The Origami Dragon And Other Tales (15 page)

‘What happened
last night? Last thing I remember, that thing was carving me up
like a Christmas turkey,’ I said.

‘Sithere
distracted it, an’ Feather drove his spear right through it. We
managed to change it back into a human, ready for delivery. Was no
easy feat, an’ Feather didn’t get off too lightly. He copped it
even worse than you did.’

‘What? Is he
dead?’ I demanded.

‘Dead?
Dead
?’ Stripes laughed, ‘The old man is dead, aye, but he
will be fine.’

I tried to
argue, Doctor, but I was so tired. I woke up to the sound of
Feather’s alarm ringing through the forest.

‘Wha’ the hell
is this?’ Stripes complained, holding up the alarm.

It was covered
in blood, but there was no sign of the arm it had been wrapped
around.

‘It’s his
watch,’ I muttered, trying to sit up.”

“So where was
Feather?” I asked Rob, “and why on Earth would Stripes think he
would be OK?”

“He
had
been dead, and then he was OK, Doctor, he was. He came running
through the forest completely unharmed but screaming like a madman,
crying out for his shotgun. We had no guns on us, as you may
remember, but there was no telling Feather that. As he raced
towards us, I saw an eagle swoop down towards us. He reached for
the bow at my side, but the eagle was too close. I kicked out at
Feather’s legs, managing to trip him over just as the bird’s talons
glanced off his skull. I threw my knife, but it was an awkward
angle and it barely snicked its wing. The bird spiralled upwards
into the trees and disappeared.

Feather was on
his feet straight away with the bow in his hand, screaming abuse at
the bird and firing arrows into the sky at random. It took Stripes
and I nearly twenty minutes to calm him down, but there was nothing
we could do to convince him to put the bow down. He sat with his
back to a tree trunk, muttering to himself.

‘Elves be here
soon,’ Stripes said, ‘an’ then we get you both sorted.’

I was wondering
if I had been hallucinating, but then a giant blue feather
spiralled gently out of the sky and landed by my hand. I picked it
up: it was real.

‘What’s the
story with that freak of a bird? It was the biggest eagle I have
ever seen, and it made straight for him like it wanted to tear his
head off!’ I said.

‘Aye, ’tis his
liver the creature wants. It hunts him at dawn, so it does. Every
dawn, and its children spy on him all through the morn’. He is
ready for it most days but sometimes it still takes him by
surprise. The man and the eagle, locked in a battle of eternal
hatred. Sometimes the man wins, sometimes the bird does. ’Tis none
too pleasant when the bird wins. You made a friend today, yes you
did. And one last night, by saving me.’

But I wasn’t
thinking about Feather, nor Stripes. A terrible thought had
occurred to me, and there was only one question I wanted
answered.

‘Why am I still
alive, Stripes? Surely-’

‘-I been
looking for a partner, me,’ he interrupted, ‘an’ you seem a likely
lad.’

‘Pretty sure I
killed your father,’ I muttered, because being killed by Stripes
was looking like the best possible alternative.

‘Da’ be silly!
I did the deed myself years ago. Ye might ha’ killed my uncle, but
he was a nasty piece of work and deserved it.’

Stripes
launched into a long story about his varied family and their many
misadventures. His grandfather had been an infamous shaman, his
mother a witchdoctor. His brother was in I.T., the white sheep of
the family. It was pretty obvious to me that he was trying to
distract me. I wondered if I would die before the wolf’s bite
changed me into one of the moon’s children. Time passed, and
nothing happened.

The Elves
arrived an hour later. Feather was better by then, and he had a
quiet word with one of the magi. They took the now-human body of
the werewolf with some enthusiasm, and I felt almost sorry for it.
Almost. A few small items seemed to change hands, and then the
Elves were gone and we were alone in the forest. Feather ambled
over to me and sat down.

‘Sorry about
this morning,’ he said, but I waved him away as graciously as a
half-dead casualty can.

He showed me a
couple of empty glass cylinders. A couple of oily red drops
remained in them. I didn’t recognise the drug, as it was the first
time I had ever seen it. Did I feel cold dread in my stomach that
first time? Did I see my whole life changing because of them? I
should have, but there was no way I could have known at the time
how that red drug would cause so much pain in my life, so much
damage. It is the reason I am sitting here today, but the story of
the Red Canary will have to wait for another day. I watched as
Feather sniffed the cylinder, pulling an ugly face at the acrid
smell.

‘This is what
that thing was on. This is what gave it such power, and damn near
drove it mad. It’s a drug of some sort, but I’ve never seen the
like.’

‘Neat,’ I
muttered without much interest, ‘I don’t suppose it doubles as some
sort of miracle cure as well?’

Feather shook
his head.

‘Nah, I
wouldn’t let you touch it. But don’t worry, I got a present for
you. I traded in part of your payment, and got these,’ he said,
passing me a bag of what seemed to be marbles.

‘OK,’ I said,
unimpressed.

‘You got bit by
the wolf, boy, and we all know what that means. Even so, you are
going to need a help if you plan on seeing tomorrow, as even wolf
spawn can die. Now, eat up!’

‘Aye,’ agreed
Stripes, and I ate up.”

“Marbles?” I
asked Rob. I had found a bag of white marbles on him when I had
found him, but there were only three left in the bag. They had
looked like tiny moons, glowing luminescent even in the daylight.
It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen them in a few days.

“I did as I was
told, and I survived,” Rob said, “Feather took off the next day,
but Stripes stayed around and made sure I healed up. We formed a
pretty successful partnership before he headed back to the Congo to
get involved in politics. I still run into him from time to time. I
had a lot of learning to do, those early days. The scars of that
night have saved my life a number of times, and my resilience waxes
and wanes with the moon. Luckily, my powers were pretty high during
my recent encounter.”

“Oh, damn,” I
said, thinking about the date.

“Yes, I was
wondering when you would realise. I didn’t bring this story up for
no reason. This curse has saved me, but a curse it is none the
less. We have two days until the full moon, and we need to be
prepared. You need to go down to the local hardware store and buy
chains. Lots of them.”

Those next few
nights were the worst of my life. I sent my daughter away, of
course. The thing that Rob became terrified me; it was a monster
that strained against the chains and tore deep scratches in the
concrete floor of my garage. He grew stronger as the full moon drew
nearer, and he almost escaped me, despite my precautions. I thought
I was going to die but, just when things were at their worst, a
silver phantom appeared over his head and whispered calming words
in his ear. Perhaps it was Sithere, still waiting for his body.
Perhaps it was a friend sent by Feather or Stripes. Rob never
mentioned it again, and I never had the courage to ask him.

I am the last
of the old people. It is not a blessing.

My captor
visits me every week. He is a member of the ruling council and
looks young enough to be my great-grandson, yet was born only a
decade after me. He is one of the first of his generation; I am the
last of mine. Our similar age is all we have in common.

“We demand you
help us stop it,” he says calmly, the same thing he says every
visit.

He is always
calm. Anger requires adrenaline and hormones, but my captor had
these regulated when he was still a young man. His strong plastic
heart beats thirty times per minute, every minute of every hour,
every hour for eternity.

“The incidents
are getting worse. We demand you undo the damage.”

He looks good
for his age, but his eyes betray him. They are cold and copper,
metallic substitutes that replaced his natural biology many years
ago. His eyes show no passion, no understanding. They are a robot’s
eyes, a golem’s eyes.

I stare out of
my prison window and onwards on to flowing hills and clear blue
skies. There is a single cloud on the horizon.

“This isn’t
much of a prison,” I say conversationally.

“You are
frail,” he answers, “we simply need to lock the door, and you are
trapped. You have no friends; where would you go?”

It is all too
true. My generation lived for decades longer than our ancestors
could have dreamed possible; healthy until our twilight years, but
we were still mortal.

“I travel
widely, both in time and in space. You will never understand the
joys that memory can bring an old man.”

“Your memory
fades with your mind. You will die soon.”

I don’t deny
his words, for their truth is self-evident. Every day is harder,
every moment inches me towards my eventual fate. As is only right,
in my mind.

“I have
outlived my friends, my family and my purpose. Maybe it’s time.
Sixteen decades are enough for any man.”

“We
disagree.”

“You aren’t
real men!” I snort.

He is quiet for
a moment, considering my words.

“We are your
descendants,” he contests, and I hang my head in recognition of a
brutal truth.

My own son
chose to replace his flesh with electronics. I consider this the
single greatest failure of my life.

When I look up
he is gone.

He visits me
again the next day; they must be getting desperate.

When I first
realised what humanity was becoming, I checked myself in to surgery
for the first and only time. I received a brainnet, an upgrade to
prevent all future upgrades. The brainnet is also the reason they
can’t just read my mind. They must interrogate me daily for
answers, a task quite alien to their nature.

I wait for them
to resort to torture, but they never do. They may be inhuman, but
they aren’t cruel. For this I admire them, despite my hatred of
what they represent.

My captors
think I am insane. I don’t bother to argue.

Humanity is
defined by its madness. We know about our own mortality, but defy
this knowledge and demand meaning from our universe. We are
frequently flawed, easily misled and just occasionally brilliant.
We live. We hope. We strive. We believe that if we somehow achieve
enough in this life, we will never truly die, which is nonsense,
but powerful nonsense.

Making peace
with this inner chaos is the greatest struggled faced by each
member of humanity. This battle defines humankind driving us to
greatness and sometimes to madness. Or it used to. The cyborg Human
2.0 is fully rational, fully in control, fully emotionless. They
have no fear or hope, so they have no passion. They can organise
and streamline, but they can’t create. Technology and science have
stagnated since the rise of the metal generation.

I tell this to
my captor.

“One day life
on earth will be challenged,” I add, “and your people will not
adapt to survive.”

“Perhaps there
is something in what you say,” he says, surprising me; he had never
shown such an understanding before. I am left speechless as he
leaves the room and, for the first time in many years, I wonder if
what I did was right.

I was brilliant
once, you understand. You see me now with thin arms and weak eyes,
but I was as young and powerful and dangerous as any man who ever
lived. In decades past I joined with like-minded men and women to
corrupt the code that runs through the minds and bodies of the
metal men. We set up a virus, a virus to change the world. We
decided not to use it then, for fear of what we would unleash on
ourselves.

I triggered the
virus three years ago, when my wife died, and I realised that I was
truly alone. They found me quickly, and I have been imprisoned ever
since.

I am sitting on
my bed when my captor bursts in and swings a wild punch that takes
me across my face and knocks me to the ground. He kicks out and I
feel my ribs crack beneath his feet. There is no escape. I am too
slow; he is too strong. My body cannot survive this abuse, and this
knowledge makes me both happy and wretched.

“What is this
poison in my mind?” he screams.

“Anger! Anger
at the chaos that threatens your best efforts to control!” I say,
realising that this is my own work come to destroy me.

“The young riot
against the council. The council, their elders, who have given them
so much, who have led them wisely and taught them everything we
could!” he says, still standing above me but no longer looking at
me.

“It is natural
for every generation to rise against their elders, and for their
elders to resent this,” I explain, sitting up against my bed,
clutching my aching side. The pain is excruciating, the victory
liberating.

“But they will
make so many mistakes,” he groans.

“Yes, yes they
will. They would rather make their own mistakes than live the
perfect lives you proscribe. This is part of what it means to be
human.”

“Why?”

“Disbelief.”

“Everything we
have done… could we lose it all?”

“Shock!”

“You did this!
Your virus destroyed our emotion suppressors!” he accuses me, and I
can see that he is crying.

“Surprise? I
too was mighty once.”

“Will we… will
we also die? I don’t want to die!”

“Fear,” I
whisper as my thoughts fade to nothing.