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Freelanga

By Jason Sanford

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There’s nothing a person can’t do. Hike Olympus Mons without oxygen. Change the universe into something it’ll never be. Outrun the things which won’t be outrun.

I wake in the middle of the night, remembering myself even as I realize the mavich is coming for me. Beside me, my wife Lauren moans slightly and rolls over, taking the bed covers with her. I wish I could wake her. Wish I could tell her about hiking Olympus Mons without breathing gear, my body so pumped full of oxygen regeneration cells that I shook for the last week of the climb. Until now, I’d forgotten the accomplishment of being the first to do what has now become a commonplace thrill.

But as I lean over Lauren and brush back the lock of hair which always falls into her eyes, I don’t tell her the good things I’ve done. Instead, I download a confession to horrible crimes. I beg her to believe that the man she fell in love with isn’t the freelanga the histories curse. I also tell her not to waste time searching for me. My body morphs its very DNA and memories into a new life every time I run. If I can’t remember who I am—if the mavich itself can barely find me—she’ll have no chance.

I almost tell her I’ll never forget her, but I don't want to lie. So I simply say she doesn’t deserve this. That our fourteen years together were the best of my life. Of any of my lives.

Then I run.

As I leave our apartment for the pressure dome’s artificial breezes, I expect the mavich to be waiting for me. Its claws and teeth stretching space-time. Its body wrapping me into the perfect vengeance of its being. I remember what my brother Jerod once said, how nothing escapes the mavich. How once it scents your body and mind and soul, no amount of change will keep it from you.

I briefly wonder who among my millions of victims created this beast for me, but that doesn’t matter. As I run for the dome’s emergency escape pods, my last thought is of Jerod, wondering how far my brother got before his mavich merged their souls into its own special hell.

***

Antarctica’s freeze-dried desert burns my nostrils as I stand guard over my buddies, who sleep double stacked in our platoon’s pressure tent. I remember an old nature sim Lauren and I downloaded about these Antarctic rock valleys, where only a centimeter of snow falls each century. Now, as I actually breathe deep of the place, I realize the sim never captured the continent’s true reality. I wish I could share this with Lauren. Then I remember that I’m now female. I wonder if that would bother Lauren, and realize with sadness that it would.

I sight my weapon along the horizon, looking for the mavich. My platoon and I are in a giant bowl of a valley rimmed by massive, ancient mountains. In the distance I see several human bodies—freelanga, created by me. I even recognize one of them and wonder how that particular SOB survived so long before being killed. Of course, in this freeze-dried desert the SOB could have died decades ago and still look freshkilled.

Even though my modified body wouldn’t freeze unless colder than liquid nitrogen, I instinctively shiver for a moment. Through my link with my platoon, I feel their absolute trust in me. They’d never believe that I created the freelanga we’ve fought for the last decade.

As my body shivers yet again, this time because it knows the mavich is closing in, I remember Gunny Sam, shot three times while pulling me to safety after I was wounded. Or Cpl. Tasanee, who ran all night across the moon’s surface to tell headquarters that our platoon was surrounded and our communications grid dead. She saved us and didn’t double-think it, merely gave me a hug and whispered that us gals got to look out for the big dumb jocks. All the big dumb jocks laughed at that. After all, the only rule of combat is never let down the person beside you.

Dear God, please don’t make me let them down.

I leave the perimeter for a moment and look in the tent. Gunny Sam, Cpl. Tasanee, all of them sleep soundly because of their trust of me. We’ve fought on a dozen worlds. We’re closer than any family. I’m not going to do it, I tell my body. I’m not going to leave them to die. At least let me wake them.

But as I scan the horizon again, I see the mavich climbing down an icy mountain. Light bends around its teeth and claws. Inside its mouth I see the galaxy of stars, the last sight it gives before vengeance is created. I fight my body’s leaving. Fight the urge to run and remake myself and forget yet again who I am.

But then, like before, I’m running. I jump into the platoon’s shuttle and fly into the sky. I pray I haven’t betrayed my platoon mates to their death. Pray the freelanga don’t notice that no one’s guarding the platoon until my buddies wake.

But the freelanga always look for the briefest sign of weakness. I should know. I’m the SOB who created them. I’m the selfish SOB who programmed this damn freelanga body to keep running and changing and running.

* * *

I lean back in my chair as Dr. Daniels drones on about the difficulties she’s had in replicating the genomic vaccine. I nod even though I’m no longer listening to her words. Instead, I look out the window at the hospital’s Martian gardens. I planted half the bioengineered pines out there. Many are now so big I can’t reach around them. My little contribution to the planet’s terrafarming efforts.

I stand and walk to the window, looking for the mavich. Dr. Daniels thinks nothing of this, assuming I’m deep in thought about the plague that’s ripping through the Mars colony. What I’m really wondering, though, is why the mavich took almost fifty years to find me—and why it couldn’t have waited just one more week.

As Dr. Daniels talks, I want to interrupt her. To ask if she ever studied the histories on the freelanga. Dr. Daniels is young, just out of medical school, so I doubt she’s bothered to download the detailed story of my former people. How I created the modification which swept through the bodies of my true believers and turned brother against brother and brother into brother. How my freelanga murdered millions before people decided my teachings about the eternal mutability of self weren’t worth killing for.

I turn and look at the sims which hover over the conference table. Images of disfigured woman and men. Kids with skin half burned away. The entire hospital has been focused on finding a cure to the out-of-control disease lashing its way through our population. In the last month we released two potential cures, only to see both fail.

That’s when I see the mavich, walking slowly across the red-tinged desert, its light-distorting spider legs shooting out to rocks and boulders as it tracks me down for vengeance. I plead with it. Beg for more time. I’ve done good, you see. Helped people. Not enough to wipe out my debt, but I have the cure to this plague. It’s in my head right now.

As I watch the mavich approach, I curse myself for not telling Dr. Daniels about the cure I’d worked out. After the hospital’s last two disappointments, I hadn’t wanted to raise anyone’s hopes. But as I walk out of the conference room and my body tenses to run, I glance a final time at the pictures of the dying colonists. This is yet another sin I’ll have to account for one day.

For the briefest of moments, I wonder if that’s how mavich wants it.

And then I run.

* * *

I’m breastfeeding my baby in the nursery when my body realizes the mavich is right outside the house. I protectively cradle Alis’s sleepy body before logic says she’ll be safer in her crib. As I lay her down, she sighs, content in being fed and being loved. I run my fingers through her curly black hair for a moment, then walk quickly to my bedroom.

Paul’s stinger is in the drawer where he always keeps it. I remember how often I’ve asked him to get rid of the gun; how many times he repeated irritating clichés about the jungles of the old Russian tundra being a dangerous place. As I pull the stinger out, I bless Paul for his foresight. I glance at him sleeping in the bed and blow a kiss as I walk outside to confront the mavich, cursing with all my might the SOB I once was.

At first I don’t see the beast, but then the trees shimmer and I realize it’s standing right before me. I’m glad my body didn’t detect the mavich until it was too late to run. While my body still aims to defend itself, I touch my love for Alis and Paul and realize I prefer death to running away yet again.

The mavich pads around me, its gaping mouth of space and time twinkling to a billion newly created stars. My body raises the stinger and fires, but the gun can’t harm something which barely exists. I smile at my coming death. I remember my love for Lauren, my betrayal of my platoon, the thousands I could have saved on Mars, the millions more my original self killed because I was so in love with my own perverted ideals. Most of all, I feel my love for Alis and Paul. I don’t care how hard my original self worked to save his life, it’s not worth the pain I feel for those I continually leave behind.

The mavich steps toward me and from its gaping mouth I hear the cries of those I murdered so many years ago. I brace myself. Beg Alis to forgive me. Take comfort in knowing that Paul will love and raise our child.

But then the mavich pauses, flickers, the distortions which form its body fading for some reason. In that instant, I realize my body is going to run again, that it’s going to reach Paul’s jump bike behind the house. That my body will once again escape and change and create a new life, a life I’ll only understand when I’m once again forced to abandon everyone and everything I’ve come to love.

However, even as I realize this my body’s instinct to run misses a beat. I flick the stinger at my legs and fire, shattering bones and muscles. I fall screaming to the ground.

The pain is almost too much to bear, but I take pride in having stopped my body. I brace myself and stare up at the mavich as it reforms even stronger than before. The beast opens its mouth impossibly wide, appears ready to envelope the entire world with its vengeance. I pray that Alis forgives me and close my eyes.

And open them again to find the mavich squatting before me, grinning. Kill me, I think. Give your creators the vengeance they told you to deliver. But the mavich merely sits there, grinning. It then steps back and disappears into the forest.

That’s when I understand a mavich’s true vengeance.

Paul runs outside and holds me, presses his hands onto my destroyed legs to slow the bleeding. He tells me a medical shuttle is on its way. They’ll repair you in no time, he says.

I think of Alis sleeping soundly in her bedroom, and realize Paul is right. I’ll be repaired in no time. And then my body will be running. And changing. And running again.

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