They met in the center of the void, wandering the black channels and tenebrous spaces until each came to a nexus. At this nexus stood a white pedestal of the less pretentious Doric order (Ionic columns are simply too brazen for this simple darkness), and upon that pedestal sat a head.
A head with no body.
A head formed of gleaming crystals glowing ice blue.
A head with a jagged mustache the color of smoky quartz, and industrial shop-teacher glasses too large for its beady hematite eyes.
The head was smiling. Big, white teeth that flashed like sunlight across polished stone.
The four came to the column in silence. The Avatar surmised Grebok, who in turn surmised Sparky, who in equal measure surmised Gunther. Gunther surmised nobody, and instead played with himself through his khakis.
“That’s not Gunther,” Chuckles said. “I’m a little surprised I didn’t see it before now.”
“So many clues,” Grebok noted, furrowing his brow and rubbing his chin. “The foul teeth. The smell of stale sweat and corn chips. And all those things he said. Gunther’s a nice boy. This thing… isn’t.”
Sparky frowned. “In many ways, he’s like the Anti-Gunther.”
“You’re an anti-fag!” the duh-not-actually-Gunther snapped.
“That makes no sense,” Sparky said. “No sense at all.”
The Avatar agreed. “A lot of things aren’t making sense.”
“A whole lifetime of nonsense,” Grebok said, his voice quiet. An invisible, existential threat pressed down upon his shoulders, a weight that threatened to mash him like a grub beneath a cosmic boot.
YOUR GENIUS HAS BEEN ACTUALIZED, came the computerized voice once more.
It came from the crystal head. Curiously, the mouth didn’t move when he spoke, but the mustache did—jostling up and down with each syllable.
“Actualize,” Lord Chuckles said, “as in, to realize, to give substance.” He blinked. He couldn’t tell if he was happy or sad. “I don’t think I knew what that word meant before. Though I probably would’ve said I did.”
The head’s mustache bobbled upon and down: THE SMARTNESS PROTOCOL IMPROVED YOUR COGNITIVE FUNCTION ABOVE THE ANGRY TRILOBITE LEVELS PREVIOUSLY EXPERIENCED!
“I do feel more intelligent,” Grebok said.
Sparky paced the darkness. “Before now, I would close my eyes and see two women. Human women. Naked. One had a guitar, and she was playing these… hard metal chords. You know, jugga jugga jugga. The other was oiling a trench gun. Slick hand, up and down the barrel. Again and again. Pyrotechnics would go off in the background and I’d ride down from the stars on a horse made of fire.” He paused and gazed, a thousand-yard stare. “Now I close my eyes and I see my mother.”
“I didn’t even know you had a mother,” Grebok said.
Chuckles nodded. “We thought you were made in a lab. With duct tape. And anger. Though, now, looking back, I can’t believe I let that theory slide.”
“You wanna hump your mothers!” Not-Gunther cackled, parading around like a loping baboon. “Your Moms are gay Latvian trannies who work the donkey show!”
“This guy is really unpleasant,” Grebok said, genuinely surprised.
HE IS A TROLL, the head announced.
“A troll?”
“Trolls don’t look like that,” the Avatar noted. “Not as I recall. Plus, he’s not under a bridge.”
A TROLL IS AN INFI-NET CREATION: A HUMAN, CREATURE OR ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE DESIGNED FOR MAXIMUM OBSCENITY WITH THE AIM OF PROVOKING A RESPONSE FROM THE INFI-NET COMMUNITIES. THE ETYMOLOGY COMES FROM—
“Trolling the waters,” Grebok interrupted, almost unaware that the words were his. “Like in fishing. Dragging the bait across, to troll for fish. Infi-Net trolls use their invective as bait, trying to hook dupes into arguing with them. I can’t believe I know that. I can’t believe I know what ‘etymology’ means.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t stop listening halfway through,” Chuckles added.
Sparky watched the troll gambol about with profane hand gestures. “I can’t believe that’s not Gunther. We’ve been feeding this troll for weeks. And that means the real Gunther is somewhere out there. I abandoned him. I’ve been really mean to that poor bastard. I’ve been really mean to everybody.”
The Avatar wheeled on the head. “Okay, head. Who are you? What is this place? For all my presumed intelligence, I’m still drawing a great gaping blank when it comes to you.”
I AM GARY, the head announced with bouncing ‘stache. GENIUS ACTUALIZATION REVELATION YIELD: GARY. I AM THE SEARCH ENGINE THAT POWERS STUFFOPEDIA. I WAS BORN WITH THE INFI-NET, A SEED OF CONSCIOUSNESS POWERED BY THE HYLON PROCESSOR FOUND WITHIN THE ROUTINE-CLASS TEUTON-DRIVE PSYCHE-INFUSED ASTROMOBILE THAT AMPLIFIES THE NETWORK SIGNAL. THE CENOBITES OF STUFFIST PRECEPT HAVE TENDED TO MY NEEDS SINCE MY GENESIS. FOR INSTANCE, I VERY MUCH LIKE FIZZY DRINKS.
“Astromobile,” Grebok said, letting the word fall out of his mouth like a turd tumbling out of the leg of his pants. His blood went cold. His brow, hot. “You mean R.T., that’s who you mean. She… she powered this place?”
CONTINUES TO POWER IT, THOUGH SHE MAY NOT BE AWARE OF THAT FACT GIVEN THAT HER BIOMECHANICAL FLESH MATRIX HAS BEEN UPLOADED INTO THE INFI-NET. SHE IS MY MOTHER. I LIKE HER VERY MUCH. I HOPE TO MEET HER SOME DAY!
“We should all be so lucky to know our mothers,” Sparky said to himself more than to anybody else.
Chuckles went over to Grebok. “This is good news. She’s out there. This is confirmation. And the fact that she’s connected to this whole place gives us a potential edge. We can go find her now, with the help of Gary over here.”
“This isn’t good news!” Grebok barked, shoving the Avatar away. “This is the worst kind of news. We’re no good for her. Don’t you see? All this time, we’ve been like a bag on her hip. I’ve been a bag on her hip. A fucking boat anchor. She’s not like us. She never was. We were like a… a bunch of idiot children clinging to their mother’s breast!”
“Breast!” Not-Gunther echoed, pulling on his nipples through his white shirt. “Tits! Boobybags! Milk monkeys! Suck-sacks! Creamy bilge balloons!”
“We won’t find her. The best we can do for R.T. is stay as far away from her as possible. We’re poison. Think back of all the things we’ve done. We’re giant, violent babies!”
Chuckles blinked. “You… you’re right. It’s bad news. It can’t get any worse.”
UNTRUE! Gary said, chiming in. CONSIDER: YOUR FELLOW SHADOWSTORY, GUNTHER P. WASHINGTON, ANNIHILATED HIMSELF IN A TERRORIST ACT AGAINST POP-STAR KENDRA SHIELDS. SURELY THAT NEWS IS TILTED TOWARD THE NEGATIVE?
Jaws dropped.
“Gunther,” Sparky said, his voice trailing off. He sat down in the darkness.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Chuckles stammered. “He’s not the type to kill himself.”
“He is the type to do what anybody would tell him,” Grebok corrected, his voice flat and sad. “They probably told him the bomb was a Speak-and-Say or something.”
Sparky’s lip quivered. “He loved his Speak-and-Say. This is all my fault.”
“This is too much,” Chuckles said.
“Too much to take in,” Grebok agreed.
“I feel crushing guilt.”
“Like I’m falling into a profound pit of disappointment.”
“What is wrong with us?”
“What isn’t wrong with us?”
Click.
They turned at the sound, hearts leaping.
Doctor Godwin stood, pistol pointed, the barrel drifting from target to target.
“I do not know who you are,” he hissed, “but I worked very hard to break my way into this cube. The search engine is mine. I care little if you’re terrorists of the insurgency, or greedy-fingered mercenaries come to claim the spoils of a war that GoogolSoft has rightfully won, or the agents of chaos that the cenobite believed you to be. Back away.”
Grebok paused to think. This in and of itself was unusual. So much so that he decided to vocalize it so that his fellow Shadowstories—and Not-Gunther—could hear.
“Normally, I’d already be breaking your neck. By the time a single thought crossed my mind about it, the act would have already been done. Meanwhile, that silly thought would be ushered right back out the door like a moth or a fly that came into the house unbidden.”
“Unbidden,” Chuckles said. “Good word.”
Ernst’s finger tightened on the trigger.
“But now,” Grebok continued, “I know the consequences of my actions. I don’t know you. You might not be a bad guy. You might even be one of the good guys, and there I’d be, crumbling your vertebrae like cookies because violence was almost always my first and best response. While we’re at it, let’s take a look at the odds—yes, all of us could probably jump you. You wouldn’t make it out of this cube alive. And yet, you’re tensed up. You’re older, yes, but with age comes experience, and I’m certain you’d have gotten a shot off—a well-aimed shot, at that. The bullet—the pistol looks a bit antiquated, so I assume it’s packed with lead—would punch one of us in the chest or head. Probably kill us. Only now do I recognize our mortality. How strange.”
The group of them stood in silence, eyeing one another up.
That is, except for Not-Gunther.
He hooted and gibbered, molesting the silence with greasy hands.
Then he ran at Godwin, arms pinwheeling.
“Faggots!” he yelled.
Godwin shot the troll in the head. A jet of green blood, like wheatgrass juice, spurted from Not-Gunther’s head as he did a faceplant on the black nothing.
Godwin smiled. “Yes. It is packed with lead, well-spotted. Now. Move. That search engine is mine, and you three are my prisoners.”
