Tag: sci fi

First drafts exist for a reason, I suppose. Pic only symbolically related.

Looking back on it, Lamont Sterling had had a fucking week.  He’d infiltrated the offices of the Britannian government’s cut-loose-but-top-secret “Project Fallenstar”, he’d stared down Death itself–largely ineffectually, it turned out, necessitating a heroic self-sacrifice by their guide to get them out alive–and he’d finally come face-to-face with the alien mastermind behind their late kidnapper-turned-guide’s machinations.  Understanding of the situation still eluded him.  Best he could tell, the country–no…more than the country–was entangled in a three-way fight over the privilege to interpret the end of the world.  On one side, L’rac–the mastermind–and by extension him, Charlotte, Pierre, Fontaine, maybe everyone else he could still trust.  Opposite them were the Architects, part Illuminati, part primordial incarnations of Life and Death and the ocean and that kind of shit, who had helped to create the world, which seemed absurd, but Lamont had heard no informed, differing opinion other than that this whole thing was stupid as hell.  And unfortunately, it all being stupid as hell did not mean it wasn’t true.

And while they’d been rummaging through the Architects’ dirty laundry in Panama, New York City had evidently turned into a battlefield between the Architects and the last side of the triangle: the King in Yellow, a cult–or perhaps its leader–whose motives were as yet unknown but whose influence was apparently fucking international, who had fucked with Lamont’s own life, who had murdered one of his closest friends scarcely hours before their journey out of the country.  That same day, the King’s agents assassinated New York’s mayor, and by aerial inspection upon Lamont’s return, it seemed the situation had escalated since.

The streets were swarming with cops, buildings of all manner–he had lost count of how many somewhere over Queens–had been reduced to hollowed, smoldering ruins.  But it wasn’t as if someone had simply set fire to them: They looked like they had been bombed.  Lamont assumed it was the same thing that had taken out the bridge between Brooklyn and Queens, itself probably the most unnerving development they saw on the flyover.  One of the two sides of the bridge had appeared scorched, its metal partially melted and twisted out of shape, and the middle was just gone, as if a great hand had grasped it and just ripped it down into the river.

If he had less on his plate, he might have landed immediately and gotten involved, looked for answers, tried to figure out just what kind of shit had gone down in his absence.  But as it stood, the practical considerations of all of this were much simpler: They would not be landing in Manhattan.  Rather, the most logical destination turned out to be their starting point: the bay behind Lamont’s family getaway in Long Island.

The landing was smooth, May and Fontaine assisted in mooring the plane without incident, and then…then Lamont’s body flushed the very last of its adrenaline, and he all but collapsed on the stairs up to the house.  It was Beau Pierre, evidently having a spell of dizziness himself, who noticed and braced him the rest of the way up.  His head was swimming.  New York was burning, the world was run by colossi whose presence could disintegrate buildings, his companions were space aliens with the memories of people, Charlotte had kissed him, Kneecap was dead–Charlotte had kissed him while they were over Brooklyn and then just vanished back into the cabin.  Everything was upside-down, spinning faster and faster.  He hadn’t felt this out of his depth in a long time.

Upon making it inside, they were greeted by Mark Luski, former Secret Service operative turned fixer, who asked, harried, uncharacteristically cagey, for the news from Panama.

“It’s all fucked,” was the best reply Lamont could manage.

“Fucked?” Luski muttered, less bewildered than exasperated.  “Got any more for me than that?”

Lamont raised a hand, gesturing vaguely at things shoulder-height and below as he trudged up the stairs from the back entrance to the main level.  At this point, his companions had largely stopped and dropped, collapsing on the lower level’s sofa, armchairs, or–in Fontaine’s case–the floor, with only Pierre following him and Luski up.

“Sterling.”

Lamont sighed, pausing at the top of the stairs.

“Okay,” he said.  “This is all a lot bigger than the Secret Service.  And Kneecap is dead.”

“Orange?” Luski asked, stepping into the foyer behind him.  “Orange is–”  

All three of them froze at the sound of a key in the front door lock.  Lamont glanced at Luski.  At once, they both drew their pistols as the door opened, revealing two young men: one in a blazer and khakis, with slicked-down hair and spectacles, carrying a briefcase; the other in a dark red suit and matching fedora, shifty, the kind of guy you’d expect to see behind a mafia don’s left shoulder.  Neither was holding a weapon, neither seemed like a government spook, but…wait.  Lamont had seen the spectacled man before.  Recently.

“You,” he growled.

“Mr. Sterling,” Spectacles said.  “Hello again!”  The greeting, however friendly, failed to put Lamont’s nerves at ease.  He had not yet encountered a context where friendliness actually precluded ill intent.

“Didn’t you work for Hawberk?” Pierre asked, evidently too tired to share Lamont’s violent level of alarm.

But the Frenchman was right: Spectacles had been Hawberk’s announcer at the poker game aboard the Prince’s Emblazoned.  They had last seen him shortly before Kneecap rammed the ocean liner and sunk it.  

“Why yes, I did,” the man replied.  “I know we met all too briefly at sea.  My name is Jonathan Banks.”  He extended a hand.  No one crossed the room to shake it, though Luski did lower his weapon.

“What do you want?” Lamont asked, pistol still aimed at Banks’ face.

“Of course, Mr. Sterling.  I”m here with a proposal on behalf of my employer.  It’s…” Banks glanced over his shoulder at the open front door, “…a matter of some urgency regarding your recent contact with the Architects.  May we come in?”

“How do you–”

“Yeah, shut the door,” Pierre interrupted.  “Let’s talk.”

Lamont whirled, ready to pistol whip the little shit, but he caught himself.  Banks and his companion were already complying with no emergent sign of hostility.  Pierre had shrunk back slightly, but his response to Lamont’s wrathful glare was just a shrug.  Unfortunately, it was looking more and more like he was right: If they had something to say worth listening to, Lamont’s posturing was just a waste of time and energy.

“Before we get to the meat of it,” Banks said, ignoring the confrontation and proceeding to the dining room, “I would like to introduce my associate, Vincent McFlinn.  Mr. McFlinn, this is Lamont Sterling, Beau Pierre, and Mark Luski.”  He opened his briefcase and began spreading a variety of papers across the table.

“Pleasure,” the man in the red suit said from the side of his mouth.

“Mr. McFlinn,” Banks continued, “is a Fallenstar entity, like you, Mr. Pierre.”

“What?” McFlinn spat, seemingly less out of shock than profound annoyance, as if this was the umpteenth bewilderment Banks had inflicted upon him this afternoon.

“How many…” Luski muttered, blinking in disbelief.  Then, more composed: “Are you here on behalf of M&M then?”  Banks sighed, deflating momentarily over his array of documents.

“You are ahead of the class, Mr. Luski,” he intoned, glancing at the dining room’s other doorways.  “Since I will likely need to explain this multiple times as the rest of the guests trickle in, I’ll try to preface: You all are presently fugitives.  M&M–my employer–would like to make an agreement with you to guarantee you a sort of…’diplomatic immunity’, if you will.”

“M&M, like the company?” Lamont asked.  His head was spinning.  The fucking industrialists were getting involved now?  What sort of diplomacy did they think they were going to do with god-monsters?

“Precisely, Mr. Sterling.”

“How is the M&M Corporation supposed to protect us from–”

“There’s an Architect named ‘Em’, isn’t there?” Pierre interrupted.

A silence stretched across the room as stares moved slowly from Pierre to Banks.

“Arrghh!” Lamont roared.  This was bullshit.  Unbelievable bullshit.

“So, yes,” Banks said, regaining his composure.  “There is–”

“Why are they letters?!” Lamont shouted.  “Why are they all fucking letters?”

“English names for Latin letters, yes,” Pierre added.

“Why?!”

Banks scanned the room, taking a deep, guarded breath.

“This is getting a little off-topic,” he said.  “To fully level with you, I don’t know.  But I’m going to have to insist that it is not especially relevant to the business at hand–and the business at hand really is quite urgent.”

“It’s also a bit late to be asking that question, isn’t it, Sterling?”  The sound of Charlotte’s voice from the stairwell turned heads around the table.

Charlotte Glossington-Clarke, heiress to the fortune of the now-defunct Glossington Industries, baggy-eyed, barefoot, every bit as disheveled as Lamont and Pierre, crossed the threshold to the dining room, not quite staggering, but scurrying in a way her normally polished persona would never have allowed.

“I’m interested in diplomatic immunity, Mr. Banks,” she said, placing her hands on the table.  Lamont felt it was impressive she was still able to project confidence despite her visible fatigue giving the impression of recent food poisoning.  “What are the terms?”

“That depends on negotiations, Miss Glossington-Clarke, but our initial proposal is a cessation of law enforcement hostilities and detainment and all of that for you and–” Banks glanced at Luski, “–your associates, in exchange for your ongoing engagement and employment with M&M, itself a de facto if contentious branch of the Architects’ collective.”

“Contentious,” Charlotte asked.  Banks shrugged, arranging a small stack of papers and sliding them toward her.

“Em and Vee have not always seen eye to eye, hence the negotiation.  But also: hence the internal disagreements of which you all presently find yourselves beneficiaries.”

Charlotte pursed her lips as she flipped through the pages.

“Good point,” she muttered.  Lamont, never much one for paperwork, found himself consciously thankful that she seemed to still have the stamina for the bare bones of due diligence.

“Hold on.  Hold the fuck on!” the newcomer–McFlinn or whatever–spouted, taking a step backward.  “Banks, what the fuck is this?  What is a falling star?  Who the fuck are Em and Vee?”  He turned to the rest of the table.  “And no fuckin’ offense or anything, but who the fuck are you?”

“He hasn’t had the existential crisis yet?” Pierre replied.

“No,” Banks said, arranging the next packet for Charlotte’s review.  “Been busy.  And it didn’t want to break it to him while driving.”

“Break what to me?!”

“Alien lifeform, fabricated memories,” Charlotte muttered.

“You have magic powers, right?” Lamont added.

“He talks to animals,” Banks added.

“Lotsa people talk to animals!” McFlinn retorted.

“I bet you listen, though,” Pierre sniped.

“That supposed to mean somethin’, wiseass?!”  McFlinn crossed the room, reaching into his jacket as he approached Pierre, who abruptly raised his hands, shouting:

“Hold on–no knives please!”

McFlinn paused mid-step at the oddly prescient objection, long enough for Charlotte to add:

“Mr. Pierre sees the future.  There are several of us here.  My sympathies as to the shock of it, but we have had a very long flight, and I simply do not have the patience to cushion the news right now.”

“You need a corner to scream in, I recommend the billiards room,” Lamont said, still weighing whether he would need to intervene on Pierre’s behalf, though the murderous glare McFlinn shot him prompted the question of whether he would need to defend himself first.  Charlotte yawned.

“Anyway,” she slurred.  “Mr. McFlinn, do you have any concerns with certifying your association with Mr. Banks’ organization?”

McFlinn stepped away from Pierre and turned to her, rage melting to confusion.

“Certif…I already fuckin’ work for him.”

“Indeed, Mr. McFlinn,” Banks interrupted.  “This next step is not dependent on your consent, so if we can table the imminent fact-grappling, I promise you will not regret the removal of the Secret Service from the list of organizations who would see you dead.”

McFlinn took another look around the room, clawing at his lip as if to adjust an invisible cigarette, and finally thrust his hands into his pockets with a muted snarl:

“Whatever.”

For a moment, the only sound in the room was the shuffling of papers and the scratching of Charlotte’s pen.  Eventually, making one last mark, she set her stack down and inclined her head over her shoulder.

“Pierre, would you go grab Fontaine?” she said.  “He’ll need to sign.”  As Pierre scuttled back to the stairs, she turned to Banks.  “I think I’m alright with this, pending these alterations.  Sterling, you can read it over if you like, but the terms are essentially that we remain ‘employed’ as long as we pursue M&M’s assignments to the best of our ability.”

Lamont grabbed a sheet of paper.  He hoped he could trust Charlotte’s judgment, but not verifying the print with his own eyes didn’t sit well.

“So…we do what your boss tells us…” he said, blinking.  He was parsing Charlotte’s summary rather than the inscrutable legalese on the page, realizing with a sinking feeling that he would have to trust her on this one.  He looked up.  “In exchange for what?”

“A modest contractor’s salary,” Banks replied.  “And the considerations detailed in this exhibit.”  He slid over another page, this one unfortunately quite easy to read.

“It’s fucking blank,” Lamont observed.

“That’s because it is yet to be negotiated,” Banks said, smiling in a way Lamont found smackable if not punchable.  “Vee needs to agree.”

“There’s a sample framework here,” Charlotte added, sliding another page to Lamont which he did not bother to pick up.  “But Mr. Banks, how will the negotiation take place?  Do you intend to send Vee a telegram?”

“Good question.”  Banks glanced about the room, lingering on a trove of houseplants in the corner.  “I have another method, courtesy of my father.  I’ll prepare it while we wait for Mr. Fontaine.  Now Mr. Sterling, would you mind terribly if I temporarily relocated your ficus?”