Supercharged

Latvia popped back into existence right above Estonia’s coffee table, smashing it to bits and collapsing to the floor. “Crap!” she groaned, pushing herself sideways on the heap of splintered wood.

“What the hell did you do to my coffee table?” Estonia roared, stepping into the room, a tiny cup of tea in her hand.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” snapped Latvia, still nested in shattered wood, her hair sticking out every which way. She flung a stick at Estonia’s legs and missed.

“How’d you get in?” Estonia barked.

“Estonia,” said Latvia, clearly frazzled. “Do I look like I know?”

They stared at each other for a few seconds. Then Estonia’s eyes lit up, and she slurped her tea in a single gulp. “You mean you teleported?” she said, tossing her empty teacup onto the couch. “You teleported like me?”

“Give me a hand,” Latvia grunted, extending her hand. Estonia hoisted her sister up from what was left of the table. “Yes, I must’ve teleported, I guess. Or maybe someone teleported me, I don’t know.” Then she thought of her mother’s book, and whirled around to find it lying there, sprawled haphazardly in the pile of rubbish. Latvia snatched it up and opened it, but the pages were now blank.

“What is it?” Estonia asked.

“I don’t know if I have time to explain,” Latvia said hurriedly. “It’s a book of mom’s. But whatever chased me back at my place can probably find us here too.”

“Chased you?”

Latvia nodded. She realized she was a little jittery. “Big dark figure. Hooded. Creepy. Typical bad guy. He could fly, I think.”

“What?”

“Estonia, mom told me to bring this book to you, and then to go with you to Lithuania.”

Estonia’s expression was blank. “First,” she said, suddenly snarky, “Mom is gone. Second, Lithuania is in another country, way beyond the reach of my still out-of-control teleportation powers. So how do you expect—”

The book hovered before Estonia’s eyes, opened, then slammed shut in her face before plopping back into Latvia’s hands. Estonia stared wide-eyed at the book. Latvia smirked. “I think that was mom telling you to shut up.”

“Latvia!” Estonia objected. “Explain!”

Latvia looked out the window. It was pitch black out. “Alright, but there isn’t much time.” So Latvia sat on the couch and explained everything that had happened—from her vision of Lithuania in the woods, to her inexplicable dialogue through the book with her mother, to the hooded creature crashing through the attic roof. “And I think,” Latvia continued, “That that thing knows I’m here.” Estonia snuck a glance at the window. “I also think we’re about to get really paranoid,” Latvia mumbled.   

“Shhh!” Estonia snapped, pressing her finger urgently to her lips. “Someone’s outside,” she mouthed. Latvia held her breath, expecting to hear footsteps. How did Estonia know?

Estonia rose from the couch, slowly. A shadow could be seen through the crack under the apartment’s front door. Latvia pressed her mother’s book close to her chest, staring fixedly at the door. Estonia inched closer to the doorway, trying to decide whether to yell at the mystery person, open the door suddenly, or stay quiet—but the shadow vanished before she could make up her mind.

A few more seconds, then both sisters exhaled in unison.

“He’s gone,” said Latvia relieved.

“He left something,” said Estonia, nonchalantly flinging the door open and picking up a small blue box from the floor. Latvia jolted, half-expecting the creature to still be standing there, then recognized the blue marble box. “Oh no,” Estonia said. “Not another one.”

“Wait,” said Latvia, rising from behind the couch, her eyes on the box. “Mom said the blue specks only brought us closer to who we really are.”

Estonia closed the front door and bolted it. “Yeah?”

“Which means that box, if it has more blue stuff in it, can only help us.”

“Listen,” said Estonia flatly, “I don’t know you, but I don’t particularly like being a teleporting freak of nature, much less a supercharged teleporting freak of nature, which, if I remember correctly, is precisely what this little box will turn me into.”

“Estonia—” 

“Remember last time? I was disappearing and reappearing like crazy! I even disappeared while taking a poop and reappeared in my cubicle! You know how embarrassing that was?” 

“Estonia, you’ve learned to control it.”

“Barely! And I don’t want to go through another steep learning curve—”

The book in Latvia’s hands flipped open, and blots of ink began taking shape. Open the box, it said. “It says we should open the box.”  

“Let me see that!” Estonia snapped, snatching the book from her sister’s hands.

OPEN THE BOX NOW, read the ink.

And then the entire apartment shuddered. “What the hell was that?” said Estonia. An ear-splitting crack. A fissure sliced through the ceiling above.

Latvia snatched the book back and held it tight. “The box, Estonia! Open the box!”

The room grew cold. Latvia and Estonia felt their breath catch in their chests. A strange sensation, like that of artificially induced terror. They couldn’t breathe. They could hardly move. Another loud crack. The glass and mirrors throughout the apartment exploded. “The box, NOW!” Latvia cried.

Estonia opened the box. Immediately, the sisters were enveloped in blue specks. Latvia gripped Estonia’s hand, closed her eyes tight, and together they thought of Lithuania.

A moment later, they were gone.  

The Resurrection

"Nothing worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we are saved by hope.... no virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own; therefore, we are saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness."

-Reinhold Niebuhr

***Forty-five years ago, on a distant planet***

The room was an ornately designed, wood-paneled study. A giant oak desk in the center was flanked by walls of bookshelves, filled with a veritable library: old books, new books, hardcovers, paperbacks, leather-bounds. Deep red curtains covered the windows and the dark sky behind them, and the room was filled with a soft, yellow light that left everything slightly dim, with a somber and pensive atmosphere. There was a soft leather chair in one corner, away from the door, and a table with a chessboard in another corner nearer the door. Besides the expense of the materials, there were a few visible details that gave clues to the owner and the purpose of the room. Two large portraits, each three meters high, were set in spaces in between the bookshelves opposite one another on the sides of the room. The first depicted a man in deep grey robes with a wreath on his head, standing before a large classical building. He was erect and handsome, and had a bright, sanguine expression on his face. The second showed a grey-haired man in the full dress uniform of a top general. He was standing before a flag and had a somber expression, hard features, and intelligent eyes. Swords with silver sheaths sat on two of the bookshelves.

The main occupant of the room was facing the back curtains, apparently deep in thought. Someone knocked at the door and the occupant asked them to enter. A uniformed guard with a beret and a machine gun opened the door from the outside to let the visitor enter. The visitor had white hair and also wore a military uniform, but without insignia of any kind to identify his rank or job. He had a somber expression, hard features, and intelligent eyes, and he seemed very tired. He entered a few paces and stopped, apparently waiting for a response, while the guard closed the door. The original occupant of the room waited for almost a half minute before turning around to show himself. He was dressed in formal business attire and looked at the visitor with searching eyes.

"Please sit down," he said to the visitor, motioning to a chair in front of the oak desk.

The visitor nodded briefly. "Th-thhhhaaankk you, your majesty," he said in a slow, gravelly voice, struggling to articulate the words precisely. He made his way to the chair with a stiff and almost painful gait. The original occupant continued watching him, and the searching gaze was tinged with a dose of sympathy.

"I'd insist that we dispense with the formalities. You can address me by my first name," said the King.

"As you wish," said the unknown officer, still with the struggling voice.

"I'm told that you haven't yet finished your recovery. The doctors advised you to wait but you insisted on getting started with your preparations immediately."

The visitor coughed. "We need to move quickly," he said. "My strength will return faster if I use it."

The occupant waited a moment before responding, apparently refining his mental picture of the old man. He was beginning to feel the reasons why this man had been chosen to lead the monumental endeavor at hand. "Perhaps you'd prefer that I do most of the talking, and you can confirm if you understand or speak up if not."

"That would be fine."

Another pause. "Unfortunately, we haven't brought you here on the firmest of evidence. All we really know for sure is that we lost contact with one of our deep space probes near the Harrimanian Rift... but not before it returned some disturbing signals."

"Signs of technology, yes."

"Signs of human technology... and something else. All very spotty. There's a lot that is unexplained."

"But enough to justify alarm."

"Yes, we think so. It looks like a fleet, and it's headed directly towards Coralende, the jewel of the disapora. It's on that basis we've brought you back here, at risk to your life; we're on the verge of bringing a quarter-million people under arms, and devoting a third of our people to the creation of a warfleet; that will depart from a dozen different planets at hundred different times, all to reach an objective that will take them four decades to reach. The worst part is, we might not even beat them there. Our fleet could arrive to find... nothing. A smoldering crater of a planet. Or worse. And we are almost certain that they know more about us than we know about them. They've probably had agents here for generations, maybe since the first landing. They hold all the cards."

"But people are going along with it."

"Yes, people are going along with it. Imagine the outrage when we announce to the public that taxes are being quintupled and we can't explain why. Better yet, imagine what happens when we make these orders to the Premierships of other planets. They're not used to taking orders. They say that it's all nonsense, they demand to know more, they threaten secession."

"But they're doing it."

"Most of them are. We've had to wrangle concessions from the parliaments of some of the more unruly worlds. They know they can get away with it, because we're dependent on what they do. We have no bargaining power."

"The royal authority still means something to people."

The King sighed. "We've prepared well. Everyone who's achieved a position of authority in the colonies knew that this day had to come someday. And so we're still working together. Because of the legacy of people like King Caleb, who took charge when we first got to this planet." He motioned to the portrait of the man in the grey cloak to his right. "And because of people like the General here," motioning to the portrait of the man in the military uniform to his left, "who kept us together back in the days when we first left Breckinridge, a half millennium ago. When it seemed like civilization might be over forever."

"The General was a fool," said the visitor, suddenly animated in a way that his previous movements never would have suggested. "He deceived the world and he deceived himself. We could never count the number of lives that were lost because of his mistakes."

"If we grow wise in proportion to the size of our mistakes, then the General would be one of the wisest men in history. I can't imagine a greater asset."

The visitor coughed.

The Read

They were back in the cell. Lithuania told them she needed to think over their offer of help before she made a decision. She had slept on it, twice, and she still hadn’t decided. So winfry and isa waited, trying to occupy themselves anyway that they could.

“umm, isa?”

“yeah?”

“ahh… Did we have sex?” winfry didn’t really know how that slip out, but he couldn’t blame the quilare. That night had been his mind’s chief occupation while he waited. But he could never get a good grip on the matter and he just kept slipping. He remembered planning to get the extra sheets for the couch he had seen in the living room. And then isa said something. “come sleep with me”? No, that wasn’t it. “let’s rest a bit, winfry”? Maybe. Not. And what did isa look like when they got up? Confused? Mad? Angry? Surprised? Her thighs were gorgeous. NO! Don’t think like that. It’s not right.

“No. We didn’t,” isa replied as she dropped her eyes to the floor.

“Really? Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” With perhaps a dash of disappointment. “How do you know?”

“My hymen didn’t get torn.”

“Oh.

…

I guess I didn’t need to think so much about that.” isabel, finally looked up, smiled and pushed winfry’s shoulder.


isa didn’t approve at first, but after a day of nothing else to do she agreed to help winfry’s endeavors. From the first day that they woke up isa had been looking through space to try to figure out what was going on in LusciousLocks. Unfortunately they didn’t really know where to look so the divining was only minimally productive. They had initially agreed not to use the librem because, well, they lied about that. But like a toddler with a new toy, winfriadoc couldn’t resist. Granted, he was only reading the librem but then again the librem was completely different when winfry read it. When he first started reading it during their imprisonment, he was very surprised to find no snarky comments and what appeared to be a novel. It was about two officers in the military who didn’t take enough humanities classes to have the balls to ask each other out so they spent ages bashing their heads against duty until one day they flew into LusciousLocks and this crazy weather phenomenon thingy came out of nowhere and crashed the Helo-Fleet and they both died but they both were alive somehow and it was all really confusing until winfry realized they had been spliced into two different universes or something crazy like that. And all the while winfry knew there was something strangely familiar about the female officer. Maybe it was here mask of bitch that she used to appear in control but winfry recognized her and it was only when he read about how the said female officer saved two people collapsed in the woods that winfry put the pieces together. But was it really true? With the librem, that question was constantly nagging. At least the part about her finding winfry and isa was true.

And the drama didn’t stop there. It also told about Lithuania’s two sisters: Latvia and Estonia. Estonia was this super uptight wench who didn’t do too much and Latvia was a super cool psychic lady who you knew you could be really good friends and maybe even go out with if you’re a guy or lesbian or bisexual or … anyways you couldn’t because Latvia had this boyfriend who was totally lame but in a way also kind of cool because of his lameness. (You can tell winfry got into the story.) And the crazy thing was that Latvia had a quilare! which was totally weird because how could a Foggistani have a quilare since all the myths, ALL the myths said the quilares would only find descendents of the nine. And anyways the three sisters had lots of parental issues but that’s an entirely different story and probably not one that should be told right yet (that might really, really piss some people off –as if they own the story just because they happen to be telling it first…).

On a more practical side, the librem also told about happenings in nilbmah and LusciousLocks. There was one story about the Green City going flaming hot red in some sort of Assmachestani war festival or something. The tricky thing about that was that isa looked through space to Green City to check but she didn’t see anything like this. What did that mean? Was the librem lying? Was this something that was going to happen? On the other hand, there was also a piece about jacob martin going complete traitor much to isa’s expectations and publishing pieces feeding the government’s war frenzy and when isa looked to nilbmah citadel, the nilbmah post’s office completely confirmed the librem. And then there was that really creepy story about them in a cell in another tower but they were acting very off. winfry had some how found the pants of the relationship and they had somehow become one of those couples that made you sad to watch. It was all so strange that isa actually looked through space to the other towers and in the tower just beyond theirs, she found them, just as off as in the librem. What was going on? Did Lithuania know about their doubles? It was all so unnerving.

There were also stories that didn’t seem to have anything to do with anything. There was the business woman who had been a huge hippie in college but majored in economics because she knew that to actually change the world you needed power, not just passion. She took that economics degree and rock climbed her way up the face of a cell phone company to become one of the most powerful persons in her nation, poised to finally change her world.

Unfortunately, winfry didn’t seem to have any control over what stories came out of the librem. He tried but then the snarky comments came back. So the librem opened lots of windows and a pesterance of gnats flew in hazing up everything.

And then it happened, making all the gnats worth it. The librem predicted a strike on the Foggistani presence in LusciousLocks. The strike would hit in between two of the towers splitting the force in two. It would be devastating. Like any good post-modern reader they were skeptical and isa double checked with the quilare. It checked out. isa was able to find a small group of assorted demons that included a black figure almost identical to the one in nilbmah. Why they were waiting she couldn’t figure out but the attack would be soon.

“What is it this time?” Lithuania didn’t even have to roll her eyes.

“We just thought you should know the enemies, whoever they are, are planning to make a strike along the tunnels between here and the northern tower. If we don’t move now, right now, we will be split. If we’re split we die. Also, even if we survive this attack there will be others and our only hope of long term survival is Marcos,” Lithuania’s eyes must have narrowed because isa went on to clarify, “your 2nd in command Marcos who must be in some alternative dimension Marcos. We might be able to get Marcos back if your sisters, Latvia and Estonia, were here.”

Considering the mountain of information isa dropped on Lithuania, her face was surprisingly smooth. Only a few facial twitches hinted at all the emotions triggering inside. After an extended silence Lithuania finally spoke, “You took quite a risk telling me all those things you shouldn’t even know. What makes you two so desperate?”

The Attempt

jacob martin was leaving work at 9:45 pm on a Sunday. The week had turned into a swamp and he was still trying to trudge out of top-hat-high brack water. He still had work to do but the office was making him feel claustrophobic so he was heading home. He pulled on his jacket, slung on his bag and clicked off the lights as he got in the elevator. jacob pushed for the lobby and his body lurched into the wall smashing his hip into the bronze railing and his temple into the glass mirror. The elevator chamber was falling. After eight floors, it crashed with the floor.

Fortunately for jacob, air resistance and partially functioning breaks buffered the impact; the X-rays would later only reveal minor fractures in his left arm, which he collapsed on with the impact. The crash had knocked out the lights and jacob was slow to reorient himself. He had only just pulled himself up with the help of the railing when there was a thump on the ceiling. Then there was some scuffling followed by the whine of an electric drill. Someone a handshake away wanted him dead.

But who? Of all the people who wanted him dead, who was this? That must have been a mosquito buzzing around mr. martin’s ear. Was it the same assassin as the country mansion? Was it landers? Was it the magistrate?

The magistrate??? (That’s you, dear slightly confused reader)

Jacob’s latest publications had thrown up a set back that triggered the magistrate’s anger. He published a piece conjuring a story of a black mist creeping over the LosciousLock’s border and a missing family. The article was absolutely shocking. And all the more shocking if you thought it were true and most people did. The citizens of nilbmah were up and begging for arms, at least that’s how the media showed it. And to be fair the media was right. Even before skewing, polls showed that around 80% of the population favored retaliation. But the media didn’t show, or rather showed hidden behind the classifieds, the 20% who were skeptical. Mr. martin reserved the headlines for fever-inducing articles that fed into the nation’s craze.

So why was the magistrate irate? Well, some of the 20% were able to jump out from behind the classifieds. A few groups of journalists and academics sprouted up their own publications. But the day of censoring was over. The magistrate was clear on that. Dealing with these deviants was jacob’s job. So the nilbmah post butted heads with its rivals and for the most part, the post had the larger antlers. For the most part. The deviants had a trump card.

andrew garner was an extremely popular chancellor in nilbmahian politburo and part of the 20%. Praised for his beautification of the citadel and recreational advancement projects, admired for his charity work and loved for his dionysian parties, garner was the biggest name in nilbmah politics, below the president of course. garner owed his entry into politics to the financial backing of his sister, elizabeth garner, the chief of directors (nilbmah’s higher taxed and regulated version of a CEO) of the biggest cell phone company in nilbmah. That, with his popularity let him be a wild card. He didn’t need to please anyone and usually he didn’t, which made him all the more popular with the public. So when the time came to vote on the militarization of nilbmah and the declaration of war, garner alone backed the 20%. And more than that, he completely blocked the rest of the politburo by invoking a constitutional clause that prevented nilbmah from going to war without any shed blood. There was no evidence that the missing family was dead or wounded. Maybe they had just gone for a picnic and gotten lost. So war was waiting on evidence of blood or an amendment of the clause. The former would be tricky since the family in the article had probably actually moved to LusciousLocks just before it went dark (only martin knew that) and latter, even with the national frenzy, would be time consuming. In either case the magistrate was pissed.

The night after the vote, the magistrate broke into jacob’s apartment at 4 a.m., ripped him out of his bed by his neck, whispered with the same intensity as shouting “fix it martin or else,” threw him on the ground and left. The ordeal took no more than 30 seconds. Jacob might have confused it with a nightmare if his neck weren’t on fire. The next day, as he walked to work, he found his favorite statue of Daedalus over Icarus, the one to which he had an almost autistic attachment, that very statue had been demolished.

This had been on Friday and it was now Sunday. Maybe the magistrate was following through. But that wouldn’t have been so smart. 1st, controlling politicians didn’t really fall into his jurisdiction and 2nd, he was doing an exceptional job with public opinion. Even with garner’s popularity only 25% supported his recent actions. The magistrate would have a hard time replacing jacob.

So if it wasn’t the magistrate bringing the elevator to a crash, was it landers? Ever since jacob volunteered to investigate the mansion assassin, the tension with landers had condensed. Nasty glances, deconstructive criticism and worse were exchanged. The day garner blocked national armament was Christmas come early for landers. But jacob had a huge edge on discovering the country mansion assassin and jacob let landers know it every chance he got. Removing a rival might be easier than showing him up.

And speaking of the country mansion assassin, maybe the magistrate hadn’t been the only target and maybe this was the second strike. The assassin must have known how close jacob was to finding her out. (That’s right, I said her. But I’m also a jerk.) Considering his betrayal, martin had a surprisingly easy time slipping back into the underground current and re-establishing his old connections. Sure, he did a skunk’s job of covering his tracks, but even so you’d think his recent publications would be fertilizer for suspicion. However, his tale of government threats seemed to appease even the most cautious of his contacts.

In any case, the mosaic martin put together from all the sources he dug up showed a fragile smattering of resistance groups with static infested communication among groups. However, one group had begun grow but there was still a lot of uncertainty about it. None of his sources had any knowledge of the leader but there were suggestions that it had affiliations with all the major deviant publications and even with garner. The only clear thing about this up-and-coming resistance group was its attitude: immediate action. According to the person, who had heard from the person who had been lucky enough to get called to a meeting (that was as close as jacob could get), they believed the government was about to cut the legs of the people out from under them sending them rolling down a dangerous trench to war. Not that they were against war – that might be inevitable – but they wanted transparency. The government was trying to send the nation into a war blindfolded for what must be ulterior motivations. And the government was just about to do it. Only immediate, absolutely now, action could save the nation from tragedy.

jacob was almost certain the assassin came from this group and he was about to discover who. Going a step further than any of his leads, he traced the funds of all the different resistive activities. What he found were suspiciously numerous ties to mobile 9, the cell phone company directed by andrew garner’s sister. He knew he was narrowing in when, the company refused answer questions about these random financial trails. With a little more grease he would discover the assassin.

So that, more or less and more less than more, was what jacob was thinking in the three seconds it took the assassin the drill off the top of the fallen elevator. At least it would have been if those three seconds were stretched like a rubber band into three minutes.

As soon as he heard the thumps on the ceiling, jacob dropped to the floor, whether out of instincts or fear its hard to tell but it worked to his advantage. In those three seconds he decided to play dead. Drill after painful drill, mr. martin resisted the itching urge to look up at what was happening. Finally, there was a clanking sound and a tiny bit of light entered the chamber. The noises ended and there was a great pause of silence. His assassin was watching him. Not doing anything just watching. The wait played havoc with jacob; he suddenly became intensely aware of all the itches and aches of his position. Staying still was like torture. And not before he thought he couldn’t stay still any longer jacob felt more than heard the assassin land on the floor no more than a foot away. After another pause filled with weight shifting and as much pacing as you can do in an elevator with a sprawled out body, jacob felt two small hands flip him off his chest and onto his back. Right then he opened his eyes to a face he was not at all expecting and kicked as hard as he could.