The Word Is - Part Nine

nobody gets to kill ideas. They try, but trying to fight an idea is like trying to put a fire out with grease. The only thing that kills an idea is itself.”


“That only works if you don't get caught,” Janus said with a smile. “Instead, you're going to be put on trial and paraded in front of everyone, and all of that mysticism will melt away like ice cream on a June afternoon.”


“Oh, Janus.” I shook my head at him with a smile of my own. “That assumes people will believe you've actually got me, when they'll still see video statements from me, hear audio statements from me... They're going to think you faked the trial, faked the execution... They'll put it down in the list of things they know their government's lied to them about, like the Kennedy assassination and the banking crash of 2009. But you go ahead and try that. See if it helps any in trying to keep the people from revolting.”


Apathe sighed. “You know a revolution is a futile action.”


“They told that to the founding fathers, too, that they were a colony and how dare they think about breaking away from the Empire, and so when they set up the country, they included language to say that if we didn't agree with the actions our government was taking, not only could we overthrow our government, but it would be our very duty to do so. But people in power are always so reluctant to give it up, which means we have to take it back. Somewhere after the turn of the millennium, we the people let business and money buy this country wholesale, but we've changed our mind, and you can't buy the country any more.”


“Of course we can.” Janus rolled his eyes at me and snapped his fingers to make a giant armchair appear for him to sit in. “We can do whatever we damn well want. The people you represent, they don't matter. They don't want to work; they want a free ride. They want to be taken care of, and they want the rich, hard working people to take care of them.”


I clapped my hands and a couch appeared for me to sit on. Both Apathe and Janus raised an eyebrow, not quite sure how I did that, but not wanting to ask how I did that, because it would be showing weakness. “Rich and hard working are mutually exclusive terms, in my experience. People who get to be rich think they're entitled to everything they have, and that anyone who doesn't have what they have is lazy, but really, the system is built to protect the wealthy, to ensure they get to continue to use their wealth and remain where they are. People aren't inherently lazy, but if the people at the top had to spread their wealth to everyone, they wouldn't be able to buy their gold-plated toilets or whatever. That's the thing that the rich don't understand – they're systematically being taken care of.”


“You make it sound like there's a conspiracy of rich people.” Apathe sat down on the couch with me, on the other end of it. “And conspiracy theories are always nonsense.”


I cocked my head with an odd smile as I looked her direction. “Oh, in that case, there is no Urban Warfare group; it's all an elaborate prank.”


“That's not a conspiracy; that's a terrorist group.”


“Says you. I'd call it a revolutionary group of freedom fighters. But it's all really semantics, isn't it? You call them bankers; I call them organized criminals. You call them politicians; I call them talking point platforms. It doesn't even matter which side you're on any more – Republicans, Democrats... they're all too invested in making sure they stay in office instead of taking care of their constituents. That's why people started Occupying... Everything. And while it didn't work the first time, you know what they say, try, try, try again. So when Zucotti Park fell apart, a dozen new Occupies started, and while they all failed, a bunch of people across the country were inspired to try and cause chaos all throughout the country. But I loved watching the rich people talking about it all.”


I snapped my fingers and a floating TV screen appeared in the middle of the air and showed a talking head from one of the networks – you know which one, I'm sure – talking about how poor people were taxing the upper class. “Don't you just want these people to go and get jobs?” the stuffed shirt asked. “They want to sit around all day, they want free stuff. They don't go out and look for work. They blame bankers, when really, how does the daily life of a banker have any impact on the daily life of a bum? They want to sit around the house, smoke pot all day, have free healthcare and free food. These people are a blight on the real Americans, the small business owners who are trying to make their way in the world. Why don't they go out and get fast food jobs, where they'll be making money? And why do people making fast food think we need to increase the minimum wage? It's a place for you to start working, not finish. You should always be looking for a better job, trying to find some place to climb up the ladder. Move to manager, become an owner, whatever it takes. Stop being such a waste of air – do something with your lives!”


I snapped my fingers again and the stuffed shirt froze in mid air. “That's what get me, you know? He KNOWS you can't just wish yourself a better job. Unemployment is at ten percent in this country. One in ten people doesn't have a job. Over half of those people have been without a job for over

The Word Is - Part Seven

image generated to build an icon... a brand. We took that you from,” I said, pointing a finger at them with a smirk. “Learn to fight your enemy using their own weapons. Propaganda.”


“So, what, some of the messages from you aren't from you?”


“Most of the messages from me aren't from me. Oh sure, some of them are me, but most of them are just people on their own, sometimes working within our framework, sometimes not. We built the Urban Warfare movement like a terrorist organization, lots of cells, cutouts, dead drops, sometimes people don't even know who they're getting their orders from. Everything is compartmentalized, and that means no matter what you think you're going to peel out of my head, it's really going to be of very little use to you.”


“I think you're stalling,” Janus said, as he walked over to me and grabbed my arms, pinning them behind my back. “What's the word?”


Apathe walked up and reached her hand up to my forehead. “The word is 'is,'” she said, and the world exploded around us again as I screamed in pain. The empty darkness was filled with streaking colors and lights, the sound of voices echoing from every conceivable corner of empty space until the world achieved some sense of normality and the memory stabilized with a loud pop.


I knew this memory and had absolutely no desire to be here, but I had little say in the matter. Everyone was dressed in black, which really tells you all you need to know. Janus let go of my arms, and I turned to punch him in the face, but my fist flew right through him. “You bastard. We don't need to be here. We can move on.”


“Obviously you encoded something on to this memory for a reason,” he said. “Who died?”


I turned to look at the mass of people, standing in the graveyard, all gathered around a coffin. It almost seemed like they were infinite, and yet, they all had something in common – they were all wearing clothes that had seen more funerals than anyone should have to endure. Everyone had wanted to help, but no one could. I covered my eyes with my fingers. “My mother's.” I inhaled a long breathe and then forced it out, trying to regain my composure. “She had a heart attack when they came to evict her from her house. She owned the house, she owned the land, but she couldn't pay taxes, because some investment banker decided to take her retirement fund and bet it on all on the stock market. So he disappeared, she was broke, and I was struggling to find some way to get enough money together so she wouldn't be on the street, but I was barely out of college, and living in an apartment with five other people just to make ends meet.” I turned to look at the crowd of faces. “We went straight from burying my mother to emptying out her house. If we didn't have it cleared out in two days time, the bank was just going to sell it all off. They said they were being generous by giving us three days time to bury her.”


“With all of these people here, she wouldn't have been homeless,” Apathe said.


“Of course she wouldn't be homeless,” I spat. “That wasn't the point. The shame killed her, the shame of failing to take care of herself. Do you know I had to hear about her tax problems from the neighbors? She'd lived in that house thirty years, watched me grow up there, watched my father grow ill and die there... that house was her whole world. She was too angry and sad to ask anyone for help. She was dying anyway, and she didn't tell anyone. Cancer, terminal, which was where what little money she had was going. And when she died, all of those creditors came after me. I owed what she owed. How does that old song go? 'Sixteen tons, what do you get/ Another day older and deeper in debt/ Saint Peter don't you call me, 'cause I can't go/ I owe my soul to the company store...' She wanted to shelter me from all of that, but once she was gone, there was little I could do. Look at me,” I said, pointing at the younger me.


The younger me was 25, clean shaven, with my blonde hair cut into a business-like coif, as if I hoped that might give me enough prestige to get a better job. It hadn't, of course. I wasn't crying, but I clearly had the weight of the world on my shoulders. People were putting their hands on my shoulders, offering condolences and words of hope, but the look on my face told everyone anything they needed to know – I wasn't really hearing them, because I was dying inside. My mother was gone. My family was gone, leaving me alone in the world. My father had died some ten years earlier, both grandparents gone before I was even born. For all the talk about how people would live longer in the future, as it turned out, that was only if you could afford it, and we couldn't. Whatever youthful energy had been behind my eyes years ago was gone now, leaving in it only a hole big enough to drown the whole damn world.


“You know what the hardest part for me was? This was the last time I think I saw any of those people. I knew if I stayed on the grid, I was going to be driven down into debt so far beyond my control that I wouldn't be able to get a foothold on climbing out. So, right there, that's the moment I decided to run, where I decided I wasn't going to be a person any more... I was going to be an idea. And

The Word Is - Part Six

could hear hesitation in his voice for the first time. “They were told to go home, to prevent exactly this kind of thing.”


“'This kind of thing?' This kind of thing is the price of freedom sometimes, and we pay it gladly, because you know what kind of reaction this caused. What had been a couple of rioters trying to get attention, trying to start a second Occupy Wall Street, suddenly turned into... this.”


The crowd scene faded away and cut to a concrete wall with graffiti on it, a pair of fists crossed at the forearms, one white, one black, the forearms two solid red lines. “The Urban Warfare group started because some cop couldn't keep his shit together when a girl through a cup at him, and because a bunch of other cops decided to hold their ground instead of turning over their fellow officers who fired into an UNARMED crowd. Don't tell me that these people, these peaceful law-abiding people, were the ones who started it. They're just going to be the ones who finish it.”

Janus stuffed his uncertainty and replaced it with righteous anger. “Finish it. Interesting choice of words. Finish the people who died when the NSA data mining center was blown up? Finish the people who died in the field because their covers were blown when some whistleblower thought it was important to reveal millions of pages of classified material? Finish the people on the army base when hackers sent a drone slamming back into its own HQ?”


I cocked my head to the side. “I don't condone violence, and if you knew anything about me at all, you'd know that, but since you're bringing up the movement, let's talk about that drone slamming back into the base. You know the hackers responsible posted their side of the story on about a dozen different sites – that it was supposed to be an unarmed drone, and apparently the US government was flying drones with live missiles over its own population, for use ON its own population. How on earth do you want to justify that?”


“The drone was tasked with stopped terrorism in the US, and the CIA...”


“The CIA isn't CHARTERED to operate on US soil!” I shouted. “They don't have any business flying armed drones over people in their homes. And you know that, but yet, somehow, you don't care. Because the CIA, the NSA, the US government is bought and paid for, lock, stock and barrel by corporations, who are STILL given the constitutional protection as a human being! How insane is THAT? You know that over two hundred people were arrested last year under the pretext that criticizing corporations was slander? And no judge has struck it down, because big business is buying them left and right, leaving us, the common people, to take back our country, through any means necessary.”


“Even if that means killing a few hundred people?” Apathe asked.


I narrowed my eyes at her. “Thomas Jefferson, flawed man that he was, still had some valid points. 'The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.' We didn't call ourselves Urban Warfare because we wanted to offer everyone a hug. You know, for the longest time, I thought the gun nuts were insane, trying to barricade themselves up mountains, saying the government was coming to take their guns from them.” I shook me head. “Now I still think they're insane, but at least they left a giant stash of weaponry for more sane people to take.”


“Now we're getting somewhere,” Janus said, a bit of resolve back in his voice once more. “Tell us about the weaponry.”


I shook my head and pointed at the Urban Warfare symbol, still hanging there on the wall. “You know what we learned from terrorists? We learned how to be the little guy. We learned how to fight battles without anyone seeing. We learned how to compartmentalize and contain, how to make sure that no matter who you captured, no matter who you tortured, no matter who you tried to peel open, that no one would have more than a handful of information. You may think I'm some great prize, the Osama Bin Laden of the hacker generation, but really, all you've done is capture an icon, and probably martyr me,” I said with a bitter laugh. “So, you know, well done with all of that.”


“You won't be martyred – you'll just disappear,” Janus answered. “No more messages, no more communiques, no more diatribes posted to the internet. It'll all just go... silent.”


I threw back my head with a wild laugh. “You're kidding, right?” I turned to look at the two of them, and they were both peering at me like I was talking in tongues. That only made me laugh even harder. “Wow. I mean, just, wow. Really?” I paused, my eyes widening as I grinned at them. “REALLY? Oh man, that's rich.” I waved my hand and the graffiti disappeared only to be replaced by an image of me giving a speech to a camera. “You remember this? It got a lot of press.” The other version of me was talking about how they were going to pry open the locks on every email, every phone call, and turn them over to the American people. It was a great speech. I let the memory play and the camera turned off. Then the version of me shimmered and transformed into a smaller man, who looked quite different. Then the real younger version of me walked towards him clapping, a broad smile on his face. “Well done. I couldn't have said it better myself.” I snapped my fingers and paused it. “I showed you this one, because I was there for it. But it wasn't me. Most of the time you see some footage of me talking, it isn't me. It's a computer

The Word Is - Part 5

a poor class.”


I took a few steps towards her and grinned. I could see that smug look drain right off her face. “Then why are you so nervous that the two of you are trying to pry my brain open, hm?”


“You have something we need,” Janus answered coldly. “Nothing more, nothing less.”


“Uh huh,” I replied, rolling my eyes. “Look, if you're going to be torturers, might as well be honest torturers, am I right?”


“This isn't torture – it's an interrogation. You are a prisoner of war, and you have intelligence that could save the lives of tens of thousands of people,” Janus said. It was odd, but you could tell that with the level of conviction in his voice, he honestly believed they were doing the right thing. “We didn't start this. I've never hurt a member of the poor class in my life.”


“Not directly,” I said, walking towards him, “but that's the thing – it's rarely direct. It's sins of omission, sins of oversight, sins happening because of you, because you can't think of the consequences every time you decide you need to buy a new Leer Jet. I mean, you had to see the writing on the wall. It's not like there weren't warning signs.”


It was my turn to move us into a memory, surrounding the area with riots, protests, people holding up signs saying things like “Lynch all the bankers!” and “Minimum wage = minimally living.” I'd picked this moment in time specifically because the protestors were non-violent, locking arms together to hold on to a bit of the public space. “This isn't fair,” Apathe said. “Things got out of hand here, true, but it isn't like they weren't given a chance to leave peacefully.”


“Leave?” I howled, turning to face her, while all around us the protestors were chanting at a line of cops, decked out in full riot gear. “Why on earth should they have to leave? It's public land. It's a peaceful protest. They have a right to be here.”


“Except that they're becoming a public hazard,” Janus stated. “Just look at these people. They're preventing regular working folks from getting to their jobs, from doing business.” He waved a hand at the crowd, which kept chanting “Hell no, we won't go” over and over again. “Louts, rapists and thieves. They're nothing more than an angry, unruly mob, and sooner or later, what happened was inevitable.”


I sneered at him. “You're so used to the sanitized version of it, the one where the cops have been exonerated, aren't you? Well, let's have a good look at what actually happened, shall we?” It was pretty clear that things were going to come to a head, but it was someone throwing a paper cup full of soda that started it all. I slowed down the action and the scene around us started to crawl. I walked through the crowd, passing through people left and right before I came to stop on the young woman, barely old enough to buy liquor if she was lucky, throwing her drink at the cops. “No bomb, no molotov cocktail, nothing harmful, nothing violent. There was no way a cup full of soda was going to harm anyone.”


Apathe frowned. “You're distorting this. This isn't how it happened.”


I wheeled to point a finger at her. “This is EXACTLY how it happened. You know how I know?” I walked a few steps over and back, a bit deeper into the crowd, and there, lo and behold, was a younger version of me, a few years older than they'd seen me last, a bit more grizzled and disheveled. “I was there,” I barked, pointing at the younger me. “And for months afterwards, I had to watch news story after news story where people talked about how the cops had done the right thing, and that the tragedy was unavoidable, and yet, look around you.” I walked a few paces over to one side, and pointed to a teenager in a Nirvana t-shirt holding up his cellphone, recording the whole thing. “Camera phone.” I walked a few paces further, and found another. “Camera phone.” A few more. “Camera phone.” A few more and right up next to the girl throwing the soda. “Camera phone.” I paused, and turned to look back at Janus and Apathe. “There were half a dozen more filming this, and yet, not one news station picked up the footage. Not one of them showed what you're about to see, for reasons of 'national security.' You think you know what happened? Fine. Then you watch. I've seen this happen enough times,” I said, walking deep into the crowd, letting the memory unfold again.


The cup went sailing through the air and a voice from somewhere in the police line yelled “BOMB!” Half a second later, there was tear gas covering the area, cops were pepper spraying people left and right, and a few seconds later, there was a gunshot. I froze the memory right as I heard the sound of the gun going off. “Take a look and tell me what you see.”


Apathe moved into the crowd, and then, eventually, towards the police line, looking carefully. “The officers fired first?” she asked, disbelievingly.


“No,” I said, as I walked up towards her, standing right next to her, looking into the face of the cop who was firing the first shot. “Not first. Only.” I let the memory unroll again, and after the first shot was fired, several other cops drew their weapons and fired into the crowd. Then again. Then again. “Rubber bullets, but that close, that many of them, and with the stampede it caused...” I froze the memory and shook my head, unable to let it keep playing out. “18 dead, over a hundred wounded. Not a single officer even more than lightly injured.”


“They were told to disperse,” Janus said, although I

The Word Is - Part 4

all starts with this single ball right here.”


“Does it kill her?” Janus asked, a bit of curiosity in his voice. “I don't recall seeing anything in your file about this Anne person.”


“You wouldn't,” I sighed, “and no, it doesn't, thankfully. You're thinking too literally. My story isn't that simple. I'm not some one you can put into an easy box and call a terrorist. You had to know that going into this.”


“We did,” Apathe said, “so why don't you show us what happened?”


“The same thing that always happens when something is destroyed. Destruction happens.” I unfroze the memory and the ball went flying, zipping straight through me. Janus and Apathe watched it, but I didn't need to see it again – I felt it every damn day of my life. The ball zipped straight at me and ripped a whole through my thigh. I was already falling forward against the door from the force of the blast, and the memory of it made my leg hurt all over again. Young me slammed his head against the door then fell back and blacked out.


Not a single thing hit Anne.


I froze the memory again, turning to look at them. “Anne was by my side when I woke up in the hospital the next day. She didn't even know my last name and she couldn't bear to apart from me. I didn't have my wallet on me, and in all the chaos, it wasn't until the next day that my roommates figured out I might be in the hospital. They were talking to the nurses at the front desk around the time I woke up. I spent the next few months learning to walk again, and Anne clung to me like I was the only thing keeping her afloat. She was falling to pieces, talking to a shrink twice a week, having night terrors.”


“There wasn't a scratch on her?” Janus asked.


“Nope,” I replied. “No idea how or why, but the shrapnel missed her entirely. She felt guilty about it. Like somehow she had deserved some of the pain, but was spared due to some cosmic oversight. We argued about that a lot. We hadn't even known each other until that moment in time, and within a month, we were lovers and living together.” I walked up to the frozen memory of Anne bending down to cradle young me in her arms, tears running down her face. I crouched down to look at her, and at myself. It's always odd looking at yourself in your own memories, mostly because your image of yourself isn't stable. It flickers.“It wasn't a good idea. It wouldn't last. But somehow, this moment started everything. In six months time, she'd be gone, I'd be a mess, and this memory would haunt us both.”


“Was the bomb your fault?”


“If it was my fault, why would I run out there?” I replied with a scowl. “What am I, the worst terrorist ever? Hell no. You people weren't even calling me a terrorist at this point. I was just a normal college student trying to figure out what he was going to be when he grew up.”


“Was 'number one enemy of the state' ever in your plan?” Apathe asked.


I glanced past Apathe, the explosion of the market in freeze frame behind her. The paint on the chunks of wall flying had changed color, so I let the memory play once more before either of them noticed. The explosion finished and the younger version of me blacked out, and the memory faded around us. We stood back in the dark room once more, just me, Apathe and Janus. “No one ever sets out to become a criminal, baby,” I told her, “it just happens. And, besides, your definition of criminal and mine certainly aren't the same thing. I was doing what I thought was right, every time I took an action that someone like you called 'terrorism.' And you don't see yourselves as villains, so why would I?”


“Because we're not criminals,” Janus answered. “But you are.”


“You're not criminals because the people can't get laws put into place to make what you do illegal. Since they can't, they put people like me into place.”


“You're saying you think people support you?” Apathe asked, incredulously. She either really was as naïve as she was playing, or she was one hell of an actress. “With all that you've done? You've hurt far more people than you've helped!”


“You really think so?” I cocked my head and peered at her, trying to decide. “Because I've hurt people, sure, but we're at war right now. The common folk and the ultra-elite. And you don't get to decide which side of that war you're on – you're just on one. You've never known what it's like to lose your third job in a year. You've never known what it's like to have to go from one minimum wage job to another to another, putting in hundred hour work weeks just to be able to afford a roof over your head and a cup of noodles to eat. You can't look at poor people and think they WANT to be poor. Nobody WANTS to be poor. And it didn't used to be the way it is now. Not since the time of kings and pharaohs. And you know what happened to them, now don't you? Or are you so ignorant to the world that you discarded history along with the people who tilled your land?”


“So you're a freedom fighter then,” Apathe said, disdain obvious in her voice. “You're a communist who thinks everyone should share everything and that there shouldn't be any rich people and any poor people. I hate to tell you, mister, but those kinds of dreams are just that... dreams. There's always going to be a rich class and

The Word Is - Part 3

hard time imagining it.”


“That's the thing about me, sweetheart,” I chuckled, “I tend to surprise people a lot.” My fingertips rubbed my temples for a moment, that pain having doubled back with a vengeance, as I knew it was going to. “I hope you're not wishing to catch some deep dark secret from my past you can use against me. You should know by now I'm far too cold for that.”


“We'll see if that's true or not, Trip,” she giggled. They really were a well-matched pair of interrogators. Even though I knew she was trying to give me the soft sell, she had an easy way about her that deflected all the stress and tension that her partner brought with every glance. I could see why they worked so well as a team together. She cooled it down and he heated it up.


“So why are we here?” Janus asked. “What so important about this moment in time that it's your first memory in a memory lock?” A gust of wind kicked up suddenly, and there was a rustle behind us and a muffled shriek. All three of us turned to see a young woman, face down in the snow, a bag of groceries scattered around her. Behind us, a door opened and closed, and footsteps approached.


“Oh my god,” a voice from behind us said. Janus and Apathe turned to look, but I knew I didn't need to. I knew who was approaching. The younger version of me ran through me, just reaffirming how intangible I was, and over to the young woman on the ground, “I saw that through the window,” younger me said as he crouched down to help the woman up, getting her out of the snow drift.


“Goddamn it,” she said, as she started to gather things up. “Look at this mess.” It was so hard seeing her like this – so young and full of life. But I couldn't let them see a moment's weakness on me, so I stomached all my emotions in and watched my younger self help her pick things up and out of the snow and into the remnant of the paper bag that had ripped as she'd fallen.


“Doesn't look like anything got loose, so you should be okay. Guess there's an upside to everything being bagged these days,” young me said. “Here, let me give you a hand. You live in the building?” God, I looked so much younger. Leaner, thinner, more optimistic. It was hard to believe I was ever that naïve. It was me at 19, long hair down past my shoulders in a bushy ponytail, a long goatee that went down past my collarbone that was braided with a silver skull in it, dressed in ratty jeans and a Hawaiian shirt that made me look like I'd walked out of a Hunter S. Thompson story. “I'm Trip, I live in the front apartment on two. I was painting out the window and I saw you fall.” The story sounded so corny coming from my lips, but the young her either didn't care or was too distracted.


“I'm Anne,” she said as she put the last of her things into the bag, scooping it into her arms. “I live up on four, in 428. I swear I thought this bag was sturdier than that.”


Young me took it from her and folded it against his chest. “Here, let me help. It was probably just the wind that knocked you off your feet. Let me guess – first Chicago winter?”


She snorted a bit, dusting snow off of herself now that her hands were free. She was dressed in a giant, bulky overcoat and had on thick snow pants over whatever pants she had on underneath, and her dark hair was underneath a giant woolen hat. “Is it that obvious? I'm a freshman over at...”


“Northwestern,” the young me interrupted. “Yeah, I figured that. Most people who live this close to campus generally do. C'mon, I'll help you carry this inside.”


“A girl?” Janus said, disappointment evident in his voice. “I had hoped for more from you, Trip. After all the trouble we went through to get you, after all the stories I've heard for the last several years, I certainly didn't expect you to be sentimental about some girl you met in college.”


I couldn't help it – a slight smirk crossed my lips. “Wait for it.”


As young me and Anne started walking up the stairs, I turned to look across the street. It gave me a chance to see the young man walking into the lobby of the building across the street, the market which Anne had just come from. For years, she'd been haunted by the timing of this. Behind me, the two were reaching the door of the building, and just as young me placed his hand on the door, the market exploded.


I'd seen this explosion a number of times since then – on replays traffic cams, a webcam in one of the windows, and even filmed in high definition from one of the sickos involved, but it didn't make it any easier. Still, I didn't want to look away from it. The world slowed down as the building turned into a fireball, the young man who'd just gone in been covered in C4, with a layer of nails, bolts and metal ball bearings, and I could see a number of them flying through the air towards the front of my building. I slowed the memory down enough so that I could find it, one metal ball about the size of a dime, and pointed to it. “You see this? This single metal ball is where it all begins. This is what begins the whole thing. Everything you've ever wanted to know about me, about what drives me, what motivates me, why I've been on this endless, relentless, crusade... it

The Word Is - Part 2

around, trying to make me spin, but it wasn't going to work, not yet anyway. “Your friends call you Trip. You are 34 years old, and have been single for four months now since your last girlfriend, Tabitha, moved cross-country to take a new job. She offered to try and make it work long distance, but you told her...”

“I told her long distance was too much distance,” I interrupted. “And that it wouldn't work.”

He cocked his head, both of them pausing in their steps. “That's correct.” It seemed they were expecting me to be more off-balance by their level of information than I was, but this is the kind of thing they prepare you for in my line of work. “She was broken up by it...”

“...but not surprised,” I finished.

“Well,” Apathe offered with a smile, “perhaps she just knew what kind of man you are. Or perhaps it wasn't working before the move.”

“It wasn't,” I said, glancing around. “Any chance I could get a chair or something? I realize I'm not actually here, but I have a feeling standing around might get awfully boring.”

Janus snapped his fingers, and when I looked behind me, there was a nice, plush comforter, as if there had always been one there. I knew how these games worked, and asking for something would make them push a little less firmly at the start. “Now you need to give me something in return,” he said, his voice calm as still water.

I cocked my head to one side, then nodded a little as I sat down. “Fair enough. It's not the typical five word cypher you're looking for. It's thirteen words.” The chair was comfortable as a daydream, easy to slip into and I relaxed just a little bit, leaning back against it, the pain between my temples starting to pass. I knew it wouldn't last, so I decided to savor it while I had it. “I know, bitch isn't it? What can I say – some of us take our security very, very seriously.”

Janus stopped his circling standing before me and Apathe continued until she was standing beside him. He turned to look at her, having to peer down because of the height difference. “Well we're going to be here a while, it seems.”

“Isn't there an easier...” she started.

“You know that if there was, we would have already tried it.”

She sighed with a slight slump, then turned to look at me. “You're going to be a real pain in the ass, aren't you?” she said, sticking her tongue out at me in a cute pout.

“We each have our parts to play,” I replied, “and neither of us gets to pick those. You knew what you were getting into when you took this job.”

“I believe in what I'm doing,” she said, that pout deepening.

“Honey, don't we all?” I laughed back.

“Enough,” Janus said. “I think we're synched enough for the first probe.” He turned to offer her one of his massive hands, and she slipped her small fingers into it as he closed those ebony hooks around her hand.

“What's the word?” she said, that phrase carrying with it the power of invocation, and my fingers closed on the armrests of the chair, bracing for what I knew was coming.

Janus closed his eyes, then opened them again, this time filled with a golden fire that burned and erupted from him like two headlights that focused on me like a pair of agonizing suns. I could feel the heat and pressure coming from them, and when he spoke again, his voice boomed with reverb and echo, thundering down on me like an earthquake. “The word is 'faith.'”

I moved nowhere and still accelerated to a thousand miles a second, my sight of the two forms blurring into a mishmash of colors and streaks until suddenly everything snapped back into focus, and suddenly the chair I was sitting in was resting on the corner outside of my college apartment of over a dozen years ago. It was snowing, although the snowflakes just passed through me, and I didn't feel any cold at all. In my head, I had known this was coming, but knowing something is coming and experiencing it are two entirely different things. The training had covered this, but it was still another thing entirely to be enveloped in it. I was taken aback by how accurate it was until I remembered that this was pulled from my own memories, so it was only as accurate as I remembered it to be, and anything I might have glorified or misremembered would be represented exactly.

“One down, twelve to go,” Janus said, stepping back into my field of vision. He was dressed in sweatpants and a hoodie, looking very much the part of a football player out on his morning job. “I told you, Trip; everyone breaks in the end.”

“Yeah, well, it only gets harder each step you take,” I told him, looking down to see my own attire was now more akin to the kind of thing I wore in college – a t-shirt with some obscure band on it, that bulky tan canvas jacket I wore everywhere, and a pair of jeans that had certainly seen better days, but weren't so shredded that I couldn't endure the cold in them.

“Then we'll just have to keep taking those steps together,” Apathe said as she also stepped back into my line of sight. She was also dressed in sweats, but her hoodie had the name of the college – Northwestern – on it. Chicago in the winter was bitter cold, and I was glad we couldn't feel it. There were some advantages of being in a memory. “Funny, I read your file and while it said you graduated near the top of your class, I had a