Mark Teppo - Heartland

The easiest way to accomplish this goal was to kill everyone, but that would mean that all the institutional knowledge they carried would be lost. That was where I came in. I wasn't his courier, or his candidate for succession. I wasn't even the spark that started the conflagration that was going to wipe it all away. I was just the guy who came through later and swept up the useful relics.

"Is that why you were selected to join the others?" I asked the Chorus. "You were his Scholar, Lafoutain. Is this your reward for a lifetime of service? To be turned into a schizophrenic figment of my psychosis?"

Lafoutain didn't answer, and the Chorus' only response was to vanish into the drain of my memory.

"I thought so," I said.

The whole situation was a mess. Everyone was trying to fuck everyone else. The Crown was the prize, and with it came the rest of the Watcher organization. And Marielle as well. That's all that mattered. Keep your eyes on the prize, and be the last man standing. As primal as it came. There is always competition, Philippe had told me in one of those lucid moments when he deigned to speak to me. The secret that lay in the heart of Free Will. The Will to desire. Whoever wants it the most.

Anarchy. Will untamed. Will unrestrained. The World as a billion points of light, all fighting to be the center of the universe.

Was this what he wanted? Was this how it was all supposed to end? In a chaotic squabble over the leftovers? After a lifetime of being a Witness, was that all he thought of us? Petty little animals, fighting over scraps.

One of the arguments Lt. Pender had articulated before Antoine had killed him had been that the souls of Portland had been better off as a combined unity focused on the realization of a single goal. It was a better use of their energy and their existence than they could have ever hoped to attain with their own small lives. Was such a unification not a better use of their lives?

I had disagreed with him-rather vehemently-based on the position that no one had asked them. Not that his argument was wrong, but that the methods were morally repugnant. And after I had killed Bernard and scattered all those souls to their final destinations, I had had a lot of time to think about that argument.

There is a place not far from the Portland Airport called the Grotto, one of the few active Franciscan monasteries in the United States. The main portion of the sanctuary sits on top of the bluff, looking north toward the river and the airport. You can't see downtown at all, the bluff hides most of the central core of the city from view, and when the wind blows east to west, the dry scent of the ruined city drifts out toward the coast. You could almost pretend the Ascension Event had never happened. The only indicator left is the psychic pain radiating through every ley line crossing the valley.

I had stayed at the Grotto for a few days, watching and reading the city as it tried to understand what had happened. Trying to understand what had happened to me between the first light of dawn and the moment Antoine had Seen me walking back across the water.

I had been given another chance. The black stain on my soul had been purged, and I had been given new guides. New angels to fill the hole in my chest. What was I supposed to do with this knowledge? With this experience?

More importantly, why had Philippe twisted the threads in a way that had forced me to be the one facing Bernard. What was I to have gained from that experience that would then be useful to him? Originally, I had thought he would have called upon me to serve him, and I had waited patiently for a sign that I was to come to his side. I had never anticipated that he'd come to me, especially to die.

Was that all I was supposed to be: his dumb pack animal? The transformation of the Chorus had afforded him a way to postpone Death. He had willingly become part of the voices in my head, and in doing so, had managed to retain his own identity. Was it a low-rent resurrection, a life beyond life? Or was it truly a means by which the knowledge of the Architects could be saved? If it was the latter, and I was inclined to think that was the case, then there had to be a way for me to transfer this knowledge. A way that wasn't the same as the manner in which I took souls.

A memory stirred. A fragment that unfolded into a blur of steel and shadow. Her hands on me. The cold kiss of the bulkhead against my skin. Her legs wrapped around me, pulling me close to her. So very close. Beneath all the pleasure of the flesh, that other sensation: that sucking, pulsating whirlpool. Trying to draw something out. Trying to take a part of me.

Marielle.

She knew. She knew they were in my head. She knew what they offered, what secrets they held. She had tried to draw them off while we had been at Batofar. In the hallway. That was what she had been trying to unlock.

She had tried, and failed.

After that, things had gotten out of our control, and there hadn't been another chance.

I leaned out of the shaft and looked up. What time is it? I asked the Chorus.

They touched the ley, synced to the geomagnetic pulse of the planet, and told me.

After nightfall. Not yet midnight.

Unprompted, they also reminded me of the date.

"Second day of spring," I murmured. The seeds, planted in winter, were starting to break ground today. The dead kings, buried in the cold ground, rising again. The world, broken and bleeding, made anew.

I laughed, and something broke free in my chest. I coughed, spat, and laughed again, my lungs clearer now. You are a sentimental bastard, Old Man, I thought.

He had waited until the last minute to come find me. So that everyone would be scrambling to find their new place in the organization. Within all that chaos, I would be able to move more readily, to be more able to accomplish the tasks laid out for me. But he could have initiated this plan weeks ago, in the cold death of winter, when everyone was hunkered down and waiting for spring to come. He could have surprised them all by starting early, but he hadn't. He had waited until the end of winter, until spring was imminent. For all of his education and enlightened thinking, he was still a vegetable god at heart. He was beholden to the cycle of the Land, and he wanted to be properly received into the bosom of that which waited for him.

In the old stories, the young lovers don't flinch when their goddesses tell them the price of being loved. They don't turn away when the ground opens up for them. They know, even before it is spelled out for them; they know what happens after that first kiss, and it never diminishes their love.

Leaning back into the shaft, I sent my tiny spirit light into the tunnel to see if there was any clue where it led. It went around a corner and bounced light back at me for a while. A route to follow at any rate; Lafoutain may have known where it went, but that knowledge was not forthcoming from the fog of the Chorus.

"What am I going to do with you three?" I wondered aloud. They were sulking, Lafoutain's suggestions about the way out notwithstanding, and the uneasy way the Chorus was boiling in my head said there was unrest in the rank. They were captive in my head, and it looked like I was going to miss the Coronation event; my presence wasn't required for it to proceed anyway. If I was supposed to give this knowledge over to the winner, then all I had to do was wait for someone to come looking for me. Antoine would probably smack his forehead tomorrow and suddenly remember where he left me. Then it would just be a matter of cracking my head open and letting the spirits out.

Was this what Husserl meant when he said they would leave me?

I had a feeling I wasn't supposed to die in this hole. That would ruin everyone's plan. As much as I wanted to curl up and die, if I tried-if I leaned forward a little too far and slipped off this shelf-the Chorus would just save me again. I wasn't done carrying them yet, and until I delivered them, they'd keep me alive.