Used by now to a life of mixed moral integrity which hardly let up to allow him
to catch breath let alone anything else, Iron indulged in an opportune moment of dreary
silence; a gap in the scintillating samba storm; to think some outlandishly obscure
things through. "Past, present, future..." he announced to nobody in particular but
himself; "they're all the same to me; in theory at least. What's to separate one moment
in time from another; one life from the next save our own categorizing minds? Who's to
say that this happened, this will happen and this is happening now? Who's to say that all
things don't happen simultaneously, and that it's just us; as human beings; logical
beings; who impose this order on the world. Why is it that us humans hold time so dear
and rush around spending it here there and everywhere; complaining that we've lost it
and protesting that we've spent it in such a way as to neglect those that time has now
taken from us?"
"So poor a receptacle is time; and such a meagre portion we posses." Lincoln had
always had the eye of a sniper and the tongue of a poet. Which was the most deadly
depended on your take on the 'pen is mightier than the sword' conundrum; on whether
you believed physical or intellectual threats to society were paramount. "Yeah, but Saz;
time can be a wonderful thing; all the things it can contain." Lincoln shook her head at
his pronouncement; it wasn't as if time had been kind to him, but she understood the
paradoxical appreciation of the fact; "We busy ourselves too much; human beings;
while nature and space are content where and how they are. We're obsessed with
discriminating between things; categorizing."
"Human beings think too much and live too little." Lincoln took the point like a direct
religious realization. Iron tended to sum up the profound in choice phrases where she
seemed to take a deliberated age. Perhaps she went about things the wrong way. Iron
had paused to return to the more physical existence which his dualistic nature required;
"This whole conception of time is merely a creation of self protection. Protection
against the vastness of real time; against its ravages. Protection against the prospect of
feeling small against the unfathomable hugeness of this universe. The problem with us
human beings is that we choose the set of rules that best suits us; that puts humanity in
the center of our whole fantastic pantheon."
"Well, we always have; the earth at the center of the universe; the king at the center of
the regime. Our brains like good, clean order. It's a myth of convenience to think that
we're the superior beings, and that our 'discoveries' are so correct and so advanced as
opposed other cultures, and other epochs in history; even to those of other species."
"Isn't it fortunate that we're the superior beings; that we can control this world. That
there are no Gods and that there's nothing we don't at least partially understand. That
it's all in our hands. It's too much of a coincidence that we happen to know it all right
now; that we hold all the cards. Couldn't it be that we're biased in our assessment of
the universe and how to understand it? In fact, isn't it more likely that we're biased;
biased towards humanity? That we choose the understanding of this world which best
suits us; which puts us in the best position?"
"Yeah. We seek to conquer by taking things apart to learn how they work without
realizing that once we've taken them apart they don't work anymore! If only we could
right wrongs, you know; turn back the clock; put all that junk back together again; the
stuff we've ruined. You can't expect people to work hard in a commercial world if they
believe there are better things to be concerned about. Fortunate for commercial society
that there aren’t better things to think about than earning the soggy fish and moldy
crust of bread you need to survive. That there's nothing beyond your mundane day to
day job. That there aren’t things bigger and better than humanity which if we stopped
rather than rushed we would see and appreciate? Well, yeah it's fortunate; so fortunate
that it can't possibly be the truth. We've messed our world up; driven a stake through
it's heart. We've even lost any idea of what it means to be human."
"If only we could go back; even fifteen years, right?"
"Fifteen years would be nice. A little over thirteen would do. On purely selfish grounds
I know what I'd change. But it isn't possible, is it; time travel?"
"Well, I've heard of all these hyperspace theories; wormholes and such. Stretching
space and time so we can manipulate them in any way we want."
"OK I know it's my nature, but of that I'm especially skeptical. It's nice in theory to
think of bending space and time; of being able to travel light years in a single bound.
But nice doesn't quite equal true. It would be nice if it never got cold. It would be nice
if your team always won the world series. It would be nice if cream cakes weren’t
packed with calories. It would be nice if people didn't go around shooting your parents,
but hell, that's the way it is. But you can't bend nothingness. You can't put a hole
through something that isn't there; that doesn't exist. The notion of putting a hole in
space is a fallacy; in effect it's the theory that you can put a hole in a hole! And time;
well. Time is probably even less physical. It doesn't even relate to corporeal form; it's
even less 'there' than the absence of everything! We live in time; in the now; we swim
in it. There's no other moment. If we were to take the past and bring it here, or even
copy it, it wouldn't be the past anymore; it would be the present. The very definitions of
past and future negate the possibility of such manipulation. The moment we touch it it's
nature changes. Maybe if we're talking about spirituality, we could conceive in some
way the idea of manipulating time, but through physical sciences; no chance, unless you
throw physical science out the window to do it, which of course would mean you
aren't using physical science to do it at all. I won't pretend to understand the intricacies
of 'time travel' theories, but to me it appears that it's more likely time will come to you
than you go to a specified time, if you see what I mean. But we just can't control time
through the physical sciences because it just isn't physical. Our theories and
terminology can't apply."
"But supposing you could." Iron was determined to play devil's advocate.
"OK, OK; supposing we could. If we could go back and change things; witness the
road not taken. We sometimes see sci fi stories where people break the light barrier and
go back in time. This is based on the notion that time gets slower when we travel
faster, and that therefore if we travel really fast, we'd go backwards, although our mass
would also become infinite, which may make us some kind of super being, but wouldn't
have very positive consequences for the universe, I'd imagine. But of course when we
look at scientific theories we must realize that we would almost inevitably; in Einstein’s
world view; be looking at relativity. Time may go slower, but only relatively so. It
seems slower than it normally does; slow to the traveler. We're not manipulating time;
just ourselves. Time goes at exactly the same rate for those not traveling with us. But
it's not the scientific difficulties which persuade me most that time travel isn't possible;
it's the paradoxes. Now, I love a good paradox, but they only make sense on a spiritual
level. Paradoxes of a physical nature; a logical nature; amount to no more than
nonsense."
"In a physical sense?"
"Nonsense or otherwise, physical facts say little about the spiritual qualities of the
contradiction."
"But because we'd have to actually travel; physically; it's the physical facts we have to
look at?"
"Right, and the facts don't add up."
"You mean like what would happen if you went back and set off a chain of events
which would mean you would no longer live today... perhaps I mean tomorrow..."
"The grandfather paradox. What if a man goes back and kills his grandfather?"
"The killer has to cease to exist."
"And if he ceases to exist he could never go back in time."
"So he could never have killed his grandfather."
"Which means the grandfather is still alive; so is the potential killer."
"So he could go back."
"And kill his grandfather. It's a vicious circle. It's a chain of events which could
conceivably go on and on until it contained the entire universe, which perhaps relates to
the thing about going at a certain speed and therefore occupying the whole universe."
"The murderer would be stuck in a loop."
"For all eternity; lost in the whirlpool of time. What if you meet your parents before
you were born, they didn't like you and decided not to have you?"
"Same problem, although you'd be pretty stupid to tell them you're their kid if they're
likely to react like that."
"What if you go back anonymously and your own mother falls in love with you; leaves
your father before you're conceived."
"That would be even worse."
"What if a man is visited by an expert who gives him the secret of time travel. The
recipient makes his mint with the device, then ten years later goes back and gives
himself; his past self; the secret of time travel."
"You mean they were the same guy?"
"Right. Now; where did the secret of time travel come from?"
"Well, the recipient got it from his elder self, who got it from..."
"His elder self. Infinite progression and regression at once. The time line goes on and
on forever like a vine without a root. The story doesn't contain any instance of anyone
'discovering' time travel. Time travel the concept is destroying time travel the
practicality."
"Or unpracticality. Yeah; that sounds... a little weird."
"OK here's the weirdest one I've heard. This is a story by a guy called Robert Heinlein.
Alright, so it's 1945; a stormy night. Thunder's beating, rain's pelting. There's an old
house on the hill; a mansion; you know, a bit like in psycho, alright? It's an orphanage.
A baby girl is dropped off on the steps; abandoned by nobody knows who. The
authorities bring her up and call her Jane, who's lonely because she never knew who her
real parents were. She feels betrayed; an outsider. She also has health problems;
hormonal deficiencies. She has a tough time; unable to make friends; meet people. She
drinks, does drugs; all that. Eventually she's getting over her hang-ups; she's just out of
the adolescent phase. She always liked kids and she works for a baby sitting agency,
but can't hold down a full time job. Anyway, one snowy Christmas in 1963, she's had a
bit too much to drink. She meets this guy who's a bit like her; a drunken wanderer
who's also in a bit of a state. She doesn't remember what happens that night but
needless to say they ended up sleeping together and she's pregnant. A day had passed
which she really can't recall, but that was probably the effect of the drink and; most
likely, the drugs. The father disappears. Jane's problems; physical and mental; mount.
She feels so uncomfortable in her own body that the only way out is to have what at
the time would have been a pioneering sex change operation. She decides she will as
soon as the baby is born. A baby girl is born, and soon after she goes into hospital for
the surgery. With no family or friends, there's nobody to look after the kid so she palms
it off to a baby-sitting agency. She unwisely leaves the kid outside the house with the
key under the mat; stupid I know but remember this girl's pretty much unhinged.
Anyway when she wakes up from the operation she finds the baby has been kidnapped;
and of course blames that damned sitter. The agency sent a registered sitter round but
at the end of the day if she no showed and Jane just left her kid there with the key
under the mat it's her own fault and she doesn't have a hope of pressing charges. Jane;
let's call her John now because she... he... is now a man, is even more embittered by
life, and turns to drink; wastes his life away walking the streets. In 1970 John is
drinking in a bar and pouring his heart out about his/her life to the old bartender. The
tender takes pity on John and reveals he's a freelance scientist who's been working on a
time travel machine, but hasn't had a chance to test it because he needs two people to
go just in case something happens to one of them and the other has to get the thing
home before they irrevocably damage the timeline. He says John can be the geinea pig;
afterall, he has nothing to live for, and if he goes back he can take his revenge on that
drifter who wrecked his; Jane's; life by leaving her pregnant on the streets. The tender
will go to operate the thing once they get there; or, maybe, then."
Iron was by now counting things on his fingers and nodding his head in feigned
comprehension like the piston of a California oil well. But things only grew more
complicated as, well... time went on; or should that have been 'back'? "OK, so they go
back, but as the bartender feared the thing goes wrong. John gets sent back to where he
should have gone but the barman appears nine months later. At this turn of events John
is even more distressed. Now even that kindly bartender has abandoned him. Worse;
evidently the machine ended up wherever the old man did. So he turns to drink like
never before, and meets a girl in a similar state. Last thing he remembers they're
sleeping together. Meanwhile; if such a term can be used conditions as they are; or
were, the old man is gathering parts for the time drive and hears the cries of a baby in
distress. He finds it in a push chair in the street and is appalled by the way parents treat
their kids in this day and age. Veritably the place is a hell hole. He looks for the mother
but can't find her. Responsible man as he is, he takes the kid in; meanwhile managing to
fix the device. So he goes back to early '63 and takes the baby with him; afterall,
nobody else is going to look after it. He finds John in a drunken stupor in bed with this
girl, and drags him off. Just as he activates the temporal rift the girl gets herself in the
way; thus once again causing a malfunction. So the girl; still in quite a state, and not
knowing she's just traveled forward in time nine months; rings the agency she works for
and gets given a job. On the way, the bartender turns up having evidently repaired the
time drive again, and; getting sick with malfunctioning time drives, drunken time
travelers and the growing weight of responsibility on his head as these people continue
to disrupt the space-time continuum; whisks her and John back to early '63' post haste.
Here he drops the girl off where he found her and says to John retribution will have to
'wait'; as it were; there's the pressing little problem of the kid. Knowing in bygone days
public services were far more efficient, he takes them back to a rainy day in 1945,
knocks on the door of an orphanage and leaves in order to avoid interaction with the
helpers; thus making sure at least that the continuum isn't damaged further. They
quickly scoot back towards 1970, but the old glitch in the machine leaves John in 1985.
What's happened to the old man he doesn't know. After getting over what must; events
taken into consideration; have been a nasty hangover, John decides to get his life
together. He's inspired by the scientist, and goes to university to study quantum
mechanics. Time passes and he invents a rudimentary device, but in his retirement he'd
rather experiment in his spare time and own a bar; afterall, he's always been into
alcohol. Unfortunately, property these days is pretty expensive, so he has an idea. He
goes back to 1970 and gets himself a bar. One day, in comes a depressed guy who
drinks away his sorrows and relays to him the story of his life... Confused?" Iron
mimicked the sob of an unloved chinchilla; "So what's the puzzle? Who's the baby?
Who's the wanderer?"
"If you work it out, Jane; or John; is not only herself, the wanderer and the bartender,
but she's also her own mother, father, mate, daughter, son; even her own grandfather,
grandmother, grandson, granddaughter; even her own great grandfather, etc, etc. Oh,
and she's the baby-sitter as well, so in actual fact the whole affair really was her fault."
This was enough to clarify the general point she was making to Iron. Really he couldn't
see any alternative; "Time travel isn't possible, is it?" Then again, Lincoln pondered;
what if indeed we were eachother's father, mother, as so on and so forth; if in effect all
people in history could be the same person; just in different instances of time travel.
She grimaced as this awful thought spread through her head like a hot flush; now she
was punishing herself.
Around the back of an illicit establishment used in the past to fuel the money
making schemes of both a rag tag burger bar and a cruel cocaine cartel in different eras
of recent history, the first stringy bars of an asperitous altercation were beginning to
sound. Another unwanted stop on the road to an unknown destiny; a further set to be
exploited by the improvisational protagonists whichever way they saw fit. "Boss says
you know where he hidin, an' I don't appreciate people tellin' me what I know an' what
I don't." Peering innocently around a crumbling brick wall, Lincoln watched as one
junta jingoist interrogated another; four more armed guards surrounding the pair inside
a recently derelict loading bay which remained neglectfully jam packed with boxes and
crates of various shapes and sizes as if they were leftovers from a previous scene.
A mountainous militia mannequin in recherché regalia which he adjusted
uncomfortably as if it was a rambling tarantula crawling all over his flesh, wiped a
gudgeon gold tooth with a tumescent top lip as the lambasted traitor winged like a
puppy kicked away from the dinner table with a fierce foot from the head of the house.
Jay Johnson clicked his jaw; producing a squeamish sound akin to squelching a spoon
around in a tin of cat food; and kicked the heel of a tasseled tongued boxing boot,
wishing all the while he was still in the ring. If a good clean brawl was out of the
question, assault would have to do. The disgraced Sergeant Mehmo; having received a
blow to the stomach before Iron and Lincoln had appeared as yet unannounced on the
stage; struggled to kneel as he weighed up the pros and cons of giving away the
information which this braying bouncer so clearly wised he'd be forced to knock out of
him. Really, it was a question of who could give him the most severe beating; the fridge
like Lieutenant; who had caught him in a swiftly abolished attempt to flee the city, or
Commander Samvriti; the higher ranking official who had gone AWOL the moment his
plans to assassinate the top governors and set up an alternative regime under his own
patronage had been discovered by government spies obviously unversed in the regularly
observed work ethic; or lack of; to which their comrades swore allegiance.
The truth was that Samvriti himself may have been a sixty year old veteran who
had been almost single handily managing the intricate day to day affairs of the
corporation which became the establishment for a full twenty years before his power
hungry brainchild was finally granted its jeeringly sacrilegious existence, but he knew
some powerful not to mention vicious people. Johnson, on the other hand; despite
being an ex heavyweight world champ and backed to the hilt by the powers that be;
wasn't in such a privileged position due to both his lower rank and the fact that those 'in
the know' were aware of his uncertain attitudes about the people he served and so
wisely didn't trust him. Then again, immediate concerns were foremost in Mehmo's
mind. If he spent enough time, effort and resources, he could probably escape before
Samvriti found out about his whale sized mouth; and besides his feeble backing was
nothing compared to the power of the government, however unstable it may have been.
"I'll tell y..."
But before his aching chest could splutter the answer, Mehmo was cut short by
the unexpected appearance of two strangers who emerged from behind their vantage
point and hovered towards the loading bay as if on a country stroll. "Oh; the tessellate
tool of treachery." Lincoln; intentionally antagonizing the burly aggressor; was well
aware that her entrance had created a riven rift between Johnson and his surroundings;
the Lieutenant was no longer in control of all that he surveyed; and that notion he
detested like a poor promoter. "Who 'hell 'you?" Johnson was always sparing in his idea
of how many words suffice to make a sentence. Lincoln paused for a moment to work
out exactly what the archetypal adonis was trying to say while Iron simply dismissed it
and guessed; "Well, I was just passing, and, you know; good, honest citizen as I am..."
"Shut 'f*ck up and get in line." Johnson drew the two intruder's attention to the fact
that his four accomplices in the background were thoughtfully kitted out with a
cavalcade of assorted machine guns and other more neanderthal munitions. "Well that
was to the point, at least." Lincoln's comment was duly ignored, so she was quick to
make another; giving Iron an advisory nudge; "think we'd better play along." Johnson's
glare almost silenced her half way through her sentence, to which she mimed a sarcastic
'sorry'.
Officers Jarrett and Hussain began to dream of the impending promise of a wild
west shoot-out should their visitors decide to make a suicide retreat as Jay Johnson
paced around like a feudal king in a hopeless war. But warfare didn't appeal to Johnson
anymore. After Iraq, he had realized the army wasn't his scene. That was typical for
him; he could only decide whether or not he liked something when he was half way to
mastering it. As yet, the only thing he did like, and which he managed to pursue was
boxing, though since the current regime took over, New York boxers were banned
from all major international sporting associations, and the underground circuits of
Manhattan were hardly a challenge for a heavyweight of his caliber. In fact, aside from
the boxing, Johnson was a man with no path to follow; no inspiration to guide him.
Such people, in permissive societies, often turn out to be varitable bomb kits waiting to
be armed and placed inside some unsuspecting target deemed strategically vital by
whatever controlled their fates. He wondered if it really was beneficial to drift between
jobs and pursuits in such a way while never entangling himself in anything enough to
actually claim a place in society. But in the grand scheme of things, society was an
abstract, and in any case the only concrete fact to Johnson was that he bore little
concern over any 'place' he may be observed to possess, and even less for either loyalty
or commitment. Such a naturally dominating man needed the psychological stability of
being under nobody's whim but his own. "No guns." His words formed rather a flat
suggestion than an order, but it had the same effect, as the four gangly guards hid their
weapons in coat pockets like mafia gunmen hoping to look inconspicuous amid a high
profile bust and began to worry what they would be able to do to stop the prisoners
without such fusilier firepower should they attempt to escape. They had all embarked
on wild flights of fancy when penning their CVs; only the boxer himself appeared to
assume they all held comparable fighting qualifications to his own. But Johnson had
other concerns; what to do with Mehmo and how to ensure the two strangers' silence
over what they had just witnessed. More to the point, what had they just witnessed,
and would they seriously be a threat if they knew who Samvriti was, that the
government was after him and that Volscenzi's grip on power was loosening like a
greased down body builder holding a miniature cup of tea; governmental fragmentation
crackling away like a metallic mug of similar vein in a microwave?
After a moment of dull deliberation, it occurred to him that actually what a pair
of disgruntled dissidents knew or didn't know was the fault and responsibility of those
residing in the loftier echelons of government, and it was rather the reminder of that big
fat reward at the bottom of the wanted posters bearing their mug shots he had seen
dotted around town like droplets from a shaken, lidless fountain pen that spurred him
on to more decisive things. As was customary within the darker recesses of a corrupt
establishment, he concluded that it was better to pass the buck and instead do simply
what took his fancy; in other words, he would award himself the dose of violence of
which he had for so long been deprived. Their fates should be dictated by the result of
hand to hand combat. Johnson had always prided himself on fighting ability; he was
mediocre at many things, but in boxing he had found his forte. "I'm a fair man, Mr...."
"Iron."
"....and Miss...."
"Lincoln."
".... I'll cut yo' a deal. My friends here'll give you one continuous round, no holds
barred, no guns; two on one; four on two. You win, you walk. You loose, you ain't
walkin' nowhere. Get the rules?" The strangers seemed to accept too readily for
Johnson's comfort, but he ignored his suspicions as some bizarre psychological banter
which he'd never understood the purpose of at pro level and stepped further back into
the loading bay dragging Mehmo behind him like a farmer removing a butchered sheep.
'Lambs to the slaughter' smirked Johnson; punching the air as if on the way to the ring
for a title bout accompanied by a booming rap soundtrack; the result of which the
bookies had proclaimed overwhelmingly in his favor. Good entertainment was hard to
come by, and he was a fanatic starved of his first love. Iron really didn't mind playing
the puppet on a string in Johnson's spectator sport as long as he was rewarded with the
clash with the puppeteer he so expected from a man of Johnson's pride and stature
supposing he and Lincoln defeated the preliminary 'goons'.
The first was Jarrett; who quite stupidly charged his opponent with a tediously
slow right armed swing. Iron was in no mood to allow the government representative
any leeway, and caught the aimless fist in good time; wrapping his attacker's captured
arm around his own neck with one sturdy hand and turning him around as if holding
aloft a rare, hunted animal. But the embarrassment of this elaborate if effective hold
was to be only the start of Jarrett's humiliation as the stranger; maintaining his grip on
the officer, hopped off the floor and planted a knee into his nose from an unpredictable
angle. But as his partner tumbled off the loading platform face agush with blood,
Hussain picked his moment to test how the other new face would react to the supposed
mathematics of the situation; him armed with a ragged flicknife; her not armed at all.
But, as he attempted to slash his way through Lincoln's scalp, he received a wholly
unwelcome surprise; his leading arm being twisted around and the blade disappearing
from his grasp as he received conformation that her arm was the deadlier weapon as
she whirled her elbow over his defending funny bone and down into the bridge of the
nose.
Johnson nodded; impressed. This was one challenge he wasn't going to miss out
on. But Iron; on the other hand; had no time to wonder about the commanding officer
entering the fray; he had to both deal with the mini ax wielding officer Kain and block
out the persistent mutterings of Mehmo, who sulked noisily in the background like a
whimpering unfed pony scratching at the stable gate. As it turned out, Kain was far
from a significant threat; his weapon parried and thrown to the floor with a simple twist
of the wrist. Now unarmed, Kain took a step back and raised a barely sufficient guard
as Iron; eager to expose his opponent's lack of responsiveness; began a misleading
attack with his right by half extending his arm as if to strike with a shortpunch to the
stomach. The dupe worked; Kain dropping his guard just enough for Iron to hurl a
devastating left handed hook into and almost straight through his jaw. Kain thumped
onto his knees; his sparring partner's punch power both deceptive and decisive. But
rattling a now broken jaw from side to side like a single match in a box, he staggered
up determined not to be beaten, and this time raised his guard higher and awaited a
mistake from Iron.
Again though, the stranger had out thought him, and realized exactly what was
going through his mind. The eyestell it all. First rule of fighting; know what your
opponent is going to do before he does. An almost devilish smirk on his face, Iron span
around with a hooking back kick designed to sail precious inches over Kain's head. The
damage this attack was intended to cause was purely psychological and as Kain seized
his opportunity and leapt forward to grab Iron in a vain attempt to bring him down, the
agonizingly elusive fighter regained his stance, lifted his back leg off the floor and
launched an excruciatingly close range side kick into his oncoming opponent's abdomen
with such ferocity that the degraded officer ballooned off the floor and into a cascade
of pungent tea boxes where he finally had time to rest and endure his pains without
anyone adding to them.
Lincoln was now left alone to finish off the last of Johnson's quartet; Okami
Hageta; a sergeant in training who was now facing his greatest test. Under the guidance
of Johnson and other top prize fighters, Hageta had enjoyed the benefits of training in
various styles of combat, but was perhaps too anxious to apply that knowledge. Fists
weaving like bees around a pollinating flower, he approached his adversary; clearly
swift on his feet, but not so fast a thinker. Lincoln acknowledged his fighting stance by
raising her fists in front of her face and casting a watchful eye over her top two
knuckles as if they were the viewfinder of a rifle.
As expected, Hageta attacked first with a combination of a hook, short leg
sweep and a straight punch with the opposite hand; none, to his amazement and
disappointment; catching their target as Lincoln skillfully put herself just out of range.
Not to be deterred, Hageta struck again; his shoulder high roundhouse caught in mid
flight like the common cold. Now Johnson and Hageta frowned simultaneously. The
latter was stuck, and had no chance of reaching his opponent with his arms; the only
courses of action were to block or attempt a complicated and potentially excruciating
maneuver which in truth he had not been taught yet, much less tried. So blocking was
the only option, but in a constricted stance it was not easy; a realization which was put
on a trial the outcome of which was as predictable of that of a homicide case in which
the accused had been found by numerous policemen and upstanding civilian witnesses
with a smoking gun in his hand and a lifetime grudge against the fallen victim.
Pummeling Hageta with a bruising series of apparently random roundhouse kicks
without once dropping her leg, she struck to the chest, face, shoulder and legs while
ensuring his helplessness by maintaining her grasp on the hyperextended leg. Positioned
and balanced well enough to deliver a near infinitude of unavoidable kicks and using
the secure hold on the stretched leg as much as a balance as a restraint, she decided to
pity the unfortunate hun and land only six; the last slamming his head back like a ping
pong ball in a Taiwanese sports center before she swept down and struck a heel against
the back of Hageta's standing leg, thus causing him to crumple into a misshapen ball on
the cemented floor. Iron could hardly help himself laughing until Johnson gave him a
challenging stare and Hageta; deciding it was probably in his best interests to stay
down; let his arms give up and dived back down in an unconvincing attempt to appear
unconscious.
Now Johnson; face strapped with a gritty grin; anticipated the inevitable battle
ahead. Lincoln stepped back, realizing this monstrous heavyweight had no intention of
risking his 'warrior's dignity' against the 'lesser' gender, but not without reluctancy.
"Better to save him the embarrassment, I guess" She waved a gesturing hand; inviting
Iron to take on the hefty monstrosity who vastly outscaled him in terms of both height
and build. But not to be daunted, the smaller man approached his opponent first as
Johnson displayed an entourage of three glittering gold canines. "I dunno who y'all
been hired by, but whoever it is their master plan ends here. I know my.... associates
ain't been proper' trained to be anythin' but pen pushers, but I got where I am 'cos I'm a
fighter, 'an I ain't goin' down like my friends here."
Iron made a troublesome cardboard box trundle aside with a tap of the foot and
watched as it scuttled eerily like a piece of gunslinging western tumbleweed across the
superficial scene. He almost expected Clint Eastwood to turn up on a trudty steed and
inquire about his feelings of personal fortune. The proletariat prize fighter squinted
punch drunk eyebrows with inane preoccupation; dreaming of better days. Afterall,
Johnson was bitterly deluded if he thought a minor scuffle in the backstreets of New
York was in any way comparable to those big Vegas pay days he had grown
accustomed to and the frivolous life they facilitated.
The boxer threw in a jab just wide of Iron's ear then a ferocious left hook which
would surely have beheaded the challenger had he not swerved precariously under and
around the striking arm with such unfalable speed and agility that the attacker
momentarily lost sight of his target.
Iron's tactics already decided, he took the initiative and bounced forward with
his own jab and hook; both avoided, but the latter skimming what limited amount of
only dimly visible shaven hair rested on the top of Johnson's bowl shaped head. This
was enough to give the resistant reactionary an idea of his method of both attack and
defense, and as the butch commissar pondered his next move, a hidden mechanism
reserved for such things in the back of Iron's mind arranged his entire battle plan as if
sorting a mental uni folder in which he had compiled a literary report on Sun Tzu's art
of war. That was an invaluable advantage as he evaded Johnson's predictable hook and
opened up the scoring with an uppercut as he slipped under the ex pro's notoriously
careless defense.
Johnson; preparing for his next attack; was caught out again as Iron realized
this, fooled his opponent as he swapped leading feet and thumped a punch with his
back hand into his kidneys, then two swooping short punches to the same area on both
sides of the body. Johnson had been totally taken aback by the shuffle of feet, and the
reverse punch had crushed his anticipation, but his enemy had backed off and given him
space to breath and that; to a professional; is a mirthless misjudgment reserved only for
those harboring a docile death wish. Iron, on the other hand, was keen to make sure
this did not turn out to be a boxing match; at that, he would most surely loose; and so
could not allow himself to be influenced by Johnson's style. Instead, he began to wave
his hands about like a drowning fly splashing its wings in vain. This method certainly
worked; Johnson found he had to concentrate so much on the arm movements that he
completely ignored the legs, and was swiftly caught with one; a bullet like roundhouse
which knocked his head to the side with enough speed and force to make him wonder
why he was suddenly looking the other way until another foot; this time a heel; sent his
chin into an aggravating loop. But the intruder was not finished yet. He took a
straightforward leap, raised a knee, saw his adversary prepare to smother a roundhouse
to the left of the head, and proceeded to whip his leg across Johnson's face instead; the
ball of the foot cutting across the right side of the jaw like a slap from a dumped
girlfriend.
Now the arena adopted an air of unprecedented jubilation as it seemed to
grimace in the smirking darkness of the derelict offloading station. Johnson had been
knocked down for the second time in his life, and out of two hundred and seventeen
bouts; sanctioned or otherwise, hundreds of rounds boxed and a knock out average of
over ninety five percent, that wasn't a bad record. He reluctantly spat out a tooth and
made some semi relevant comment on the rules of boxing which hardly pertained to
this environment. Then he painstakingly hobbled onto his feet like a tank laboring its
way up a ridge; its tracks suffering from gratingly worn tread. Luck didn’t usually work
against him, but he quickly persuaded himself that on this occasion, it was the operative
ingredient.
Iron stepped over a misshapen wooden parcel before finding himself on the
fringe of receiving one of Johnson's wild, searching swings. Then another with the
opposite arm; this one; courtesy of a thankfully timely duck of the head; pounding a
potential cascade of collapsible crates with an almighty smash and the musty smell of
singed balsa.
Johnson was in no mood to wait around; he was far from enthusiastic in his
representation of the moribund autocracy, but resented the affront to his personal pride.
Lincoln; arms crossed to counteract the crippling cold, earned herself an enamored
interpretation of governmental ergonomics; the corner of her eye keeping tabs on the
writhing forms of Hussain and Hageta; the former genuinely struggling against real pain
while the latter feigned more severe injury than he had received as he lay at the bottom
of a set of surly steps like a kid fleeing the bogeyman under his bed hoping it would all
go away. Johnson; as a disgruntled disciple of a magniloquent maladministration; was a
perfect case study of herirarchy in fatal instability. His loyalty was an accurate gage of
potential internal mutiny. He smashed another torpedo like fist into an unsuspecting
tower of small metal caskets which wobbled precariously before collapsing like a
glittering avalanche of ice and snow over the dim and dusty floor.
As a third meteoric punch wrenched a pungent tea box into blocks and splinters
inches behind his head, Iron began to wonder whether this man could hit his way
through solid steel should he be so inclined, and despite the obvious weight and bulk of
what he was ending up connecting with, those mammoth fists seemed barely to carry a
scratch. The smaller combatant whirled his way under the boxer's hulking arm and
backstepped gladly into the space behind him. At last there was room to use more than
just instinct and reflexes; to attack rather than just defend, otherwise he would have
been lying flat on the canvas contemplating a career change moments after the initial
bell.
Iron awaited another hurling right hook, leaned back at the right moment and
delivered his own left over the outstretched arm; leaving Johnson to puzzle over why
though he had thrown most of the punches he had been the first to receive one. But
still, it had not been enough to draw blood; only to persuade the heavyweight that
perhaps he had better be a little less complacent and a little more thoughtful. Iron stood
his ground a while and threw a jab of sublime accuracy through the minutest gap in
Johnson's guard, but registered the fact that though such a strike might serve well to
win over the judges on a bout headed the full twelve, it was to be worth less than the
effort required against a man who would ostensibly go for the knock out and, by all
accounts; regularly got it. He leant his head to one side and bounced around like a
carnival goer in a jovial jig. A win here would require a lot of forward planning and a
great deal of improvisation.
Though very much on the outside looking in in this particular case, Lincoln was
well aware of Iron's predicament. She felt for a box, wall or stair rail to lean on for a
moment, didn't find one and resigned herself to placing her head on a hand. It was
somehow engrossing to witness an equal fight; how her madcap friend would find his
way out of this one she could hardly imagine, but then again, he hadn't been hit yet.
Iron feinted with one hand and struck with the other; a simple ploy even for a
slogger of a boxer out of work for some years. Still, you have to start somewhere, and
the more complicated doses of offensive trickery would come later. It was just
somehow mesmerizing to be fighting someone with a style so stringently closed and
limited, but at once perfect in its simplicity. Here was a man who had unquestionably
mastered the basics to an extent where deviation from their use was as out of the
question as a technical mistake, which was why it was Iron's task to impose on
someone so imposing his own open fighting style.
Johnson upped the tempo with a fearsome uppercut, leaving Iron to imagine the
seriousness of such a blow had he allowed it to connect. But while pondering this grim
point, Johnson took advantage; a last minute placed left which; weak by the boxer's
high standards, sufficed to knock Iron embarrassingly over a tirade of crumpled air mail
packages. This wasn't good. He really had to get on top of this fight, otherwise he'd
find himself confronted with a change from the usual outcome; a nudging of the needle
which would unstick the vagrant vinyl record. 'It's all a matter of psychology....' he
assured himself; leaping to his feet the best he could as the ocean of shoddily wrapped
crates seemed to deliberately hamper his recovery; 'It's all a matter of sifting through
the intimidation and taking control. It's all about getting to the center of the ring and
making your opponent do the moving. It's the first thing a boxer tries to do; to establish
himself. When a fighter gets knocked out, it's never in the middle of the ring; he's
knocked sideways, backwards, against the ropes, but from the middle, not in it. Getting
the center of the ring is like clambering to the high moral ground; once you're there,
that's half the fight, and it's up to you to finish it.' This personal training completed,
Iron dabbed at a minor nick on his eyebrow and shook his shoulders loose. Personally,
he had never been able to fight bunched up, and didn't want to start now, when he was
depending on a good performance.
Suddenly he began to notice things; possible tactical advantages in the scenery
around him, space to move he had been too preoccupied to notice before; even faults in
his opponent's defense. He had eased his attitude so that everything had ebbed into a
kind of slow-mo, and that's the way he liked it. He hurtled forward with a deceptive
punch; started as a regular hook but ending up a bowling swipe which hit the underside
of the shocked boxer's chin; an inch lower than he had expected. Once struck, and
especially struck so unexpectedly, a fighter may dwell on the unfortunate moment;
make excuses for himself in the back of his head, and anyone with either Iron or
Johnson's experience would be well aware that this was an opportunity to exploit an
opening just waiting to happen.
With a sudden injection of pace and imagination, Iron hacked at Johnson's
midsection with a low roundhouse with one foot, a dashing knee with the other and a
close range turn around kick with the first; throwing the gargantuan hillock of a man
tumbling into a gathering of wooden chests with a momentous bang and shatter like a
sudden burst of thunder. At last, this thing was evening up, and no one was more
pleased than Lincoln, who gave Officer Mehmo a grilling stare but nothing more as he
seized the opportunity and fled down the steps into the safety of the criss cross streets
beyond.
Now it was Johnson's turn to feel aggrieved. He had not much liked the earlier
hit he had taken, and he absolutely despised this. Floored; humiliated, but not again. He
rose looking an even bigger man than before and certainly a more determined one. But
appearances and actions; thankfully for Iron; are two completely different things. He
greeted his opponent's return to action with a snapping inside out kick on the end of a
timely upward leap, thus snapping Johnson's head to one side and at last drawing blood
from the pierced cavity of a crooked gold capped tooth. He moved his shoulders
jitteringly and tapped his front foot twice before twisting sideways and throwing the
opposite leg up at his sneering counterpart's chin from an angle which proved
impossible to avoid.
At this point, thought would go straight out the window for Johnson. He didn't
like getting beaten, and his opponent knew it. Iron had successfully balanced reason,
skill and instinct in his approach to this showdown, but Johnson had grown tired of all
three. It was time for the sparks to fly, and for somebody to fall. He stormed forward
like an aroused rhinosauras with a soaring punch which drifted well wide of the target
as Iron whirled into a full circle spinning leap with a hooking heel connecting with
Johnson's unprotected face to loosen a few more gritted teeth.
Lincoln tapped her feet and rubbed a handful of nibbled fingernails up and down
her jacket as if fastening and unfastening a zip. Perhaps it was her silent wish that this
potentially drawn out conflict would come to a premature end which made that fact so.
Johnson was brawling blind by now; wrecking bands of crumpling crates and
boxes as he steam rolled through them like a bullet train through a thoughtlessly
abandoned station wagon on a level crossing. As space for maneuverability ran out, it
was perhaps expected that Iron would receive a rare blow to the head; a pendulum
right which crunched his nose like a screwed up packet of potato chips.
With this success Johnson stepped back; usually a peerless assassin reluctant to
allow even the most forlorn of victims an inch. But never had he been shown up before;
challenged in this way. He really needed to prove to himself that this flitting fire fly of
an opponent was hitable, and in doing so he was pleasantly surprised enough to neglect
the very killer instinct which would have allowed him to chalk up another knockout
victory if he had not let up. But Iron was very seldom surprised by the oblique ways of
the world; by the sublime mysteries it threw up like an ongoing conjurer’s trick. He
would certainly not be swayed by a venomous thwack, a bleeding nostril and a
momentary show of indecisiveness. Instead he snatched his opportunity like a starving
refugee grabbing a loaf of bread from a badly guarded food store. He gained much
needed height by hopping onto the edge of an unsteady crate, turned as he did so and
caught the Herculean monster with a firm, flat foot which made him condemn his own
lack of foresight. Continuing the coarse chain reaction, Iron was already spinning back
off his elevated position with a downward arching roundhouse which; given the extra
momentum; came close to felling the startled commissar again, although it was the
follow up leaping sidekick which bore the responsibility for that specific job; striking
like an ax swinging on a chain in a medieval torture chamber probably more likely to
exist in a dubiously historical action movie than real life; and making the suddenly sick
stomached Johnson's barrel like midsection cave in like a car in a crusher which forced
him backwards into a coronating cluster of crushable boxes which at least offered to
conceal his identity in case any intrusive security cameras loitered the vicinity as he
tipped his head back and felt the spiky splinters jink and snap under his grueling frame
as he sunk steadily deeper; the detestable taste of defeat sticking in his throat like an
extra large lozenge.
"So Linc; past, present, future?" Iron raised his arms in a gesture not unlike that
of an unbelievably blameless kid surrounded by shattered bone china ornaments in a
hoarding grandmother's front room. He was developing a worrying habit of taking the
often vindictive tribulations life threw at him a tad too lightly. One day such
complacency would be punished, but then, Iron had always believed everyone was
created for a divine purpose. Maybe he was right but who says the divine necessarily
intends survival for a person?
Lincoln ushered him hurriedly away from the loading bay before Johnson came
to his scuttled senses and the two again left the scene with neither applause or pursuit.
"There's only the present moment, Marti; the now. Life is happening around us. Aside
from it is only memory and expectation. If we miss the now, we miss life itself." If that
was so, their presumptuous exit was more natural than it had first appeared.
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