Subject: [OTL]: The Chosen Ones [12/12]
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 16:27:42 -0700 (PDT)
From: D Benway <d_benway@yahoo.com>

The Chosen Ones: Part 12 of 12
On The Eighth Day
Benway did this.

*******************************************************************

This story is not intended for children of any age. It contains
descriptions of human behaviour which many might find distressing.
You have been warned.

The characters belong to Marvel. The story is my own, and copyright
to me. Many thanks for the editorial assistance of Luba K and
Tina S. Other stories are archived at the website of Luba.

********************************************************************

The sun had gone down by the time their tale had ended. The tea was
cold in their mugs, unconsumed. Sam had done most of the talking,
but she had helped when he lost the words, as he often did now.
Piotr had listened sympathetically, asking few questions. Kurt had
said nothing at all. Kurt was still sitting in his chair, although
the chair was now resting upside down on the ceiling.

It had all been lies, of course. What else could they have said?
Piotr seemed to have accepted the tale of Kitty going off with
Illyana to fight demons after they had vanquished Emma Frost, and he
had managed to construct a plausible explanation of how they had
ended up in their current situation. It was frightening to lie to
those who might be Gods, but neither she nor Sam had the courage to
do otherwise.

She hadn't told them of what they found after Illyana and Kitty had
been consumed. They had staggered out of the conservatory into a
scene from what World War Three might have looked like. The Faceless
Ones that had tried to get into the house to kill the others had
been fought to a standstill by James, and then had been hit from
above by SHIELD hit squads. All of the survivors had been swept away
for interrogation at locations that she was never able to identify,
although she suspected that they were far from the world of the
ordinary. Everything that they had done was praised and condemned in
programmed alternation, but there was nothing worth hiding after
they had shown her what had happened to Moira. They had been held
for almost a month of solid interrogation, after which Moira had
died of her burns and all of Sam's family had been buried. At the
end, they were informed that they were charged with nothing, and
what was left of their lives began.

Before their release, they were taken to see Emmanuel da Costa, who
was there as a grateful father and as an official representative of
what remained of the Hellfire Club. She understood almost
immediately that they were being offered a blank cheque, any amount
of money that they wanted. Sam asked about Emma and Angelica, and
was informed that both had suffered irreparable brain damage. They
were taken to see Emma, who, in her lucid moments, could manage one
or two word sentences. She was at least able to take care of
herself, even if she was catatonic half of the time. Sam inquired
about the arrangements that would be made for them, and was informed
that both were to be institutionalized for life. Sam had made them
an offer. The gatekeeper's cottage at the school, was it occupied?
Could they make modifications so that it could be used as a care
facility for Emma and Angelica? Could funds be made available for
this? It seemed that their best hope for recovery was in the
presence of those whom they loved. He asked her if she would like to
help, and she agreed. It wasn't as if there was anywhere else for
her to go.

They looked after Angelica for ten years until she died. It never
became any easier, and any improvements that they thought they saw
vanished almost immediately and to be replaced by some further
decay. Looking after her was continuous work, and neither of them
had day off or more than six hours sleep during the entire period.
Emma had been able to help after the first year or so. Looking after
Angelica helped Emma find her way partly back to reality, so some
good could have been said to come of it. Sam thought that he did it
out of love, but the effort of forgiving was so great that all he
was left with was the capacity for duty, which was required as
Angelica became larger and larger. At the end, it took all three of
them and a crane to deal with her needs. When she died after a short
bout of pneumonia, the relief in the house was almost too painful to
bear.

Without Angelica, Emma began to slip away. She sometimes forgot to
dress herself or feed herself, and began to spend the hours that she
had spent at Angelica's bedside in front of the television. They
cared for her needs, but the only thing that slowed the decline was
the cat that Dani brought for her. It proved to be an affectionate
cat, which was just as well since Emma wouldn't let go of it while
awake. Five years after Angelica's death, Emma stopped speaking
almost entirely. Two years after that, hard drugs were legalized and
Emma spoke her last words. Sam purchased the drugs for her, and she
abandoned the cat, retreating into a perpetual opium haze. It took
another two years for the drugs to kill her, and the cat died a
month afterwards.

After that, they lived in the empty house, going through the motions
of life. There were visitors from time to time that broke the
monotony, but there was even greater relief once they left.
Sometimes it was Dani visiting from the West, telling them of the
latest things that she had been doing in the tribal nations, where
she had rejoined the Cheyenne. James came once, and stole all of the
pills that they had in the house. Given that almost of these were
associated with the control of Angelica's bowels, they were not
surprised when he did not return. Marie-Ange returned from time to
time as she traveled from place to place in her studies of the
occult. These visits were endurable, as they still had the manners
required to survive them.

She didn't tell her visitors of the visit that Roberto had made, after
Angelica died. He had come to ask them to join Geonet, a new
business that he had founded after finishing at the Harvard Business
School, dedicated to the exploitation of geophysical resources. Sam
had, just that once, violated his pledge not to use his powers. He
had hurled Roberto from the house. Roberto had been taken away in an
ambulance, and they had not seen him until his face started showing
up in the commercials on Emma's television. After Emma's death, he
had thrown the television away.

Shortly after Emma's death, Amara had come calling, with a large
white-haired man as her companion. It was as clear to Sam as to her
that the man she introduced as Erik was her lover, but Sam had still
heard her out. The new geophysical energy sources were hers, and
Roberto was her front man, and the only person in all of Geonet who
knew where the power came from. Geonet wired the world for power,
then gave it television, which was where Erik came into the picture.
Through their efforts, all but about a million people on the planet
had a thousand channels personally accessible through the Geonet
satellite network, complete with special signals designed by Erik to
make them safe. Fertility rates were down, and the last major civil
war had died out a month before. With fine tuning, Amara had said that
it might be possible to almost entirely eliminate domestic violence. It

required a large effort from many people, working in the Blue Area
on the Moon and in orbiting space stations. The best and the
brightest were there. Would they come?

For a moment, she thought that he might be tempted, but he turned
them down. They had both seen the effects of the Geonet program
locally. The streets, deserted at almost all hours. The churches,
gradually emptying as their congregations found themselves
inexorably attracted to the services on the box. The nation, which
had faded away almost altogether. She had heard that no more than
ten languages were expected to survive into the next decade. After
they left, she had watched them with wolven eyes, and read their lips.

"Insufferably noble," Erik had said.

"Yes," replied Amara. "It is sad."

"It would be safest to take them anyway."

"They will not speak of it, I am sure."

The white-haired man had smiled with great sadness.

"They are last of Charles' children."

As she watched the car fly away into the sky, she decided that she
too would never use her devil-given power again.

She said none of this to the visitors, but she was sure that she
didn't have to. She knew in her heart that they knew that Sam had
lied.

"It is-", Piotr started, then halted, vexed.

"Tragedy?" suggested Kurt. "Farce?"

"Tragedy", said Piotr, uncertainly. "But this is not the purpose of
our visit."

"We're here for a reason," said Kurt.

"We are in need of something that the Professor left behind for you,
in case of a dire emergency," said Piotr. "It is brown and made from
the skins of dead animals. It contains papers."

"Why would you need a set of documents that the Professor wrote?"
asked Sam. "Did you not say he was still alive.?"

"He is beyond being able to assimilate that sort of information in
his current state," said Piotr. "Only Kurt and I can still
understand what he wrote."

"What do you need it for?" she asked. She had read only parts of it.
Sam had read it all.

"Transformation," said Kurt. "Enlightenment. Transfiguration."

"It would be simpler to act through an agency less changed than
ourselves," said Piotr.

"Transformation into what?" asked Sam.

"Why?" she asked.

"What has happened to us, you cannot imagine it," said Piotr airily.
"What we've become, it's so wonderful. We only want to share. You
will all become as Gods. All of humanity, raised up into perfection."

"Oh," said Sam.

"Do you know of what we seek?" asked Piotr.

"It's late," said Sam. "Tomorrow. I know where it is. I'll take you
there."

"Tomorrow," said Piotr.

"They need their rest," said Kurt.

"We have no assigned location to stay on this plane," said Piotr.
"May we leave our mass here?"

"We don't have an extra bed any more," said Sam.

"These fixtures are adequate," said Piotr, gesturing to the chairs.
"We have no complicated needs."

"Come on," said Sam, smiling at her for the first time in many years
with love in his eyes. "Let's go to sleep."

********************************************************************

They left their mass in space and time, sending themselves back to
the higher domain to report on what they had found. The joy was
indescribable, and it was difficult for him to experience any but a
small part of it. When they returned, his remaining human senses
told him that something was amiss. He shifted his mass
instantaneously to the second floor bathroom. The sink was filled
with ash, and an empty container made from the skins of dead animals
lay open on the floor. As Kurt floated up behind him, the draft from
his passage blew the ash apart.

"I could have told you this was going to happen," said Kurt.

"Then why did you not?" he asked.

"You didn't ask," said Kurt. "It matters not."

They opened the door to the bedroom. The two small single beds had
been pushed together to make one. Sam and Rahne lay on each, their
hands clasped. There was a empty bottle of pills on the night-table
beside Sam, and both of them had plastic bags over their heads.

"They got away from us," he said.

"For now," said Kurt.

"For now, " he agreed. A small part of him, remembering a little
blonde girl standing in a field of snow, wished that they really
had gotten away, but he knew that he would soon be rid of such
feelings. Those feelings would be no part of the new way
of the world.

FIN

*******************************************************************

Acknowledgements:

This was composed while listening to a lot of KMFDM, especially
Godlike.

It was heavily influenced by the novels of Iain Banks, especially
Feersum Enjinn.

It was also heavily influenced by some very good films, including
Roman Polanski's Macbeth, Jacques Rivette's Duelle, and Terry
Gilliam's Brazil.

The working title was The New Mutants vs Shakespeare, starring Kitty
as Macbeth, Sam as Hamlet, Illyana as Iago, Emma as Gertrude, and
Doug as Ophelia.

Finally, many thanks to Tina, Luba, and all of those who wrote in as
the narrative hurtled down the mountainside towards the rocks
waiting below.

Soon, there will be more.

B

=====