Gary A. Braunbeck - Cages and Those Who Hold the Keys

“And they do this somewhere underneath our perception?”

“Yes.”

Martin rubbed his eyes. “You’re telling me that these beings, these Substruo , destroy and then re-create the world every day?”

“Sometimes quite a few times a day, often in the blink of an eye; and with each incarnation, the world contains a little less horror, a little less fear, less loneliness and despair; some of the changes— most , actually—are quite small but have surprisingly vast consequences: new fractal patterns, changes in cell behavior, an unexpected warm breeze on a chilly autumn day, millions of other like fine points—but each revision moves the world closer toward becoming the masterpiece God once envisioned, one that the Onlookers can approve of with a good review and be proud to show to Him . . . or Her . . . or Them—I’m still a bit fuzzy on the exact nature of that last one, but you get the idea.”

“How is that even possible?”

“Imagine that all of this—” Again Jerry gestured toward the circus. “—is just one note you hear from a single triangle in the back of the orchestra.

“ Substruo like Bob can hear the whole symphony. They have different receptors than the rest of humankind, their minds and hearts are better equipped to process the information that the Universe is transmitting. They can not only receive the data, but they can play with it, re-shape it, mold it into something unique and powerful, something filled with new sorts of meaning. Mozart could do it. Van Gogh and Thomas Aquinas, Mark Twain, Lovecraft, Stephen Hawking, Kurasawa, Philip K. Dick, Einstein . . . and thousands of people whose names you wouldn’t recognize but whose efforts at re-shaping the quanta have profoundly affected the way you exist . . . and ensure that you never remember your daily death and rebirth.

“If you want something simpler to compare it to, think of the way old-school cartoonists used to animate: they’d take a bunch of clear plastic sheets, draw a sky on one, a field of grass on another, a bunch of trees on the next, some people on the last one, then layer them all together to have the image of a summer picnic. The Substruo work basically the same way.”

“Sounds like it should be a precise system—so where’d the fuck-up occur?”

Jerry shook his head. “It’s not a question of where , it’s a question of why. Fuck-ups happen because the Substruo are mostly human, and because of that are just as vulnerable to sickness and genetic whims and disease and brain-chemistry brouhaha as the rest of humankind: some are born retarded, or become schizophrenic, or develop other mental illnesses; some of them never realize what they are and so never harness their power; the very old whose minds are crumbling into terminal dementia pick up on it shortly before they die, but that’s accidental; in that stage of death, they can receive the data, can even sometimes see various reality branches simultaneously, but they can do nothing to adequately express what it is they’re experiencing because they didn’t comprehend their true nature in time.

“But then you get one like Bob, who can not only receive and process all the random bits of data and consciousness and quanta in order to create a Starry Night or a Letters From the Earth or an Ikiru or String Theory, but uses it as a place to simply begin his work the same way you used Dick and Jane books in kindergarten to begin learning how to read. Of all the Substruo on Earth today, there are only a dozen who possess the same level of ability as Bob; their life span is about twice that of a normal human being, give or take; and these twelve are the foundation-makers; the rest simply build upon the work they construct.

“The foundation is cracking, Martin. The closer Bob comes to death, the wider this fracture becomes.”

Martin considered all this for a moment. “Last night, before I was brought in, I saw an Onlooker after it had been killed, and I saw a part of the thing that killed it.” He rubbed his eyes against the image, then looked at Jerry. “Did I see Gash?”

“Yes. He was testing his own strength, making sure he could find the way out of his prison. But as long as Bob is still alive, that’s all he can do—slip through for a few moments.”

It occurred to Martin that the Onlooker he’d seen had probably been fighting Gash before he’d lain eyes on it—that would explain the blood it was spitting from its beak. “So Gash is still more or less trapped right now?” “More or less . . . leaning toward the ‘less’ side of things every hour.” “But why bother killing an Onlooker?” “Because there’s a finite number of them. Kill them all, God has no direct way of observing the work in progress.” “Okay . . . ?”

“C’mon, Martin— think: if you were sponsoring an artist, and that artist stopped showing you his or her work, what would you do?”

“Stop sponsoring them. Cut off money. Pull the plu— oh, shit .”

“Methinks he’s finally getting it.”

Martin looked back at the circus. In the Center Ring, a musical note named Cottleslip played hide-and-seek with the Ghosts of Confused Twilight, accompanied by the Pattern Juggler, the Rain Witch, and the Satin Lion Dancers. Martin once more shook his head in wonder. “And all of this is just a fraction of what Bob was working with?”

“Consider it the first few words of an epic novel.”

Martin watched as Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, believed to have been tortured to death in Grenoble in 1535, was shot out of a cannon as he scattered copies of the lost fourth volume of De Occulta Philosophia , his book that contained, among other things, an alchemic cure for epilepsy and the precise topographic location of Integrity; Mirza Ali Mohammed appeared with eighteen more letters of the living that he passed on to Baha-Ullah, who could not wait to share them with his faithful Baha’i; a mechanical crane rose above it all, a film camera attached to it, Orson Welles calling the shots from up high while Sam Peckinpah moved through everyone at ground level, using a Stedi-Cam to get all the grit Welles couldn’t capture—babies with iron hooks in place of their heads; hump-backed figures with faces that were little more than smooth, featureless ovals, creatures that were thin wisps of amorphous Ideals.

“What happens when Bob dies?” asked Martin.

“Another Substruo will be born who can one day take his place.”

“That still leaves you one short.”

“Which isn’t an insurmountable problem, so long as the foundation stays in place. The remaining eleven can repair what damage exists at this moment . But it cannot be allowed to worsen. Gash must be dealt with.”

“And how do you plan on doing that?”

“Depends on you.”

At that moment, Martin Tyler took a cold, hard look at himself and his life: the books read in the solitary evening hours; the movies he’d gone to by himself; the offices and restrooms he’d worked long and hard to clean, only to get up the next day and do it all over again; the meals he’d shared with no one; the emptiness of the days, the aloneness of the nights; the fear that always accompanied him and that kept him at arm’s length from the rest of the world. What he saw was a man whose life was devoid of meaning and purpose because he had allowed it to become devoid of meaning and purpose.

But now it had both; maybe for the only time it ever would.

Am I crazy? he thought. Did I do a serious number on my brain with all the pills?

Then decided he didn’t care.

For the first time in several years—since Dad had first been diagnosed with prostate cancer, to tell the truth—he felt active, vital, necessary, strong— alive . He wanted to hold onto this feeling, if just for a little while longer. “Tell me,” he said to Jerry. “Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.” “You’ll have to find a way to get out of here as soon as possible.” Martin nodded. “I’ll think of something.” “And once you’re out the door, there’s no turning back.” “I understand.” “I mean it, Martin; you can’t let anyone or anything stop you or slow you down.”