Rise Up

First Written    Thu Apr 19 06:14:18 2018
File Modified    Wed Feb 14 18:32:26 2024
Latest Upload    Thu Sep 19 03:09:54 2024

Fourier's mind floated, trying to catch the thing he was looking for. It was like trying to remember a word or a name. You'd never find it just by thinking. You'd have to walk through the steps, the last sequence of memories you last went through before hearing the term. And when you could remember no further, you just had to hover. He hovered his mind like a glass jar floating down a riverside: don't hit any edges. Don't get caught on anything nearby. Just float until you reach wherever it is you have to be. He floated. And then he found it.

"The nerve," his inner monologue remarked, breaking through the fog. After two and a half seconds of mindfulness, he had found the nerve again. In two and half milliseconds, he had capitalized on it. It was hard to find this one. He had hardly used the thing since it was installed. A port, of Republic design, had been implanted at the base of his spine since he had gained his citizenship so many years ago. The port was one of many, and the nerve, in its physical form at least, was one of many sockets in one of many busses in this port. Of course, it was no physical thing to Fourier.

No one felt nerves. It was a fact not only evident in the perceptions of any Human who had ever felt, but also quickly confirmed in the early years of the implant program. Nerves were wires. You didn't feel them, you felt the thing they were attached to. This meant that replacements - arms and legs and hands, were relatively natural. Other lines of control were a bit more complex. Thankfully, the motor cortex had proved to be just as imaginative as the rest of the brain: Fourier had wings.

That was what his body believed, at least. He never saw them. No one else ever saw them. But when he wanted to, he could feel them. His wings were like tree branches. They did not flap. They felt more like antlers than they did wings, not that Fourier had any real world experience having either. But, as Dr. Young's videos had explained, he could choose where to put them. And he wanted wings.

Not all of his nerves were this difficult to find. One "wing tip" lowered his helmet. Others could trigger his shields, prime his legs for jumping, or call his mother and order groceries. This one just happened to suffer from a lack of frequent use.

He flexed the wing tip, holding it tense for three seconds. His mind's eye traced the path to it, starting from the base of his shoulder blades where real flesh and imaginary flesh were blurred, up through its fractal offshoots until it stared right at the pinpoint of sensation that was his nerve. When the final second ticked, Fourier let out a constricted gasp as he felt the weight of his own chest for the first time in three years. Though the vital systems of his suit remained online, his artificial muscles were now off.

"Breathe," he commanded himself, "you still remember how."

He opened his eyes only to reveal the steel tile floor of his quarters an inch from his face. His helmet's visor, still down, was the only thing between him and a broken nose. His sister had called him earlier. It unnerved him to think about how close the visor was. Gwyneth always tried to call him while she was flying. She said it was her duty to remind him the sky was blue so he wouldn't forget while he was cooped up in the barracks all day. The clouds above and fields below seemed so far when he was seeing them through his sister's eyes. It felt cheapening to think about how everything he had seen had been projected on a glass screen right in front of his nose.

"How goes the eternal struggle, dearest brother?" he had heard her ask through the sounds of wind against a microphone.

"Gwyneth, you know I haven't even been deployed right?"

"Not that struggle, March! I mean the eternal struggle of bettering thyself, bettering thy world, and getting thyself laid. I'm pretty sure they beat at least two out of three of those things into us."

"Fuck's sake, you know they can hear us. Do you have to be thirty three percent vulgar whenever you're on the phone?"

"God," she replied, "I assume I'm right in guessing you've shed no more than zero percent of your burdens, both existential and... carnal?"

Fourier had been sitting on his bed about to masturbate before answering receiving Gwyneth's call.

He grunted dismissively, "Why do you care so much about who I've been porking anyways? What happened to clouds? Why don't you tell me about clouds again. I like clouds."

Gwyneth laughed. "You don't like clouds. You don't like anything, you fuck. That's why I'm worried about you. I know you, Mr. 'I'm March Fourier and I'm boring so I'll join the Vanguard and fall in love and be a real boy just like my cool sister.' Born and age with so many defining labels and yet, you just had to end up with 'tragically unremarkable romantic'. Gross."

"Why do I even talk to you," he complained, "Why don't you go fly into a cumulonimbus?"

"Okay. I can tell when I'm not wanted. Just, tell me you're doing okay, March. Tell me you made some friends or you talked to a girl or found yourself or something. Lie if you have to. I'll pass it on to mom, no questions."

March blew wind through his lips. He was making the sound effects he imagined his sister heard as she soared over the countryside.

"Tell her, and tell yourself, that I don't need to be worried over and I don't need to lie. I found a girl. A woman, actually. I found the person I'm going to die for and I'm going to make myself strong for her. In fact, I was just about to start my workout."

"Oh my god," Gwyneth gushed, "Oh god, I need to tell mom! She's going to be so happy! She's going to tell all her friends and send you a cake and get off my back about grandchildren-"

Fourier had closed the channel. He had dropped to the floor moments after and sighed. He didn't, couldn't lie. But he could stretch the truth. He had stretched the truth about the 'girl'. He didn't want to stretch the truth about fitness either. In a fit of self-betterment he had vowed to do a single push-up, unassisted, and so he had cast aside the protective shell of his artificial musculature and let his Human parts bear the pain of being again.

While his electronic parts sat dead, his living ones felt like they were dying. He wondered if he liked it. He wondered if he'd like the rush of forcing himself to his feet on asphalt or trench mud instead of Vanguard-issue flooring. Athletes liked the burn of building their bodies. Did he like tearing his apart as his muscles pushed and split against his metal shell? The weight of his backplate normally felt like nothing sitting against his raw flesh, but now it was uncomfortably unyielding. It was not painful unless he struggled. While parts of him were pressed beneath the plate, others hung off it like meat on steel ribs.

He reactivated his implants. The sleeping parts of him quickly faded back into life as if they had just been numbed from a pinched nerve. With his fists, he raised himself up until he could see the printout on the wall above his dresser. His muse was always watching him.

"I didn't lie," he told her.

The picture of Anastasia Yem was cheap. It had cost him two luxury credits at the barracks printer. A small price to turn the place that held his socks into a temple, a one-way telephone to God, or in this case Goddess, herself. He found this picture of her revealing. Her summer dress showed skin, at least by Anna Yem standards. A neckline low enough to show the tops of collarbones turned a Republic official portrait into the closest thing he could find to a pin-up of the Chairwoman. What he really found revealing however, was her smile. Anna was naked when she smiled. She was naked when she watched her father accept the Neumannoids' surrender. She was not naked at her inauguration, but she was when she sat at the Chair's desk for the first time. He had seen all the pictures, figured out the pattern, and in turn realized that two months ago, she had exposed herself to him.

The Chairwoman, as was not unexpected for a stateswoman, had decided to speak to some of her citizens when she made her last tour of the Republic Oversees. On the Seaboard Monitor, she had chosen Fourier. The Chairwoman, as was not unexpected for Anna Yem, asked him if he would enjoy dying for the Vanguard. He had told her no. She had asked him if he would enjoy dying for humanity. He had told her that he most assuredly would not. She had asked him if he would enjoy dying for her. He had told her he would think about it. That was enough for Ms. Yem to bare it all. Enough for March Fourier to get his first unforgettable taste of a madwoman's victory smile at point blank. He knew then that it didn't matter if he'd like dying for her. She certainly would.

March basked in her image as if the shines off her photo's gloss were rays of light coming from the deity he made her out to be. Still on his fists, he felt himself a winged monkey lying prostrate before his wicked witch. He took a deep breath and at its peak, shut down his implants again. His wind left forcefully, taking with it any inclination to give up and leaving him kissing tile floor again. Would it kill him to complete a push-up in her name? He figured it would be a shame if it didn't come close. After all, he'd told her he would think about it.