By David C. Daoust
Armin Cook, like most of the Onion, was raised under the Church of the Eternal Night. The Eternal Night was the mainstay religion of the Onion. One of its main doctrines, was simply that your actions determine the reality you live in. So good actions, caring for others, having a basic sense of fairness, justice for all, would land you in a reality that matched such attributes. That would be the life you experienced. So, living a good life, would lead to a good life. The bad things, while inevitable, were simply there as the exception. To prove the rule.
Conversely a bad life—a life of lying and cheating, stealing and killing, would land you in a reality where those attributes were not the exception, but the reality. A nightmare reality where no one told the truth, no one had your best interests at heart, and no one could ever be trusted. A reality of killers looking for a reason to kill, but not even needing one. This was a living hell, promised by the church, to those that did not live a good life.
These were the ideas that Armin Cook, aka Dutch, was raised with. Ideas which he believed in.
The problem was, he also believed that he could never thrive in a reality of justice and fairness. He was mean and rotten, always had been. He would always be hoping for the understanding of others– a hand up; he would always be at the bottom. Dutch knew the only life he could thrive in, and he knew it at a very young age. As a child he was little more than a thief– stealing candy, snatching coins, robbing his world before he made it out of middle school. Once he made it to high scool, nothing but brawls til they threw him out… brawled his way into juevy, through a mess of jobs, bars…
Lie, Cheat, steal… Anything that might buy him his way into the reality he knew he would thrive in.
This was a perverse twisted version of the lessons those Priests tried to teach him as a child, Dutch did not care.
Admittedly, the full plan was not formulated until he was much older, but once you were in that reality, it had a way of flowing around you. Squashing many, but for Dutch, it elevated him. Knocking off businesses, burglary, flat out murder for a price…
Dutch believed it was his trust in the Eternal Night– that led him to becoming the Underboss of the Organization. Only one man in all his nightmare reality stood over him, and Dutch was convinced he was the only man that belonged there. Bernard Vice was a genius to Dutch’s eyes. A king among men—the only one Dutch could bare to have above him. And for decades now, the only man safe from Dutch’s scourge of a life.
Except for Colin, of course. Surely, if Bernard was king, then his boy was a prince…
When Dutch found Colin’s broken ship, looted bare, in the desert, and without any sign of the boy himself, Dutch moved in hard and fast to find what information he could.
The troubadour claimed Colin was pulled onto a Red Faction ship… the Red Faction ship was a thorn in their side. Had been for a while. They were, after all, the nearest neighbors of Halfhul—the Heart of the Organization.
Dutch ordered his men to search the rover and returned to his bridge.
Upon arrival, grave news was presented to him.
Halfhul was gone.
All communication was severed.
This told Dutch it was destroyed—wiped out.
The Organization was gone.
It was not hard to guess the Red Faction was behind the whole thing.
The hell he had chosen for his life had finally caught up to him. Not only was his king gone—even if the boy was on a mission, his body would be on Halfhul.
Destroyed.
Dutch sank into himself.
He was full on mourning as he trekked out into the desert to explore Colin’s abandoned ship.
Lost in thought, lost in possibility.
No one stood over him now—the king is dead.
Long live the King.
Dutch would have to step up; Dutch would have to take the reins. A reign he never wanted. It was not beyond him that this was the life he had chosen. The reality, the hell; guiding him, rewarding him. He thrived. This reality demanded that he not fold and whimper. But to rise up, to rise up and rule the hell that was his chosen reality…
All the way until Colin appeared on that ship– Stepping from his private chambers. Fully dressed, throwing on a fresh coat… muttering something about running out of cloths before he ran out of holomechs.
It could not be, Dutch knew! Halfhul was gone!
There was only one answer. It was something Dutch had feared from the start; from day one of Colin having his mind ‘routed’ into that holomech. Simply, that the tech was not real at all. It was all code, a simulation, a copy of the boy that went forth and worked, while the boy slept at home. It looked real, it tracked as though it worked as presented, but now that the body was surely as destroyed as their homebase, it proved what Dutch had suspected all along.
This was a remnant. A ghost that had no body to return to…
There was no joy, there was no relief, only the sudden need to put this undead monster down.
To release it from this new hell.
Dutch’s hand went to his revolver…
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