Last chapter of No Romance

Chapter 27, “Diabolo Ex Machina or: God of Mercy”

Not until night conquers day, and our decree falls below the earth.
            Jack, though he alone could move, did not.

We are putting down our tools of creation, and putting your story on what you might call autopilot.

            “You mean this wasn’t on autopilot? The whole time, this was supposed to be more? Different from all the other crap you’ve put me through? Special?”
            Yes, of course. There are several elements to this story that we haven’t used before. That is why our sentencing of you is so significant. That sentencing is thus: In forsaking the entire purpose of your life---your time and mission on this island---you have chosen your own destiny: a meaningless existence. Gun fights, barroom brawls, leaps of faith, chase sequences---temporary women, backstabbing friends, damsels in distress, femme fatales---that is your sentencing. This continually, this eternally, with no guidance, no goals, a plot without a purpose, just an endless splendid device, cause and effect into forever, no direction nor destination. We are walking away and withdrawing from you, leaving you alone.
            Jack McDowell had no words. The anger inside him was no longer alone---sadness had entered his heart. A crushing pain. He let out a choked, gasping sob, a reaction he had never given before, to anything. He wanted to cry.
            You chose this, Jack McDowell. Over all other roles, you chose this one.
            “I didn’t choose not to choose!” he said, his voice cracking halfway through. “When and why would I have done that!?”
            Images flashed in Jack’s mind. A computer hacker’s fingers dancing on the keyboard, ignoring the mouse on the side. A man walking with a woman on the beach at sunset. A great warrior wielding a mythic sword on a battlefield. A young magician learning the ways of wizardry. An eccentric, charismatic figure solving mysteries and mocking the lesser minds around him. Then finally a megalomaniacal villain, cackling and explaining his evil plan to a bound hero who was already planning a clever escape.
            And Jack McDowell knew what he had to do. That which had been building up inside him for so long finally broke the surface. We say “broke” but in reality it burst out with an explosion, like a raging sea monster filled with fiery, red-eyed wrath.

Jack snapped.

            And time resumed again.
            Ann had stopped shooting at the men around her because they had already stopped shooting at her. The men Jack had been brawling with were backing up, afraid of the unconquerable hero.
            But Jack was no longer the hero.
            With rage and gritted teeth he wrenched Wrench from Ann’s hands, strung his arm around her throat, and put the gun to her head.
            “Come and get me if you dare!” he screamed, spinning slowly on the spot. “You attack again and the girl dies!”
            “Jack, have you lost your mind?” Ann shrieked.
            “I think I might have done just that, yes,” he seethed viciously. “And unless you all change your minds and join me as my lackeys, the girl dies!”
            We the gods were so shocked at what he had done that all but one of us left. I stayed behind to witness the proceedings. I alone knew what was going to happen, how the final pieces of the story would fall into place.
            The men around Jack were shocked too. No reaction seemed appropriate but to just stand and stare, mouths agape.
            “You get to grovelling or the girl dies!” he yelled at all of them menacingly. “If I’m a slave, you will all be slaves too! I will use the advanced volcano technology in my possession to destroy every part and person of this island that is not under my control! And I will use the mystical protection of this jacket to shield myself against any foe! Bwahahahahahahaha!”
            “Mr. McDowell!” came a raised but soft voice. “What’s going on?”
            Dark Jack whirled around, gun still pressed to Ann’s temple. Blake had shown up at the top of the ravine. The seven or eight Cardaccian workers were with him.
            Jack laughed insanely. “You think you can stop me? Nobody can stop me!”
            He raised Wrench to fire on Blake and the innocent Cardaccians. But for the first time in Wrench’s remembered existence...it missed.
            Jack fired again and again. After missing all the Cardaccians, he turned on and missed the surviving men of Amon Dem around him. He swore when Wrench was fully empty after only six shots. He made to check the chamber---
            ---and that was when Paula struck.

First with an impossibly high kick that made her legs create a 180-degree angle (which isn’t an angle at all), then an elbow into Jack’s gut. He dropped Wrench and doubled over. She spun and kneed him in the face, knocking him backwards, dazed.

But the insanity hadn’t left his eyes. And she, too, was now possessed---entirely taken over by Paula.

Jack recovered in a matter of milliseconds, then charged at her, swinging his right fist at her jaw. She dodged and tried a counter punch, but he grabbed her arm midway and flipped her down on her back. She rolled to the side as he thrust his knee down at her chest. She swung her leg around to the back of his knees, tripping him up. He didn’t quite fall to the ground, but had to use his hands to keep balanced as he righted himself. The two now faced each other in fighting stances, his a boxing bounce, hers some sort of martial art. Both utterly ignored the world around them. It had disappeared, and they had lost themselves completely.

Nearly completely.

“So this is what it comes down to,” he said. “The whole thing, leading to this.”

“It’s about time,” she quipped back. “Afraid to kill a girl?”

She struck at him like a cobra, coming at him with rapid steps in one smooth motion. He maintained his brute force and barreled into the attack. She sidestepped him, but he managed to grab her arm and jerked her around with his momentum. This threw her backwards into the ravine slope. She found footing on the slope and launched back into him. He absorbed the brunt of her attack, wrapping his bigger, more powerful arms around her as she essentially tackled him to the ground. But Jack ended up on top, and pinned her arms down.

He used that moment to catch his breath. Both their breasts were heaving. Every ounce of his rage was, in that moment, shooting through his eyes and boring into hers. And in that moment---no one was ever sure if it was Annie showing through, or if Jack had found a vulnerability in Paula---her eyes expressed fear. Real, desperate, fear.

            Jack’s grip on her arms faltered just a bit.
            And that’s when something tackled him---something orange and black and magnificent, a beast with the mind and power of a god (though not a god’s speaking capability). Carl Sagan had toppled Jack, had pinned his arms down with his paws, was snarling at him, dagger-like teeth bared.
            And now Jack looked afraid. But not just of the Super Tiger standing on his chest. It was a look of realization---the dawning horror of both his choice and his presumed fate.
            Carl Sagan noticed this, and stopped snarling.

Then the wondrous beast licked Jack’s face.

And Jack McDowell began to weep. Genuine tears poured from his eyes amid wracking, heaving sobs. He was crying out in agony, in regret, in pain, more than a wounded animal---a wounded, judged, condemned soul. Carl Sagan got off Jack’s chest, and as the ruined hero curled up into a fetal position, the Super Tiger licked the tears as they fell from his clenched-close eyes.

            Before anyone knew what was going on, Paula had melted back into Annie and she was crying too. After lying on the ground a long time, she crawled over to Jack and put her arms around him. Neither said a word, just rocked in each other’s embrace. The darkness had released them from its clutches.
            At last, when the tear wells began to dry, Jack managed to sit up. He looked first to Carl Sagan.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

Carl Sagan looked at his old friend sadly, as if to say, “You did the same for me! You saved me from the darkest abyss! I was deep within the grip of hell, bent on violence and destruction, and with one sock to the jaw you rescued me, and forced me to see the light! I owed you, my friend, my only true friend. Thank you.” His words!

Annie threw her arms around Carl Sagan’s neck and held onto him tight. She kissed his fur and then she and Jack rose to their feet.

Jack was too ashamed to meet the eyes of the men standing all around them, so he merely hung his head as he said, “Sorry. I’m so sorry, everyone. I just need to leave. I need to get out of here. We need to get out of here. That’s all I know now. I promise you I didn’t kill Golbez and that I’m not faking as his son. I’m not really your enemy, I’ve just been defending myself the whole time. Everything else that happened was out of my control. I’m sorry it ended like that. I’m sorry.”

He and Annie trudged up the ravine, side by side, with Carl Sagan right behind them, past Blake and through the line of quivering Cardaccians, and finally towards the train, walking with an emotionally triggered limp. They left everyone standing still, wondering what on earth it was they had just witnessed.

---

A few blinks later and Jack was Jack again, and Annie, Annie.

“Jack, what was that?” Annie asked quietly.

“I was trying to escape. Trying to...” He sighed. “Make a choice. And it just took over. I don’t understand it fully myself. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.”

“Hilti, we’re on our way to board,” Jack spoke into his wristwatch. “And I think I know the last password to get us out of here. I’ll deliver it in person. Wait for us.”

Annie had picked up Wrench from the ground as they started leaving, and was now offering it back to Jack.

            “No, no,” he said, declining with his hand. “You keep it. I don’t want to shoot another henchman again for the rest of my life. I’m not going to do that ever again.”
            “Are you sure?” she said tentatively.
            But there was no time to answer. The whistle had just sounded on the train and the horn had been blown. Steam pulsed through the train’s system and brought the machine back to life.
            Jack and Annie looked at each other in alarm. They could run, but they’d never make it. They’d have to stare helplessly as the train, for whatever reason, left the station, just barely out of their grasp.
            Jack yelled into his wrist.
            “Hilti! Hilti! Stop the train! How are you even going without the password?”
            But no response came back.
            Jack, taking on his old persona, looked back at Carl Sagan.
            “Annie,” Jack said. “Take my hand.”
            There was no reason for it other than theatricality, but she took his hand anyway, and the two mounted themselves on Carl Sagan’s back.
            “Hyah!” shouted Jack unnecessarily. Carl Sagan had already begun running. Annie held onto Jack and Jack onto Carl Sagan’s ruff as the Super Tiger burump-burumped forth towards the runaway train.
            Carl Sagan was more than a match for the locomotive. He got Jack and Annie close enough to the caboose’s porch that they could transfer over without worry. Jack went first, then helped Annie---though Paula, and maybe even Ann wouldn’t have needed the help.
            They had finally made it. Onto the train as it was about to leave Rainswept Isle behind. Jack and Annie were about to share in their exultant triumph when they remembered the beast that had helped them get there. They turned back to see the gradually fading Super Tiger looking at them, his best friends, with a mournful, longing look. He bellowed after them, and Annie started to cry as they waved goodbye.
            “Somehow that’s the saddest thing I’ve seen this entire journey,” she said, on the verge of further tears.
            “I know what you mean. But let’s get up to the head car, where Hilti is. We have to find out what’s going on.”
            They passed through the cars in the same way Jack had earlier that day. This time, the train was empty of passengers or stowaways. In one car, lit by cloud-burning sunlight pouring in through glassless windows, they found crates, and Jack, curious, pried open one of them.
            He leapt backwards.
            “What, what!” said Annie, the sudden fear spreading to her as if contagious and clutching onto Jack.
            He just pointed. She crept over to the box and looked inside.
            She turned back around, confused.

“Stuffed animals?” she said, her head tilted.

            “Not just any animals,” Jack said, trembling. “Bunnies.” He shuddered.
            Annie laughed.
            “This is what you’re afraid of?”
            “Somehow I feel like they’re representatives of Death himself. Stupid children’s books that aren’t really for children. Gah. Let’s get out of here.”
            And he marched out.

For a moment Annie wondered if the stuffed bunny rabbits might have been used to transport drugs, but did not pursue the issue. She just closed the crate and joined Jack outside in his march to the head car.

But Jack had stopped outside the door, and for good reason. The next four cars on the train weren’t really cars because they weren’t really there. Just flat gray steel rectangular platforms where cars once were. Something had done away with them.

And by now the rushing train had taken them over the sea, off the isle proper. So without the cars, there were no guards or boundaries to keep them from falling off and into the water at 45 miles per hour.

“That wind feels amazing,” Annie said, taking off her Paula wig and letting said wind blow through her real hair. It was an odd image. Didn’t quite fit. She tossed the wig into the sea. “Won’t need that anymore.”
            “Won’t you?” Jack said as he leaped over to the steel platform.

She didn’t answer. Both their minds were consumed of the age-old question: what happened next? For them it wasn’t a matter of suspense but of true mystery. They had escaped the entrapments of Rainswept Isle, surely, but where were they headed now? They did not know. Not the train’s destination, nor the destination of their souls. Jack was especially tortured, the judgment of the gods repeating endlessly in his mind. He had forgotten the words I had whispered to him after his conversation with the other gods in Golbez’s car.

They crossed the car-less platforms without fear of falling and finally made it to the front car. When they opened the door, Clara Higgins saw them just fine, but Hilti jumped in surprise.

“Oh, it’s you guys,” he said with relief as he turned back to the dashboard. “Scared me.”

Jack didn’t apologize. Instead he stepped over to Hilti, spun him around, and made to punch him in the face.

“Jack!” Annie said.

Jack halted in his cocked position. “What?” he said.

“Violence isn’t the answer!”

“Right, right. Is that the lesson we learned? Anyway, Hilti, why the hell did you take off without us? And how did you do it without the password?”

“You weren’t on board?”

“Some little fella with a weird accent came in and told us to go ahead and start the train,” said Clara. “Said he came in the name of the god of mercy, or some nonsense like that. Told us you were on board. He even entered the password for us, though he didn’t mention what it was.”

Jack caught Annie’s eye. They knew who it was, of course. The one figure who they hadn’t seen at the top of that ravine after the incident. The one person whose fate they had yet to seal. The one character whose depths, limited though they may be, Jack had yet to discover.

Amon Dem was on this train.

Jack turned back to Hilti.

“But why didn’t you tell us on the radio, or respond to us when we talked to you?”

Hilti looked at Jack, then at Clara, then at the wall where the radio transmitter was.

“Well would you look at that. The damn radio was switched off. Huh!” He went over and flipped it on. “Must have brushed against it with one of our backs.”

Jack let out a long sigh.

“It’s funny,” Hilti was saying as he retook his place at the train’s helm. “I feel like we should have finished crossing the sea to the mainland by now, but it just keeps staying the same distance away. Like we’re stuck in between two places. A liminal state. Hm. I swear there’s a lesson in all this.”

“I think I need to go think on what that lesson might be,” Jack said. “Alone.”

He exited the head car and jumped onto one of the flat empty platforms. There he wandered, hands in his pockets, head down, the sea below him rushing by.

Jack didn’t want to think about his future. No doubt it would start as soon as he got to the mainland. Probably some drug runners in the jungle would cause trouble and need to be neutralized. And it would keep going from there. On and on, and on and on.

He looked away, out over the sea. He smelled the salty air. That scent might once have represented freedom to Jack, just like this train. Now it was a symbol of his unbreakable chains.

Wanting a distraction, Jack turned his thoughts turned to the photo inside Golbez’s locked wooden box. Then to the name on the back. Then to the elaborate emergency password system Golbez had set up for the train.

“My son is named...”

Jackie. It had to be Jackie. That was what Golbez called Jack all the time.

But...that was also the name of the boy in the photo. Wasn’t it?

            It started to rain. A perfectly normal, average kind of rain. Not hard, not light, not drizzling, not pouring. Just rain.

“Is your name really Jack McDowell, Hero?”

            Jack stiffened. Slowly he turned around to see Amon Dem, standing on the next car-less platform with a piece of paper in one hand, a gun in the other. He seemed to be standing okay, though his left pant leg was soaked in blood.
            “That’s what I’ve been told for thirty years,” Jack said coolly.
            “How would you like to know that you’ve been lied to that whole time?” Amon Dem said casually in his strange accent.
            Jack’s eyes narrowed a little, but he said nothing.
            “I have in my hand here a letter. A letter written from one Malandra McDowell, to her ex-husband Golbez MacDowell. In it she explains everything. Did you ever read it, Jack? No, you didn’t, did you? Just now, hiding on this train, I read the letter again and realized that you didn’t know any of it. You hadn’t opened it or read it or had any awareness of its contents. That explains why it was still sealed when I found it in your room after you poisoned Golbez.”
            The letter he was meant to deliver to Golbez.
            “Get to the point.”
            “Few people know my real name. As I told you once, it’s pretty embarrassing. But you know it.” He grinned spitefully. “My real name...is Jack MacDowell. Or, if you’re my father, you could call me ‘Jackie.’”
            Jack’s face paled, undercutting his rugged, unshaved look.
            “What the hell are you playing at?”
            “My father created that password system so he’d be reminded who his son was. His memory is notoriously erratic, as I’m sure you know. ‘My son is named...Amon Dem.’ That was the password.”
            Jack’s paleness turned a sickly color.
            Amon Dem went on, relentless. He spoke his next words with a bold finality.

“Golbez is not your father. You are not his son. You think you could have been born from such a complex and eccentric tale as Golbez’s and Malandra’s? No---you could only have been born from a ripe, overused cliche, that of the assassin who falls in love with his mark. I, I was their son. Malandra is my mother. She’s both our mothers. We are half-brothers, Jack McDowell! And only one of us ever truly belonged on Rainswept Isle. My accent is proof that I was their son. It might interest you to know that English is my first and only language. I have always spoken this bizarre way, this combination of several different languages. I wondered about it for a long time. I came to the conclusion that it represents the United Kingdom, and all the nations it once conquered and colonized. That is my heritage, after all.”

Jack was reeling.

“But the name...the name Amon Dem...”

“Please, Hero. Do you think I’d try to build my career in a military structure with the name ‘Jackie’? No---’Amon Dem’ is far more powerful. I made it up myself. I told you once I was raised by my grandmother. My nani, Mother MacDowell. Golbez himself never really had time for me. Once in a while, in the beginning, sure. He offered to do those typical father-son things every few years. But he forgot about me easily. Frequently. But I stayed with him. Loyal. Patient. He even forgot all about me when you came along, but I still loved him. You never did, even when you thought he was your father. And you killed him. You killed my father. You probably don’t even know how to love, do you, Hero?”

“I...I loved my mother,” Jack said, reeling. “You...never even knew her.”

“But did she ever love you? I don’t think she was capable of love. This letter proves it.” He waved the paper around. “The reason she sent you to Golbez was as I had always suspected, but clearly something you were unaware of. So I apologize for blaming you for that. She sent you here as the culmination of a plan that spanned your entire life. Your parents knew exactly who and what you were. They were using you the entire time. Preparing you to do this final mission. You, an invincible hero who was born to fight corruption and villainy, were sent to be a ticking time bomb to take Golbez and his industry down, as revenge for what he had done to her around the time that you were born. She claims he stole...me. That Golbez took me, her first son, away from her when I was born, so after she escaped she had another son with Johnny Hit, a son to replace me and act as a calculated, cold-blooded instrument of vengeance. They planned it together. Both had come to hate Golbez. They knew you’d be the perfect weapon against him and his organization. She even named you the same name as her first son because she knew Golbez would get confused and believe you to be me and accept you as his son, so he would be caught off guard. All they had to do was put it together and press Play, and Golbez Industries would fall apart. She wrote this letter to him to make him fear. She knew by the time he read it, he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. You were already there, a virus that had already infected the organism. There’s even indication she was working with that rat Vanasmas, but it doesn’t spell it out explicitly. Either way, Jack McDowell---she was controlling and using you the entire time.”

Jack could hardly process it all. So he said the first thing that came into his mind.

“I thought you came in the name of the god of mercy? So why do you feel no mercy for her? for me? Why are you so angry when such terrible things have transpired on both sides of this battle?”

“I’m here now because of your slaughter of my brothers. They all had names, Hero. And stories. They were real people. They had love in their lives. They---we---were brothers. Not like you and I, who only happen to share the same mother. No, my men and I were true brothers. Family. And you destroyed that family. Including our father. My father. And so this is your sentencing. This is your judgment. This is your punishment. You have brought this upon yourself after so many merciless killings. Jack McDowell---prepare to die. You have the length of time until I can raise this gun and aim it at your heart.”

Jack didn’t move to get away. He stood there, accepting his fate, without a care to contradict.

Amon Dem raised his gun, and had almost aimed it at Jack’s heart when another voice sounded.

Paula’s.

“Amen, Amon.”

BANG. Only one shot sounded, but two had been fired. They had gone off at precisely the same instant.

Amon Dem crumpled to the ground. He wasn’t moving.

Jack clutched at his stomach, where crimson blood was soaking his white shirt underneath the black leather jacket.

“Jack, Jack!”

            Ann came rushing over from the doorway of the head car. She caught him as he was about to fall over and helped him to lie down. “Jack! Where are you hurt, where are you hurt? Jack!”
            “Stomach!” Jack gasped as she lowered him. “Obviously! No, don’t touch it! Gah!”
            Kneeling at his side, she drew back her hand from the blood and started panicking.
            “I don’t know what to do,” she said frantically. “I don’t know what to do!”
            “There’s nothing to do,” Jack said, breathing heavily. “I deserve what I got. But this...this is a mercy. One of the gods told me they’d do this. They’re letting me go. Releasing me from my bonds.”
            Ann didn’t understand, but she didn’t know that because she wasn’t really listening.
            Jack looked up, past Annie, at the heavens. “Thank you,” he said to me.

I am here because I care for my creations, I told him. Though I did not create you, I took pity. But there is little else I can do for you. The human characters are so driven by reaction that the gods of pulp fiction didn’t even have to write this story. All they had to do was have the martial arts seminar and the villain symposium be booked at the same hotel on the same day over thirty years ago. For the most part they simply observed as the rest happened from there. A chain of cause and effect.

“My will!” Jack burst out, through tremendous pain, “My will can break that chain.”

“You have a will?” Annie said. “Jack, what are you talking about?”

“No...My choice. I can...still choose something. Just like I have this entire time. Just one, small thing. You know what it is. No...no romance...” He winced. “And in choosing, I am a god, just like they are.”

“Oh, Jack!”

It was all too much for Annie. Floods of tears pouring from her eyes, she leaned down to finally kiss him.

“No!” Jack said as loudly as he could. “Please, no. Stop...right there.”

She stopped a few inches from his face. Though he was clearly experiencing the greater agony, Annie was clearly enduring some of her own. The strain on her face in this act of resistance really did made it look like she was in genuine physical pain at not being able to just give in.

But she would do it and she did it: she hovered there, giving him the choice.

And he made it.

“No, sweet strawberry lips. I...won’t pucker up...for you. But please...help me get out of his jacket. Eli Noyce was right. It is painful to die this way.”

“No, Jack, no! Please no! If you die I’m going to marry someone else but I won’t care who and have a baby with him, a son! And I will name that baby ‘Jackson’ because I love you so much and I’ll never tell the man I married why. I’ll just say I like the name and it will be your son, Jack, your son!”

“That’s...that’s horrible,” Jack managed to say. “I don’t think that’s the right thing to do...I don’t know if killing Amon Dem was the right thing to do either...”

“Oh, Jack, what can I do then? What can I do?”

“You can take this jacket off of me. Only then will the train reach the mainland.”

Annie, overcome by grief, howled and wailed, but she did as Jack requested. That act was difficult on both of them, though for very different reasons. The gratitude in Jack’s face made her want to kiss him again.

Instead she steeled herself and flung the jacket behind her, where the wind carried it into the sea.

“Now I can die. Now I can escape. Now I am free.”

He closed his eyes and left her. And she, with the rains, wept.

Isle.