This is part of a piece I wrote in 2022 for the charity zine, Camelotpunk. It focused on retelling of Arthurian legend with a cyberpunk twist and along with the other contributors, this zine raised over $500 supporting children’s literacy in Canada. My contribution was a short story retelling the Quest for the Holy Grail.
I finally got the go-ahead to post this work. I plan on revisiting it later and honing it into the novella it deserves to be. I hope you enjoy!
I.
A hundred curious stares prick at the boy as he enters the Guild’s Court, bearing the weight of it all dutifully, but meeting none of them in return. He’s young, half the age at least of most everyone scrutinizing him, some hiding behind their augmented glasses, others outright. Most of them started young, yes, but the key difference being that young as they were, they were far from children.
This boy is gangly, not yet grown into himself, and his cheeks are flush with baby fat; choppy, curly hair, a dark halo around his head. Dappled with freckles as if he’d spent long hours out in the sweltering heat of summer, back when the swelter still came with sunshine, though they all know he was baked under a sunlamp instead.
“He’s a rep from Corbenic,” Bors tilts his head towards his brother, conspiratorial in his muttering.
“Why’d they send a kid?”
“Well, he isn’t just any kid.”
The two of them, for all their shows of secrecy, are angling for the opposite, laying out bait with each word. Maybe the tactic would be more subtle if it was applied to anyone else, but Lancelot knows it for what it is.
Besides, he’s got more on his mind than immature attempts to stir something up in him; at the forefront is the boy’s face.
(Or rather his own, peering back at him through the veil of nearly three decades past.)
And, riding on the heels of that realization: the acutely sharp memory of the conference fifteen years back. Of waking up in the hotel room, sheets spattered with blood, writing it off as a nosebleed all these years.
It feels as though he’s on the brink of some larger epiphany, one that’s so suffocating he’s half mad with the feeling of clawing himself out of his own grave. But it slips through his fingers like wisps of smoke, the spell broken as Arthur clears his throat, bringing the meeting hall to silence.
“You’ve come a long way, but, I confess, I’m not sure what you’re looking for here,” he says.
The boy fixes him with the clear-eyed gaze of equals, “I want to join your guild, to help the city run as it should.”
“Since when do we take on kids?” Gawain interrupts, sending the rest of the guild muttering amongst themselves.
Lionel takes advantage of it, leaning in and whispering from behind his hand, “He really looks like you, doesn’t he?”
Once again, the bristling feeling catches up with Lancelot, like the body jerking itself awake right at the cusp of sleep. But, he can’t linger on it; Arthur holds up his hand, calling for silence.
When he gets it, he continues, “This is a very specialized guild, you’ll have to prove your mettle if you want a place here.”
“I can help,” the boy says, voice tinged with all the urgency of a single-minded teenager, “I learned everything I could under the head of Corbenic and his daughter!”
Another thread in the Gordian knot resting in the pit of Lancelot’s stomach, growing ever more tangled as he tries to pick it apart.
Guinevere had contacted him directly, promising to meet him at the conference, along with a key-code for a hotel room on site for the two of them to rendezvous at. All through encrypted channels, of course, the best way to manage their more… clandestine activities.
He had waited for her, spent hours after the dinner break and the last of the late night seminars biding away the minutes. Somewhere along the way, he had fallen asleep. Alone.
Lancelot figured she ended up working in tandem with Arthur on some last minute contract or emergency call.
(But there’d been some seed of doubt, even then. The whole thing was hosted by Corbenic, the headlining speaker being Elaine, right hand and daughter of Pelles himself.)
Through the haze of his thoughts, Lancelot only catches the tail end of Arthur’s speech, “–plenty of time to prove yourself, but for now, you’re welcome at our table.”
The boy nods and quietly darts off, obviously desperate to finally shirk the scrutiny of the rest of the guild. He cycles around the meeting table, stopping at the only open seat in the room. Which, yet another terrifying synchronicity, is at Lancelot’s side.
He takes his seat, all solemnity and practiced airs of maturity. He doesn’t cast his eyes towards Lancelot, focusing instead on Arthur at the head of the table.
Arthur begins again, “Now, with that resolved, we’re still getting new reports of the same bug taking out vital equipment throughout the city. Has anyone made any headway on finding the source of it?”
II.
The nature of the program is hardly a mystery to Galahad. Mr. Corbenic talked about it often, almost reverently, and he knows the importance of it well.
Galahad raises his hand, uncertain if it’s necessary, but Arthur glances his way regardless and nods towards him.
“Sir,” he starts, “It’s called the Grail. Mister Corbenic has been tracking it for years.”
Arthur raises an eyebrow and opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, only to be cut off by the click and whirring of machinery coming to life.
Everyone looks away from Arthur. Galahad follows their eyes, landing on the projection rig in the center of the table, flickering as it warms up. The image steadily becomes clearer: a halting, stuttering image of a man standing before them.
“To-to-to solve the mysteries plaguing these la-a-ands,” the man’s mouth moves curiously, at odds with the words, which sound like they’re cut together from random broadcasts, “And st-t-top its t-t-t-troubles, many must se-e-e-ek and one will achieve the G-g-grail– Grail– Grail–“
The projection skips on and on, like a faulty disc, before finally shutting off.
The meeting hall stays silent for a weighted while, like they’re all holding their breath, waiting for the projection to spark back to life yet again. When it doesn’t, the whole room descends into chaos, overlapping voices over a hundred strong.
But, Galahad remains transfixed, mulling over the projection’s words. The Corbenics always reminded him that he had a purpose, one which seems clearer to him now.
Then, someone calls out, “We know what the program’s called now, so it’ll be easier to find the source, right? So let’s trace how it spread, go all the way back to patient zero. Who’s with me?”
The majority of the guild raises their hand, Galahad included.
–
As the meeting disperses, Galahad finds himself rooted in place, unsure of what to do. He’s an awfully long way away from Corbenic, on his own for the first time he can remember.
Then, a woman circles around to him, gently touching his shoulder as she leans over him.
“You’re welcome to stay here tonight,” she says, “We have a handful of rooms for this exact purpose.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he hopes she can’t see how lost he is amidst all of this.
“I’ll show you the way, come along.”
She pulls her hand back and takes a couple hesitant steps, looking back over her shoulder until he gets up and falls in step beside her.
As they make their way into the hallways, she says, “I’m Guinevere.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” he bows his head slightly, “My name’s Galahad.”
Then, she pauses, fixing him with a stare that makes him feel more than a little shy, “Who’s your father, Galahad?”
His face flushes, burning all the way up to his ears, and he rubs the back of his neck, “I… I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
Galahad shifts his weight from foot to foot, wringing his hands. Neither of the Corbenics ever answered any of his questions in detail, and he’d mostly come to terms with that before today.
“Miss Elaine told me I wasn’t born of flesh in the way of man.”
“Well, you’re still made from someone’s genetic material, aren’t you?” Ms. Guinevere raises an eyebrow.
“If you’re so sure of who he is, why don’t you tell me?” He can’t stop himself from snapping, feeling guilty as soon as he does, unable to meet her eyes.
“You should already know,” she sneers, “You sat right next to him.”
With that, she opens the door to a small bedroom, sparsely furnished with a cot and an ensuite bathroom. He thanks her once again, even though he’s not sure he should.
Behind him, she shuts the door, leaving him with no other company than his thoughts.
III.
They reconvened briefly at the Court the next morning, asserting again the need to contact trace back to the originator of the program. The general consensus settled on “divide and conquer”, divvying up any recent complaints submitted that fit the traits of the Grail before scattering to track them down and glean what they could.
Arthur divided up reports himself, with each Guild member pledged to the hunt taking at least two to investigate. Still, the city needs watchful eyes to run smoothly, so a handful stayed behind; among them, Arthur and Guinevere both.
In the morning, before Lancelot left, she’d come to him smugly, with the look in her eye of someone who knows they’ve got an ace up their sleeve. He had an inkling of what she was there to discuss, but it was harder to hear it from her lips. Although, she’s hardly got the right to demand monogamy, given their myriad off-the-books meetings.
But, he’s never been unfaithful. The boy looks too sublimely like him to be his son.
Still the logic behind it eludes him. Why on earth had Elaine chosen him? To plant the seeds of contempt in Guinevere? To try to usurp his position as the right hand of the Guild?
He mulls these possibilities over as he makes his way to the first of his assignments. As far as support tickets go, it’s standard fare; something only a fresh recruit would get assigned. The only factor that got flagged was a fragment of code matching the partial they got from the program that hacked their projection equipment.
The client’s home has some sort of catastrophic processing error for the central control module; lights flickering in and out, heat and AC turning off and on as they please, video and audio transmissions picked up from unknown frequencies. They sent over the initial diagnostics as part of their intake, which Lancelot skimmed briefly.
He prefers to do his work on his feet, though. Which brings him to their door, prepared to witness whatever strangeness the Grail program has waiting for him.
–
The condo is small, filled with the soft whir of an automated whole-home comfort system, albeit slightly outdated. If he were a salesman rather than a maintenance tech by trade, he would’ve tried to sell them on an upgrade. Instead, he sits and listens to the woman explain their troubles while her father, glassy eyed and stoic, reclines in an armchair, mouth parted slightly as he breathes in shallow, wheezing breaths.
Once she’s unburdened her woes with all the seriousness of the confessional, she clasps her hands in her lap and says, “Can you help us, then?”
He nods with a small smile. Then, he devotes himself to what he does best.
The control panel is built into the wall almost seamlessly in their living room but that’s hardly a problem for him. All of them are equipped with tradesman’s keys, running a custom set of programs designed for the Guild.
Although, they hardly call to mind the image of the keys of antiquity. His is a nondescript rectangle, palm sized and weighted, with a simple keypad that lights up when he holds it near the control panel. All he has to do is activate the Sword program and the panel rises up from the wall enough to slide it back.
Then, Lancelot taps a few other keys, patching into the system wirelessly to run a diagnostics of his own. This time, he’s hunting specifically for any vestiges of the Grail program, rather than fumbling around blindly for errors and glitches.
As if on cue, the systems of the condo begin to go haywire. It almost feels as if it’s too simple, as if the Grail was waiting for him, although it’s dangerous to begin to humanize the programs they work with.
The lights flicker in and out before finally deciding to shut off entirely. The entertainment system buzzes to life, playing a staticky radio frequency on low volume. The woman gasps somewhere in the darkness.
“This is perfectly normal,” he says, calm and collected, “Don’t worry, it’ll be–“
His tongue suddenly feels leaden heavy, swollen in his mouth. The Sword key drops from his hand, now rigid as the dead.
A single light flickers back on, a spotlit halo over the old man dozing on the couch. And, strangest of all, Lancelot swears he could hear the whispers of voices in the radio static, speaking in tongues.
But his sight is slowly stripped away too, gleaning only smears of shadow and movement in the room. His chest rises and falls barely, heart beating sluggishly, as if he were asleep. Even the sensations of touch, his clothes sliding against his skin, the circulated air in the condo, are lost on him.
He’s left alone with the formless light and the whispers of the static.
Then, as quickly as it began, it ends. The lights all come back on, the radio goes silent, his hands rush to his chest like he could plunge them into his ribcage and soothe away the fear taking hold within him.
“Oh my god,” the woman mumbles.
When Lancelot blinks the room into focus, he sees the old man staring at him, a new look of lucidity in his eyes to match the telltale glint of an augmented prosthetic.
“I-I,” he stutters out, trembling all over, “Have to, uh, have to leave.”
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