Sovereign Ch. 4 (Patreon)

Sovereign

Chapter Four

Having the ability to view hundreds of possible futures tended to make finding an outcome you wanted surprisingly easy. It felt a little like playing god though, and it made me uncomfortable. Also, just because there was the possibility of a future existing didn’t mean it was at all likely. 

The Simurgh viewed the past as a solid definitive line with holes for those few things she was unable to see. That line ended in 2002, the year she’d appeared. The future, though, was more like a pie with a billion slices. The biggest slices were most likely to happen, while the smallest ones were… technically possible. 

In one future, I encountered a whole gang of gunman, terrorists, while I walked the streets of Houston. In that future, I did a ballet routine that dodged every single bullet they fired at me, knocking them out with grace and elegance that was only realistic in anime. 

Just because it was technically possible didn’t mean it was actually going to happen. 

And since I could direct the Simurgh, every time I changed a decision I would’ve made, I got a new pie. This was helpful though, because all I really had to do, after each decision I made, was look at the biggest slices. If I didn’t like the futures I saw there, I changed my decision until I found a future I liked. 

After weeks of doing this, I had finally found one that mostly worked positively. 

“Uhm… Eidolon’ll be here tomorrow, right?” I drawled shyly. Shy wasn’t hard for me to fake.

I could tell I was stretching the very limits of Chronicler’s patience, but in my defense, the whole day was stretching his patience. I was just nearly the last straw of hay. 

“Don’t I know you?” he said, his eye twitching behind his mask. “Yeah… you were at the event Wednesday, asking Young Buck about Eidolon, too. Right, he’s awesome, we get it. You can make us Wards feel a little jealous, you know,” he said with a beaming grin that didn’t quite hide just how much he wanted to punch me in the face.

I kicked my foot bashfully like a starstruck schoolgirl. “I just really want to meet him. I didn’t think it would be so hard to get to talk to him after I finally got here.” 

He stopped then, and took a long look at the clothes I wore. The frayed pants and the hoodie that was a size too big. The holes in it. The crusty look of clothes worn until dry after a rainstorm. 

His eyes widened a little as irritation melted away. I actually liked Chronicler. In the futures I’d seen of him he was always irritable but when someone was in genuine trouble, he was always willing to help. 

A true hero, hidden beneath scholarly disinterest. 

“Do… you have anywhere to sleep? Miss…?”

There. That was the point I needed. Time to subvert some expectations.

“Oh. I… have to confess, I don’t. But that’s not all that important. I needed… I needed to tell him somethin’! Somethin’ that is important.” I said, playing up the slightly southern accent that would stick in Chronicler’s mind. 

I leaned in conspiratorially. “If you see him today, could you do me a favor? Since I’m clearly not going to be able to get in touch with him and they keep turnin’ me away at the Aych Cue! Tell him… come home. His three kids need him, and he’ll be stronger if he visits. Not weaker.”

Chronicler’s eyes widened so far I could see his eyebrows raised above his mask. 

“Holy–! I mean-! I’ll… I’ll pass it along!” he stammered. I grinned at him. 

“Thanks, darlin’,” I said, patting the ward on the cheek before turning and walking away. I turned back as if I’d forgotten something and said “Oh! And you tell David that it was Taylor who told you about this, ya hear?” 

“Taylor? Got it,” he said assuredly. He wouldn’t realize until after I’d left that I’d used Eidolon’s name. Only then would he really take it seriously. Till then, he would think of it as the best gossip he’d had for a while. 

I walked through the streets of Houston, completely unafraid of anything that might assail me. It was easy to be unafraid when you knew for a fact nothing would happen to you. Oh sure, if I kept going straight for another two blocks I might get accosted, or if I turned into that surprisingly busy road, someone would try to steal a wallet that didn’t have anything in it. 

I actually went that way. Sure enough, a street kid snatched the worthless wallet right out of my pocket. Poor kid. 

Inside the wallet he’d find a note. That note said “Better luck next time.” 

That note, and the rage it inspired, would spur him to get caught trying to steal a woman’s purse. Eventually, that very woman would adopt him. 

… he’d go to Yale someday. Assuming Yale was still around.

I spent my days doing deeds like this. I couldn’t be as big-picture as the Simurgh, but I could turn her powers to good. Simurgh bombs in reverse. Events cascading in ways that led to happiness and joy. 

Behemoth and Leviathan were surprisingly even more helpful, if on a less personally gratifying scale. Behemoth, from half the planet away, noticed and changed the tectonic plates to prevent what would’ve been a massive earthquake only a few months from now. That earthquake and the resulting tsunami it caused would’ve decimated an already destitute Japan, killing millions of people who’d been forced into the area after Leviathan sank Kyushu years ago. 

Leviathan likewise was able to point out weather patterns that would lead to major hurricanes in the next year. The Simurgh was able to tell me that they would’ve been named either Irene or Isabell and the next, almost definitely Sandy. One of which would likely decimate my home. 

I’d been gone from Brockton for a little over two weeks now, learning. Listening to the past. The Simurgh didn’t need to be near me to show me the past, and with enough time, I’d slowly pieced together the pages of our world. 

Eidolon. Not the shining example of heroism everyone thought… and yet. Perhaps he was. 

If he knew, it would devastate him. But how could you fault someone for wanting to be a hero? For wanting to protect people? For wanting to be… important? How could one know that their inner desire to be heroic could spawn such… monstrosities?

Hadn’t I wanted the same? In the dark recesses of my mind I had desired to matter. Telling him the truth would crush everything he’d ever achieved. Make meaningless the work he’d dedicated his entire life to. Yes, the Endbringers might cease their cycle of death, but at the cost of one of the greatest heroes this world had. Morally gray as the things he’d done, the things his organization had decided was necessary, I couldn’t help but feel like I would do all the same things. 

I’d stopped the Simurgh’s attack, but made it look like she was planning something extra horrible. Alexandria was now terrified the Endbringers were attacking the Truce. The truce which would be vital when Scion turned against us.  

I wished I could assuage her panic. Her fear. But I couldn’t. Nor could I let the Endbringers continue attacking though. The Simurgh couldn’t see Scion in her multitude of futures and pasts. But she could hear people speak of him. She could hear the past. All of it from the moment of her birth. It hadn’t taken me long following Eidolon’s path to reach those of Cauldron’s members. All I had to do was keep asking why. 

Starting with something simple, I followed the chain: Why was Eidolon controlling the Endbringers? He needed to fight. To be a hero. To be important. To be… validated. 

Why did he need that? Failing Hero. Inferiority Complex. His looks. His deep-seated fears spoken of only in close corners with his closest friends. Legend. Not so much Alexandria. Memories of–!

A wall. 2002. I couldn’t go back further than that. Simurgh couldn’t see back further than that. So I had to make conjecture from the memories of him speaking of these things. 

His need to be a hero. His drive to make that his life’s purpose. Finally, his need to be able to fight Scion. 

Why? Why would anyone need to fight Scion?

Because a woman in a Doctor’s coat had told him that Scion was going to destroy the world, and that they’d already killed one of his kind. 

Why did they kill it?

… Back and back and back, but constantly running into that wall in 2002, left only with visions of conversations that had happened after the fact. Cauldron was irritatingly unwilling to discuss the past very often, but I had years of conversations to sift through. Not once did Eidolon discuss or even seem to hint that he might’ve been the one summoning the Endbringers. Which was good. It made me more and more sure that he was unaware of the atrocity he’d inadvertently committed. 

But it also left me with a complete fucking dead end on trying to discover what the Endbringer’s primary directive was. If Eidolon had assigned it to them, he’d done so unconsciously. It was fucking infuriating!

I stepped past a diner and scooped up a burger that a girl had ordered. She’d run to the bathroom upon seeing it, disgusted by the smell of the sweet pickles the cook had accidentally used instead of regular ones. Her date, a poor guy who now thought she was disgusted with him, didn’t notice my theft, but would be thanked by his date for disposing of the offending burger. 

I quite liked sweet pickles on a burger. A win for everyone.

I turned several more corners before I found her. 

The Simurgh herself. Or… the puppet she was piloting. The girl was the absolute average for a human female. She did the same for all her features. Average waist, average bust, average eye color. She was in every way, the most ordinary girl in existence. It made her a tad uglier than most women somehow, and her skin-tone looked a little hispanic.

And she looked bizarre. Like a cardboard cut out or one of the generic background people in a Where’s Waldo book. Bland to the point of annoyance. 

Her actual body was still in the Atlantic with Leviathan and Behemoth on the wonderful little island mountain I’d secluded myself in for most of the past week before deciding on this plan. This humanoid creation she’d built was actually tinkertech, and she was piloting the body remotely.

“Here,” I said, handing her the half of the burger I hadn’t already eaten. “Try this.” 

The girl took the proffered burger and examined it up and down as if checking for defects or flaws. “Charred animal protein beneath vegetative matter. Interesting. Oh, and a paste consisting of crushed vegetation and sodium chloride. More vegetation, a fermented lactation product, and a yeast-based grain product. What a quaint attempt at harnessing microbiology. This is… cheeseburger?” 

“Exactly. It’s delicious and awful all at once. Try it!” I insisted. 

She held it up to her lips, unaware, or unconcerned with the ketchup falling out of the back end as she squished the bun too tightly. She took a bite and her eyes lit up. “I… enjoy this. But regret it at the same time?” 

I grinned at the doll. “Well I don’t know how well that thing you made can actually taste, or how well you can experience what it feels, but that’s about how you should feel.” 

“Good. Test, completed.” 

I half expected her to throw the food away like she had a half dozen times before, but this time she held on to it. 

“Want more?” 

“More testing. Mastication amongst peers is a part of human emotional connection,” she said matter of factly before taking another bite. She’d squeezed out all of the ketchup at this point, but didn’t seem to notice or mind. 

“That is the most bizarre way I’ve ever heard someone say they enjoyed eating with me, but thanks. I think,” I replied. 

“Gratitude noted. Emotion logged.” 

I rolled my eyes. 

So, project make-the-Simurgh-understand-human-emotion was slow going. Still, by comparison to the other two, who’s ability to create human avatars was abysmal, it was practically blazing. Even so, I felt like I was constantly on a clock. The next attack was something like two months away and I still had no way to override the endbringers primary directive other than creating secondary ones to distract them from the primary. And… they… they got irritated with that. Like they might decide killing me was the best way to execute their primary directive. 

Behemoth in particular was bad about this. Simurgh, ironically, could be manipulated into giving up the primary directive for temporary secondary ones that seemed attractive to her, especially if she could be convinced they helped with the primary. Then, the more she learned about humanity, the more she seemed to enjoy it. 

Leviathan, as always, was somewhere in the middle. Not for the first time, I questioned why they were the way they were. Emotionless killing machines… but they had the capacity for emotion. They addressed themselves as drones. Meaning either they were created or they were brainwashed.

Simurgh, unfortunately, could not tell me anything about before she’d awakened in Lausanne. She knew she’d existed but her form had been different. Her form now was temporary, but could not be changed. Though in different pasts she’d implied that her powers and abilities were different. She and her brothers were the same thing, but each of them had a template slapped on top of them when they’d been ‘born.’ On this earth, she, Drone 3, was the Simurgh. 

Fortunately, her tinkering abilities allowed her to create her believable, if bland, human body and somehow attach her consciousness to it. 

Behemoth and Leviathan could create humans that looked like they could’ve been case fifty threes, but that was the closest they could get. A human made of water, for Leviathan, and Behemoth could make two. One of Earth and one of energy. Neither of which would look out of place on a Protectorate roster, but none of them could form the necessary similarities with humanity to allow them to progress on my directive of helping them learn to understand human emotions. 

I had them do it anyway, but only when convenient. I was considering asking them to join the Protectorate, but Behemoth might grumble about killing me again because I was distracting from the Primary Directive. 

Terrifying asshole. 

I sat down on the chair I’d procured for this. Tonight we would be staying in a hotel room using a stash of money a drug peddler had conveniently hidden before being captured and arrested. Since he wouldn’t get out for about four to six years, he wouldn’t be needing it, and I didn’t feel bad about helping myself to the ill-gotten gains.

In all three of the top most likely futures, the biggest pie slices comprising almost fourty percent of the likely chain of events, Eidolon would discover the comment about his “Kids” and come looking for answers. He’d find me relatively quickly after that and–!”

“Hello,” said a deep masculine voice. 

I jumped and screeched as the chair I’d been leaning in toppled backwards, depositing me on the hard concrete with no mercy. The Simurgh only didn’t laugh because she didn’t know she should’ve. 

“R-Really? The fuck man!?” I shouted, annoyed, looking up at the glowing green cape. My head had clunked against the ground hard enough to hurt though not enough to cause any real damage. “Was that really necessary? You could’ve just walked up instead of dropping in out of the sky.”

Eidolon blinked. Then narrowed his eyes. “You expected me to treat you kindly? You know my name, and have spread rumors that I have illegitimate children and expect me to save you from your own idiocy? I was taught as a five year old not to lean back on chairs!”

I scowled up at him. Unpleasant man. Then I glared at the Simurgh who’s blank expression and face were so terrifyingly empty for a moment I thought she was a mannequin. 

I stood up, rubbing the back of my head. Swollen. It would bruise up pretty bad too. A quick check with the Simurgh told me that most likely routes, if I just reacted naturally, would not lead to a good outcome, but I didn’t have many good options at the moment. 

Tell him the truth?

He wouldn’t believe it. In about seven months he would draw enough parallels that he would question. He would then have a breakdown that resulted in the primary directive not only not being erased but actually killed him. 

So… who the heck could I be to him, that would allow me to help him without telling him why he even needed help?

To my shock, the Simurgh made a suggestion. The pies flipped and suddenly I saw a future that was almost exactly what I was looking for. 

“That was… just to get your attention. It’s… not actually inaccurate, though. Do you remember a girl named Sandra? You went to New Jersey, shortly after Behemoth attacked Sao Paulo? You… were apparently drinking in a bar after the fight?” 

His eyes began to widen. “No…”

The word wasn’t one of denial, but more disbelief.

“Uh… y-yeah. Sorry. I know it probably comes as a bit of a shock, but uhm. This… this is your daughter, we think. My half sister. It’s… good to finally meet you.”

“You… I… this is ridiculous,” He said. Fortunately, I actually did share a few features with him. I didn’t look much like Sandra but it occurred to me now that the Simurgh’s puppet actually did, and Sandra had recently died of cancer, and did have two daughters. Neither of which came from the fling she and Eidolon had had after Sao Paulo, but with the right coincidences the lie could hold. Add in the fact that I suspected the Simurgh’s puppet probably was genetically related to Eidolon somehow and...”

The man sunk to the ground. Looked at me closely through that eerie green mask of his, then over to the Simurgh. Then, he very un-heroicially plopped down on his ass. 

“I… this is…”

“Hey, I understand. And imagine how we feel? I mean… Just… wow though. She’d always get this wistful look when she’d see you on TV,” it was a little painful how easily lying came. The futures didn’t lie though. Most of them had a positive outcome from this. When he found out the truth, he would be livid. But when he found out the next truth… he would understand. He would be able to rise with this instead of break. 

Most of the time. 

“Why… why are you speaking for her though? No offense, but…?”

“Oh,” I said, tone dropping with feigned sadness. “Sammy here… she’s a little autistic. I think she’s embarrassed.”

“I am not embarrassed. I am interested. It is… strange to see my progenitor out of combat. Not unpleasant though. Human emotion, logged.”

“Y-yeah. She… gets like that,” I said shakily. 

“No. This… how could… she… we never even spoke again after… she could’ve…!? WHY!?” He blurted, his emotions bouncing around like a hacky sack, his masked face darting between myself and the Simurgh’s puppet.

“Hey. Hey it's okay,” I said soothingly. “We know you’re busy and probably don’t really have time for her. She just… wanted to see you. This doesn’t have to mean anything more than that, okay?” 

There were no words more calculated to bring out his heroism than those. “No… I… no. If you… I mean. If I’m really her, uhm.. your...” He directed his attention back to the Simurgh but couldn’t finish the sentence. 

I felt guilty for this, but only a little. This was about stopping the endbringers. The lie wouldn’t last long either. Clearly the most likely future didn’t always come to pass, and I wasn’t the Simurgh. I didn’t have time to view the full results of each outcome. Just snapshots. 

Plus… it was a little true. Maybe the Simurgh could learn a bit of human emotion while we figured out what David’s primary directive was. Another win-win. 

“This is all just a bit overwhelming. Could… could we go somewhere more private to talk? I could bring you back the protector… no. Probably best not to go there. I…”

Glancing through the possible futures I found a restaurant that would appeal both to the Simurgh and to David and grinned.