Charybdis by Joel Tagert | Art by Chris Austin

Charybdis
By Joel Tagert

Art by Chris Austin
Published Issue 131, November 2024

Chris walked in crimson, the goggles’ night vision painting the willow and aspen with a red and bloody brush. It was fall, the ground dry, and his steps would have been noisy but for the wind rasping the leaves, a wind that also brought him a rich breath of woodsmoke half a mile from its source. When he saw the windows, bright yellow in the infrared, as though the cabin’s log courses contained the devil’s own inferno, he crouched and considered the ground. 

The cabin stood in a meadow, uphill fifty yards from the edge of the wood. He could circle around to approach it from the north, but that direction lay the road, and even less cover. Probably it didn’t matter. It was dark, and few people were capable of reacting quickly to a determined attack. 

Why do I have to use a knife? he whispered voicelessly, but of course he hadn’t said the daemon’s name and so received no response. Charybdis, he tried again, why do I have to use a knife?

What’s wrong with a knife? 

The voice in his ear (silent to anyone else) sounded exactly like Lance Corporal Marcus Dorsey, formerly the communications specialist for their Marine Raider element. Marc liked to joke that he’d joined the Marines to get ahead in his radio career. Voice like a submarine propellor. Dead with the rest in the Osprey.

Well first of all, it’s more risk, Chris said. More exposure. You use a gun so you don’t have to get close to the target. You set an explosive for a delayed kill. A knife means you’re in reach. 

You’re bigger and stronger than they are, and better trained. You also got the advantage of surprise. This should be easy for you.

Do you think I’m a psycho? 

You really want to discuss your psych profile right now? 

Do you think killing someone’s easy for me? Up close like this?

No, not easy. Pleasurable.

That’s fucked up.

Charybdis said nothing more, this not being a question or anything that needed answering, and a sense Christian had lost the argument seeped into the ensuing silence. Charybdis, god of the deep, who sent whirlpools to swallow ships. Like a great white shark swimming over his shoulder.

It didn’t matter though. It was all just like a video game, or an afterlife, or a vivid dream. The waving branches, the deepness of the night, carried him further into that feeling. 

Still, why the knife? he whispered. Charybdis? 

It’s complicated.

Unless there’s some time-sensitive need here, I’m going to wait until the target goes to sleep. That work for you?

Yeah, that works. 

So we’re not in a hurry. Explain.

A knife offers the greatest chance of success in the event of outside interference. Like they say in the movies, there are other forces at work here. 

You mean another AI.

Another superintelligence, yeah. 

And the target is what, this thing’s agent? 

That’s right. 

What kind of interference?

Not sure. Probably nothing. But after it’s done, I need you to remove the target’s neuroport. 

Well that’s fucking gruesome. 

Your knife is equipped with a saw blade. With it you can cut through the back of the—

Yeah, I get it. I get it. 

He had died in that crash, and been resurrected. He had lain dead and God had come for him and healed his damaged brain stem. A god, anyway. And Charybdis said, Walk, and lo, he walked. The lights in the cabin winked out. 

Orion was high before he stood up. He walked slowly and silently up the slope to the cabin. He was, as he understood it, to bring about the end of the world. Charybdis had promised him a paradise afterward. He circled a bit to avoid the gravel drive and its loud crunch. No moonshadow to worry about falling onto the windows. The knife was in his hand. 

He stopped outside the door. He braced himself. He kicked the door in and jumped inside. 

Something clipped his forehead and right brow and he fell. Another blow was coming, but slow — fucking cast iron pan, is what it was —  and he drove right, head lowered, knife stabbing. Instantly they ducked low, came up under his knees like a wrestler, his whole body wheeling at its center of gravity, crashing onto his shoulders with head tucked.

He rolled with the motion, twisting, trying to slash at their legs with the knife, but quick as a cat they slipped away and kicked a small coffee table at him. He jumped to his feet and they squared off, her back to the tiny kitchen and his to the broken door.

She was a young woman, maybe five-two, slender. He’d known this going in. She was wearing big bug-eyed goggles that he assumed were AR, though he’d never seen the brand. Her flesh was bright in the infrared.

You don’t have to do this, she said. 

Maybe, he replied. But it’s paradise on one hand and hell on the other. 

He feinted, then jabbed three times as fast, knowing that no one, realistically, could fully block that kind of scissor attack. 

The knife struck home, and again, but something was different. He looked and he was holding a bouquet of flowers, for some reason bright and multicolored in his goggles. He was so baffled that he didn’t see the young woman’s flying elbow to his temple at all. 

When he came to, she was long gone, the knife (or flowers) with her. Charybdis, he said, did I imagine that? The gun turning to flowers?

No. Your senses reported it correctly.

Charybdis, he said, screwing up his courage. Is this a sim? Is it? Has it been a sim all along? But the daemon didn’t answer.