Spanners - The Fountain of Youth (16 page)

“Do you feel bad for what you’ve done?” asked Mendel.

“Not really,” said Phage. “But I know what’s wrong and I know what’s right.”

“Killing people is wrong?” asked Mendel.

“Sure,” said Phage.

“Why?” asked Mendel.

“I don’t know,” said Phage. “Just is.”

“How many people have you killed?”

“Billions,” said Phage. “Billions with an
s,
and furthermore—”

“If you hadn’t killed those people,” asked Mendel. “How many would be alive today?”

Phage thought for a moment, became nervous and reached for a cigarette in his pocket. He pulled out the pack and started banging the edge to push in the tobacco, but Kerké mouthed the words
no
and he put the cigarettes away.

“Most of them would be dead,” said Phage. “Ninety
percent, maybe.”

“And how many would be alive a hundred years from now?” asked Mendel.

“None.”

“Then why are you upset over your past misdeeds? You were like a lion on the savannah, killing prey out of instinct and only playing the role that nature provided.”

Phage looked down, thought for a minute and then looked the child right in the eye.

“I didn’t kill out of instinct, I killed out of
choice
, and that made it wrong,” said Phage. “Death comes for us all; it’ll even call on you
pipsqueaks one day. Death just
is
, but I made a choice to bring it to a lot of innocent folks before their time, people that could have done something with that time.”

Phage became lost in thought for a moment and then addressed the group.

“I guess that’s it,” said Phage. “They had time remaining in their lives, and I robbed them of it. I was a
thief
.”

Mendel smiled and then looked at another boy, who smiled in return. The boy was a bit chubby, but his face showed that he was roughly the same age as Mendel.

“All crime can be considered theft, with murder being theft of a life, assault being theft of personal safety, and so on,” said Mendel. “My friend Bentham has quite a bit to say in that regard.

“We’ve been debating you for some time, and yes
, you’re a thief of life as you say; but it’s not that simple,” said Bentham, “because you fail to recognize
intent.
Intent
is inexorably bound to culpability and
wrongness
, as it were. Who is worse: the man who willingly kills a ninety year old, or a girl who slips and falls on a hidden button that launches a missile that destroys a nation? The murdering man is worse, of course, for though the girl caused more net suffering, societies must consider
intent.
Over time, forgiveness of crimes without intent leads to a healthier, more compassionate and
successful
society.”

“There you go then,” said Phage. “I’m an asshole.”

“Not necessarily,” said Mendel. “We performed an analysis where we considered humanity to be
one being
, and then saw how that being would fare with and without your plagues. Would you like to know what we found?”

“I’d like to know that very much,” said Phage. “Tell me what the world would be like if I’d never been born.”

“If you consider the health of humanity as the health of one being,” said Mendel, “you would be the equivalent of a lingering virus. You killed billions of cells, as it were, but didn’t kill the body and allowed humanity to recover completely, and effectively
stronger
. So if we ignore intent, we realize—”

“You can’t ignore intent,” said Phage. “You just said that.”

“Intent is irrelevant in this second analysis,” said Bentham, “for
intent
means nothing in terms of history. Pompeii would surely have preferred a hundred mass-murderers full of
intent
than a single volcano; but I digress. We found that your plagues have actually helped humanity in the long run.
The Black Death
, that was yours, right?”

“Yeah,” said Phage. “I was traveling through China and a chick dumped me, so I infected a few fleas in her village and things got outta control.”

“The Black Death was devastating for the
individual
,” said Bentham, “but it wasn’t a bad thing for humanity. It served to catapult Europe out of stagnation and—”

Kerké tapped Phoe on the shoulder and nodded towards the outside.

“They talk forever,” whispered Kerké with a smile
.
“Come with me; I’ve got something to show you.”

/***/

Kerké took Phoe out to a small stretch of dirt behind the rooms. It was still under the safe house’s electrified roofing, but it was outside, and the sun beat down relentlessly. Phoe squinted hard, and Kerké opened a shed and grabbed a hat and some old newspapers from inside. She placed the newspapers on three stumps on the far end of the field and brought the hat back to Phoe.

“You still have beauty left to protect,” said Kerké, handing Phoe the hat. “I lost my own beauty a long time ago.”

Kerké stared at the sky and squinted.

“The sun took my skin and made it heavy and thick,” she said. “Our kind is destined to burn, one way or another.”

“
Our
kind
,” said Phoe. “You’re like me.”

“Yeah,” said Kerké. “I’m a phoenix-class s
panner, just like you.”

Phoe didn’t know what to say, but Kerké smiled.

“Phage should have told you about me, but I suppose he’s got other things on his mind,” said Kerké. “So does everyone nowadays, with the talk of destiny, Fountains, battles and whatnot. But Phage gave you your class name, and that’s about it, right?”

“Yeah,” said Phoe.

“Well, there’s a lot more to our kind than the standard narrative,” said Kerké. “We’re all beautiful, or at least we once were, we fall in love, get heartsick and then get reborn in fire. You’ve heard that basic stuff, right?”

“Yes,” said Phoe.

“Well, there’s more,” said Kerké. “In the rare cases when our kind don’t die, odd things happen.”

“It’s our destiny to die young,” said Phoe.

“Not mine,” said Kerké, “though ninety-nine times out of a hundred that happens. But sometimes we live lives without love, and that protects us. Like in my case, a group rescued me as a child and told me the truth. They raised me with no access to anyone I could fall for, and soon my time had passed and they put me here, protecting these overgrown toddlers.”

Kerké looked at Phoe again
, and the old woman’s eyes flashed orange.

“Your plight was a little less deliberate,” said Kerké. “You grew up in a place where love wasn’t an option, so your powers manifested themselves in a different way.”

Kerké squinted at the sun once more and then smiled.

“You had a tough childhood, Phoe, I know this,” said Kerké. “But there’s an upside to it all. You didn’t get to fall for some boy, but you didn’t burst into fire when he took another girl to the roller rink either. You might end up like me, a bitter old woman with bad breath and a flamethrower, but there’s a big upside to living a life without love.”

“What is it?”

“I’ll show you,” said Kerké with a smile.

/***/

Kerké took three newspapers, rolled them up and put them on three posts in the distance. She walked back to Phoe and concentrated a moment before pointing her right hand at the rightmost post and exhaling quickly. The rightmost newspaper caught fire, and with another snap
, Kerké put the flame out.

“Our emotions are strong,” said Kerké, “and when we decide to stop feeling sorry for ourselves, we can push our feelings outwards. Phoen
īcēs aren’t born to fight, but when we do, we can do bad things. Do you want to learn?”

“Yes,” said Phoe.

Kerké smiled and then brought another newspaper from the shed and replaced the paper she had burnt. She walked backwards to Phoe and pointed at the left post.

“Now
, think back to a time when you felt a strong emotion,” said Kerké, “but don’t dwell too much on it. Whatever that feeling is, try to focus it on the paper I’m pointing at. Take your pain and put it there, and nowhere else.”

Phoe nodded and then searched her mind for a particularly painful moment and didn’t have to think back too far. She thought of a time when Bocephalus ordered her friend Porella out of her bed in the middle of the night two years a
go. At the time, Phoe didn’t know what he might have done to her, but she now had an idea, and it wasn’t good. Phoe felt emotions rise within her and she began to frown. She became angry at herself for not stopping Bocephalus, she became resentful of Master Chergon for lying to them, and she became furious at fate for allowing the island to exist in the first place.

Phoe wanted to cry but held it in and instead chose to focus all her anger on the paper
on top of the left-hand post
. She closed her eyes and visualized her emotions
going inside the paper and tearing it to pieces.
She could tell it was working; the air now smelled of burning leaves, but Phoe didn’t stop. She just kept focusing her rage into the small piece of newspaper until she heard a cracking sound and felt Kerké’s hand on her shoulder.

“That’s good!” said Kerké with a laugh.

Phoe opened her eyes and saw that all three posts were on fire, and the heat from the flames had reached them, causing Phoe to draw back and Kerké to sweat.

“You’ve got a lot of emotion
, girl, and a
lot
of power,” said Kerké. “You just have to learn how to manage it and focus so it hits your target and not everything else. I can give you a crash course over the next few days.”

“Thank you,” said Phoe.

“We’ve got a plane up here, and Phage, as much as I loathe him, is a damn good pilot,” said Kerké. “The prodigies equipped it with some gadget to find Adam’s group; it responds to the Fountain’s energy, or some such thing. You’ll fly north, and you’ll get to where you need to go; the kids here know what’s at stake, and you’ll be where you need to be.”

“Perfect,” said Phoe.

“No, it’s not perfect, not just yet,” said Kerké. “What happens when you get there? There’s a guy outside the compound walls who will track you down wherever you go, and he’ll kidnap you unless you learn to protect yourself. Can you fight?”

“I’m good at running,” said Phoe.

“The guy outside is a blur-class spanner, and he’s a lot better at running than you,” said Kerké. “Our final lesson will be dealing with him, head-on.”

“You want me to fight him?”

“In a few days, after you’ve improved your skills,” said Kerké. “I’ll be there behind you, and we’ll both let him know that you’re a phoenix, but you aren’t a victim any longer. He can run around all day, but we’ll take your emotions and tear him right in half.”

Kerké smiled and put an open hand towards the scorched posts. The fire died down for a moment, and then she pointed at them again and they all burst into an explosion of flames, cleaving the smoldering post in the center perfectly in two.
             

A CITY OF SIBLINGS

Mayfly woke to hear the sound of Brogg snoring loudly. Two of the Treys were sleeping, one deeply and one restlessly. The restless Trey got up and nudged Brogg until the caveman turned over onto his stomach, and though it
didn’t help much, that Trey went back to bed. The sleeping Trey didn’t wake up at all, and the third one was currently driving the RV.
I sleep an hour per night and they say it’s efficient,
thought Mayfly,
but Trey is more efficient than I. He never rests and rests always.
Mayfly splashed some water on his face from the RV’s sink and saw that Adam was also sleeping, but his hands were twitching.
And perhaps Adam rests the worst of us all,
thought Mayfly.
Though he sleeps soundly,
his evenings are always filled with the same nightmare.

Mayfly got up in the front of the RV and sat next to the driving Trey. It was still dark outside, but the clear sky cast pale moonlight over the snowy branches and Mayfly could see far into the night. Though the roads were well paved, they were in the middle of nowhere
, and Mayfly wondered what would happen if they ran out of gasoline.

“The Wild Zone is a dark place,” said Trey, eyeing Cattaga asleep in the back. “Cattaga’s from Alaska, so she’s used to the cold, but this place is more than just
cold
. This is a place most spanners choose to ignore, much like regular humans don’t think about prisons.”

“What exactly is it?” asked Mayfly.

“I don’t quite know, other than legend,” said Trey. “But yeah, all the really bad spanners are sent here. That part’s true.”

“The humans paved the roads?” asked Mayfly.

“Yeah, a few help manage this place,” said Trey. “A very, very select few. A couple of them get together with guys like Adam every once in awhile to make sure spanners stay hidden and this place stays open.”

“They send the crazy spanners here,” said Mayfly.

“Not crazy like Juan,” said Trey, “but
crazy and uncontrollable,
you know? Like if Brogg went nuts, what could you do? No prison can hold him, so they’d drug him and drop him off here, and he’d never get out.”

“I’ve heard some spanners live here voluntarily,” said Mayfly.

“Yep,” said Trey, “and we’re headed towards some of them to beg for fuel. There are spanners who don’t want to live in normal society so they come up here, and this place takes them. No matter what you’ve done, as long as you can survive up here, you’re okay.”

They drove in silence for a
while and Mayfly looked at the trees. It was quite desolate, but seemed pristine and beautiful; it didn’t feel like the forest was filled with monsters.

“Tell me about the bad ones,” said Mayfly, “the dangerous spanners that live here.”

Trey smiled, thought for a moment and then nodded.

“Some of them are just like you and me but crazy and violent with random powers, and some are even animals,” said Trey.

“Animals?”

“Well
, legends say so,” said Trey. “Spider-wolves.”

“Spider-wolves,” said Mayfly, his heart skipping a beat.

“Wolves with the lifespan of a spider, and rumor has it Juan’s tamed a few,” said Trey. “Breed fast, travel quick, and they can rip you open like a wolf, or poison you like a spider.”

Mayfly tried to hide the chill that crawled up his back, but Trey picked up on it.

“It’s not the spider-wolves that are really bad,” said Trey. “They’ll just kill you like all the other creatures out here, quickly and without too much pain. What really frightens me are the
berserkers.
”

“Berserkers,” said Mayfly, glad to be done talking about spiders. “I’ve heard of them, but I don’t know much about them.”

“No one does,” said Trey, “and no one really knows what they are; some say they live two hundred years, some say longer. We do know they’re like Brogg; they seem to devolve as they age, and get stronger too. But they’re not entirely like Brogg; as they get stronger, they seem to lose their empathy and intelligence until they’re just as much an animal as your average spider-wolf. So if, in normal society, there’s a psychotically violent guy getting bigger and bigger, they find he’s a berserker and drop him off here.”

Trey pointed to the woods around him.

“They’re out there, you know,” said Trey. “They become feral and will eat anything they find, including you.”

“Cannibalism,” said Mayfly
. “That’s scary.”

“Yeah,” said Trey. “They’ll hunt you in packs.”

“Scary,” said Mayfly with a smile.

“It’s worse than you think,” said Trey. “If they find you or me
, they’ll drag us away and gnaw on us for a few days. They’ve been known to keep their prey alive, and they love guys like Adam.”

Mayfly looked back at Adam, who was asleep and twitching; still in the middle of a nightmare.

“Immortals,” said Mayfly.

“Yep,” said Trey. “The berserkers see his kind as an endless pantry. If they find Adam they’ll take him, break his legs
, put him in a tree and feast on him for a couple years at least.”

Trey stared straight ahead at the road with a
grim look on his face, and then moved the steering wheel as they entered a series of turns in the road.

“They say Adam’s class of s
panner fears only burial, but there are a lot worse things out there for him to be scared of, and many of them live in these woods. So when we make a pit stop for fuel, rest or whatever, don’t wander too far off. This place is beautiful but there’s always something out there waiting to get you, and if it does there’ll be nothing we’ll be able to do about it, because we’re on our own.”

Mayfly looked out the window and then rolled it down a bit, letting the cold bite against his face. Mayfly thought for a moment and then
smiled.

“It’s not all bad up here,” said Mayfly.

“Why’s that?” asked Trey.

“It’s getting really cold, so cold that the Fountain doesn’t need to live in the freezer anymore,” said Mayfly. “We just need to open the window.”

/***/

They drove for two more days straight, with Trey taking endless shifts; he wouldn’t even stop to switch bodies and just did a quick maneuver where one of him would hold the wheel and the other would get out while holding down the gas until the other’s foot was on it. But though they drove constantly and the roads were paved, it was slow going. The roads were wind
ing and held endless switchbacks that often returned farther than where they started.

B
y the end of the second day, they realized that they needed more gasoline. Adam knew of an encampment with fuel to spare along the way and they stopped at it, got out of the RV and approached cautiously.

“I can’t believe anyone lives out here,” said Cattaga.

“They’re not just anyone,” said Adam. “These are
clone
-class spanners. They’re not exactly dangerous, but they’re … eccentric.”

“Eccentric?” asked Mayfly.

“Yeah,” said Adam. “They’re kind of stuck-up. We’ll have to hide the Fountain from them; their attitude towards her might be unpredictable.”

“
Stuck-up
,” said Mayfly. “So stuck-up that they live up here?”

“They think they’re better than everyone else,” said Adam, “and the world doesn’t understand that, so they live here.”

“Do they have fuel?” asked Trey.

“They have everything,” said Adam.

“Then let’s go,” said Trey.

“Yeah,” said Mayfly. “They sound like fun.”

/***/

Mayfly was shocked at how neat the village looked. It was surrounded by a heavy wall, but its front was wide open and it didn’t seem like a rough place. There were two guards at the gate; one man and one woman, both unnaturally beautiful. As Mayfly walked through the village
, he noticed everyone was part of a couple and that each couple looked just as beautiful as the guards they had first seen. The people in the village didn’t all belong to one race or even reflect the current norms of beauty, but each couple seemed
perfect
, as if they belonged in a painting. Some were shorter, some were taller, some were dark skinned and some were light skinned, but all of them had flawless complexions, perfectly symmetrical faces and perfect teeth.

And though each couple is unique, the man and woman resemble one another,
thought Mayfly,
and the children resemble their parents.

Mayfly found them friendly and wondered how they could be considered
stuck-up
, but soon realized that they were shooting dark glances at Brogg, shaking their heads in disgust as they walked by.

“
Clone
-class spanners live their lifespans with perfect DNA,” whispered Adam, “or at least they
consider
it perfect. They have no flaws; not a single mutation and not a single recessive gene that would bring disease or anything else.”

“What’s their spanner power?” whispered Mayfly.

“They don’t consider themselves
spanners
,” said Adam. “They consider themselves
perfect humans
and nothing more.”

“Then why do they live up here?” asked Mayfly.

“They don’t want to dilute their genetic perfection, so they inbreed,” said Adam. “That doesn’t fly in too many places.”

“Inbreeding?” asked Mayfly. “Even in a perfect world that would cause bad things to happen.”

“This is more than a perfect world,” said Adam. “The couples are identical twins, but one is a girl and one is a boy. They have no flaws in their DNA, so when they reproduce it always comes out as two clones of themselves, one more boy and one more girl.”

It makes sense in theory,
thought Mayfly.
But there’s something wrong with what they do, and I’ll find it soon.

The group walked towards a small building in the center of the village. A small, beautiful girl, about fourteen, walked outside the building with her brother.

“Our elders request to speak with you,” they said in unison. “Leave the brute outside; he’s an abomination.”

Brogg grunted angrily and approached the two children, but Mayfly put up his hand to stop him and then bent down to whisper in the kids’ ears.

“I wouldn’t use the word ‘abomination,’” said Mayfly to the young couple. “Not until your wedding night, at least.”

/***/

The two children’s parents were at the front of the hall, surrounded by ten other sets of twins, some young and some old.

“Adam, it is
interesting
that you stopped by,” said the woman. “We’ve heard of you from our older selves.”

“Indeed,” said Adam. “I met your older self two generations back. I assume your couple name is still Fion and Fiona?”

“Time hasn’t sharpened your intuition, Dr. Parr,” said the woman. “We’ve done away with names. Our society runs perfectly and the lack of conflict obviates the need for possession, which in turn eliminates the need for names. We did away with this primitive form of self-identification years ago.”

“I understand,” said Adam.

“Now, what do you seek?” said a short, dark-skinned man from the far left of the hall. “Outside of the manipulator-class female you’ve brought, you can’t hope to join us, so you’ve obviously come with some petty request in your own self-interest. Tell us what it is.”

Mayfly looked at Cattaga; she clearly wasn’t flattered by the clones’ approval of her spanner class.

“We need fuel,” said Adam, “pure and simple.”

“Fuel?” scoffed a woman from the far right. “That begs the question
:
What do you seek
?”

“I don’t follow you,” said Adam.

“It figures that a
tree
wouldn’t be able to grasp this basic reasoning,” said the woman, speaking deliberately slowly. “We ask what you
seek
. Why are you here in the Wild Zone, and where would you need
… to go …
with
our fuel
?”

Adam paused for a moment to think.

“Did you understand the question, Dr. Parr?” asked another man, in a mocking tone.

Mayfly tapped Adam on the shoulder and gave him a wink; Mayfly knew that Adam had a hard time lying under pressure and would need help. Adam gave Mayfly a relieved nod of approval, and Mayfly stepped forward to speak to the group.

“One of our own went missing in these woods,” said Mayfly. “We’re hoping to find her.”

“One of your own is clearly dead
, then,” said a man in the center, “as you shall soon be, mayfly. Please leave before you perish right in front of us, as your kind are wont to do.”

“Our missing friend is a scourge-class spanner,” said Mayfly. “They fare quite well in these woods, and can even fell a berserker with a touch. And though your village is remote, the scourge might wander here, and I understand that their touch drains life from their victims …
and inadvertently
corrupts their victim’s DNA.
”