Thresholder, ch 189, Epilogue: Kes (Patreon)

Normal Link

Edit/Comment Link

~~~~

Kes had spent two years as a hedonist. When Perry came back and left again, it was as good a time as any to change it up.

He sat down for milk tea with Richter at a cafe in Rhodion. It was one of his favorite cities in all of Markat, situated on a cliff where a plateau river spilled over the edge. The people there knew what natural beauty they had, and there was a stone walking bridge built across it so you could see the waterfall up close. There were buildings on either side with balconies to take in the waterfall as well as the vista below, a carpet of hilly jungle that spread to the ocean.

There had been a time when ships had come over the ocean, and eventually huge airships took over, but recent conversion efforts had meant the giant white envelopes had gone by the wayside, with the gondola all that remained, K-class engines crudely bolted to the sides.

He wished that Richter could have seen the airships. There was something gentle and peaceful about them. The K-class engines moved without much sound, but they zipped through the air like they had somewhere to be and it just wasn’t the same. Markat was changing, as much as it was trying not to.

Still, for Richter, who was in her third week in this world, it was all new. Her eyes tracked the ships whenever one came in, and she looked at the elves and dwarves that passed with a level of interest that wasn’t the culture.

“Wow, that’s rich,” said Richter as she took the first sip of her tea. “What is this?”

“It’s a spiced tea with yak’s milk,” said Kes. “I love it.” He took his own sip. It was a drink that was meant to be consumed slowly.

“So, you know that Perry and I broke up,” said Richter.

“I’ve been made aware,” said Kes. “Probably for the best.”

“You’re not sad about it?” asked Richter.

“I saw it coming,” said Kes. “I remember what it was like to be him.”

“And I want to be very clear with you that this isn’t an attempt at … anything.” She laid her hand flat on the table and gave him a serious look.

He let out a little laugh. “You’re not looking for round two?”

She smiled at him. “You think my heartbreak is funny?”

“It’s a little funny,” said Kes. He took another sip of his milk tea and let the spices wash over his tongue. They were all unfamiliar to him, but he’d never been much of a connoisseur. “What are you planning to do with the rest of your life?”

“No idea,” said Richter. “Apparently on Esperide they’re all super engineers, and they’re going to be coming through in the thousands, so there’s not much use for me. Plus all the clones running around. I feel the need to respecialize, but I need something that hooks me, and you were right, it’s difficult to break in when you have to learn everything from scratch.”

“He said that, not me,” said Kes. He smiled to show there were no hard feelings.

“Ah, right,” said Richter, looking away. She brushed something from her eye, and he hoped it wasn’t a tear. She seemed fine when she turned back though. “I’m tempted to do as the culture does and find a place to pitch in with whatever they need. I could start at the bottom of the totem pole in one of the golden domes, work my way up with only four hours a day, live here, immerse myself.”

“You don’t want to go back to Earth 2?” asked Kes.

“We talked about it,” said Richter. “Me and Perry.” She looked guilty. “You don’t mind that he took your name and he’s already out of here?”

“Going with the flow is a very good quality in a thresholder,” said Kes. “Though I think I learned it even before I went through that first portal. Call me Perry, call me Kes, call me Ishmael. Doesn’t matter much to me.”

“You’ve read Mocha Dick?” asked Richter.

“That’s what it’s called where you’re from?” asked Kes with a little laugh. “I’d have thought that was well past the timeline divergence. It was … 1850s, right? God, I used to know everything.”

“Well what’s it called where you’re from?” asked Richter.

“Moby-Dick,” said Kes. He drew a line through the air. “With a hyphen.”

“Wow, he even knows the punctuation,” said Richter. She leaned forward and bit her lip. “Now I’m remembering why I fell for you.”

Kes looked her over. “You know that I am him, right? We have most of the experiences in common. Most of it happened to me too. Most of it, I did too. He didn’t fill me in, of course he didn’t, that would have felt like he was laying it on my shoulders, I’d guess, but … whatever turned you away from him, the same is true for me.”

“Maybe,” shrugged Richter. She sat back in her seat and ran her fingers through her hair. “You know you have a son?”

“I know,” said Kes. He sighed and looked out at the waterfall. Their view of it was less good than he’d have liked. The sound was a dull roar. “I’m not sure how much I should be in the kid’s life.”

“I know they do it differently there,” said Richter. “And her? The mother?”

“Yeah,” said Kes.

“Yeah?” asked Richter.

Kes turned back to look at her. She was watching him carefully. “I think a lot of what Perry did falls on my shoulders, especially because some of it is, subjectively, what I did. So some of it, yeah, I’ll do. My time on Markat has made me think that hedonism is overrated.”

Richter picked up her cup of milk tea and held it in her hands to warm them. “How so?”

“I don’t know,” said Kes. “At first it was nice, you know? Getting whatever I wanted, not having to work, bumming around, I … you’re probably not going to want to hear about me sleeping around, but I slept around.”

Richter clucked her tongue, then gave a laugh. “Well, I already knew about him, and you’re absolved.”

“Thanks,” said Kes. “But it was empty. Nice, but empty. Meaningless to all involved. And that’s not what I want my life to be. I don’t want to look back twenty years from now and think, ‘oh, that’s all I ended up doing with my life?’”

“So you’ll clean up your clone’s messes, as it were?” asked Richter. “Raise a child because that’s the right thing to do?”

“I don’t know,” said Kes. He looked away from her again. “It really genuinely is different on Esperide. But I’ve known for a long time he was there, and there’s a part of me that’s wanted to see him.” He sighed and turned back. Richter seemed pleased. “What?”

“I like you,” she said. “You’re more like the old Perry.”

“Thanks, I guess,” said Kes.

“The new Perry, he was this creature of obligation,” said Richter. “He took me to a museum and it felt like he was going because he had to. I don’t even know how to describe it, like he was … patiently waiting on me? At first I thought it was eggshells, because I’d just come back to life and everything was horrible, but — sorry, is this fine?”

Kes shrugged. “Sure, why wouldn’t it be? He’s not me.”

“I feel like breaking up with a guy and then shit-talking him to his clone is,” Richter began, then failed to find her words, “Weird?”

“You think I’m a fan?” Kes chuckled.

“Alright, then I’ll say it — it’s weird and good,” said Richter. She giggled. “I am thankful, to him, to you, for bringing me back. I know I’d be literally dead without it, though maybe with the Loop established, Earth 1 would bring back people for cloning.”

“In which case stealing the dewar from the cryo facility did nothing but speed up when you came back, and ensured that it was experimental,” said Kes.

“Did he steal it?” asked Richter.

“I assumed he did,” shrugged Kes.

Richter laughed and shook her head. “And you really want to pick up the pieces?”

“With my son?” asked Kes. “Yeah. I want to try. Maybe it’ll be weird, maybe I’ll spend a bunch of time with him and he won’t understand why I’m hanging around, but sure. He’s as much my child as Perry’s. Plus he saw our parents, our sisters. And there’s a diplomatic angle, I guess. I can be a warm body sitting there as a representative of Earth 1.”

“Is that what you want to be?” asked Richter. “It won’t sicken you?”

“I’ve really been thinking that I need something to do,” said Kes. “I’ve had enough of bumming around the great cities of Markat. This place is great, I love Rhodion, and I’m glad I could show you the place, but I’ve found myself reading books lately and getting restless. I need a project. I need something to sink myself into. It doesn’t need to be something big and grand, I think I’m past that, it can be something simple. Like being a guard for interworld diplomats during a tense time of negotiations. You know, that old fallback.”

“But you don’t have powers?” asked Richter.

“I’m a werewolf,” said Kes. “But other than that, no. I don’t even have a suit of power armor, which would really make me feel better. And maybe I could ascend to second sphere, or talk to Shoreboth, or something. There are powers that can be layered onto a person, if they really want them.”

“Seems like a dark path,” Richter frowned.

“Says the woman who gave me an extremely expensive suit of power armor,” said Kes.

“It was really meant to be more of a loan, actually,” said Richter. “But I didn’t feel like I could take it back from Perry in the break up.” She laughed. “Can you imagine his reaction?”

Kes didn’t say anything, and didn’t find it funny, because he could imagine Perry’s reaction. It would be mixed up in his relationship with Marchand, the one relationship that had persisted through worlds. “Well, let’s hope he’s served well by it out there.”

Richter held her mostly empty cup out, and Kes clinked his against it.

“To Perry,” said Richter.

“To Perry,” Kes agreed. “Wherever he might be.”

It was nice to be friends with her. It felt mature, in a way, a sign that he was doing something right with his life. And if they found themselves together in his hotel room, and had one last roll in the hay for old time’s sake, well, there wasn’t anything to say that you had to stop hedonism cold turkey.

~~~~

Brigitta had taken the swap well. She seemed to think of it as proof of the decency of Perry-kind, and Kes wasn’t about to argue that. He was surprised by how much the years they’d spent apart had changed her, the extra lines around her eyes and the slight differences in her body. She’d had a child in that time, and suffered some radiation damage in space, so it was no particular surprise, but Perry hadn’t mentioned it. She looked more mature, and Kes found himself liking it, though he hadn’t come for her: he’d come for his son.

Unlike Perry, Kes had time to think about what it meant that he had a child out there in the world. While relatively little time had passed for Perry, for Kes it had been years, and while he’d been having his fun, the idea of fatherhood had grown and matured inside him. He’d never really wanted to be a father, it was a legacy of sorts, a piece of him that would continue on. He’d known that if the Farfinder’s mission succeeded, he would see Brigitta and the child again.

So he found himself spending time with the toddler, in the downed space station, while the world moved around him.

“Bock,” said Peregrin, picking up a red block from the play area and placing it next to Kes.

“Yes, thank you for the block,” said Kes.

Peregrin toddled over to the collection of blocks and picked up another one, this one blue, and placed it next to Kes. “Bock.”

“Yes, thank you for the block,” said Kes.

Peregrin gave a mostly toothless smile at him, then went for more blocks. Soon the floor would be empty, and Kes would have an entire pile, and this was how games with toddlers were often played. Sometimes they would play beside each other, stacking the blocks, which the toddler was terrible at, though he had glee in his eyes when he knocked the tower down.

“You’re good with him,” said Brigitta after two weeks had passed.

“I don’t know how you’d be bad with a toddler,” said Kes.

“You’re gentle, kind, patient,” she said. “I’d never seen that side of you before.”

“My mind wanders,” said Kes. “I don’t think I’m a natural at it.”

Brigitta laughed. “You think my mind doesn’t wander? You think that’s what being a parent is, laser focus on the child at all times?”

“I don’t know,” shrugged Kes. “You’re saying it’s something else?”

“I suppose we come from different cultures,” said Brigitta. “Do you want to be around him?”

“To have him in my life?” asked Kes. “Yeah. I know he’d be raised communally, but … there’s something sad about that, to me. I don’t know how you do it.”

“I don’t know how we do it either,” said Brigitta. “I’m out of step with my people, maybe because I came to being a mother late, maybe because I’ve always had more freedom.” She shrugged. “But I’m glad you’re here, and we can do this together, at least for a while.”

Kes nodded slowly, but he didn’t like that framing, as though he was just a tourist. The kid was a commitment, one that he’d chosen for himself, and to call it temporary was to say that he was fickle. He didn’t like that, not at all.

“I’m glad I’m here too,” said Kes.

“And you don’t want me to … show my appreciation?” asked Brigitta, moving closer to him. In the two weeks he’d been on the downed space station, they hadn’t slept together, though not for lack of effort on her part.

“I don’t have my head on straight,” said Kes. “The space station is going into hibernation, we’re a month out from moving to Markat, and everything will change then. I don’t know what you’re going to be doing, or what I’ll be doing. I want to be around, to be in your life, and his, but … you get it, right?”

“I do,” said Brigitta. “And unfortunately your consideration only makes me want to sleep with you more.”

“Maybe some other time,” said Kes, which was maybe more than he should have said, leaving the door open for too much. She was pleased that he hadn’t given her a hard no, he could tell that, and it was gratifying to see her eyes light up, but he didn’t want to play house, not if he had doubts.

~~~~

The whole population of Esperide was less than twenty thousand, which was a small town by Earth standards. By agreement with Markat, they’d been set up not far from Cannaport, one of the former capital cities. The Natrix itself had been transported with oversized precision punch drives, landing to within a tenth of a meter, and the population soon spilled out into a tent city that surrounded the ship, then real houses as building materials were brought in. A golden dome was constructed close by, and the engineers swarmed it, churning out materials at a scale they’d never been able to attain before.

The Esperidians were free to move about the world, that was the culture, but they mostly stuck together, and Kes stayed with them, save for the occasional sojourn out to visit friends.

He spent time with Peregrin whenever he could, and the child became a part of the texture of his life. He changed diapers, carried around snacks, and would go for walks through the nearby woods and fields, which often ended with him carrying the toddler back on his shoulders. He was more of a presence in Peregrin’s life than Brigitta was, in fact. They got to know each other, or at least Kes got to know Peregrin, his particular looks and ways of speaking that were opaque to anyone else.

They took a picnic in the woods together, with fruit and sandwiches eaten by a stream, and Kes wondered if this was his life now. It wasn’t bad, but it seemed like it was lacking in ambition, and when Peregrin was four, he’d be a part of the school system, which would mean that Kes would have less to fill his days with. Already he was reading more books than he ever had in his life, many of them from Markat, opaque and difficult to chew on, though they built on each other, and each one went down easier than the last. He read about the culture, and how it was supposed to work in principle, then how it was supposed to work in practice. They were attempting to spread across the multiverse, to infect the other world, and life was fairly nice, but he wanted to understand the principles of it, the ways they thought about themselves.

He ended up attending a committee meeting in Cannaport, then another one. He was a known quantity, famous in his own way. Perry had saved the world, and this was now known to the masses. While Kes hadn’t saved the world, some of the renown had rubbed off on him, and the fact that Perry was off into the great blue yonder, a mysterious figure, definitely helped. Kes stayed sitting there, not contributing much, which was the default mode for people at a committee meeting.

At the third committee meeting, Kes watched two men talking to each other about the roles of technology in the world, and what they thought might happen if the tiny K-drive ships were allowed free movement in and out of their city. There were arguments backward and forward about what the culture was, and eventually he spoke up.

“There’s a concept from Earth 1 called globalization,” said Kes. “Increased trade and movement between countries at increased speeds means an overall flattening of the cultures and products of the world. Where this is a problem, insofar as the culture is concerned, is that local self-governance is threatened and self-selection creates all these unwanted effects that are, generally, bad for the world. Brain drain, for example.”

They wanted to know what brain drain was — it was a concept they didn’t have a name for, though the effect was obviously real, and happening on Markat, at least in Kes’ opinion. There were all kinds of things happening within the culture that they just didn’t have good metrics on, and the open borders combined with the variability of their populations meant that they were asking for trouble, especially if easy flight became widely available. Obviously “the culture” was a tool used to paper over various issues, but it was a tool that didn’t have infinite capacity.

He was surprised that they listened to him and wanted to hear what he had to say. It was hard to know how much of that was his modicum of celebrity, and how much was the actual information content.

After the meeting, he was encouraged to attend more. It was a form of socializing, in a way, and when he heard a word he didn’t know, or someone mentioned a book, he’d jot it down in his notebook and add it to his reading list. Peregrin’s afternoon naps were a good time to read.

It was like being in college, in a way. He’d always been one of the people to speak up in class, and didn’t fully understand the people who paid for a full college education and sat there filling notebooks and never responding to a single question. It was like that at committee meetings too. So many people felt like they were there only out of obligation, or to fill the rooms with warm bodies, or maybe because it was the culture. But Kes was one of the ones who spoke, and he liked speaking.

Half a year in, he was surprised to see a Dirk at one of those meetings, though Dirk sat back with his arms crossed, watching, not saying anything.

Kes sought him out when it was over.

“I’d have thought you’d have better things to do,” said Kes.

“You know, somehow I keep finding the time to do all kinds of things,” said Dirk.

“You keep putting things on the schedule and then, by some magic, it can all get done,” said Kes. “Imagine that. But I’m still surprised that this, whatever it is, needs to get done.”

“You have a newsletter,” said Dirk.

“Small one,” said Kes. “Just a thing I print off and hand out to whoever wants to read it.”

“Two thousand readers,” said Dirk.

“I’m not sure where you get your numbers, but it’s two hundred,” said Kes.

“There’s a ten-to-one rule of thumb,” said Dirk. “You put out a mimeo, and those copies don’t just end up in the trash, then we figure each one is read by maybe ten people.”

“Seems wildly optimistic to me,” said Kes. “Seems like my readership is lower than you’re figuring. And you’re talking about two thousand people, that’s nothing.”

Dirk sighed. “You still don’t have the culture figured out, do you?”

“Can’t say I do, no,” said Kes with a roll of his shoulders.

“That was a pretty typical meeting,” said Dirk. “There are a hundred thousand people, maybe twenty of them show up, and five of them talk. That’s not the culture we’d like to have, but it’s the culture we do have, and you’re one of the ones who talks.”

“Okay,” said Kes. He frowned. “Not sure what you’re getting at.”

“Two hundred copies of a newsletter go out,” said Dirk. “Who do you think is reading those? It’s the people who are most engaged, the people who are showing up to meetings, the people who are speaking. So we say hey, that’s maybe a readership of two thousand when all is said and done, but that’s two thousand people who are involved. It’s not the guy who does his shift at the fishery and then comes home to nap and never really thinks about the culture beyond a few local projects.”

“Get to the point,” said Kes. “You need me to stop writing, is that it?”

Dirk laughed. “It’s the opposite. You’re aligned with my interests, and those of my allies. You have a unique perspective, and you’re not bad at making a point. You read a lot, clearly, and you’re inclined to spend time thinking about things. You come at people like you’re ready to beat them to death.”

“You’re offering me better readership,” said Kes. “You want me on your side.”

“You’re already on our side, more or less,” said Dirk. “You’re invested, I can see that, and you’re ready to voice an opinion. You have a fight in you that a lot of people don’t have.”

“So what, you want to hire me?” asked Kes.

Dirk laughed. “You know that’s not the culture. But we do want to publish you. You’d go from two hundred to two thousand, and you know that in reality, that probably means twenty thousand. Important people.”

“Saying people are important isn’t the culture,” said Kes.

“Yeah, well,” said Dirk with a wave of his hand. “People who make decisions then.”

“Decision-making is collective,” replied Kes.

Dirk looked him over. “Are you arguing for the sake of argument? Do we have bad blood between us?”

“I’m not sure I want this,” said Kes. “I’m not sure I want to be a part of a fight. Is this because I’m a clone? You need someone to back you up in that fight?”

“Doesn’t hurt,” said Dirk. “If you need to think on it, you think on it. I’ll be in the city for the next week, down by Eastgate.”

He left, and Kes watched his back.

He talked it over with Brigitta while Peregrin played by their feet.

“He’s using me,” said Kes.

“He wouldn’t have editorial control, right?” asked Brigitta, who’d picked up a thing or two from listening to him.

She spent most of her time working at the big golden dome next to the Natrix, though she was also working on a project to get a crude semiconductor fab up and running on Markat. Cell phones and computers weren’t the culture, but no one had put a stop to the plans for a huge facility, and maybe in a decade there would be widespread proliferation. For the time being, the technology was sparse, imported from Earth 1 and Earth 2, with the attendant issues regarding sovereignty and worries about spycraft.

“If someone gives you something, they can take it away,” said Kes. “And … it feels like I’m fighting again.”

“There’s nothing wrong with fighting,” said Brigitta. “You’re fighting for things you believe in, aren’t you? You’re shaping the culture, in your own small way?”

“I’m trying to contribute,” Kes nodded.

“Then fight,” said Brigitta. “Throw yourself in the ring, if it’s for the right reasons. Punch someone in the mouth. With words.”

Kes laughed, and that was the end of the conversation, but he found himself tossing and turning in bed beside her during the night, running through imagined conversations in his head, defending himself from attacks. There were already some blowhards that he’d identified, people with their own newsletters that he didn’t think much of, and a few whose books struck him as rank nonsense that appealed only to the lowest common denominator.

He’d wasted a fair bit of his life arguing with people online, and had wasted more of his life fighting people across worlds. He wasn’t sure that this wasn’t just him following the same instincts again.

But in the morning, he went to the city to seek out Dirk and accept the offer.