5. The Magus

Chapter 5

When I find Eva in her sitting room, practicing her needlework, she confirms it—she wants to get married. But she does not in fact specify that she wants to get married to the boy—she only says she wants to get married because she wants "Children, a family, and a purpose." She says nothing about the boy himself.

So, by that logic, it makes more sense for her to get married to me, actually. I would be a better provider; I have infinite resources that I can devote to her. Once we are wed, I can continue to allocate my infinite resources to make her happy, as I have done all her life. I can give her as many children, families, and purposes as she wants and easily provide for them all.

I haven't planned for this. I haven't thought past re-creating Eva. I haven't considered what I would do with her once I have her, but marriage makes as much sense as anything else.

I walk into my study and sit in my armchair. I lift my wrist and use the transmission device embedded in my knuckles to ask Iago to come to me. He tries to ask me what I am calling about, but I ask that we speak in person.

I wait outside, reclining against the wall, soaking in the humidity, feeling caged in by the overcast sky. The world rolls into the darkness of night. An owl begins hooting in a nearby tree. It seems to be mocking me for hours with its 'who-who's' until I gingerly release my sniper from my forearm, aim, and shoot it from the tree. It falls with an undignified squawk. Soon after, Iago finally gallops up on his robotic mule.

"Hello, hello Genji. How are you today?" he says lazily, not dismounting, leaving me to crane my head up to look at him. He seems larger than me atop that mule, with his top hat perched jauntily on his blond head.

"I am fine," I say.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" he strokes the robot mule's neck as he speaks to me.

I say, "Iago, I need to arrange a marriage."

He shoots down from his saddle and, as he is in reality shorter than me, I tilt my neck to look down on him.

He says, "A marriage?"

I say, "Yes, a marriage."

He says, "Who are you marrying?"

I say, "I'm marrying?—"

He says, "Eva the thirteenth?"

I say, "Yes, I am marrying Eva."

He says, "Wonderful, congratulations!"

I remember why being around Iago always drains my energy. I say, "Thank you. I need to arrange the marriage as soon as possible. You see, she—I mean the boy who she is always...playing with has asked for her hand."

"Oh?" Iago says. "Your maid's son?"

"Yes," I say. "And he told me that Eva wanted to get married—and if Eva would be happy getting married, of course I want to make her happy. But I would obviously be the better provider. And when I asked Eva if she wanted to get married, she confirmed."

Iago squints at me and turns up one corner of his mouth. He says, "She confirmed that she wants to get married to you."

"No, she did not confirm that, but she did confirm she wants to get married. She did not confirm she wants to get married to the boy either."

Iago pauses a moment to adjust his orange bowtie, disregarding the fact that it is already perfectly straight. "So, she did not specify who she wants to get married to, and you want me to help you arrange her marriage—to you."

"Yes, please, if you would," I say.

Iago grins. "Well, Genji, as you know, I am a registered priest. I went to—what do you call that school again, with the priests? Well, I went there. Back in… I don't know how long ago. But yeah, I went there—seminary school. And I haven't broken my priestly vows in at least fifty years, and as that is longer than some priests have been alive, I'm sure I could be the priest at your wedding if that is what you are asking me. I would be honored to. I'll be your best man too. I'll even be your maid of honor and your ring bearer if you'd like."

I wipe the dampness of the humidity from my face. "Um. Right," I say. "I don't know if we are going to need a maid of honor. I want it to be a casual affair, but yes, please be the priest. That would be quite convenient."

Iago says, "Excellent. I suppose you'll be wanting to get married soon, as soon as possible?"

I confirm, "Yes."

"Don't worry, my dear Genji," Iago says. "This can all be arranged, this can all be worked out. We won't let the boy take your Eva from you."

"Yes," I say.

Speaking with Iago makes everything seem so close and fresh. Speaking to him always reminds me of what he did and what I did. Breathing the same air as him is like breathing smoke. I want to be done as soon as possible to get away from him and clear my lungs. Then I remember I don't need to breathe at all, so I stop. Breathing has become a habit because of Eva. Anywhere on the manor's grounds, there is always a trace of her scent.

I knock at the cottage door. It is slightly after midnight. At first there was no answer, so I pound again.

Then I hear the boy Theo's voice like I have never heard before: "Who is it? Who's out there?" Aggressive as a rabid dog.

"It is I," I say, "the Magus, your lord."

"I'm sorry my lord!" I heard the door latch clattering open, and there was the boy's face. The candle he held danced the shadows of his face upward, making the face I'd seen for years freshly unfamiliar, freshly grotesque.

I hear my maid's voice in the background. She says, "Is that the Magus?"

"Yes," I say.

Behind me Iago bows. "Iago, it is a pleasure, at your service," he laughs, "But not really."

"I am here." I say, "To give you these horses." I step aside to give them a better view of the horses. "They are laden with 900,000 glips."

The boy and the maid gasp.

"900,000 glips?!"

"Yes," I say. "I wish to buy your farm."

"We can't accept this, that doesn't make any sense, we would be grateful for any dowry at all, lord, but this is too generous," the maid says, even as she steps forward.

"Not a dowry: a transaction. I wish to buy your farm," I say.

I hear Iago behind me laughing as he splashes the petroleum around like a child with water balloons.

"But what about Eva? We need the farm!" says the boy.

"You can buy a new farm. You can buy ten new farms. Or a castle. I don't care. But I wish to buy your farm. And I wish for you and your mother to vacate the premises tonight." I'm surprised at his stupidity and at my surprise at his stupidity. Not much surprises me anymore.

"Tonight? I'm sorry my lord, but what about Eva?" he says.

"Shh, I'm sorry my lord, he is young, he doesn't know of what he speaks. Theo—look at that money. Look at those horses," says my maid.

From the corner of my eye, I see Iago skirt the corner of the building, watering the flower beds with petroleum. I hope he is thorough.

"But what about Eva?" the boy says.

"She is none of your concern," I say. "It is in our best interest if you leave this village tonight, go as far away as possible, and never return. Forget you ever knew her."

Iago speaks from behind me. He says, "I'm sorry to interrupt, but we are in a hurry, you people. We don't have all night to be shooting the shit like this. We need to invite the guests, get a ring, throw a bachelor party—I'm on a schedule."

"He's on a schedule," I agreed.

Iago heaves the sack of gunpowder from his mule and bustles past the boy and the maid straight into their cottage.

"What are you doing—get out of here!" says the boy. Futilely, he tries to snatch the sack from Iago, who is tossing handfuls of the gray powder around like confetti. But the human's brawny arms are nothing compared to Iago's strength. Iago pushes the boy harder than necessary, and the boy lands with a thump on his rear. Iago laughs harder than is necessary. I want the boy gone, of course, but I find Iago's dramatics distasteful.

"I will give you ten minutes to retrieve any belongings from your cottage that you want to keep," I sigh. "The rest will be burned. This is mercy, I am showing. Do not dawdle." I swallow my second sigh. The original Eva had told me to take the feelings of humans into account—not to hurt or scare them beyond what is necessary. To be efficient. To be merciful.

Iago walks out the door, clapping gunpowder from his hands, as the maid and the boy scramble for their belongings. They finally seem to understand.

"Mercy indeed," Iago says to me. "I still think you should kill them outright."

"I told you: Eva would be sad," I say.

We watch in silence as mother and son scurry about their modest cottage. It almost makes me angry to watch, knowing that they are nothing to the force of nature that Iago and I are. Ants walking up a tree—unworthy of notice, uniform bugs. And my Eva, in the scheme of things, is no more significant, despite being everything to me. If I were Iago, I would laugh at the irony of it, but I am not Iago.

The last look the boy gives me as he helps his mother up onto a horse reminds me of a charred corpse, like those I saw during the apocalypse, though he is very much alive.

Iago and I linger, watching the flames, long enough to hear the gunpowder catch on fire, and new flames burst freshly forth from the cottage like a drunkard's burp.

The crackle, the heat—I know it is destruction, but to me (and I suspect to Iago as well), it feels and sounds like creation. From order, comes chaos. Chaos is the fate of all matter. Chaos is where matter can finally find peace. I long for it.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" says Iago.

She was frustrated with me, and she told me so.

"I'm getting frustrated with you," she said.

"You could never pass as human," she said.

"You're, you're, just so robotic," she said.

"Yes, I am partially a robot," I agreed with her. "But I also contain biological and magtech components."

From where she was sitting on a colorful couch across from the blue armchair I was perched on, she raised her dark eyebrows at me in a look that I now recognized meant I had said the wrong thing. I didn't care that I said the wrong thing, I only cared that I was in her vicinity, looking at her, listening to her, breathing her in. I wanted to touch her. I wanted to taste her, feel her with all six of my senses.

She had been attempting to teach me passable human behavior for weeks by that point, and it seemed I wasn't making any progress. She had ordered me to read literature about ‘the human experience,' read psychology books, and self-help books. She made me read How To Win Friends and Influence People five times in a row, and The Catcher in the Rye, six.

She had me play video games and solitaire, look at art, watch movies, and learn to knit. She had spent hours trying to explain to me the nuances of proper reactions to each social situation I might encounter, running through hypothetical scripts with me, but I could never react to her satisfaction.

"The problem," she said, "Is that you are so totally devoid of a personality. I never realized how important a personality is until I started to deal with you. You may look like him, but you are nothing like Caesar."

A wire deep inside me sparked hotly. "Caesar?" I asked, "Who is Caesar?"

She stared at me, and I could hear her heart rate increase, as it sometimes did at seemingly random moments, but her facial expression did not change.

"No one," she said, "He is no one anymore."

"Who was he?" I stood up, walked over, and knelt before where she sat on the couch. I wanted to touch her, engulf her, crush this ‘Caesar' from her mind. I wanted to rip that white lab coat from her and then rip off whatever else she was wearing: the barriers between us. But I could only get so close, no closer. Her order not to touch her still shackled me.

She held very still. "He's dead," she said. She turned her head away from me, "Totally, completely, one hundred percent dead, and he's not coming back."

I laughed. The first automatic, non-forced, reflexive laugh of my existence, and she slapped me. The sting of her soft palm was perfection.

"Do it again," I told her, "Touch me again." I leaned in closer and offered my cheek to her. I was grinning so violently that it hurt my face.

She kicked me. She drew her legs up as she leaned back on the couch and pummeled me as hard as she could with her sneakered feet. The bottoms of her shoes were dirty from the streets outside that I had yet to step foot on. I could have rubbed my face against those shoes quite satisfied.

"I hate you. I hate you; I hate you I hate you I HATE YOU!" she screamed.

I laughed and laughed. Her kicks couldn't hurt me, her voice, even if it was screaming, was a melody to my ears—but the way she had said, ‘Caesar,' had made me long for non-existence, so I was glad that Caesar didn't exist anymore. I don't know what I would have done if my existence had overlapped with his. I probably would have had to kill him.

Eventually, Eva's sobs turned to hysterical laughter, "You do have a personality after all! You're a sick, twisted psycho. We should turn you into scraps and start over."