Dillinger
A man can’t live between two worlds forever. The time comes when he must choose.
Photo by Martijn Vonk on Unsplash
This is a sequel to The First Death in 100 Years. While it is written to work as a stand alone, I do think this story is more enjoyable if you read the first one first. Either way enjoy.
Dillinger looked at the man standing at the back door of his clinic. Dark hair fell to his upper back. Dillinger’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know you.”
“You did once,” the man responded.
“I’d remember ya.”
“I was different the last time we saw each other. I’m Elian. My parents were…” He struggled for the names. “Oris and... and Rena.”
Dillinger’s frown deepened. He pulled his gun from the holster. “Get in then. Did anyone follow you?”
“I was careful.”
“Some of the new bot designs are better trackers.”
Elian took a small puck out of his pocket. “I said I was careful.”
Dillinger looked Elian up and down and frowned again. “Where did you get a jammer?”
Elian laughed. “I’m not my parents, Mr. Dillinger. It’s hard to remain patriotic for a nation that erased your family.”
Dillinger rummaged through a cabinet, pulled out a thick blue file, and opened it, sorting through the papers. He found his pictures of Oris, Rena and the baby. “How old are you?” Dillinger demanded.
“I’m almost 35.”
“Fine, why are you here?”
“I want to join the fence sitters.”
The next day, Elian sat in a chair. “And after this I won’t struggle to remember my parent’s names?”
Dillinger frowned and said, “If that is why you are doing this, kid, I assure you it’s not worth it.”
“It’s only one reasons. Maybe the biggest,” Elian said.
“Ok kid. Just checkin’. Memory isolation is the most painful procedure I do. Last chance to back out.”
“I want to help the fence sitters.”
“Okay kid. Starting now.”
Elian stiffened in the chair. His teeth clenched and his eyes shut. It felt as if someone were slowly dragging hot pokers from inside his brain outward in all directions. The burning pulsed forward one neuron at a time.
“Halfway kid,” Dillinger promised. Elian couldn’t hear anything. All he knew was pain.
Somewhere in his scrambled mind images started to grow. A man with mousy hair and blue eyes like his. He hugged a woman with long black hair. They were crying. It was a goodbye. His twenty-fifth birthday. Why were they crying?
It is their last day, that is why.
The pain stopped as suddenly as it had started. Elian opened his eyes, panting like a dog in August. Between gasping breaths, he said, “Oris and Rena.”
“They were good people, kid.”
For the first year Elian cleaned the warehouse, ran errands, and acted as a general assistant. Dillinger didn’t offer Elian any more modifications, nor did Elian dare ask.
The warehouse spent more time as a trading post than a clinic. Most visitors bought forbidden items, mostly nonsynthetic food from the jungle settlement. With the money Dillinger brought medicine and other complex technology back to the jungle.
“Hey kid, ‘member when you first started?” Dillinger asked one day. “I told you, you could work when you wanted, no schedule?”
“I remember,” Elian said, emptying a dustpan into a bin.
“Well, it was a fib.” Dillinger laughed. “Had you not worked enough, you’d be sweepin’ my floor forever. Come have a seat in the chair.”
Elian sat back down in the patient’s chair and looked at his mentor with a doubtful grimace. “What’s up Dillinger?”
“Well, your scrawny ass isn’t going to make it to the jungle and back on foot, and we can’t take no cars. Bots can track em.”
Elian didn’t move. He only looked at Dillinger.
“Kid, I’m tryin’ to tell you we’re gonna put some meat on those bones of yours. Next trip is in two months and you are coming with.”
Two months later, Elian didn’t recognize his own body. His defined muscles bulged against his skin. He could run over two-hundred miles in a day and he needed little sleep. Now that he had seen firsthand how quickly the nanos could transform a person, their basic maintenance duties seemed wasteful.
Dillinger looked at Elian closely. “Okay kid, we will only have the nanos for about half the trip.”
Elian pursed his lips and remained silent. Dillinger continued, “What did you tell the wife?”
“That I was going on a mission to the wilds. That I was working with a group that tried to bring wild humans back to civilization.”
Dillinger laughed from his gut. “She bought that?”
Elian shrugged. “How do we get past the walls?” he asked.
“You get to learn your first secret, kid.” Dillinger moved to a large rack along the wall. Reaching behind the steel, he pressed something. The rack drifted down into the floor, revealing a staircase heading down into the earth. “Tunnels,” Dillinger said. “They connect us all over the city.”
The tunnels were dark, but Elian could only tell by the lack of color. The same nanos that kept him alive and built muscle amplified his low-light vision, like built-in infrared cameras. Taking full advantage of the nanos they jogged for hours. Even as the tunnel took a steep upward turn, they maintained the pace. Dillinger came to a stop at a dead end. A rope ladder rested beside the wall. Elian couldn’t see the hatch at the top.
The ladder swayed easily. Elian had to focus on each movement, keeping his body weight centered, but before long they emerged from a rotting wood hatch into a mixed oak and pine forest. Small animals scurried under the brush or into the trees. “Trees?” Elian asked, pointing at a pine.
“Pines,” Dillinger said. “Wait until you see what lay to the south.”
With a nod, Dillinger turned to the south, and they jogged once again.
They ran. Over rock outcroppings. Uphill. Through trickling streams. Animals scurried in their path. Dillinger pressed the pace, not slowing down for Elian. Elian kept up, but Dillinger, he thrived. He knew every root, every rut, and stump. He knew the thin game trails that cut through the brush, and where you had to look out for loose soil. He shouted commands back to Elian as they ran.
After a day and a half, they set up camp along the banks of a river. Dillinger dropped some lines into the water and set some traps on the outskirts of camp. “It’s easier than it used to be, kid. The animals have gotten dumber with us around less.” Dillinger explained as he filleted a large trout. A rabbit pelt set at his feet. The meat was already over the fire.
The next morning Dillinger was the first to wake. A couple of hours later, Elian joined him beside the river. A small group of deer came down to the water to drink, and fish jumped into the air snatching bugs. Elian asked, “So do we swim across?”
Dillinger laughed as he picked up a stick and tossed it as far as he could into the river. The stick hit the water with a splash and was whipped down the river at frightening speed. “The current is faster than it looks.” Dillinger explained as a wide-eyed Elian followed the stick. Dillinger continued, “There is a bridge farther upstream. But first we need to turn off our nano’s here.”
Dillinger’s bridge was six large cedar logs stripped of bark and lay across the river. He had cut thin grooves into the logs to increase traction and give water channels.
Thirteen days later they stood on the crest of a mountain, looking down into a valley. Jungle loomed as far as the eye could see. Except for a spot at the base of the mountain. In that clearing, buildings had replaced trees. Rows of planted food replaced the thick underbrush. A small river ran through the center of the town, and thin aqueducts spread in every direction like a flowing octopus.
“It’s about two more days to town,” Dillinger said. “You’ve done well, kid.”
Elian was speechless. He looked out over the emerald expanse and took a deep breath. The air felt different, cooler, more nourishing. He took two more deep breaths. “Are we setting up camp here?” he asked.
“Hell, yeah we are. This camp site is half the reason I take these trips.”
They walked into town late afternoon two days later. The town’s children rushed to greet them, or so Elian thought. He quickly learned the excitement was for the sweet treats that Dillinger brought. They squealed with delight as they put the small synthetic candy into their mouths.
To Elian, this wasn’t a different settlement; it was a different world. There were no robots to be seen. Every machine in the town was operated by a human being. They pulled on levers, pressed pedals, and turned wheels to make them perform a multitude of tasks. The hospital was staffed by humans as well. Specially trained people with a deep understanding of the human body. Elian was surprised when Dillinger called one woman “doctor.” In his city, there hadn’t been a human doctor for centuries.
People did the less glamorous work too. They collected trash, made their own meals, and tended to the crops. They weren’t universally happy, far from it, but there was something in their eyes. A glint, maybe a spark, that separated them from the dull glazes Elian was used to.
They only stayed a day on that first trip. Elian didn’t retain the name of a single person he had met. It was a whirlwind of wonderment for a man who lived on concrete, synthetic calories and steel.
Nearly two months after leaving home, Elian returned. He walked into his house, but it felt foreign, as if it wasn’t his any longer. His wife wasn’t home.
When Elian turned on the light mat, he was met with a hologram of his wife.
“Hello, Elian,” the hologram said. “I suppose you wonder where I have gone. That is something you don’t need to know. What you do need to know is that that the bots have granted me a divorce on the grounds of abandonment. I have filed to have myself erased from your mind. You have your life and now I have mine.”
Holding a syringe of bliss, Elian searched for emotion, but felt nothing. Since joining Dillinger, he hadn’t been around much. Going forward he wouldn’t be around at all. Elian laughed. Erased from his mind.
Over the coming decades, Dillinger trained Elian. Soon Elian knew the route as well as any fence sitter. He even took multiple solo trips to the settlement.
Over time Dillinger grew distant. He only spoke to Elian about official business. When asked about it he said, “Look, kid, you don’t know everything.“
“After all this time you don’t trust me?” Elian asked.
Dillinger let out something between a chuckle and a grunt. “Kid, I trust you more than I’ve ever trusted anyone. With my life.”
“Then why are you holding back?”
Dillinger motioned to the chair beside him. The mountain of a man closed his eyes as if meditating and rocked slightly. Opening them, he said, “A man can’t live between two worlds forever. A time comes when he must choose. That time isn’t here for you yet, but I have made my choice.”
“What did you choose?”
“That is on me. Your time will come, but I won’t burden you with mine. I’m sorry, kid.”
Elian looked to the concrete floor. He felt as cold as the stone beneath him. He wanted to press, to ask more questions, but something held him back.
For the only time, he saw a tear glisten in Dillinger’s eye.
Later that afternoon, two men and a woman came into the warehouse. Dillinger wanded them while they both kept their hands on their guns. “Human,” Dillinger said with a nod. “Y’all want to move south?”
“Who is he?” Lucan said, motioning toward Elian.
Dillinger frowned, “Okay. Maybe quick introductions. I’m Dillinger. This is Elian. He works with me.”
Elian marked his words. With, not for.
Lucan spoke for his family. “I’m Lucan. This is my wife Lina and our son Lawrence.”
Elian tilted his head and asked, “How old are you, Lawrence?”
Lawrence spoke so softly it was hard to make out. “I’m 37.”
Elian smiled, “My parents talked about you. You met when applying to have children. They were in front of you.”
“I don’t remember anyone in front of us. You must be thinking of someone else.” Lina said.
A few weeks later Dillinger and Elian waited for the family to return. “Why can’t we keep the nanos activated for the first part of the trip?” Elian asked. This was his first trip moving refugees.
“We don’t just turn them off like ours. We remove them entirely. Or, kill them and the things get pissed out.”
“This is going to be a long trip.”
Dillinger nodded.
Three hours later Lina, Luca and Lawrence sat in the chairs. Dillinger worked at a computer, emphasizing various steps to Elian. They spent over an hour in the chairs.
Lina turned to Elian and called out, “Oris and Rena. You have your mother’s eyes.”
It wasn’t just them. A lifetime of erased people and events rushed back into their minds. Crimes were as common as they had ever been. Not that it mattered when no one remembered. Dillinger saw the horror wash across their faces. He said, “Yep. The world is not as you know it. Never has been.”
Tears welled in Lucan’s eyes. “I’m sorry they did that to you, Elian. Oris was a good man, he’d be proud of you.”
Elian turned away and closed his eyes.
They left before sunrise the next day. The sun didn’t reach the tunnels anyway. Without the nanobots and enhancements the family was blind. They moved slowly, Lucan and Lina clutched Dillinger’s broad shoulders, while Lawrence rested his hand on Elian’s.
By the time they made their way through the escape hatch, the sun was high above their heads. Elian looked at Dillinger with a nod, and they turned the group to the south.
The family asked a lot of questions. Elian answered them, letting Dillinger focus on the path ahead.
They set up camp early on the first night. Elian set up a tent while Dillinger set the traps just beyond the treelined. Dillinger was gone longer than usual, but Elian wasn’t concerned. Socializing wasn’t Dillinger’s strength.
The next morning Dillinger slept while Elian made breakfast. Lawrence wandered away from the camp and in the distance, he gave out a loud scream. Dillinger sat up in time to see Lawrence jump out of the way of a charging boar. “Help!” Lawrence shouted.
Dillinger and Elian locked eyes. With a nod, both men stood up. Elian took his .44 in hand. Dillinger jumped up and down, shouting. The boar snorted as it was ready for another charge. Elian took three big steps out of the charge line, then held still. Elian and Dillinger both held their fingers to their lips telling the family to be quiet. The boar turned to Dillinger and charged.
Elian tracked the beast with the muzzle of his pistol, waiting for it to be in position. Once it was, he fired rapidly, emptying the ammunition. He was still firing as the creature toppled over into the dirt.
Helping Lawrence to his feet, Elian asked, “Are you okay, man?”
Lawrence dusted himself off and asked, “Wa… was that a rhino?”
Dillinger gave out a guttural laugh. “No rhinos around here.”
Elian smiled. “That’s a hog.”
“A small one at that,” Dillinger added, inspecting the animal. “Damn kid, that’s a headshot on a charging boar. You are getting good with that thing.”
“Been practicing.”
“We will have all the meat we can carry,” Dillinger said, pulling a knife from his boot.
It took ten weeks to reach the summit vista campsite. Dillinger was much slower than normal. By afternoon, he’d fall behind, leaving Elian to lead the group.
The family’s wonder had turned to misery. They complained about blisters and hunger. They whined about exhaustion. Every day they covered less ground.
Looking out over the valley, Dillinger became uneasy. His breath came labored, and there was a strange ache in his chest.
“What do you think,” Elian asked. “At least four days to the settlement with this group?”
“Probably,” Dillinger said, shaking his head.
Dillinger admired all that he had worked for below them. A sense of quiet pride washed over him. He snapped back and grabbed his chest. It felt as if someone had just dropped an anvil on it; his vision blurred. The pain shot down his left arm like lightning. As he fell to the ground, he knew what this was. He had heard of it in the settlement. They called it a heart attack.
Elian turned white as ivory. He’d never seen a dead body before, and this was his closest friend. He checked Dillinger’s pulse, but there was nothing. He shook the man, but it only created a cloud of dust.
Cries echoed through the valley below. He choked back his tears. Elian was the fence sitter now.
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You’ve got a “stand along” typo in the introduction.