In the Arms of Lachiga: Stories

Where All Roads Meet

Where All Roads Meet

Jed Sodexho listened to the buzz of the Net, felt the rush of neurostims rise from the quiet dark to flood his universe.

The old city, a stagnant sea of rust-colored industrial complexes and mostly abandoned skyscrapers, crackled and folded into being all around him. Its vastness was dizzying, although the distant colossus of Lachiga that loomed among the artificial clouds kilometers away would’ve demanded the attention of even the most well-traveled of offworlders.

By the time the environment finished rendering, starlight glittered in the black skies above, and Jed could smell the pungent stench of noxious fumes belched skyward from the handful of factories that remained operational throughout the digital replica-city. He stood between two seemingly endless rows of antiquated train cars and cargo trailers, the earth tone paint faded and peeling. The tall, jagged containers cut a deep metal frame about the rectangular length of night sky.

Something whirred past overhead, the loud thrumming of gyro-propellers giving it away: a security drone. It flew circles around him, and then stopped to hover in front of his face.

The array of camera lenses winked in succession, each tiny eye whining as it adjusted to regard him from a different electronic vantage point.

Sodexho, the machine sent, do you wish to continue with the application process?

“Yes,” Jed said. He’d had weeks to consider his choice. “I’m in.”

Confirmed, the drone subvocalized. We shall conduct the next phase of your initiation here, in cyberspace, for maximum secrecy.

“Just point the way.”

The machine fluttered its gyromotors and drifted onward down the corridor of dust- and grime-caked metal. There looked to be no way out in sight. Explain, if you will, your desire to serve our agency.

Jed sighed, felt the sickening warmth of disgust wash over him. “Sasha, my fiancee. She died a couple months ago… My world is empty, now. I need something to put me back in control, something to grant me purpose. Shadowplay can give me that.”

Say nothing of our organization! the drone urged. Especially its name. The Net is prone to leaks—eyes and ears lie all about, waiting to catch the faintest whisper. Discretion is priority one. It’s vital to the keeping of Disarmament stability.

“I understand.” He looked down, studied his avatar’s polished shoes as he skidded across the pebbly, copper dirt underfoot.

Do you feel you are qualified to hunt and neutralize those who would bring back the stain of ballistic warfare to the nations of Earth?

Jed grunted through a smile. “My record in the combat sims indicates I sure as hell do.”

And what of the sacrifice necessary? You understand, of course, that your memories will be ours to safeguard. They’ll no longer be accessible to you.

“I was informed.”

The machine rotated, as if to scan his face, measure his resolve. Perhaps also to check for the truthfulness of his responses. And you agree to this condition? it subvocalized.

“Yes.”

Fear, and the careful manipulation of it, is our greatest leverage for ensuring peace throughout the globe. You, Jed, will be wiped clean of such burdens. You will know no fear, nothing that might prove a hindrance to your greater judgment in the field.

Somewhere between cowardice and insanity, Jed supposed, lay a healthy medium. What exactly would limitless courage mean? Suicide? And moreover, what was fear, anyway, but the most key instinct of the surviving animal?

“And when I decide to retire?” he wondered.

Unfortunately, that won’t be your decision to make. You will have no memory of your former self, save for what we elect to tell you. Assassination and reconnaissance will consume your world—your identity. You’ll have no use for such fantasies. Few operatives live to achieve such extravagance as old age.

Forgetting all about Sasha, about the night he’d come home to find her skull split open at the back, blood and cerebrospinal fluid spilling out into a pool of death about her soft ocher flesh, seemed a divine recompense for the pain that had ravaged his soul for so long. The pain of loss, of having his best friend steal his love away and then destroy it, all for the lousy price of a failed neural implant upgrade.

Lurking silently in the darkness, killing those soulless few who would sow the seeds of war to turn a profit, would do nothing to quell such hurt. But Shadowplay was offering a total erasure of his sorrow, an escape.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m ready to begin.”