Topic: Mercator Arc
Updated July 2, 2011
This short segment dovetails with the opening scene of "Retribution" and is the aftermath of the events therein. When I first began these stories in the summer of 2008, they were plagued with cliche plots and ideas which were unsatisfactory. "Presage", which would have given a background story that Mil Kariden would have become entangle in was also sort of cliche and unimaginative and I wanted to get away from character motives such as revenge, and plot schemes such as coup d'etates, and rather uninspired things like that. So I had a brainstorming secession where I looked at what I had written and where I wanted to take the story and found, I think, rich fertile soil. I'd rather much center stories around personal desires than political machinations, and some things do not have to be at a grand scale, and much more low key, like the tumbling pebble that starts an avalanche.
This story serves mostly as exposition. Usually the Bad Guy, upon capturing the Good Guy, explains himself and what he is doing or plans to do in a sort of haha comeupance manner. I understand why this is done in stories, but it doesn't feel realistic, and it seems forced as opposed to a natural progression of events. Besides, what if the bad Guy doesn't feel motivated to explain himself to the Good Guy? What if the Good Guy is never in a position to learn the motives? How then does the information get to the reader? Since the Mercator series is mostly from the point of view of Mil Kariden, I find it necessary to branch off into the points of view of other supporting characters as a way to fill in the blanks and expand the overall story. If and when these stories get compiled into a single work, I can have chapters and segments devoted to these other characters to give the story a greater sense of cohesion.
The events in this piece isn't going to effect Mil Kariden until a few stories down the line, but it was on my mind and a fast write, so why not offer it now?
Order of the Raven
For a Sip of Coffee
The man was off cycle and he felt it down to his bones. He took a seat in the café, one of many buildings that lined the long broad pier, steaming cup of imported coffee warming his hand. It wasn’t just any coffee; it was the prized expensive blend from Cenestra. More costly than drink or drug. He saved his meager earnings just to occasionally come here and relax to a damn fine brew. In this miserable place, it was the only thing to look forward too.
He glanced at the clock face on the far wall above the picture windows, its hands coming apart at ten o’clock noon. A storm battered the building and he could barely see the turbulent greenish waters outside, much less the city standing defiant upon the sloping wall of the crater.
Noon. He should be sleeping. He found himself busier than he had ever been now that the League and the Association were in a forced truce, busy putting his technical expertise to work for a pocketful of slips, busy in the labor of rebuilding. Although he doubted the old heart of the city would never see redevelopment, and that would suit him just fine. Let the squalid place keep its secrets.
His secrets.
He settled as comfortable as he would get in the thin cushioned chair, and raised the cup to his lips, for that soothing warmth and kick of caffeine to make him feel more alive. That’s when someone washed a cyberscape over him like a dark blanket, seeping past his weave’s security layers as if they owned his head. He froze in worry as the sudden darkness burned away into a white nothingness. Still he sat, but on nothing, at nothing, although he could feel the chair and floor beneath him, and the table under his elbows, and the hot solidity of the cup in his hand. Behind him came approaching boot-falls, hard claps of menace. And he heard chimes, a tinkling on the air, a familiar sound back from the days of the war, a sound of bone like beads.
The table melted into view as the presence stood behind him. He did not want to look behind himself out of resignation of who it might be. Out in his peripheral vision a fist loomed, clutching long dirty hair from which hung a fat head with thick features, the neck cleanly severed through the larynx. The figure behind him dropped the bloodless head on the table, and stepped around to take the facing chair, the stump of its neck grisly and pink.
The man eager to enjoy his coffee stared at the head, at the hair splayed across the table, greasy braids threading through the finger bones of the old enemy; not all of them had been dead when their fingers were liberated. “Hello Amex.”
“Hello, Jorn,” the head said, smirking.
“You seem to have made a misjudgment.”
The head sighed. “Tell me about it.” And like a dream were scenes shift in a disjointed way, the head was on the man’s body as if it had always been that way, its features shifting subtly. “You’d think that whoever took the League’s Homesteader and figured out how to make the landscaper work would be on our side, seeming how they didn't vaporize the Iron Heart.” The man relaxed, his leather clothing creaking. His huge fingers locked together in front of him on the table.
Behind Amex, the café slowly faded into view. People seemed frozen in their steps, and Jorn Avis noticed his hand was still raising his cup to his lips; it seemed so far out of reach. The ‘scape was in accelerated subjected time. “Yeah. You’d think that.” Amex’s features were not exactly as Jorn remembered. There were slight differences as if whoever made the reproduction wasn’t certain of what the old warrior chief looked like. He looked somewhat softened, but he still had that prominent widow’s peak that looked like a raven’s bill. This couldn’t be Amex, no matter what happened to him. Someone must have found out what they were up to before Raum intervened and took the war away from them. “I don’t know who you are, or who you represent, but if you can get into my head this easy, I’m sure you can get whatever it is you think you are looking for.”
The thing that looked sort of like Amex laughed. “Jorn, it’s me," he said, opening his arms to suggest it could be no one else, squinting eyes twinkling under the shelves of meat where thick eyebrows sprouted like a tangle of weeds. "And you’re the only one that can help me.”
“Help you?”
“You know what happened . . .” he waved stiff fingers at his throat, “. . . after this—”
“Yeah,” Avis interrupted. “They took the weave out of Amex’s head. And a weave is not—”
Amex held a hand up hushing him. “Ethdain removed my weave, yes. And somehow—I’m not certain of the details—it ended up in a glass case in some bar, mixed with other weaves. Eventually the merging . . .” he rolled a hand, “. . . shit was complex enough so the pseudo-personalities gained consciousness.”
“How is that possible?” Jorn admitted he was awed by this. If he could study it. . . .
Amex shrugged. “No skumping clue. But I see you’d like to find out.”
Jorn nodded. No sense in hiding his curiosity.
“Anyway,” Amex continued, “I was angry at being killed, as anyone would be—”
“But you’re not Amex . . .”
The warrior chief shot him a sour look. “Are we going to split hairs?”
Jorn saw the threat, and supposed that even in a cyberscape, the man could hurt him. He shrugged and shook his head.
“Good. I know what I am," he stated with a hint of regret. "I know the real Amex is dead. I’m what's left, a little more, a little less. I’m not kidding myself that I am that man, but I am enough of him to feel like I am him, and so, I chose to be him. Who else can I be?”
Jorn said nothing.
“So, anyway, we came to consciousness. I was mixed with aimless ghosts, the leftovers of people that had no goals or purpose in life except to eke out a meager existence. Now dead, what were they to do? Absolutely nothing. Except go mad from their condition.”
That mixing . . . it explained why Amex looked different. He incorporated other identities. “But you,” Jorn said, “were different.”
“Of course,” Amex boomed. “The war and this trivial death are just a setback. I got things I still want to do. The weave caught those desires exactly. The power of my ambition overwhelmed the rest of the dead men in the tank. I’m the prominent mind. It’s a schizophrenic existence, but it’s an existence. ”
Jorn Avis knew Amex was not locally nearby. This cyberscape came highly encrypted over the wavecast. “Where are you now?”
Amex sighed, as if it were an embarrassment. “Some secret Raven bar on the coast.” His tone took a sour note, “These Ravens . . . they have no right to the name. These are not warriors, they’re thugs without honor or respect. Loathsome men I would set out to destroy if I didn’t have higher aspirations.”
Jorn had a sinking feeling where this conversation was going. “To do what?”
And like from a disjointed dream, Amex raised a heavy mug of frothy beer to his lips, pulled a draught. Jorn noticed his cup of coffee hadn’t seemed to move. The huge man smacked his lips and dropped the mug to the table. He leaned in like a conspirator. “To find the tomb.”
Avis sighed and looked away at the motionless scene around him. “Mercator’s Tomb is a myth. No one knows where it is.”
The warrior’s face spread in a broad grin. “I do.”
Jorn refused to look surprised. “How?”
“I’m a node on the wavecast. The only thing I can do is sift information, to search mountains of data, eavesdrop on private conversations.”
“And you have found this mythical tomb?”
They locked eyes, and Amex looked hesitant. “Alright,” he said, tilting and dropping his chin. “Not exactly. But I know where to look.”
Jorn nodded, his thoughts falling back to Amex’s plans to progress the war to an end, that was before Raum came and ruined his goals. He didn’t want to become involved in Amex’s treasure seeking, always thought it was a dead end. He had better things to do with his life, none of which involved the secrets hidden in the heart of the old city. “I’m sure you can find someone to go on expedition for you.”
Amex laughed. “Not the plan I had in mind. No one is taking my glory. And I can’t very well do any expeditioning as a discorporate . . . thing.”
A moment of silence. “It’s come to that, has it?”
“I know the tanks are safe.” Amex’s voice dropped low and serious, the meaty ledge of his brow bunched. “If anyone found them I would certainly know.”
Probably true, he being a node on the wavecast. Jorn wasn’t certain about operating the tanks. “How long do you think I can keep them safe?”
Amex drew in closer. “No one knows they are here. The trail has been cleanly cut off. I saw to that. As long as you don’t advertise it, no one will know.”
To honor this request could bring undue attention to himself. Jorn bit his bottom lip. “A permanent body will take some time to grow.” No accelerants. A natural gestation.
“Time I have plenty of.”
He was being cornered. “And I’m supposed to do what? Take some tissue samples from a random stranger?”
“Ethdain has my corpse.”
“Ethdain is dead!”
“You think I don’t know this? Check your fluid cache. I dropped the location there.”
Jorn did so and his weave generated a fresh neural network modeling this new information. In a flash of insight, he knew where Amex’s body was being stored. “Alright. But there’s problems with getting a tank up and running—”
“Technical challenges I have every faith you'll overcome.”
“Yeah, but the weave . . .”
“You’ll have to get it.”
“Out of a Ravens’ liar?”
“You’ll think of something. You love a good strategy.”
Jorn Avis nodded. He wished he could will that sip of coffee faster to his lips. “This is a lot of work, especially done in secret. I suppose that if I decline, you will continuously haunt me until I capitulate?”
“That’s up to you, old friend.” Amex leaned back, locked his fingers behind his head, widow’s peak like an arrow pointing to Hell. “Now I don’t have many a coin to toss your way, none actually. I mean I could steal funds but that would leave a trail and someone would find out. Can’t have that, now can we? However . . .” he paused and studied Avis as if he were about to make a risky gamble. “I don’t think you want to fail them.”
Jorn felt an urge to shift in his chair. “Fail who?” But he knew.
Amex smirked. “There is nothing you can hid from me anymore, old friend. Not in my current state. I know why you are here on this skumping flooded world. Find Mercator’s Tomb and you might just find the adyta.”
Avis would have dropped his cherished mug if he could. He felt himself teetering on a fulcrum.
Amex continued. “Hell, the adyta might be under the tomb, for all I know.”
“Why would Mercator have known about the apaxan?”
“You think he would spend a lot of time here because of the rain?”
“Mercator’s motivations were a mystery.” Avis admitted as much.
“A mystery worth checking out.”
“I suppose,” Jorn sighed. “But what if we find nothing.”
“Then we find nothing. But at least you will know Mercator had nothing to do with the adyta or the apaxan. You could check that off your list.”
Jorn Avis wasn’t sure of what to do. True, someone, through an elaborate network of connections, had hired him to find this legendary adyta, to find it and the occupants and hopefully revitalize them. But no one saw the war coming, or Raum, who seemed to rule without lust for wealth or empire. Avis began to doubt there was an adyta anywhere on the planet. There was no legend, no rumor, no speculation of any kind. And if it were in Cratertown, no amount of wartime shelling had unearthed it from its rocky tomb.
Tomb. Did the first explorer of this planet discover the lost adyta? There was really no way to know except to take Amex up on his offer. But . . . how serious was the old warrior? “And if I’m still not interested?”
Amex drew himself together and leaned over the table. “No man is so special he cannot be replaced.”
Jorn Avis barked a nervous chuckle. “You’d find a way to suck my knowledge out and put it in someone else’s skull?”
“You know it.”
The cup of coffee seemed no closer to Jorn’s mouth. “No need to go to such extremes. But am concerned about the success of what you ask. Integrating a mature weave into an undeveloped brain might come with . . . complications. It might not even work.”
Amex flashed his broad grin. “With all that Allodian technology at your disposal, I don’t think you will have as much problems as you claim.”
Jorn seemed to sink. “Is there anything you don’t know?”
Amex tapped the side of his head with a meaty fingertip. “You’re an open book.”
The coffee . . . so close yet so far away. Amex would chat him up all day in accelerated subjective time if he didn’t give in. The mug would stay warm in his hand, taunting and teasing. “Alright. Then I guess you know you got yourself a body.”
“That I do.” The old warrior chief stood up. “I’ll keep a mind out on your progress. Lucky for me, I can accelerate my awareness, so the years won’t be that long.” He clapped a hand on Jorn’s shoulder as he stood near. “Try to stay alive, will you.”
“That’s the trick, isn’t it,” he said aloud as the room lurched into motion. In this chaotic town, death lurked behind every corner.
Finally, Jorn sipped his coffee, thinking it could have tasted better, and come at a cheaper price.
I never liked the original title, "The Request", yeah . . . boring. It was going to be "The Body", which was better, but too revealing. As I was looking over it and tweaking it, I noticed I could orient Jorn Avis' goals around getting that coffee down his throat. That's all he wants to do and Amex's digital ghost is bugging him about treasure seeking. Some people, I swear. I know it's not jaw dropping awesome, but it is a thread to hang the story on. I think it works. Will be surprised if anyone tells me otherwise.
