Dream Drive Ch. 06

They swept the wood clean, tossing out a bit more excess dirt. The casket was solid brown oak, sealed with a bright gloss and embroidered with gold. Jackson wondered if Westley's father had even thought for five damn seconds how entirely pointless the investment was for something that was buried underground. Just wanted to look good at the funeral.

Jackson clasped his hands together. His arms were trembling. Folding his fingers together felt like an effort.

He had never prayed before. Now, he prayed for his friend to forgive him for disturbing his place of rest.

Jackson set his shovel under the lid. He had his robots do the same. Together, they pried the box open, fighting against the ancient technology of wood planking and nails. It creaked, then cracked open with the sudden ugly sound tearing wood. The lid was flung flat to the side of the hole.

Jackson took a long, steadying breath, then clicked on his flashlight. He shined it down into the open coffin.

It was empty.

****

Jackson did not expect to burn the entirety of the hospital down, but he wouldn't want to do that, anyway. There were plenty of innocent people housed up there.

Some of his data was disseminated through company servers, but most of it was on his lab's private computer. He shredded all of it with a simple memory scrubbing program, and then he removed the physical drives for good measure and piled them in the center of the room.

He took all his half-built parts and carted them in. He gathered all his tools, his sensors, and even rolled the ED-MRI machine across the room to sit next to the heap. He launched a few worms into the rest of the lab systems; they would linger for a time, burrow down, then pop up to cause havoc in the future.

And then he poured gasoline all over the pile. The fumes made his eyes water, but he smiled, because it smelled like sickly sweet revenge. He secreted a few jars of kerosene into the middle of it all to add a little extra fun.

Jackson trailed gasoline to the door, lit an old-fashioned camping match, and threw it down.

The gas whooshed to flame before the match touched the tile, forcing Jackson to jump backward. The fire raced across the floor and slammed into the gas-soaked kindling. Burning plastic quickly overwhelmed the scent of gas. The middle of the pile turned to slag satisfyingly quickly.

An alarm went off in the room. Flame-retardant foam spilled from the ceiling. It would ruin any unprotected electronics - and that was everything Jackson had stripped down and thrown into the lab. Jackson turned from the door as the first kerosene jar ignited, blasting a shower of shrapnel over the tile. He pulled the fire alarm on the way out.

Jackson was at the lobby by the time the hospital's response team was reaching the lab. He merged with the flood of people that were evacuating. That would be a bit messy for the patients, but vital systems wouldn't be taken offline. For the rest, well, he really didn't care about inconveniencing Ransfeld hospital anymore.

Jackson opened his tablet, sent his email of resignation to Charles's phone, then deleted Charles from his contacts list and blocked him on all channels.

He spent the rest of the evening combing through Ransfeld's security files, deleting anything that would serve as evidence he'd been involved with the fire. After four or five hours, Jackson's connection was cut off - they found the wireless access point where he'd cut into the cables in the maintenance room. Too late to make a difference.

****

They went to the same school. It was inevitable that they'd run into each other. Besides, Charles knew where he lived.

There could be no running away, so Jackson waited in the most obvious place he could think of.

The piano room was silent. There were no students there this late in the afternoon. He sat on one of the benches in front of a grand, ebony instrument.

The light of a setting sun was coming in through the windows. It gave the space an orange haze. A gold glare sat on the tiles. Jackson stared at it, letting his eyes wander along the seams in the floor.

They had sat together in this room a hundred times after classes were over. Jackson would work on a project. Charles would play with his tablet, conducting his business remotely. And Westley would play music. The sun always fell over the windows in the same way - bright, and then gold, and then a deep orange, and then night, and they had to turn on the fluorescent lights.

"Jackson."

He looked up. Charles was there. He was the same; preened and suited. Smiling.

"How can you fucking smile like that after what you did?"

"...it would have been better if you didn't know."

Jackson stood from his seat so fast the bench fell back. It clattered onto the floor. "Why?!"

The word echoed through the room with the solid acoustics of a space meant for music. It hung in the air - a long, grating note that made Charles's smile falter.

"I'll explain," Charles said. "The investors were considering our venture into prosthetics to be a waste of time. My father was going to shut us down unless we rapidly improved in every measure. We only had one available long-term sample."

"WESTLY WAS NOT A FUCKING SAMPLE!!"

"Jackson," Charles said, "you need to calm down."

Jackson ran across the room. He didn't know what he was going to do; he just knew that every instinct told him to throw himself at Charles with every fiber of his being.

It was like hitting a brick wall.

Jackson wasn't sure what had happened. His stomach hurt. He was on the floor, wheezing for a breath. Charles paced around him and into the middle of the room. Jackson groaned and rolled onto his knees. "Where the fuck...you going?"

"I'm not going anywhere," Charles said. "I'm going to explain myself. You attacked me before I had a chance."

"Fuck you!"

"Jackson," Charles said, "you're not being reasonable."

"Reasonable." Jackson climbed back to his feet. "You harvested Westley's body so you could manufacture a fucking prosthetic, and you're going to throw the word reasonable at me?! You sick fucking piece of shit!"

Charles looked out the window. "...man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor."

"FUCK YOUR BULLSHIT!"

Jackson charged again. At the last moment, he pulled up short, and threw a punch, trying to catch Charles unprepared.

Jackson's hand was grabbed; Charles stepped into the punch at the same time, locking Jackson's entire arm behind his back. And then, Jackson's stomach dropped, because he was flying through the air, upside down.

He crashed into a piano in a cacophony of broken sounds. He fell off the keys, onto a bench, and collapsed onto the tile.

He tried to take a breath. It hurt. He tasted blood in his mouth.

Jackson moved his neck, struggling to twist himself up. Charles came back into view. "...how...wasn't he your friend? Weren't we...why..."

"It couldn't wait," Charles said. "The effective sample we needed would have rendered Westley unable to walk again for the rest of his life. I decided that, if I was going to go through with it, I might as well kill him, rather than subject him to that kind of torture."

"Why?!" Jackson growled.

"Because," Charles said, stepping closer, "I hate people, Jackson, but I know them very well. There are no good men out there, not in my line of business. There's too much money involved. It had to be Ransfeld that led the way, or the field of prosthetics would be corrupted, the same as every other medical breakthrough in the last two centuries. It had to be me - someone that was looking out for humanity."

"Where was your humanity when you murdered him in cold fucking blood?!"

"It wasn't a snap decision, Jackson," Charles said quietly. "I warred with myself, even when I sat in his hospital room. Westley, or my beliefs? The life of someone I know, or the future of the human race that I hate?"

Jackson was starting to get some feeling back in his fingers. He focused on trying to recover instead of making another reckless move. "You're conflating the financial success of Ransfeld International with the future of the human race. You're insane."

"To the contrary," Charles said. "What other force will save us, Charles? Some other company? They're all the same as they've been. The governments of the world? What have they given us? Totalitarian police states and endless wars. Rebels, so-called freedom fighters? They're mindless zealots and terrorists more often than they are real altruists, and if they gained power, they'd turn into exactly what they claim to fight against.

"We're it," Charles said. "We are the last thing left working for the greater good. And I believed that if I posed all of this to Westley, that if I asked him if he would trade his life in order to further the cause, then he would do it. That is why I did what I did."

"Did you think to ask him about it before stealing his life?"

"I didn't need to."

"You arrogant FUCK!"

Charles had slowly moved closer. Jackson lunged from where he was kneeling, going for Charles's groin.

The leg that Jackson had built got in the way. Jackson took a kick in the stomach from a polished shoe backed with a metallic foot. He tumbled backward and ended up lying on his stomach.

Charles's foot came down and pinned him to the floor. Jackson scrabbled and kicked, but he couldn't dislodge the results of his own engineering. Charles increased the pressure. "I don't want to hurt you, Jackson."

Jackson stopped struggling. The pressure lifted slightly. He dragged in a breath. "You're fine...with suffering," he said. "As long as it isn't you. As long as you're the one carrying the flag. You're the greatest zealot of them all. You killed your own friend for the cause."

"Yes," Charles said, "I did."

"Do you think, maybe," Jackson said, "that you've totally lost it? Because I do. You're not Charles. The Charles I know doesn't hurt people. He wants to help them."

"I am helping people," Charles said. "I won't forget what I had to do, or what Westley had to give up to achieve what we have now. If what I've done makes me less human, then so be it. I've long been afraid that the march of progress will cause us to lose some part of our humanity. I'll be the first. I'll be the sacrifice."

"Westley is dead," Jackson said, "and you think you're the sacrifice. What the fuck, Charles? What the fuck! Listen to yourself!"

"I thought you understood," Charles said. "I thought you would understand. Didn't you say I was right, back at your house? Didn't you agree with me?"

"If you're the future of humanity," Jackson said, "then humanity has no future, and it doesn't deserve one."

"Don't say that."

"I don't give a fuck. I'll never work for you again. I'll kill you if you give me the chance. Are you listening to me?! I'll fucking kill you!"

Jackson felt himself shoved back to the floor. He couldn't get another breath. His lungs started to ache. His ribs were being ground into the tile.

Charles leaned close. "You could try, Jackson. If you did...I'd have to take appropriate measures to defend myself."

The pressure vanished. Jackson heard footsteps. He struggled to roll over. "Charles, we're...I'm not -"

"You made yourself very clear," Charles said. He stopped near the entrance; his head was bowed. "I'm sorry to lose you. We had a lot of potential. But I'll go on without you. Maybe you'll see, one day."

"See what?"

"You think you're the only one in this room that cares about Westley." Charles looked back at him. "I had to do it, Jackson. I killed Westley with my own hands. I got him those concert tickets, because I wanted his last day..." Charles turned. "I will live with what I have done for the rest of my life."

"Do you really think it was worth it, Charles?" Jackson's voice cracked. "You think people - the people you told me you hated - that they're worth his life? Is that what you believe? A leg made out of metal and plastic was worth his life?"

"...if we can become greater than what we are today," Charles said, "then perhaps we will no longer have to hate. For that day, yes - his life was worth it. All our lives are worth it."

Charles left the room.

Jackson clawed himself together. He limped home. He locked his door tight, and curled up in his bed. He did not sleep.

****

It had taken time for Jackson to tell his story. Landri and Palla had already retired to the tipi. Jackson still rested with Chaki near the fire pit.

And like every night, the flames were gone. The fire had burned low, leaving a pack of glowing coals. A wind blew over them.

Jackson held Chaki around her shoulders. She sat with her knees tucked in, leaning in under his arm.

"I cannot believe he was capable of doing such a thing," Chaki said. "He is evil."

"No," Jackson said. "He's not evil. It's a lot worse than that. He's misguided, and totally convinced he's right."

"No, Jackson," Chaki said. "His logic is not human. His morality is disgusting."

"Logic is inhuman by its very nature," Jackson said. "He just followed the progress of technology to its final conclusion."

"Why are you defending him?"

"Defending him?" Jackson said. "I'm just explaining him."

"What are you going to do about him?"

"I dunno. I haven't done much so far."

Chaki looked at him. "What you have just described to me is worthy of a blood feud great enough to destroy an entire tribe. You are no longer what you were. You are Tatanka Ska, a warrior of Shakhan. You must take revenge for your friend, Westley. Only then can his soul rest in peace."

"Soul," Jackson said. "What's a soul?"

"The soul is all too real," Chaki said. "Is it not?"

"Yeah," Jackson said. "But what can I do?"

"Your world of science and math is beyond me," Chaki said. "It makes me feel...weak." She pushed in closer to him. "I wish I could guide you, but only you can make the decisions that need to be made. Whatever you choose, I shall support you."

"...I know." Jackson rubbed her shoulder. "And that means the world to me."

"...do not hate people, Jackson," Chaki said. "They don't deserve it. And you do not deserve it."

"What are you saying?"

"Hatred," Chaki said, "is a bad thing. It can be turned to motivate the self, but it can burn a hole through the heart. It is like fire. A weapon, a source of heat; dangerous."

"You sound like Shaka."

"Good," Chaki said. "I must make her proud as spirit guide."

"...yeah."

Chaki looked at him. "Jackson. I...you were right. I did not understand your experience as I thought I did. I am sorry for many things."

"...I've thought about that," Jackson said. "I wasn't angry because you didn't understand. I wasn't angry at your, presumption, I guess. I was angry because you did understand, and you were trying to help, and I was upset because it was so easy to see from someone looking in." Jackson stared at the coals burning in the fire pit. "I've lived with this for...I don't know. But suddenly, all that burden, all that weight, whisked away, just like that? It scared me. It was too easy. Something was wrong. I felt like, if I was happy, despite what happened toe Westley...I dunno."

"You clung to pain because it was familiar," Chaki said. "When people have only fear in their souls, they will fight to protect it. Even if it's irrational, they will grasp ahold of what they know and not let go. Westley would not want you to do that. He would want you to live as you want to live."

"Yeah."

Chaki took a slow breath. She closed her eyes. "I will not leave you, Jackson. I am here."

"...thanks," Jackson said.

The was the last word Jackson was able to manage before he started to cry, but Chaki was there, and she did not leave.

****

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