Chapter 21 - Descent Into Madness

Dear Jim,

I miss you. Life is so lonely without you. I wake up in my bed, and when you're not next to me, I cry. My dad misses you. He talks about you a lot. It's hard living in this big, dark house without you. I don't leave my room much. I wish you would come home to me. I've missed you for a long time, and you coming home means we could start fresh. I still want you in my life. I miss your touch. I miss feeling you spoon me before bed. I need you, Jim. Life doesn't feel right without you. Please, come back.

Love, always,

Molly.

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Jim woke to the trumpeting of a bugle. He made his bed as quickly as he could, corners on the mattress laser-straight, no wrinkles in the sheets. Every wrinkle was 5 push-ups. He straightened his uniform, pulled on his familiar combat boots, and tucked his pristine, scratchy white tee-shirt into his thick khaki fatigues. Base-life was hard, rigid, and boring, but there was something to the austerity and regiment that was deeply comforting. He pulled out his primitive handheld communicator device from the cargo pocket on his leg and leafed through his messages. Molly's name jumped out at him, stopping him dead in his tracks.

“Sir!” two privates almost ran headlong into him but stopped and snapped to attention with a salute.

“At ease,” he could barely mumble as he skip-stepped and briskly made his way to the garage.

“Jim,” he shook his head and looked up from his communicator to see Tomah about to climb into a jeep. “I'll drive, you seem distracted.”

“Oh,” he shook his head again, his brain still just as foggy as it had been for weeks. “Yeah, thanks, I need to reply to this,” he shook his phone.

“Oh, that's fine,” he climbed into the driver's seat. Jim hopped the door and vaulted into shotgun.

“You'll never understand why I have to do what I have to do,” Jim typed out. “You're the only thing on this planet that I care about, and why I wake up every morning and endure this nightmare. I have to save us from this insanity. Put an end to this so we can be together forever. Afterward, we can be together. I will never leave your side, again. But until then, I have to put a stop to this madness.”

“You've been very absorbed in something deeply troubling to you,” Tomah said after he noticed Jim drop his phone slightly.

“It's just...” he trailed off and shook his head again, brain still hazy, rereading the email.

“You're out of balance,” he said again. His voice was much softer and distant than he remembered.

“Balance?” Jim looked up from his phone and met his penetrating green-white eyes.

“I am not a man of spirit,” he looked at him square, the jeep eating up field and forest with alacrity. “But everyone, within them, has battles. The forces of your soul are out of balance. One side has too much power.”

Jim furrowed his brow, “Battles?”

“Battles. Self-perpetuation versus morality. Pride versus hubris. Passion versus logic,” he gripped his ponytail and flipped it to a side, the thick black locks spilling down over his immense shoulder. “We all face battles. If you are not conflicted, then you are not pondering a topic deeply enough, or you lack enough empathy to understand that with which you battle.”

“So, you're conflicted?” Jim gazed upon his placid face, neutral, but warm.

“I am constantly in conflict,” a peaceful smile pulled deep furrows into the smooth skin around his eyes. “I will often spend days in meditation trying to become enlightened on a subject only to find myself farther away from understanding than I was when I started.”

“So, how do you carry on? If you're so conflicted, how do you get anything done?” Jim was transfixed on the tranquility of his face, his eyes seeming to ignore him completely, fixated on the road ahead.

“What is productivity? It is nothing but an illusion,” he furrowed his brow slightly, head unturned. “Life, all of this is an illusion.”

“Wait, like a computer program?” Jim furrowed his brow and gazed skeptically.

“Maybe, that's a fair analogy. 'Brain in a vat' Theory, as it's called, but not exactly what I meant,” he turned his head and smiled briefly. “No, I mean that the future has not yet happened and the past has already happened. We toil under this delusion of productivity because we make the false prediction that our future will be better if we are productive because we were productive at some point in the distant past and it paid off in the near past. The truth, however, is that we bumble from one random experience to the next, and our previous experience has little bearing on our ability to predict the future.”

“I don't think I agree,” Jim furrowed his brow again, and pulled his mouth to the side, both hands still on his communicator, dropped in his lap. He locked his eyes in the middle distance and gently let the images of the trees flow by him. “When I was a kid, I grabbed the stem of a rose my dad had brought home for my mom. One of the thorns stabbed me in the hand. I think I can make a fairly safe prediction that if I grab another rose by the stem, it will stab my hand.”

“Ah, perfectly logical,” Tomah took a hand off the wheel and pointed at Jim with a nod, “and also completely wrong. Did you know that there are, in fact, many species of rose that do not have thorns? Let me simplify it farther. I have just flipped a coin and received 10 ups in a row. If you were a gambling man, what would you say the odds of me flipping a downs is?”

“I'd say,” Jim touched a finger to his chin contemplatively, “that a ten-run of ups is extremely rare, and an 11 would be pretty preposterous. I'd day that without doubt, the next flip would be a downs.”

“And, yet again, you would be wrong,” Tomah smiled and pointed again. “You see, each flip is a discrete flip. So, there is equal chance that I will flip an up or a down. As with the rose, each attempt you make at grabbing the stem of a rose will net you an equivalent chance that it will or will not be thorned.”

“So, I should just go ahead and grab the stem, and accept that a certain portion of the time I'll get stabbed?” Jim pulled his chin into his neck and scrunched his nose indignantly.

“No, you miss the point,” Tomah frowned a bit. “It is not about using the past as a means to predict the future, but instead to use the past experience to inform our ability to more accurately predict the outcomes of choices we make in the present.”

“So, instead of just grabbing the rose, I should check the stem to make sure there aren't any thorns, first,” Jim pinched his mouth tight and raised his eyebrows.

“Exactly!” Tomah drove a finger into the air in front of him and then elbow-checked Jim in the shoulder. “Now you get it! Each moment of our existence is a discrete flip of the coin. We cannot predict the outcome, and sometimes, despite our best information gathering, we may grab the stem and still get stabbed.”

“I think I get it,” Jim shook his head, a little bit of fog clearing away. “But, let's say I were presented with a very tough decision. One is highly predictable, but the potential fallout of such a choice would devastate me. The other path is highly questionable, but cogent enough, and the potential payout of following it up could be immense.”

“That's not an answer I can give you, Jim,” Tomah maintained his sagely gaze. “You must use your past and assess the outcomes. My only recommendation is that you make the choice for who's fallout you could most easily deal with should things not go as planned.”

“So, it's less about which has the better outcome, and more about which one wouldn't ruin me?” Jim pulled his eyebrows down and cocked his head quizzically.

Tomah just patted a single finger to the tip of his nose. “You and I are just machines, Jim. All humans are. We take information in, process it through the complex computational machine of our brain, and then spit out a result,” his yellow-white eyes shimmered. “You, as you exist, as a self-aware entity, are only a part of that complex computational engine. Many things are fighting within you to control this piece of meat you call a body. Your self-awareness is just one of those things. It's why we drill relentlessly. It's why our Augs work the way they do” he tapped his finger to his temple. “One of those 'things,' arguably the most important of them all, is self-preservation. Do not attempt to control your body. Influence it. Do not fight your mind. Accept it. Do not fear choice. Decide.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Jim curled his lips against his teeth in and furrowed his brow.

“It is not,” Tomah shrugged effortlessly. “It is indeed the most difficult thing to do. To overcome the obsession with the self, to ignore the screams of society, to deny the impulses of instinct. To transcend the chains of this corporeal, imperfect existence and achieve a state of enlightened awareness, a state beyond our mortal suffering. It is what everyone seeks, and so few ever attain.”

“How do you know so much?” Jim sat in awe, eyes wide.

“We're here, Jim” Tomah leaned his head forward. His eye twitched, in what might have been a wink, cheek creased with a wry smile. “I need to continue my research on the DPRC's Diety-core, Siddhartha, with Toni. If you get a chance, you're doing live drills today, yes? You should ask Vishnu about him. It would be most instructive.”

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“This rudimentary form of communication is stifling,” Vishnu came through. Jim jumped over a large rock oucropping into a barrel roll and then began climbing a steep mountain face. “When shall we again be able to commune minds?”

“Soon,” Jim said aloud, “Magister Rinolado said I can't re-Aug until he can be certain there will be no negative effects from it.”

“It severely hinders my teaching,” Vishnu replied, his voice now coming to Jim's ears and not his head.

“About Siddhartha,” Jim carried on. He reached the peak of the cliff and pulled himself into the lush jungle. Over his shoulder he could hear Annie Oakley in tow.

“He is I,” Vishnu replied.

“No, I mean, the Core. The one in DPRC's posession,” Jim reached out and helped Annie Oakley over the ledge.

“He is I,” Vishnu repeated. “He is an incarnation of me.”

“So you were built from the same platform?” Jim questioned. He pulled out his rifle. He was feeling exhausted from the exertion. His sync ratios had yet to recover from the de-Augging.

“If that is the easiest way for your mortal mind to comprehend,” Vishnu sounded dismissive. “I manifested myself into Siddhartha, instilling him with my Divinity.”

“What is he capable of, should I have to fight him?” Jim trained his automatic laser rifle forward and signaled to Annie Oakley to follow.”

“He is not much for doing harm,” Vishnu scoffed. “His power lies in his pacifism.”

“So, he doesn't fight much?” Jim and Annie Oakley wended their massive bodies uphill through the tall trees of the Wild. He felt the fatigue start to set in, each footfall slowly sapping his strength.

“Quite the contrary,” Vishnu scoffed again. “he is, as I am, a Preserver. Sometimes, great harm must be done in the short-term to ensure no harm is done in the long term. His mind is disciplined, his body trained, and his technique martialed. The warrior-monks inspired by him were legend, feared far and wide, assuming the aspects of animal savageness. One would be quite unlucky to find themselves on his bad side.”

“Good to know,” Jim pointed his rifle at a patch of tree outlined in blue on his HUD. “I'll pass that along to Tomah. Now, what am I looking for, again? The Commander said to 'attain the objective when you reach the waypoint,' but never gave us an Objective.”

“I can see no reason why the indicated position is special,” Vishnu replied.

“That's because this is my show,” Marion said as she wheeled Annie Oakley into position, cutting back the growth to reveal a clear view across the strait.

“This isn't a drill, is it?” Jim tried to make a face.

“That would be correct,” She laid supine and extended the feet of her mass driver, facing over the cliff, toward the Central Straits, extending as far as the eye can see.

“And who, then, are we jumping?” Jim took a knee and pointed his assault weapon at the ocean in the same direction as Marion.

“Who do you think?” She stated matter-of-factly. “Standish jumped a DPRC transport ship. It had some pretty precious cargo.”

“What's a DPRC transport doing in IA waters?” Jim tried to make a face again.

“Training exercises in the Northern Frontier,” she replied. “In other words, they got Siddhartha up and running and were stretching its legs.”

“And now Standish has Siddhartha?” Jim sounded a bit afraid. “But I thought Standish was working with the DPRC? Isn't that where you recovered me from the torture.”

“We never recovered you,” Marion's voice was hard. “Sixth Legion did. It was a whole campaign, apparently. None of us were even aware. Apparently Kumal tortured you or something, but I don't know the whole story. If I'm honest the whole thing is kind of a blur at this point. Carol kept us in the dark, mostly. Put us in a huge campaign in the Wilds while it was all going on.”

“Wait, who tortured me?” Jim paused a second.

“Standish. Did I stutter?” Marion replied with rushed hostility.

“Where's our backup? Why is she having us do this alone? Do you work for Tessa? What's going on!” Jim pointed his rifle at Marion.

“Woah, woah, woah,” she shot up and put her hands in the air. “Jim, wait, I can explain,” she waved her hands and backed away.

“Vishnu,” Jim said both into his com and aloud, “I want you to engage the hyperspeed field on my mark.”

“Just hold on!” Marion shouted into the comm. “I'm not on anyone's 'side'” She pulled her elbows down to her hips and kept her hands up, shaking them frantically. “I don't have any idea what's going on with them. They filled me in about everything when they promoted me. I'm a digital like you.”

“Keep talking,” Jim didn't lower his guard.

“I don't know much,” she held her hands still. “They told me about the whole computer simulation thing when Carol or Tessa or whoever got pulled away and I took over for her. I just know that they think this is some big defense project and that we're not real. Sounded like some cult shit at the time and I just nodded my head. I still don't know if I believe them, but I think I might be starting to with all that's going on.”

“So, what are we doing out here, then?” Jim kept his rifle trained right on center mass.

“Jumping Kumal. Standish. Fuck, I don't know!” She was desperate. “I'm supposed to drive two rounds through the transport ship as it crosses the strait. A javelin to disable it and a tracker so Carol-slash-Tessa can send the Third in and recover Siddhartha.”

“I mean, that's the plan,” Standish came over, putting sarcastic emphasis on “plan.” The bow of his boat just crossing into view along the strait.

“Standish!” Marion gasped and dropped down, training her rifle on the boat.

Jim did not flinch. He kicked the rifle to the side and pressed the weapon to the joint where the Plug screwed into the Core. “What did I just fucking say, Marion? Don't fucking move!”

“Attaboy Jim!” Standish came over, enthusiasm in his voice.

“You shut the fuck up, too,” Jim pulled the carbine mass driver off his back, loaded a round, and lobbed it at the boat. It clipped a part of the hull just above the deck, a twisted metal hole left in its wake.

“Hey man!” Standish freaked out. “Who's side are you on!”

“I'm fucking thinking!” Jim yelled into his comm. An alert klaxon was blaring in his HUD, red flashing on the cartoonified version of the core.

“That was not a wise move,” Vishnu spake clearly. “You did not engage the kinetic sync. That shoulder joint is in poor condition. You have ruptured the air cushion in the hydraulic actuator. Functionality is severely diminished. I have engaged the kinetic sync, should you choose to take another foolish shot.”

“Alright,” Jim said after shaking his head. “Here's what's going to happen. Standish, what are you doing here?”

“Baiting you out, duh,” he sounded nonplussed. “I sent Vishnu with you, and honestly, I kinda grew to like the self-righteous bastard. And, well, you hung up on me last time and we still need to talk.”

“Marion, up,” Jump signaled with his weapon. “We're clipping in and abseiling down. Standish, pick us up.”

“Wait, what the hell are you doing,” Marion stood Annie Oakley slowly, hands open by her chest again.

“Send over the main frequency that Standish anticipated us and he's taking us hostage,” Jim took the weapons off of Annie Oakley and lobbed them over the cliff. They made a dull, thudding crash into the rocky surf below.

“Hey, wait,” Standish replied, “only one of those things is true.”

“Right, because I'm taking her hostage and we're both going with you,” the compartment at Jim's thigh opened with a mechanical hiss. He withdrew his abseil line and pressed the long spike against the ground and slammed his fist onto the top. It tapped deep into the ground. He threw the rope tail over the cliff. It didn't go all the way to the surf but cut out about a hundred yards from the waterline. “Marion, clip in.”

“Alright, but I don't like this,” she said through the comm. “Base, this is Gold-one. Mission is a fail. Bogey had intel, we are in his charge. Repeat. Mission is a fail, we are apprehended by the Bogey.”

“Perfect,” Jim grabbed the line and let it slip through his hands and ran it under his butt, and then grabbed the rope again, sitting into the coil like a makeshift harness. He felt the simulated feel of rope in his palms. “Alright, let's go. I'll explain everything when we get to the ship, Marion, you just have to trust me.”

“You just had your gun at my neck,” she said deadpan.

“Because I thought you betrayed me. But I decided to trust you instead. I need you to do the same,” He flung himself over the edge, the coil sliding fast through his fingers. As he reached the crest of his arc and started swinging back toward the cliff face, he carefully tightened his grip, gently, so as to not let the immense friction burn his palm, but also firmly enough to slow his decent as his feet planted on the wall. After a short pause, Marion met him parallel, feet planted perpendicular to the sheer face.

“You better know what you're doing,” Marion came through. “You trashed my weapons.”

“Call it a 'leap of faith,'” Jim chuckled.

“If this doesn't get us killed, I'm going to kill you,” she retorted as they began the slow, arduous descent.

Once they reached the bottom, Standish had wheeled the transport as closely to them as he could. “You'll have to leap, if you can,” he came over.

“Vishnu?” Jim pulled up the trajectory computer.

“My omnipotence shall guide us. Jump at your discretion and I shall ensure our safe landing,” he replied. With a strong bound, Jim jumped backward arms out in a cross, body postured arched against the force. After what felt like seconds suspended like this, he pulled his knees to his chest, and flipped several times. At the last moment, he gainer'd into a front-flip, landed on the deck on his upper shoulders, summer-saulted, vaulting to his feet and carrying that momentum into a front-flip before landing square, arms in a Y-shape to the sky.

“That was some fancy force-vectoring, but I give it an 8.5, max,” Marion came through. Jim turned to look up at her on the cliff. She pushed away with a mighty thrusty, keeping her body flat through several twisting whip-backs, arms tucked against her chest. She planted hard, pushing against the landing into an incredibly high whip-back, pulling her knees in at the apex for several tight, rapid flips, before planting square and extending her arms up into the Y-shape.

“Very impressive,” Jim had Vishnu golf-clap. “Definitely a 9. I don't know how you planted without a roll on the landing and didn't blow out your kinetic syncs.”

“99.1% on landing,” she made a bow. “The computer actually predicted 101%, but it overestimates a few percentage points because of my sync ratio.”

“Vishnu underestimates a few points because of my sync ratios,” he half-replied to Marion. “I always end up blowing out my syncs.”

“If you were more controlled, you would not cause so much damage,” Vishnu replied.

“Thanks, Dad,” Jim snarked.

“If you're done, there are several other slips in the cargo hold,” Standish replied. “I can tech you out.”

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“I want all of us to switch,” Jim folded his hands on the table in black and white slate map room. “Not just me.”

“Define 'all of us,'” Terry O'Callaghan sneered, his gold teeth looking like void-spots in the dim light.

“Me and the team,” Jim hitched a thumb at Marion, who was sitting next to him.

“And do what with them, exactly?” he scrunched his nose and raised his hands to the sides. “They're all career soldiers. They're not like you, they were bred on the War server. All they know is conflict. They don't know how to operate in the regular world,” he scoffed.

“No man left behind,” Jim folded his arms across his chest and leaned back. “I want to go, to be with your daughter, Molly, the girl I love. I want to be with her forever. But I can't leave my family behind.”

“Ugh,” he threw his hands into the air, shot out of his seat, and turned his back to them, folding his hands behind his back and pacing.

“This is what you get,” Dyman picked up, pulling back the corner of his mouth back. “Spoken like a true soldier,” he chuckled wryly.

“I mean,” Standish cocked an eyebrow and pulled the corner of his mouth down, “it's not like it's any more difficult than extracting Jim. I'll just pull them onto the blade, too, and inject them into the simulation, too.

“That's not the point!” he leaned down on the table, the harsh overhead light drawing deep shadows in the furrows of his face. “They don't fit any of the templates on the Utopia server. They'll throw off the whole simulation!” He threw his hands up again and continued to pace.

“I won't let my friends get nuked,” Jim sat resolute.

“What would you have me do, hmm?” Terry shot around the table faster than Jim could track, his scowl inches from Jim's face. His breath was smelt of spearmint.

“Give them a chance at a normal life.” Jim furrowed his brow and met his gaze.

“What, you think that her,” he shot up bolt straight and held a hand to Marion, “this intelligence that was hardened in a world of conflict and knows only killing and following orders, you think she can ever carry on as a banker? A Lyceum teacher? You think she can just give this life up so easily?”

“Yes,” Marion said deadpan. “Yes, I can, sir.”

“What?” Terry recoiled.

“I would like that, yes, sir.” Marion calmly folded her hands in her lap. “My dad was a lecturer. I joined up to piss him off. I stayed in to piss off my hippy Ex. Now, I fight because I don't know what else to do. If I had a way out? I'd take that in a second, sir.” She stared Terry dead in the eye, her dark skin glowing slightly with sweat, her hair pulled back, her deeply furrowed scowl on full display.

“What would all be?” Dyman inserted calmly, drawing everyone's attention to him.

“Tomah wants a farm out in the countryside, growing real crops. Adrian wants to be a gaming journalist. Blaize thinks he has the stock market cornered, like some Bridge game,” she chuckled softly to herself, “wants to run a hedge fund. Toni wants to get into custom printing. Thinks she has a killer idea for a new communicator design.”

“But what do you want?” Dyman emphasized the “you” and drilled a finger at her.

“I just want to retire, sir,” she shrugged. “Kick back on some SU beach and meet a pretty half-Wild wife who barely speaks Common. Raise kids. Do some surfing. Read a lot. Think. Maybe write a book.”

“I'm touched,” Standish put his hands over his heart and cocked his head to the side.

“Shut up,” Dyman scowled. “That's beautiful, Marion. We'll do whatever we can to make that a reality for you.”

“What are you saying, Blake?” Terry's jaw went slack and his eyes wide.

“You heard me,” Dyman's face was jagged, not even the comically gaudy jewelry softening its intensity. “I think it will be good for the simulation.”

“No!” He threw his hands up. “You've seen these guys in our world. They lose their minds! They drink all day, flashback to combat, and pick kids off from a water tower! Or, failing that, blow their brains out for their children to find. They're time bombs just waiting to go off!”

“I don't know about all that,” Standish pulled one arm across his body and rested his elbow on it, flopping his hand back and forth and resting it next to his chin, eyes wide, the corners of his mouth pulled down hard.

“Listen to yourself, Terry!” Blake slammed a hand on the table.

“Look,” Terry took his seat and leaned across the table, arm extended past the halfway point pleading, “I respect everything that you do. Truly. You're the lifeblood that protects the freedom of decent people, or at least that's what everyone tells you. And that's great! It's truly respectable. But you don't 'just' integrate back into peaceful society. It's a different world and your kind doesn't handle it well.”

“With all due respect, sir,” Marion replied, “stank” heavy on the “sir.” “We don't 'integrate back into peaceful society' well because people like you keep treating us like this. Yeah, I've known a couple of guys who got out of service after doing a tour through the Wilds and were never quite right afterward. But that's because your, quite frankly, fucked medical system threw them to the wolves without any support. It's because your 'decent people' treat us like pariahs. Like we're not 'of them.' You ignore every single successfully-reintegrated soldier and focus only on the random one-offs who you let slip through the cracks. Sir.”

“Ohhh shit,” Standish leaned his chair back hard, putting a balled up hand in front of his mouth and pulling a knee to his chest.”Check and mate, bro. I think she wins.”

“So do we have a deal?” Jim, arms still folded, leaning back in his chair, cocked his head forward, a slight smirk creasing his cheeks.

Terry pulled back, dropping his arms to his sides, deflated. “Yeah,” he twirled a finger in the air and let it drop back lifelessly to his side, “they can come, too.”