Refraction | Part 2 | Multiverse

9) How to Make Friends and Influence People

Here’s how it happened.

Israel had accepted his discharge, and without looking any of the other men in the room in the eye, he had stood, turned, and walked out. He left the building and walked slowly through the sunny afternoon across the base, his duffel slung over his shoulder. He watched as uniformed men and women scurried about their business. What was left of his once great nation was still very much on war footing, the military still responsible for a good deal of law enforcement and peace keeping in the streets of the fallen cities.

He noted a large olive drab truck parked outside Hanger 8. The Labs. The Top-Secret, head quarters of the ultra black ops Hung Jury. Until Today, when the surviving members of the group had signed various papers and gone their various separate ways. Itzak and Jesus had opted to remain a part of the machine, Israel understood their thinking. Here he was 26 years old, super-powered by now illegal nanomachines, his only true skills not exactly leaning toward the kind of jobs that allow a man to maybe settle down, maybe have a family, maybe grow old. The Fourth Man, The Sarge, well he had quit too. By the time Israel got outside into the sunlight he was gone. Maybe he had the same dream as Israel, maybe The Sarge, he just wanted to go some where and grow old.

That was Israel’s great dream, to just grow old as the fucking dirt. He also wanted to see it all. That was a big part of the reason he had trained so hard when he was conscripted. Everyone knows the more bad ass you are, the more places you’ll get to go. The more shit you will get to see. He had trained hard, and volunteered for dangerous work. He had eventually made his way through Marine Recon and Seal Training, then he had been invited into the unit that became known as the Hung Jury. The mother of all Delta Forces. The twelve deadliest men on the planet. Assassins of hundreds of guilty killers. Killers of thousands of innocent victims. He had seen things. He had seen his fill of certain things.

Even after his time in the tanks, he had dreams. Terrible dreams where he transformed into death itself, a furious hell hound bent on blood. The dreams had pushed him toward drink, like so many other millions of military men over the last six thousand years. The dreams would eventually push him much farther than drink, through drugs, and almost to the edge of his substantial ability to tough it out. But Israel was not by any stretch a weak sister, he had grown up in the ghettoes of Baltimore at the turn of the twentieth century. When the war started people in his neighborhood barely even noticed. They had been at war since Nancy Reagan had been unleashed on the world. He had developed what psychologists call ‘coping skills’.

Of course having ‘coping skills” didn’t stop him from being more less totally wasted for the decade starting about ten minutes after he walked through the pedestrian gates of the base. He had been drinking, whoring, and generally having the time of his life (in between the incontrollable sobbing fits, hysteria packed panic attacks, and night terrors) for about six weeks when he met Stanley Crutchfield.

Stanley was, like everyone else on the planet at this point, a survivor. He had been a stevedore before the beginning of the war, and was working at the Port of Los Angeles when the water riots in Orange County first began. He had made his way on foot from Long Beach all the way to Joshua Tree National Monument. There he had befriended a young woman who called herself the Commander, a fantasy prone neo-hippie who appeared to live mostly on a diet of Psilocybin Mushrooms. She saw him as a great warrior and invited him to join her small band of pill popping Burningman-ites who were making their way east, toward the snow covered peaks of the Rocky Mountains. Really, Stanley was not much of a fighter, but he was a bigger than average guy. As the Commander saw it that, made him a warrior.

As Stanley Crutchfield saw it, it was pretty much the end of the world, and sure the babe was a little spooky, but she and her buddies had filtration equipment and supplies, and she was kind of a kick in the sack, so east he went. All the way to the Rockies. A long slow, convoluted march of almost four years. So much of that time was a blur to Stanley, he barely considered it part of his history.

They had passed through Utah about two years before the Nukes went off. They were living on the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains at the time, laying low, hiding from perils of the world. They had sat in their mountain camp northwest of Vail, melting snow, doing various drugs, watching the missiles launch, watching the missiles arrive, watching the sky glow.

Everyone in the group had gotten laid that night. Some of them five or six times, with as many different partners.

When the glow subsided, and the sun rose, and they were still alive, and the all view to the west held was an enormous steel gray cloud, rolling slowly toward them, they pulled up camp. Two weeks later they were in Denver. Two weeks after that, Stanley and Israel met over a game of pool. Forced into partnership by the list on the wall, they shook hands, introduced themselves to each other and their opponents. Then they cleaned out the ration cards of any chump dumb enough to play them.

Some people are sore losers. They get mad, and they start fights. If you find yourself in this category, you would do well to stop and think next time. Two men waited outside for Israel and his new friend to leave. Two men jumped them in the lot behind the bar. Two men subsequently lost their lives.

Here’s how it happened.

Israel and Stanley, fast friends, had been cleaning up all night. Betting and winning, taking on challengers and egging on the crowd. Buying drinks for losers and onlookers alike, spreading around the rationed drinks and having a generally high time of it. Israel and Stanley were running the show. Women wanted them, and men wanted to be them. They complemented each other’s styles. It was regretful that the two men who had lost their months alcohol allotment decided to do what they did. Everyone except them had had a pretty nice evening.

Chances are, if they had gone home and sobered up, they would have survived to the end of all hostilities, the worst being over for the North American mainland already anyway. Instead they walked into the jaws of a wolf.

Chances are, Israel and Stanley would have never seen each other again, but then Israel killed two men in defense of Stanley, and that sort of made it more of a lifelong kind of thing.

After the remaining crowd gave a drunken round of applause to the two generous victors, Israel and Stanley had stumbled out into the night, overflowing with the positive vibes they had picked up. Kindred spirits having a fine time. Israel was singing one of his favorite oldies, “8 Ball” by NWA, Stanley was spitting-ly providing beats. They made their way around the back of the bar, and began pissing on the rear wall of the building.

Israel was staring up into the night sky, thinking how you could always see the stars now, since the war had made so much of the world A Dark Place. He never saw the stars as a kid. The Stars of the Night, he thought happily to himself, the combination of urination and visual input almost too much beauty for him to bear. Oh yeah, he thought, I’ve seen the fucking Stars.

“I thinks you coulda, couldsa had yersef some sex with the red, uh…that red headerd chu-hick, dude”, said Stanley, “I think you should, hurk.”

Stanley made a wet sound in the dark that Israel knew so terribly, intimately well. In milliseconds things began happening inside of him, biology and technology working together in a feedback loop.

Time Slows. The Night brightens, a full moon on snow. Background noise funnels away.

Four heartbeats, two fast, one erratic, one calm. Deadly calm. The man with the blade is dealing with Stanley’s bulk. The breathing behind is below Israel’s own, closing from the right side. Pilots would call it five o’clock low. Shorty. Stanley is definitely hurt but is still fighting, he has the knife hand in his grip. Good. Shorty is close enough. Israel lets go of his dick, takes a long low step toward six o’clock. He sweeps his right arm in a wide arc down, Then back up to the sky. Shorty watches it sail by. Follows it with his eyes. Lifts his chin. Israel steps toward the man with his left foot, his left hand shoots out straight. His fist is like polished ebon wood. Shorty is moving toward Israel. The impact is impressive. Shorty feels his thyroid cartilage collapse into his pharynx. Blood wells into his bronchial passages, gluts from his mouth. Shorty’s own knife drops, unopened, from his hand. He sits down on the pavement. Hard. The knife’s impact trips the cheap weapon’s trigger. Four heart beats, one fast, two erratic, one calm. Christ what a waste of life, thinks Israel. A weight hits his legs from behind. Stanley falling down. First guy with knife on top. Working his blade.

Things in Israel’s world are logical, progressive. He knows what will happen next. This scenario has no more surprises. Instinct dancing with training, amped up on the music of the machines that live within him. He is purely in this moment, reaction occurring before thought. Normal people do not have a fucking ice cube’s chance in hell with Israel.

Stanley’s full weight had not yet fallen to ground by the time Israel sidesteps the pair. He reaches in and grabs the assailants head, twists it until the man is staring at his own coccyx. His body weight finishes the job thoroughly and with a satisfactorily audible finish.

Three heart beats, two erratic, one calm.

Painful choking noises as Israel bends over his new friend. It’s Shorty in Atelectasis. His bronchial passages are filled with blood. He drowns in himself. Two heart beats, one erratic, one calm.

Israel picks up a knife and runs it across his fingers. Blood wells from his slender, powerful hand. Thousands of tiny machines live in the crimson beads on his fingertips. They told him this sort of thing wouldn’t work. They told him blood type, Rh factor, 3 percent efficacy, blah blah blah. He knows he has to try anyway. He slides his fingers through the wound and deep into Stanley’s collapsed lung. Feels the suction.

“Breathe” Israel whispers.

Machines swarm from Israel’s bloodstream into Stanley’s, adapt.

“Live”, Israel says.

Two heart beats, both calm.

“Goddamn I’m drunk.”, Israel thinks.

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