Chapter 6: Meditatio - Preparation

In the car on the way down from Martine's loft to my house, I had Natalie nap, and I talked to Martine as she drove.

"I was stupid. Stupid. I walked into Vegas like a fool, never thinking that there had to be in Inceptor there. But only a day later, Vincent clearly knew more about me than I knew about him. How did he know who my mom was, how to reach her so fast?"

Martine looked at me. "Welcome to the labyrinth, Carter. Who can be trusted, how do we know what is real?"

"What do you mean?"

"Think it through, all the way down. Work it out."

"Okay, so ... Someone had to have told him ... someone who knew all about me and the details of my life."

"Someone who knew all about you, Carter."

"The only one who knows all about me is you, Martine." I looked at her steadily. "And you've definitely not been who I thought you are."

"So, there you are. The first level of the labyrinth. Can I be trusted? Am I a double agent? Am I really Vincent's creature? Was I turned or taken by him?"

"I trust you Martine."

"Then you're an idiot and will get us all killed!" She pulled the car over onto the shoulder and yelled at me. "Stop sleepwalking! Wake up, Carter! HE COULD HAVE TAKEN MY MIND!" She was shaking from the emotion of her outburst.

"For all you know, he could have taken yours. This is one of the most powerful telepaths in the world we're talking about here. Never assume anything. Never trust reality."

She paused for another moment. "How do you know that your memories are intact? How do you know that your memories are your memories? How do you know anything? It's all in your mind, isn't it? He beat you out in the desert. He thought he was getting rid of you. He probably knows by now that you're coming for him. But look at this possibility, Carter. What if he sacrificed that guy? What if he set it up for you to get that guy killed? What if he reprogrammed you out there in the desert to be his weapon inside our Clique? What if this is all an elaborate ruse to get to Claudio?"

"Claudio would never have let me walk away then."

"More stupid thinking. You're pissing me off."

She pulled back onto the freeway, and we completed the drive in near total silence. Every time I thought of something to say, I stopped, thinking again about what she'd said ... how do I know anything? The old German philosophers had it right. Everything we know, everything we base our thinking upon comes in through our senses. We have no 'direct' access to reality, and because we don't everything we know about reality isn't reality ... it's a story about reality. When you add in telepaths that can actually alter your memory of the past, change aspects of your personality, well ... at that point anything becomes possible. Telepathic mind controllers ... it's Sartre and Orwell all rolled into one. Or as the Buddhists believe, everything is illusion.

She dropped me at my house, but she didn't stay. Martine was clearly upset with me. There were messages waiting for me on my machine. A couple from the police department before Martine got to them. My boss Alice had called, she said she needed to speak to me. She was probably working herself up to let me go because of all the missed time. Several calls from Angela. They were all old messages to another Carter from another life. I deleted them all.

Natalie came in and looked the place over.

"So this is where I live now?"

"Yes, you stay here with me, Natalie."

She looked me in the eyes. "Do I sleep with you?"

"Of course. After all, the casino did give you to me, you came with the room."

"I still don't understand how they could have made that mistake, Sir."

"Don't worry about it please. By morning you'll be living in a completely different world again."

"What do you mean?"

"Never mind, go settle in."

"Oh, okay Sir."

...

The bank checks had been in the glove compartment of the convertible. Manny never had the chance to get them. I deposited them on Monday and used my power over the people in the bank to force the manager and her boss to clear them immediately. I was rich, but it was tainted money. I was going to use it to kill Vincent and everyone around him.

I drove up to a gun range in Milpitas and spent a good portion of the next several days learning to shoot a gun. After several different models, I settled on a Colt 10mm automatic. The Colt 10mm is a big gun with a big kick. It seemed to suit me somehow. The shop owner's name was Ronny. He and his employees were all very cooperative, most pleasant to work with and learn from.

"Mr. Popingham, the Colt 10mm Delta Elite is a high stopping power gun," Ronny said. "This dude will knock your bad guy back and punch a hole in his chest the size of a softball. You don't get up from that. Using a fully jacketed 200 grain bullet, eleven grains of our hand loaded double-A number seven powder gives you almost thirteen hundred feet per second. A good shooter can group his shots under one inch with those loads."

I had no idea what the fuck he was telling me, so I asked. "So this will knock a big guy down, even a really big guy?"

He grinned this weird grin. "Mr. Popingham ... I've personally seen this gun drop a charging cape buffalo in its tracks. The typical cape buffalo is nearly 1500 pounds. This is one of the most powerful and useful semi-automatic pistols in the world."

For the next several days, I had a fairly simple routine. During the day I'd go shoot the gun and mull over my plans for the future. I nursed my grief and upset, sometimes crying as I shot the gun. In the evenings, I'd drink and fuck Natalie. I drank like a fish, not stopping until I'd passed out. Each night Natalie'd clean me up and drag me into the shower and then bed.

By Friday the 16^th, I had fired over two thousand rounds and I'd learned the basics of hitting what I was aiming at. I walked out of the store with the gun, 500 rounds of premium hand loads, and accessories. Ronny would file it as a stolen gun the next day. More usefully, I was cried out.

The other thing I did with my time that week was take a tour of the local dog shelters. I found Marco in the Gilroy pound. Marco was a 140 pound Rottweiler with an attitude problem.

The skinny volunteer girl named Rosa cautioned me.

"You should be careful around that dog, Mister."

"Why's that?"

"He's already tried to bite a couple of us, and his owner had trouble with him biting. He bit the animal control officer. He's gonna be put down tomorrow."

"Give me a minute with him, please ... oh, and unlock the cage."

"Okay mister, it's your life I guess."

I settled down in the cramped hallway of the pound and looked Marco in the eye. We came to an understanding. I promised to treat Marco well, give him a ball to play with, rub his head and not beat him with a studded cane like his prior owner had. Marco promised me to do his very, very best to rip the throats out of people I didn't like. Marco just wanted to be a good dog. When Rosa came back, we were playing in the hallway.

"I've never seen anything like that, Mister."

"Dogs and I just seem to get along. I'll take him."

"I can't let you have him, there's a destroy order on him."

"Rosa, this dog deserves a second chance. Find all the paperwork on the destroy order and shred it. Delete it from the computer. Make a new file for this dog, and I'll adopt him."

"Oh. Okay, I'll go get started. I'll probably lose my position though."

"I don't care. Go back to college. Find a nice guy. Get married. Have kids. Go live a good life."

"Oh." She said, and walked off.

So there I was, I had my gun, Martine, a couple of girls, and a head full of wild, bitter rage. I was ready, right? Ready to go take on Vincent, be the big hero and avenge my family, right? Yeah, except for one thing.

I knew that if I went up against Vincent, I'd lose. I'd get everyone around me killed or mind-wiped or worse, and it would all be useless ... useless and stupid. I felt helpless and frustrated. He was stronger than me, by a lot. Maybe he didn't have the power to kill me outright, maybe I'd been powerful enough to survive, but no way was I in his league. Something was missing, and I needed time to think it through. Martine's words, 'Never assume anything' kept going through my mind, over and over, like a litany.

After a couple of days of this, and for no particular reason, I started to pack up a bag and my car for a trip. I wasn't quite sure where I was going or what I was going to do when I got there, but I knew that I needed time to think things out ... time to see something new. Martine didn't ask many questions of me about it, and when she saw that I didn't have any answers, she stopped asking. At least she seemed pleased that I had started doing some real thinking.

On Monday the 19^th, we got in the car and headed out. I decided to head east, out towards Vincent's territory, but not into it. Reno seemed like a good compromise, a good place to hole up and spend some time. We took highway 50 out of the bay area and drove through the day. Late that afternoon we went over the pass and down towards Tahoe and Reno. The world seemed clean and pure. I knew it wasn't.

Reno was one of those spots on the maps that was a neutral ground between powerful Cliques. Claudio had most of Northern California under his control. There were a couple of people that had carved up LA and San Diego into fiefdoms. Vincent ran Las Vegas. Claudio controlled Fresno. Reno and Tahoe however were semi-open territory. No one controlled it mostly because they didn't want to start a war over it.

I found a small, flea bag hotel on the south-eastern side of Reno in a nowhere spot called 'Steamboat' that evening. It looked out on the high desert, out on nothing. That was perfect. We checked in. I put the women in one room, and Marco and I went into another. We drove to the local pie shop for dinner.

We sat over dinner and talked a while, Martine and I. I found myself going over and over the same things that I'd already thought through. It was frustrating. I grew bored. So, I looked over to the not so attractive, 50 something waitress and made a few changes to her and to the crowd around us.

She approached our booth with a frown. "How's everything with you folks this evening? Need anything more?"

"Everything's fine." I said.

She frowned. "Don't quite know how you can say that, mister."

"What do you mean?"

"Well," she paused for a second, "you've been here what, forty five minutes or so, and that hooker you got with you there," she nodded at Natalie, "hasn't once sucked your dick or anything."

Natalie gasped and turned bright red. "WHAT?"

Martine rolled her eyes and chuckled.

The waitress glared at Natalie. "You're gonna give Nevada a bad name, you lazy, no good slut. It's bad enough that decent folks have to put up with tramps like you. Then you go and make it worse by not doing your god-damned job. You don't see me slacking off, do you?"

In the background, several other customers laughed and made comments.

"That's right Gladys, you tell her!" One trucker said.

"That's right." Gladys said, glaring at Natalie. She reached out and grabbed her by the hair.

"OW!" Natalie slapped her hand away, and came out of the booth like a tiger, ready to kick some ass. She looked around at the diner crowd. Several people got to their feet, staring at her. She paused a moment and looked back and forth between the crowd and me.

I shrugged. "Well, the casino did give you to me."

She lowered her head and a single tear ran down her cheek.

Several men in the crowd laughed. One said. "Useless damned whore ... won't even do her god damned job. What the fuck good are you if you won't even suck a man's dick?"

"But ... but I'm not really a..." She sighed.

Just then, someone new, a guy who'd driven up in a red Miata, walked in. He took in the scene. "Uh?" He said, pausing at the register near the door.

The manager looked at him. "Got us a whore here who hasn't done her job today."

The guy looked around the crowd. He saw probably thirty or forty people all involved in this scene. "I think I'll go. I don't know what's happening here, but it's too weird for me." He left. Someone in the crowd said. "Probably from out of state." Heads nodded.

With a slow shrug of her shoulders, Natalie crawled under our booth table and began unbuttoning my jeans. The waitress, Gladys, leaned down and looked at her. "And don't you spit, missy ... or you won't be welcome around here ever again."

Several men in the background crowd laughed and sat down. A woman two booths over turned to her husband and said. "Can you imagine, spitting? I wouldn't put it past her. Lazy bitch."

I settled deeper into the booth as Natalie's warm mouth closed over my dick and began to get me hard. She tugged my jeans down around my feet and then let loose long enough to get my boxers down. She went back to work, licking and sucking on my rapidly enlarging dick.

Martine smiled at me, an indulgent smile. "God Carter, you're such an ass. You get off on humiliating her, don't you?" I chuckled. Gladys re-filled my coffee.

"How's that good Nevada slut mouth doing for ya, sir?"

"She has a nice mouth, Gladys."

"Say thank you, whore." Gladys leaned down and glared at Natalie.

"Frnk prw!" Natalie mouthed around the hard shaft now beginning to prod at the back of her throat. I could hear her softly sob as she sucked on me. I grabbed her lightly by the hair and began to fuck her mouth. Every once in a while I could feel a hot tear land on my shaft. It made me harder.

With a shudder, I came, jetting into her mouth. She swallowed reflexively. As the last warm thrill of delight ran through me, I pushed her off of me. She sat at my feet and hugged my leg.

"Was that good?"

I patted her on the head. "Very nice, thank you."

Later that night I sat alone in my room at the motel. I listened to the old window air conditioner struggle with the desert heat. It gasped and whirred. Cool air came out in puffs. Marco lay at my feet, one eye open, tongue lolling out, watching me. As I reflected, I knew that there had to be an answer out there, somewhere. There had to be a way to fight Vincent, to win. No one is invincible. No one is god.

I sat and reflected deep into the late hours of the night.

As I began to doze, I let my mind wander ... drift.

That was when I sensed it. A mind, out there, alone. A telepath? Perhaps, but not like anything I'd ever felt before. The sense was confusing, shadowed, almost hidden. Yet, I somehow knew that it was extremely powerful and already fully aware of me. It knew about me.

Like a clear bell tolling, a voice spoke in my mind. It was past all my defenses, inside my mind in a heartbeat, effortlessly. It spoke to me. "Good. Strong so far. Now see if you can pass the remaining test." And with that, it was gone, as if it had never existed. Even the faint trace of it off in the distance was gone.

All I had left was a memory, and a taste of it. Hard edged, like rough cut diamond, sharp, dangerous, foreign.

I reached with my mind and summoned Martine. She was already awake and alert, but had no idea of what had happened. She came over to my room in a hurry.

"Carter!"

"Someone's out there, Martine ... someone powerful. It said something about a test ... testing me, I suppose. It was a weird voice, a weird feeling."

"I don't think this is good, Carter. It might be a trap. It could be a lure. Vincent or another Inceptor could be out there."

"No, it didn't feel like that at all, Martine."

"Don't go."

"I'm going, stay here and wait for me."

"No, if you go, I'm going too."

"NO. Wait here for me, Martine. Take care of Natalie."