The Complete Karma Trilogy (34 page)

“I’d like to see the rats,” the writer said. “They carry the plague, don’t they? Seems rather dangerous to have them in a public place like this.”

“Don’t worry,” Darcy assured him. “They keep them in little glass boxes. Whatever diseases they have, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Decay 13

Depressing Story Time

Night was closing
in, and Will was flying in a Helicar, on his way back to Charles’ mansion. An almost beautiful, argyle sunset was happening in the distance, entirely shades of purple, a rare display of color by the sky. Sitting with him were Eric and the others. Their Evaporation Pens were being recharged in the cockpit.

Even though Charles’ Karma Chip was no longer broadcasting a signal, Will wasn’t sure how much that meant. It could have been his imposter that was killed—Will hadn’t been close enough to see. He had taken most of his shots at the group from the height of the Helicar, only using his Grappling Chain to reach the ground when he realized that the remnants of the enemy group would need to be chased on foot.

He had chased a man down into the subway system, in the middle of a large crowd waiting for the train. The man had tried to get away by jumping onto the tracks and running through the tunnels, but Will had caught up with him in time to Evaporate him from the platform. The extended range of his Evaporation Pen was working quite well to his advantage already.

He had then gone back to Karma, who told him to go immediately back to the mansion to investigate, with Eric and the rest, and to kill whoever they might find. Will was personally carrying a large amount of explosives, with which he intended to blow the whole thing up after they were through.

If anyone was still at the mansion, they didn’t have Karma Chips. To Will it didn’t make much of a difference, since he had only been an officer for a short period of time, and was used to not knowing where and when people might appear. But to a cop like Eric, who was quite accustomed to the Karma Map, it must have been unsettling to be up against an unseen enemy.

Presently, Eric was talking to Will, as they waited to arrive at the mansion. “It’s a really interesting time you picked to become a cop, kid. As long as I’ve been with the Government, I’ve never dealt with anything even nearly this exciting. I hope this doesn’t set your expectations too high for the rest of your career, because you’re going to be disappointed.”

Will was curious. “What’s the most exciting thing you’ve dealt with? Before this?”

Eric took a moment to consider. “Like I said, nothing compares. But there was this one time, I’ll tell you about that. Usually, when people are trying to take out their Karma Chip on their own, they do it in their bathroom. We don’t tell them they have a time limit in there before they’re investigated, right? So all things being equal, they think it’s best to have running water, lots of light, and a mess that’s easy to clean up even though they won’t be living there anymore. It’s habit more than anything, really.

“But these people I’m talking about, they were a couple. And instead of going to the bathroom, they were trying to take their Chips out in their bedroom. Which gave them a lot of extra time—I almost feel like they must have known somehow. After about sixteen hours, Karma gets suspicious and sends me in. And it’s one of the first calls I’d done on my own, so I’m nervous as it is.

“I walk in, go to the bedroom. Blood everywhere, disgusting. I feel like vomiting, completely nauseous. They’re both still alive, the girl had been trying to take the guy’s out first, and then they were going to switch, I guess. He wasn’t looking too healthy, had lost a lot of blood, and she still hadn’t gotten very far into his head. I’m surprised she made it as far as she did—she was either not squeamish at all, or absolutely hated the guy, I’m still not sure which. Besides probably being exhausted and frustrated, she’s still pretty healthy by the time I show up.

“So I walk in, take a look. Tell them what I’m there for, and that they’re committing a crime. But I’m confused by the whole thing. I’m supposed to stand somewhere that Karma can see me Evaporate them, but they’re in the bedroom, and they’re on the far side, which was more like ten feet, twice my range. Even more than that, I’m not actually sure the girl committed a felony, because even though she was helping him with his, hers was perfectly intact. I wanted to talk to someone before I did anything, and I didn’t want them to go anywhere.

“We only get two pairs of handcuffs as officers, right? The high-torsion, and the normal. So naturally, out of propriety, even though he’s not looking too hot, I put the high-torsion on him, and cuff him to the bedframe. I go to put the regular ones on her, and she’s looking pretty docile so I’ve got my guard down, but as soon as I’m within arm’s length she hits me in the face, and runs out into the hallway.

“I chase after her, down a staircase. Finally I get a hold of her, and I’m sorry to admit but I hit her in the head a little bit, to get my point across. Put on the handcuffs, walked with her back up the staircase. And on the other side of the hallway, I see a trail of blood leading to the elevator. I have no idea what it could be, because surely the man’s already drained to kosher by now from his skull hole. But the trail leads to their apartment. I go in, and into the bedroom, and I see an entire bed halfway through a wall, with just an arm attached to it. One arm. He struggled with the handcuffs, they did that crazy twisting thing they do, and it sent both the bed and his arm through a wall. And then he walked away.

“The kicker is that I never found him. I went down the same elevator, with the girl. And onto the street outside, but then the trail ended. I look at my Karma Map, and he’s not on that either. So I figure maybe she damaged his Chip after all. And because I have her, I have to give up and let him go. To this day, I don’t know what happened to him.

“Just to see the expression on her face, I tell her that he got away, that he was free now, that he left her behind to save himself, and I congratulated her on her work. Not a single expression on her face, no spite, no smile. Two things I learned—there’s a lot more blood in the human body than you’d ever expect, always remember that. Number two—I don’t know what love is anymore. And I have a wife of my own. I always wonder if he just left her there, if he took his opportunity and ran, even though it cost him a limb, or if they had agreed all along that if they were caught, whoever could give their life for the other, would.

“I don’t know whether they loved each other completely, or not at all. I Evaporated her there, on the street, in front of everyone, simply because I didn’t want to know the answer at that point. And later that night, I went home to my wife, and realized the damage was already done, Evaporating the girl hadn’t helped. I realized that I had all of the same doubts as before, except it was my life, not theirs.

“Perhaps that was a little more personal than you were looking for, but it’s always what I think of, when I reflect back on my career as a police officer. It’s the memory I will always have.”

“Wow, shit,” was all that Will could think to say. Hoping to lighten the mood, Will said, “What about you, Marcus?”

“I had to Evaporate a kid,” Marcus said immediately. “I didn’t want to. And just like Eric, my first reaction was to call it in, because I wasn’t sure about the law, but didn’t think it would possibly be the case that I would have to Evaporate him. And they told me to do it. The kid had waited until his parents were gone, and did it with a pair of pliers. He had just gotten it inserted, the incisions were all still fresh, he just undid the thread and peeled it all back off. I bet his anesthesia was still working, otherwise I don’t understand it at all. But he spent too long doing it, so I was sent. And I Evaporated him, fourteen years old.”

“What the hell,” Will said. “I said exciting, not depressing. Now I’m just sad.”

“Mine was exciting, it just happened to be depressing too,” Eric said.

“I forgot the prompt,” Marcus said. “After Eric’s story, I thought we were doing depressing.”

“And here I finally have a story to replace that one,” Eric continued, “and I can’t even tell anyone about it. Charles Darcy will always be the perfect model, whose life tragically ended too early. It’s a shame, all of it. The loss of a good story, the fact that such a scumbag will forever be idolized by the world when chances are good people like us, who stopped him, will just be forgotten. I wonder how they’re going to cover it all up, what they’re going to say happened to him. They must be thinking about it already, wouldn’t you say?”

“Does it make sense to you?” Will asked. “Why can’t they just say the truth? That he turned out to be a fake. What damage could it really do? I don’t see large rebellions happening, or people doubting the value of Karma, just because of that. We all know we need Karma. Well, most of us. The well-adjusted.”

Eric said, “Karma forgive me for hazarding such a practical-minded guess, but here I go. It’s more than just the fact that they’d be losing such a strong role model. Everyone wants to think they can get rich. It’s the implications, it goes to show you that you can be evil to the core and still earn all of the money of being good. Maybe the general public wouldn’t consciously reach that conclusion, but I bet a part of them, subconsciously, would realize it.

“A lot of people don’t separate the Good Work from the good intention. And that’s the perfect misunderstanding, that’s just the way we want it. Accidental sincerity in a majority of the world is more valuable than the truth, at least as far as I’m concerned. Because the first one gives us harmony, and the second one doubt, and I feel like it’s objectively the case that harmony is far more valuable, whatever its cause.”

Will only considered it silently. A naïve part of him still thought that everyone, given the truth, would make the right decision, that the world was fundamentally good. But already he had found reasons to doubt that, being a police officer. Charles Darcy. He had spoken face to face with a reason to doubt.

When they finally landed, they spread out across the mansion, their team of five. They all kept their shoes on. Will went straight to the bathroom, where he had failed to find anything before. Eric went to the bedroom. Marcus was in the kitchen, looking out into the backyard, and Steve and John were elsewhere, overturning furniture and tearing tapestries from the walls.

Will wanted desperately to find what he had missed before. He tore the toilet from the floor, smashed it open with his bare hands, and threw the pieces of porcelain out the window. The glass shattered. He did the same with the cabinets, the towel rack, the porcelain tub. He broke everything into small pieces, and when he found nothing he threw it out the window. When the entire bathroom was stripped, he even tore out the drywall, but found nothing. “It’s just a bathroom,” he said to himself.

A voice responded. “Go to the backyard.” It was Karma’s voice, somehow speaking to him from within his own head.

Even though he knew, he asked, “Who is this?”

“You know, Will Spector. It’s Karma. I’m tired of being in a tower, counting on others to do my work for me. Be my agent, be my body. And throw away your Karma Map, I will tell you everything you need to know. Help me with this.”

As insane as it seemed to Will, he just accepted it. He asked, “What’s in the backyard?”

“I don’t know, and that’s the problem. There are holes in my Map, gaps in my knowledge, and that’s a problem. We need to fill those holes, Will Spector.”

Will placed his Karma Map on the ground, crushed it with his mechanical foot, and then vaulted through the broken window. He ran to the back of the house, without a moment of hesitation. “It’s hard to see,” Will said, peering around into the darkness. The moon wasn’t out that night. “Is this really helpful?”

“Some detail is better than nothing, and I only need a little bit of detail. Go out past those trees.”

Will continued forward at a sprint, into the thick brush.

“Look around more,” Karma said.

He moved his head back and forth constantly, not because he was actually looking for anything, but just so that Karma would have the images. Eventually he broke through to a clearing, in which there were tents and buildings.

“They were living here,” Will said. “Hundreds of them.” He went through the tents, the temple, the control station, all the way to the farm, where animals were still wandering around listlessly in the dark. “A little, isolated community. I can’t believe it.” And to Karma, he said, “Was there anything else you wanted to see.”

“I want to see you destroy it, every piece. Use your Evaporation Pen. Then go back to the mansion, and blow it up. Be quick, I need you to do something else after all of this. I don’t see anybody present, in the images you are sending. They are either gone, or hiding. Either way, this place should not exist.”

Will took out his Pen, and Evaporated everything, starting at the farm. He Evaporated a cow, or at least what looked vaguely like a cow. He Evaporated the carefully tended rows of withered plants, the tents, the temple. The Evaporation Pen worked surprisingly well on inanimate objects—everything burst into the same billowing clouds of particles, no matter what it had been before. The walls of the temple were no different than the cows in the field. Until there was nothing left standing. It was exhilarating for him—for a long time, an unhealthy hatred towards Charles, and everything associated with him, had been building up inside of Will, and he was finally able to release a part of it. He could see the man’s works disintegrate, with his own eyes, with Karma behind them.

He went back to the mansion when he had finished. The others were still destroying things with reckless abandon inside. “Find anything?” he asked to Steve and John, when he found them.