by Max Barry
Wil’s breath steamed. “Okay. Okay.” Anger built inside him and he didn’t know what to do with it. “Fine. That’s how it is?” He walked back to the plane. He didn’t know what he was doing. But he could do it somewhere warm. He could do that. Halfway up the steps, he yelled, “What happened in Broken Hill? Woolf killed everyone, right?” Eliot didn’t move. “Yeah! So you go hide out while she does what she likes to the rest of us! You do that!” He shivered. He stomped up the steps.
• • •
Eliot stood on the road, scanning the horizon. His coat flapped around his legs. Wil would pop back out of that plane in about five minutes, by his estimation. That would be the point at which his fear of being abandoned surpassed his physiological desire for warmth. It would be useful if a car appeared before then. That way, Eliot could compromise the driver and be on his way without ever seeing Wil again.
The wind stung his cheeks. He couldn’t resist the comparison any longer: the last time he’d stood like this, waiting and watching to see what came over the horizon, carrying a gun and hoping not to need it. A little over a year ago. He had been outside Broken Hill.
• • •
He put the air-conditioning on full, but it made no difference: The sun blasted through the windshield, broiling him inside his shirt. The kid he’d collected from the airport, Campbell, squirmed and twisted his tie and finally pulled off his linen jacket and hung it over the back of his seat. “The sun looks bigger,” he said. “Can it actually be bigger?”
“It’s the ozone,” said Eliot. “There’s a hole.”
“Do you get used to it?”
“Not yet.”
“When I left DC, it was twelve degrees,” said the kid, rolling up his sleeves. “Twelve.” He glanced at Eliot. “You miss DC?”
“I visit.”
“Yeah, but . . .” The kid looked out the window at the blasted soil rolling by. “How long have you been out here, in total? Three months?”
“Seven.”
“Yeah.” The kid nodded. “Of course. Well, after this, you can go home.” He smiled.
Eliot looked at him. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-one. Why?”
“How much do you know about what you’re doing?”
“Everything.” The kid laughed. “Eliot, I’m fully briefed. I’ve spent six weeks in intensive prep. I was selected for my talents. I know what I’m doing.”
Eliot said nothing.
“Four months ago, Virginia Woolf releases a bareword in Broken Hill, Australia, population three thousand. Now population zero. Official story, explosion in the ore refinery plant causing a catastrophic toxic leak. Town is fenced off at a radius of five miles. Scary signs promise death to all who enter. The funny part is the signs don’t lie. We send people in, they don’t come out. Hence the theory that the word is still in there.” He pulled his shirt out of his pants and flapped air. “Crazy idea, isn’t it? That a word can persist. Hang in the air, like an echo.”
“It can’t.”
“What, then? Because something bad is in there, and it ain’t a toxic leak.”
He almost didn’t say it. “Maybe Woolf.”
“Mmm,” said the kid. “Yeah, nobody really thinks that’s plausible, Eliot. We’re all pretty sure Woolf’s dead.” He tapped idly on the window. “We have satellite on that town. We’ve imaged it a hundred different ways. Nothing moves.”
Eliot drove in silence.
“I’m the best there is, defensively,” said the kid. “I mean, not to boast. But that’s why I’m here. I was selected because I can’t be compromised. There’s not going to be a problem.”
“You realize you’re betting your life on that.”
“I realize it.”
Eliot glanced at him. Twenty-one, he thought. “Who chose you? Yeats?”
“I have had the honor of speaking with Yeats, yes.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
The kid looked at him. Give me a sign, Eliot thought, and we’ll blow right by Broken Hill, Campbell, keep going until we reach an airport. By sundown we’ll be a country away. You ever think about quitting, Campbell? Just walking away? And let me ask you something else: Have you noticed there’s something wrong with Yeats? Like something dead? Notice that?
The kid turned away. “You’ve been in the desert too long, Eliot.”
He watched the endless road. “You’re right about that,” he said.
• • •
He drove up to the chain-link fence and killed the engine. They sat in silence, looking at the signs. CONTAMINATION. TOXIC. TRESPASS. DEATH. Skulls and thick red lines. The heat pressed in like a hand. “They’re words, aren’t they?” said the kid. “Fear words.” He unbuckled. “I need to get out of this car.”
Outside was no cooler but at least the air was moving, stirring dust and sand. The road was blocked with a snarl of razor wire. To the left and right, the chain-link fence stretched away, signs flapping every few hundred feet. A few scrubby bushes protruded from the red soil. This continued as far as one could see.
He had wire cutters in the trunk, just in case, but nothing had changed since last time: The wire looped across the road but was not secured. It didn’t need to be. The kid was right: It was the words that kept people out. Eliot dragged the wire from the road.
The kid was trying to wrap his linen jacket around his head. “I have a hat in the back,” said Eliot. “Take that.”
“I’m okay.”
“Take the hat.” He opened the back door and retrieved the cap and a bottle of water.
“Fine. Thanks.” The kid jammed the cap on his head. The peak said: THE THUNDER FROM DOWN UNDER. Eliot had picked it up from a street vendor in Adelaide. “How do I look?”
“You have a satellite phone?”
“Yep.”
“Call me.”
“It works. I checked at the airport. I’ll call you when I get into town.”
“Call me now.”
The kid produced his phone and poked at it. Eliot’s phone trilled.
“Okay?” said the kid.
“You have a backup battery.”
“I do.”
“And your main is full?”
“It’s fine.”
“Is it full?”
“Look.” The kid showed him the screen. “See the little battery? I know how to use a phone.”
“Call me as soon as you can no longer see me clearly. Then keep the line open. If the call drops, keep trying me until you get through.”
“Will do.”
“What’s your segment?”
“What?”
“Is it ninety-three?”
The kid’s face blanked. It was how they trained them. The kid was thinking about something else: something happy, something sad, something traumatic; only he knew. It was supposed to make him unreadable, by adding noise to his facial expression.
“You’re a ninety-three.”
“Shit,” said the kid. “You’re not supposed to do that. Why’d you do that?”
“For your protection.”
“It doesn’t matter. I can’t be compromised. You want to try me? Go ahead.”
Eliot considered it. He didn’t doubt that the kid was good. But he’d probably done most of his work in a relatively controlled environment. If Eliot jumped him, put a gun in his mouth, screamed words, well, that was not the same.
“Don’t worry about me,” said the kid. “I’m good to go.”
“Don’t take any risks. Anything looks wrong, don’t investigate. Just walk away. We don’t have to do everything today.”
The kid adjusted his DOWN UNDER cap. He thought Eliot was crazy, of course. “Well, I’m going to do this.”
Eliot nodded. “Good luck.”
“Heh,” said the kid. “Thanks.” He stepped around the razor wire and began to walk up the road.
• • •
With distance, the kid’s body shimmered in the heat haze rising out of the blacktop. Soon he
was hard to make out at all, just another twisting current of air. Eliot stood with a hand shielding his face from the sun, watching.
His cell phone rang.
“Thanks for the cap,” said the kid. “Glad I’ve got it now.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I have seriously never been this hot.”
“Can you see the town’s outskirts?”
“Not yet.”
“Should be close.”
“Yeah, I know. I have the maps by heart.”
They fell silent. The sun beat down on Eliot’s head. He should retreat to the car. In a few minutes. He would wait until the kid reached the town.
“You used to teach her at the Academy. Virginia Woolf. That’s what I heard. Is that true?” The kid was panting a little. “We have to spend an hour on the phone, Eliot; we may as well talk. Jesus.” He blew air. “This is so ridiculously hot.” Eliot heard him take a swig from the water bottle.
“Yes, I taught Woolf.”
“Did you see it coming? At all, I mean? Did you ever get the sense she might . . .”
“Might what?”
“Go ballistic,” said the kid. “Kill a whole town. I don’t mean to insult your observation skills, which are, clearly, very good. I just wonder how you can miss something like that. You know? It wasn’t just you. It was everyone. We’re supposed to know people.”
“There’s a risk in training anyone. In Woolf’s case, her potential seemed to justify it.” He shrugged, although there was no one to see him. “We were wrong.”
“I never met her. She’d left by the time I started.” He coughed. “She’d been kicked out, I mean. Banished. Whatever. It’s really dusty. The wind . . . I think I can see the refinery.”
“Keep your eyes open.”
The kid laughed, which turned into another cough. “Seriously, you’re making me nervous for no reason. There’s nobody in here.”
Eliot said nothing.
“Do you know what I do? In the organization? I’m in Digital. Web services. You know?”
“Not really.”
“You should. This is where everything is going. Let me tell you about it. Bring you up to speed.”
“Fine,” he said.
“Well, don’t humor me. I don’t care. I’m just offering you an inside look at what Yeats himself has called, quote, the greatest attack vector since print, end quote.”
“Fine.”
“The organization is changing, Eliot. It’s not newspapers and TV anymore. That stuff is old school. Obsolete. And you older guys, if you don’t watch out, you’ll be obsolete with it. You don’t want to be obsolete, do you?”
“No.”
“No. So let me help you out.” The kid panted awhile. “The key to the Web is it’s interactive. That’s the difference. Online, someone visits your site, you can have a little poll there. It says, ‘Hey, what do you think about the tax cuts?’ And people click and segment themselves. First advantage right there. You’re not just proselytizing, speaking into the void. You’re getting data back. But here’s the really clever part. Your site isn’t static. It’s dynamically generated. Do you know what that means?”
“No.”
“It means the site looks different to different people. Let’s say you chose the poll option that said you’re in favor of tax cuts. Well there’s a cookie on your machine now, and when you look at the site again, the articles are about how the government is wasting your money. The site is dynamically selecting content based on what you want. I mean, not what you want. What will piss you off. What will engage your attention and reinforce your beliefs, make you trust the site. And if you said you were against tax cuts, we’ll show you stories of Republicans blocking social programs or whatever. It works every which way. Your site is made of mirrors, reflecting everyone’s thoughts back at them. That’s pretty great, right?”
“It’s great.”
“And we haven’t even started talking about keywords. This is just the beginning. Third major advantage: People who use a site like this tend to ramp up their dependence on it. Suddenly all those other news sources, the ones that aren’t framing every story in terms of the user’s core beliefs, they start to seem confusing and strange. They start to seem biased, actually, which is kind of funny. So now you’ve got a user who not only trusts you, you’re his major source of information on what’s happening in the world. Boom, you own that guy. You can tell him whatever you like and no one’s contradicting you. He’s—” The kid sucked in breath. “Aw, shit.”
“What is it?”
“I think I see a body.”
“You didn’t know there would be bodies?”
“I knew. Of course I knew. But knowing and seeing are two . . . aw, geez. That’s disgusting.”
“They’ve been in the sun for four months.”
“Yeah. Clearly.”
“Is it just bone or . . . ?”
“It’s mostly bone,” said the kid. “That’s the disgusting part.” For a while Eliot heard nothing but his breathing. “Yecch. They’re all over.”
“You were telling me about Digital.”
“How do you think they died?” His voice sounded muffled, as if he was talking through his sleeve. “Did the bareword blow out their fucking brains? Like aneurysms? Because it doesn’t look like they died from aneurysms.”
“Why not?”
“They’re in clumps. Like they dragged themselves into groups. Then died.”
Eliot was silent.
“So . . . yeah, Digital.” The kid’s voice wavered. “Fourth advantage. We can whisper. A problem with old media has always been that we can’t control who’s watching. There’s self-selection—people don’t tune in for shows that rub against their beliefs—but you still get people from the wrong segment watching. And they think you’re peddling bullshit, of course, because you are, and sometimes they make a big deal out of that, and it feeds back to the target segment. Then you have message bleeding. In Digital, that problem goes away. You can say things to a user and no one else can hear, because it’s dynamically generated for that user. The next user, the site looks different. End result, you get people from different segments and they agree on nothing, literally nothing, except the site is a great source of unbiased information.” He took a breath. “I’m passing houses. Flat, ugly houses.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Fine. Just hot.”
“Take a rest if you need it.”
“Why do you think they’re in groups?”
“I don’t know.”
“You think they could be families? Like . . . they had time to find their loved ones?”
“Maybe.”
“I don’t think that’s it. Something about the way . . . I don’t know. But I don’t think so.” Something scraped against the phone. “I need a drink.”
“Rest.”
The kid gulped water. “No. I want to get this done.” Time passed. “So . . . that’s Digital. Pretty great, huh?”
“It makes me wonder why we’re bothering with anything else.”
“Heh. Yeah. Well, we have a problem with unidentified users. Someone visits our site for the first time, and we have no idea who they are. We don’t know what to show them. We can make guesses, based on where they are geographically, and the software they’re using. But that’s suboptimal. We’re getting better. You know about social networking?”
“No.”
“You are . . . you need to get into this stuff, Eliot. It’s the future. Everyone’s making pages for themselves. Imagine a hundred million people clicking polls and typing in their favorite TV shows and products and political leanings, day after day. It’s the biggest data profile ever. And it’s voluntary. That’s the funny part. People resist a census, but give them a profile page and they’ll spend all day telling you who they are. Which is . . . good . . . for us . . . obviously . . .”
“What is it?”
“There’s a . . . ah, it’s okay.”
�
�What is it?”
“Gas station. Place is burned out. Cars all over. And one is . . . yeah, one is upside down. That’s . . . uh . . . not bad, huh, Eliot? A word that can flip cars?” He laughed, the pitch high. “That’s some pretty fucking impressive neurolinguistics, wouldn’t you say?”
“Are there bodies?”
“Of course there are bodies! I’m fucking knee-deep in bodies! Just assume there are bodies unless I tell you otherwise!”
“Understood.”
He panted. “I’m not knee-deep. I’m . . . sorry, I’m exaggerating. But there are a lot. A real lot.” He swallowed over and over. “How could there be so many? I mean, what did she do? How could she kill everyone?”
“Take a break.”
“Fuck!”
“Campbell. You need to calm down.”
“I can see the hospital. It’s just up the road. The road that’s fucking full of bodies.”
“You can come back. You don’t need to do this today.”
The kid took a shaky breath. “Yeah, I do, Eliot.”
“It’s not that important. Forget about Yeats.”
There was a snuffling sound. Eventually Eliot identified it as laughter. “You have definitely been away too long, Eliot. No question. ‘Forget about Yeats.’ Jesus fucking Christ.” He sucked air. “There’s a lot of damage here. Cars on the sidewalk. I saw this on the satellite pictures, but up close it’s . . . more real, I guess. On the computer they just looked badly parked. Like everyone was in a real hurry. But . . . they hit things. They’re all . . . all somewhere for a reason.” He swallowed. “Almost at the hospital. Looks . . . smaller . . . than I expected, actually. Like a library. I can see the entrance to the ER. Ambulance out front. I mean a van. A paramedic van, up on the curb. Front of the ER’s all glass, but I can’t see inside.” He heard the kid stop. “It’s real dark in there. Or grimy or something.” He hesitated. “I’m going around to the main entrance, okay?”
“Okay.”
“It’s just, I don’t think I need to mess with this black room if there’s another way in.”
“Agreed.”
“Okay. I’m coming up on the main doors. Shit. I don’t even know if this is better.”
“Tell me what you see.”