Weary Traveler
Chapter 23

A stiff object with a pointed edge poked Mitch’s thigh.

A dream? Another memory washed to the surface of his mind?

Bubbling up from the depths of his unconscious like a broken projector, flashing images that conjured up visceral reactions.

“Mitch…” a distant voice said, like the echo of a whisper heard just upon waking from a deep, drowsy slumber.

Again, the pressure point appeared. This time it dug into Mitch’s ribs, prodded him so that his relaxed muscles and loose fat wriggled.

And then, something gripped, squeezed, and shook his left shoulder. Mitch’s hand raised without conscious thought or purposeful awareness, swatted it away.

“Weary Traveler!” the voice screamed straight into Mitch’s ear.

His eyelids pried open like he had just confronted a near death experience. Fiery lungs gasped the smoke and smog wafting through the outskirts of Rotech District. He blinked, gathered a douse of moisture to wet his sleepy eyes, cracking with blood vessels, and stared up at Zoxillian standing over him, gripping a briefcase in his left hand. He wore a slim cut, glossy, turquoise suit with a neon yellow shirt and a lime green tie.

Mitch’s woozy eyes gazed through Zox while his disoriented brain scanned him like a ghost hovered between worlds. A cloudy figment of his imagination. A character in a dream that he manifested into real life.

“Zox?” Mitch muttered.

“Of course it’s the Zox,” he said, straightening his posture and adjusting his tie. “Why are you sleeping outside my lab?”

“Needed another round on the Memory Mod.”

“How much you got for me this time?”

Mitch closed his eyes, counted the credits he had acquired.

“I can do five-hundred this time.”

“Ohh the big, bad corpo player’s got some creds to spend,” Zoxillian mocked, shaking his palms and wriggling his fingers at Mitch. “If you want to pay me that much, I’d be happy to take it off your hands.”

Zox stretched out a hand and hefted Mitch onto his feet. His brows dropped, narrow eyes looked Mitch up and down, mouth hung slightly open like he had a riddle that he couldn’t solve trapped in his mind.

“Man, Weary Traveler, I’ve never seen a bum turn his life around like you have. A truly incredible feat. How’d you do it?”

“Been sober for a few months now.”

“That it? I should get off the booze and bonzos myself. Corpo life makes it tough to do. You work here long enough and the wicked stuff will wrap around your mind and pull you under,” Zox said, stepping up to the keypad and punching in his entry code. A gust of air dispersed from the door, spread through the air. “After you.”

Mitch stepped through the open door and marched straight for the operating table, plopped onto its pad and focused his breath like a seasoned veteran scouring the pits of his unconscious, fighting his fucked-up memories. He gathered his wild thoughts flying through the air at light speed. Memories swirling. Ideas launched into the sky, plunged back into the depths of his soul.

Zoxillian strutted across the room, placed his briefcase on the back table, and slipped a white lab coat over his suit.

“Alright, Weary Traveler…” Zoxillian said, dropping onto a rolling chair and sliding over to Mitch, plastic wheels gliding across the tile, “pay up now.”

Mitch dug into his right pant pocket and pulled out the credit disk, adjusted the amount, and held it over Zox’s credit wallet until both devices sounded a melodic chime.

“Make this a good one,” Zox said. “Trials are ending soon.”

“And then what?”

“And then the big boys on the executive board will gather all of the scientists and psychologists at the RID to go over the data to decide whether or not the product should hit the markets.”

“You, too?”

“Me? No,” Zox said, shaking his head. “I’m just a sleazy salesman. And what we’ve been doing here is under the table. If the bosses replace out you’ve had more than one trip on the mod then we’re both dead. Capiche?”

“I know…” Mitch said, feeling the warm blood drain from his face like a wraith crawled through his eyeballs and gazed back out at the world from a fresh perspective. “Let’s begin.”

Zox grabbed the cable connected to the sensory immersion rig and plugged it into Mitch’s scalp.

Mitch closed his eyes. Inhaled, exhaled long breaths, filling his bloodstream with oxygen, preparing his body for the journey. Mind focused inwards. Mental vision aimed at the image of the distant memory he selected from the abandoned sewer of his brain. That unending reel of pain and misery manifested in the present. Conjured up from the past like the black sludge and brown muck raked up from the bottom of Rosenfell River.

The vision was foggy at first, obscured by a gray haze that blocked out the light of consciousness. Abstract shapes appeared, disappeared in the mist. Manifested out of the ether within the void of space. Indistinct, as if the haze evolved from a mass of nothingness into sound and color and physical matter that gathered, congealed, transformed into a setting… a place… a memory…

Mitch stared at his hands coated with dirt and stained with black spots like dried oil. Long fingernails traced with thick, brown crud like they had been painted with gutter water. Scratches, cuts, and bruises covered his arms all the way up to his ripped, soiled, white tee-shirt hanging off of his bony shoulders, sagging from his skeletal neck.

He lifted his head, looked left, then right, gazed out from the middle of an abandoned warehouse. Studying the environment of the memory that slept dormant in his mind. Suppressed by years of booze and bonzos. Buried by the pain of guilt. Obscured by reluctance. Denying the reality from a lifetime of fuck-ups.

The warehouse looked like a bomb went off. Scraps of metal and mounds of garbage surrounded the base of the wall like a bunker. Broken windows covered the entire roof, warped by a grid of bent beams. Shattered glass sprinkled across the crumbled concrete floor, glistening in the flickering light of dumpster fires spewing rancid fumes into the air. Pillars of smoke dispersed throughout the structure, streamed through the holes in the glass ceiling, and joined the inferno swirling in the sky overhead like the breath of a thousand dragons.

A metallic clash echoed through the warehouse. Mitch spun around, stared at an open door as a group of shadowed figures approached at a creeping pace. Some had metal chains hanging from their fists. Others carried knives, steel pipes, pistols. They spread out to form a single file line that arched into a half-circle, surrounding Mitch. Scars covered their arms and chests like they had run through a sword fight. Low-level tech wrapped around their wrists, slipped over their skulls and eyes like they wore metallic caps and augmented reality goggles.

“Where’s the bonzos?” the muscular one in the middle asked in a Southern, American accent. He was bald with ebony skin, and dressed in a shredded, black tee-shirt with torn off sleeves. Full sleeves of tattoos covered his arms all the way to his wrists.

Mitch patted the left strap of the backpack hanging from his back.

“Where’s the credits?”

The nomad on the far left reached into the right hip pocket of his black track pants, pulled out something that looked like a block of stone and waved it at Mitch.

“One-thousand?” Mitch asked.

“One-thousand,” the man in the middle said, straight faced.

Mitch made a motion to slip the backpack off of his shoulders, froze. Awakened by the memory of this decade-old encounter... The empty credit wallet... The backpack filled with trash...

He grasped his stomach, squeezed the memory of the pain of the bullets that penetrated his flesh, oozed blood onto the pavement. His body toppling over, shriveling into the fetal position. Left for dead.

“What’s this ‘ere, eh? You got a fuckin’ problem, bum?” the fat man on the far-right asked in a gritty, British accent. His head and shoulders swallowed his neck. Stubby arms rested on the rolls upon rolls of his bulbous torso. Wide legs planted like synthetic tree stumps. Shoes, broken open, porky toes busting through the seams.

Mitch leered straight down the middle of the gang, looked into their lost souls.

“There aren’t one-thousand credits in that wallet,” Mitch said, stoically.

The group took a collective half-step forward.

“What did you just say?” the American in the middle said. He turned his head and cupped his hand around his mangled ear.

“I said that credit wallet is empty.”

“You call us liars?” the man in the tracksuit asked. He tucked the credit wallet back into his pocket and folded his arms over his puffed chest, slipped his right hand into the left side of his jacket.

“I merely offer the truth,” Mitch said. “And the truth is that this backpack is filled with trash.”

Mitch slipped under the straps and then flung the backpack in front of the gangs’ feet, held his hands up, palms out.

“I want to offer a new deal…”

“Or else what?” the Englishman asked, rubbing his belly as if he weighed the benefits of eating Mitch’s potential offer.

“Or else the snipers I hired will fire at you from every direction.”

The Brit belted a boisterous guffaw.

“He’s fuckin’ bluffin’.”

“Ain’t no bum out there that can afford snipers, Duncan,” the squatty Italian said.

The American stroked his beard stubble like a shadow clung to his chin and cheeks.

“Excuse me…” the tall, slender man asked. He wore a black suit with a black tie and vest. Tattoos covered the top of his hands and neck. Scars sliced across the bristles of his shaved scalp. “What deal do you propose?”

“Help me save the world,” Mitch said.

Each of the men snorted, struggled to suppress a laugh. Their faces twisted, contorted as they bit down on their lower lips. The first cackle burst from the Brit. Infected the man on his right. And then the next, like fire jumping from one stack of garbage to the next, until the whole gang was caught in a fit of laughter.

“I have seen the future,” Mitch said, projecting his voice to overcome their cackles. He sifted through his mind for a statement that would persuade the gang. “None of you will survive the path you are on. Join me.”

“Join a fucking bum that thinks he knows the future?” Duncan asked, clutching his belly. “I’d rather take your backpack full of trash.”

“I can pay you,” Mitch said.

“Paying us in the future doesn’t mean shit for us right now,” Duncan said. “So, maybe we should just kill you for wasting our fucking time.”

Duncan’s arm darted behind his back and yanked a pistol from his waistband, aimed it at Mitch’s face.

“Wait,” Mitch said, raising his hands and backing away. “Just wait a second. I can-”

A black cloud shot from behind Mitch, carried a gust of cold wind that knocked the pistol out of Duncan’s hand, flung it onto the pavement where it skipped into a mound of rusted scrap metal.

“What the fuck was-”

The cloud boomeranged, whipped against the gang’s backs, and stopped in the air between the gap separating them from Mitch.

The other four crooks pulled out pistols and aimed them at the cloud, followed it as it descended and settled on the pavement like a small tornado had dropped into the warehouse. It twisted in a tight vortex until the shapeless gray and black mist manifested into the black-robed, Raphael.

“Mio Dio… the Grim Reaper,” the Italian muttered, barely audible over the winds churned from the slowing vortex. He made a cross over his chest and pressed his shaky palms together in front of him.

The man in the track suit fired the first shot, followed by the others. They emptied their clips into the cloud. Raphael was motionless, levitating several inches off of the ground, unfazed by the bullets that pierced his shroud of smoke.

“None of you will survive the path you are on,” Raphael said, fathomless voice echoing through the warehouse like a sonic bomb exploded. He lifted his right arm and flung it away from his body, whipping a gust of wind that knocked the weapons from the gang’s hands into a spark-spraying skip across the pavement. Then he twirled his robed arm over his head and flicked his hand forward like he cast a spell, pointed at the thugs. The shower of bullets burst from the smoke and glimmered in the light of the dumpster fires, stopped in midair just before piercing their flesh. Their frightened faces were paralyzed by crossed eyes and jittering jaws.

Then, Raphael dropped his arm, sending the bullets onto the pavement like a hundred drops of lead rain fell from the sky.

“We’re fucked,” the track suit goon said.

“Sit!” Raphael demanded, pointing at the ground.

All five men dropped to the ground like their legs had given out, stared up at Raphael, cowering before his mysterious power.

“Mitch offers you a proposal. I suggest you consider what he has to say if you have any desire to live out a full life on this planet. Listen well. He speaks the truth,” Raphael said, glaring deep into their eyes with his crimson beams. “Do you understand?”

Five heads nodded like eager school children.

Raphael stepped aside and swung his robed hand away from his body.

“Please, continue, Mitch Henderson.”

“Thank you, Raphael,” Mitch said, stepping forward.

He cleared his hoarse throat, scanned their frightened faces. Nomads. Criminals. Products of a broken system, a fallen society. Victims of booze and bonzos. Tools of destruction. Hungry for power and control. Weapons of gang war turned prophets of peace before the mighty voice of Raphael. Angel of the past. Protector of the future of the human race.

“I have walked this path before,” Mitch said, “as many have done before me. The path of booze, bonzos, and crime is a wicked one. It leads straight into darkness, sorrow, pain, and loneliness. But the righteous path of light and consciousness is the way of the world. It is the truth.”

Mitch paused to gather his thoughts, taking the time to peer deep into the chaotic minds of the men sitting beneath him as if he was a wise guru reciting the ancient wisdom of the Hindu Sutras.

“We came here today to exchange a backpack full of bonzos for one-thousand credits,” Mitch said. “And yet, I bring a bag full of trash and you bring zero credits.”

“What do you want from us?” Duncan asked.

“Leave your lives of crime behind. Join me. Help me save the world.”

“How?” the Brit asked.

Mitch glanced over his right shoulder.

Raphael was standing with his eyes closed a few feet back. Abstained from the plans of the future.

Mitch turned around, faced the gang.

“By toppling the system that oppresses the poor and the weak. By destroying the class hierarchy that divides the rich and the poor.”

“We are only criminals,” track suit said.

“And you’re just a fucking bum,” Duncan said.

“Our past may be wrecked by poverty and crime, booze and bonzos, but we possess the power to improve ourselves and overcome the trauma. But that change must occur right here, right now,” Mitch said, aiming a strong finger at the ground.

The gang was silent, blank faces staring up at Mitch.

“My name is Mitch,” he said, patting his chest with an open palm. “And you are… Duncan,” he added, pointing to the American in the middle.

“Vladimir,” the man in the track suit said.

“Tony,” the Italian said.

“Kaito,” the tattooed man said.

“Craig,” the Brit said.

“Alright, good, good.” Mitch said. “This is the plan…”

*****

“Hello…” a faint voice whispered, like an echo in the distance.

A thin stream of fluorescent light squeezed through the slits in Mitch’s eyelids, spreading a warm sensation across his awakening body. His hazy consciousness crawled up from the depths of his mind where memories dwell, seeking out the light of the world.

“Hello, hello! Mitch, Mitch, Mitch!” Zoxillian screamed so loud that the ripples from his voice popped Mitch’s left eardrum. It rang like an open palm smacked the side of his head. “I swear if you fucking die on the Zox your body is going straight into the river.”

A sterile, chemical scent crept through Mitch’s nostrils, kicked on his awareness of his body sprawled across the operating table in the lab.

“Weary Traveler…” Zox said, ruffling Mitch’s chest. “Wake up!”

A tiny smirk crept up from the corners of Mitch’s lips. His mind flooded with a rush of calm and a sensation of peace and tranquility like it had been injected from a higher source… a sentient, self-creating, cosmic-super-intelligence that travels between dimensions bestowing grace upon those that traverse the ethereal realms of infinite and eternal consciousness.

Mitch peeled his achy right eye open, then left, stared into the wide-eyed Zoxillian glaring at him a few inches from his face. His white-within-white eyes looked like two headlights driving through fog on a dark street.

“Holy shit,” Zox said, dropping onto his chair and rolling several feet across the tile. He placed his right hand over his heart, tried to slow the fit of rapid breaths that seized him.

“What happened?” Mitch asked. His voice sounded like a stranger as it streamed out from his mouth and strolled through his ears.

“I thought you were fucking dead.”

Mitch leaned his head against the operating table and stared up at the ceiling, pondered the possibility of death. That strange state of being beyond life. The mysterious unknown that stretches through dimensions unseen and realities unfelt.

“How long?” Mitch asked. “How long was I gone?”

Zox punched the air with his right hand, slid his lab coat above his wrist.

“Just over two hours,” Zox said, looking at Mitch. “What happened in there?”

Mitch’s eyeballs rolled to the top of his head, mouth hung slightly open.

“I… I don’t know. It’s all so… unfamiliar now. Like trying to remember a dream upon waking… only to have it slowly slip through your fingers,” Mitch said.

He turned his palms up and spread his fingers in front of his face like he was testing their materiality after a jelly trip venturing through the psychedelic kaleidoscope of mystical realms.

“I’ve never seen anyone last that long without some kind of…” Zox said, glancing at Mitch from the corner of his eyes, “complications.”

“What kind?”

“Usually the Dark Dwellers swoop in and slice the Memory Mod users up. Fucks up their brains real good. Messes with their psychological state.”

“Dark Dwellers?”

“That’s what we are calling those black-robed creatures,” Zox said. “Haven’t been able to figure out their origins or purpose, but the bosses up on the board demand that we continue moving forward with mass production.”

“Of course they do.”

“Vincent doesn’t give a shit about safety, only profit.”

“What about the other members of the board?”

“Don’t hear from them much, they operate behind the scenes. They make decisions in private while Vincent makes them in public.”

Zox checked his watch again.

“I need to leave for the final Memory Mod conference. Time for you to leave and never come back,” Zox said, striding to the operating table.

Mitch swung his legs over the side, placed his booze-splattered dress shoes on the floor, and then rose onto his aching feet, faced Zoxillian.

“Thank you for your service,” Mitch said. He stretched out his right hand and gripped Zox’s clammy palm.

“It was nice knowing you, Weary Traveler. The Zox wishes you luck on your journey.”