Passiontide, Pt. 1

“Why the fuck did you bring him here?” Steve Hall asked, furious.

“Look at me, Rev,” I said. “Where else would I take him?”

We were in his office. There were boxes in large piles all around and behind his desk. Each box had, in large, hand written red letters, the word “ReNcarn8" written on the side. When I came in, he had stood up and thrown his chair back with such force, he’d almost knocked a stack of these boxes over. Now he was leaning over the desk and his face was red with anger. I had other things to think about. I took a rag from the corner of the office and tied it around my upper arm. I pulled it tight, the knife wound was deep. It would heal quickly, but that wouldn’t matter if I lost too much blood.

“I don’t rightly give a fuck, Tucker,” Steve screamed. “Anywhere but here.”

“Steve, c’mon. I don’t have anywhere else to go. You know that. Can you please just trust me?”

“And what if they come looking for him?” Steve sat down. He was still angry, although a little defeated. What had happened, had happened.

“They won’t.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because we don’t exist, Rev. The ones that can even remember us are sure we’re dead. They don’t have protocols for this situation.”

He started to say something, but just put his head down on the desk.

“Rev, you gotta trust me.”

“Why?” His words were barely a mumble with his head down, but I understood him.
“Because I’d never do anything to betray that trust.”

He lifted his head to look at me.

“I wouldn’t, Steve,” I said. “I owe you everything. I wouldn’t have done this if I wasn’t absolutely sure it was necessary. Or if I thought we’d be in any danger whatsoever.”

Steve chuckled. “You see the irony, right? We’ve been stuck down here so long because we tried to keep him out, and you go and bring him down here.”

“That hadn’t escaped me, no.”

“Christ, Tucker. I’ve got enough shit to deal with without all this. You picked the worst fucking time.”

“I know, I know. You won’t even notice him. Just keep him where he’s at. I’ll have him out by the end of the week.”

“God love you, Tucker...”

“...no one else will,” I said, finishing his tired sentiment. I motioned to the boxes behind him. “You got any of that in the Lite?”

“Yeah. In Store Room C. Why?”

“If I don’t get some rest, I won’t heal so well. Just need a day.”

“Will he be okay?” Steve asked.

“Sure, Rev. He’ll be fine. I go feed him as soon as I wake up.”

“Hey, I know they’re Lites, but take a half a one. We need help with the show.”

***

I headed out of Steve’s office and walked back to the back of the church. The church, Followers of the Unbound Redeemer, was housed in a large gutted warehouse. The first half was offices and the narthex. Now, in preparation for Passiontide, the pews had been thrown in storage and there were families and parishioners setting up attractions for the festivities. I moved to the middle of the midway to see the Aberdines.

John and Alice Aberdine were performers. The family had four tents all in a row and at the first one, John was laying out a mound of coal that he would later set ablaze and walk across. He stopped to wave a nail-pierced hand in my direction. His wife was setting up equipment near his coal bed for her fire-eating and juggling act.
The next two tents in the Aberdine line-up were also open in the front. Each was a game of skill run by John and Alice’s youngest children. James and Ruth, twins, were twenty one, and easily the youngest survivors of the riots that had sealed us all in Lowsi. James ran a sharpshooting booth, and he was busy hanging prizes on the walls. The prizes were a sad, dystopian mix of rat traps, zipper seal plastic bags and packages of batteries. I wasn’t sure where he got the batteries, but taking them as a prize would be a gamble. If they were good, they’d be very, very valuable, but the odds were against it. Ruth blushed and looked away as I walked past. She was setting up a table of old bottles for a ring toss.

The fourth and final tent that the family occupied was closed up. Outside, the oldest Aberdine child, Marla, was hanging a sign that bore the words “Palms and Cards Read.”

“Hi, Marla,” I said.

She turned, saw me, and gave me a sad little smile. “Hey, Tucker.”

“How are you?”

She sighed, “You know, well.”

“I got you a present.”

Her smile widened, but her eyes were still so sad.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Can’t tell you. But I’ll show you in a couple of days. I think you’ll really like it.”

“You can’t keep secrets from me, Tucker. I can see the future, remember?”

I smiled. “Yeah, and I can pass through the eye of a needle.”

“If anyone could, it’d be you.”

“Alright, I need to get going,” I said, dodging the compliment.

“Coming back around tonight? Can I read your palm?”

“No, no. I need to get some rest. But I’ll swing by tomorrow night.”

“Tell Salome I said hi.”

“Will do. “

I continued heading towards the back half of the church warehouse, which was divided equally into storage units and living quarters. Several people I passed waved and said hi. The church’s strongman/bouncer stopped me so he could show me the ride he’d made. It was a series of five crates set up along a track in such a way that they would spin when he turned a crank. Each of the crates was set up on it’s own fulcrum so that the riders could spin them. He asked if I could help him out. I offered to give him a couple hours each night, since I was the only other one of the congregation strong enough to crank the crates around.

Passiontide is a huge week for the churches of Lowsi. Of the four churches in the city, Unbound Redeemer consistantly boasts the largest congregation and much of that credit is due to the amount of work they put in to this one week each year. A larger congregation means more power, so each year we try to push it further and further.

Another one of Unbound Redeemers attractions is that it has the only prostitute in Lowsi to claim to be a direct descendent of Mary Magdalene. There’s no way she can know this is true, but no one has dared question her. I know she’s pulling it out of her ass, so to speak, because she told me. I had to marry her to get that level of confidence, though.

I stopped by storage to get a bottle of Lites and headed back up to the dorm that Salome and I shared. She was getting ready for the evening. The first night of Passiontide is always a busy one at Unbound Redeemer, and this seems to go double for the women who do what Salome does. I stood behind her and waited for her to notice me in the mirror.

“So, you did it?” she asked when she looked up.

“Yeah. He’s here.”

“Everything went smoothly?”

“I took a knife to the shoulder. Made it nearly impossible to get back down the Needle.”

She stood up and came over to me. She kissed me deeply before unwrapping the rag I’d tied on my arm and looking at the wound.

“Let’s put something on that, shall we.” She went to the medicine cabinet and got some salve and some antiseptic.

“He’s incredible, Sal. You gotta see him.”

“I will, darling,” she said. She began to apply the ointments to my wound. I sat down in a chair and let her do her thing.

“He’s got genitalia.”

“I don’t even want to know how you know that,” she laughed.

“He was in the shower when I took him. I put some clothes on him before I brought him down, don’t worry. It’s was just unnerving to see a penis there.”

“Who stabbed you?”

“One of his guards. They’re making them stronger and faster these days. Plus, his guys are part of the elite.”
“They’re no match for my baby, though, are they?”

I reached over to the table and grabbed a cigarette and lit it. “No, I guess they weren’t. They’re making them dumber these days, too. That’s what stacked the odds, I suppose.”

She finished cleaning me up and began to wrap my arm in some clean gauze.

“Steve was pissed,” I told her.

“Of course he was, Tucker. He’s worked hard to build all this. He’s taken some risks, but nothing as big as what you’ve done here.”

I popped open the bottle of pills I’d gotten from the storage room and pulled one out. I broke the pill in half. I dropped one half back in the bottle. The other half I swallowed.

“Goodnight, baby,” I said and then kissed my wife.
“Was that a Lite?”

“Yeah.”

“See you tomorrow then.”

***

Waking up from a ReNcarn8 sucks. Lites, regs, half, whole. Sucks. At least the first three minutes. I came back to life suddenly, and my head felt like my brains had been removed and my head had been refilled with pillow stuffing made of dark matter. The contrast between lightheadedness and the fact that your head feels heavier than a black hole added to the extreme sensitivity to light, the nausea and the empty stomach is almost unbearable. It’s enough to make you wish you were dead sometimes, which is ironic. Then I coughed up fluids for a full minute, a murky black, gray substance. Then it wore off. My head was clear and I felt aware and calm. I unwrapped the gauze on my arm and found the wound was completely healed, as if it had never been there.

I got dressed quickly and prepared something to eat. I pulled on some shoes and headed up the offices. The office directly above Steve’s is completely soundproofed. It used to be a jail, and then a choir room, and then a jail again. I opened the door, walked in, and closed and locked the door behind me.

I turned on the light and he was sitting in the chair where I’d left him. His arms tied behind his back, his legs tied to the legs of the chair. He was blindfolded and gagged.

“Hi.”
No answer, obviously.

“I’m going to take your gag off.”

I did so.

“GO FUCK YOURSELF,” he screamed. “GO FUCK YOURSELF AND DIE!”

“Are you quite finished?”

No answer. He was so used to getting his way, and things just weren’t working out for him. I could feel his surprise. It was just going to get worse. I took off the blindfold.

I was never born. I was created. The lab that created me, created the man who was in front of me. We were identical in nearly every way. There were a few key differences. I was bred to be a soldier. He was bred to tame the masses. I was genetically altered to be stronger, faster, and smarter than any human born. He was created to be more charismatic and to control minds with his voice. I was bred to have a natural suppression to base desires. They gave him a cock. I was created to fight and die for my government; he was created to be a newscaster. I lived in group homes for my entire life before coming to Lowsi. He was kept separate from everyone. I could only imagine his shock. He fainted.

***

When he came to, I was sitting in front of him.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

He blinked a couple of times, tugged on his ropes. “Tom Brokaw.”

“Not that name. The one they call you.”

“I don’t know wh–“

”Mine was Pointman Alpha-8,” I interrupted. “But there were three dozen of me.”

“They call me Highchair.”

“Do you know why?”

He nodded.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I hold up the ‘babies.’”

“Those are people you’re talking about. Real. Live. People.”

“I know!”

“Do you?”

“I keep them happy.”

“You keep them docile.”

He looked away from me.

“You keep them stupid.”

This infuriated him. “Do you have any idea how miserable they would be without me? Do you?! I make a difference. I make them happy and I keep them working and working together.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“Where am I?” he asked.

“In Lowsi. In the choir room of a church.”

“Lowsi? What’s that?”

“It’s a city buried five hundred feet below Upper Seattle, where you live.”

“There’s a city–?” his voice trailed off.

“You really don’t remember us?”

“No.”

“We’re down here because of you. Do they tell you anything about what goes on in the world?”

“Only what they want me to tell everyone else. I have a lot of responsibility. They don’t want to burden me with too much.”

I laughed. “They want to keep you as stupid as everyone else.”

“Why am I here?”

“Because I kidnapped you and brought you here.”

“What are you going to do to me?”

“I’m going to kill you. Drown you, actually.”

“What the fuck?!”

“But first, I need you to something for me.” I tossed the food I'd prepared back at the apartment into his lap. "Now you need to eat. It's going to be a long week."

To be continued...