Frightened Boy - Scott Kelly (ebook reader with android os .txt) 📗

each rifle. It was too easy because they were so slow. I had their side arms out of their belts before they could turn around. I shot them both in the head.” Escher talked in quick staccato bursts as the memory of his first kills haunted him.

“So you’d never killed anyone before?” I asked. “This was your first time?”

“I just—I knew what had to happen. They couldn't possibly kill me because they were a part of me. They are only put in the way to scare me, more and more of them as time passes. I think the escalating threat is typical for a dream—the faster you run, the slower you go. The more of them I kill, the more there are the next time. I have to plan everything very carefully because of this.

“But ‘fighting’ these men, if it can be called that—everything was so slow—every motion I made was amplified 100 times. It’s my reality. It wasn’t impressive, and it wasn’t even fun—no more so than using an eraser on a sketch.

“I lost my temper initially. I just wanted to wake up. I didn’t want to hear what anyone had to say and didn’t believe it could be useful. I walked down the hallway, out of the medical ward, and killed three more guards on my way out. I shot a pregnant woman in her hospital bed, right in the head. It didn't matter…she didn't matter because I made her up.

“They shot back at me, but they never come close to hitting me. I was only fighting myself, so there could be only one victor.

“I killed them all. Blood made it hard to walk. Every footprint looked like a wax seal. I found all the blood they’d taken from me, in a freezer. They had taken plenty while I was unconscious. I took it back with me. It was taken before I woke up to this new reality. When I re-inject it, for a minute, reality becomes like water—because of the recursion. Without it, sometimes now it is more like chiseling brick.

“I also found some old items from my past life, things that either traveled with me or that were so important I had to recreate them. My knife, my shoes, my headphones,my compass, my radio, my cap. I even found a small white cat, a pet I’d kept when I was a child. My very first pet.”

“You gve that stuff to—“
“Whisper took the cat, Lux took the headphones and shoes. Sam took the compass, Mal took the knife. These artifacts made them extensions of my will. I thought the artifacts also made them loyal, but I was wrong. I am beset on all sides.

"What was wrong with me? What would cause my mind to make a world like this? I had to find myself. Everything was a clue. Everything was telling me something. I couldn’t have imagined how expansive the world I’d created was. Of course, the more I try to find that out, the larger the world gets.”

“So you think you might have been better off if you’d stayed in the hospital?” I asked, trying to piece together some sort of reality in his version of events.

“Maybe,” Escher said. “It’s hard to say. You can’t imagine how mad it has driven me, knowing that just by exploring with thoughts the world I’ve created I might be making the problem worse.

“Eventually, after I killed everyone, I left the military base. On my way out, I found a large bunker built into the ground. I was still looking for significance in everything, so I searched for some in that and found it in spades. It was an old nuclear silo. Strange that it looked so well preserved. The equipment seemed to be functioning. I knew that this, being one of the first sights my mind created, must be important. There must be some reason for a nuclear missile. I never forgot it.

“But I didn’t act on it. I didn’t know there was any world out there to destroy, yet. I spent years in the Red just trying to piece things together, interviewing every rock and every bird, hoping they could give me some clue as to what was wrong with me.

“I learned that Banlo Bay was where most of the fear came from. I heard rumors of Little Brother’s existence.

“I realized I was not entirely alone. I was simply broken into many parts. The terror in me, the weakness in me, the evil in me were all Little Brother.

“I learned more about Little Brother. I left a path of destruction in my wake, and I was merciless in my hunt for knowledge. I wasn’t interested in dicking around on this plane of existence. I just wanted to get out of here as quick as I could. The more I kill—or erase, as I like to think of it—the simpler things are. If I kill Lux right now, that idea and concept will be gone from this world. The more people I kill, the simpler the pattern is. Hopefully, if I just simplify things enough, like by killing everyone in Banlo Bay, I will be able to see what is wrong and fix it,” he said with some finality.

“Sounds crazy,” I admitted, “but I realize it’s pointless for me to tell you that. But since I think that, it must mean a part of you doubts yourself, right? Or else I wouldn’t be here doubting you now,” I said.

“True,” Escher said. “It’s why I tried to surround myself with people who seemed important to me, people who were meaningful in my personal life before I became trapped here.”

“So is their pattern erased forever then?” I asked him. I choked on my words, remembering Erika.

“I don’t know,” Escher said. “Maybe they will be recreated within this image, or maybe they are erased forever. I don’t intend to stick around long enough to find out.”

My mind swam.

There was a long pause as Escher continued making eye contact with the stars, and finally, he spoke again. “As I first started exploring Banlo Bay and the area around it, my reputation grew. Someone was fighting the fear. Whisper and I organized people. I figured that if every average ‘person’ is like a cell of my brain, the more I can get on my side, the better. We dressed up like Strangers because Strangers are to be feared, and that fear gave us the strength we needed to move about freely. We wore hats with huge brims so Little Brother couldn’t see us from above, from his cameras.

"The Secret Society of Strangers was born. I met the others—Grundel, Mal, Sam, and granted them the items I brought with me from the place I entered this world. I have a last vial of my own blood here in my boot. I began plotting against Little Brother, recognizing him as the source of the disquiet in my mind. But then I was betrayed, and Little Brother won the battle for Banlo Bay. But all that time, I never forgot about what I saw there in that missile silo from my birthplace. It always remained an option, albeit a brutal one. Like giving myself a lobotomy. But still, crude as it is, it’s my last option. That is Epoch. I am going to find this missile silo and launch its contents at the city.”


23. Metamorphosis

At last, Escher leaned his head back and closed his eyes. I’d call it "sleep," but I’m not sure that was something Escher did.

I wasn’t sure what to make of Escher’s story. I was real. I had a history and a free will. I didn’t think I’d ever change my mind about that, no matter how much proof Escher seemed to have. I wasn’t a figment of anyone’s imagination.

Lux and I looked at each other, and while I’m no good at picking sentiment up out of other’s eyes, I think we were in agreement: We couldn’t let Escher destroy Banlo Bay. There had to be some morality, some right and wrong in this world, and surely killing millions of people qualified as “wrong,” even if it killed Little Brother in the process.

Even if it means killing Little Brother? Killing Whisper? Avenging Erika.

Okay, maybe. I don’t know. Shit, I don’t know.

*

I woke up with the sunlight beaming into my eyes.

As I squinted past the fire in my pupils, I saw Lux’s form standing over me, offering me a hand up. “You should never sleep facing east,” he said. His hand felt warm, and the simple advice was comforting.

“What’s the situation today?” I asked, groggily rubbing the palms of my hands against my eyes, clearing the colorful spots from my vision.

“West. Today, we head west. Epoch is west.”

“How do you know?” Lux asked.

“We’ll get there today. I know because we aren’t really going to it. It’s coming to us.”

*

We rode in the bumpy jeep for hours, until the sun crossed over our heads and raced ahead of us to the west. Sometime into the afternoon, we spotted our first helicopter. It hovered nearly out of view just to the south, a black vulture circling slowly as we sped toward the first place Escher could remember. I pointed them out to Lux, but neither man cared. They’d deal with them when they had to.

Finally, after hours of driving along broken highways, Escher turned off onto a set of city streets hairy with green stalks and finally into a path only marked by the width of the gap in the trees that walled it.

Now the helicopter was joined by its flock, and they sped ahead of us and out of sight.

The channel of trees opened up into a spacious set of hills that rolled out untamed for miles. Dotted on one of the hills was a set of stone structures that stretched defiantly up away from the hungry earth. The place was ruined, destroyed, and ancient like the castles of antiquity I’d see on television as a child. It was burned to the ground so that only the stone structures still stood; the roofs mostly gone.

“This is where I came into this world,” Escher announced.

When we could make out the details of the old military compound, we saw the helicopters had landed just ahead of us, a couple hundred yards. Men were stepping out of them, in formation, around the center of the base, forming a perimeter around the ruins. Even from 200 yards away, I could see the black and white uniforms of the Co-Intel-Pro soldiers.

Escher slowed the jeep to a halt a few hundred yards away from the ruined fortress. “Get out,” he ordered as he stepped from the vehicle.

I did so, feeling the dry grass crunch beneath my feet.

“Duck,” Escher said softly.

“Wha—?”

Lux kicked my legs out from under me. I heard a gunshot. He fell with me to the ground, and the two of us lay on our backs, staring up at the sun.

“Snipers,” Lux groaned.

I could see maybe twelve or fifteen of them from various perches and positions around a small bunker that stood only a few feet up from the ground and led down into it. Across from it was the military base—or hospital, I suspected—that