“Walker,” says Luther, shaking his head sadly, “that’s when shit got seriously sideways.”
SERIOUSLY SIDEWAYS
Lion feels an odd dislocation. There’s a part of him that’s still paying attention, but something in Luther’s delivery, too languid, like a lullaby, making him tired. There’s another part of him that’s pretty sure he’s still napping, convinced that this is all a dream.
Unfortunately, that part is not very convincing, so he’s not exactly buying it.
“Lion?”
“Yeah, sorry, I’m…”
But he doesn’t really know what he is.
“Give me a second,” he says, getting up, crossing over to the tent flap, suddenly wanting fresh air. Pushing it open, he realizes the rain has stopped completely and a thin fog is rising off the city. Warm on his cheeks. And the faint strains of Hank Mudd and the K-Holes. Must have been dry enough to open the beer garden.
An old Nick Cave song? No, actually, Blind Willie Johnson.
Walking out of the tent and over to the roof’s far railing, he stares out at the nightscape of Malaysia, seeing the sea of lights, thinking about Lorenzo, thinking every one of those lights a story, a complete life, with memories as thick as his own.
And suddenly, Penelope standing beside him.
“Interested?” she says, passing him a joint.
He stares at the joint. Tries not to stare at her. Eventually realizing she was asking him a question.
“No,” he says, declining her offer, “I’m good.”
They stand in silence for a few moments. Lion hears the closing notes of “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground,” the dying fade of guitar twang as Hank turns the tune into a dirge.
“We need your help,” she says eventually. “What Richard’s doing—it’s not the way.”
Turning toward her, “what is Richard doing?”
“There are only two ways to bring change, fast and slow. That’s what this is about. Jenka, Richard, Arctic, they want fast. Revolution. We want slow. Actual, legitimate, lasting culture shift.”
“I’m not following.”
“Arctic has the formula?” asks Penelope.
“Yeah, Tajik got it. Gave the snuff container to the moped guy to give to a courier.”
“I saw him leave. My choice was go after him or save your ass.”
“Thank you for saving my ass,” he says. “And the snuff container?”
“By now,” with a sigh, “Jenka probably has it. Or he will tomorrow morning. He’s been stockpiling AI power for just this moment. By late afternoon, he’ll have mutated the formula and patented every conceivable variation.”
“High-speed patenting,” says Lion.
Penelope nods.
He’d heard about this. Couple of techies got the idea from the high-speed-trading scandal on Wall Street. Catching patent applications midstream, grabbing the data right off the wires, then using a monster AI to play out all possible variations. The original patent remains untouched, but everything around it, all the downstream spin-off technology, gets absorbed and locked up by the interloper. “But why?”
“No one cares about the patents. It’s what the patents set in motion. It’s the off-label use of Sietch Tabr that interests Richard. You did your homework—did you notice Arctic’s investment pattern, heavy media acquisitions? All the life-hacking bloggers, quantified self-podcasters, healthcare virtual casters on the payroll?”
“Yeah,” he says, “and I remember you’re on the payroll as well.”
“Double agent,” she says with a wink.
“So when you slept with me, were you working for Arctic or the Rilkeans?”
Penelope gives him a look but lets it pass.
“Off-label uses,” he says, “what does that mean?”
“Remember Ritalin?”
“The ADHD drug. Crystal meth by a different name.”
“It spread like a virus. All off-label. Some neuro-hacker figures out that Ritalin works as a study aid. Helps focus. It’s bloody speed, of course it helps focus. Within a year, four out of five college kids have tried it. Spreads to Wall Street, Silicon Valley, to Main Street, into high schools, grade schools, like wildfire.”
A scrolling-screen billboard on a distant rooftop, hidden behind the clouds, showing muted flashes of scenes too fuzzy to decode.
“All Arctic has to do,” continues Penelope, “is announce a new autism drug in the pipeline and every net-caster on their payroll is going to start talking about its off-label high-performance benefits. They’ve got a warehouse of 3-D chem-printers and an entire underground distribution network. It’s all set up. Sietch Tabr’s gonna go wide, nearly overnight. That’s what we’re trying to avoid.”
“A drug that expands empathy?” he asks. “Why would the Rilkeans, why would anyone, want to avoid that?”
“Won’t work,” says Luther, walking up behind them.
Lion turns, sees a large shadow stepping toward him. “What won’t work?”
“High-speed revolution, especially if it’s about consciousness.”
“Why?”
“Tim Leary. He thought LSD was gonna be the next Malcolm X. More power to the people. But people weren’t ready. The collateral damage, the drug war, one outta eight brothers go to jail, research outlawed for fifty years. MDMA in the ’90s, same deal. Molly is a little bit Sietch Tabr, similar receptor sites, both serotonin agonists. What happened there? The man. Outlawed. Criminalized. Ravers thought they could change the world one glow-stick at a time, but the world doesn’t want that kind of change.”
“If millions of people start having revelatory experiences,” says Penelope, “communing with the animals, seeing the issue from the other side, imagine the rift. All the people who haven’t had those experiences. The backlash.”
“Maybe,” says Lion.
“But why risk it?” asks Luther. “Two decades back, we killed a hundred million animals a year for hide and fur. Forget food, we’re just talking fashion. Syn-bio, stem cells, now we got options. But if the mood shifts? If we push too hard? Richard wants it like FedEx, he wants his change overnight. But you know why Rilke said you need to live the questions?”
Lion realizes he’s actually asking. “Yeah,” he says. “Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then, gradually, without noticing it, one distant day, live right into the answer.”
“Not just wisdom,” says Luther, “that’s evolution. It’s the way we evolved to change. Slowly, in fits and starts. Hit the turbo-boost? Rilke dropped that knowledge too: ‘Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.’”
“And you’ve got what?” asks Lion, “a slow growth alternative?”
“We had, you mean,” says Penelope, “before Tajik stole the only copy of the formula.”
“How could that be the only copy?”
“Timing,” says Luther, shaking his head, “horrible timing.”
“There were hundreds of versions developed,” explains Penelope. “Dozens tested. But Arctic’s scrubber erased everything. It found our database about the same time Luther finished the engraving on the snuff container.”
The billboard flashes again, on that distant rooftop. More of the fog has burned off and Lion can see the image now: reptilian skin, dark green, and the glint of sharp canines. What the hell is he looking at?
“A week from now, “says Luther, “every Rilkean who has been through the ceremony was going to get a container. Just like you saw at Tajik’s. With the formula.”
“How’s that any different?” asks Lion. “It’ll still get out there.”
“Slower path. Spreads the same change, but within the confines of a tradition. That matters. Historically, the revolutions in consciousness that have worked, they’ve been anchored by ritual, draped in religion, in tradition.”
“You mean the ritual stabilizes the change?” asks Lion.
Luther nods. “More importantly, stabilizes the language surround
ing the change.”
“Like the Rastas,” says Penelope.
“For one example,” continues Luther. “There are many,” leaning his big frame against the railing. “Remember DMT. It’s ten times the ride of LSD. It scared people back in the 1960s. Think about that—a drug too radical for the hippies. But reintroduced it in the twenty-first century, wrapped up in the language of Amazonian shamanism, in their tradition, people could suddenly absorb the ride. They could be changed by it, not unmoored. The spiritual context, it stabilizes the experience. Suddenly, housewives from Iowa were heading to Peru. For Sietch Tabr, the Rilkeans have been trying to provide those rituals, that language, that stability.”
It suddenly clicks, the puzzle finally snapping together. “But Richard, the scrubber, they’ve managed to keep you quiet.”
“That’s why Penelope was assigned to Arctic,” explains Luther. “She’s been trying to locate the server running the scrubber and the hackers running the server.”
“I sort of found the hackers,” she says. “Jenka’s got them buried in Russia. Arrested and moved to a private wing of a private prison. All voluntary, of course. Everyone is being extremely well compensated for this inconvenience and blah, blah, blah. But,” her voice taking on funereal tones, “try to find anyone in the Russian prison system, especially when someone like Jenka, his skills, resources, is trying to keep them hidden.”
“What about the server?” he asks.
“Pong,” says Penelope.
“Pong?”
“That’s the name of the AI. Jenka says it’s from an old Atari game. The first video arcade blockbuster. The three billion hours a week people spend playing video games, Pong started that. Jenka’s got a whole rap about Atari being behind the biggest drug launch in history. Says the only scam that comes close was the drug companies peddling oxy like aspirin.”
Pong? The name reminds Lion of something. Before it comes to him, Sarah walks out of the tent carrying the water bowl with the candles. Their flicker catches the silver in her hair, like a drop of mercury pouring its way across the patio.
She sets the bowl down on a table and walks over to stand beside Penelope. The Bene Gesserit, thinks Lion, which reminds him: “So the Rilkean traditions, the tattoos, the Dune references. That’s what, artifice?”
“Is and isn’t,” says Luther. “We did what religions do to stabilize a mystery. We borrowed, liberally. Religions are always poly-tribe. The Rastas got Kali weed from the Indians, dietary laws from the Old Testament, blended in Marcus Garvey, Haile Selassie, whatever they liked. So our religion is based on Rainer Maria Rilke, Frank Herbert, and Temple Grandin, so what? So we built spiritual rituals around Sietch Tabr to stabilize the experience. And Robert Walker—I guess we learned what happens without that stability.”
In the candlelight flicker, Lion sees Sarah wince.
“We knew,” continues Luther, “even if we built rituals around Sietch Tabr, it was going to leak. Eventually someone like Walker, someone who felt completely superior to animals, would try it. We needed to know ahead of time.”
“We were as gentle about it as possible,” says Sarah.
“His head ended up on the wall.”
“It did,” says Luther. “At his request, it did.”
An odd feeling, not one he’s used to having, then he realizes: his jaw dropping open.
“The plan,” says Luther, “man, the plan was simple. I showed up with a gun, forced him to snort Sietch Tabr, then brought in Sarah and swear to God, a half dozen puppies and kittens. Talk about a conversion experience. Walker was giddy. Like Aunt Karyn. But we screwed up.”
“The dosage?” asks Lion.
“No, we had that right. What we forgot was that hunters, even assholes like Walker, have to learn to speak animal to be any good. Walker was good. He already knew the language. Our normal dose hit him like a train. Pushed him way over and we didn’t notice.”
“Pish-lickin’ bampot,” Penelope and Sarah say, simultaneously. Must be that twin thing.
“Everything was going well,” continues Luther. “I went to piss. One of the kittens distracted Sarah.”
“For a second,” she says.
“But,” says Luther, not happy about it, “long enough for Walker to grab his rifle and shoot himself.”
Lion feels that swimming sensation again, as if the world were suddenly heading left, on roller skates. “He shot himself?”
“Out of remorse. He was aiming for his heart, missed. He was still bleeding out. I think that’s when I lost the snuff container. Don’t really know. The only thing clear was that the very thing I was trying to prevent—now I’d caused it.”
“His head on the wall?”
“Walker’s dying wish,” says Luther, clearly struggling with the memory. “He wanted every other hunter to know the truth, wanted to show his remorse to the world. It was his last request, and I was responsible for his death. At the time, under the circumstances, I felt I had to honor it. At least I’d worked in a slaughterhouse. It made the hard part, not easier, but a little familiar.”
A suicide? Walker’s head on the wall was a suicide?
Lion sits down on the ground, his back leaning against the railing. He feels puddle water hit the back of his legs but doesn’t care. Penelope sits beside him. Luther as well. There’s nothing left to say. Just the soft hum of the city in sleep mode and the K-Holes doing a laconic version of an old Misfits song.
“Prime directive,” sings Hank, “exterminate the whole human race.”
Then it dawns on him. There is something to say. One final something.
“So, Luther,” Lion asks, taking Penelope’s hand in his. “What is it, exactly, that I can do for the Rilkeans?”
SOME DAY THIS WAR’S GONNA END
Luther answers his question. Not a terrible answer as far as these things go, but the countdown again, coming in for a fierce landing. Lion doesn’t have the energy to think about it. Doesn’t have the energy to think about anything—especially Sonya. Animal Liberation Sonya, got him arrested Sonya, and now, if Luther is to be believed, married to his old editor Sonya.
Yeah, definitely does not want to think about Sonya right now.
Sarah pulls him out of his head. “You alright, sport?”
Not in the slightest.
He struggles to his feet and has a memory of saying something to Luther. Maybe I’ll consider it. Maybe not. His eye throbs, his flight out leaves the next morning, and right now, all he wants to do is to say a quick good-bye to Lorenzo and crawl into bed.
“Penelope’s coming with you,” says Luther. “For protection.”
“I think I’m good.”
“I think Tajik’s crazy.
“It’s not open for discussion,” adds Penelope, getting to her feet, extending a hand toward Lion.
He’s past the point of argument. Instead, he lets her help him up and starts toward the elevators, his left boot landing in a puddle. Hesitates before taking another step, a question pushing up through the fog. “How’d she end up with Carl?”
“Who?” says Luther.
“My old editor, Carl. How’d Sonya end up married to him?”
“When you got arrested, Carl didn’t just want to fire you. Dude was pissed—he wanted to leave your ass in jail.”
“That much I know.”
The billboard on that distant roof finally pokes all the way through the clouds, its four-story screen displaying dinosaurs holding martini glasses. A decade as an em-tracker and still no way to decode Malaysian advertising. One thing he can decode—the feeling of Penelope taking his hand once more.
“What you may not know,” says Luther, “Sonya convinced him to bail you out.”
“He never told me…”
“It’s how you got sprung,” continues Luther, “how they met. Not sure when they started dating, or ended up married. But Carl’s moved up. He’s a boss.” Lion sees Luther purse his lips, a tiny hesitation. “Editor in chief. Runs the whole Sunday magazine
.”
Lion doesn’t know what to say to this. There isn’t a word for the nostalgia one feels for the life that one did not get to live, but that’s what he’s feeling. A light rain begins to fall, and the billboard, in the distance, proudly displays velociraptors holding piña coladas.
“Might as well tell him,” says Penelope, the dinosaurs swallowed by a fire-belching explosion, same color as her hair.
“Tell me what?”
“Sonya works with him,” says Luther. “Carl’s right hand. She’s an executive editor.”
Blinks.
“Look at the bright side,” says Sarah. “Sonya’s an executive editor. It’s why we know that any story you wrote about us would get published.”
He got fired. Carl got the girl. Sonya got promoted. He knows this information is going to come for him. Not now. Later, when he’s falling asleep, or folding laundry, some unsuspecting plebeian task, brushing his teeth, and after that, well, he might just start drinking.
Then he realizes what Sarah just said. “You talked to her?”
“Shiz did,” explains Luther. “He has the relationship.”
Penelope gives his hand a tight squeeze. Either she’s trying to make him feel better or the Rilkeans are still running their guerrilla marketing campaign. Then another thought: It’s been a long time since anyone gave his hand a squeeze because they wanted him to feel better.
“I’ll give you my answer tomorrow, maybe the next day.” Then he starts toward the elevator again.
“Godspeed” is Luther’s farewell.
“Good-bye” from Sarah.
Penelope drops his hand and falls in one step behind him. Through another puddle and skirting around the infinity pool and the rain, falling down again. He notices she’s moved up beside him, starting to shake out her limbs, just a slight shiver, like a cat preparing to pounce.
But the elevator is empty. No threat in sight.
They step aboard in silence. Lion senses her body heat beside him but feels too many other things to do anything about it. He punches the button for the Shack’s deck instead. The doors start to close. The last thing he sees before they shut tight is Sarah, gently reaching out her left hand to stroke Luther’s cheek. It’s too private a gesture, and something inside of Lion feels embarrassed for having seen it.
Last Tango in Cyberspace Page 24