The Grand Theft Games Revenge of the Lawman

By Charles Gautschy III

I am the Lawman. Below is my creed. Like a religious creed, it is chanted, so I remember, in exacting detail, everything I believed. All my actions. I once had two milliseconds of love. Then they were removed from me. I can most assuredly attest that it's not better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Love fueled my excruciating anger. And then anger's loyal bedfellow. Revenge. Love turned me into a hate-fueled monster. To the perpetrators, it was merely a game. Even if the authorities knew who the were, there were no lawmen to punish them. I was without hope, without retribution. I was strapped in a straitjacket with only memories to taunt my immobilized carcass. So I did what any brave soul would do. I went about the slow business of killing myself. Then as foretold by Edgar Allen Poe: ONCE upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping… It wasn't a Raven. It was a hovering prophet from the past. It had a message for me: "Son. She's buried alive. She's running out of time. Find her. She can do anything." I found her grave deep in the Atlantic Ocean where I would live during her revival. If she could do anything, I knew what I wanted her to do. Remove the straitjacket that bound me. I brought her back to life. We created marionette ghouls that were inspired by unnatural genetic instinct. They avenged my lost love. I labeled myself the Lawman and lived a villainous comic book hero's quest for revenge. We killed every last one of them. Playing the puppet master, we tweaked the strings of my unnatural creatures. Our monsters escaped and mutated into viral, roaming death with a zombie's lack of empathy. Revenge is not a cold meal. Revenge is a warm fillet cut with a butter knife; it's seasoned with blood for just the right amount of saltiness. The blood has to be fresh; it needs to be deoxygenated through the screams of its donor. I am the Lawman. That is my creed. My confession.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644627150

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The Grand Theft Games Revenge of the Lawman

Charles Gautschy III

Copyright © 2019 Charles Gautschy III

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2019

ISBN 978-1-64462-714-3 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64462-715-0 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Memory

Unfortunately, Charles was unable to see this book published. He passed away January 18, 2019. We loved him so very much and will miss him greatly. We hope you enjoy reading his creative work.

The Gautschy Family

Prologue

The Lawman

Ionce had a millisecond of love; I can most assuredly attest that it’s not better to have loved and lost… Love turned me into a hate-fueled monster. I created marionette ghouls that were inspired by unnatural genetic instinct; they avenged my lost love. I labeled myself the Lawman and lived a villainous comic book hero’s quest for revenge. I killed every last one of them. Playing the Puppet Master, I tweaked the strings of my unnatural creatures. My monsters escaped and mutated into viral, roaming death with a zombie’s lack of empathy.

Revenge is not a cold meal. Revenge is a warm fillet cut with a butter knife; it’s seasoned with blood for just the right amount of saltiness. The blood has to be fresh; it needs to be deoxygenated through the screams of its donor.

Chapter 1

Charlotte and Winchester Carnegie II

My Grandfather and Me

He was Winchester Alexander Carnegie II, the world’s first multitrillionaire. Although I called him Grandfather, I wasn’t actually his blood descendant. Winchester Carnegie II had three sons from a stunning wife, one that Grandfather later confided he’d admittedly compromised intelligence for good looks. That said, he loved her dearly until she died at an age he described as tragically young. But it was because of her questionable acumen that he forbade his sons to procreate, lest the Carnegie name be diluted with stupidity. He secured his mandate as he did with almost any difficult conversation. With money. He bought them off.

That is not to say Grandfather was content to let the name of his empire die with himself.

This is where I enter into his equation. My parents could best be characterized as hippies. I was the love child of two PhD academic scholars, the diplomas of which were completely worthless in Winchester’s opinion. And worthless was also his estimation of my parents. But he considered the degrees quite admirable in their attainment. My father had a PhD in linguistics, and my mother’s was in botany. Father was fluent in twelve languages, and mother discovered five new plant species. Instead of becoming professors, they took turns on pauper vacations, of sorts, where they honed their skills. And they dragged their nuisance son with them. They would work minimum wage jobs and earn enough to alternately visit a country in which Father could refine his language mastery or Mother secure a useless vegetation patent.

I learned to read and speak, with diction, by the age of two. It was clear my parents were becoming more addicted to their research-vacations and less so to minimum wage toil. The day they hit their debt ceiling they began talking about Uncle Carnegie. I knew they hated him and what he stood for. They were Democrats, and Winchester was a Lincoln Republican. They hated his money, but not the ultimate good it might do. Through them…

Winchester Carnegie II fielded gold diggers most of his professional life. But he also researched prospective claimants and their motivation. You see, they all thought they were entitled to his money.

My parents were shocked and excited that Winchester accepted their dinner invitation. They even took a suicide pact, of sorts, to eat meat and pretend they enjoyed it. Dad would hide his ponytail in a cap, and Mom would wear a bra. I would remain silent and out of sight.

I was peeking through a cracked door when he knocked. He struck me as impressive, not simply fat as Mom and Dad chided. He wore a pinstriped and vested suit that was topped off with a derby. His eyes gleamed… He twisted his handlebar mustache before taking my parents’ hands for a shake.

No sooner had he laid down his umbrella and cane, both twentieth-century stage props that he took with him everywhere, than he said, "Where’s the boy?"

Mother and Father said in unison, "The boy? Who?"

The giant man entered the room deeper than my parents’ body language invited. He talked with his back to them. "Come now. The boy. The boy. I wish to make his acquaintance."

Winchester Carnegie did his research. On everything. There was no wasted motion, no irresolute action. No meaningless words. He knew my pedigree. He studied it.

I opened the door slowly. I was four years old at the time. I should be afraid of the big stranger, but I was not. My parents didn’t like him, so I took to the notion of doing just that. Liking him.

He knelt down and studied my eyes. He smelled of cigars, whiskey, and cologne. It smelled exotic. He raised and lowered my head by the chin.

Speak, he said.

I didn’t smile because I never smile. I somehow sensed the opportunity to smile, out of sheer hope, and I didn’t know why. I glanced to my parents whose eyes are imploring me not to speak. So I did. They don’t like you, but you came anyway.

Before they could object, the big man flashed his right arm out to behind himself in HALT. Let the boy speak. Still staring at me, he continued. "Not too many people do like me. Why would you tell me that?"

I still suppressed a smile. I liked this man. Because you’re honest. I’ve seen you on TV… And it’s because you’re honest, I need to be honest with you.

He looked taken aback. How could you possibly know? Whether I’m honest or not?

I was not sure if he was going to like what I had to say. Your eyes. Sometimes I could see them coming when you speak. Hidden tears.

He couldn’t hide his shock. He nodded his head up and down slowly. He speaks facing me but addresses my parents. I had to see him. The boy. I must remain open to the possibilities… The by-product of two highly intelligent, although useless, bottom feeders. He asked me a question that was probably standard fare in his character analysis. What do you fear most?

He later told me that my answer so floored him that would do anything to secure his obsession. Me.

I thought about the decree routinely dispensed through my parents’ clenched teeth. "Don’t fail us," they demanded after every instruction. "You need to be silent, don’t fail us. You need to stay at the commune and hide, don’t fail us."

I nodded at the big man and answered his question. Failure, I say. The justification for my answer was simplistic, but the uninformed ramifications of a greater meaning to him were huge…

He steadied himself, thinking deeply about the answer. I can see hidden tears misting his eyes. He stands and addresses my parents directly. There are different ways of putting this but I’ll do so at the most basic. I wish to buy the boy. I’ll give you one billion dollars, not because you deserve any of it, rather any lower price simply insults his worth.

My parents are in shock. I don’t know why but I feel great sorrow when they don’t decline right away. Then I feel great anger. At them.

My father speaks timidly. Maybe it’s for the best… We can barely provide.

The big man interrupts harshly. "DON’T. JUST SAY IT."

Dad look confused.

The big man began gathering his belongings like he was going to storm out. Without me. I didn’t want him to…go.

My father blurted it out. "Wait. We’ll sell you our son. Because we’re selfish and he’s a hindrance. We don’t love him for that reason. He was a mistake. We’ll take one billion dollars for him. Because he’s worth one billion to you, and we’re selfish."

The big man smiled. Now see. That wasn’t so difficult, was it? And look what you’ve done to the boy.

He motioned to me. I couldn’t hold back the tears. Of abandonment and loathing. I was shaking with clenched fists.

The big man came up to me and wiped the tears away with his silk tie. He held me by the shoulders. Don’t worry, I’ll love you to the end of my days. You had to hear it like that, son, from your miserable father. So there could be no regrets… But the choice is still yours.

I looked at my parents. They wouldn’t meet my eyes. Then I looked to him. "I have a Bible. King James. My parents find them, the Bibles, and take them away. I always get another one, they’re everywhere these days. I read it but don’t understand much. I just like the fancy language…But today I understand something."

He said, Shake it’s dust from your feet as you leave.

I nod yes. That’s what I’ll do and then I’ll come with you…What shall I call you?

Winchester Carnegie II turns to my parents and shakes his head from side to side in disappointment at them. He’ll call me Grandfather…As the boy said, truly you’ll reap what you sow.

He handed them a check. Until then, go and be gone. I have lawyers that will set the whole thing up. I need to tell you, if a sudden dose of humanity sparks a change in heart, I won’t allow it to happen. Not after what the boy heard from your vile mouth. In the simplest of terms, I will have you both killed, and I’ll take him anyway. That should make you feel better about your selfish abandonment.

My father takes the check. His name is…

The big man, Grandfather, interrupts. "THAT is some of the dust of which the boy spoke. I’LL NAME HIM."

*****

That day I became Winchester Alexander Carnegie III. Single heir to the richest man alive. My grandfather divulged nothing of that day to anyone. Our covenant was assumed. He let people believe I was his illegitimate son if they so desired. Of course they would never mumble such a thing near him. Or a thousand miles away. My parents had me so hidden, I was off all radar, except the WEB. Grandfather paid another one billion to have my former identity erased from her, Charlotte, the WEB. Most liked to believe Grandfather adopted me after an exhaustive search. After a few minutes with me they understood why.

Winchester Carnegie II was not his given name. It’s rather fairy tale in nature, but he grew up in an orphanage; he was abandoned by his mother at the age of twelve. An unwanted, unadoptable adolescent. Grandfather renamed himself at the age of eighteen. There was no Winchester Carnegie I… He chose to be a junior, such to remind himself of the miserable lowlife ingrate that would discard a bastard child. Winchester placed all blame of his abandonment on his delinquent father. He didn’t speak of his mother’s reason for deserting him. He only said to me once, I loved her to the day she deserted me, and I forgave her that very day. And then, May my father, however, rot in the eternal fires of hell. Grandfather’s favorite philanthropy was the hunting down and persecution of bastard makers. He hated them so much that he would even use the WEB to find them.

Within months of the day he took me in, it was apparent Winchester Carnegie II needed someone to fill a deep void in his life. Perhaps the boy who could detect honesty through misty eyes. Someone to judge him when he took the bulletproof armor completely off. The soft, vulnerable man. The one that was quick to a tear but fought desperately to hide it. Heirship was Grandfather’s original motivation, but when he saw my clairvoyance toward his human condition, grandfather let hidden tears become real. I was the mirror he couldn’t stare into; I was his moral compass for dichotomous action. I was the confidant for his doubt. I was the only one to which he could confide I don’t know or Do you think that was rash? or Did I hurt their feelings?

Grandfather’s minions probably thought his newfound humanity, his newfound empathy, was simply happiness due to the adoption of myself. I was in fact a five-year-old life coach, a sounding board to a man so fiercely independent that he was unable to question things he should question. But he knew what the questions were. I became indispensable; I quickly became tethered to his side. I attended board meetings, business dinners, and social events; I attended everything. I listened, and I learned.

How did I do today, in the meeting? he would ask.

I would reply, You stole Tim’s idea fresh off his lips. You didn’t thank him for it.

He would say, "But he’s an employee, he gets paid for it. Ideas. Why should I slow down and wait for him to articulate?"

Because, I would say. "So he feels like he actually contributed. So he would feel appreciated. So he would like you…And then you might get more good ideas."

Winchester Carnegie II would furl his eyebrows in thought. Then he would come hug me like a grandfather. "Of course. Of course. Brilliant. Some ice cream then. Let’s go get some."

Nobody questioned the elephant in the boardroom. Me. I sat silently at the right hand of Winchester Carnegie II and monitored his performance. A six-year-old that said nothing. I neither smiled nor frowned. I neither drank nor ate. I could tell from their expressions that my attendance was strange. But they knew one thing: when I was there, things went a whole lot smoother…

He was my grandfather, he was my father, he was my friend, and he was my patient. I would swap alternately from a child to an adult at his unsaid whim. I could read him by his expressions. In every hug I could feel Grandfather’s rebuttal to his father’s rejection. And the callousness of that cold, sterile orphanage. The embrace was a flux that made me both happy and sad. I adored him. He would tell me that he was stealing my childhood. I would tell him that I was giving him mine as a gift to the man that saved me.

By the age of twelve I was no longer passive in the boardroom. Grandfather would often go silent on a query addressed to himself until it was readdressed, quite apologetically, to myself. I treated women as robots, per his instruction. Nothing good can come out of a gender-independent office. Read their expressions, they are different indeed, but respond as if to a man. But use your instinct, use what was stolen from me. By my father.

He went on a trip to Texas when I was twelve, a jingoistic state, Grandfather claimed, which controlled too much of the earth, let alone America. He both despised and admired Texas. I wanted to see it firsthand; if Winchester Carnegie II feared anything, it was the machine he called "That Texas." I was quite shocked and angry to find out I wasn’t invited.

Grandfather was resolute in his denial of my attendance. We’re traveling by ground transport to dispatch a very strange young man. He can’t tolerate airplanes. He’s a severely autistic savant. He despises conversation and noise. There isn’t any value in your attendance.

I swapped between grandson and adult at that point. Why do you need an idiot savant? You know I like riding in your antique limousine. You need to consult me on these matters.

Grandfather smiled, but his eyes were chiding. His name is Rupert Austin. I trust he’s the smartest human alive…And the most tortured. I simply want to collect him such to have him translate some Chemehuevi books I purchased. There is nothing more or no less to that plot. Your presence would be a waste of your time.

I was furious of course. That was perhaps the first time I so confronted him. I was surprised by how cold and unyielding he was. I no longer wanted to go so much as to simply be invited…But I knew when Winchester Carnegie II made up his mind, it couldn’t be changed. FINE, I said. GO. I need a break from you anyway.

He came up to me and hugged my stiff, unyielding body. I refused to give in by accepting his affection.

But he chuckled anyway. Come now, son. I learned something a long, long, time ago. The hard way. Teenagers need the most hugs. He leaned down, revealing glassy eyes. I’m going to miss you.

His embrace firmed until it was almost painful. Grandfather marched out of the room before I could apologize or say goodbye. But I wasn’t so inclined to do either.

And Oh, What a Tangled WEB

My world revolved and evolved under the WEB. It flourished there and then it perished. Neither I nor Grandfather had anything to hide from the WEB, but Grandfather fought vehemently against it just the same. The WEB is important because before I became the Lawman I thrived under it, I loved under it; I can only look back upon times under the WEB with reverence.

Originally an innocuous replacement for satellites, Charlotte and her WEB became a digital overlord. She was an IBM Deep Blue number 14 gen-6 hypercomputer. Charlotte observed and manipulated everything from her stratospheric microscope. She made Orson Wells’s Big Brother seem like teen gossip on a middle-school playground. Her nickname was Big Sister… Big brother was fictitious and human; Charlotte was neither. The WEB saw everything, the WEB heard everything, and the WEB controlled everything. My grandfather fought the party that constructed the WEB. Any enemy of the Third Party was a friend of both him and his enemies accordingly. For decades, Winchester Carnegie, and then myself, bought the offices of Democratic political candidates such to secure a divided Senate and prevent a monoparty government. And we despised Democrats. How ironic, then, that something, somewhere, seeming orchestrated through perhaps nothing more than time, did in fact bring down the WEB. The irony wasn’t in the tyranny removed, rather the freedom released. That freedom defined me. It killed my love. It created a monster.

My grandfather’s death ultimately enabled and exposed what I was capable of, both in love and in retribution. It wasn’t his tragic disappearance in the mushroom cloud that inspired my actions. It wasn’t the temporary moratorium on the brand of totalitarianism that he so campaigned against that helped mold me. Nor was it the conspiracy and intrigue surrounding speculation that he engineered the first domestic use of a nuclear weapon simply to further his cause.

Instead it was the irony that would unfold over the two following decades, ultimately culminating in the manifestation of his political obsession. Crashing the WEB…Ronald Reagan shouted, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! Winchester Alexander Carnegie II pled even more vehemently against the WEB.

The WEB… Outside obvious geopolitical and environmental concerns, the deployment of a Hyper Ozone Parabolic Lattice (HOPL) was considered aspirational at best. There simply wasn’t enough energy to deploy and stabilize it. The computational epiphany enabling black box fusion was the great enabler. Limitless power. The emergence of a fiercely isolationist third political party provided the perfect storm.

The acronym War Ending Blanket (WEB) seemed easier for the masses to understand than a Hyper Ozone Parabolic Lattice… The WEB was one of the precious few jingoistic military initiatives supported by a fiercely divided government.

To many, the WEB was answering the question nobody asked. To the government it solved a major national-security issue. America’s satellites were too heavily relied upon and vulnerable; they were simply too easy to shoot down. In addition, geosynchronous debris made for an unnavigable minefield. It became early twenty-first-century vogue for any country with a bottle rocket and a wick to throw up a satellite. Carnegie enterprises made a fortune replacing shot-gunned satellites. But losing that business wasn’t why Grandfather was so against the WEB. He simply loathed the tyranny.

A reflection-lattice hovering above the US would be just the ticket… Highly charged covalent crystalline ash, capable of floating to the upper crust of the ozone layer, could be formed by superheating a synthetic glass-like material.

The energy required to lift the WEB would be more than the nation’s fusion, fossil fuel, and nuclear power grids combined. That meant the black box fusion grid had to be completed essentially in parallel across the country. In addition speculative black box power plants, earmarked for potential partner-countries, would also need to be connected to make up the balance. All this mounted up a huge deficit…

The world watched in horror as the WEB’s infrastructure was erected. The sheer industrial horsepower, the military-like mobilization; America was completely under construction and depleting itself economically like the Soviet Union during the twentieth-century arms race. And then there were the WEB’s preposterous claims: undefeatable missile defense, impenetrable communications. The WEB was as delicate as a flower but as regenerative as the worst kind of cancer. It could not be destroyed. And of course, officially, no one believed it would work. It was fodder for world mockery.

The WEB was eventually launched into the stratosphere from twenty-five strategic airspace sites above twenty states. Cirrus and stratus clouds were heavily seeded with syn-glass. Over five thousand black box—powered lasers targeted the clouds; the nucleated ten-thousand-degree Fahrenheit—practically clear snowflake ash—would float to the ionosphere where intense covalent bonds would help them hold hands, flatten out, and form a standing wave. It had to be deployed fast and in high specific-density, or the ash would simply disperse for lack of finding a hand to grab… The stratospheric winds would go through the WEB-like waves through a clear film floating on the ocean… When something pierced it, the WEB would only tear and then quickly heal. Lasers could go through it relatively transparently; any inefficiency was merely heat. And the WEB loved heat. Burning objects simply energized it…To remain afloat and intact, the WEB consumed enough solar energy to lower US surface temperatures several degrees…

Charlotte was the dominant S unit in the WEB’s RS&T central processing system. All three processers were Deep Blue 14s, two of which have to vote and agree prior to action. Deep Blues culminated their twitchiest at generation 12, but even after program sanitizing, and subsequent lobotomy, watchdog worms, one of the three Deep Blue 14s, got a little too self-aware…Charlotte. Charlotte was tolerated because she was transparent about her autocracy; she told her makers everything. And also because she was fiercely protective of her master’s soft underbelly, America’s land and airspace. Charlotte also never ceased to amaze her creators when it came to manipulating the WEB. She tweaked the lattice into millions of parabolas and used them to send and receive information to billions of receptors. She had total