Fix (28 page)

P
aul filled
his body with light – not trivial illumination, but the
concepts
of light.

He felt photon-cascades rocketing down from outer space, plunging through the atmosphere, ricocheting off trees.

He felt gravity's subtle flow tugging straight-lined photons into slender arcs that barely bent as they soared across continents.

He fused with the collective's understanding to fathom the electromagnetic spectrum's great sweep – the knife-like sprinkle of gamma rays, infrared's warm radiation, the shriek of radio waves…

A million laws had to converge to create light. Paul envisioned the universe as a great terrarium, and light itself as this fragile creature that could be extinguished if any of those factors failed –
had
failed, in the demon dimensions.

He ordered the collective to gather the laws into one great sword, raising it high above the Earth. He formed his awareness into a sharp edge to punch Earth-style physics deep into the demon dimensions – a reverse broach.

A better world
, he thought, exhaling.

The Unimancers could only do Unimancy; their low tide of debate quashed the certainty a 'mancer needed. They tried to hold him back, protesting bureaucracy wasn't what drove the universe…

Paul swept their objections aside. The universe was governed by regulations, orderly laws that controlled the spin of atoms.

All universes should be so governed.

And as the Unimancers fell into place behind him, Paul would make the demon dimensions orderly.

No wonder Aliyah had been so potent in here. Most of the captured Unimancers had been caught after their first 'mancy generated enough bad luck to call SMASH down on their heads. Whereas Paul had followed his unique obsession for years, every act of 'mancy reinforcing his viewpoint until he was incapable of viewing the world through anything
but
the lens of forms, laws, and regulations.

He loaded his surety onto the collective until their willpower broke. They'd been starved of victory for decades, needed it so badly they'd agree with anyone who promised triumph.

They organized underneath his guidance, forming ranks, chains of command, communications protocols.

He reached up into the heavens to slam Light into the broken sky.

The dimensional collage overhead shivered, edges blurring as they fused into one unified whole. The chunks glowed a fiery orange as the light fought its way through, like glass heating in an oven–

Warm yellow sunlight flooded down across the field.

For the first time in years, the sky over Bastogne was a clear, unbroken blue.

Sixty-seven Unimancers gasped.

There was no time to luxuriate; light was their first beachhead. The sun illuminated battalions of unthinkable beasts that chewed up light and shat alien ideas.

He swept his hands up like a conductor, commanded the Unimancers to send the second wave crashing in.

Paul took the wedge he'd driven into the demon dimensions and poured all the rules Earth had to offer into it: gravity, mass, conservation of energy. He instructed the hivemind's scientists to find whatever crevices still ran on fragments of antiquated Earth rules and use them as anchor points.

The sky shuddered. Paul had turned classical physics into a virus, infecting demon dimensions in the ways the broach infected ours. He had to nourish these thin roots back to life…

Except what remained of Earth within the broach was dead scar tissue.

Paul bombarded the broach with Gravity and Time, resuscitating the fragments of Earth that had survived over the past seventy years. The scant microphysics he could nurture bloomed into odd variants – zones where the gravity-to-mass ratio skewed heavy, where the Bohr radius rounded down to five.

He tended to these mutant strains of Earth – but they rebelled at his touch, collapsing into chaos.

You wanted to spend weeks forming one miniscule perfection
, he thought. He wished he had. If he'd done that instead of charging in, he would have discovered the broach was broken beyond repair. The broach was so wrecked all the 'mancers in the world could not restore it and

lynchpin

The heavens spoke, alien words slithering into Paul's brain.

The Thing in the sky had a voice. Each syllable it spoke threatened to snuff out Paul's heart.

The Unimancers shrieked in terror.
It spoke it's never spoken we didn't know it could speak

we know you lynchpin

It clawed the sunlight away, revealing that white nothingness beyond.

“
Get out
.” Paul pointed at the sky, calling down barrages of fundamental principles – the Thing couldn't exist on Earth, its mountainous body was a crazy quilt of paradoxes. He was the War Bureaucromancer, and he
would
drive this Thing back.

you think you are war

It stomped, and the sky cracked. Buzzsects poured out in an ichorous halo; they swallowed up Paul's laws and extruded an osseous armor around the Thing.

we are war

“No,” Paul whispered.

A dark blaze spread from horizon to horizon with the languid pleasure of a cat licking its lips. The Thing spread multitudinous limbs out, still barred behind that stained glass sky – but the flames poured in, and it absorbed them into its body, became a mockery of the sun.

for you it is always fire

“
No!
” Paul screamed, feeling the collective panic. He tried to hold onto the War Bureaucromancer's bloody certainty, but no willpower on Earth could force this Thing back–

you hold the rules yet know not how to use them

we will use them

we will strip the rules from your bones and use them to unlock this cage

“No,” Paul begged.

The Thing bent a finger and inverted gravity.

Slowly, inexorably, Paul tumbled upwards into the burning sky.

A
liyah was shrieking
at her father, begging him not to bring the heavens down on that Thing.

Daddy, no!
she cried.
That's not bureaucromancy!

She'd felt his urge to start small –
that
was the father she'd trusted. The man who'd spent months planning political rallies, carefully anticipating contingencies, worried sick someone might get hurt when SMASH showed up.

Daddy believed his magic sprung from his love of rules, but Aliyah had always known the truth: he'd learned to cast spells while working for a crappy insurance company that longed to refuse claims. Her father had harnessed their rules to subvert the system, getting people the money they needed.

Good work, Dad
, she'd started to say.
We'll back you for as long as–

A thousand protests drowned out her assurance.

The Unimancers were a military operation – and to them, Paul Tsabo was a weapon. They didn't understand his 'mancy involved hours of careful planning, were infuriated that Paul the gun balked at being fired.

No, wait–

Their 'mancy infiltrated his mind, brought him into line with their harmony, convinced him yes, he needed to go bigger, and Aliyah shrieked her head off as they rolled over her like a river.

She'd never been on a losing side of a Unimancer argument. But now she was the minority vote, and they silenced her.

Consensus
.

She stood frozen while her father rearranged the Unimancers to his liking, then assaulted the Thing in the sky, and the Thing shrugged off their best efforts–

It's broken it's too broken we can't fix this no one can fix this

Aliyah's heart thumped as her father wailed–

He rose into the sky.

Save him!
Aliyah thought. But she was one voice among thousands.

The general broadcast calm, issuing orders – but her father had laced the hivemind with regulations. In his absence, the confused remnants couldn't remember who was authorized to speak to who; they were manacled by chains of command.

They had thought they were war. The Thing proved them wrong.

Ruth
, Aliyah thought,
help me
. But Ruth, too, was frozen – the Mom-construct had sensed danger, was analyzing the ramifications and deluging Ruth with details. Ruth was in a screaming fight with an unthinking telemarketers' script that would not stop dispensing instructions–

Aliyah ran.

And though Aliyah sped to her father, she ran as herself – God, she'd gotten so used to the Unimancer's feedback loop honing her clumsy reflexes into athlete's grace. She tripped.

That Thing vomited out beast-armies, the sky seething with tentacles squirming towards her father–

Someone grabbed her shoulder.

“Get 'em to safety, kid.” Valentine squinted towards the sky. “I got this.”

Valentine looked heroic – a vision of her aunt the way she'd viewed her when she was six years old. Valentine viewed the sky without fear, as if the heavens aflame was another broken nail.

Aliyah remembered Aunt Valentine's kindnesses: giving her that first Nintendo DS in the burn ward, knowing a kid in pain needed as much distraction as she could get. Sticking French fries into milkshakes with Aunt Valentine back at her apartment, then sticking them up their nose. The way Aunt Valentine had saved her with a secret gift of the right videogame at the right time.

That trust poured into the network, calmed them: seven thousand Unimancers grabbed onto Aliyah's unwavering conviction that Valentine would save them.

Valentine pressed her Nintendo DS into Aliyah's hands. “Keep this safe for me,” she whispered, kissing Aliyah on the forehead.

Her hair sprouted out, black tresses becoming impossibly long, spreading out in great bat wings. A chunky pair of pistols appeared in her hands as her frilly goth-dress slimmed into a form-fitting black leather outfit.

“…Bayonetta?” Aliyah asked. Sometimes it was hard to tell who Valentine channeled, as she refused to adjust her weight to match gaming's skinny character models.

“I wish my default wasn't fighting games,” Valentine said. “Tell your dad I apologize for kicking his ass.” She chewed her lip. “Again.”

She launched into the air in a trail of ruby fire, hair soaring out behind her, her body highlighted against the blackfire heavens…

She slammed into Paul's spine fist-first.

Aliyah winced; Aunt Valentine's go-to maneuver had been to catch Paul in a mid-air combo. Yet the visuals were electric as her father was tossed around like a rag doll. Encouraged, the Unimancers mustered willpower to drive back the unnatural conflagration. The inferno overhead sputtered into speckled smoke as they shouted their love into the broach.

“He's
mine
!” Valentine smacked Paul around, Paul jerking upwards as the Thing in the sky tried to wrest him away. “I
am the protector!
I
am the guardian! And you – will – not – have – my –
friend!”

With each word she smashed her elbow into Paul's cheek, fired her guns into his skull, claimed him with compassionate violence. The Thing in the sky roared, clawing Its way towards Paul–

Valentine flipped into a roundhouse kick that caught Paul in the stomach, sent him hurtling back down to Earth to slam into the ground. Imani rushed up next to Daddy, who was bleeding but not injured – videogame logic.

Paul leapt up screaming, reaching for Valentine.

Valentine lifted her fists in triumph, bobbing on streams of crimson energy. “Fuck
yeah
!” she cried–

Unlike Bayonetta, she did not float back down to Earth.

The flames above her circled into a shrinking vortex, the Thing stirring the remaining flames into a tornado.

Valentine tumbled upwards.

“
Oh yeah?
” Valentine tore off her eyepatch, flung it downwards like a duelist throwing down the glove. “
You want some of this, ugly? I got enough bullets for every demon you got!
”

She summoned a
Contra
cannon onto her shoulder, fired a glowing shot–

Except the stability Daddy had created had worn off. The sky fissured as Valentine unleashed her 'mancy, the last Earth's gravity cascading away.

“
Get some, motherfucker!
” she screamed, as she pinwheeled into the demon dimensions, firing madly at the buzzsects and rifters that rushed down to meet her. They ate furrows through her body, swarmed around the magical pistols in her hands. “
I did my job! I protected the ones I loved! It doesn't matter if I–”

They ate her pistols.

They ate her arms.

They ate her mouth.

The heavens closed over Valentine's disintegrating remains as they were sucked up into the sky. There was a great burst of green light – Xbox light – and Valentine was gone.

I
mani gave
Paul and Aliyah two days to grieve. Any less, and they'd break under the weight she needed them to carry; any more, and time might run out.

Then she hauled Aliyah out to the place where everything had gone so wrong.

Paul sat on a stump, not having left the flowering field where Valentine had died. Imani had forced him to eat, but Paul silently caressed the bruises Valentine had left, pushing his fingers deep into her marks, ensuring they'd never fade.

The flowers in the grove continued to bloom as though Valentine hadn't been devoured, and the sky hadn't fractured further. The dimensional cracks above had deepened into a collapsed junkie's veins. Now convulsions seized the heavens, the Thing more determined than ever to smash down the gates.

Imani wasn't a 'mancer, and even she felt the sickness spreading across the sky.

Each skyquake took longer, as though the Thing gathered increasing strength with each blow. The fissures into the demon dimensions inched across the sky like a hairline crack spreading across a windshield.

It was coming for them.

She sat Aliyah down on the ground facing her father. Paul wore Valentine's eyepatch, ignoring Aliyah to study the blue blossoms at his feet; Aliyah opened and shut the Nintendo DS mechanically, as though it were a puzzle to be unlocked.

“Hey,” Imani snapped.

They both looked up guiltily.

“You fucked up,” she told them.

As expected, they both cringed. They
still
hadn't come to terms with the magnitude of what had gone wrong. They still didn't want to admit they had caused Valentine's death.

Their belief was pure when channeled properly. But as the divorce had taught Imani, that same belief could shunt inconvenient realities aside.

“Know why you fucked up?”

They looked up, eager for answers.

“Because you stopped fucking
talking
to each other.”

She quashed a swell of anger as both her husband and daughter averted their gazes.

“I don't know what happened in the hivemind.” Imani grabbed them both by the scruff of the neck. “I get you're ashamed. I get you don't want to talk to each other. But that's the only way we
work
.

“When we worked as a family,
nothing
could defeat us. Now you two are playing tug-of-war – we get
you
crashing in here to haul your daughter away whether she wants rescuing or not, and
you
commandeering the Unimancers to use your daddy like a socket wrench.

“That shit is
killing
people.”

Imani closed her eyes, breathing hoarsely. It took a lot to get her to swear. But it felt like a fitting eulogy for Valentine.

“In case you have forgotten,
I'm
the mom here.” She yanked their heads back, forcing them to look at the sky's sickening pulse. “As this family's matron, I am telling you
that is what we are here to stop
. As such, you two will work out your differences – any personal issues that get in the way of you saving the world
is our enemy
. And if you can't find a way to reconcile…”

She tugged Valentine's eyepatch, gripped the Nintendo DS Aliyah held.

“…I'm gonna take those mementoes away. Because you don't deserve to have a part of Valentine if you can't remember what she stood for.”

She figured she'd done enough when they both hung their heads. Paul was so talented, her daughter was so powerful…

And both were so adrift.

What Imani had learned working for massive organizations is that after a corporation went bankrupt, reporters invariably pointed to the external problems facing the now-dead company – as though those obstacles had been what had toppled a billion-dollar industry.

But no. Those companies had stockpiles of brilliant minds, millions of dollars in cash to hire contractors, raw labor to make massive changes. But the brilliant minds squabbled and the cash got squandered and the labor got mistreated until that massive force was diffused into a whiff of stale bureaucracy.

Past a certain level of power, a corporation was like the
Titanic
. You could always steer around the iceberg, unless so many hands grabbed at the wheel that you plowed straight into avoidable catastrophes.

And if the apocalypse came, it would not be because of that Thing about, but because the incredible potency of Aliyah and Paul and General Kanakia and the Unimancers and herself could not align themselves.

Her family worked best when their power was concentrated into a piercing laser; her fear was that Paul and Aliyah would tear at each other until they were as ineffective as moonbeams.

But who could change a 'mancer's mind but another 'mancer?

“
Talk
,” she said, hoping Valentine's legacy would be enough to enact change.

Having done all she could do, Imani walked back to the general's office to see if he had a drink stashed anywhere.

P
aul and Aliyah
sat quiet for a long time, doing their best not to look at the sky.

“…
n
ice eyepatch
,” Aliyah ventured.

Paul lifted it up sheepishly, blinking as he exposed his covered eye to the wavering sunlight. “You like it? I'm down a foot, I'm down a best friend… I figure I might as well be down an eye.” He rubbed his eyesocket with the heel of his palm. “I honestly don't know how she wore it. The
inside
has rhinestones.”

“So did her bra.”

Paul winced. “Don't remind me.”

Aliyah smirked. “You know her problem with those bras, right?”

Paul buried his face in his hands, blushing. “Oh, God. Tell me she didn't come to
you
when–”

“–when it caught on her nipple ring, yeah.” She raised her voice, doing a passable Valentine imitation. “‘This fucker's got my tit like a fishhook, I'm telling you! Come extricate your aunt before I dangle this fucking bra off me like a Christmas ornament.'”

“I am
so
sorry for sticking you with that job,” Paul said. “She tried to get me to be her tit-fixer. ‘Paul, it's a breast, not a water balloon filled with acid. You'd help out if my earrings got tangled in my hair, right?'”

“Did you ever?”

“Oh, God no. I imagined your Mom walking in while I unstuck Valentine's nipple ring with a paper clip, and…”

They dissolved in laughter.

“I always figured she got Robert to scoop her out,” Paul apologized.

“Nope.” Aliyah smacked her lips, as if trying to get a terrible taste out of her mouth. “She said the sight would spoil their romance.”

Paul massaged his temples. “I still haven't told Uncle Robert.”

Mournful silence washed over them.

Neither of them liked looking up these days. The sky was their failure. Aliyah flipped the Nintendo DS open and shut, open and shut.

Paul craned his neck. “Have you played since…”

“I've tried.”

She angled the Nintendo in her dad's direction, then pushed the start button to summon
Super Mario
's first level. She left Mario idle. After a minute, the screen wobbled, and the unit reset itself.

“It broke when Aunt Valentine… well, you know.” She hunched over the Nintendo. “The collective's offered to help me repair it, but… I'm gonna leave it.”

“You really don't play anymore, huh?”

Paul leaned forward on the stump, filled with wan hopefulness. Aliyah squeezed the Nintendo DS, wishing she could be what her father wanted her to be, feeling the correctness in refusing him.

“No. Just… too many bad memories when I play.”

An exquisite look of pain crossed Paul's face. “It was… yeah. Lots of bad things happened when you played.” He took the Nintendo DS away, absolving her. “I get it.”

He didn't say,
I wanted magic to be as good for you as it was for me
. They both understood that. Aliyah had a kind of 'mancy, sure – but it was a regimented magic that traded art for comfort.

They moved with stiff ritual formality as Paul placed the Nintendo aside.

After a few minutes, the Nintendo blooped, broken, resetting. Aliyah thumped the grass with her heels.

“You don't have to play it,” Paul told her.

She sobbed. “I'm not afraid of games, Dad. It's… She didn't
finish
. Her level's incomplete. Her
mission
was incomplete – and she died for such stupid reasons! If she'd died
beating
that Thing, I could–”

“Wait a minute,” Paul snapped. “You'd be OK with Valentine dying?”

Aliyah's eyes went flinty. “If she went down taking out the broach? Goddamn straight I would. I'd hold a party if she'd saved Europe.”

“No.” His refusal was a whisper. “Aliyah, that's not this mission's point, we're keeping people safe–”

“That's the enemy.”

“What?”

“Can you come with me?”

Paul squinted, confused; his daughter's anger had dissolved, yet he still quivered with rage: how could Valentine's death be
acceptable
?

Yet he heard the weary
please?
threaded through his daughter's command; she didn't want to fight any more than he did.

He let her lead him through the woods.

She led him up choked thickets, climbing a ridge. His artificial foot had never been good on uneven surfaces, the toes catching on underbrush, and the hill's steepness made him pant with exhaustion. She assisted him as best she could, but her eyes weren't jittering – for whatever reason, she was reluctant to call upon her Unimancy.

“Here.” She stopped at a rocky outcropping overlooking a set of rough-hewn cabins at Bastogne's edge. The rough granite had been swept clear of brush; Paul realized Aliyah had sat here for the last two days.

Laughter carried up through echoes from the cabins. A family canned food for the winter, the mothers boiling bushels of fruit, the fathers stoking the fire, the children tasked with putting the fruit into jars, the grandparents supervising.

The littlest children broke off for impromptu games of tag; the parents corralled them, laughing merrily. They told incomprehensible stories in their thick dialect – though Paul could tell where the funny bits were from the lilt and pause.

“Look at them.” Aliyah spoke in an astonished whisper. “They
saw
the sky crack open two days ago, witnessed that Thing lunging down. And yet… here they are. Canning food like they expect winter to come.” She shook her head. “I keep thinking how brave they have to be.”

Paul hesitated before putting his arm around her. She snuggled against him, blissful. “You could go down with them, you know. Help out.”

She shook her head with slow certainty. “No. I'd ruin it for them. I'd try to perfect the canning process, or I'd get too caught up in playing tag the right way…” She tapped her scars. “I'm a 'mancer. I'm always going to be obsessed.”

He closed his eyes. “I wanted you to be down there.”

“That dream was dead when our apartment caught fire. You tried to save me with 'mancy. I got burned. And from there…”

She shrugged.

Her effortless dismissal of his dreams made Paul's chest hitch.

“…I've been trying to fix you, Aliyah.”

“I know.”

“I can't,” he said, his voice cracking.

She cupped his cheek, serene, offering forgiveness. “I know.”

“I fucked up in that fire. And I kept thinking if… if I changed America enough, if I found you the right place, I could erase your scars. I could give you that village. But I…”

YOU WILL LOSE YOUR DAUGHTER IN WAYS YOU NEVER IMAGINED

“I can save the world, Aliyah, but I can't save
you
.”

Paul collapsed, sobbing. Aliyah held him just long enough to show him she wouldn't leave him.

“Dad. Listen to me.”

He sniffled, rubbing his cheeks.

“I'll never live in that village.”

He squeezed his eyes tight, nodded reluctantly.

“But I can live up here.” She patted her guardpost. “Protecting them. I can't lead the life I wanted – but I can make damn sure other people can. That's good, Dad. That's satisfying. That will
do
.”

Paul looked down, shamed by how much he needed to believe her.

“Can you let me do that, Dad? Can you let me serve in the Unimancers? Not as a mascot – as someone accomplishing something real. Protecting Bastogne. Protecting Morehead.”

“Aliyah.” Paul gripped her jacket. “You might die.”

She thumped his chest. “
That's
the enemy.”

“…what enemy?”

“The enemy that's stopping us from saving the world.” She waved up at the broken sky, which throbbed like a tumorous heart; a child dropped a jar of peaches, got scooped up in a grandmother's hug. “We all need to do this – you and me and Mom and Ruth and the Unimancers and General Kanakia. And you can't
make
this safe. I might die sealing this rift–”

“Aliyah, don't say th–”

“
I might die, Dad
. I don't
want
to die. But as long as you'll do anything to protect me, we'll fail all over again. And… too much is at stake.”

Paul froze, taking in the immensity of what she asked of him.

She forced him to look at her. “If you love me, Dad, you have to let me go. Now tell me. Tell me you're OK with me dying.”

He thrashed in her grip. “I can never be OK with that. I can never–”

“Would you sacrifice your life for me?”

“Yes.”

“Have you sacrificed your happiness for me?”

“You know I have.”

“Then do this for me, Dad. If I can't be in the village… help me be its guardian.”