Maker Messiah

by Ed Miracle

  “Leave your keys. Leave your equipment. Keep your hands away from your pockets, and follow me.” Tanner led them to a stairway of foot-lighted stones.

  Everett had expected an elaborate, circuitous route, a blindfold perhaps, with a switch to a different car. Guards with guns. They were calling on the single most-hunted fugitive in the world, but their escort turned his back and marched up the stairs ahead of them.

  The entry was dim, the house dark and cold. Tanner switched on a table lamp as he led them through a spacious living room. At the end of a short corridor, he opened a carved mahogany door and flicked on the light.

  “Wait here,” he said, and he ushered them into a vacant bedroom, white on white.

  “He didn’t search us,” Everett whispered.

  “Did you bring that thing in here? You’re going to get us kicked out, Everett. All my work to set this up, and you are going to scare them off. Or get somebody shot.”

  “If they want you, sweetheart, they gotta take me first. The man knows I have it. He didn’t search us because he’s got friends with guns. They know exactly where we are. We just have to be careful, that’s all. And polite.”

  “I didn’t see anyone else,” Marcy said. “But the room’s probably bugged. My guess is Machen’s not in the house.”

  “Maybe the FBI knows this place,” Everett said. “Maybe they’ll bust the door and come in shooting. They wouldn’t care about a couple of freelancers who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He rubbed his face.

  Last night he had dreamed of meeting Philip Machen, of drawing his pistol and raising it to the guy’s face. He even imagined pulling the trigger—a reckless, shameful urge. No matter what anyone said about the man, Everett could never do such a thing—murder someone in cold blood. He shivered.

  Marcy dropped her purse and put her arms around him, held him like a pillow.

  “Cold in here,” she said.

  He held her for all it was worth. In his twenty-two years, he had made enough huggy-bear, kissy-faces to have rid himself of his virginity, but Marcy was a grown woman, far more potent and intoxicating than any Florida bar girl. And more maddening. Connecting with her would never be just a party favor, it would be—special. He needed to say so, but this was hardly the time or place. So he held her close, imagined they were lovers, and enjoyed their moment.

  From the kitchen came footfalls and voices. Drawers pulled, and flatware clinked. A cupboard door slapped, then the furnace came on.

  Promptly at five-thirty came the knock. When Everett opened the door, Philip Machen stood before him, close enough to touch. Here was no myth or disembodied image. Here was the World’s Most Wanted Man, taller than expected, and thinner, breathing the same cool air. Machen’s gray, unblinking eyes widened.

  “Good morning, Mr. Aboud.”

  When the fugitive stepped closer, Everett Aboud, the automatic Arab, shook Philip Machen’s hand and grinned like a tourist blundering into a celebrity.

  “Morning,” he replied.

  There were no guards. He could shoot him now. Or stick the gun in his face and tell Marcy to call 911. That would bend the world sideways. But, Jesus, what crazy ideas. The craziest was that in some weird sense, shooting Philip Machen would amount to shooting himself. He finally remembered to breathe and to step aside.

  The great man’s face came alive with the pleasure of meeting Marcy. Seeing her effect on him spun Everett’s feelings in yet another direction. When the fugitive gestured to the living room, Marcy led the way.

  Behind her, Machen pressed something into Everett’s hand—a brass key on a leather fob.

  “You’re the pilot, right?”

  “Huh?”

  “Keep it,” Machen said, squeezing his hand. Everett stuffed the key into his pocket and rushed to catch up.

  They gathered in the dining room, where a red lacquered table awaited, complete with calligraphed name cards and monogrammed napkins. Machen seated them as Tanner wheeled in a serving cart. He served fruit, glasses of juice, rolls, muffins, and jellies. Machen set cereal bowls beside a pitcher of milk and encouraged them to enjoy whatever they wished. He strode to the kitchen door.

  “Draw the curtains, would you please, Tanner.”

  The house floated it seemed, as the curtains parted, on a lake of misty green foliage. No walls or streets intruded. Across the way, pine boughs partitioned a row of rooftops that glistened wet and slippery while San Francisco glimmered in the distance. The entire wall was glass.

  “This early, it’s still hazy,” Machen said. He set a chair with its back to the view, while Tanner placed rice paper screens to shield him. Then Philip Machen sat and sliced a banana onto his cereal.

  “We will be more at ease, Mr. Aboud, if you would remove your jacket and place it on the chair by the kitchen door.” Machen waited.

  Everett hesitated long enough to draw a scowl from Marcy. He stood to doff his jacket, but instead of the distant chair, he laid it on a sofa, closer to the table. Machen met his eyes then nodded to Tanner, who gave Everett a hard look.

  “We should be recording this,” Marcy said. “A beautiful breakfast in a beautiful house.”

  “Wouldn’t that be wonderful, Ms. Johnson? No agendas. Just breakfast with friends.” Philip beamed. He indicated Marcy’s cameras, positioned on tripods. “We took the liberty of setting up for you. But first, let’s eat.”

  His bodyguard seated himself across from Everett, selected three rolls and a helping of fruit. For a moment he returned Everett’s stare, then speared a melon slice and placed it deftly in his mouth. The man ate as politely as a diplomat, but there was nothing fragile about him.

  “It would be a pity if this house became notorious,” Machen was saying. “We warned our friends they might regret loaning it to us, but they insisted. I am so pleased they did.” He gestured to the view. “Isn’t it grand?”

  “Two bridges and two skylines,” Marcy noted. “How ironic that your Makers have brought so much darkness where Powerpods promised only light.”

  Machen stopped chewing.

  “If I may say so, Mr. Machen, the world is in chaos, and everyone is blaming you.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Everett looked up from his plate. “Did we start?”

  Machen shifted in his chair. “How shall we proceed, Ms. Johnson?”

  Marcy pitched a nod to Everett. He stuffed the remains of a blueberry muffin into his mouth and made his way to the cameras. Tanner stood as he passed the sofa, then the bodyguard scooped up his plate and departed for the chair at the kitchen door, out of the video frames but in clear sight of Everett and his jacket.

  Everett switched on his equipment and slowly panned the room. The authorities would welcome these images. Then he focused one lens on Machen, closeted within his screens, and the other on Marcy, who loosened her shoulders and licked her lips.

  “This is Marcy Johnson, and we are meeting today with Philip Machen, inventor of Powerpods, and a central figure in our current economic turmoil. My cameraman and I traveled to this hidden location at Mr. Machen’s invitation to discuss with him the machines he calls Makers.”

  Philip Machen, so relaxed before, sipped orange juice and sat up. Everett poised a finger to balance the audio.

  “Mr. Machen, yesterday WebNews showed an elderly woman telling President Washburn at his town meeting in Decatur, Illinois, what her life has been like since you announced your Makers. She begged the president to help her. Did you see that broadcast?”

  “Good morning, Marcy. No, I missed the show.”

  “This woman is terrified,” Marcy said. “From her home, she’s seen fires and looting. Her husband is ill. Their pension and insurance policies have been wiped out by the financial markets collapsing. Her husband needs a medicine produced by a company that may go out of business. Since their neighborhood grocery was looted, she doesn’t know where to find food, and she’s afraid to go in search of it. She and her husband feel as if they are captives in
a war zone, with no means of escape and no one to help them. If you met this woman today, what would you say to her?”

  “I would say, Madam, you are not alone.” He looked into the camera. “A community of caring and sympathetic people surrounds you. Seek them out and help them establish a mutual-aid community, a Maker enclave that will care for each other, produce what your talents allow, and share or trade for what you lack. I would say all the politicians in the world are of less importance to you right now than one good neighbor willing to share a Maker or two.”

  Marcy pursed her lips.

  “Mr. Machen, you call your Makers a gift. President Washburn has called them a financial Trojan horse meant to destroy our economy. What is the truth? Why did you do this?”

  “Marcy, the possibility of Makers has always been inherent in the natural world. Powerpods are one incarnation of matter-energy transmutation. Makers are another.”

  “But you tricked us.”

  “There is nothing false about Powerpods or Makers. No one was defrauded. But let’s not quibble. Can you think of another way I could make a simultaneous gift to millions of people in a single day?”

  “You could have told us what you were doing. You could have published your research and let the experts decide how to proceed.”

  “Marcy, it’s clear to me that the world’s power elites—the ones who employ those experts—would have stolen my gift and used it against ordinary people. They would have appropriated Makers for themselves to continue subjugating their fellow human beings. They would have deprived you of the opportunities that I have freely given. As we speak, most of them are trying to do exactly that.”

  Marcy frowned.

  “But here in the United States, we would have voted about what to do with your machines.”

  “Really? Would our politicians and their wealthy sponsors allow a direct vote of the people on such an important matter? Cite for me a single precedent. If you are a decent, nonviolent person, why should anyone’s vote deprive you of the means to produce what you need to live? You alone must decide what to do with your Makers. That is the difference between symbolic voting and a real choice. No government on Earth dares to trust you with such a genuine, empowering choice. But I have.”

  “Are you trying to overthrow the government?”

  He scoffed. “Makers are force antidotes. They give everyone the personal wherewithal to resist subjugation, and the means to withdraw their sanction from distant, unresponsive elites. Makers emancipate us not just from scarcity, but from the tyranny of unelected, unresponsive overlords. Real freedom for real people.”

  “Isn’t that anarchy?”

  “Not at all. We are devolving from vast nation-states to small, cooperative communities, with local people put in charge and held accountable by their neighbors. People with Makers don’t need guns or violence to improve their lives. They just do it.” He licked his lips.

  Marcy read from her notes.

  “Mr. Machen, the Depression of the 1930s did not bring the number of business closures we are seeing today. Markets everywhere have collapsed. U.S. unemployment may soon reach 50 percent. Did you foresee this? And if so, are you not therefore responsible?”

  “Marcy, I destroyed nothing. Traditional businesses simply can’t compete. The cost of capital just went to zero—for everyone, not just the wealthy.” He leaned toward her.

  “If I had not given away millions of Makers, the mere fact of their existence would have brought the same effects. Take Philip Machen out of the picture, while leaving free Makers, and you would still have plummeting prices and mass-market collapses. When everyone owns a personal means to produce, it’s not the end of capitalism. It’s the beginning of personal, universal capitalism.”

  “So what do you want?” She bore in on him. “What’s your goal?”

  “I want free Makers in every household. I want people to stop fighting over scraps so they can share the pie. I want them to gather all of human providence into their communities, then share it. Above all, I want them to share their Makers.”

  She leaned forward.

  “I mean, what’s in it for you, Philip Machen?”

  His eyes flashed.

  “I believe Makers are going to spark a moral awakening that our religions have failed to achieve, a worldwide moral renaissance. I want to be part of that.”

  Marcy rocked back.

  “We have not had Makers long enough,” he said, “to experience it yet, but using them every day is going to generate a new sharing sensibility, a mutual, sustainable benevolence, that will replace the bitter calculus of scarcity and hoarding.”

  He rubbed his wrist.

  “Maker owners are forming neighborhood communities because they need one another’s support. Within these enclaves, sharing will create a new expectation that most goods and all consumables should be shared. And why not? If it costs you nothing to share, why hoard?

  “Likewise, every community will need to trade for desired goods and services, so networks of artisans and traders will arise, spontaneously. Every enclave will lack certain skills, so they will compete to attract new members, first by ensuring their communities are desirable places to live and work and to raise families. The new reality will be shared prosperity within healthy, secure neighborhoods. And through all these communities will run a vigorous new ethos of cooperation and fair treatment, fostered by daily routines of sharing.

  “This sensibility will spread wherever Makers remain free. It will transcend older traditions because it is free and beneficial, practical and humane. Not political or religious or exclusive. It is simply the proper thing to do. In time, it will become the new normal, as common as saying hello.

  “Under scarcity, love-thy-neighbor was a test of character. In a Maker community, the test is over. Excuses will not be tolerated. If you fail to share, you will no longer look strong or sophisticated. You will appear twisted and stingy, utterly pathological. If you won’t share your Maker and your goods, you are a hoarder and a parasite.”

  Marcy fumbled her cards.

  “President Washburn says—” She cleared her throat. “— that he banned Makers to defend the country.”

  Machen scowled.

  “Jack Washburn is protecting the power holders, the hoarders, and the special interests. For ordinary people, complying with his ban amounts to social and economic suicide. Sooner or later, if you surrender your Makers, you will become serfs to those who are keeping theirs. Once they have Makers, nobody’s going back to poverty or scorn or symbolic democracy. Nobody’s going to work for the glory of kings or billionaires.”

  “But the world is in chaos,” Marcy said. “Everything is—”

  “Ms. Johnson, the sun still rises, and human compassion remains True North on every sane person’s moral compass. Only our possibilities have expanded.”

  “Mr. Machen.” Marcy cocked her jaw. “A friend would never pull a rug from under our feet and claim that our crash to the floor was not his fault. He would not pretend his arrogance was anything less than naked aggression. Aren’t you just another rich know-it-all trying to impose your worldview on us?”

  Machen jerked as if she had slapped him. He aimed his reply at Everett.

  “Every other alternative,” he said, “will enslave you to the hoarders. I made the only choice that gives everyone on Earth a genuine, personal chance for liberty, prosperity, and a moral awakening. I did what’s right. Now it’s your turn.” He stared into the lens, straight through Everett.

  “You must choose your path and defend it,” Philip said. “If you will not share your Makers, you do not deserve them. If you surrender your Makers, you may never get them back.”

  He kissed the scar on his wrist, stood abruptly, and marched from the room. Marcy popped to her feet, only to sit again for the camera.

  “Thank you, Philip Machen. It is Sunday, May third, and this is Marcy Johnson in Berkeley, California.” She stared into the lens until Everett drew a finger across his
throat.

  At the kitchen door, Tanner Newe was on his feet, pistol in hand. Everett spun the camera toward him and held his breath. Philip Machen’s bodyguard backed into the kitchen and shut the door. When footfalls and door closings gave way to the measured ticks of a grandfather clock, Everett released the breath he was holding.

  “Still recording,” he whispered.

  “Did they leave?”

  “Would you stick around? You got ‘em, girl. They’re pissed. We had better load this onto the internet before anyone can stop us.”

  He headed for the stairs, to fetch the uplink.

  “Be careful,” she said.

  He looked back, suddenly hopeful. If they shot him, she might care.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Oakland, California. Sunday, May 3

  Still Day Sixteen

  After Marcy dropped him back at Shoes-for-You, Everett had no idea where she might go, and he didn’t ask. The interview was safely embedded in the folds of the internet. They had broken no laws and owed no favors, so why notify anyone, especially the cops? Besides, how could most people learn these things if journalists didn’t reveal them? He crossed the boulevard, straddled his motorcycle, and sat in the warm sunlight. For once, he might have touched the world.

  First concern: Machen’s key. Too small for a door, it might fit a padlock. Penned on its fob was 5749 South Tracy Boulevard, #3. How could Machen have known he would recognize this address, and that he would go there?

  He pocketed the key and started his motorcycle. Instead of returning to Jesse Cardoza’s ranch, he continued east, past Livermore and up the Altamont Pass. From the summit, the flat midriff of the world’s largest valley sprawled before him, its air so uncommonly clear the Sierra snowpack glistened across it from eighty miles away.

  Tracy Municipal Airport comprised a few dozen hangars rusting behind the wire fences at 5749 Tracy Boulevard. Weeds were slowly digesting the asphalt where he parked. No services here anymore, just an old strip for touch-and-go landings, and a row of metal hutches rattling softly in the breeze. He peeked into hangar number three, where sun-damaged skylights cast a malarial pallor over a lithe and female form. In better light, she would be the exact color of lust. He slipped inside and traced the curve of her wing, fondling her with awe.