The Collector

FINNEAS

“Wealth, devourer of man,” Finneas echoed, “carrier of chaos.” His eager eyes darted across the newly formed chapel, a mass of mud and brick. Paranoia had begun to set in. His expression would’ve raised questions, if not for the protruding scar that attracted the majority of speculation.

The village, now fervent in their chants, addressed the raging fires in front of them. “Conqueror of humanity, relic of time.” Word by word, Finneas detached himself from his surroundings. He wasn’t here to repent, but to retain. The Curator had been very clear about his objective, and very, very, explicit about the locket. He took a shaky breath, and laid a single hand on the knife by his hip.

“Silver, the decadence of fools,”-Finneas drew the knife from it’s leather sheath and approached the front of the crowd- “The weakness of kings.” The silver masks of the Fringe-Keepers had obstructed their view, as the heat began to warm the metal against worn skin. If this world hadn’t already succumbed to chaos, Finneas would’ve felt more undignified. He reassured himself that he wasn’t a bad person, just a good person doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. “Well, that feels like a real workaround,” he noted to himself. And he was right, it was a real workaround.

While he debated with the moral qualms of stealing from a religious group, the silver-clad pastor pulled a chest onto the podium. From the box, the slow-roasting pastor produced an eye-catching silver heart locket. The crowd around Finneas began to hiss, violently opposed to the chained memento of a world long gone. The pastor turned to the fire, heralding the locket as an item worth nothing more than tinder for the ritual. Finneas, recognizing the feeling of an opportunity about to be squandered, launched himself through the fire towards the pastor. Pushing the podium onto him with one hand, and snatching the locket with the other, Finneas attempted to think of something mildly clever to yell to the crowd behind him. “Enjoy poverty!” Finneas yelled as he ran through the tent, already wincing at the clearly classist nature of his riposte. If the newly appointed collector hadn’t begun questioning his own ability to create quips, he might’ve seen the caravan of soldiers approaching the Fringe limits. Barreling into a hulking mass of armored wires and screens, Finneas clutched the chain to his chest.

The soldier, repositioning a freshly-cracked monitor to where a human’s head would be, stood motionless above Finneas. “Causing another mess on the outside, collector?” Finneas would’ve responded, but out of fear that he would’ve said another dangerous quip, remained silent on the ground. Behind him, dozens of robed churchgoers escaped the mud-chapel. The pastor, adorning a ceremonial silver headpiece, approached the envoy of robotic officers. In a language unknown to everyone involved, he attempted to approach Finneas, only to be met by a flurry of movement. His corpse fell next to a still-prone Finneas, having been partially melted by the leading officer.

“You’re under arrest, Finneas. Your rights are as follows-”

“I know them. You have to do this every time?”

“-Every time. Your rights are as follows.”

Finneas disregarded his rights completely. They didn’t mean much to a man who had an entire cell block named after him (Finn-Land, however unimaginative that may be). Seemingly bored, Collector Finneas kept himself satisfied only in knowing that as long as he kept the locket in his possession, his mission wasn’t over. The Curator would bail him out, as he always did, before long. Stepping into the transport cage, Finneas held his head notably high, especially for someone who was just arrested for stealing from an indigenous tribe of religious zealots.

“If I was any worse or better of a person than I am today, I’d be dead. I want those words to sink into the head of anybody looking to change their stakes out here. Morality doesn’t matter anymore, so don’t let it impair your judgement. No matter who accuses you of stealing, no matter what those children were planning to do with their allowance scraps, you’re still a good person. That’s what all of this is about. Right?”

Finneas looked only mildly sure that this monologue was going to get him off of the hook. It didn’t help that the mirror, warped by blistering heat, made him look like an hourglass with meat-hook arms. Sighing, Finneas stepped back from the mirror, which he believed would look a lot nicer with his fist going through it.

From outside, a heavy voice seemed to approach the silo door. “Are you ready? Kershaw’s at the stand.” Finneas would’ve been prepared to respond, but he found himself distracted, now extracting glass shards from his knuckles. The long-imprisoned Finneas was just getting used to having his voice again, which became evident through frequent breaks and pauses. Pausing between syllables, Finneas put on his most bravado impersonation of someone who didn’t just punch a mirror, “The Curator call?”

“Not yet. Don’t count on it, though. You took the most prized item on the Fringe. There’s a price to pay that not even he could afford.” Inspecting the locket, the guard chuckled to himself, clearly content with that clever retort. “Let’s move it, Finneas. The council gets restless.” Approaching the bolted door, Finneas prepared an even cooler retort for the guard. As he opened his mouth to speak, the guard cut him off. “Is your tie wrapped around your hand?”

The cold cells of New Republica are often regarded as the most human part of the city. A reprieve from technology and steel, Finneas felt quite at home under the cobblestone roof of the dungeon. If the prison was an escape from technology, then the council was a leap towards autonomy. A massive monitor sat in the center of the auditorium, surrounded by bright lights and consistently active servers. Finneas’ mugshot blared across various screens in the room, much to his delight. The picture had been taken long before Finneas had encountered any of the Buzzards in the Fringe, and his face was devoid of scars.

“That really is a good picture of me,” Finneas noted to the guard, “I hope the server enjoys traditional beauty, and not, you know, wires and pixels and stuff.” The guard didn’t respond, much to the dismay of Finneas, who took this to mean the guard didn’t find him conventionally attractive either. Escorting the repeat-offender collector to his seat, the guard wasted no time in leaving the courtroom altogether, locket in hand. Finneas didn’t think this was a great sign, considering the only request the Curator had made was ‘DON’T LET THAT LOCKET LEAVE YOUR HAND’. Any doubts about his rescue, however small they may have been, crept over Finneas’ mind. The trial had begun..

THE CURATOR

For New Republica’s greatest explorer and collector, the Curator was notoriously inept at running a museum. He often handed his daily work off to the first person that found him in the morning, if only to gaze just a bit longer at his collection. Such is the life of a man who found success beyond his paygrade. Following in the pursuit of a traditional business tycoon, the Curator had issued a new generation of collectors, most of which currently lay either in the prison, or below the prison. Of the fifteen or so remaining, none had caught the attention of the Curator in the same way that Finneas Cauld had.

It wasn’t often that the Curator would send Finneas out on another acquisition, unless something was really wrong. He wasn’t known as a problem-solver in the collection agency; if the rest of the collectors were chisels and fine-tuned lockpicks, then Finneas was the hammer. Perhaps that was why the Curator chose Finneas in the first place, as some sort of distractor, while the rest of the team could recover the item. So why did he send Finneas alone? Only the Curator could have explained it, but he was already occupied planning Finneas’ return.

On the third day since Finneas set out towards the Fringe, the Curator had planned ahead on the pending trial for his arrest. Knowing the exuberant collector to leave the largest of trails imaginable, he had already scheduled a call with the quartermaster of the ‘Finn-land’ cell block (how embarrassing), and paid off any pending charges. Just to make Finneas suffer, even a tiny bit, the Curator loved to wait longer and longer into the trial before acquitting Finneas. As long as he held onto that locket, the Curator thought, there’s no need to break him out soon.

Suddenly, a diminutive man burst through the gaudy doors of the Curator’s room, papers in hand. As these same papers spilled across the floor, the Curator wasted no time getting upset by this disturbance. “Damian! I was incredibly busy here, in my zone, and you have completely ruined it!” The Curator was blatantly lying, but Damian was too concerned with the stack of formerly carefully organized papers to care. After the second minute of watching Damian scramble to reform the pile of papers, The Curator broke silence to broach a conversation. “What did you want? Is it these papers?” The Curator picked one of the loose papers from the floor, found the phrase ‘Failure To Acquire”, and released it once more. This was not something he felt like dealing with today.

Through ragged breath, Damian proudly placed the papers on the table, and prepared to speak. “Sir, Finneas was just spotted outside Rawhide, on the Fringe. He’s been arrested.” The Curator forced himself to hide his disbelief, not that Finneas had been arrested, but that Damian had expended minutes of effort for that.

“Thanks, bye. I've looked- I’ll look into it.” The Curator struggled to state calmly. Damian turned to leave, his papers still on the desk. Seizing this opportunity, The Curator swiped the stack of papers back onto the floor in front of him. Turning to the trophy wall behind him, The Curator stood at the collection of ceremonial goods he had acquired. Gold-plated trophies, ceremonial masks, massive tribal weaponry, it had all fallen into his clenched hands. In the center, five pedestals stood open, each awaiting a remaining artifact. An indentation had been made for a specific heart locket in the center. It was at this moment that Damian had returned to the room, silently resigning to picking up his papers once more.

“Ah, sir,” Damian attempted to capture the Curator’s attention, “There’s a guard here to see you. He says he’s found a locket. Said he wants to be paid for his efforts.” The Curator’s attention had been pulled away from freeing Finneas, if at least for a bit longer. What harm could there be in that?

FINNEAS

The deliberation came and went without a trace of doubt. Finneas was distracted, scouting the expressionless council of monitors, looking for any semblance of a savior from the outside. There was nothing. Still, his faith was not shaken. Finneas, a man of stature and fortitude, was not known to break easily.

The council began their verdict after approximately twenty-two seconds of calculation. “We find Finneas Cauld guilty on twenty-four charges, most notably in his inability to retain good behavior and failure to cooperate with enforcement. All charges will be dispensed via receipt to his cell, in the SuperMax detainment center. It’s here, though, that we offer a final verdict...”

Finneas, ever hopeful that the choice would simply be ‘freedom’, nestled himself back into his seat. The council continued, now displaying a collection of catalogued items deemed to be in the Curator’s collection. “These items, illegally possessed by the Curator, have long avoided capture. Those that took them, similarly, avoid capture. You will recapture these items, as well as their collectors.” Finneas laughed, then paused to respond, then laughed harder. “Or what, you’ll imprison me?” he gasped out through bouts of laughter. The council responded in kind. “Or we’ll erase you.”