Intentional Dissonance (12 page)

The next few seconds unfold slowly, as if everything is happening under water. The man in black walks past a guard dishing up pasta salad and without looking, One Eye reaches out one arm to snap the guard’s neck and his other takes the now dead guard’s weapon. He now has two guns and he makes them dance in his hands backwards and forwards across the room. Shot after shot finds its home on a uniform somewhere in the mess hall; guards dive for cover under tables as Edward roars and lunges forward, his massive body slamming through chairs and counters like they were made of balsa wood. Jon imagines there are more of them than there actually are and he aims the illusion at half of the guards, who begin to desperately kill each other in a fight for survival. Edward is hit in the good arm by a stray bullet but it’s a clean shot and goes all the way through; it barely even slows him down. But it does piss him off. One Eye is cornered by fire from three of the guards shooting from behind the counter. He leaps toward them and spins through the air, shooting as he falls to the ground, hitting two guards with one bullet as he lands and stabbing the third guard with a blade that appears from somewhere in his black clothing. Only two guards remain and they’re busy desperately trying to strangle each other.

“Are you doing that?” asks Edward.

“Yes,” says Jon. One Eye turns to him and his remaining eye goes wide.

“It’s pretty impressive,” says Edward to One Eye.

“I usually just use it for magic tricks,” says Jon.

“Tell me, Jon, and I know we’ve only just met each other, relatively speaking,” says Edward, amongst the carnage in the mess hall.

“Yes?” asks Jon.

“Are you a clever person?” asks Edward.

“I believe I am as clever as you are a tree,” says Jon. He’s doing his best to not be offended by Edward’s gruff manner. He also feels that it is best not to be offended while fighting for one’s life.

“So why can’t we just use your illusion magic-gifty-thingy to walk out of here and make everyone think we’re guards?” asks Edward.

“I’ve never tried anything like that,” says Jon, “but it’s worth a shot.”

At that moment, guards burst open the doors, guns trained on them, fingers on triggers. No one moves but the three of them tense, ready to fight.

“Which way did they go?” yells the commander at the front. Edward raises his limp wooden arm towards the door they came through.

“Right, you lot get to the ER and get patched up, the rest of you, with me,” says the guard in charge. They storm past the three of them, not paying them any heed.

“I’m glad you’re here with me, Edward, you’re quite clever,” says Jon.

“I’m glad I’m here with you too, Jon,” says Edward. One Eye sighs and starts walking. They follow him out into another long white corridor, the red emergency lights still flashing but the sirens are suddenly silenced.

“I guess everyone who needs know that we’ve escaped, knows,” says Edward.

“I guess so,” says Jon. They find an elevator, One Eye fiddles with wires in the control panel and after the doors slide open seconds later, they jump inside. The elevator starts to go down. Jon doesn’t turn to face the glass wall to the outside world, in case there’s an army parked outside waiting for them. He doesn’t want to know.

“Next stop, basement parking,” says an electronic voice.

The three of them breathe heavily from exhaustion and stress, as if they’re trying to breathe as much air as they can before they die. The elevator music plays just for them. The doors slide open and the basement appears barren, save for one Peace Carriage and a guard busy polishing it. He turns to them.

“Do you lot know what’s going on upstairs?” asks the guard.

“Yes,” says Edward. “We’ve escaped.” He picks up the guard by the foot and hurls him across the parking bays and he hits the opposite wall with a sickening wet crunch. They get inside the Peace Carriage. One Eye opens a panel on the interior wall and fiddles with the wires. Nothing.

“Come on!” yells Edward and One Eye scowls at him, still fiddling. Edward pushes him out the way and starts punching one of the control panels. The mechanical horse at the front of the carriage comes to life and they jerk forward, galloping hard towards the giant garage doors.

“What about the door?” says Jon. One Eye looks at him.

“He says ‘Fuck the door,’” says Edward.

One Eye pushes some more buttons in what remains of the control panel and the rather impressive arsenal at the disposal of the Peace Ambassadors makes itself known. A plume of fire launches from the mouth of the mechanical horse and the door melts away before them. Metal drips around them as they burst through, bullets from sentry guns outside bouncing off the hardened shields of the Peace Carriage. And then they’re through, into the deserted streets below the United Government compound.

“I know you can hear me, Jon,” says the doctor.

Chapter 14

Now

A team of scientists in white lab coats and Peace Ambassadors in full body armour knock down the door of an abandoned apartment, somewhere on the poor side of NewLand, which is most sides. There, they find the resting, almost tranquil dead bodies of a family. One woman, two young children. She killed herself and them; a bottle of brake fluid lies empty nearby. She kept track of every day leading up to it in her diary. One of the scientists picks it up and pages through it, considers it for a moment and then puts it in a clear plastic bag.

“Can we use it?”

“Yes we can.”

“Look for more.”

Racing away from the United Government building in the stolen Peace Carriage, Jon looks around wildly, trying to find the source of the doctor’s voice. There’s a screen mounted on one of the panels inside the carriage and the doctor’s face leers out of it. Jon wonders if he reached out, punched the doctor in the face, would he feel it? One Eye picks up a keyboard and begins to type furiously.

‘Don’t respond. He’s broadcasting to every screen in every Peace Carriage and in every room in the building. If you respond, he’ll know exactly where you are.’

Jon reads what One Eye’s written and then nods.

“Where are you going, Jon? Home to Michelle? To your ghost?” the doctor’s voice challenges him.

“Who’s Michelle?” asks Edward.

Jon ignores him and stares intently at the screen, straight into the doctor’s eyes.

“You do know you’re living with a ghost, don’t you, Jon? My men had trouble figuring it out but once I’d gone over the video footage and other surveillance material we’ve been gathering on you for the past few years, I worked it out. I worked out why she kept disappearing when you weren’t looking. It’s because you make her, Jon. It’s because she’s only in your head. It must be nice living with a dream girl, Jon. A perfect girl. A girl who accepts you no matter what. Who never expects you to change. So romantic. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself, when was the last time you had a fight with Michelle you didn’t win? Does that sound normal to you, Jon? The girl you love is one of your own illusions. And she’s such a good illusion, she even fooled you—” The doctor’s voice is starting to get garbled as city feeds interrupt the broadcast.

It takes Jon time but each word from the doctor slowly filters through. He knows that the doctor might kill billions, but he doesn’t lie. Jon thinks back to every memory he has of Michelle and for the first time, he starts to consider how she always sleeps if he has nothing to say to her, how she’s always awake when he does. How she fades away into the periphery when he goes to Emily’s or the Cabaret.

“We need to go back to my apartment,” says Jon.

“That’s the first place they’ll look for you,” says Edward.

“I don’t care. I need to go home to Michelle.”

Just then, the screen flickers back on, picking up a signal again and on the screen is a low-res video of Jon walking around his apartment while Michelle sleeps. The doctor’s obviously sending this, messing with his head. He gets into bed and after a few seconds, he’s asleep and slowly, Michelle fades away. She just disappears from the video.

The truth slowly settles on Jon’s heart like an anchor.

And his heart dies. And every fibre of his being suddenly seems to be screaming for him to hang himself, like the illusion in the cell.

“No,” whispers Jon. He reaches for the transmit button on the panel, to yell at the doctor, to confront him, to tell him that Michelle is real. One Eye smacks his hand away. Jon struggles and One Eye grabs him and holds him in a choke hold to stop him from giving them away. Deep down, Jon knows that the love of his life is a figment of his imagination. A ten year long dream.

“What the hell is this? What’s he talking about? What dream girl?” asks Edward as One Eye restrains Jon.

“She’s all I fucking have,” says Jon through One Eye’s choke hold. Jon’s heart finds some kindness; it overrules his brain and makes him pass out. The last thing he hears is the doctor’s garbled voice slowly rising to a scream.

“I will find you, Jon! I will find you! I’m coming fo—”

Chapter 15

NOW

Inside a Massively Multiplayer Online role playing game, ten years ago.

What time are we supposed to be raiding?

Around 10 pm local time, here in New York, not sure what time it’ll be for you in the UK.

I’ll work it out. Everything cool?

Yip but I think there’s some kind of bug, the entire New Zealand clan, then all of the Ozzies and a whole bunch of the Russians just dropped off the server one after another.

That’s weird.

Yeah, I’ve never heard of a bug that rolls across the planet, usually everyone drops off the server at once or everything’s fine.

The admins are usually quite good with this sort of thing, they’ll sort it out quickly.

Yeah. Fuck, Sweden just went. WTF?

That’s so fucking strange. Hold on, there’s a knock at the door, I’ll be right back.

5 minutes ago.

10 minutes ago.

Dude, are you still there?

I’m going to cancel tonight. There’s no way we can get organised if the server’s going to fuck-out every five seconds, none of the other clans have come back online. I’m going to take some screenshots of what happened so I can send them to the admins tomorrow. Haha, now there’s a knock at my door. Freaky. Will catch you tomorrow.

Ten years later, Jon stays unconscious and dreams as Edward and One Eye swerve the stolen Peace Carriage through the streets, outrunning the collected forces of the United Government. In his dream, Jon’s driving a convertible. The sun is beautiful and warm on his skin. He doesn’t know why, but he’s going to a wedding. He pulls up and parks just off the dirt road outside a hotel; a few metres away, the sea rushes the land against some nearby cliffs, again and again. He goes inside.

“Name, sir?”

“Jon Salt.”

The words feel so strange. The powdered wig on the concierge bobs from left to right over the guest list as he scans for the name of the lithe young man in front of him before nodding and waving him in with his tablet.

Inside, four young ladies play invisible violins, their hands hovering in the air where the strings once were on these mongrel children of Theramins and synthesizers. He looks down at the wedding invitation in his hand. The date reads 21/11. That’s the date The End happened, still eight days away. Or nearly ten years ago.

Jon suddenly feels sick. Edward swerves the Peace Carriage around a particular tricky corner.

Jon sees Emily again, for what feels like the first time that day, at her brother’s wedding. He’s been told they’ll be having it at a Renaissance Halo Hotel and he doesn’t expect much out of the event. If Halo Hotels, hotels set in different holographic realities, still exist, then this is after The End but why is everything so different, Jon asks himself, under his breath, trying to win a fight against a dream. Where are the starving children? Where’s the decay? Where’s the darkness?

He does his best to hold on to where he is and to remember what the score is, what’s happened, what hasn’t happened yet.

Emily isn’t a drug dealer yet. She’s just a girl. No. A young adult. But their lives were never like this. Never normal.

And when he really looks at her, her face hits him with all the speed of thought and memory. Even across the room, he can see her pupils dilate as they meet his.

Forgoing any pretenses, he makes his way through the crowd, trying to not make eye contact with anyone in case they remember him and try to draw him into a conversation, a conversation he’s had a thousand times before, for all he knows. Now he’s afraid he’s in a loop, one of the ghosts doing the same thing over and over again, never remembering that he’s done it all before. He doesn’t know why he remembers and no one else does. No that wasn’t true; sometimes they remember but only for a moment, then back to wherever, however they were supposed to be. What scares him more than anything is the idea that he also forgets. Maybe he just didn’t, couldn’t know when that happened. He’d been told once that you were a new person every time you woke up. Maybe he just thinks he remembers. Fear tiptoed through his mind.