You want another tale of man against society?
You want to experience Camu’s The Stranger again — injustice overwhelming the lone man you relate to? Do you want to feel what Holden felt, alone in a world of phonies? Do you look at your cubicle and relate to George Winston?
ENOUGH!
ENOUGH!
How about a story that shows a man overcoming his frailties and the world’s challenges, becoming a healthy member of society? How about a story that doesn’t attack the very structure we all live by? Must we always bite the system that gives us hope in this land of plenty (and that is not ironic doublespeak. It is truth).
Proles of the world! Submit! Your chains await!
Swallow that rancid storyline, again and again. Man against world. Man against everybody. The protagonist is surrounded by fools. Lazy Man’s Ethics conspires against you. There is no hope. Might as well laugh like the Joker. Insert Joker laugh here.
Every rancid story you buy is another ticket to the Matrix. You claim to know you’re a Prisoner and gladly bitch about it at the water cooler. You wear your number while claiming to be a free man.
You have your steak with Agent Smith, and eat it, too.
***
Copernicus Harvey, or Nick for short, closed the text file on his screen. He would mull over his words, sleep on it, and then decide in the morning if he should post it on his blog.
He wanted to become an Icon. Yes, he knew about them. More and more people discussed Icons on the blogs these days, and he’d heard a discussion about them on Coast to Coast AM a few nights ago when he couldn’t sleep. The word was spreading.
Was that a good thing? He wondered. After all, one of the theories was that Icons required faith in what they represented in order to survive. It was conceivable that the more people who skipped faith in the representation and began believing in the being itself … how much would that increase their powers?
Perhaps he’d blog about it. Might as well have two posts ready to go in the morning, he thought, in case he didn’t like one of them. Besides, he thought, if he kept blogging, enough people might believe in his rants and he might magically become an Icon, LOL.
***
The Realtre was on the rooftop of his tower in Manhattan, hovering just inches above the ground. The more people who mentioned him by name, the more his power grew.
It didn’t matter if the mentions were curses and not compliments. Any word, thought, feeling brought new energy to him, powering him to new heights, to the point where he thought it might be possible to defy gravity.
And here he was.
The question was could he maintain his present height if he stepped over the ledge?
The Realtre had no doubts. It was simply willpower over feelings of fear.
He had fallen before from great heights, and survived … but he had never deliberately walked off a building with the risk of drawing unnecessary attention to himself.
However, after all these years, he had discovered the benefits of people suspecting who he was.
It was time for a coming out party.
The energy came in waves. The Realtre waited for the right surge to carry him over the edge, to give him the ability to walk off the rooftop and into the night sky.
***
The news traveled fast….
North Fort Myers, Florida: Monday Night R.A.W. was interrupted by the live video from Manhattan. The Dream Seeker couldn’t believe a news feed was cutting into his wrestling show, until he saw who it was and what he was doing.
A gas station in Newport, Kentucky: The Traveller’s radio station cut to the breaking news story. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
The New York Public Library: The Nihilist was the first to find out about the news, having noticed the refresh on the DrudgeReport. He picked up his duffel bag and exited, to see for himself.
***
This was his greatest moment … his finest ACHIEVEMENT since the beginning of time … since the clocks had reset at the birth of this universe. He was all-powerful on this earth, in this universe, in this REALITY, just as he had been at the end of the previous reality.
Out of thin air, Ma Yuan appeared again. This time, the Realtre was caught unawares. In his finest moment, basking in the feelings that enveloped him … awe, wonder, power … love? He had never felt this way before. His instincts were muted by the surge he was riding.
The sword pierced his chest, splitting his heart in two. He grabbed his chest as Ma Yuan pulled the sword out. He tried to say “Cindy” but was stopped short by the sword, this time chopping his head off.
Ma Yuan caught the head and held it up by the hair, as the Realtre’s body tumbled down to the streets. Looking up, the cameras zoomed in on Ma Yuan. In a booming voice, he said, “Icons! This shall be your fate!” Then, he disappeared, along with the head of the Realtre.
***
“Well?” Dace asked his guests. Cindy was looking down. The boys looked away, the way a class acts ashamed when a respected teacher has caught them misbehaving. Chris was the first one to speak.
“We only did it a couple of times. I don’t even remember doing that.”
“Yeah,” Mark added. “I had no idea this was happening.”
Dace had caused Cindy to remember a dream earlier, the most important dream of her young life, and based on it, he suspected the boys didn’t have a clue. Cindy, on the other hand….
She had dreamt of a major Hollywood star trapped on a movie set, abandoned, alone. The star resorted to desperate acts in order to survive. It was clear from the dream that Cindy had viewed herself as powerless, while simultaneously demonstrating her hate for those who were prominent and powerful by tormenting the actor in her subconscious mind. This tendency to hate those with power, combined with the spirit of the Killer of Icons, was a symbiotic match. It was clear that the spirit had found a perfect host in Cindy, while using her four friends as physical parts to reconstruct his body for short periods of time.
A thought occurred to Dace. “What day is today?” he asked.
They all claimed it was September, when Dace knew it was February.
“What year?”
They claimed it was two years ago.
***
The next day, Nick decided to post the following:
An Icon is dead. Long live the Icons.
A photo of the Realtre’s headless body crumpled on Broadway was placed above what he wrote.
***
The Nihilist had returned the next morning, to verify what he had seen the day before.
Sure enough, there were workers fixing the crater that had been created by the impact of the Realtre’s body slamming into the asphalt.
A man in a black business suit walked up and stood next to the Nihilist.
“Wow. Tough break, huh?” said the man.
The Nihilist slowly turned his head to see that the man next to him was none other than the Realtor.
The Realtor pointed at his nemesis and said, “Gotcha!” before walking away.
The Nihilist dropped his bag. The Realtor crossed the street and entered his office.
***
So, what actually happened?
It turned out the Realtor had grown so powerful that he began inhabiting a second body — someone with similar features whom the Icon of Buying and Selling Realities had been able to remake in his image through sheer willpower and a good plastic surgeon.
No one had known. While he was on the West Coast, recruiting some rich mogul to be part of his organization, his doppelganger — which he had nicknamed the Realtre, was making appearances at his Manhattan office. The consciousness known as the Realtor had controlled both bodies at the same time, only occasionally allowing one to run on autopilot, so to speak.
Of course, the Realtor explained none of this to the MEDIA.
The coroner’s report revealed that the body was actually a silicon dummy. The Realtor had his secretary issue a Press Release stating this was a promotion for a new special effects company, with techniques that could be used on stage and film.
The MEDIA reported the news without questions. The public, for the most part, believed what they read. Those who didn’t?
Nick Harvey had this to say:
WHERE’S THE INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING? HUH?
Some guy whom we’ve never heard of, who apparently owns the TALLEST TOWER IN MID-TOWN MANHATTAN, says it was all a hoax, and we’re SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE HIM?
***
The Realtor not only owned those towers, buy he OWNED the executives whose companies OWNED the major news media outlets. The word had come from above to report the press release and not investigate further — to focus instead on the political events of the day.
the Realtor owned the government as well, so he didn’t have to worry about investigations coming from the FBI, DOJ, ATF, CIA, NSA, IRS, or state and local agencies.
Sure — there were bloggers like Copernicus, trying to make a difference … little Nihilist juniors, trying to find the TRUTH. They were of little consequence … but if they did start to cause trouble, the Realtor owned the search engines and web hosts. With a simple claim of “Questionable Content,” any such blog would disappear into the electronic night.
The point now was that he had started a buzz … he had created a new myth, built around himself. This increased his power, making miracles such as levitation possible.
He wondered what else he would be able to do soon….
The only thing that remained for the Realtor was Ma Yuan, the Killer of Icons. As soon as he had discovered the identities of the people behind the killer, he had ordered his agents to have them killed … in a freak car accident, of course.
Those kids — Cindy, Chris, Mark, and Al — had been dead almost six months … and yet this was the second time he had been attacked. The first time, he spoke their names aloud and Ma Yuan had disappeared. The second time, he hadn’t anticipated the Killer of Icons showing up(he’d never admit that out loud). He was caught off-guard. One of his two bodies was killed as a consequence.
So, What could he do now, he wondered? How do you kill something that travels time, that’s attacking you from the past?
***
Dace handed his cellphone to Chris. “Go ahead,” he said. “Call yourself up.”
He dialed the number. “Hola? … no comprende. No hablo inglese.”
Dace did a quick MSN search on his computer. He found a news article in the Palm Beach Post, related to a tragic car accident. Four people dead.
Chris peered over his shoulder, read some of the article, and said, “Wow. We’re dead.”
“What?” said Al.
They guys discussed the implications of death and time travel. Cindy waited for a pause in the conversation before saying, “Dream Seeker — what do you think of this?”
Dace thought for a moment before answering, “When you reform into Ma Yuan, you’ll go back to your time, and you will die when the time comes.”
“Are you kidding me?” yelled Mark. “I know the date! There’s no way!”
“You don’t know anything that can change what will happen. You cannot change what will happen, or has already happened.”
“Bull! We’ll stay alive and create an alternate reality … or we’ll just stay here.”
“No,” said Cindy. “We can’t stay. Ma Yuan won’t let us.”
“What?” said Mark.
“He’ll come when we’re sleeping, if he has to, but he will come, and he will take us back.”
“But we control him,” said Mark.
“Wait a minute,” interjected Chris. “We’ve never tried stopping. We’ve only done this a couple of times, but there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to stop whenever we feel like. He might be able to force us to do it. Ma Yuan is incredibly powerful.”
“We better go,” said Cindy. “We’ll go reform under the bridge. Dream Seeker….”
“Don’t worry. He won’t come after me again. At least not tonight.”
While walking towards the bridge, Mark continued to argue that they should stay, and see what happens. He argued it was better to stay and fight than to leave and die. Chris finally offered an answer that even Mark couldn’t deny.
“I have a feeling that car accident we’re supposed to die in is some kind of bait and switch. We’re not going to die. Ma Yuan won’t let it happen.”
***
“Are they gone?” asked Ana Conrad. She called Dace on his cell phone.
“Is who gone, Ana?”
“Ma Yuan.”
Dace shook his head. “Yeah, he was here. Him and his four kids.”
It was Ana’s turn to shake her head. “Dace, I had another vision. This isn’t going to go on forever. The kids are going to die — I think they died already, if that makes any sense.”
“We know. We read an article that said they died last year. The kids who were here were from a time prior to that. The thing is, I’m not entirely sold on the idea that they die. Why would Ma Yuan allow that to happen?”
“Ma Yuan can’t do anything unless he’s fully manifested.”
“Huh.”
“Dace — have you thought about what we talked about — about you creating an organization to battle the Realtor and the Gambler on their level?”
Dace was silent for a moment before saying, “That’s not my style, Ana.”
