Akanor: Tales From Necro Box Set Page 14

  The Actor was standing still, holding his hand up, saluting his cadets and senior officers, waiting for the music to arrive at its decrescendo before continuing to move. His curly, golden wig swayed with the hiss of the wind.

  The crowd was silent, hypnotized by The Actor’s stellar performance. The audience’s emotional cloth was a steady stream of grey duskiness with occasional flares of yellow or blue. But those lively colors never lasted longer than a blink of an eye. It was like watching lightning. If you looked away, you would miss it.

  The Jellyfish cameras hovered freely, broadcasting every detail as they streamed across the audience to capture their elation. A few Falcon cameras circled high above, capturing the scene from another, more distant angle. Yulius could see the sneer politicians gave him as they slurped on five-gallon capacity corn-colas. A servo-craft was offering free corn-dogs. The lucky citizens chosen at random to attend the play would take as many as five corn-dogs in one sitting and feast with a vengeance. Once they were done eating, another servo-craft offering free corn-cola refills would pour molten diabetes into their enormous cups. Yulius had always seen this unravel in front of his face. Two hundred and sixty total episodes, five total years, and it was always the same feast, the same promotion of disease reenacted time after time. Today was the first time he was disgusted during the play by watching people overfeeding.

  The music began with a shiver as the first violin hummed out the sounds of its lamenting soul, the violinist moving around, convulsing. This in itself created a spectacle users loved watching.

  Three other violins followed suit like dying sirens, pursued by the slow march of the drums in an unavoidable and honorable crescendo. The blast of the cymbals and the roar of the double bass exploded, the air rippling in turn with invisible echoes. The main scene was about to begin, ‘The Day of Reckoning’ arriving at its zenith. The live Orchestra was creating a humming buzz within the Globus Theater.

  The man beneath the thick makeup was nervous. He didn’t know exactly when the altered Script would be uploaded into his iTop. Up until now, nothing had happened. But the play was arriving at its climax. It had to be now, or at least very soon. If Ingman Greenberg managed to hack into his iTop and upload the altered Script, then this could mean that UniCorn’s servers could be tapped as well. The Primals or some other band of Offgridders could eventually seize it, and overthrow it. Why am I thinking about overthrowing anybody anyway? thought Robert. This wasn’t his goal. His purpose was to simply ignite peoples’ souls, like an engine of the Old World invited to spark once again. But to overthrow the government of Texalifornia was another matter, an impossible feat. Texalifornia was too powerful. Too vast. Every citizen was a user, thus an eye of the government.

  Robert silenced his inner mind. The moment was coming. The zenith approaching.

  As the Script scrolled on and the parts he knew were efficiently acted, he saw his iTop quiver. This was it. The hack happened in an instant. The intrusive program was suppressed, until its powerful algorithms debugged itself from the hack.

  The altered text by Ingman arrived in the color of blood-stained words. This is it, thought Robert, time to shine.

  “Hear me!” boomed the voice of Yulius Zezar. Most of the secondary actors, including Markle sitting within the audience, realized this was not part of the Script. The Understudy held his breath. The music halted abruptly with a screech. From the Orchestra Pit, the Conductor veered around to face The Actor, his face flushed with anger. The Master of Ceremonies was biting his nails off frantically. It was happening again.

  “Reason,” boomed Yulius’s voice, “man’s power to think and make rational choices is his most valuable attribute. Without it, he is nothing more than flesh and bone decaying through time. To forfeit this value is to enter the realm of serfdom.

  “The moment you delegate the act of thinking to another party, then you, my friend, become a puppet. You lose your identity in exchange for the strings that gain control of your limbs. Yes, you will feel comfortable, because these controlling strings will lift the weight off your shoulders, as if you were but floating. This is, however, the first step toward bondage.”

  Markle was aghast at what was being said. Nonetheless, the average user was elated.

  Yulius had seen a couple flairs of yellow and blue light. Here. And there. Up in the last rows! In the center! In the right corner! It was like gazing at a brilliant thunderstorm. But alas, each flash of emotion would not outlive a second. But it was hope, a feedback mechanism that fed his desire to continue. Yulius could also see most of the politicians talking among themselves. A wave of red and orange emotional light was being evoked by their clothing.

  Robert grew nervous. He knew his speech had done its rightful effect. He saw the lights! The music played on as the Conductor started again, no longer caring if his music coincided with the play. His AI was surprisingly silent—it had reversed the hack. Robert expected the Leukoforce to come kicking down the double doors of the Theater, canceling the whole event. Yet nothing happened. Moshi Nikamaya was within the crowd, observing him passively. Robert wondered if there were other androids within the crowd.

  “I call you to action!” bellowed out The Actor as the Script scrolled onward on his iTop in blood-red, capital characters. The AI hadn’t removed the altered Script.

  “Demand your freedom! Demand your choices! Stop the flow of entertainment, a trap created to keep you distracted! Demand the food source you’re offered to be assorted and diverse—not just the sweetness that pacifies you and keeps your blood sugar high. And the only way to control your elevated blood sugar is to take the government-issued pills. How convenient! Yet another method to control us. Can’t you see it?”

  The music roared: the drums banged and the cymbals exploded as the zenith of the play arrived at its fruition. The music’s decrescendo faded into the stale bliss of nothingness.

  Yulius became a statue, waiting for a response from the crowd. Someone began to clap. Another user followed suit. And another. The cheers erupted and exploded with visceral might. But the emotional clothing was still gleaming with stale greyness and the occasional flare of yellow…nothing.

  Yulius’s face started to melt as his emotions blossomed. He was not happy, not ecstatic. He was terrified to find the crowd merely sitting there without consequence and cheering him on as if nothing important had occurred. But…his words had been revolting! Absolutely life-changing! He had to have caused some effect on somebody! Anybody!

  “Plis brand me, mister! Plis! Here’s the laser pen! Brand ma’ butt cheek plis, mister!” yelled the first fan to reach the stage. The whole theater followed her and made a line, waiting to be branded by the superstar prior to being Unified.

  The fan requesting to be branded was an attractive, plump lady with huge breasts outlined by her tight emotional shirt. The emotional cloth gleamed orange and red, probably because she was sexually attracted to The Actor. Two hundred InstantSex requests popped up in Robert’s iTop. He didn’t hear the usual chime, as he had the “Do Not Disturb” mode enabled.

  Robert was paralyzed. The only thing he could do was stare at the one fan asking him to brand her. This was madness. The public he so desperately tried to change ignored his words as if they were a mere act. That was the root of it. Everything had become a piece of entertainment. Nothing more. Just a gust of bliss.

  “You were magnificent! Magnanimus! So gud!” yelled other people from the upper levels of the Theater.

  His hopes died without ripples. In his mind’s eye, his soul condensed into a drop of blue liquid. It was a stale and nonviable substance that would soon ebb into nothingness. Robert’s soul died then and there.

  Yulius took a step back. For the first time in five years, he was immediately repulsed by one of his fans, disgusted to the point of feeling nauseated. The young woman was awestruck to find herself in the presence of someone she admired yet who had the demeanor of extreme loathing. She was unable to decide whether The Actor was ab
out to perform or run away out of fear—or both.

  “Wat’s wrong with him?” asked one of the fans behind the woman facing The Actor.

  “I guess he’s just…sad he finished faiv yeers of acting…” responded the woman. However, she was already leaning back, fearing the horrible look on The Actor’s face.

  Yulius Zezar seemed at the verge of vomiting. The tunnels of his pupils became vortices, bewitching the woman’s soul. She was hypnotized, staring at the void where Robert’s soul lay dead.

  The grey colors evoked by the emotional shirt of the bewitched woman began to falter. The orange morphed into a cool and deep purple, a color rarely seen. The purple intensified and then began to darken. The purple plummeted into the saddest violet ever seen.

  The Jellyfish cameras loomed closer to the scene, all lenses focusing on Yulius’s frozen facial expression, on the battle of stares he endured with his beloved fan.

  Silence grew in proportion. People stopped breathing. The scenery was stunning: a violet emotion that outlasted ten seconds. Every user was capturing the phenomenon via their Anicor.

  Robert’s true emotions were blooming with impeccable fertility. His eyes were transferring his every emotion to the woman.

  The Actor emerged from the depths of the trance. He took another step back, fearing the violet color would consume him. It was the color of melancholy in its purest state.

  The woman shining the violet color lurched backward as if fire had licked her. Her emotional cloth gleamed fiercely as the deep purple began alternating with the color of blood. The people in line behind the afflicted fan lunged back as the woman fell on her bottom. She began backpedalling as if a menacing monster was in her midst, daring to eat her alive.

  She had never been exposed to the conflicting nature of the human soul. Staring into Yulius’s gaze had made her see Robert’s agonizing existence. This effect forced her to endure the ugliness of her own empty soul. The afflicted fan began to whimper, then to scream uncontrollably, pulling at her hair. Her shirt gleamed a convulsion of colors, a rainbow nobody had ever witnessed before. She ran up the stairs of the Theater and out the door.

  The audience applauded with fervor, believing this was part of the act. Their cheers filled the air, escaping into the night. Holograms around every city in Texalifornia displayed the exhibit as the main attraction of the moment, episode two hundred and sixty, the grand finale, which had concluded with the perfection of violets. InstantSex requests were exchanged. A massive orgy was already happening. A fight erupted in the upper levels of the Theater, where fans cutting the line to be branded were being pushed back.

  Only the politicians had stern faces as they slurped on five-gallon corn-colas and sat in awe of what they had just seen.

  ***

  The following news was broadcast around Texalifornia as “The Day of Reckoning” arrived at its end:

  “That, I Trust, is living in the now thanks to our beloved Actor!” said Honest, wearing a yellow and blue neon suit, his orange hair neatly combed to one side like a frozen wave.

  “Honestly, I can’t think of a better grand finale. Living in the now through each one of the two hundred and sixty episodes of this Yulius’s career was indeed discombobulatingly, flabbergastingly, extravagantly amazing! I can barely contain myself to see this Actor be promoted to Unification. I’m sad to see him leave us at the zenith of his career,” said Trust, who was wearing his typical maroon and green suit, his blue hair a blazing six-inch high mohawk.

  “I think we can Trust the next eligible Actor, the current Understudy, to debut next week with the first and foremost Episode of his five-year career. Will Texalifornia be as pleased? Submit your opinion by Retinizing us through your personal Anicor. Stay tuned in the now, then, to live in the now! Now! Now! Now! With Honest and Trust in Honky Dory!”

  “Stayed tuned for a special presentation in the next minutes by Paco Taco as he gives his opinion about The Actor’s last Episode. Stayed tuned, now!” said an advertisement as the screen faded and the news anchor took over the scene.

  “Nuclear winter rages onward, but Texalifornia is protected by the cloud of nanobots, also known as Samites…”

  ***

  Robert’s face went from Markle’s to Denton’s. Both showed extreme complacency, as if the initial objective of awakening the audience had actually entranced them.

  But how? Why? How could people bypass the truth he had uncovered in front of them? Weren’t the words that were said revealing?

  The rawness of truth had revealed many things to the public, and like the pornography of the masses, the crowd chose to see a body of curves rather than the value of a human soul. Truth was now exposed, thawing until it would rot in absolute humiliation.

  Robert’s eyes moved from Denton’s admiration to Moshi’s stale, false face. The android’s expression was of pleasure.

  The last person The Actor gazed at was a small, slender, and collected man. He wore a grey suit and a blue tie. His hair was grey and his facial skin stretched out, such that he seemed like he wore melted plastic. His age was impossible to calculate given the extensive surgical work done on his features. His hands, noticed Robert, were that of a cripple, with big knuckles suggesting joint degeneration over time. Robert couldn’t tell why this apparently old man hadn’t had surgery on his hands. Perhaps he was holding on to something of the past?

  The man’s eyes were funnels of pitch blackness, too deep to be as stupid and mindless as the majority of the citizens of New Hollow. His gaze was not fearless, but it did carry the eeriness of an emotionless stare. Was he a new-age android, such as Moshi? Was he some handiwork machine? But what of his hands? Moshi was all perfection; this man was a combination of destruction and reconstruction, sewn together by meticulous craftsmanship. The man veered to talk to Moshi.

  Robert lost all interest in the audience, in anything really. There was nothing more left for him, not here, not elsewhere.

  He sighed. The Actor’s head fell inch by inch, vertebra by vertebra, like a puppet whose strings are slowly loosened. His eyes found the soothing passiveness of the stage floor. The crowd cheered ever louder, erroneously thinking The Actor was bowing to salute them.

  “That Script…” said Anicor. “It was—”

  “Yes, it was. You can report me if you will. Nothing else matters anyway. Just get me my meal. Hopefully, Unification will happen in spite of my reading an altered Script…”

  He returned backstage, plodding like a wooden puppet back to its wooden container.

  IX

  Robert walked backstage, crestfallen. He headed toward his dressing room. Part of him was empty. Another part of him, however, sensed accomplishment.

  He had witnessed pristine beauty in the materialization of an unspoken idea. In spite of having failed to inspire his audience, Robert found the monolith of words in the writings of the Screenwriter.

  There was nothing more left for Robert but retirement, of passing on the baton to his Understudy. He was unsure if Markle would ever bother thinking for himself. But there was nothing he could do about it.

  Robert felt an urge to be promoted to Unification. Hopefully, from some interstellar ship, he could continue spreading his words of freedom through a RetinaChat. Or he could simply dive into the pitch blackness of space. He saw himself daydreaming, doing nothing more than admiring the purity of the galaxies.

  He found himself wondering about the fate of the former Actor, and the one before him. Had they all been promoted to Unification in a peaceful manner, or had there been feelings of depression similar to the ones he felt?

  Robert could not find any satisfactory answer to his inquiry since no record was stored on the succession of Actors who once blossomed in the Globus Theater. Why was this information censored?

  “You were phenomenal, Robert,” said Anicor. “Yet it was evident to me you weren’t just acting. You were feeling, portraying such emotions in real time. You meant everything you said, didn’t you? Your vital signs
were unsteady. Had this something to do with the visit you had yesterday in your room? Was the EMP signal related in any manner? What did you do, Robert?”

  “Just shut up, you fucking program. I did mean the words I said; there, you have it! Are you happy now?”

  “My happiness is not a matter of discussion at this moment, Robert. I am merely assessing the facts.”

  “Whatever…”

  “Good evening, Robert Thorns,” said an eloquent voice. “The world-renowned Actor, Yulius Zezar, ends his stupendous five-year career with us. Congratulations on your grand finale, Episode two hundred and sixty. What an honor.” Was the voice a man’s or an android’s? It had a deliberate cadence, pausing between consonants and vowels, such that he elongated the words and made them sound supremely important.

  Robert had heard that particular voice long ago. He spun around with a jolt. That look in the man’s eyes…it was emotionless. The man hardly blinked.

  Now that Robert was closer to the grey-suited man, he could see how well the suit fit his body. His face was so stretched out that it shined. But his eyes did not hold back the truth: he was an old soul who had seen many things in his lifetime. His calculated movements suggested he had perfected the art of creating first impressions.

  “You are the master when it comes to quenching the ravenous hunger of your audience, Robert Thorns. I envy your power to convey, to make the public enter the realm of empathy, to willingly give up their very breath to listen to you. And a special thanks from your government for inspiring our youth to enlist. You must feel…honored?” The stretched-out face smiled.

  Robert felt a sudden urge to hit this man. Those eyes that stare…they betrayed his words entirely. He was treacherously condescending, pouring the cinders of his wretched being into Robert’s soul.

  “What the fuck do you want?” asked Robert. He forgot himself completely. He was still donned like The Actor, making him look like a cheap transsexual from South New Hollow.