Part III � Triggerman

It had been over a week since the Traveler departed. No one had seen him since that day. No one except Luther. Luther saw him all the time. He had never spent so much thought on a Traveler before. Something was different.

Luther was a thinker, but he found himself thinking things he had never thought before. At first, he thought that after the Traveler left, things had changed somehow. Then he realized, nothing had changed in Dragontown, nothing ever did. It was him, somehow, but he didn�t understand what it was. The tail-wagging specter of the Traveler standing across the room didn�t offer any opinion on the matter.

He found himself staring at the broken mirror in his tiny abode for hours on end. He tried to ignore the Traveler he saw standing behind him, and focused on staring at himself. Staring at the contours of green and brown flesh, the sharp little jags that pointed out from his joints, those hazy black eyes in his head. What was different? What had changed? Everything seemed to be the same.

�Look at you,� he said to himself, grinning, slowly enunciating each word in a raspy voice. �Big, bad, Triggerman.� The Traveler wagged his tail and grinned.

Even among thinkers, Luther was something of a mystery. The thinkers, of course, made the decisions in Dragontown, decisions of every sort. Luther was assigned to make specific types of decisions; those dealing with death. It was his decision which section of town was cut off from the food supply when times were tight, which would almost certainly lead to cannibalism; death. It was his decision where to send doers to repair buildings that had broken into hazards, and where not to send them. It was his decision when to let a group of disease ridden prostitutes live, and when to execute the lot of them for the sake of the city.

Death waited on the snap of his fingers. Triggerman.

But for the past several days, he had made no such decision. For the past several days, he hadn�t left his room. He thought about himself, and wondered if those outside had noticed he was no longer there. They most likely assumed that he was dead. They were almost right.

For the first few days he actually thought that the lack of food and drink was somehow enhancing his ability to think. His perception seemed sharp and he was thinking things he couldn�t recall thinking before. New is good, right? Naked, he hugged his wall and twirled until he had done a lap around his room several times. The Traveler stood in the center of the room and pivoted to watch him. It didn�t matter that the door was hanging off of its hinges, he felt as if he were trapped in a box.

He could hear them outside. They were having sex and they were killing each other. They never stopped. He thought about walking out there among them. Somehow it occurred to him that he could walk amongst them like a ghost, invisible. It made sense when the thought came to him, at least. Why should they notice him? Death was supposed to be invisible, wasn�t it? A phantom.

Clearly, however, Luther was not invisible, as someone was peering through his broken door, and drawing his portrait. Luther stole a glance at it and saw a large group of strange men standing in a building, and one standing outside.

Giggling at the silliness of the picture, the naked mutant did pushups on his floor until he realized that his torso was touching the floor and his arms weren�t managing to push him up at all.

�Big, bad, Triggerman.�

Finally, he realized that he needed something. He needed something outside this room. He needed to drink.

Entire minutes of memory seemed to blank out, and following the mere thought of drink, he was dressed and walking on the street, staggering about as if already drunk. If a doer walked about like this, displaying such vulnerability, he would certainly find a knife in his back. Being a thinker had advantages, he knew no one would touch him.

The Traveler was still with him, somehow ethereal and material at once, he followed easily when Luther made his way down the street and into the pub. He sat down at the very table that Luther had intended to sit down at, and the plan didn�t change. Luther ordered a drink and looked all about at the freaks here. Doers, all of them, the brash young type. One in particular seemed rather out of sorts, an attractive young man, lots of muscle and scale, but Luther lost interest in him as soon as he walked out of sight.

Luther sat and drank. He asked the Traveler if it was true, the things he had heard about him that day.

�Is it true you never killed anyone?� The specter sitting across the table nodded. �Really? And you never forced sex on anyone either?� The Traveler shook his head, smiling. �I heard you had plans to do things, to change things.� He nodded. �Why did you leave?�

The Traveler didn�t need to speak, he had already said all he would say before he left for the mountains. Four words. He did, though, gesture for Luther to look behind him.

Luther spun and stood just in time to see the knife driving for his chest, just in time for his hands to reach out and grab the arm thrusting that knife. He didn�t think about what he was doing, never stopped or slowed, but twisted the arm, wheeled about and threw the assailant. The knife dropped to the ground and the young assassin crashed into the table, sending Luther�s drink flying, rotted wood breaking apart and clattering around. The whole of the building rumbled, and all eyes were on them.

Luther picked up the knife, a rusty, wickedly curved little thing, and stood over the man. It was the attractive young one he had noticed before. There was a silence as thick as the fog that hung in the streets. The Traveler was gone, having vanished as soon as there were more interesting things to occupy Luther�s thoughts. Luther smiled as the man looked up at him, and he asked, �What is your name, doer?�

Neither the change in his own position nor the knife�s seemed to break the man�s nerve, and he spouted up at Luther, �Crash!� Luther nodded. For a long moment, nothing was said. Luther simply loomed over Crash, knife in hand, unsure of how to proceed. Kill him? Maybe. Crash certainly expected it, and was even getting impatient for it. �What?!� He barked as Luther glared down at him. �Aren�t you going to kill me?�

�I don�t know yet, Crash,� Luther said. �I�m still thinking about it.� There were murmurs in the crowd, everyone knew now, Crash had attacked a thinker. Luther wished that he could mention his title and instill in Crash the sort of fear that it should, but unfortunately, no one would know what it meant. Triggerman wasn�t a designation that doers ever heard. After all, the thinkers were only accorded respect because the doers believed that they were being taken care of. If they knew that there were Triggermen deciding that entire multitudes would be abandoned when necessary, there would be trouble.

Finally, Luther said, �No, Crash, I don�t think I�ll kill you. Your money doesn�t tempt me, and though I kill for many reasons, vengeance isn�t one of them.�

�Then what do you want?� Crash asked, likely reasoning that if this were over, Luther wouldn�t still be holding a knife. He was right.

�What do I want�� Luther murmured, beginning to pace a bit. �I want you to answer a question for me.�

Everyone seemed very confused. This didn�t make any sense. Thinkers answered questions, not doers. Doers didn�t even ask them. Luther decided to involve the crowd a bit. He turned to a man roughly eight feet in height and fur from head to toe. �Doers don�t usually attack thinkers, do they?�

�No, no they don�t,� The man�s voice matched his frame. Luther turned to someone else, a woman in a dress that covered so little she may as well have been naked.

�Why is that, my dear? Why don�t doers attack thinkers?�

�Because,� she said. �Thinkers make things work, without them, we wouldn�t be able to survive.� They weren�t considering the words at all, just regurgitating what they had heard.

�Interesting,� Luther said, and in a moment of sardonic delight gestured about and yelled, �And just look at it work!� The crowd�s confusion redoubled, but they kept watching. Luther went to a small rat-like man

�You suppose I should kill this man, don�t you?� Luther asked, gesturing to Crash.

�Of course, sir,� the rat man said. �But if you would prefer not to, I could do it for you.�

�I�m sure you could,� Luther said. �And what would that solve?�

The rat man had nothing to say. He was baffled at being asked such a thing.

�Never mind,� Luther said. It was a cruel thing, confusing a doer like that, Luther hadn�t meant to do so. He decided such cruelty was better saved for someone else. He turned to Crash. �Well, son, everyone seems to understand how things work pretty well. So why would you have tried to kill me? Why would you have tried to kill a thinker, one of the people who �make society work�.�

Crash sprang up with a fire in his eyes.

�Because it doesn�t work!� He screamed. �Look around you! Look at how we live! I kill every night and I can�t stand it anymore! I sleep in a bed of dirt with a different woman for a distraction every night and I don�t want it anymore! I hate this place!�

Now it was Luther�s turn to stand in a silent bewilderment. This was one thing he never expected. Finally, he brought himself to speak again.

�Then why don�t you change it?� He asked the young man.

Crash simply stared at him and said, �You�re a thinker, why don�t you?�

Luther had the answer immediately, but the words caught in his throat. He saw the Traveler wagging his tail by the door, he had known it too. Luther couldn�t speak. I have to go, I have to read it again, I have to go to the Monastery. Yes, reading it again would comfort him. It would give him something to think about that was far from this place. He went for the door.

�Oh, of course, run!� Crash yelled. �Run away like you always do, thinker!� Crash said. At this, Luther stopped and turned with a wry grin on his face.

�Oh, son, how can you not realize it by now. You�re a thinker too.� And with that unlikely condemnation, he was gone.

Luther ran through the streets, his body one massive ache. And why shouldn�t it be? He hadn�t eaten or slept in days, and now he was running. The pain was the price to pay for movement. Nothing is free. You want to move, you have to pay. If you don�t pay by eating and sleeping, your body exacts the toll with pain. Luther didn�t care. He could use that pain, focus on it, distract himself from Dragontown, at least until he reached the Monastery and could read it again.

Stumbling and staggering through the soft wooden doors of the Monastery, Luther ignored the clergy and went straight for the archives. His boots tracked mud over the floor, and unlike almost anywhere else, it was noticeable. The Monastery was a strange, clean place with a lot of breakable artifacts that for some reason were not broken. It was an odd thing in Dragontown. Every sound echoed in the hollow corridors of the place, enough so that the footsteps instantly alerted Luther that he was being followed. A Clergyman, he knew. It was to be expected. This was one of the few places where the other thinkers knew who and what he was. Everywhere else, he was nameless, faceless, death. Here, they knew him, and they never left him alone.

Luther didn�t pause as he reached the archives; he simply began his search. Every time he came here, he found it, but every time he left, they would hide it again. The Clergyman entered behind him and sat atop a pile of books and began to speak.

�Master Luther, why have you come?�

Long ago, there was a thinker, a thinker who chose to travel.

�You know why I�ve come,� Luther said. He didn�t like to waste the energy speaking, but it was a crime not to answer a Clergyman, and he didn�t need any more trouble. As he spoke, he threw open a chest and rummaged through papers and little relics of forgotten histories that no one cared about.

He was always writing.

�Reading that tablet won�t make you feel any better, Master Luther,� he said. �You know that, don�t you.� The Clergyman almost had to shout over the cacophony as Luther threw the chest aside and flung open a cabinet and started tearing things out of it.

He wrote everything he ever thought, anywhere he could.

�It will make me feel better. It helps me forget.� Luther struck the wall in anger, then opened a desk and continued searching. The Clergyman wouldn�t stop him, he was, after all, a Triggerman, and even the Ministry wasn�t safe from the doom he could hand down.

He wrote on walls and doors.

�What do you want to forget, Master Luther?�

He scorched words into wood.

�I want to forget Dragontown, and all of the horror here. I want to think of something far away, and this is all I have to show me anything outside of Dragontown.� Luther threw a drawer across the room and it shattered against the wall, then he opened another.

He carved them into stone.

�Forgetting about your problems won�t make them go away.�

A week after the writing thinker traveled, a Guardian was caught and sliced apart.

The Clergyman was right about that much. �I suppose you think I should try to change things. I�ve heard that already.�

From the stomach was recovered a tablet.

�And why don�t you? You�re a thinker.�

On the tablet were carved six words, in three lines.

Luther stopped for a moment and saw the Traveler wagging his tail across the room. Luther smiled and shook his head, whispering, �It�s much too late.�

Finally Luther found it, sitting at the bottom of a box. He picked it up and stared at the words, loving the look of them, wondering at what they meant. No matter what they meant, they were the only testimony of a Traveler ever to reach Dragontown, and that made these words more precious than a thousand bodies of money.

The first line told of pain, he supposed. He liked to think about it word by word, The first word, a realization? The second� pain, yes pain, no doubt about that. The second line was more confusing. When it�s spelled like that, as opposed to the first line, it isn�t a realization. What is it? Some sort of reverence? And more pain, yes, but what sort could it be to be described this way? The meaning of the third line was impossible to guess, but he loved it just the same. He read it, again and again, loving it every time.

OH HELL
O SWEET TORTURE
GOD

And nothing more.