Chapter 28: HQ
GEMINI
I read the note left by Spherical Globe over and over again, and the more I read it, the angrier I got. So, some person who we didn't even know was living thousands of years, and playing with human lives?!? All the civil unrest was directly linked to him? Or her? Yeah, no. I was no big hero, I had realized that lately, but if there was one decent thing that I did with my life, it would be to put a stop to this shit. To make people realize that there wasn't a heroes vs villains conflict, nor a black vs white conflict, but as the song went "It's only you and me, and we just disagree." But none of this would happen until the toxic elements running the show were out of power.
And so, I called my immediate friends (those like Fundamentalist and Green Pieces had finally shown they were not all bad, but for this mission, I needed a small group. Nerissa's team from her Navy Seal work got us a chopper, and we flew… roughly 150 ft. Seriously, the base was right in town, under the civic center. But there were a vast network of underground mazes that could only be noticed from the sky. So this was totally necessary, and not just to look cool or anything.
I changed out of the hospital robe in the chopper, switching to some gloves, a long sleeved dress, a cape, and some boots. Normally, I didn't go for this sort of outfit, but it was a more official version of my regular clothes. It had no mask and no superhero logo. The others were similarly dressed in superhero outfits. Nerissa had on a Navy Seal outfit, her natural red hair offset by ammunition pouches, camo pants, and a very big gun. Emily wore a work apron that we happened to know was safe for welding and other jobs. And Summer? Well, Summer managed to use her uniform powers to get the crowd from earlier to disperse, but she decided for this kind of mission, a superhero costume was the approved outfit. You know, a red wig, and a black catsuit. What? Much of Marvel Comics Universe is complete tripe, but the Black Widow look is hot!
Emily's hair isn't this dark though. The light from the picture when I took a shot of her outfit was bad. Also, she hadn't taken a show in days so her sandy blond hair looked really dark from the dirt. That's my excuse for why she looks like that.
NERISSA
We snuck into the cave without much trouble. There were a swarm of single rotor drones that closely resembled the helicopter we just flew in, except for their size. I noticed the gun rack on these machines though, and realized that these were no toy helicopters. We were in major danger if they saw us. "Emily," I asked, "You got that broadcasting device?" Emily had what could best be described as a miniature radio tower. It could receive signals, it could scramble signals, it could record things, and it could even send data to the helicopter to be broadcast. It even had a parallel signal system, so that it could broadcast one thing while recording another for broadcast. "Readying radio scramble," she said. But I stopped her, "Wait, I have a better idea." My suit had what was effectively a camera/wire system. I pressed an American flag on my chest, and instructed her to set this to record and broadcast everything. Time was running out as their cameras were starting to look in our general direction. But before they noticed us, I managed to patch into their systems. We waited there, while the drones flew back and forth, oblivious to our presence. I left an American flag at the cave floor, allowing it to record a full six hours of footage with us and the broadcast out of frame. We had lunch and waited until late afternoon before finally switching the mode from record to looped broadcast.
Since there was nothing for us to do during this time, we sat in the helicopter and watched anime, as was our custom. We watched Duel Masters Victory while slurping on some cheap ramen noodle bowls made by hot pot. Eventually, a timer rang, and it was time to head out. I set the first track to loop the camera broadcast, which the second track was set to record anything experienced since then. "Truth to power," Gemini had said, "We can use physical weapons when we need to, but our best weapon of all is if we can expose them. If the public knows what they are doing, won't they be outraged?" I had a more pessimistic view of the public, having been around the military for a few years, and I actually preferred marine animals to be honest. But I thought about how poorly those who were fighting against regarded humanity, even compared to me, and my resolve strengthened.
We entered the cave again, slipping past the drones. Deeper in the cave, we encountered what appeared to be a sort of timed rolling pins with spikes. We encounted a number of traps. And there were some sort of metal octopus thing that homed in on us and fired destructive beams. Breath of the Wild wouldn't come out for another six years, so we knew only that these giant things were some sort of hi-tech movable turret. Emily still had her barrier, and used it to deflect these eye beams back at them. I was struck by the relative absence of personnel. Oh yes, there were powerful machines, but this Deep State person must be incredibly lonely, distrusting everyone in order to have their lair guarded mainly by machines.
Eventually, we did see actual people, but not too many. There was someone chained up in a cell being tortured by some creepy pro-wrestler type. Emily and Summer said, "Leave this guy to us!" We ran past into a long corridor. Then I blanked out for a second, to find Gemini slapping me across the face. I couldn't really remember what I had been dreaming, but whatever it was so distracted me that Gemini told me to move along. I noticed two women ahead of us, so I figured that had probably been the cause of all this. "Be careful!" I said, as I did a sliding kick, then broke into a run before those two could… do whatever it was they did to me before. I ran into some kind of large guest room, only to be slammed to the floor by three goons in robes. I at last saw Deep State. They weren't that impressive, from the looks of it… I sneered at the lot of these goofballs, until something hit me from behind.
GEMINI
"Who are you people?" I asked, looking at two women. They looked like twins. At least, I thought they were two women. As they spoke, one of them sounded like a male while the other's voice was sweet and lyrical like a woman's. Then the next time the spoke it was the other way around. "I am Reality," said the male-sounding one, "and I am Illusion," said the female-sounding one. "Or am Reality?" said the same one, now with a different voice. "And I, Illusion?" the other twin said. They played this trick back and forth a few times, until I told them to cut it out. Then they said in unison, "We will teach you what is true and what is false!" The two of them raised their staves against me, and tapping the tips across each other, a ball of light spiraled towards me. I raised me hands to block, but then I blinked and not only had the ball gone right through me, but the two (sisters?) were no longer in front of me. Confused, I was taken off guard completely when the ball of whatever energy they hit me with blindsided me.
EMILY
I manifested a baseball bat, like I'd seen the crowd wield. It was sturdy aluminum, made of military grade 7075 aluminum, which was not exactly the standard make. I saw this poor man being punished while chained up and unable to defend himself, and I just kinda lost it. I apologize, random dude, for smashing your head with a baseball bat.
But things didn't quite play out like I thought they would. Most people with smashed heads don't get up, and immediately regrowing their heads from a bloody stump. "S-stay back!" I stuttered, frightened of the man. As I got a good look at him, he was a Charles Atlas type, completely musclebound, but there was something strange about his muscles, like he basically kept working them long after a normal person would have started bleeding. I honestly wasn't sure he actually had super strength, but he probably pushed himself to the point where the only person who could tell the difference was Gemini. "Just who are you?!?" asked Summer. "I am Ungorr the Untamed! I fight to live, because fighting and killing is manly. You little girls don't understand true exercise. And so, I shall kill you. Then you will understand."
Neither Summer nor I understood. And if killing us was the way to understand, I'm not sure I wanted that. Instead, I blasted him repeatedly with a laser pistol. He just got up again. Summer charged her fists with enough energy to smash through a wall. It knocked him back like a ragdoll, but I got the sense we were fighting a zombie. He just got back up again. I conjured a chainsaw, and took out his spine. It didn't seem to matter. Parts of him crawled together and he somehow got whole again. I wisely unsummoned some of these weapons, figuring he could use them far more effectively than I. Summer's rapid flurry of punches and kicks glowed with energy, and his body shattered to a mass of chunks of organs and blood. But then his body reconstituted itself. "Seriously," I said, "How do you kill this guy?!?"
The chained man spoke up, "You can't," he said, as I set a blaster at its highest setting and turned his body into dust, only for him to start to reconstruct himself. "He's immortal?!?" Summer asked as she delivered a single solid hit that knocked the reforming dust apart. The chained man nodded, "Hey uhhh, if you set me free, I'll deal with him." I asked him, "You're that powerful?!? Who are you?" He said, "I am the Way, the Truth, the Life. Nobody sees God except through me." My religious training told me who he was, "Jesus! You're Jesus! But I thought you were supposed to come again at end times. And… wasn't Satan supposed to be the one chained up? How do I know you're not a pretender here to trick me?"
And so, we debate scripture back and forth, with Jesus citing several passages where the Biblical Jesus forgave the sins of those who put him to death, while the Revelation 'Jesus' punished people for random and seemingly minor crimes. All the while, Summer smashed that Ungorr guy up again and again. "Look," he said, "You don't need to free me. But eventually, Ungorr and his zombies are gonna destroy the Earth. If you won't remove my chains, could you at least pull this spear out? It's been inside of me for a thousand years!" We were at an impasse. My studies of engineering and creating objects dated this spear back to Roman times, and I suspected this was the Holy Lance, also known as the Spear of Destiny. He sighed, "Ultimately, you have to test what you believe. If I am Satan, you are responsible for releasing me. If I am not, you have saved the world. It's up to you." I thought about Fundamentalist's words, about love driving out fear. If Jesus was love, what did I have to fear about this man? Either he was Jesus, or God would take care of him. And so, I decided to trust him. Placing my foot against his stomach, I yanked hard at the spear. The Spear of Destiny had a rather wide head, broader than anything I had seen before or since. It was leaf-shaped with a shaft in the middle to reinforce the head. It was tied together in several places, and had a cover in the middle of what appeared to be gold leaf that read «Lancea Et Clavus Domini». As I yanked the spear out of him, the side of the head badly cut me. Jesus came free of his chains, as though they were no longer there. Seeing my wounds, he touched me with his hands, and the wound closed. Summer was exhausted, and couldn't defend us any more. Jesus also touched him, saying, "Be at peace." These were words without judgement or condemnation, only a touch of pity, for a very long life characterized by nothing but brutality and strength. His flesh began to turn to dust. No matter how strong this man was, he was mortal after all. He had not overcome death. He had not overcome anything, in fact. "I have a world that needs me," Jesus said, "There are zombies, you see." I nodded, as Jesus disappeared right in front of me. "See you later," I said. Before he left completely, he said, "Forgive her for her sins. Deep State is a broken person."
NERISSA
I awoke to Deep State standing at the edge of the room, while I dangled suspended by chains. I pivoted my body to look around. It was like a terrible James Bond scene. The other three were also at the edge of the room, so I wondered what exactly they were staying clear of, and looked at the ground below me. Was there lava? A lake filled with piranhas? Sharp spikes? No, much worse. There were guinea pigs.
I gasped, "You can't do this! I might die of botulism, cavy, or cat scratch fever! You horrible fiend!" Being a mastermind of many things wrong with this world, he couldn't resist the urge to boast about his plans. I could see it coming, and switched on the little American flag recorder thing. It was surprisingly good for its size, giving good quality picture and sound. Deep State bragged, "For centuries, I have posed as various men to dupe the public in my schemes. Karl Marx? I shaved my head and wore a fake beard woven from my own hair! In order to keep humanity at a low population, I started wars, I started schemes to get women to abort there babies by telling them it was their right to choose. Hahahaha, no! These abortions benefited men, who got to fuck them and then pressure them to get rid of it. And those stupid blacks! I told them they would get reparations, and they would get to take over. They thought their payback was justice. So they were easy to dupe. I deliberately helped persecute LGBT people so they would become a minority group, and I could use them for marches. The communists I pitted against the capitalists, the Muslims and Jews against the Christians, and so on." She continued, also listing atrocities she had done to nearly every group of humans in existence, using them one moment and having them killed the next, and even admitted to engineering ROVER-04 and the rise of Islam. She concluded, "I pitted all of these groups against each other, all to give myself all the money and control of every government on Earth."
I need to stall Deep State, as I had a hairpin that I was planning to launch across the room to hit the switch over at the east side of the room. So I kept him talking, "Wait, but what is your goal? Why are doing this?" She answered, "Why? Because then I can control humanity, of course! I get to tell them what to think, what to believe, and what to do by intimidating them with terrible government." I still hadn't freed my hairpin, and below me, I heard the horrific "Meep eep eeep!" sound of hungry guinea pigs in captivity. Not that they would eat me, by they might give me a disease if they panicked. So I said, "Yes, but why? Ruling over others is a pain in the ass! Slave masters had a nuisance of a time watching after people who would literally try to run away. And tyrants have to appease the public or they come to a nasty end. What do you really want?" She turned her back, deep in thought, "Huh! I never actually thought about this! Two thousand years alive, and nobody ever asked me this question. I suppose it's because I'm lonely, or maybe I always felt powerless when compared to Jesus. Or maybe I just hate people and want to treat them like animals…" She mumbled for awhile, but I interrupted her train of thought, "Hah! I'll be free now!" I threw the hairpin, and it shut the trap door. Not only did it not affect my chains, but she simply walked over, and hit the switch again, toggling it open. Yeah, I was screwed. "You do realize," I asked, "That I have been recording you this whole time?" Deep State seemed surprised, but then hid her shock, "Bah! I don't think the public will ever care. The public doesn't mind being lied to."
THE WORLD
But the world heard this message. With Reminas the Dark Green gone, the public wasn't brainwashed to tune out the truth. When something seemed interesting, humans had a natural curiosity. So something that was supposed to only be shared with a local radio station instead made in to Japan and Korea, to Russia, China, and everywhere with a radio signal. It made it to television, radio, and eventually to print in areas with a poor signal. The truth was out there.
The chauvinist men didn't like that Deep State was a woman. The women didn't much like Deep State, and how they had been forced to commit abortions by these very chauvinist men. Black people, trans people, and other minorities who thought they were gonna have special rights or perks under the so-called new regime found that it was not only a very old regime, but run by someone who regarded their lives as less than dirt. Her initial loyalty to Jews was betrayed by her support of despotic systems that got out of hand and killed Jews. Nobody who heard this person felt any sympathy or approval for this gloating speech. Deep State had few friends, after all. Only Jesus, and maybe some of his followers, had real sympathy. But years of teaching Christians about the wrong sort of Jesus made sympathy in short supply. This was the tragedy of her life. She tried so hard to control others that she never found any real connections. All over the world, people instead organized in mobs and screamed for "justice."
In another area, Jesus had work to do, praying to do away with those brought back by a serum as zombies. The Saints came to Earth. Unlike the depiction of saints as some sort of statues that people venerated for their great deeds, Saints were the dead blessed by God. And all of the dead were saints, just that Saints were people infused with holy power. With just a touch, each of the zombies were coated with an intense light, and they returned to dust. And while the zombies pretended they could not be killed, Saints actually couldn't, as they had been dead and had been brought into the physical world by permission from God. It took only moments to destroy all the zombies on Earth.
GEMINI
I was standing in a weird dreamlike world. I remembered my name, and where I came from. At least that was a good sign. But everything else was a mess. The sisters were gone, replaced by a field of fluffy white and purple grasses. The air was covered with a thick powdery mist, and as I tried to look around, in every direction there was no visibility for more than about fifty feet. Worse yet, when I looked around, I felt like the scenery had changed in some way but I couldn't remember how. Were these trees always there? What about this pond?
And then a question kept coming to my mind. Who am I? Oh yes, I knew I was Gemini Fisher, the hero known as Unmasked. But is this who I really am? Or a mask I have created to deal with the falsehood of my life? And then it was like my mind heard the sound of breaking glass. Nothing about what I remembered made sense. I looked at things I had said or done. I saw each of them as though from looking at different lens. Liberals and conservatives would find some of my actions cruel or others perfectly justified. I couldn't sort out what I believed and whether it was real or not. Had my powers ever been real? Or were they just the delusion of someone who needed to have powers in a world where everyone else was special? More images flashed through my mind rapidly, while another intrusive thought hit. And if they were real powers, how did I know they were powers of truth? Maybe those leftists had been good, decent, and virtuous people all along, and I had been the selfish one. Does truth even matter?
Then something alarming happened. The shifting misty landscape broke down, and I was inside a room. I was a person named Samantha Hooker. Around me were some plants, an orchid near a record player, some succulents sitting on a heater, some records, a television, some bookcases filled with books, and I was sitting on a couch typing a book. My dad had tossed some mail into a bin, and was reading a 2024 Farmer's Almanac. The year wasn't even the same! He just asked me whether Thanksgiving was always the last Thursday of the month, and then walked away to go to the bathroom. This was my life. I had lost my own Bookworm, so to speak, and didn't even have the energy to go out and find someone like Nerissa. I was a loser, slowly gaining weight, living with my parents, and worried my hair was thinning. Like Gemini, I wanted to be genderfluid, but hadn't made a great go of it. My life seemed depressing, and filled with failed opportunities.
My dad was cutting beets now, and he asked, "How many shall we do, five?" And I stretched my hand out, as though to dismiss the falsehood of all this. Yet nothing happened. It seemed to be real. And then a voice inside asked me, Does it matter to you as a writer what is real? What is true? Should I sink likewise into confusion about reality and delusion? But then I remembered. I am a writer. My writing told truth through fiction. By writing about things, I tried to find a greater truth in the way of everyday events. Things like beets being cut faded back into the background. These were the mundane aspects of my life. But I had a book to write. And like Gemini, I did have friends and a family.
And then I was Gemini again, wondering what I had just seen. Instead of standing a misty plains or forest, instead of being another person writing a page, I was standing in the same sort of place that I had encountered when I had found out that I could instantly move to other locations.
Hi there again, God said, It seems you have more questions. I nodded. I explained, "It just gets me down. Out there, there's a version of me that never really got what he really wanted. He writes down what he hopes, but it all just seems so sad. If this is the truth about things, what's the point?" At that moment, a distant ring of an alarm for laundry rang out. Samantha went downstairs, loaded a basket full of dry clothes, and hauled them up to the ground floor, then upstairs to do later. The truth is, God said, just as you life could turn out depressing like that, her life could wind up more like yours. Samantha's life might improve. Samantha writes in hopes that one day her wishes become reality. She writes about things in the world around her that she wants to change. The truths we write about matter, the circumstances themselves? Not so much. Samantha's parents sang Blue Christmas by Elvis, and then all the noise faded into the background.
"What?!?" the two screamed, "Why didn't that work?" I responded as I rushed toward them, seeing through their mirages, and knocking away their cheap balls of tricks, "I see now. Reality is an illusion. And the illusions we tell ourselves are what is most real, as it reveals our hopes, dreams, and worries. True love casts out fear. And I am not afraid of you fuckers anymore." I had realized that the two sisters were like me, neither of them were born female, though they did a fabulous job of hiding that. That they were boys pretending to be girls was the truth, built on the lie that they had generated with makeup. Reality and delusion were the same. They were brothers, and yet they wanted to be sisters. So I rushed them, and kicked both of them in the nuts. I had gotta stop watching Summer fight.
I continued down the hallway, only to notice something. The same crowd that had beaten me up before was now right behind me. I broke into a run.
NERISSA
The chain had lengthened to the point where my feet were practically touching those foul creatures, when Gemini and a group of angry thugs burst into the room. For a change, they had forgotten their anger concerning Gemini and now were pissed as hell about Deep State and his goons, and how they had been used.
Seeing the button on the wall, Gemini smashed her finger on it. The trap door mechanism was quite robust, able to chop off body parts or the like if Deep State felt sadistic. So it closed on Deep State's chain that were now dangling me well below the door, and snapped them like a twig. "Gemini, you idiiiiiioooooot~~~!" I screamed as I fell the last few feet to the ravenous guinea pigs. The good news was now my chains were loose enough that I could slip free of them, having been hanging the whole time due to tension holding the thing together. I whipped the chains around me, scaring the guinea pigs away from me and towards the corners of this small pit. To be honest, it wasn't all that deep, so when the others got the pit open again, I tossed my chain up, and she caught it.
"Secure it to something, so I can climb," I said. But having nothing in the room to use, she instead asked the cooperation of crowd. They were reluctant at first, but some of this crowd remembered me from the first meeting with Fundamentalist. "She's weird, but not a bad kid," one said. They got enough cooperation that they were able to hold her steady, and I climbed out before Deep State got the bright idea to close it on me.
The crowd had already beaten up Deep State's hooded lackeys, and to be honest, they looked beaten to death. The crowd, satisfied that I was safe, turned their attentions to Deep State. "We demand justice! Justice!!!" the mob said in full force. "Wait!!!" said Emily, entering the room with Summer, "Jesus wanted to forgive her! He was chained for a thousand years by her, and still thought there was hope for her being a decent person." The crowd grumbled at this, as many of them either didn't like what they'd heard of Jesus or didn't know him. Eventually though, they said, "Alright, we'll spare their life." Deep State scoffed, "Bah! Ever the soft-hearted one! Such a weakling." I told her, "Don't mistake mercy for weakness. Keep in mind, I know some pretty effective methods of torture myself. I'm probably better at it than you. Say, locking you in a pit with those guinea pigs?" The piggies chose that moment to make their meeping sound. Deep State was visibly afraid, "Anything but that!" The crowd insisted that Deep State was too much of a threat to be allowed freedom from some kind of punishment. If not torture, then what? Then I had an idea. "We must keep her imprisoned, centuries if we have to, until she is truly reformed." The audience thought this was not cruel or unusual enough to have a real effect on a hard case like this.
"In a men's correctional facility," I added. At this, the group jeered at her. "Don't drop the soap!" they said.
