Phoenix Rising (Book Two of The Icarus Trilogy) (33 page)

“It’s alright, Carver.  I understand.  I can see why, now.  I just wish,” he said with a single tear running down his left cheek.  “I just wish it had helped me.”

Carver looked up at the young soldier and felt ashamed.  The veteran was so much older, so much more experienced.  The consoling should be done by him; the horrors faced by him.  He had no business letting the younger man fall into this misery.  He picked himself up and brought the boy up with him.  They were standing in the reflected light of seven asteroids, the broken moon and the ruined Earth, just as they had always done.  But this time Carver finally felt like it was alright.  He finally felt like he could change this world.

“I don’t see why it would, Ryan.  The evils and failures of other men can’t give us peace.  We can only find it in ourselves,” the old man said, his voice gravelly and calm like he had never lost his composure.  Jenkins shook his head, but Carver didn’t let the man wallow for long.

“No, Ryan, there’s no need for that.  You tell me that you belong in Hell.  You were made here.  But a man can change himself, even when it seems like your destiny is fixed,” Carver said, finally understanding why he had been brought to this planet and why he existed in the first place.  The old man was there not to lead, but to guide.

“What do you want, Ryan?  What do you want more than anything?” Carver asked in his grim fashion.  The young soldier looked at him, the tear tracks dried up and no more tears to come.

“I want people to acknowledge me.  Not as a monster or a freak.  I want them to know that I’m a real person.  I just want to be a real person,” he said, his voice trembling.  Carver looked into the frightened soldier’s soul with his piercing, blue eyes.

“Then what’s stopping you?  You might not be him, but why should that matter?  If you want people to think of you as a real person,” Carver said, “all you have to do is stop pretending to be someone else.”  Jenkins looked into Carver’s eyes and heard the truth, but shied away from it.  He looked at the ground at their feet.

“They loved him so much.  They think he’s a hero,” the artificial soldier said, but Carver would have none of it.  He grabbed underneath the young man’s jaw and twisted his hand, causing the boy to look back up into his wrinkled face.

“You know what it takes to be a hero.”  Jenkins shook his head.

“What?  What does it take?” Ryan asked, assuming that it was a question, but Carver shook his head at the remark.

“No, Ryan.  You already know what it takes to be a hero,” the old man said with a sad smile in his eyes.  He brought his hands off of the young soldier and turned towards the barracks.

“What do you mean, Carver?” Jenkins asked in desperation.  He didn’t quite understand what the veteran was getting at.  The elder soldier turned and smiled at the young soldier.

“You want to be a hero.  You want to be a hero so bad that you will do anything.  All you have to do, Ryan, is act on it.  Heroism is nothing more than pushing yourself past your doubts and succumbing to your better nature.  You don’t have to bury your fear, you just have to ignore it,” Carver said as he started to walk to the barracks.

“I’m going to be right there with you, Ryan.  But if I’m not, there’s only one thing you have to remember,” Carver said, realizing that he was finally starting to be proud of himself.

“What’s that?”

“You’re already a better man than I ever was.  Your path is your own, now.  I can only walk beside you.”

-

Darren Christiansen entered the office without a care in the world.  The young executive had taken it upon himself to not give any meaning to the action, to not care about the wrinkled, old man that sat behind that gorgeous desk.  If Darren were to claim the man’s place at the head of the Trade Union, he could hold it in reverence.

Jasper Montgomery smiled behind his desk.  He had been reading an article on his computer about rising prices of oil in the Arab states.  It just seemed so appropriate that these people who had been so selfish with their products only a few hundred years ago were now begging for scraps.  Jasper had signed off on the papers to increase the price himself, just a few days ago.  It was nice to see them squirm.

The old executive looked up from his terminal and noticed the young man approaching.  He had always appreciated Christiansen, even before he had started to work within War World Entertainment.  In fact, when the puppet master thought about it, he had enjoyed Darren’s company even more than the father’s.  The old man had to smile at that.  Christiansen Sr. was a contemptible, sneaky fellow who more than made up for it by making Future Bionics one of the most profitable subsidiaries of Montgomery’s ventures.  To think that his progeny would be more suited to claiming Montgomery’s throne…

Well, it just made the old man smile.

“Did you hear about Catalytics?  They went belly-up in the trades this morning,” Darren said as he approached the desk and then sank into the comfortable leather chair across from Montgomery.  The old man tilted his head and gave a vicious smile.

“Darren, my boy, you must try to be
ahead
of the news.  Whispers about Catalytics have been going through the offices for a day now,” Jasper said, bringing his left elbow on top of his crossed legs.  The young executive returned the malicious smile and scoffed at the remark.

“Jasper, you’re secluded in your office.  How did you manage to hear the whispers?” the young man asked, already knowing the answer.  The elder gentleman chuckled and entertained the question, saying the words he had built this conversation around.

“I was the one whispering,” Jasper said, the smile on his face bringing the folds of his wrinkles into stark relief.  Darren closed his eyes slowly and sighed happily.

“I had assumed as much.  Don’t you own a large share of Catalytics?” Darren asked, searching through his memories to recall if Montgomery owned sixty-four or seventy-one percent of the shares.  Darren had always mixed up Catalytics and Enzymic, their products being so similar.

“My boy, why do you think they crashed?  I’m merely creating a way for Enzymic to take its rightful place as the pinnacle of the pharmaceutical trade,” Jasper said as he uncrossed his legs and picked himself up from his chair.  His bones creaked a bit from the effort, but he paid it no mind.  His body was just destroying itself in its years; Montgomery had no illusions of immortality.  He only needed his legacy. 

The old executive crossed over to the decanter of brandy and poured out two glasses.  The puppet master walked back over to his desk and handed one of the crystal glasses to his protégé before sitting in the chair beside the man.  Jasper brought his own glass to his mouth and breathed in through his nostrils.  He could only just make out the odors of the liquor, which was perhaps the hardest part about accepting his age.  Montgomery didn’t mind growing old, but he missed being able to sense the world the same way.

“We’ll let it play out for a few years and then bring in a rival company to stimulate demand and competition.  It is the natural order of things, Darren,” Montgomery said as he looked at the young executive.  Jasper let himself smile as he considered the man’s ruthlessness; it was a shadow of his own youth.

“Of course, Jasper,” Darren said, wary of the puppet master’s conversation.  The old man did not speak in this manner unless he was feeling wistful or philosophical.  He let Montgomery take his first sip of brandy before taking one of his own.  It was a custom of theirs.

“Darren, what do you think of this ‘Hero’ program?  No lies or deceptions, as always.  I want your honest opinion on the matter,” Montgomery said before turning his head to look out the massive windows, the view of Babylon’s skyline dominating his perspective.  It was his master work, and yet it seemed so empty.

“What do you think of it, Jasper?  That’s the question.  But to be nice I’ll entertain this,” Darren conceded.  He didn’t see why anything so small and insignificant would mean anything to the grand master.  “I think it’s a bit of a waste of time.  You and I know that the games are perfectly fine as they are in terms of revenue.  We manufacture the dips and rises in interest and to spend any sort of money on creating super soldiers…. Well, I just think we could make better use of our time.”

“You don’t think it’s evil?” Jasper asked as he turned to face the young executive.  There was a slight twitch at the corner of the old man’s lips when he saw the mild shock on Darren’s face.  The shock disappeared quickly, and with it almost-smile, but they both knew what had transpired.

“I don’t see why it matters,” Christiansen said, wondering where this conversation would lead.  The old man scoffed and shook his head before sniffing at the brandy once more.

“Forty years old, this one.  I wish I had the senses to appreciate it,” Jasper said before taking a small sip of the liquor.  The burn filled his mouth and his throat, promising an ache for a minute.  It was interesting to Jasper how much his age affected him.  When he was young he avoided pain at all costs; when he was a vibrant man he embraced it in order to show his pure will.  Now, in his winter, all it brought was nostalgia.  The old man looked at Christiansen and felt something close to envy.

“In what world would evil not matter, Darren?” Jasper inquired, rising from his seat and walking slowly to one of the massive screens adorning his office wall.  It showed the news on mute, as always, and as close as he was Jasper was not able to read the closed captioning scrolling at the bottom of the screen.  He still felt like he perfectly understood what was happening in any case, and what made him sad was that he knew he was right.

“It comes down to good and evil, I think,” Darren responded, rising to join his teacher by the wall.  “In what kind of world do good and evil matter?  When I think about that, I can only think about stories and old legends when the fate of the world or the lives of loved ones were at stake.  And to tell you the truth, Jasper,” Darren said, waiting for the old man to look at him from his periphery.  “I’ve never seen that world in person.”

“The world we live in is beyond that.  There’s really only one thing that matters, and that is power.  The ones who don’t have it merely resent that it’s missing from their lives.  They might curse us, the ones who dominate them, and they might call us evil.  But I don’t consider that the truth.  We’re merely playing our role in the world.”  Darren hoped that would be the end of it.  He had heard Montgomery say something very similar in an article, once.  The simplest way to end the unwanted discussion was to agree outright.  Jasper merely clucked his tongue and sighed.

“I said nothing about social dynamics, Darren.  We were discussing evil.  And when it comes down to it are there not universal definitions of evil?” Montgomery asked, swirling the brandy in his crystal glass.  Darren merely laughed at the notion.

“There’s no universal anything, Jasper.  It’s all relative,” Darren said, knowing that this conversation would continue far too long.

“Relative, Darren?  There’s nothing in this world that you would demand all people to see as evil?  What of rape?  What of murder?  These actions take away the very free will of other men and women.  Some would say that these are universal,” Jasper said, turning away from the news behind him.  He was getting sick of seeing the same old tired clichés working their way through his society.  Darren took a gulp of his brandy, not appreciating it but trying to fill his throat with fire.

“I cannot call those universal, Jasper.  The Rape of the Sabines in the Roman Empire, hell, all of medieval conquest and war.  All relative atrocities, but many done in the name of a cause.  The Roman Empire held a golden standard for centuries, but their origins were among the mud and dirt.  It comes back to power, Jasper.  Those who have it are not just allowed to use it,” Darren said before breathing in deeply and giving a slight smile, “they must.”

Montgomery grunted and then walked back over to his desk, looking out to the expanse of Babylon below.  It was laid out beautifully, organized like the petals of a flower.  It had been a reference to the Babylon of old with its Hanging Gardens, but now Jasper saw it for what it truly was.  The old man was quiet far too long for Darren’s liking, but soon enough the old man’s kind voice echoed through the room.

“A good argument, if this were a debate.  But Darren, this is merely a discussion.  There is no need to get so lost in your words that you merely wish to prove a point.  We are just exploring.  I return to one such venture: free will.  Do you not see that the deprivation of free will could be seen as evil?”  Darren remained behind at the wall; he knew his teacher well enough to know that he wished to be alone with his city.  He merely wanted to speak from his pulpit and Christiansen would not deny him that pleasure.

“It matters little what I personally think, Jasper, and you know this. 
You
are the explorer in this,” Darren said as he walked over to one of the plush couches and made himself comfortable.  “But in order for you to believe we’re having a discussion, rather than a sermon, I guess I will reply.  Yes, I can see what you mean.”  Jasper turned to smile at him with that.

“You understand much about me, but perhaps not much about the world.  We’ll make you ready, yet, Darren.  But as we’re both giving up the ruse, I want to posit this particular point.  In most men’s eyes, free will is seen as sacred.  The very idea of prisons is enough to cause ire and in these societies men are given death as a way for the society to avoid being considered evil.  Thus, I bring up the ‘hero’ program once more.”

“And what would you say about it?”  Darren asked, settling the weight of his head on his propped up right hand.  Jasper sighed and let the wrinkles of his face increase his age by a matter of years.

“That it is possibly the most evil concept that has ever existed.”  Darren considered the statement and wondered again why Montgomery would even speak of such a thing.  Jasper nodded and then walked over to his chair, gripping the edge with his two hands, the veins pronounced and showing the force with which the puppet master held on.