Authors: James Burkard
The moon was still low in the sky casting long, smashed shadows across the channel. Then, he saw the headlights of the other grav-cars led by the black Crown Vic, nosing carefully up the channel. They hadn’t abandoned him, he thought and tears of gratitude ran down his cheeks.
Without warning, an ancient .50-caliber machine gun began hammering at the on-coming cars from a shadowy pile of overgrown rubble in the middle of the channel. In the coughing back-light of the muzzle flash, Harry could just make out the silhouette of an old military grav-car and the figure of a man hunched over the machine gun mounted on its hood.
When the shooting finally stopped, Harry could hear the distant screams and shouts of his friends down the channel. He was afraid that they would turn tail and leave, and he wouldn’t have blamed them if they did.
A few had, but most of the others just backed off except for the James Bond, Aston Martin and the Crown Vic. The Aston Martin was hugging the far side of the channel and easing slowly down
towards Harry. The Crown Vic hadn’t moved. The .50-caliber slugs had knocked out one headlight, starred its diamond glass windshield, and scratched the paint on its armor plating but aside from that had done no real damage.
Now, as he watched, the front end of the Crown Vic’s hood split open and a squat, snub-nosed canon rose into sight. It rested on a gimbaled gun carriage and had what looked like a tightly wound stainless steel spring wrapped around a stubby barrel that ended in a funnel-shaped, blunderbuss muzzle. The butt end of the barrel fit into a brass drum at least eighteen inches across and a foot thick. Two large copper nodes stuck out of the top of the drum with thick electrical cables and glass insulators attached. The cables snaked back into the grav-core.
Suddenly, a pencil thin beam lanced out from the barrel, and Harry recognized the distinctive mewling hiss of a gigawatt plasma canon as the beam grew as thick across as his own wrist. The crazy son of a bitch had come loaded for bear, he thought, his hopes rising as the bright, neon-purple particle beam walked up the channel towards the machine gun nest, leaving exploding geysers of superheated steam and torn atoms in its wake.
The machine gun began firing blindly into the curtain of steam in a panic-stricken attempt to knock out the plasma canon before it zeroed in.
Then, down the channel behind the Crown Vic, Harry saw the flare of a rocket launch. It burned down from the top of a huge, jungle covered mountain of debris that might have once been a minor skyscraper. The rocket cut a flat arc through the night sky and zeroed in on the limousine. There was the sharp slap of an explosion and a gigantic flashbulb seemed to go off behind the curtain of steam that the plasma canon had kicked up. The particle beam instantly cut off as if someone just pulled its plug. The machine gun kept up its mad chatter for a while longer and finally coughed into silence.
The veil of steam blew apart into long misty tendrils, and
Harry saw what was left of the limousine settling nose first into the water. Slowly, its rear end lifted straight up like the sinking of the Titanic. The car slid down, hit the shallow bottom of the channel, and stopped with a sudden jolt. Only its rear end still stuck out of the water like a surreal black tombstone. Ghostly white clumps of crash-foam floated on the oil slick water.
Mother of Gods! Harry thought. That had to be a Seraphim Stinger to do that much damage! He’d heard of them but had never seen one in action. There weren’t many weapons that were against the law, but a Stinger brought down an automatic death penalty.
The Seraphim didn’t care. Like the freezer, the Stinger was a low-tech weapon of opportunity, cheap and easy to build. It was basically just a miniature grav-coil, no bigger than a small stack of old DVDs, wired to a rocket and a cell phone running a simple targeting program. The coil had only a rudimentary containment field and was spun into the red when the rocket fired. When it hit its target, the impact breached the containment field, the coil went critical, blew a hole in the fabric of space time, and released a nanosecond blast of pure Planck energy. Simple coil physics and “Presto!” No more car problems! Harry thought.
He noticed that the Aston Martin that had been sneaking towards him had turned around. It was badly battered by the shock wave from the blast, and its containment field must have been breached because it was leaking gravity waves and weaving and hopscotching drunkenly back up the channel, chasing the dwindling taillights of the other cars.
Harry watched in despair as they fled. “No! Don’t leave us!” he sobbed. “Please don’t leave us!”
As the taillights dwindled to pinpricks in the distance, Harry heard shouts and cheers from the ruined buildings. A searchlight punched down from a roof across the channel. It probed the wreckage of Harry’s car that was half-submerged, resting on a concrete slab under the water. Frantically, he pulled Susan behind
a broken section of overgrown wall.
He could feel his strength ebbing as the adrenaline rush that had sustained him for so long gradually burned itself out. Even the effort of trying to keep both their heads above water was becoming too much. He tried to find a handhold in the darkness, but the back of the wall was slick with a jelly-like scum that gave no purchase. He clawed blindly at the concrete until, at last, his desperate fingers found a rusting reinforcing rod sticking out of the wall and he grabbed it and held them both above water.
The searchlight played back and forth across the channel. In its flickering backlight, Harry could see his own hand, pale and claw-like, grasping the twisted steel rod. He noticed that he was still wearing his wrist phone. He had forgotten all about it. With a surge of hope, he hit the emergency-call button. Nothing happened. The phone was dead. The intense electro-magnetic pulse from the grav-core blast had fried its circuits. With a sob of despair, he ripped it off his wrist and threw it away.
Time lost all meaning after that. He vaguely remembered holding Susan close, brushing wet strands of hair away from her face, and whispering in her ear, telling her that it was going to be all right, everything was going to be all right, just wait and see, help was on the way, he lied.
Later, he heard the whine of a grav-car slowly coming towards them and his heart leapt with hope. He pulled himself up and looked over the edge of the wall. He was about to scream “Here! Here we are! Save us!” when he saw the armed men standing in the grav-car, silhouetted against the glare of the searchlight from across the channel. One of them wore a hooded robe. When he shifted position, the searchlights picked out a large, silver medallion that hung from a rawhide thong around his neck. Harry recognized the medallion instantly. It was the Seraphim, scimitar crucifix with the gun-sight circle centered where the swords crossed.
This wasn’t help, this was who ambushed them! He noticed
the rocket tubes welded into the front fenders of the car and a small plasma canon mounted on the hood. Then the hooded Seraphim flicked on a handheld spotlight. The light swept back and forth across the water and Harry ducked back behind the wall as the car glided towards him.
Maybe they were just scavenging, he thought hopefully. Even wrecked, his car would be worth a fortune. All they had to do was put a couple grav-units on it and pull it out. On the other hand, they could be looking for him and Susan. In that case they might both be better off dead.
The stories of psychopathic cruelty and cold-blooded slaughter that came out of the Sinks were legendary. Hollywood had turned more than a few into blood-dripping B-movie classics. Hell, Harry had even played in in a couple, but nothing had prepared him for the sheer, helpless terror he felt cringing behind that wall, holding Susan’s lifeless body and hearing the grav-car closing in. The spotlight played over the concrete block they were hiding behind, etching its shadow sharply against the water.
With Susan unconscious, her breathing shallow, he could not even risk diving underwater for fear that she would drown. Any moment now, the grav-car would sweep around the corner and the spot light would pin them like insects against the concrete. Harry held Susan close and steeled himself for what was coming.
Instinctively, he reached into his jacket and felt the butt end of the ancient thirty-eight, snug in its shoulder holster. If this had been one of his heroic blockbusters, he would have taken out the little thirty-eight, killed the four Seraphim in the oncoming car and then, with Susan slung over his shoulder, he would have jumped aboard and manned the plasma canon, blowing away the oncoming Seraphim gunboats and shooting his way out of the Sinks in a blaze of glory. Reality was a whole other ball of wax, he thought, as he took out the little thirty-eight and prepared to die.
Then, in the distance, he heard the howl of police sirens.
Someone had managed to call in an emergency. As the sirens drew nearer, the spotlights flicked off, and Harry heard the grav-car turn and speed away.
After that, the night was filled with the flashing blue lights of heavily armored police cruisers and then the rocketing, screaming ride in the back of an ambulance, hanging over Susan, refusing to leave her side, begging the doctors to do something, to please make her better and later, the looks of sorrow and pity, the shake of the head, the words of regret and compassion. Susan was not dead but she might as well be. She had sustained massive brain damage and would never regain consciousness.
Only the life supports were keeping her alive. It would probably be a mercy to her to shut them off, the doctor suggested months later, when he thought Harry might be able to make such a decision. But Harry refused. How could he kill her again? She was alive, and he refused to believe that she would never wake up. Every day he went up to that sunlit room where he made sure there were always fresh flowers and he sat with her and waited.
Then one day, he didn’t go. He was too drunk; too drunk to even remember. It happened again the next day and the next and the next…And Susan lay alone in the hospital as Harry descended deeper into his own private hell of guilt and pain.
His career went on the skids, but he didn’t care. The only thing he wanted was the oblivion that hid in the bottom of a whiskey bottle. It was the same old story from Shakespeare to Hollywood; overweening pride followed by the fall from greatness and the precipitous descent into the depths. It was almost mythic in its sheer banality.
9
The Stuff that Dreams Are Made of
“Harry!” Roger yelled and shook his shoulder. “Are you listening, Harry? Don’t go nodding off on me.”
Harry opened his eyes. For a moment, old memories floated across his vision, like crash-foam floating on scummy water in the night.
“Look Harry, I’m sorry. Why don’t we just let bygones be bygones?” Roger ran his thick fingers through his thinning, ginger hair. “I mean, it all happened a long time ago. It’s water under the bridge.”
“It’s been five years,” Harry said. “And two since you stole my wife.”
“Roger leaned over and pushed his face right up into Harry’s. “I’m sick and tired of this bullshit, you hear! I didn’t steal anything!” His breath smelled of expensive cigars, aged whiskey and a hint of rotting meat. His bloodshot eyes stared straight at Harry. “I just picked up what you threw away with your drinking and womanizing.”
He straightened up, his face red and blotchy with anger. “Maybe you’re forgetting that it was me who brought her back to life. If it wasn’t for me, she’d still be a vegetable with plastic tubes running in and out of her and machines keeping her alive.” He jabbed a thick finger into Harry’s chest. “Remember, asshole, it wasn’t me who put her there in the first place!”
“I know what I did,” Harry said quietly. “And I know what you did. So spare me the noble Sir Galahad act. A suit of shiny armor and a white horse was never your style. All Susan was to you was a hot business prospect, a means to an end, a way of getting to me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself!” Roger said contemptuously.
“Alcoholic has-beens like you are a dime a dozen. You were just lucky I happened to choose you.”
“Luck had nothing to do with it. You chose me because I was just what you needed, the perfect tool, and you knew I couldn’t say no. So let’s cut the crap! You didn’t give a shit about Susan, but hey, if she could put that perfect tool in your hands, you’d be willing to play Santa Claus for a day.”
Roger clucked his tongue and shook his head. “So much cynicism in one so young.”
“Come on, Roger, let’s talk straight for once. Five years ago, you were just another Hollywood hustler, a wheeler-dealer with a knack for bringing money, talent and know-how together to produce second-rate box office successes. Then, you ran into Doc…I have to give you credit, you recognized a winner when no one else did. You saw that this could put you into the big leagues. The only problem was they played hardball up there. I don’t think you realized just how hard.”
Roger looked down at him with a smile like a razor slash. “I was raised playing hardball,” he growled. “I don’t think you or they realized just how hard the game can be played.”
For an instant, Harry seemed to look straight through Roger’s sagging, dissipated features to a younger, harder Roger, all sharp angles and harsh planes. There was the smell of spilled blood and sudden violence in the air, and Roger’s tired, bloodshot eyes were cold and clear and without mercy. Roger chuckled and shook his head. “Babes in the woods, Harry, you’re all nothing but babes in the woods.” And once again he was the overweight, self-indulgent CEO of Eternal Life.
Harry felt as if he’d just stepped off the end of the continental shelf into very deep water. Stuff like this was happening to him more and more frequently lately. Reality was becoming a very tenuous affair. He remembered Roger’s face turning into the snout of one of those things that had chased him down the resurrection trail. How real was that? How real was any of that? He
shifted uncomfortably in the bed and felt the welts on his back rasp painfully against the sheets. At any rate, those were real enough. So where did that leave him?
Roger took out his gold cigarette case and lighter. He slid out a cigarette, lit it, and took a deep drag. He tilted his head and blew a couple of perfect smoke rings at the ceiling. “When Jericho came to me with his invention, I knew he had something so revolutionary that it was going to shake the social structure to its foundations,” he said. “I also knew that a lot of very rich, powerful people had a very big stake in maintaining the status quo that kept them rich and powerful. They didn’t want anyone rocking the boat. They weren’t necessarily against the technology; they just wanted to control it themselves. They saw me and my company as upstarts, loose cannons and they wanted us out of the picture. Only, I wasn’t about to leave. This was my ticket to ride, and I intended to ride it all the way to the top.”
Roger began pacing back and forth as he talked and smoked. “I knew I had a war on my hands, not the shooting kind, but it could have come to that. If it did, I knew they had me outgunned. So instead, I turned it into my kind of war, a media war, a public opinion war, a war for hearts and minds. And I won it!” he said and slammed his fist into the palm of his hand.
“I used every trick in the book, every New Hollywood connection. I twisted arms, bribed, blackmailed, and called in every marker I had. I knew I could sell Eternal Life to the public. Hell, hadn’t I sold them some of the biggest turkeys New Hollywood ever made? I’d sell Eternal Life the same way!”
“But no matter how good you were, you couldn’t have done it without me,” Harry said with undisguised self-contempt. “The perfect poster-boy front man, someone with New Hollywood star quality to lead the campaign, someone people would recognize and trust, someone they could identify with, someone who would reassure them, and someone who would be willing to die for them again and again, just to show them that, yes, this
worked, there’s nothing to be afraid of, just trust me and we’ll all have ETERNAL LIFE! You needed someone like good ol’ Harry Neuman, that honest, clean-cut hero of a dozen blockbusters.”
Harry shook his head wearily. “But most of all, you wanted me because you knew that I couldn’t say no, that I’d even jump at the chance, because you could give me the one thing I wanted most. You could bring back Susan. You could wipe away all the pain and guilt and bring back the dream.
“All I had to do was sign a five-year contract with Eternal Life, and I’d get Susan back and everything would be like it was before, and we’d live happily ever after. Only it didn’t work out that way, did it? There were a couple of things you neglected to tell me.”
In the beginning, though, it really was like a dream come true, Harry thought. A clone was prepared for Susan, and she was taken off life support. A short time later, she died, only to be resurrected again in the amino acid vats of Eternal Life; Susan, alive and whole, with all her memories and love intact.
The media boys spun it into the love story of the century. It was irresistible, a living fairytale. Sleeping Beauty revived by her Prince Charming, a love that transcended death. Their faces were on the front pages of every newspaper, magazine, and holo screen in the country. They became icons of the new age, as familiar as the first pictures of the earth taken from space.
And when Roger’s media circus had milked that story for all it was worth, there came the final revelation, the price Harry had been willing to pay to bring back his love. Of course, no one was so crass as to talk about five-year legal contracts. No, this was the noble lover, who only wanted to pay his debt of gratitude to Eternal Life by allowing himself to be killed and resurrected again and again, so that everyone could see the wonderful benefits and dependability of this new technology.
The reality was far from the glitzy, media hype. The first year of Harry’s contract was sheer hell. He died twenty times that
year, in car crashes, fires, muggings, even a malignant brain tumor. In every case the pain was excruciating, the death trauma worse, and rebirth a nightmare without end.
Somehow, Roger had forgotten to mention these little details when they were signing the contract. Harry would wake up in the amino acid vats in the cellars beneath Eternal Life begging Jericho to let him die for real. But the old man just shook his head, his eyes full of pity because there was nothing he could do, he said, because he didn’t make the decisions anymore.
Later, Harry learned that Jericho had gone to Roger, demanding that he release Harry from his contract or, at the very least, that he not be made to die so often. It was in no one’s interest, he argued, if Harry went insane.
But Roger dismissed Jericho’s concerns. Eternal Life was fighting for its life, he insisted, and Harry was all they had. Major political, financial, and religious interests all over the empire felt threatened by this new technology. Why save or invest for your old age, when you knew there wasn’t going to be an old age? Why insure yourself against accidents, disability, or death when you knew you could just jump out of this old, broken body and into a new, healthy one? Savings banks, pension funds, insurance, medical, and drug companies all saw their profit margins collapse, and they fought back trying to discredit Eternal life, break its monopoly on resurrection technology, and get a piece of the action for themselves.
In the halls of the imperial parliament they used their political influence to lobby and buy votes while in the news media and the talk shows they thundered against the socially destabilizing effect of this new technology in the hands of one company, controlled by one individual.
But the churches were the worst, the most ruthless and vicious of all. Those old snake oil salesmen had been selling their particular brands of eternal life for centuries. Now suddenly, they were being put out of business, and they didn’t like it. Religious
communities all over the Empire put aside their differences and closed ranks. They thundered against Eternal Life from the pulpits of thousands of churches and temples. People who came back from the dead were soulless monsters, they screamed; they were possessed by the devil and the whole thing was a demonic conspiracy to destroy humanity. Then, they called for a new crusade, a just war, a jihad, to crush this satanic abomination.
The only religious order that did not hop on the bandwagon was The Church of She. The Church was born in the Crash and worshipped the Goddess in all her guises as ruler of this earth. If New Hollywood had had a state religion, the Church of She would have been it. Its cathedral dominated the city’s skyline and a large proportion of the population favored it over all the other splinters of old-time ersatz Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, etc.
In the conflict with Eternal Life, the Church of She maintained a neutral wait-and-see attitude, pointing out that the technology, far from being at odds with religious teaching, in fact supported one of its basic tenets, the existence of life after death in the form of a soul or ka. For this reason alone, the Church favored caution over condemnation, but its message was drowned out by the fear-mongering, demonizing scream pouring like raw sewage from an unholy alliance of business, politics, and religion.
In the end, only Harry Neuman and the might of Roger’s New Hollywood media campaign stood between Eternal Life and destruction. When Harry died the first time, Roger’s media machine went into high gear, whipping up interest to a fever pitch.
When Harry emerged from the rebirthing chamber with his boyish grin and thumbs up expression, Roger made sure the image was plastered all over the empire. And it worked! People went wild with enthusiasm. Not since Charles Lindbergh, in another age, flew alone across the Atlantic, had one man so captured the public imagination and transformed the spirit of
the times. And Roger milked the story for all it was worth. Harry became the symbol of hope and courage for a new age.
But it didn’t stop there. It couldn’t stop there. The pressure on Eternal Life was too great. Harry had to die again and again, and each time he walked out of the rebirthing chamber, joking and grinning with that irresistible, “aw shucks twern’t nothin,” Gary Cooper strength and humility, the world went wild and Eternal Life’s stock soared. The people loved him, loved his quiet courage and self-sacrifice, loved him for the fact that he was doing it all for his woman, that he was paying a debt of honor, gratitude, and love. It was old time Hollywood come true.
And because they respected and trusted Harry, the people came to respect and trust Eternal Life. Roger, that old Hollywood wheeler-dealer, had gotten it just right. His choice of Harry, and the massive advertising campaign he built around him, won over public opinion and routed the forces that stood against him. By the end of that second year, he was finally able to give in to Jericho’s demands and ease the pressure on Harry.
But by then it was too late. The strain had driven Harry over the edge. He became moody, irritable, depressed, at times almost psychotic. He began drinking again. His marriage began to founder. His drinking got worse. He and Susan fought constantly. He turned to other women, a whole string of other women, eager to comfort the great Harry Neuman. He got into ugly public brawls, beating his opponents senseless, and Eternal Life had to work overtime covering it all up and bailing him out. At last, Susan could take no more, and three years after his first death, she packed up and left. And surprise, surprise! Who should be there waiting with a convenient shoulder to cry upon, but good old Roger.