1.
“There he goes.”
“Yes, exactly where he's supposed to be, at the foot of Asclepius.”
The two dusted off their hands, and looked down at the prone figure.
“I wonder if he'll understand what happened.”
He smirked, and looked down at his companion.
“Hallucination or katabasis? It doesn't really matter. If he wakes up, he'll be changed by what happened.”
“He's stirring.”
“Damn.”
“We should have slit his throat,” she said.
“Not here.”
“Why not?”
“This is holy ground. Or a reasonable facsimile. Also, too many witnesses.”
“Which of those is the real reason?”
His smirk faded and turned into a scowl.
“You seem to think that it matters which is which. It doesn't.”
She kept her face blank, an uncaring mask, but the dirtied halo around her head roiled with agitation.
“Just because you're older than me doesn't give you the right to chide me and force your philosophy on me, Lark.”
He snickered, before turning away.
“I don't have time for this. Go back into hiding. I'll be along in two, maybe three hours.”
“Where are you going?”
“To gather supplies. Orders from the Great Marquis,” he informed her, without turning.
“Did he not see fit to give me orders?”
“Yours is the honor of the rearguard. Now get to work.”
He left her standing on the lawn of the medical school, in the shadow of the statue of Asclepius. She looked down at the prone form of the real Wade Larkin, and allowed her mask to drop, warring impulses competing on her face.
She turned away from him, and walked away, unsure of what she felt.
2.
"There spoke the race!" he said; "always ready to claim what it hasn't got, and mistake its ounce of brass filings for a ton of gold-dust. You have a mongrel perception of humor, nothing more; a multitude of you possess that. This multitude see the comic side of a thousand low-grade and trivial things -- broad incongruities, mainly; grotesqueries, absurdities, evokers of the horse-laugh. The ten thousand high-grade comicalities which exist in the world are sealed from their dull vision. Will a day come when the race will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them -- and by laughing at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon -- laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution -- these can lift at a colossal humbug -- push it a little -- weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand. You are always fussing and fighting with your other weapons. Do you ever use that one? No; you leave it lying rusting. As a race, do you ever use it at all? No; you lack sense and the courage.”
Something nudged Wade's side, and he rolled away.
“Lark, wake up.”
He groaned, and curled up into a fetal position, screwing his eyes as tight as they could go.
“You're asleep on the goddamn lawn. This is a public place, dammit. If you don't get up, the university police will probably do something drastic. You know. Like ask you to move along. Or call someone who can actually arrest you.”
“Nnnnn,” was his reply.
Theia prodded him in the ribs with her foot again, and he opened his eyes.
“Oh, great. Reality. I was wondering where this went.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You wouldn't believe me if...wait...actually, you probably would.”
Wade rolled onto his feet and stretched, Theia stepped back and crossed her arms as he did so.
“Know where I can get a cup of coffee?” he asked, producing a soft pack and pulling out a cigarette that had been bent into the shape of a cartoon lightning bolt.
Theia sighed.
“Just follow me. Where were you? I've been looking for you for almost a day, now.”
She put her hands in her pockets, and walked southward. The sky to the east was just beginning to brighten behind the heavy clouds, allowing the bare hills beyond the edge of the city to lighten into silhouettes.
“Why?” he asked, trotting after her.
“Because some protective sigils I drew in Algernon's reformed. Said crazy things. Threatening things. Profane things.”
“You sure he didn't do it?”
Theia barked a laugh.
“You think he'd get up just to screw with my mind?”
“Good point. How is he?”
“Not good.”
3.
The man and woman slid down the sinkhole, and into the ruined concrete bunker. They trailed a pair of ropes behind them, and lowered themselves to the floor of the laboratory. Piles of dirt slumped against the walls, and the concrete had been scorched in places, with exposed rebar that had hardened into nebulous shapes.
“Why didn't we take the tunnel?” the duplicate Wade asked.
“I checked. If we were to walk the twelve hours of night, it would collapse on us, and flood the tunnel. Also, passing through the snake hole, or past the mausoleum, would be ill advised.”
“Snake hole? Mausoleum?”
“Both created by the Master's predecessors. Charles Carver made the Twelve hours as a sort of artificial katabasis. A way of ensuring that his successors would be worthy to continue his work. The Mausoleum is a faraday cage that trapped the souls of his family, as he felt that they would not be...allowed into the afterlife.”
“And the 'snake hole?'”
“His artificial Apophis. You know of the geothermal powerplant far below the city?”
“Vaguely.”
“Its output is converted into a dry charge, and it builds up in special capacitors. As soon as a consciousness passes between the plates of the capacitor, a threshold guardian is created, reflecting the Jungian shadow-nature of the tresspasser.”
“So, as a servant of Shax and an artificial demoniac entity...”
“We would call up a fairly nasty guardian, yes.”
Wade's duplicate produced a flashlight, and illuminated his companion. Laplace looked back at him, and blinked her eyes.
“You remember what happened here?” he asked her.
She smiled back.
“Do you?”
“Vaguely. A battle of titans, if I remember correctly.”
“My...brother?...Maxwell fought your original. An artificial, entropy-controlling demoniac versus a mere human.”
“A human suffering from a nasty case of trans-possession by one of the primordial entities...Paimon, the almighty idiot...Artificial trans-possession, if I recall correctly.”
“Yes. You do.”
“Let's get to work, demoniac.”
“As you wish, simulacra.”
4.
The campus coffee shop was just opening, and the sleepy-eyed freshman behind the counter took their money and made their drinks in silence. Theia guided Wade to a table in the corner, where they could speak with their voices lowered and avoid being overheard.
“Where were you?” Theia asked again, looking at him over the top of her espresso.
“Hell,” he replied, before taking a long drink from his mug. He spat back most of it upon realizing that he'd misjudged the heat of the drink.
“Hell,” she repeated.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding, and sipping at his coffee.
“What happened?”
“You know that greasy black smoke that sometimes follows me around.”
“I believe I've seen it,” she replied.
“Well, all of it was ripped out of me. I ran into a duplicate of myself, it, uh...”
“Enumerated all of your faults?”
He narrowed his eyes, and studied her carefully.
“How do you know?”
“I ran into one, too. While I was looking for you. This big man--”
“With a tattoo of the number forty-four?” Wade supplied.
She nodded, “he gestured at me, and when I turned around...”
“There the double was,” Wade finished.
“Yeah. Mine just kicked the shit out of me.”
“Well, that hardly seems fair. I got the shit beaten out of me a couple dozen times over while I was in hell.”
“Describe it to me,” she said.
“Well,” he said, furrowing his brow, trying to think of how to begin.
5.
“There we are,” Wade's duplicate said, nodding. A large amount of equipment had been loaded into a bulging harness, which he picked up, and swung onto his back.
“Be careful,” Laplace responded, “much of that equipment is unique.”
“Which is why we had to scavenge it instead of buying it. Now, tell me, why are you helping us?”
Laplace gave a thin, tight smile.
“Because it's the way that events are supposed to unfold. Don't tell me that you can't guess from my name.”
“Sure, I can. Absolute causal knowledge. Victor must be proud of himself.”
She shook her head.
“He was just playing his role when he created me. He thinks of me as his pawn...but he's thus far been disappointed by my prescience.”
Wade clipped onto his line, and looked at her.
“I possess a limited sort of prescience, myself,” he said, with a wicked smile. He reached out, and a long, thin tendril of arafel-smoke extended from his hand and wrapped around her, dragging her close to him.
He placed a kiss on her lips with savage intensity, and threw her to the ground.
“The next time we meet, I'll kill you. That's my prediction, and my promise.”
Laplace looked up at him, but narrowed her eyes.
“I doubt it,” she muttered, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
6.
“Hey. Gimme a drink,” Algernon ordered.
“My god, he's alive,” Jacob said, turning away from the man he had been talking to.
Santiago looked over, and adjusted his white suit jacket.
“It's eleven in the morning,” he pointed out.
Jacob shushed him with a gesture.
“How about some orange juice or some water, Algernon?” he offered.
Algernon set his gun down on the counter top.
“Not unless it's a screwdriver or...or...I can't think of anything that's mixed with water.”
“Right,” Jacob said, sighing.
He scooped a large amount of ice into a glass, and filled it nine-tenths of the way with orange juice before putting a splash of vodka into it to fulfill his demand.
“There. One screwdriver.”
Algernon drained the glass in one go. Jacob and Santiago watched as he did so, ice crashing against his creased face and tumbling from the glass, falling to the ground, down his collar, and into the front pocket of his shirt.
When he finished, he looked over at them.
“Where's Wade? I need him to go buy me smokes.”
“We don't know,” Jacob said. Both of the other men looked at him with cold, level eyes.
“Screw it. I'll go, myself.”
He got up and began to leave. Upon reaching the door, he stopped and turned back toward the bar. He stalked over, and grabbed his revolver from where he'd left it.
It was raining when he got outside, so he turned up his collar against the weather, allowing an ice cube to fall down and slide across his slumped shoulder.
His head downcast, he walked to the convenience store, and bought his cigarettes.
A large man with a long, hooked nose watched him as he went in, and still stood there when he left. The man was wearing short sleeves, and on one bicep was a tattoo that read “#44.”
One of the bank of defunct payphones rang.
The man made a gesture.
Ring.
Algernon stopped and looked at it.
Ring.
Had Wade said something about payphones, once? The younger man had had a strange fascination with them for a while, shortly before Mari had died.
Ring.
What had he said about them?
Ring.
Had he said something?
Ring.
Or was it his imagination?
Ring.
What did any of it mean?
Ring.
Did it even matter?
Ring.
Ah, hell.
R--
“What?” Algernon asked the receiver.
“You are not alone, Algernon Heller,” the voice was horribly distorted, and filled with an unidentifiable electronic noise that warped and slowed it down.
“Who is this?”
“Be alert...t...” the voice continued, before the line went silent.
He looked down, and saw that the cord of the phone had been cut long ago.
Dropping the receiver on the ground, Algernon turned.
7.
“...and then I woke up on the lawn with you kicking me in the ribs,” Wade finished.
“Nudging,” Theia amended.
“Right. Nudging me. Hard. With your foot.”
“Okay, fine, so kicking.”
Theia leaned back, and flipped her empty cup over on her saucer, and pushed it to the edge of the table.
“That sounds familiar, actually?”
“Oh?” Wade asked, leaning back, taking this time to drink from his cooled coffee.
“Do you know what Novs are?”
“I always figured you all were a little like goths, interested in occult symbolism, a little fringy, stuff like that.”
“Sort of. There are other elements. You know where the name came from?”
Wade shook his head, and emptied his coffee.
“It's a shortening of 'Novice.' The first Novs were people that Charles Carver was training to take over his work, but were rejected for some reason or other.”
Wade cocked his head to the side.
“So...the first Novs knew things that the Carvers were using, their...trade secrets, or something like that, and...”
“Cue the game of Chinese whispers. But some things are kept stable. Too important to change. Too important to let change.”
“So what do you know?”
“Well, aside from most of Carver's original equipment being gotten when Nikola Tesla had to liquidate his assets in 1900, there was a time when a shamanic current ran through the Nov consciousness. People took black hash with LSD and psilocybin, and they would describe things like what you saw. The last time someone did that was in 1951, and it was the only time an account of it was written down, but not by one of us.”
“Who wrote it down?” Wade asked, leaning forward.
“A traveling poet. A man who crossed the country so many times that it's hard to tell where he was at what point.”
“Kerouac?”
“Yeah. Supposedly, it was published, but got subsumed into one of his works in such a way that it's just about impossible to detect, lurking there, under the surface, waiting to be unlocked.”
She got up, and stretched.
“Of course...it could all just be Chinese whispers.”
8.
Theia's duplicate had spent the morning clearing out a workspace in the warehouse, and securing it against intruders. She found a hose, and sprayed down the spot on the floor that had been used as a fire pit by the previous occupants.
“Victory,” the other Wade declared, pushing the door open. He set his bundle by the door, and unwrapped it.
“This should be quite enough,” he noted, “don't you think?”
“It's beautiful,” she noted, “we should be able to do our duty with this.”
“Now. We need to take stock and figure out what else we'll need,” he said.
“I'm quite aware of the plan, Lark. You don't need to be such a bitch about everything.”
He sighed, and hung his head.
“I'm sorry, alright. I think when I was made, something got put in crooked, okay?”
“Maybe. Now. Let's get to work.”
“Lets.”
9.
There was a dark figure behind him, a man in a trenchcoat, with the collar turned up against the rain. He had an old, battered trilby hat shading his face. Around his mouth was a roiling, tentacular mass of greasy gray-black smoke.
“Who are you?” Algernon asked.
“Me? Isn't it obvious?”
The figure tilted back his hat, and Algernon looked into his mirror image.
“No, I don't believe it is obvious.”
“I'm your double, your duplicate, your simulacra.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? You're some kind of copy?”
The other man shook his head.
“Copy? Not so much. I'm not intended to perfectly mimic you, by any stretch. Instead...think of me as an upgraded replacement. None of those pesky regrets.”
“I happen to think that I'm doing just fine at being me.”
“You would, but I'm as I'm meant to be, and as you're meant to be. I'm perfect. Just as my maker made me.”
“So?”
The other Algernon smiled.
“I don't have any regrets, because I'm not guilty of anything. I was just made now, born into the world without a single sin. Because I didn't let my integrity get compromised with the bribe that ended your journalistic career, I don't lie about it, either.”
“Shut up.”
“Nor did I shortchange Wade Larkin or Theia Marlowe.”
“Shut up.”
“I neither waited too long to tell Mariposa Harris about my feelings, nor did I shoot her down.”
“Shut the hell up!”
“And least of all, I've never been a burden on those who care about me. So, in all honesty, I'm more offended about being made in your image than you probably are about the same.”
“Shut the fuck up!” Algernon said, reaching for his shoulder holster.
His duplicate did the same.
They drew.
They aim.
They fire.