Distant Worlds Volume 2 Read online

"This quick and painless death is my gift to you, Prince Sarthis. A poison distilled from the boiled flesh of a gluttonous, debauched priest. But fear not this mortal death, for I’ve a most refined taste for vengeance and I promise that you shall have yours before your soul departs for the misty shores of true death."

  "Dead?"

  Hargrim, son of Illvin, stared disbelievingly at his servant.

  "Yes, my lord. It appears His Majesty flung himself from his balcony sometime last night."

  "By the gods, why?"

  "None can say, my lord. Perhaps he was overcome by grief at the loss of his only son. His servants heard him shouting Prince Sarthis's name. Perhaps some great melancholy took hold of him, my lord."

  Hargrim knew that could not be true. The king could not bring himself to hand his kingdom over to the hedonistic son he so despised. Though it was possible the king was not of sound mind when he ordered his son’s murder, he promised Hargrim too great a reward to question his command.

  His many spies in Valimere eventually found the ideal assassin for the foul plot. Hargrim did not know how the necromancer came to the city, but he nearly laughed when all the Tzaladarian asked for in payment was an obscure book from one of the palace’s libraries that was penned in a language long forgotten by any scholar in Kurn.

  The necromancer did his work well, though Hargrim had no idea how he carried it out. Ergill’s men found Sarthis's body just as the pale prince said they would, with a poisoned dagger in his chest and his hands wrapped around the neck of a dead whore. There remained only the formality of burying the prince and then the king would announce the new heir to the throne, as was the custom of any Kurnite king with no male heir of his own. Ergill would be that heir, the king’s promised reward for Hargrim's unflinching loyalty.

  After dismissing his servant, Hargrim pondered his next move. He believed he had enough influence in the late king’s court to make a claim to the throne without provoking a war with the other noble families. If Ergill did not make that claim soon, a civil war would break out in Valimere and quickly spread throughout Kurn. The decaying kingdom could not withstand such a conflict.

  Hargrim went to his son’s chambers and knocked on the door several times without answer. The door was not locked so he pulled it open and stepped inside to find the large room in shambles. Then his eyes fell upon a sight that made him cry out in despair. Ergill’s naked body lay sprawled on the floor in a puddle of his own blood. A dagger rested near his slashed wrists. Hargrim rushed forward and cradled the corpse in his arms, his son’s dead, empty eyes staring into his own.

  "Did I not warn you, brother?"

  The voice came from behind him. It sounded husky and labored, but familiar. Hargrim spun around to face the image of his brother Mathris hovering before him. A large chunk of his skull was missing and blood ran down his wrinkled face.

  "Mathris?"

  The apparition floated across the room towards him. It looked down at Ergill’s body.

  "A pity about my dear nephew. We were having such a fine conversation when he had to go and do something rash." The ghostly figure smiled. "Perhaps it was something I said?"

  Hargrim stumbled backward out of the room and onto the balcony overlooking the palace grounds far below.

  "Such terrible news about the king, as well, I’m afraid," Mathris said. His awful voice was laced with a mocking tone of sadness.

  "You're responsible for the king’s death?"

  "No, no, my brother. He was far too involved with his beloved son to have time for me."

  "Prince Sarthis?"

  "You never learned your lessons quickly, Hargrim. I tried to talk you out of these foolish little schemes for the throne, but you would not take heed. Your necromancer is not without a sense of justice it seems, for what better fate for a triad of conspirators than to be haunted by those they betrayed to their untimely deaths?"

  The ghost swept towards Hargrim, a smile upon its ruined and blood sodden face.

  "No, get back!"

  Hargrim staggered back into the low stone wall that encircled the balcony. The phantom laughed and reached out to embrace him. Just before the specter’s hand could touch his skin, Hargrim heaved himself over the edge and plummeted down to the courtyard.

  The ghostly visage of his murdered brother followed his descent, its black eyes filled with a mixture of hatred and ecstasy.

  "Farewell, brother."

  Hargrim’s heart seized with fright long before his body shattered upon the stones below.

  The First Price

  Originally published in Dystopian Express (Hydra Publications, 2016)

  One of my few forays into near future sci-fi, this story actually feels kind of prescient in retrospect. Written during my time as an English tutor, I spent a lot of time evaluating essay content and getting frustrated that nobody seemed to be able to make use of basic historical facts. This story, which follows a menial researcher tasked with manually verifying data, grew out of that experience. It’s a bit modest in scope, but I always envisioned it (along with “Lena’s Song”) as one in a series of cyberpunk-style stories taking place in and around a futuristic Houston-area urban sprawl. I’d still like to revisit the setting in longer form at some point.

  “You seem a little more comfortable today. Have you been getting out of your apartment a bit more?”

  The words were distant echoes, each one bouncing from one end of his skull to the other until they merged into an indeterminable murmur.

  By the time the noise receded, she was already dumping more of it onto him.

  “Well, you look like you’ve been getting some sun, at least.”

  A sharp, staccato ripple broke through the droning.

  She might have laughed.

  “Do you feel like talking today?”

  The pitch of her voice shifted half a step upwards as she spoke.

  Another question.

  He shrugged.

  “No? How about looking up, then? Do you feel like we could start there?”

  Questions, questions, questions.

  Less than a minute in and he was already getting tired of her and her damn questions.

  “Lyndon?”

  He raised his head slowly, letting his gaze pass over his cheap khaki pants and then creep gradually across the laminate surface of the coffee table until it reached the splayed out cables feeding into her diagnostic machine. They were a tangled mess, but the console wasn’t in much better shape. Its thin, metal casing was dented and cracked in several places; the spindly sensors and instruments sticking out of it were so rickety that they might as well have been held together with tape. The thing probably hadn’t been serviced in years. Firmware was probably more out of date.

  An articulated arm uncoiled itself from the center of the console like a scorpion’s tail rising up to strike. He almost would have preferred a venomous stinger to the sensor suite that was packed into the appendage’s bulbous tip.

  A quick scan would reveal everything that his silence sought to conceal: metabolic rate, toxicology, brain activity, blood pressure, electrical impulse levels, the works.

  She didn’t like secrets.

  “Trouble sleeping again, I see.”

  Lyndon looked past the device to see her sifting through the data that its sensors were relaying to her tablet. She must have caught his movement, her eyes snapping upward before he could look away.

  For a painful fraction of a second, she made eye contact.

  She might have smiled before Lyndon looked down.

  “I sleep fine,” he said.

  “I’m glad to hear that, but how many hours of sleep would you say you’re getting?”

  Her voice was piercingly clear, always tuned to just the right frequency, one that couldn’t be ignored.

  He shrugged, his head sagging towards his left shoulder.

  “Three hours, maybe four?”

  There was no sense in lying about it. Not with that damned machine frisking him all the time
. He managed to confuse it once with a combination of contradictory answers and forced emotional reactions, but lying to a machine wasn’t the same as lying to a human. There was no way to do both at the same time. When it gave her a false reading, she just smiled that practiced smile of hers and kindly asked him to cut the bullshit.

  “I think we’ve talked about this before, Lyndon,” she said. “There are more and more studies coming out that show the effects of sleep deprivation on emotional well-being and productivity.”

  There would be at least three such studies waiting in his inbox by the time their session was through. They were probably already en route.

  She had a study for everything.

  Lyndon nodded slightly.

  “Still having trouble letting go of the day?”

  “I guess.”

  “How many hours are you working on an average day?”

  Lyndon tried to do the math quickly. He glanced at his hands to tick numbers off with a flex of each digit.

  “I don’t know. Fourteen? Sixteen? Depends.”

  “Any days off?”

  He let out a faint grunt; it was the closest he could get to a chuckle.

  “Not really.”

  “Can you remember the last time you had a day off?”

  He sighed. There had been that day he went to get his transit pass renewed. He’d been due for a full assessment diagnostic this year; insurance liability, they said. Stood in line all day for a med-droid to tell him to cut back on his caffeine. The rest of the day was a blur, though. He might have gotten something to eat afterwards, but maybe not. Didn’t much matter; he was back in his chair next thing he knew.

  When had that been? A week ago? Two? Surely not three, was it?

  “Week and a half or so, I guess,” he said.

  The answer did not provoke a reply.

  Lyndon fell into the trap, glancing up and meeting her concerned gaze.

  The machine on the table hissed softly.

  She smiled. It was the softer one, the one that didn’t look quite so rehearsed. She saved it for moments like this when she wanted to convince him that she gave a shit.

  “Have you thought about taking some time away, Lyndon? You must have bit of vacation time, don’t you?”

  He shook his head, but couldn’t quite break eye contact.

  “I can’t,” he said. “Not this time of year.”

  Her gaze was magnetic. Every detail of her blue eyes leapt out at him, held him with a firm, dispassionate insistence.

  “You’re entitled to that time, Lyndon,” she said. “The enclave’s bylaws are…”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know!”

  The machine buzzed excitedly, harmonizing perfectly with his raised voice.

  She blinked.

  The smile was gone now.

  “I just can’t do it right now, okay?”

  She stared at him. Her eyes seemed a little less vivid.

  “All right,” she said, nodding. “I understand that you feel that way.”

  Lyndon sighed and looked back to the floor.

  “We’re almost out of time for today, Lyndon.”

  The voice was distant again, practiced and measured.

  “I have you down for next month on the same date and time. You’ll get a reminder, as usual.”

  He shrugged.

  “Fine. Whatever.”

  Their sessions always ended the same way. She would tell him now about the terms of his counseling rights and the therapy requirements spelled out in a subheading of his employment contract. Something else about his benefits package and leave eligibility.

  But the familiar drone of her voice rattling off procedural protocol did not begin.

  He looked up to find her still staring at him, her eyebrows slightly furrowed and her lower lip clenched between her teeth.

  This face was new.

  “Can I ask you to do something for me, Lyndon?”

  He didn’t know how to answer. She didn’t usually ask permission before telling him to do something.

  “Sure,” he said.

  “I want you to think about what you would do if you did take that vacation. Think about where you would go, where you would stay, how you would spend your time there.”

  He blinked and rubbed the back of his neck as he tried to process the request.

  Something rattled inside the machine.

  “If you like,” she said, “imagine you could take someone with you. Who would it be? What would you do together?”

  The machine rasped as Lyndon stood up.

  “See you next month,” he said.

  He reached across the table and pressed the sensor on the upper left hand corner of the monitor. The screen went blank, taking her image away and leaving him alone with the diagnostic machine.

  It wagged its rickety appendages at him.

  “Fuck you, too.”

  The thing clicked as he left the room.

  There were three people sitting in the waiting area outside. He recognized two of them, but didn’t know their names. The other one must have been new.

  He didn’t say anything, turning instead down the long corridor that led back to his workstation.

  His shift wasn’t even half over yet.

  The chair had been specially designed for ergonomic comfort by dozens of engineers pouring decades of cumulative experience into producing the ideal centerpiece of the 22nd century workstation. Test studies had shown that it all but eliminated lower and upper back strain, completely prevented or arrested wrist ligament deterioration, and helped to stimulate circulation during prolonged periods of use. Once incorporated into the workplace, research indicated that medical claims associated with degenerative physical strain declined by as much as 90%. Healthcare savings in the first year alone were usually enough to cover the steep implementation costs, but the elevated productivity of a healthier workforce often helped to recoup the investment even faster.

  Lyndon hated the damned thing.

  His workstation consisted of little more than the chair and the array of keypads and monitors that were connected to it by dozens of articulated armatures. It was merely one of several dozen similar setups, each one occupying no more than a few square feet of space on the giant office floor. A small canopy covered each station, shielding it from the harsh fluorescent lightbulbs burning just a few feet overhead. Although nearly every seat was filled, the room was silent save for his own breathing and the steady footsteps of the floor supervisor as he stalked from chair to chair monitoring the productivity of his subordinates. Sophisticated sonic dampeners prevented any sound from escaping each workstation, which helped to reduce potential distractions and unnecessary interactions between employees.

  The supervisor stopped when he noticed Lyndon. He made a big show of glancing at his watch as if he didn’t already know the time from the retinal display on his contacts.

  “Get a lot out of your session today?” he asked.

  Lyndon wanted to tell him to fuck off, but that would only prolong their interaction.

  “Went a bit over. Shrink’s busy today.”

  “No different than the rest of us, then. You’d best get back to your station; we’re far enough behind as it is.”

  “We’re always behind,” Lyndon said.

  The supervisor laughed.

  “It just feels that way because we’ve added new clients recently.”

  Lyndon didn’t see what was so funny about his explanation. Adding new clients was precisely the reason that they were always behind. By the time the department got around to hiring more people to deal with the workload, they would be shorthanded again.

  “Make sure to check your messages,” the supervisor said as he resumed his rounds. “Looks like it’s going to be another long night for you guys.”

  Lyndon climbed into the chair’s harness and slowly strapped himself in. Hundreds of tiny sensors embedded in the seat padding detected his presence, each one sending a different signal to the many processors t
hat helped to regulate the occupant’s comfort. Sheets of nano-motors woven into the fabric activated to massage his muscles while thermal regulators worked to keep the temperature of his skin constant. The leg clamps disengaged as the mag-lev field kicked on, leaving the chair floating tranquilly in the air.

  Keypads, touchscreens, and display monitors swung into position all around him as the chair’s armatures contracted like long, skeletal fingers over the seat. A few quick keystrokes brought the system online and the monitors glowed to life. The narrow screen floating to his left displayed his current task load; it had more than doubled since he left his station.

  He reached up and tapped the first item on the screen.

  Topic: 2034 Metro Phoenix Riots.

  Client: Suncast Media.

  The client’s information unfolded across several screens. News reports, blog entries, video clips, text messages.

  A single request loomed above the jumble of raw, unfiltered data.

  Query: Sources point to military cover-up and clandestine plot to destabilize problem city; please verify.

  Lyndon sighed.

  Sifting was a thankless task. The pile of information thrust upon him by the client would only scratch the surface of the hoard of available data spread across the antiquated databanks of the old Internet. There would be gaps, of course; virtual records lost for all time owing to equipment failure and memory corruption from the widespread system crashes some fifty or sixty years ago, back when the old network started to crumble under its own weight. What remained was a disorganized heap of virtual trash, an archeological relic of the nascent information age. Facts mingled with fictions, knowledge with pseudo-knowledge, truths with half-truths. It was a minefield of consciousness; stumbling upon an unseen fallacy could shred reputations as surely as hot shrapnel tore through flesh.

  Lyndon didn’t bother looking at most of the client’s information. There was no point in trying to verify the accuracy of data that lacked anything that might pass for research. He fed the unsourced info into a collator program and let it filter through the nonsense in search of firm consistencies while he went to work sifting through the harder data. As he skimmed over several screens of text, he flagged inaccuracies and assumptions that betrayed a lack of methodological rigor and dumped the offending files into the collator.