Superego (3 page)

“Okay, I've chosen a destination. Prepare to jump.”

So I was off to relax for a bit. That made me nervous. But it wasn't just the idea of having unstructured free time. The Nystrom syndicate's slight changes in behavior gave me the beginning of a suspicion that something big was going on. In retrospect, I might call that prescience.

CHAPTER 2

I should explain. I have a severe disability that I constantly struggle with. You might even consider mine an inspirational story of the human spirit persevering against all odds. You see, I have no morals.

I'm not a bad person. I didn't choose to be this way, and my own actions didn't cause my problem. It's how I was made, you might say. I was designed in a lab as part of an experimental program to make a super soldier or something—they used gene modification combined with surgical operations while I was still a fetus. I was to be both physically and mentally exceptional. As a result, I have highly tuned reflexes, can perform two tasks at once, am exceptionally intelligent, and have reduced emotional extremes.

But one of the results of their tinkering is a social condition I've struggled with since childhood: I am just completely incapable of internalizing basic morality. To me, eating, sleeping, walking, and strangling a puppy in front of a crying child are all just different activities, and none of them holds any “moral” weight for me. The first time I killed someone left no bigger impression on my psyche than the first time I tied my shoe. Most people develop some sense of right and wrong during early childhood—Freud called it the superego—but I never did. And it is very hard to interact with society when you are like that.

It's easy to see the direct consequences of my actions. If someone annoys me, I know punching him might be a bad idea, because he might punch me back. But what if it's a baby? Punching the baby has no consequences, since the baby can't hit me back, right? But most people would be shocked at the thought of striking a baby even if there was no one around to see it. They consider that “wrong.” My guess is that it's an evolutionary adaptation. Even though striking a baby may have no ill consequences for me, there are long-term consequences to society if everyone punches babies when they get annoying. Instead of sentients having to rationally figure out things like that all the time, they just have this irrational sense that it's “wrong.” It's that sense that I lack.

Lots of sentients have turned their natural feelings of right and wrong into religions. But even those who don't believe in a supernatural moral order share those feelings. Ask an atheist whether there are repercussions to killing people you don't know, and he will claim that there are, when I know for a fact that you can slaughter tons of people, travel galaxies away, and have nothing to worry about in terms of consequences. So really, it's like all sentients have this irrational belief system they share—a common religion—and I am the odd man out. Not only am I a heretic, I barely understand their beliefs enough to reliably imitate them.

Anyway, I don't think I was the intended result of the experimental program, and it's informative that I've never heard of them making another attempt. Whatever the original intentions were for me were abandoned, and I was just raised as a normal child. But there was little hope for that. I couldn't really return affections to my “parents” because…well, I didn't care about them beyond their utility to me. It seemed like I was destined to be a societal outcast with no real place in the world.

I could have given up and lived all drugged up in some asylum. But here's the inspirational part: I've made a normal life for myself. I'm a hitman. It's an occupation where my lack of normal human emotions is not a disability. No one cares if the guy gunning people down seems unusually callous at times. I love being on the job and in the midst of combat. I can be myself and not worry how anyone else perceives me.

The time between hits is much more difficult. If I don't have a set objective, I'm out of my element. Usually, I have my next job to focus on and can think of my down time as preparation for that. But when I don't have a next job or know when that's coming, it's quite a bit more stressful.

I enjoy the challenges of combat, but there's just something unappealing to me about starting a random fight on some anonymous planet just to entertain myself. I like to have a purpose to my actions, and besides, if I started killing people off the job I'd become a liability to the syndicate. In fact, I have a pretty strict rule that I don't kill anyone or anything when I'm not on a job—not even insects or the planet's equivalent. It takes too much work to figure out which creatures are acceptable to kill and what's an acceptable way to kill them. So unless my life is in direct danger, I'm a complete pacifist when nobody is paying me to be otherwise.

Well, that's the goal at least.

Of course, the easiest way to avoid trouble is to just keep to myself. There are lots of loner jerks out there, so it doesn't make me stick out too much. I know I need to learn to interact with society, though. I do sometimes have jobs where going in guns blazing toward the target without a plan would be suicide. Instead, I need to scope out the area, and that means it can't be too obvious that I have no problem with mass homicide.

So I work at it. Between jobs I force myself to socialize and appear normal. It's mentally exhausting, but it's something I need to practice constantly—same as firearms. And I've gotten good at it…just not as good as I am with firearms.

Dip woke me up when we landed on a planet called Ryle. The planet was marginally settled for mining and farming with a single main port where travelers could resupply and rest a bit on firm ground. Seems like I've been to thousands of planets like it. They're relaxing in that they're sparsely populated, but it also means I stick out more. Plus, if I forget myself and…well, something happens to someone…people will notice he's missing pretty quickly and will know who to suspect. Next thing you know I've decimated the population of a small town as I make my escape.

That's what I call a complete social failure. It's been a long while since that happened.

“So how are you doing, stranger?”

The hotel clerk was an older human male. Dealing with other species is much easier—they're less likely to catch my oddities or notice if my facial expressions don't quite match a particular situation. Also, any errors or gaffes are usually dismissed as a translator error. For humans, I have to bring my best game.

I'm good at reading people, and the clerk seemed genuinely friendly. I hate that. People who are happy all the time tend to be stupid (though if I were stupid, I think I'd be angry), and stupidity makes me impatient. So this would be good practice. Usually, just matching the mood of whomever I'm talking to is a good strategy. But I have to be careful. If I talk to two people one after another with wildly different moods, I could end up looking bipolar.

“Doing pretty well. How are you?” It would be hard to contemplate a situation where the well-being of this random human was of any interest to me, but I've learned that's just part of being polite. I think I pulled it off. At least I concealed how nervous I was. I hate that a simple conversation scares me, but that's who I am.

“Can't complain. So what brings you here?”

“Business travel. Just need some solid ground to rest on for a few days.” Technically true, but I have to analyze everything I say so much that it doesn't actually make things easier for me to tell the truth.

“How long do you plan on staying?”

Unknown. That terrified me. I knew myself. First I'd get bored. Then I'd get a little cranky. And then I'd make mistakes. And that would not be good for this small planet—not that I cared about them, but it would be a personal failure for me. “I'm not sure. A couple days, maybe.”

“Well, we'll be happy to have you for as long as you're staying. So what kind of business are you in?”

“Mining equipment. Always plenty of places in the universe to mine.” This conversation was already wearing on me.

“There sure are. Well, I hope you like your stay. It's a nice little planet. I've lived here…”

This is why I hate small talk. This man had absolutely no information I was interested in, and my first instinct while he prattled on was to simply turn and walk away. That's impolite to the point of severely standing out, so instead I was stuck standing there, smiling and nodding. To keep from getting too bored, I imagined he was an assassin pretending to be a boring old man in order to catch me off guard. So I contemplated how many objects were in arm's length that I could bludgeon him to death with. I counted three.

“…if you like good food, I definitely recommend them. Hey, I see you eyeing my little beager statue.” He pointed to the metal figurine on his counter of a bear-like creature. “Local species. They're a little intimidating to run into, but they're harmless.”

It looked sturdy and had pointed parts, so it could easily crack a skull. “It's always neat to see local wildlife.” This was true. I actually do enjoy that. Plus, non-sentient creatures never seem to mind me…at least no more than any other predator. “What forms of payment do you take?” I hoped that was a polite signal to end the small talk, as I really couldn't take much more.

“Let's see what you have.” With so many governments and commerce systems, I have to have accounts in many different banks to keep transactions simple no matter where I end up. On human-populated planets, I usually don't have a problem. As backup, I keep some gold on me. It's yellow and shiny. Everyone likes it.

As I was finalizing the payment, a police officer walked into the lobby. I've left my mark on more legal systems than I can count and am probably in numerous databases. Still, all these systems are tracking billions of criminals, and the syndicate scrubs references to me whenever they find them, so the chance some random local cop would recognize me was about as much of a concern as taking a meteor to the head. Someone like me who has no roots and can jump around the universe freely is pretty much impossible for modern law enforcement to track down. Still, the police officer was looking right at me, and I mentally prepared myself to kill him a moment's notice. But I do that with just about everyone.

“Sir, did you just land here?”

“Yes, is something the matter, Officer?” His gun was on his belt. Technically, he was in a better position to draw than I was with my shoulder holster, but I seriously doubted he had as much practice as I did.

“I just wanted to warn you there has been pirate activity in this system. When you take off again, I recommend you stick with a convoy until you make a jump.”

“Thank you for the warning.” I found it hard to be concerned about pirates, but it was something a normal person would be worried about. “Are there any plans to do something about them?”

“We don't have the weaponry ourselves, but we've been promised some assistance by the Alliance.”

“They take too long to act,” the clerk added. “Too many criminals feel like they can get away with anything these days. I assume you've heard about Zaldia.”

Now he had said something that interested me. Worlds away, Chal Naus had mentioned it too. I hadn't seen any reason to care at the time. But if the news was spreading far and wide, that was different, because the Nystrom syndicate was not usually one to do things out in the open. “No. I haven't.”

The clerk's expression turned grim. “Some criminal syndicate has forcefully taken over the whole planet and is executing anyone who stands up against them. Since the Zaldians never had the tech to travel out of their own system the syndicate probably figured they could do what they wanted, and no one would care. And they're right, because no one
is
doing anything. The Alliance says it's outside their jurisdiction…and no one else seems to think they have the right to stop it. So the governments are just sitting there trying to sort out their legal issues while innocent people get slaughtered.”

“They nuked—obliterated—a whole country,” the officer said, “just to set an example. You don't want to see the pictures.”

I needed to make an expression. Mass slaughter of innocents is supposed to be horrific—even if I had no idea who they were or any reason to care. If my expression didn't change, I'd look like a sociopath. So I went with a shocked expression—which was easy, because I was shocked. Usually Nystrom was better at cutting off communications if they were going to murder a planet. The syndicate always took careful steps to stay out of the news.

Still, it didn't really concern me. Nystrom could do what they wanted. They just had to keep me occupied. “And the governments are doing nothing?”

“They say they can't,” the clerk answered. “So many laws, so many governments with so many different property claims, and no one seems to be able to do anything useful. They're too busy worrying about overstepping their bounds. But the Alliance is going to hold this big conference about creating a more forceful central government, one that's finally going to do something and cut through these petty legal issues.”

I suppressed a laugh. That had been the threat forever. There were too many factions in too many governments to get them to agree about anything. The only way to get people to act together was force, and that was something modern society shunned. “Well, hopefully something will come of that.” I was bored again. I wasn't sure this was an acceptable spot to exit the conversation, but I was getting mentally exhausted, so I grabbed my bags and headed for my room before they could think of anything else they'd incorrectly think I wanted to hear.

For me, these casual conversations people have all the time are mentally taxing exercises. It amazes me, the complex social calculations everyone else can do without even thinking while I struggle just not to stand out. This one was a little victory for me, as I actually cared what someone else had to say and was genuinely engaged—if only for a moment. Still, it left me quite tired, so when I got to my room it was finally time to try some “relaxing.”