Blackjack Wayward

Chapter Fifteen

“Undead,” she said, clarifying, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “I am not f*cking kidding,” Claire snapped.

“I bet I’m still back in that mind machine at Utopia, and the guys are having a huge laugh at my expense.”

She watched me, confused.

“Let’s throw some undead chick and see if he f*cks her,” I laughed, doing a shitty version of a lab tech’s nasal voice. “He’ll f*ck just about every other damned thing.”

Claire smiled, “This is true.”

I checked my laughter, “Huh?”

“I said it’s true,” she repeated.

“I don’t–” I struggled, wondering how she knew.

She wiped her nose with her sleeve. “You f*cked that bitch Apogee, no?” she said, catching me off guard. “I f*cking hate that bitch. Always pushing her fake tits into the camera, like if–”

“They’re real,” I said.

“Oh, now I really hate her.”

“And they’re amazing,” I pressed, twisting the dagger.

She scowled at me and I laughed. “It doesn’t matter, I never did anything with her.”

“Like I’m going to believe that,” Claire sneered, coming to her feet and walking to the faucet.

“I’m serious,” I said, staying on the floor as she washed her face clear of tears. She looked at me in the mirror.

“You never...?”

I shook my head.

“You’re not ... you know....”

“Nope,” I said. “I guess I’m just a gentleman.”

She laughed. “The gentleman f*cks the gentle lady. That’s how God made it, you know?”

I chuckled. “I know.”

“Oh, could it be....” she said, turning to me and extending her index finger up in the air, before slowly deflating it, implying I had some problem with my pipes. “You just take a little pill and...,” she said extending her finger out.

“I killed her friend,” I said, still with a stupid smile on my face, not sure why I was sharing. “I’m sure she likes me some, but ... I don’t think she’ll ever like me enough.”

“Ah,” she said, still watching me. “She is very pretty. I thought…you know.”

I nodded.

“I won’t lie. I kind of fell for her.”

“What was the name of her friend? Pulsewave?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

“Why did you kill him?”

I shrugged. “It was an accident, kind of me being irresponsible.”

“An accident? Really?”

“Not an innocent accident.”

“What is the difference?” she said, grabbing a toothbrush and cleaning her teeth.

“I guess nothing,” I answered after giving it some thought. “I mean, it’s my fault. I did it. I fired an explosive arrow that knocked him off a building. But it was more me being stupid than evil or anything. I was careless.”

“Right,” she said spitting out some toothpaste. “It still makes no difference. You killed him.”

Again under attack from her, for no reason, just moments after I had saved for life for the third or fourth time.

“What’s the point?” she said

“Well, you do this whole thing with being nice and decent and everything. And it’s bullshit, you know? It’s stupid.”

“Like what?” I said.

“Like trying to be a gentleman, and always saving women.”

“I like being a gentleman.”

“It’s bullshit.”

“No, it’s not,” I snapped. I like holding a door for a woman. I like paying for a meal. I’m not trying to exert some sort of dominance, or anything, I just think it’s a nice gesture.”

Claire ‘pffted’ with a mouthful of toothpaste and had to wipe the glass to clean her mess. She spit out the paste before continuing.

“You know how old I am?” she started shaking her head as if there was no point in explaining things to me. “I have known gentlemen. Real gentlemen.”

“What, some powdered wig, face-painted effete that knows how to dance to the latest Baroque clavier tunes? That how old you are? Those guys didn’t strike me as particularly manly.”

Claire spun around and watched me, a sliver of a grin forming on her face.

“All that powdered wigs, and the dances, they were there so you could then go and f*ck. You know? Those effete guys, as you call them, were fiends. Et les animaux dans le lit.”

She smiled, seeing I hadn’t understood the last part.

“They saw a woman they liked, and they went for it. They didn’t buy drinks, or pretend to be interested in her stories, or what she was wearing. Well, no, they did. They did all that, but they did it so they could get you in the bed. It was all to f*ck. And my goodness, there was a lot of f*cking.”

I laughed.

“So you’re saying I’m the unmanly one because I haven’t just jumped up and thrown you into the bed, plowed you like a field.”

“You plow everything else,” she said, nonchalantly waving the toothbrush to seem indifferent, but I could see her peeking at me from the corner of my eye. “Plow the field,” she continued, unfamiliar with the term. “I think I like that. It means to do it hard, no?”

I stood.

“That’s the second time you say that,” I said, straightening.

She was confused.

“What?”

“That I’ll have sex with anything.”

Claire smiled, but I could tell she was hiding something.

“Well, you’re Blackjack, you know? Big as you are, I figured you–”

“No,” I interrupted. “It wasn’t an assumption. You said it definitively. You said ‘you plow everything else.’ I remember clearly.”

“If you think you’re still in the machine back at Utopia–”

“I want to know what that’s supposed to mean. And don’t give me the whole, ‘he’s Blackjack, he has to f*ck lots of chicks’ thing, because I’ve been with one girl in the last two years. That’s it.”

She winced. “That’s it?”

“What do you want me to do? And no one knows I was with this girl.”

“Apogee, right?”

I shook my head. “Some girl called Serpentis, a friend of a friend.”

Her mouth parted slightly, as if coming to some sort of realization.

“I want an answer,” I said, snapping her out of her momentary reverie.

“Or what?” she said. “I’m Lady Vexille, Blackjack. I can send you to the time of the dinosaurs with a single spell.”

“What do you know that you aren’t telling me?”

“Nothing,” she said, trying to move past me. I held onto her arm softly, in fear I would harm her thin frame.

“Let go of me.”

“Tell me.”

She smiled.

“I’m tired of games, Claire. I’m tired of it.”

I let go of her but made sure my bulk would preclude her from moving past.

She noticed my positioning and was tense for a moment, then finally smiled. “I’ll be honest with you, if you can do the same with me. Is that too hard for you? To be honest?”

I shrugged, taking a half step back.

“You want me to be straight? Okay, I’ll be straight. Of course, I want to f*ck you. Oh, my God, do I want to. You’re beautiful, a Persian princess. I want to throw you onto that bed and plow you ‘til we bring the roof down. Is that what you want to hear?”

Claire smiled, enjoying the direction of the conversation.

“But I’m scared, okay?”

She moved closer, intertwining me with her arms, saying, “There’s nothing to be scared of.”

“Oh, but there is. See, that guy Doctor Zundergrub, he’s a real bad guy. I know you’ve done some bad shit and made a dark pact or something, but this guy, he wants to kill every single person in the world. And I’m scared that while I’m here playing the French Revolution with you, as nice as it would be, he’s out there, trying to hurt Apogee, or maybe he’s–”

“Oh, to hell with her,” she snapped, pushing me off.

“You don’t understand,” I started, but she jumped all over me.

“What, that you love her? So what? Where was she when you were in trouble? Where was this woman you love when you were about to die at Utopia?”

She paused, letting her accusations settle.

“Where was she when you were on trial? Why didn’t she talk in your defense?”

How did she know all of this? How could she possibly have access to such personal details? Did she have some sort of telepathic power?

“They didn’t let her,” I snapped defensively.

“Let her?” she mocked. “Let her? She’s f*cking Apogee, the biggest super heroine in the world. She can go and do whatever she wants.”

“No, there’s procedure in a courtroom. She couldn’t just–”

“Blackjack, she’s Apogee. She’s saved the world a hundred times. If she wants to talk in some court and say that you were the hero at Hashima, then she says it, and that’s it. She’s like the Pope: no court can refuse her. No one. If she wanted to help you, she would have. Did she even come to see you after Hashima?”

She was right, of course, and on a roll, but she had given herself away. She had gone too far. This wasn’t conjecture or theory, these were my inner thoughts.

“How the f*ck do you know all this?” I snapped, feeling my anger churning like the boiling caldera of a volcano on the verge of erupting.

Claire paused, realizing her mistake. In her eagerness to badmouth Apogee, she had revealed a level of knowledge that she couldn’t possibly have gained on her own. She knew my thoughts, my desires. She knew me.

Cornered, Claire looked past me, at the door, but there was no way she was going to make it there, nor would I let her get more than a few words of that pig-Latin magic off before her whole head was wrapped in my hands.

“Answer me!”

She flinched, fear flashing across her face.

“I was–” she started, but lowered her head, avoiding my gaze. “I was in there, with you.”

“What?”

“At Utopia,” she said, waving her hand.

“I don’t ... I mean ... I thought,” I stammered. “How?”

“The mind thing didn’t work on me. No matter how hard they tried. I just didn’t believe it. So they put me in a regular cell.”

She paused, her gaze settled on my navel.

“But if it didn’t work, then how did you...?”

“I was there a long time. A long time. After a while, if you behave, and I did ... they let you play a little.”

“You mean, they put you in with me? In my dream?”

She nodded, feeling suddenly relieved when I stumbled back a few feet and sat on the bed.

“It allowed them to keep an eye on you. I was a confidential…what is this word?”

“A confidential informant?”

“Yes, that. I would tell them things about you…and about others,” she added, trying to reduce the weight of it all. “But you were more fun. It was like living a Jules Verne novel.”

“The devil girl,” I said, suddenly seeing Claire’s features in the demonic imp’s face. From her elegant nose, her oval face, and her regal chin to her eyes, which subtly transformed from dark brown on the inner edge of the iris to light brown, almost green at the far edges, all were similar enough for me to recognize.

And Dalmeria, the orc maid. She had the same nose and cheeks, the small, high breasts, the stern jawline and full lips. Even Aryani, the Vershani goddess, bore striking similarities. Though her body was more similar to Apogee, more voluptuous, Aryani’s face was the spitting image of Claire’s. She had thrown herself into my dream world and jumped in my bed every chance she could.

She saw me going through the motions, putting it all together, still worried for my reaction and sitting on the sink as if it was the only safe place in the shack.

“No wonder you’re so familiar with me,” I said.

Claire said nothing.

“It’s ok,” I told her.

“It was just a little bit of fun,” she said, almost breathlessly. “I didn’t mean any harm. It just made the time go by faster. And ... it was pleasurable, non?”

I smiled and stood.

“Please don’t be mad,” she pleaded.

“I’m not,” I said, going toward the door. “I’m just going to go for a walk.”

Claire rushed me and grabbed my arm.

“Dale, please don’t be mad.”

I lifted her chin up and kissed her forehead.

“I’ll be back,” I said, and walked out.

“Ground control to Blackjack,” the little voice said.

It was like a whisper in the wind that drifted in once I had cleared the structures of Rabbit Flat. I would have thought I was going mad, if not for the real life madness I had lived the last few months and years.

But it was only Haha, making his presence felt from my wrist. He had survived the Hashima explosion, powered by what few electric joules he could drain from my body.

“Haha?” I spoke to my wrist.

“The one and only,” he said with a tinny, small, crappy speaker voice. “Sorry I’ve been offline for this long, but it did take me some time to pool what little excess power I get from you so I could fire up audio.”

I laughed. “Well it’s good to hear a friendly voice.”

“Somewhat friendly, Blackjack. You trust too easily. I was wondering, why are you here?” he asked.

“Frustrated.”

“Does the woman frustrate you?”

“Women do that to every guy,” I said.

I walked away from the main building, through an open field covered with rough, low brush and dotted with bare trees as far as the eye could see. The sun was still coming up behind me as I crossed the road and moved toward an open field, with a grayish grass that swayed with the light breeze.

Back at the shack, a shadowy figure standing was watching me move away.

“But in any case, that’s not at all what I meant,” he said.

“What are you talking about? What am I doing with her?”

“No,” he said, trying to channel exasperation through the tiny speaker. “Her purpose is pretty clear. I’ve studied you long enough now to know that you crave female accompaniment and approval.”

“That just worked out that way, Haha. I couldn’t leave her to be raped, or worse.”

“I suppose....”

I grabbed a twisted stick and tore it in half, throwing it into the distance.

“Haha, humans need to feel close to each other. We’re social creatures. It’d take a monster like Zundergrub to not feel pity for her. I mean, what kind of man sees her in that predicament and walks away?”

“It helps that she is beautiful,” Haha began.

“Don’t start with that fecundity shit,” I warned him, remembering a speech he had given me on Shard World not so long ago.

“She’s the living dead,” he corrected. “Her body has arrested decay and managed to retain the will and soul that make a human being alive, but she is not alive, Blackjack. You are having sex with a corpse.”

“I thought you didn’t have any sensors or anything.”

He laughed, “I don’t. I need a long list of things before I can even try accessing the mainframe. I’m just going by your conversations. You should have asked me to translate everything she said in French.”

“I kind of know what she was saying. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. I’m stuck in Shitsville with an undead wizard who wants to f*ck my brains out.”

I took maybe ten steps before he responded with “It could be worse,” making me chuckle. “From all your physical responses that I can monitor, she seems to be quite attractive.”

“She’s beautiful,” I admitted.

Again, Haha let that linger in the air as I paced onward, reaching the middle of the wide plain. Ahead was a sparse treeline where the ground gave way to a falling ridge.

“Again, I have to ask: what are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“There’s nowhere in the world that you can hide,” he said finally, as if reading my thoughts. Then again, he was, I was giving him my thoughts and getting them back through his pretend construct. “You can’t stay here with her, pretending the world will just forget about you. Besides, you’re forgetting the show.”

I swallowed hard, thinking back to the old website Haha had kept updated with videos of all of our escapades, images that were plastered all over my trial and used against me. Worst of all were the videos that Haha managed to get of me during the silent moments, staring at Apogee like a school boy with a crush. He made me look pathetic, simian, like a roughshod beast who only knew lust and rage.

Then again, maybe that was not far from the truth.

“Please tell me you’re not recording this shit, Haha.”

“I wish I had the ability. I barely have any processing power. If you can find a car battery out here, maybe I can be of more help. Besides, that’s not the show I’m talking about. You and Zundergrub. It has to happen, Blackjack. People are clamoring for it.”

I laughed.

“No one wants to see me, Haha, ‘cept to beat my ass and put me away. I’m better off out here, out of the way.”

“They won’t forget you. He won’t forget her.”

“She’s a big girl,” I said, tearing some leaves from a nearby bush and letting them fly with the slight breeze.

“If he didn’t have her at Utopia” Haha said, “then it’s likely he tried to find her and failed. He’ll try again, Blackjack. You have to help her.”

“Why?” I laughed, opening my hands to feel the low grassland I was walking through. “Lady Vexille was right, you know.”

“No she wasn’t.”

“She let me fry, man!” I yelled, thankful that we were so far away from the shack.

“It’s likely that....” Haha started, but his voice faded out.

“Haha, you all right?”

“Yes,” he said. “I am short on power. As I was saying, it’s likely that she wanted to but wasn’t allowed.”

“Maybe” I said. “But then there’s the other thing.”

Haha didn’t respond, which meant either his power cell had died or he didn’t understand. In any case, I continued, figuring that talking to myself was probably better than nothing.

“I always thought that she and I shared something special, you know? I know that it doesn’t mean anything to you. It’s all f*cking silly to you, but I honestly thought it wasn’t just me. I thought she was right there with me. But it’s more likely that she didn’t give a shit, that it was all a play to cause a rift between us. It was just like you warned me.”

I shook my head, pushing a small tree over as I passed it.

“See, the way I think of it is like this: if she had needed me, if I had been the hero, and she was the one facing the mind-prison ... no force on f*cking Earth could have stopped me. You understand? Nothing.”

Another tree, this one quite large, fell over after a massive shove tore it from the roots.

“Nothing!”

“There’s another alternative that you’re not figuring, Blackjack,” Haha said, his voice replete with noise as if he was over-amplifying the speaker.

“And what’s that?”

“That you’re over-simplifying the whole thing.”

“F*ck you, man,” I said, picking up the tree I had just felled and tossing it into the distance. Every bone and tendon complained, but the exertion felt good. It was comforting to know that I still had my strength. Claire’s magic really had healed me.

“You’re not that thoughtful,” he continued, not giving a shit about how frustrated he was making me. “If you could only imagine the myriad of emotions that poor woman had to endure.”

“She wouldn’t have let me go down like that,” I said, almost pleading for him to agree. To hate her, like Claire did, was a much easier explanation.

“Maybe she thought it was necessary,” he continued, pushing the virtual dagger deeper into my heart. “Maybe she thought you needed a lesson. Maybe you should ask her.”

“For what, Haha?”

He didn’t respond.

“F*ck her, okay? I mean, I have everything I need right now. I have my freedom, I have....”

I stopped, having walked to the edge of a cliff that lay a hundred yards beyond me. From my position, I couldn’t tell how far down it went, except to guess it was quite a ways. The ground wasn’t entirely stable, so I didn’t bother going to the edge.

“I was there,” he said.

“I know.”

“I saw what she did to you.”

I peered at the cliff edge, then back at the tiny shack, far in the distance.

“I saw what you did to her.”

Suddenly, I started laughing uncontrollably. “Oh, man. You’re not uploading all this crap to your blog thing, are you?”

Haha joined in my laughter. “That’s the only pity. I wish I could record this for future use. We really need to raid an electronics shop for the base components.”

Mr. Haha was probably one of the most amazing works of engineering ever attempted. My theory was that Retcon had originated the A.I. and unleashed it, like a child, out in the world, but I had no way of proving that. In any case, Haha’s mainframe was uploaded in the net somewhere, waiting for his body to be repaired and rebuilt so he could jack in. In the meantime, he was just a mass of metal wires and simple components, running on bare battery power, without the ability to do much more than question my every decision.

“So what would you do, if you were me?” I asked him.

“I don’t have my processing net. I barely have my conversation heuristics. I just figured I’d need them in order to communicate with you. Few humans know Binary.”

I laughed, “Reminds me of when you backed out of that mission in Shard World–”

“I haven’t my memory grid to cross-reference,” he interrupted.

“You don’t remember? The big monster? Some poor bastard had to go down into a big lake and piss it off, then hope it killed the Mist Army. It was kind of a big deal.”

“Yes,” he started. “I have some recollection of the event via bullet-points. Again, I’d need access to the mainframe for full comprehension.”

I let the matter slip, not wanting to tell him how he had shown a robotic version of fear that day. He had told me he was unable to do the mission because of being apart from his mainframe, risking meeting a final end. Basically, he was afraid of dying somehow, and while he was perfectly suited for the task we had at hand, I had to weather the load. As I always did.

Now he couldn’t even give me advice.

“Part of me wants to run to that town, Alice, wherever it is, and get on a plane to the U.S. and try to track down Zundergrub.”

“Regardless of the challenge, you have to try.”

“I don’t know. I doubt I’d get past customs.”

“That’s nothing compared to the matter of how to find Zundergrub,” he said. “And how to do it while having every super from high and low, and every member of law enforcement across the world, looking for you.”

I hadn’t given much thought to how would I go about finding him with everyone after me. I guess my first instinct would be to go to where Apogee was and wait for him to strike. But that’s what I was expected to do, and I’m sure she was in as secluded a spot as they could figure to put her. In fact, I was just drawn to her; it was almost uncontrollable, and it made me sick. Claire had been right: I’d be in a completely different situation if she had helped me. I wouldn’t have gone to jail, wouldn’t be on the run from Zundergrub, wouldn’t have had to endure the ridiculous mind-prison. As if that was commensurate punishment for the crimes I had committed.

“But none of that is important,” he said, his voice sputtering.

“Everything all right?”

“Running out of power. Find me some batteries, will you? Anything will do. Just remember, you can’t hide from who you are, and you’re not safe here.” Haha said, his voice fading.

I looked back at the house, now just a tiny spec, miles in the distance, lit by the rising sun. Before me was a deep drop that opened up to a wide plain, and in the distance I could see another dusty road, this one much larger than the path beside Rabbit Flat, and several large trucks crossing it. Watching the main road, which led to Alice, I was struck by how odd it was that I didn’t really have much of a choice after all.