88 Names

by Matt Ruff

  I find myself looking into the shoebox again, at the second box nestled inside it. Something tells me that whatever it contains, I’m not going to like it.

  It’s as if Smith can read my thoughts.

  “Yes,” he says. “Open it.”

  Part Three

  RL

  You can play with your friends in the Realms of Asgarth, but remember to play with them outside Asgarth as well.

  —Call to Wizardry loading screen tip

  Chapter 16

  * * *

  prohibition — A popular blood sport in which a government attempts to tame desire by passing a series of ineffective and increasingly draconian laws.

  —The New Devil’s Dictionary

  * * *

  Yesterday must have been protest day in Sacramento. The southbound Coast Starlight is carrying scores of anti-gun activists, and an equal number of anti-abortion protesters. Amtrak, hoping to avoid a riot, has seated the two groups at opposite ends of the train.

  I get put in a car with the anti-gun crowd. At twenty-one I am an old man among them: Most are high-school age or even younger. They wear blood-red T-shirts, adorned on the back with the names of places where mass shootings have occurred. On the front of the shirts, above a graphic of a fist smashing an AK-47 into pieces, is the name of their movement: Repeal the 2nd.

  Given how my grandparents died, you might assume I’d be all in favor of this, but as usual, I get hung up on the practical shit. When I think about gun control, I think of my aunt Emma, an Army surgeon who served four tours in Iraq. Retired now, she lives on a ranch outside Carson City, Nevada, with her wife, Yoko Hayashi. Aunt Yoko has a sad story about her grandparents, too: They were interned at the Tule Lake Segregation Center during the Second World War. Her grandmother was raped by one of the guards there.

  Em and Yoko own a lot of firearms: a shotgun to deal with coyotes and human trespassers; a rifle for hunting; an assortment of pistols for mostly sentimental reasons (they met at a shooting range); and hidden behind a false wall in the bedroom closet, a pair of AR-15s and several thousand rounds of ammunition, their insurance against history repeating itself. Emma is mechanically gifted and Yoko can perform sorcery with a 3D printer, so in the event of a fascist takeover, I imagine they would have no trouble converting the AR-15s to full auto.

  This makes them sound like doomsday preppers, which they kind of are, but they are also two of the sweetest people I know, and funny as hell. They are on a very short list of relatives who I enjoy arguing politics with. But good luck trying to change their minds about anything. When I first heard about the secret arsenal in the closet, I suggested to Emma that even machine guns would be useless in a fight against the government: Mom’s got drones that could incinerate the entire ranch from fifty thousand feet in the air. Aunt Em replied that America had drones in Iraq, too, but the insurgents still managed to inflict enough pain that we eventually gave up and went home. “Don’t get me wrong,” she added good-naturedly. “I’m sure your mother could kill me if she wanted to. But I’m not making it a freebie.”

  Emma and Yoko raise Cavalier King Charles Spaniels for competition. This is relevant because the ATF has a standing policy to shoot any dogs they encounter during a raid. The agency does not discriminate: Even obviously harmless pets are treated as vicious attack animals and put down. My aunts regard their Spaniels as their children, and if a bunch of men and women in black showed up at the ranch and started murdering their babies, it doesn’t take a genius to guess what would happen next. I would feel like a huge asshole if I were in any way responsible for that.

  None of which changes the fact that America has a gun problem. If I could wave a magic wand and prevent all future Columbines, stop people from shooting each other in domestic disputes, and make it harder to commit suicide on a whim—yeah, sure, I would do that. But there is no magic wand, only the blunt instrument of the law versus the endless adaptability of the human heart in pursuit of what it wants.

  Maybe these kids will come up with a strategy to make prohibition work at a reasonable cost in innocent lives. On another day, I might ask them about it, kill some time shooting the breeze on the way down to L.A. But at the moment, I’m dealing with too many distractions to feel like chatting.

  Distraction number one is the collar around my neck. To a casual observer it must look like bondage gear, or some sort of science-fiction cosplay: a two-inch-wide band of black plastic ribbon cable, secured by a chunky metal buckle beneath my chin. There’s an LED light on the front of the buckle that turned green when I locked the collar in place. If I try to undo the buckle or cut the ribbon cable, or if I fail to follow Smith’s instructions to the letter, the light will turn red, and then something very bad will happen to me. Smith wasn’t explicit about the nature of the bad thing, but it undoubtedly has something to do with the little glass vial at the back of the collar. The vial is filled with an amber-colored liquid, and sits in a metal bracket attached to the outside of the collar; on the inside of the collar, riding flush against the nape of my neck, is a tiny grommet with a hole a couple of millimeters wide. Feeling it there, I imagine a spring-loaded needle poised to jab me in the spine. That’s probably wrong, though: VX, a topical nerve poison, doesn’t need to be injected. A single drop on exposed skin is all it takes to kill you.

  This makes it hard to get comfortable. The collar chafes, and I can’t lean my head back against the seat rest for fear of breaking the glass. I sit up straight, stiff-necked, studying the faces of the people around me.

  Distraction number two: Figuring out which of my fellow passengers is a DPRK sleeper agent. Smith told me that he’d have someone on the train keeping an eye on me. I assume the watcher is the same person who delivered the box to the motel.

  I doubt it’s any of the protesters. They were already on the train when I boarded, and besides, they’re mostly white kids. Caucasian teenage North Korean spies seems like a stretch. I can probably also rule out the Sikh family who got on in Oakland. It could be the Asian guy in the business suit: He boarded the same time I did, and he has a pissed off resting expression that reminds me of Smith. But he’s Japanese, not Korean, and while that doesn’t rule him out, it does make me feel guilty about racially profiling him. Aunt Yoko would be disappointed.

  Maybe it’s none of these people. The collar buckle is big enough to contain a GPS tracker and a microphone, so there’s no reason for the watcher to be in the same car as me. He, or she, could be sitting with the pro-lifers at the front of the train, remotely monitoring my GPS signal. And listening.

  Which brings me to distraction number three: Finding a way to call for help. My computer got fried, and I left my cell phone back in my apartment because I was worried about being tracked with it. I have the Xiaomi phone that Smith provided, but for obvious reasons I can’t use that. I need to borrow another phone, without asking for it out loud.

  The girl in the window seat next to me has an iPhone, but unfortunately she has decided I am some kind of weirdo. She took one look at my collar as I was sitting down and immediately put in earbuds and assumed a defensive posture that says, “I will tase you if you so much as tap me on the shoulder.” I could try passing her a note anyway—“I NEED YOUR PHONE. PLEASE DON’T RESPOND VERBALLY.”—but I doubt that would end well.

  Looking through the gap between the seat backs, I can see that the boy in front of us is using his phone to watch a video. A two-second glimpse of the footage is enough for my nerd brain to identify it as an episode of the original Star Trek. It’s the one about the guy named Lazarus who’s caught in an eternal feud with an insane twin from an alternate universe. One Lazarus is made of matter, the other of antimatter, and if they ever meet outside a special interdimensional corridor, the resulting explosion will destroy all of existence.

  I am thinking about this when the conductor announces that the dining car in the middle of the train is open for lunch. It gives me an idea.

  JUST AS SOME PEOPLE ASSUME I MUST
BE IN FAVOR OF gun control, there are others, including several members of my own family, who argue that I ought to be in the anti-abortion camp. Their logic is straightforward: As the unplanned child of an ambitious single mother, I am lucky not to have been killed in the womb.

  This is true as far as it goes, but I don’t think it goes very far. Because I paid attention in sex ed class, I know that a lot of things had to go right in order for me to be born. Not getting aborted is actually pretty far down on the list.

  For example: The average male ejaculate contains hundreds of millions of sperm. They are not identical; each carries a random combination of half the man’s DNA, further altered by mutation. And their race to fertilize the egg is governed by the rules of chaos theory, in which outcomes are highly dependent on initial conditions—a nerdy way of saying that if your parents had had sex a few minutes earlier or later, they’d have conceived a different child.

  This is another case where a magic wand would be useful. I happen to think being alive is great, and if I could I’d happily give the gift of life—a good life—not just to all the kids who got aborted, but to those millions of potential brothers and sisters whose existence was precluded by my own conception.

  That’s a fantasy, of course. And so is the idea that you could have stopped my mother from getting an abortion, if she’d wanted one. Granted, at the time she became pregnant, she didn’t yet have access to Hellfire-equipped drones. But she was already a badass, confident in her own judgment, and she knew how to stand up for herself. If you’d told her she didn’t have a choice what to do with her own uterus, she’d have tossed you into a swimming pool—and if that didn’t get the point across, she’d have shot you.

  When the thing standing between you and your heart’s desire is another person with their own wants and needs, the answer is never as simple as just laying down the law. We all understand this when someone else tries to tell us what we can and can’t do, but conveniently forget it when it’s our turn to give orders. This blind spot is common to people on all parts of the political spectrum, which is one reason why I don’t like arguing politics much.

  Another thing we all have in common is that we all need to eat. So now, in a bid to save my own precious life, I head for the dining car, the interdimensional corridor where the matter of Repeal the 2nd mixes with the antimatter of Overturn Roe.

  The car door opens on the sound of raised voices. Looking down the aisle as I step inside, I see a teenage girl in a blood-red T-shirt going nose-to-nose with an older woman whose blouse is patterned with sonogram images. Standing beside them, trying to play ref, is a nervous looking Amtrak attendant.

  The woman and the girl aren’t so much arguing as exchanging bumper sticker slogans; you could write their dialog yourself if you really wanted to. The Amtrak attendant’s dialog consists of a single phrase, which he repeats over and over again: “Ladies, please!” This is completely ineffectual, but he keeps saying it anyway, like a sorcerer’s apprentice trying to get his Charm of Silence to work.

  Everyone else in the car is focused on the woman and the girl, waiting to see if they’ll go full PvP on each other. The girl’s back is to me, so I can’t read her expression, but the Overturn Roe woman looks like she’s enjoying the verbal sparring too much to start throwing real punches. Which is fine. I don’t want anyone to get hurt here, I just need a distraction.

  I turn my attention to the nearest tables. I spot what I want almost instantly: A guy sitting alone just ahead and to my left has a phone. It looks like he was scrolling through Twitter when the live-action version broke out behind him. Now he’s set the phone down on the table and turned around in his seat to watch the fireworks.

  Thinking will only cause trouble here, so I will myself to just act: Grab the phone as if I have every right to take it, turn, and go. But even as I step forward, a teenage boy in a red T-shirt gets up from a table on the other side of the aisle. It looks like he intends to provide backup to the girl, whether or not she actually needs his help. But having gotten to his feet, he just stands there, in my way.

  I need to get the phone before it goes to sleep and locks itself. I could probably get away with saying “Excuse me” here, but my sense of urgency inclines me to more forceful methods, and because this is the real world, chest-bumping is allowed. The train car jolts over a rough spot on the tracks and I pretend to lose my footing, shoving the boy forward. He shoots me an angry look over his shoulder, but when he sees I’m not wearing a sonogram shirt, he turns back towards the girl.

  I can reach the phone now. I’ve got my hand on it when the train gives another big jolt. This time it’s the boy who stumbles. He falls into me. More worried about losing the phone than my balance, I tip over backwards. When my head hits the floor, the bracket on the back of the collar jams painfully against my spine, and as my teeth click together I swear I hear the crunch of breaking glass.

  My body goes numb. This is panic, but it could also be the VX starting its attack on my neurotransmitters. I jerk my head up, reach around to the nape of my neck.

  Yes, I know, this is dumb: using my bare hand to check for leaking contact poison. But if the vial is broken, I’m almost certainly doomed; the only real question is how many other people will die with me. Better to find out fast, so I can start agonizing about whether to throw myself heroically from the train.

  I touch the bracket. The vial is intact. I feel for cracks in the glass, pressing hard enough as I do this that, if it were cracked, it would probably shatter. But as best I can tell, it’s undamaged. The only moisture I feel is the cold sweat on my fingertips. I am still alive.

  The boy, who landed on top of me, is trying to get up; my sense of relief is cut short as he elbows me in the balls. I grit my teeth again. As I cup my wounded testicles, I see the phone, lying on the floor within easy reach and still unlocked. I grab it. The boy steps on my hand.

  It’s OK, I needed to get my blood pumping again after that scare. I wait for the boy to get off me and haul myself to my feet. Then I try to make a quick exit. I get as far as the door at the end of the dining car.

  When the door slides open, the surly Japanese guy in the business suit is standing on the other side. He glances at the phone in my hand, then looks me right in the eye, scowling. I start to go numb again, but not before I feel my face compose itself into a perfectly guilty expression.

  He doesn’t kill me. He stares at me unblinking for a few seconds, then tilts his head and looks past me to where the woman and the girl are still going at it. “What’s that all about?” he asks.

  Even if I were free to speak, I’m not sure what I’d say to this. I answer with a shrug. Then I duck my head, and make good my escape.

  I FIND A VACANT LAVATORY AND LOCK MYSELF INSIDE. Holding up the phone, I carefully close Twitter and open the dialing app. Then I stare at the screen and realize I don’t know what to do next.

  Normally I contact Mom through my computer. There’s an emergency number I can call if I get into trouble when I’m away from my PC. I’m supposed to have that number memorized, and I do, sort of—it’s programmed into my cell phone. I had optimistically assumed that the act of programming it into my cell phone would also imprint it in my brain, but now, try as I might, I cannot recall a single digit.

  I don’t know Jolene’s phone number either. Or Ray’s. I do know Darla’s, but reaching out to her is one of the few things I can think of that might conceivably make my situation worse.

  The answer, when it comes to me, is so blindingly obvious that I feel stupid: Duh, of course. I’m traveling to his city, after all, and not only can he relay a message to Mom, he’s got resources of his own that could help me.

  I punch in his number, start composing a text.

  DEAR DAD, it begins.

  Chapter 17

  * * *

  apophany — A false epiphany, in which a person perceives a meaningful connection between things which are in fact unrelated. The term, coined by German psychiatrist Klaus
Conrad in the 1950s, originally referred to a type of delusion suffered by schizophrenics, but has since come to apply broadly to any misfire of human pattern recognition.

  —Lady Ada’s Lexicon

  * * *

  The Coast Starlight arrives at Los Angeles Union Station just after eleven p.m. Everyone on board is cranky. At the start of the dinner service, after another shouting match between protesters ended in a food fight, the crew shut the dining car down and sent the passengers back to their seats without supper. Now, as we roll to a stop, I see Amtrak security and LAPD out in force on the platform.

  When the train doors open, I’m one of the first to disembark. I keep my head down and walk swiftly past the cops. Inside the terminal, I fake towards the Metro subway escalators but instead go up and out. A black limousine is waiting at the car service pick-up; the driver sees me coming and the back door opens automatically. I duck inside, and before I’ve even got my backpack on the floor, the door clanks shut and we are moving.

  “Hi John,” the driver says, turning to flash me a quick smile. “How was your trip?”

  “Exciting,” I tell her, reluctant to say more until I’m sure we can’t be overheard.

  “It’s OK,” she says. “Faraday’s on.” She points to the bright green shield that has lit up on the dashboard, a telltale signifying that the limo’s Virtual Faraday Cage has been activated. All electronic transmissions into and out of the vehicle should be blocked; GPS trackers cannot transmit, cell phones have no bars, and booby-trapped death collars cannot be remotely triggered. So for the moment I am safe, and if we are lucky, Smith will interpret the loss of GPS signal to mean that I’ve taken the subway.

  My chauffeur’s name is Bamber Holtz—“Bambi,” inevitably, in the trades. Originally from Oklahoma, she did a stint in the Army after high school and then came to Hollywood to do FX work, specializing in pyrotechnics and demolition, skills she’d honed defusing IEDs in Syria. She’s won two VES awards and was nominated for a Visual Effects Oscar, but to heterosexual men of a certain age she’s most famous for her one on-screen role, body-doubling Sandra Bjorn during the nude motorcycle chase in Death Race 5000. After the original stunt woman suffered a bad case of road rash during a test shoot, the director, desperate to keep the film on schedule, turned to the only other woman on the crew and asked how she’d like to take her clothes off and ride a vintage Harley. Bamber agreed to do the scene in exchange for the bike.