pylons topped with beacon cauldrons, lit in fire during times of celebratory worship. Garrisons of paladins were posted at each end. Impaled skulls of their vanquished transgressors were set upon pikes mounted at intervals across the dark steelwork’s causeway.

The paladin elite guard were a fearsome lot, led by a nun who went by the name ‘Sister Dez.’ She had a reputation like few others; wicked, ruthless, prone to ungodly fits of rage, if rumors were to be believed. San Francisco was the sole city, in what was once called California, which somehow escaped significant effects from worldshift. Its non-military civilians were largely forced to live underground in the Subterranea, an network of tech warrens, tunnels, and caverns beneath its topside of merchant guilds and military-industrial commerce. Its central fortress, the Pyramid of Paladins, was a towering spire, its triangular facades slithering and glistening in nanobot streams. Bard told me it had once been an office high-rise, now fortified with House Li’s singular web of nanotech.

Outlanders often mistook me for a member of House Li because of my genetic ancestry. I was never sure why people tended to think Asian types originated in San Francisco. Bard told me it was a leftover bias from earlier eras of humankind. He said I presented as a Chinese-Filipina hybrid. Me, I didn’t really care about my biology that much. It didn’t seem to hurt nor help my chit account, though I’d been led to understand that was entirely different before worldshift.

The wormhole grew translucent as seconds passed. Maddy’s face appeared into view at the other end.  She sat on a plush sofa, drinking from a white ceramic bottle. Her posh suite was lit in soft light and furnished with statuary and clean linens. She was a beautiful middle-aged woman with silver hair, porcelain skin, and blue-hazel eyes. She wore a simple black coverall with House Cheyenne’s raven logo emblazoned on its breast pocket. Behind her, through a floor-to-ceiling window, lay the vast stretch of slums surrounding the tower. Thousands of campfires flickered in the distance.

“Guess what,” Bard said.

“Really,” she muttered. “It’s too soon. Another year at least.”

“I’m afraid we have no choice.” Bard replied.

“That’s on you,” she huffed, and glared at me. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Domers give you any guff?” she asked.

“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” I said.

“Aye, of course.” She looked at Bard with a grim scowl. “It’s got to keep.”

“It cannot.” he said.

“What’s gotta keep?” I asked.

“You,” Maddy said.

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“Madison will tell you all,” Bard said.

“What’s the big secret? Let’s forgo the cryptic nonsense,” I scoffed.

“If she doesn’t come to it on her own, she won’t get there at all. As I’ve told you,” Bard insisted to Maddy. “If I’m right, it’s more urgent than I’d estimated. Something’s brewing unexpectedly. It’s time to pursue your intel as well. I’m headed to House Li.”

Maddy took a swig of her wine. “You really think they’re there?”

“I know not. But we have to start somewhere. Your source was reliable and the name itself is proof enough to investigate.”

“What name?” I asked.

“There’s a possibility a person dwells in the depths of the Subterranea, going by the name of Wednesday,” Bard said. “We think…we hope…they might be a member of your clan.”

“I don’t have a clan!” I insisted.

“We all stem from a clan of some sort, Monday,” Maddy replied.

 I shook my head, doubtful. “Names don’t necessarily imply blood relation.”

“Kinship isn’t limited to blood. Such association can be formed via clan, origin, or likeness as well, or a combination thereof,” Bard replied.

“Sister Dez will skin you alive if you’re discovered,” Maddy said to him.

“That’s a risk that must be taken.” Bard replied.

“You’re going to risk life and limb in San Francisco just to track down someone with similar title? That seems a long shot,” I said.

“Does the prospect feel…inauthentic to you?” Bard said, tentative.

At that, Maddy grew quiet.

I considered him, then Maddy.

They waited, almost fervent.

He was testing me.

It was annoying.

I considered the query. I felt little to nothing about it.

“No idea,” I finally offered.

“You haven’t an inkling?” Bard pressed.  

“If you’re trying a deep dive into whether I know something I’m ill-disposed to reveal, you can quit while you’re ahead,” I groused.

“Just answer the question, Monday!” Maddy barked.

“If neither of you are going to tell me what’s going on, I’m outta here,” I said, at my limit, and turned to storm out.

“Monday, you’ll listen and listen good,” Maddy said, using that all biz voice of hers. “I would’ve told you long ago, but if Bard is right, he is right about all of it, including waiting to tell you of these larger matters. I have guarded a message I was given, which must be passed to you. I wish it were otherwise.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“I don’t know what it is. I only know vagaries that were told to my people, some sixteen years back, and what Bard has divined, and all that wasn’t nearly enough. Come home and find out for yourself, then we’ll know more. If you’re so inclined after you examine the item, you’ll need to hop the bullet to House Arroyo and speak with your kitty-cat. Are you traveling straight here?”

“I’ve gotta drop a fare to a spot near Washoe first. But there’s nothing I hate more than riddling, and you both know that.” I said, sullen.

Maddy gazed at Bard, forlorn. “I won’t force her.”

“She’ll come to it, in her own way. You know how this works.”

“I love when people talk about me like I’m not right here,” I growled.

“Oh, hush. The only agenda we had was hoping we could put off coming to this until you were older,” Maddy said.   

“You don’t have to like it, Monday. Few of us choose the paths we eventually take,” Bard added.

Maddy looked pained. “What if she can’t find everyone?”

Bard cast his eyes downward. “Then everything will fall. Chaos magicks will run amok over what little is left, and we’ll lose the last of the light.”

“Oh, is that all?” I muttered.

“It’s time to for you to start understanding your place in the world,” Bard said.

He almost sounded like he was begging.

“I dunno what’s gotten into you two, but you serio need to chill,” I said.

They were jittering, like eggs on a hot skillet.

Wreckish, as my courier contemporaries liked to say.

I’ve seen Maddy fret, but never Bard.

Weird.

“Listen to your sage, Monday. Shut this down, I’ve got company coming. I’ll see you in a couple days,” Maddy said, and disappeared from view.

Bard reached and turned the center pyramid piece to the right, then back left. The portal winked out. Black Mariah resumed its phasing randomness.

“If you have something to share, say it,” I said.

“It’s not that simple,” Bard replied.

Now he was upset.

Was that a tear in his eye?

My heart ticked a beat.

I wanted to hug the old gizzard-lump, despite him having pissed me off.

But I didn’t.

“I’m tired. I’ll play along for now. Whatever’s going on, I don’t think withholding information was a good game plan.”

Then I left to escort Lieutenant Jack Crackers up the Sierra.

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