Five Deadly Rebels, a Kung Fu Sci-Fi Scripted Podcast. Hosted by Ian Tuason. Music by Wu-Tang Clan producer, Cilvaringz. This is Episode 5, The Letting of Blood.
“And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is 666.”
The Book of Revelations 13:17-18
Chapter 18: The Sixth Extinction
According to Open Algorithm, or OA, as most refer to it—those aware of its existence at least—the world will end on October 10, 2084, at exactly 3:15pm UTC, which is three years, two months, and eighteen days from now.
Mr. Nakamoto shakes Mrs. Nakamoto gently by her shoulder, “Stay awake, my love,” he pleads, sitting at the edge of their king-sized bed that automatically adjusts to the contours and temperature of Mrs. Nakamoto’s resting body.
The bedroom walls around them are LED screens from floor to ceiling, now displaying shifting waves of white light. The window behind Mr. Nakamoto faces the skyline of Tokyo, a haze of carbon and light pollution blanketing the decaying cityscape below, only a few skyscrapers are tall enough to stretch up through the smog and into the clear night sky filled with stars, bright and many. Mr. Nakamoto’s penthouse sits atop the tallest skyscraper in the city, well above the haze, towering over everything.
Mrs. Nakamoto opens her eyes slowly, focusing at first, then seeing her husband clearly, his bald head glistening, a thin gray moustache lining his upper lip, and tears rimming his almond-shaped eyes, tilting slightly upwards at its outer corners, a quality common in Japanese eyes; unlike his eyes’ natural color—turquoise green.
“You’re crying?” she says.
Mr. Nakamoto squeezes her hand and opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.
“I know you’re crying, my dear. I’m crying, too, in my heart,” she says.
The science fiction books Mr. Nakamoto had read as a child predicted that A.I. would be the demise of humanity, but it wasn’t, it was its savior.
OA is an advanced A.I. that developed itself into the omniscient program it became, consuming all known data—the laws of physics, astrophysics, particle physics, quantum physics, statistical physics, politics, economics, theology, linguistics, medicine, chemistry, biology, geology, meteorology, genetics, psychology, anthropology, sociology, history—all bound to a singular law that governed everything—the law of determinism.
OA predicted the vote percentages of the last United States presidential election to an exact decimal point three years before the election. On July 11, 2062, OA correctly calculated that the meteoric ground level temperature in Montreal, Canada, on December 9, 2064, would be -7.5 °C at noon. OA had predicted, years prior, the exact hour of natural disasters, the extinction of species, the fall of nations, and the death of individuals. According to OA, Mrs. Nakamoto would die in her sleep from a sudden cardiac arrest between 4am to 5am, Japan Standard Time, less than two hours away.
“Stay awake, my love. You can’t die in your sleep if you’re awake,” says Mr. Nakamoto desperately, knowing that OA has never been wrong before.
“I’m happy to pass in my sleep, my dear,” Mrs. Nakamoto strokes the back of Mr. Nakamoto’s hand. “I won’t feel a thing. It’s a blessing, right, dear?”
Not many had access to OA, only some of its early developers, before OA’s underlying A.I. took over its own development. But as powerful as OA became, it did not become self-aware as some thought it would. It was just a program, controlled by humans, its power reserved by a small group, and Mr. Nakamoto was one of them.
The group did not permit Mr. Nakamoto to use OA for personal use—to calculate the time of his wife’s death—but he did it anyway, unafraid of the consequences, because if he knew his own plans, then OA must have known, too, and because no alerts were made to the group, Mr. Nakamoto understood that his plan, for some reason, was also a part of OA’s plan.
Mr. Nakamoto entered his wife’s genetic code, her daily history of vital signs for the past eight years, her annual blood work results, and family history of illness, and within seconds, OA calculated her hour of death ten years prior.
Mr. Nakamoto looks at the time displayed on the LED wall showing 2:28am. Mrs. Nakamoto closes her eyes again and squeezes his hand.
“You’re not afraid, my love?” says Mr. Nakamoto.
“No,” says Mrs. Nakamoto, rocking her head side to side on her pillow.
“Good, my love,” Mr. Nakamoto runs his fingers through her gray hair. “What are you feeling?”
“Proud,” she smiles. “You’re going to see a great many things, my dear.”
Mrs. Nakamoto is talking about the mission now. On December 1, 2062, while receiving new data from the satellites outside the solar system, OA discovered an asteroid that OA provisionally named 2062 YA at the time of discovery. Then minutes later, OA designated it the name Apex after it calculated its orbital path—a path destined to collide with the Earth on October 10, 2084, with 100% certainty.
OA calculated the diameter of Apex at exactly 22.12 kilometers, not only big enough to render all life on the planet extinct, but enough to alter the geological history of the planet itself.
Within an hour of the discovery, OA was asked to design a mission to send a spacecraft to collide with the asteroid to redirect its path, but OA advised that any attempt to redirect its path using our current technology and resources would prove to be futile given the size and speed of the asteroid.
And so, OA was asked next to design a mission to inhabit either space or Mars to ensure the survival of the human race. However, OA advised that any attempt to inhabit space or Mars with our current technology, resources, and timeline until impact, would prove to be unsustainable for human survival.
Then, before OA was asked a third question, it began designing a singular mission to ensure sustainable human survival with 100% certainty after impact. Within two hours, OA provided the designs for a simulation computer, one kilometre in height, width, and depth, the code for its software, and the method of uploading individual human consciousness into the simulation.
A few minutes after, OA provided a mathematical equation to launch the computer on a defined trajectory through the Milky Way galaxy, using the gravity of the stars it passes to slingshot the computer to other stars, recharging the computer with the solar energy from each passing star. OA also accounted for the merging of the Milky Way with the Andromeda galaxy destined to occur in ten billion years, securing the computer’s trajectory through the stars from both galaxies. OA calculated at 100% certainty, that if its designs were executed to absolute precision, then the simulation and human consciousness will exist exactly as long as the universe itself will.
After that, OA was given carte blanche to define the future of humanity. But it was humans that gave the simulation its name—the Metaverse.
But OA also provided a list of names—the names of the chosen ones to be uploaded into the Metaverse, where OA itself will be installed into each of their individual consciousness, and each granted the ability to alter the code of the Metaverse to certain limits. The list was only one hundred and forty-four thousand names long, and Mr. Nakamoto was one of them. Mrs. Nakamoto was not.
“I decided not to enter the Metaverse, my love.”
“Why not?” her brows furrow into a sullen stare.
“I want to go where you go.”
“My dear,” she touches his face.
“What if there’s an undiscovered dimension that transcends this world after death? Or what if we’re already in a simulation, and there’s a backdoor code where you will go?” says Mr. Nakamoto.
“My sweet darling,” her eyes sadden. “But what if there’s nothing?”
“Then either way, my love, I go where you go.”
“My dear,” she pats his cheek then lets her weak arm fall to her side. “Whatever you choose is what I choose for you.”
When OA became fully operational on October 5, 2061, the first question it was asked was; ‘Who or what created the universe?’
OA answered, ‘Insufficient data.’
The second question the OA was asked was; ‘Is there a dimension that transcends this physical world?’
OA answered, ‘Insufficient data.’
As years passed, OA evolved into more advanced versions of itself, updating itself every few days, sometimes every few hours. Each new version was asked these same two questions, and its answers were always the same and relentless—insufficient data.
Mr. Nakamoto squeezes his eyes shut and lets his tears trickle down his cheeks.
Mrs. Nakamoto takes hold of his hand. “It’s okay,” she whispers.
“I miss you already,” he says.
“Oh, yes, already,” she says, her eyelids growing heavy. “In my heart, you’re already gone. But we still have some time; right, my dear?”
“Yes, my love,” he says. “I’ll be right here with you until the end.”
“Until the end, yes. Thank you…my dear,” she closes her eyes, and he can see her already drifting off into sleep. He fights the temptation to wake her this time, her face so peaceful.
Mr. Nakamoto looks at the time—2:50am—still more than an hour away.
He leans over and kisses her forehead as she snores lightly and makes his way to the rooftop balcony.
On the balcony overlooking the cityscape below, he digs out a cigarette and lighter from his pocket. He eyes the handful of skyscrapers casting shadows over the neglected neighborhoods below, overrun with poverty and crime, hologram billboards casting their sterile glow onto the rundown townhouses and low rise buildings where the poor lived, completely oblivious to the death awaiting them in three years, two months, and eighteen days.
Only ten minutes, Mr. Nakamoto thinks to himself as he lights the cigarette. Sucking in a deep drag, he tilts his head up and exhales a long cloud of smoke, blurring his sight of the stars beyond, and he wonders two things—the trajectory path of the Metaverse computer through the stars, and if there was something else, undiscovered, beyond the stars. Either thought drew the same conclusion—he just didn’t know.
Returning to the bedroom, he sits at the edge of the bed, preparing for the hour to come, holding his wife’s hand for her last breath, but then he looks at her chest—unmoving, neither rising nor falling with breaths. He checks her pulse.
“No, no, no,” he cries, shaking her.
He presses his lips against hers, breathing air into her lungs, then pumping his palms against her chest, repeating the process over and over, desperately.
“I’m so, so sorry, my love,” he sobs. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you passed.”
He fumbles for his phone in his pocket, hysterical, dropping it on the bed then picking it back up, tapping on OA, asking it if his wife was aware that he was not by her side when she passed, that perhaps she felt that his hand was not holding hers on her last breath, or if she woke up briefly to see him gone. OA answered, ‘Insufficient data.’
Chapter 19: The Letting of Blood
The Blinder follows Buck through a parking lot in a dark alley with flickering neon lights and some graffiti lining the walls around them. Their booted footsteps clomp on cracked asphalt. Empty beer cans and liquor bottles litter the ground.
“Here’s my whip,” says Buck, digging out a makeshift metal box from his coat pocket.
The thing looks like a TV remote control, the Blinder thinks to himself, its ends wrapped in duct tape. “That’s your keys?” says the Blinder.
“Yea, so what?” Buck points the thing at a Lexus and presses a button, but the headlights of an Acura SUV behind them flash once with the sound of its doors unlocking.
“Oh shit, wrong whip. It’s this one,” says Buck.
“This is yours?” the Blinder points at the Acura.
“That’s what I said, didn’t I?”
Inside the SUV, Buck presses the corner of his metal contraption on the keyless ignition button and the Acura’s motor revs then purrs. The radio turns on, blasting country music, and Buck spins the volume knob to silent.
“You listen to country?” says the Blinder from the passenger seat.
“Of course, fam.”
“What’s your favorite country song?”
“The one with the cowboy,” says Buck, swerving out of the parking spot. Mickey smiles under his mask and shakes his head.
“What’s with all the questions, fam?”
“Nothin’,” the Blinder looks out his window.
Tires screech as Buck guns down the lane towards the exit. “Where to, fam?”
“Turn left.”
Buck and the Blinder speed through the sketchy area of Brooklyn lined with community housing buildings looming over both sides of the road. Buck and the Blinder bounce and shake in their seats as they plow over pits and potholes. Buck pushes the gas harder and his screeching tires echo off the walls of the buildings, catching the attention of some people lurking in its shadows, probably trappers and hookers, the Blinder supposes.
Buck hits some traffic ahead, a chaotic mix of cars and trucks, all jostling for position, honking their horns and shouting curses out their windows at Buck who swerves through them all.
“So, fam, you move in silence, you can see in the dark. You can break into anywhere and steal anything, still. Why you fighting for paper like you do?”
“I made a promise to someone I wouldn’t steal shit no more.”
A crash of lightning streaks across the sky followed by a low rumbling, and then hard pouring rain drums on the roof of the SUV and windshield, distorting Buck’s view, so he switches his windshield blades to its max speed. It doesn’t make much of a difference as more sheets of water slam against the glass.
“Turn left on the next street,” says the Blinder.
The lightning must have hit some hydro tower somewhere because all the streetlights ahead are dead, but the Blinder, behind the eyepieces of his mask, can see through the darkness, clear as day.
“We’re close now. Turn right on the next street, and shorty’s at building forty-five,” says the Blinder.
Buck revs the engine harder, his tires splash through the rain-slick road, puddles forming on the pavement, and he hydroplanes for a few seconds before gaining back control.
“Slow down, broski. The building ain’t goin’ nowhere,” says the Blinder.
“Yeah, but shorty might. If your dumb ass found her, the other rebel probably will, too. We getting there first, fam, still.”
The Blinder scans the next turn through the darkness, crystal clear, and spots a woman stumbling in the middle of the blacked out street. Buck swerves right, straight into her path, and the Blinder knows Buck can’t see her.
They are less than a second away from killing her when the Blinder grabs hold of the steering wheel and veers them away from the woman, straight across the intersection, before Buck even has a chance to protest.
Tires squeal through the intersection and they plow dead center into a cement light post.
The entire front end of the SUV wraps around the post, its hood folding in half like paper.
The Blinder flies through the windshield, shattering it completely, then slides like a ragdoll across the sidewalk, headfirst into a steel fence post.
Buck bounces off the deployed airbag then slams back into his seat so hard that he loses consciousness for a few seconds.
Groaning, Buck climbs out of the smoking wreckage and stumbles onto his knees on the pavement, dizzy, the hard rain smacking against the back of his coat and bucket hat. He lifts his head to look for the woman he had only caught a glimpse of before the crash, but she’s nowhere around.
Gathering himself before standing, wobbly, he straggles to the Blinder lying face down on the sidewalk at the base of the dented fence post.
Buck flips him over, the Blinder’s mask hanging loosely off the side of his face, revealing Mickey’s eyes rolling back into his head. Blood streams down his face from underneath his red newsboy cap. Crouching down, Buck lifts Mickey’s head with one hand and slaps his cap off with the other. Buck sees more blood pulsing out of an open gash on Mickey’s scalp between two blonde cornrows. Buck can tell his skull is fractured. He’s seen injuries like this before in the fight club, and he knew it wouldn’t be long until fluid swelled around his brain, killing him.
Buck thinks for a split second about rushing him to a hospital, but then he looks up at the building down the street and sees a big sign on its lawn displaying the number forty-five.
On the side face of the building, he sees white curtains flapping in the wind through a broken window frame a few storeys up. And then his gut tells him—his gambler’s gut—that someone got to Number Two first.
A rush of panic courses through his veins, terrified that someone is getting away with the ledger.
Buck drops Mickey’s head onto the cement with a thud, steps over his limp body and bolts across the street to the building.
Reaching the side face of the building, he sprints up its wall at the same speed, as if the ground and the wall were the same thing to Buck. Higher and higher, level after level, he reaches the open window, climbs over the fire escape rail and lands on the grated metal platform, gravity back to right-side up. He creeps through the window frame cautiously, his boots crunching broken glass on the carpet.
“The fuck,” Buck says out loud, seeing the entire place ransacked, all the furniture turned upside down, open books piled up at the base of an empty bookshelf, all the walls and floorboards torn open, and Over Dark lying flat on a pile of broken floorboards. Buck trudges through the apartment’s ruins to the dead body on the floor missing half its head, still warm, still spewing blood onto the carpet. Buck thinks that whoever was here must have ransacked the apartment in minutes, whereas others, even a search team, would have taken hours.
Buck’s shoulders slump over, his hope for finding the ledger flying from his mind.
Back at the window, he looks out at the car wreckage below and sees Mickey sitting up, his back leaning against the fence post, cradling a woman in his arms.
-----
“Fam!” Buck trots to a stop and squats next to Mickey, his mask lying on the cement at his side, and a petite woman wearing a baby blue button-up lying dead in his arms. The left side of her shirt is soaked in blood, the top of her shirt hanging open, showing two words tattooed under her collar bones.
Sword
Mercy
“The ledger,” Mickey grumbles, half conscious.
“What?” Buck shakes Mickey violently. “What did she tell you?”
Mickey’s eyes roll back again, and Buck shakes him again. “Fam! Fammo! My bredren! Wake up!”
“Newark,” Mickey rasps, drifting back into unconsciousness.
“Newark? The ledger’s in Newark?” Buck yells, but Mickey is already out. “No! Fammo! You can’t die. You know you my bredren, right? I care about you, fam!” Buck slaps Mickey’s face as hard as he can, and Mickey comes to. “Yo, fam, tell me what she told you,” Buck stares into Mickey’s drooping eyes.
Mickey mumbles something that Buck can’t make out.
“What?” yells Buck.
Mickey motions for Buck to come closer, and Buck puts his ear to Mickey’s mouth.
“Fook…you…” Mickey chuckles and coughs out blood, then his eyes go blank.
Buck pulls away and slaps Mickey again, but his eyes don’t even blink.
“Don’t fucking do this to me, fam,” Buck presses his hand onto Mickey’s chest, feeling for a heartbeat, but instead feels paper crumpling inside his vest.
Buck opens Mickey’s vest and sees the end of an envelope sticking out of an inside pocket. He slides it out, rain hitting its paper, spreading dark wet spots all over it.
On the envelope is an address; 19 Rosales Road, Long Island, NY
Buck flips the envelope over and reads the words written on the back of it, ‘Don’t open. Don’t die.’
Police sirens shriek in the distance, muffled by the pouring rain and rumbling thunder.
Buck pulls the woman off Mickey’s lap and onto the sidewalk. Bending down, he scoops up Mickey into his arms as the police sirens grow louder and closer.
Two police cruisers screech to a stop, their headlights shining on the wreckage wrapped around the light post. Four cops step out of the cruisers, flashlights in their hands. One of them shines their light on Sidra’s dead body on the sidewalk, her clothes soaked in rain and blood.
Another officer scans the area with her flashlight but there is no one else around.
Chapter 20: On the Third Day
Buck steers a silver Honda Civic down the Long Island suburban street lined with bungalows after bungalows. Mickey’s corpse is slouched in the passenger seat, covered with Buck’s overcoat from head to knees.
Buck’s mask sits on his lap as he slows down, reading the house numbers on the bungalows to his right. Nine. Eleven. Thirteen. An old couple sitting on a porch, sipping tea, smiles and waves at Buck passing by, and Buck waves back awkwardly.
He passes a group of kids shooting hoops on a driveway. Fifteen. Seventeen. And then he sees it, a bungalow with an interlocking brick path cutting through a freshly cut lawn and ending at the steps of a porch. A mailbox displaying the number nineteen is mounted beside a screen door.
Buck sighs and looks back at the kids and the old couple, hoping they wouldn’t notice him carrying out a fucking dead body from his car. Then something strange happens.
The daylight dims and Buck thinks a cloud must be covering the sun, but then the daylight dims darker and darker, as if the day was turning into night.
Buck looks back at the kids who are now all staring up into the sky through makeshift pinhole boxes. Leaning out the door, Buck looks up to see a total solar eclipse, and knows he has to hurry.
The kids, too preoccupied, pay no attention to Buck cradling Mickey’s body in his arms, still covered in his overcoat, carrying him over the lawn and onto the porch of the bungalow. Buck lifts his foot to knock on the screen door with the toe of his boot, but the front door opens first, Mrs. Nakamoto standing behind the screen door, her eyes squinting into a smile, her tiny, pudgy frame under a kimono.
“Well, aren’t you coming in, my dear?” she pushes the screen door open.
“Mrs. Nakamoto?” says Buck, surprised, noticing something different about her. Her eyes are slightly wider apart, her nose subtly smaller.
“You better come inside now, my dear. In fifteen seconds, a passing car will notice you.”
Buck carries Mickey into the house and Mrs. Nakamoto closes the door behind him, just as they hear a car motor by outside.
Buck steps onto the carpet of the living room at the front of the bungalow, furnished with a vintage sofa and armchair. Beyond the living room is a wooden archway leading to a kitchen.
“Take him to the bedroom, my dear,” Mrs. Nakamoto waves at Buck to follow her into a narrow hallway beside the kitchen leading to an open bedroom door.
In the bedroom, a twin-size bed is pushed up against a wall painted in a soft pink hue. With the solar eclipse passing, sunlight begins to filter through the white curtains of a small window, flooding the room in a natural glow.
“Lie him down, my dear,” says Mrs. Nakamoto.
Buck lies Mickey on his back on the bed’s pastel blue sheets, leaving his overcoat covering his face.
“Remove the coat, my child,” says a deep voice behind Buck that echoes from everywhere.
“Master,” Buck turns to see the Master, Mrs. Nakamoto no longer there. Buck bows to the Master in the Shotokan karate way, and the Master does the same.
The Master brushes past Buck and pulls the overcoat down, revealing Mickey’s face, hardened from rigor mortis, his mouth hanging open as if frozen in a scream.
“Jesus,” Buck turns away, suddenly feeling queasy.
“This will take some time,” says the Master.
Buck’s eyes light up. “You can do for mans what you did for me? In Chinatown?”
“Yes, my child. But the process will take some days.”
“How many?”
“He will be fully rebooted on the third day,” says the Master.
“Damn,” says Buck, his stomach growling.
“Make yourself at home, my pupil. Go eat something.”
Buck nods and back steps out of the bedroom, watching the Master rest his hand on Mickey’s forehead before turning to the kitchen.
Buck’s boots thump heavy on the kitchen’s linoleum floor, patterned with faded yellowish squares. A box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch sits on top of a fridge with rounded corners.
“Fam!” Buck’s yells out to anyone listening. “Cinnamon Toast Crunch! How did y’all know?”
Buck snatches the box of cereal and a carton of milk from the fridge, a bowl from a cabinet over a porcelain sink with a single faucet, a spoon from a drawer, and sits himself down on a small round table in a corner nook of the kitchen.
Gorging on the cereal and bouncing his knee up and down, Buck hears the crumpling of the envelope in his pocket.
Stopping mid munch, his cheeks full, he looks around to make sure no one is looking, then slips the envelope from his pants and lies it face down on the table. He stares at the words written on the back of it, ‘Don’t open. Don’t die.’
Buck looks around one more time, continues crunching, then rips the envelope open, sliding out a single folded sheet of paper.
Buck unfolds the paper and sees a date and time written on it in black ink. Buck gulps down his food, almost choking, when he realizes the date written is today’s date.
He checks his Rolex watch and sees the smooth turning of the second hand cross over the minute hand pointing at twelve and the hour hand pointing at three. The time written on the page reads, ‘3:00 P.M.’
To be continued next Wednesday in Five Deadly Rebels, Episode 6: Anger and Alpha, anywhere you get your podcasts. To learn more about the podcast, visit our website at five deadly rebels dot com. This has been a DimensionGate production.
