Tailored Realities, page 29
“What have you done?” the emperor asked Dennison with a haunted voice.
Dennison didn’t respond. He sat motionless, staring at the ten screens. For a moment he’d almost been able to convince himself that he was Varion. A victor.
“Your Majesty!” a surprised voice called from the back of the room. It was the aging admiral, pointing at the screen. “Look! Look at the Silvermane’s forces…”
In the tenth battle, the one that Dennison hadn’t been able to falsify, several of Varion’s fighter squadrons had turned away from their assault. Then the Voidhawk itself broke off its attack.
“Your Majesty, they’re retreating!” another admiral said with amazement.
The emperor stood, turning toward Dennison. “What…?”
Dennison stood as well, stepping forward, toward the viewscreen. Could it be … If Varion’s technicians had found the discrepancy and fixed it on their own before telling Varion what was happening … extending for just a few moments the time in which Varion believed he was being defeated …
Dennison watched Varion’s forces retreat, and in that moment he knew the truth. He could see it in the organization of the ships.
He had won. His trick had worked. “In all the things Varion discovered or was taught,” Dennison said, a little stunned himself as he sat back in the chair, “for all his success, for all his genius, there was one thing he never learned…”
Dennison paused, reaching over to his datapad and looking for a specific data feed. He clicked the button, bringing up an image on the main viewscreen: the image that showed Varion’s ready room via the bug that Varion had always known about. The bug that he had allowed to remain because it amused him. It showed exactly what Dennison had hoped to see.
There, presented on the enormous screen, was an image of the High Admiral. Lord Varion Crestmar the Silvermane, greatest military genius of the age, sat behind his desk in the Voidhawk. In his limp fingers he held a gun, a smoking hole blown through his own forehead.
“He never learned how to lose,” Dennison whispered.
POSTSCRIPT
This is the second of the “early Brandon” stories in this collection—and is actually my first published piece of short fiction, though it was written after “Defending Elysium.”
“Firstborn” has a quirky publication story. I sold it to Tor.com, right when Tor.com (now called Reactor) was new. They were exploring the idea of doing free fiction for publicity, and bought this story outright to put on their website. On a lark, they put it on Amazon a few years later for one dollar, even though it was free on their website.
This was my first experience with how powerful indie publishing could become, as I ended up earning more money on that story through Amazon than I did in the initial sale. The story was free elsewhere, and was only one dollar even on Amazon, and I got only a tiny fraction of the money (since Amazon and Tor both took their chunks first). Even with all of that, the earnings on the story blew away the pay of any other short story market—going on to earn me many multiples of what I could have earned selling it to an anthology or any of the major magazines. (Tor.com, it should be noted, had paid quite well for the story, so I’d considered the story as having done its job.) It was eye-opening to get a taste of what ebooks could be.
As for the text, this story is quite obviously a nature-versus-nurture story. I’ve often said it was a response to Ender’s Game and the trope of a hypercompetent youth. (In Ender’s Game, the protagonist’s parents are allowed to have a third child because their first two had almost been perfect candidates for commanders in the space force, and the government wanted to roll the dice on a third child.)
Here, a direct clone of a genius military commander grows up to be … an ordinary guy. I don’t know the actual balance between nature and nurture, but exploring such things is one of the reasons we write fiction, and I enjoyed this exploration.
I will note, somewhat critically, how often storytellers of this era (myself obviously included) liked to use suicide as a plot device. It’s something that I suspect many of us are more conscious about these days. (In my case, I know that I am.)
1
The day had finally arrived, a day I’d been awaiting for ten years. A glorious day, a momentous day, a day of import and distinction.
It was time to buy a hot dog.
Someone was in line when we arrived, but I didn’t cut in front of her. She would have let me. I was one of the Reckoners—leaders of the rebellion, defenders of the city of Newcago, slayers of Steelheart himself. But standing in line was part of the experience, and I didn’t want to skip a moment.
Newcago extended around me, a city of skyscrapers, underpasses, shops, and streets all frozen permanently in steel. Recently, Tia had started an initiative to paint some of those surfaces. Now that the city’s perpetual gloom had been dispelled, it turned out all those reflective surfaces could make things really bright. With some work, instead of looking the same everywhere, the city would eventually become a patchwork of reds, oranges, greens, whites, and purples.
Abraham—my companion for this hot dog excursion—followed my gaze, then grimaced. “It would be nice if when we painted a wall, we would take a little more concern for colors that matched those of their neighbors.”
Tall and dark-skinned, Abraham spoke with a light French accent. As he talked, he scanned the people walking nearby, studying each one in his trademark relaxed yet discerning way. The butt of a handgun poked from his hip holster. We Reckoners weren’t technically police. I wasn’t sure what we were. But whatever it was, it involved weapons, and I had my rifle over my shoulder. Newcago was almost kind of peaceful, now that we’d dealt with the rioters, but you couldn’t count on peace lasting long. Not with Epics out there.
“We have to use the paint we can find,” I said.
“It’s garish.”
I shrugged. “I like it. The colors are different. Not like the city was before Calamity, but also a big change from how it was under Steelheart. They make the city look like a big … chessboard. Um, one painted a lot of colors.”
“Or perhaps a quilt?” Abraham asked, sounding amused.
“Sure, I suppose. If you want to use a boring metaphor.”
A quilt. Why hadn’t I thought of that?
The woman in front of us wandered off with her hot dog, and I stepped up to the stand—a small metal cart with a transformed steel umbrella permanently frozen open. The vendor, Sam, was an elderly, bearded man who wore a small red-and-white hat. He grinned at us. “For you, half price,” he said, whipping up two hot dogs. Chicago style, of course.
“Half price?” Abraham said. “Saving the world does not inspire the gratitude it once did.”
“A man has to make a living,” Sam said, slathering on the condiments. Like … a lot of them. Yellow mustard, onions, chunked tomatoes, sweet pickle relish, peppers—whole, of course, and pickled—a dill pickle slice, and a pinch of celery salt. Just like I remembered. A true Chicago dog looks like someone fired a bazooka at a vegetable stand, then scraped the remnants off the wall and slathered it on a tube of meat.
I took mine greedily. Abraham was more skeptical.
“Ketchup?” Abraham asked.
The vendor’s eyes opened wide.
“He’s not from around here,” I said quickly. “No ketchup, Abraham. Aren’t you French? You people are supposed to have good taste in food.”
“French Canadians do have good taste in food,” Abraham said, inspecting the hot dog. “But I am not convinced that this is actually food.”
“Just try it.” I bit into my dog.
Bliss.
For a moment, it was as if no time had passed. I was back with my father, before everything went bad. I could hear him laughing, could smell the city as it had been back then—rank at times, yes, but also alive. Full of people talking and laughing and yelling. Asphalt streets, hot in the summer as we walked together. People in hockey jerseys. The Blackhawks had just won the Cup …
It faded around me, and I was back in Newcago, a steel city. But that moment of tasting it all again … sparks, that was wonderful. I looked up at Sam, and he grinned at me. We couldn’t recapture it all. The world was a different place now.
But damn it, we could have proper hot dogs again.
I turned to look around the city. Nobody else had gotten in line, and people passed with eyes cast down. We were at First Union Square, a holy place where a certain bank had once stood. It was also the center of the new city’s crossroads. It was a busy location, a prime spot for a hot dog vendor.
I set my jaw, then slapped some coins down on Sam’s cart. “Free hot dogs for the first ten who want them!” I shouted.
People looked at us, but nobody came over. When some of them saw me watching, they lowered their eyes and continued on.
Sam sighed, crossing his arms on top of his cart. “Sorry, Steelslayer. They’re too afraid.”
“Afraid of hot dogs?” I said.
“Afraid to get comfortable with freedom,” Sam said, watching a woman rush past and head into the understreets, where most people still lived. Even with sunlight up here now, and no Epics to torment them … even with painted walls and colors … they still hid below.
“They think the Epics will return,” Abraham said with a nod. “They are waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak.”
“They’ll change,” I said, stubbornly stuffing more of my hot dog into my mouth. I talked around the bite. “They’ll see.”
That was what this had all been about, right? Killing Steelheart? It had been to show that we could fight back. Everyone else would understand, eventually. They had to. The Reckoners couldn’t fight every Epic in the country on our own.
I nodded to Sam. “Thanks. For what you do.”
He nodded. It might seem silly, but Sam opening his hot dog stand was one of the most important events this city had seen in ten years. Some of us fought back with guns and assassinations. Others fought back with a little hot dog stand on the corner.
“We’ll see,” Sam said, pushing away the coins I’d set down, all but two nickels to pay for our hot dogs. We’d gone back to using American money, though only the coins, and we valued them much higher. The city government backed them with food stores, at Tia’s suggestion.
“Keep it all,” I said. “Give free hot dogs to the first ten who come today. We’ll change them, Sam. One bite at a time.”
He smiled, but pocketed the money. As Abraham and I walked off, Tia’s voice, terse and distracted, came in over my earpiece. “Do you two have a report?”
“The dogs are awesome,” I said.
“Dogs?” she said. “Watchdogs? You’ve been checking on the city kennels?”
“Young David,” Abraham said around a mouthful, “has been instructing me on the local cuisine. They are called ‘hot dogs’ because they’re only good for feeding to animals, yes?”
“You took him to that hot dog stand?” Tia asked. “Weren’t you two supposed to be doing greetings?”
“Philistines, both of you,” I said, cramming the rest of my hot dog into my mouth.
“We are on our way, Tia,” Abraham said.
Abraham and I hiked toward the city gates. The new city government had decided to section off the downtown, and had done so by creating barricades out of steel furniture to block some of the streets. It created a decent perimeter of control that helped us keep tabs on who was entering our city.
We passed people scuttling about on their business, heads down. Sam was right. Most of the population seemed to think the Epics were going to descend upon the city any moment, exacting retribution. In fact, after we’d overthrown Steelheart, a shocking number of people had left the city.
That was unfortunate, as we now had a provisional government in place. We had farmers to work the fields outside, and Edmund using his Epic abilities to provide free power for the whole place. We even had a large number of former members of Steelheart’s Enforcement troops recruited to police the city.
Newcago was working as well now as it had under Steelheart. We’d tried to replicate his organization, only without that whole “indiscriminate murder of innocents” thing. Life was good here. Better than anything else in the remnants of the Fractured States, for certain.
Still, people hid, waited for a disaster. “They will see,” I muttered.
“Perhaps,” Abraham said, eyeing me.
“Just wait.”
He shrugged and chewed his last bit of hot dog. He grimaced. “I do not think I can forgive you for that, David. It was terrible. Tastes should complement one another, not hold all-out war with one another.”
“You finished it.”
“I did not wish to be impolite.” He grimaced again. “Truly awful.”
We walked in silence until we arrived at the first unbarricaded roadway. Here, members of Enforcement processed a line of people wanting to enter. People with Newcago passports—farmers or scavengers who worked outside of the downtown—went right through. Newcomers, however, were stopped and told to wait for orientation.
“Good crowd today,” I noted. Some forty or fifty people waited in the newcomer line.
Abraham grunted. The two of us walked up to where a man in black Enforcement armor was explaining the city rules to a group in worn, dirty clothing. Most of these people would have spent recent years outside of civilization, dodging Epics, surviving as best they could in a land ruled by nested levels of tyrants, like Russian dolls with evil little faces painted on them.
Two families among the newcomers, I thought, noting the men and women with children. That encouraged me.
As several of the soldiers continued orientation, one of them—Roy—strolled over to me. Like the other soldiers, he wore black armor but no helmet. Enforcement members were intimidating enough without covering their faces.
“Hey,” Roy said. He was a lanky redhead I’d grown up with. I still hadn’t figured out whether he bore a grudge for that time I’d shot him in the leg.
“How’s this batch?” I asked softly.
“Better than yesterday,” Roy said with a grunt. “Fewer opportunists, more genuine immigrants. You can tell the difference when you explain the jobs we need done.”
“The opportunists refuse the work?”
“No,” Roy said. “They’re just too excited, all smiles and eagerness. It’s a sham. They plan to get put onto a work detail, then ditch it first chance to see what they can steal. We’ll weed them out.”
“Be careful,” I said. “Don’t blacklist someone just because they’re optimistic.”
Roy shrugged. Enforcement was on our side—we controlled the power that ran their weapons and armor—but they too seemed on edge. Steelheart had occasionally used them to fight lesser Epics. From what I’d heard, it hadn’t gone well for the ordinary humans on either side of such a conflict.
These men knew firsthand what it was like to face down Epics. If a powerful one decided to step into Steelheart’s place, the police force would be worth less than a bagful of snakes at a dance competition.
I gave Roy an encouraging slap on the shoulder. The officers finished their orientation, and I joined Abraham, who began introducing himself to the newcomers one at a time. We’d figured out that after Enforcement’s cheerful welcome of stern gazes, strict rules, and suspicious glances, a little friendly chatting with someone more normal went a long way.
I welcomed one of the families, telling them how wonderful Newcago was and how glad I was they’d come. I didn’t tell them specifically who I was, though I implied that I was a liaison between the city’s people and the Reckoners. I had the speech down pat by now.
As we talked, I saw someone pass to the side.
That hair. That figure.
I turned immediately, stuttering the last words of my greeting. My heart thundered inside my chest. But it wasn’t her.
Of course it wasn’t her. You’re a fool, David Charleston, I told myself, turning back to my duties. How long was I going to keep jumping every time I spotted someone who looked vaguely like Megan?
The answer seemed simple. I’d keep doing it until I found her.
This group took well to my introduction, relaxing visibly. A few even asked me questions. Turned out that the family in my group had fled Newcago years be- fore, deciding that the convenience wasn’t worth the tyranny. Now they were willing to give it another go.
I told the group about a few jobs in particular I thought they should consider, then suggested they get mobiles as soon as possible. A lot of our city administration happened through those, and the fact that we had electricity to power them was a highlight of Newcago. I wanted people to stop thinking of themselves as refugees. They belonged to a community now.
Introductions done, I stepped back and let the people enter the city. They started forward, trepidatious, looking at the towering buildings ahead. It seemed Roy had been right. This group was more promising than ones who had come before. We were accomplishing something. And …
I frowned.
“Did you talk to that one?” I asked Abraham, nodding to a man toward the rear of the departing group. He wore simple clothing, jeans and a faded T-shirt, and no socks with his sneakers. Tattoos ringed his forearm, and he wore an earring in one ear. He was muscular, with distinctively knobbed features, and was perhaps in his late thirties. There was something about him …
“He didn’t say much,” Abraham said. “Do you know him?”
“No.” I narrowed my eyes. “Wait here.”
I followed the group, pulling out my mobile and looking at it as I walked, feigning distraction. They continued on as we’d instructed them, making for the offices at First Union Square.
Maybe I was jumping at nothing. I usually got a little paranoid when the Professor wasn’t in town. He and Cody had supposedly gone out east to check in with another cell of the Reckoners. Babilar or someplace.
