by Max Barry
“You want to run through the protocols again?” the speaker muttered. Then: “Okay. I’ll finish.”
Her middle finger touched something cool but she couldn’t grip it. She pressed and it bit. “Ow,” she said. “Ow, ow.” It was sharp. Thicker than she expected. Irregularly shaped. She had been thinking paper, maybe cardboard, material on which a word could be inscribed, but this was neither. She began to work it out between the plastic knives.
“Jessschica, come over to the walkie-talkie. To where my voice is coming from.”
The thing got stuck on the broken plastic mouth and she waggled it back and forth. She couldn’t figure out what it was. And yet it felt familiar. She pulled with all her strength and heard a tearing, a ripping that she hoped mightily was plastic and not some vital part of whatever she was withdrawing. Then it popped free. She clutched it, panting.
“The speaker here has a compartment on the underside. Open this. There are four red pills inside. These are cyanide pills. If you eat them, you will die. It’s important that you know this. If you understand that eating the pills will kill you, nod.”
She shrugged her denim jacket and wrapped it carefully around the thing. It probably would have been smart to keep track of which way it had been facing, in case it had a good side and a bad side—she was thinking of words written on paper again—but it was too late for that. When she was sure no part of it was showing, she opened her eyes. She was surprised by the room’s size. In her imagination, it had grown enormous.
“Swallow all the pills.”
Behind her was the box. Empty, she hoped, of whatever had been going to take away her mind and leave her amenable to the speaker’s terrible instructions. But she was not going to test that theory. She looked at the bundle of jacket. It took an effort to do that. The thing seemed roughly book-shaped, but irregular and heavy. She stole a hand into the jacket and probed at its surface. Freezing. Like metal. She found a little protuberance with vicious edges, and realized this must be what had cut her, so at least she knew which way it faced.
The door bolts fired. She was out of time. Her fingers traced grooves, rough indentations in a smooth surface, and when her mind tried to piece these together, something thickened there and she withdrew her hand with a gasp. Nausea crashed over her. She felt herself beginning to faint and fought it, because that would be the end. Here, she told herself. I’m right here.
The room filled with light. A shadow appeared, bisecting the brightness. “Oh, God,” said someone. The tech. She heard footsteps.
She began to unwrap the jacket. Years ago, in a hidden library at the school, she had read tales of mass enthrallment. Of towers and the splintering of language. Myths, she’d thought. Everything they’d taught her said there was no way to compromise everyone at once. The organization’s words were keyed to particular psychographic segments; that was how they worked. And they did not push a p-graph flat. They did not trigger synapsis. Something that could do that was not a regular word. It was the kind of word from the tales. If anything was worth flooding a building with guys in black space suits who couldn’t hear or see except through helmets, and burying in a concrete tomb with a time-locked steel door thicker than she was, she thought that would probably be it.
The man in the gray uniform rushed in, his gun drawn. The tech was just standing there, shocked. Her jacket dropped to the floor. Wood. She recognized the feel of it now. The thing was petrified wood. She pressed its back to her chest, keeping her eyes up. If she was wrong, now was when she would find out. That would be pretty hilarious. At this point, unless it was exactly what she thought, she was pretty screwed. She said, “Don’t move.”
The guard stopped. There was silence. In it, she started to believe.
“Touch your nose,” she said. “Both of you.”
Their hands rose. Her spine tingled. It was one thing to understand the concept. It was another to see it. She took a breath. That was the first part. Now for the next. She said, “Tell me how to get out of here.”
TERROR LOCKDOWN
Large areas of Washington, D.C., are in lockdown this evening following what authorities have described as a significant terrorism event.
Tactical police, military, and emergency biohazard response teams have flooded the downtown area and a major search appears underway, prompting speculation that one or more terrorists remain at large.
The Metropolitan Police Department is advising all D.C. residents to stay where they are and avoid all nonessential travel. “The city is essentially in lockdown tonight. People will not be getting anywhere,” said Chief of Police Roberta Martinez a short time ago. “I ask residents to bear with us during this time of crisis.”
Authorities have yet to confirm whether an attack has taken place, saying only they are responding to “an incident.” However, unofficial sources are fearful that a chemical or biological weapon has been deployed.
City workers described scenes of chaos as special operations soldiers and armored vehicles descended on the city.
“They were herding everybody out, these guys with black helmets, goggles; people were screaming,” said Julia Treuel, 24, an office worker from iMax. “They looked like astronauts.”
It is estimated that as many as five thousand troops may already be on the ground in D.C. with more en route as the hunt for the terrorists intensifies.
MORE TO COME
D.C. LOCKDOWN COMPENSATION CASE STALLS
D.C. Mayor Frank Viletti has for the first time ruled out the city compensating residents for losses incurred as a result of last month’s two-day terrorism lockdown.
“We’re very sympathetic to the residents and business owners inconvenienced, and we are doing and have done everything in our power to allow them to return to their normal lives as quickly as possible,” he said at a press conference today. “However, with an incident like this that affects us all, we feel D.C. residents need to pull together and accept that some shared burden is inevitable.”
The remarks seem to signal that the fight for payouts will not be resolved outside the courts. Law firm Vignotti & Busch, which controls the class action, could not be reached for comment.
During the conference, Mayor Viletti again denied early reports that the lockdown was sparked by the use of a chemical or biological weapon. “There was never any suggestion of that. What we had was forewarning of an imminent attack, and we took action to prevent it.”
He was unable to provide further details, referring questions to the White House. Yesterday, White House spokesperson Gary Fielding reiterated that several people had been arrested during the operation, but that no further information could yet be released.
“What I will say is that we had a situation and our people responded brilliantly. We should all be proud of what our people did in D.C. last month.”
From: http://nationstates.org/pages/liberty-versus-security-4011.html
. . . Like the DC lockdown last year. Like the gunmen who went around assassinating people with military-issue sniper rifles in 2003. Like the anthrax in the mail in 2006. For a week everyone freaks out, we need more security, we need scanners, we need to take people’s photograph when they enter a government building. Then a month later everyone’s calmed down and yet we still get these incredibly intrusive new processes and technologies, which would have made zero difference to the incident that inspired them. This isn’t an accident; this happens because to people at the top, the scariest thing is how many people there are below. They need to watch us. They need to monitor what we’re thinking. It’s the only thing between them and a guillotine. Every time something like this happens, anytime there’s death and fear and people demanding action, to them that’s an opportunity.
[THREE]
One coffee shop in Broken Hill didn’t have a view of the quarry. This was what Eliot had ascertained after three months of study: that the town offered coffee at five different locations and four stared at the quarry. He patronized the fifth. It wasn’t that the qua
rry was ugly—although it was, deeply and thoroughly—but rather that it was everywhere. The town streets were wide, its buildings well spaced, the land as flat as any he’d seen, and this made it impossible to remain unaware of the forty-foot battlement of desiccated dirt and shattered stone that stood like a rib cage at the town’s core. He kept taking it for a wave, a great rolling crest of vomited earth about to engulf the town. Which it was, in a sense; wind and erosion and the constant addition of new mullock must push it a little closer every year. Given time, it would swallow everything. This would be a serious improvement. That was another thing Eliot had ascertained, while waiting here in case Woolf showed up.
He sipped coffee and browsed the Barrier Daily Truth, an eighteen-page newspaper that came out weekly. This edition was leading with “Fifty Years of Happiness,” a story about an elderly married couple. Eliot read it twice, searching for the part that was always missing in these kinds of articles, namely, how the hell that was possible. He was genuinely unsure whether these idyllic unions existed or people merely pretended because the alternative was so unpalatable. Every time he thought he’d settled on the latter, he would see something like this, “Fifty Years of Happiness,” and start to wonder.
These were loose thoughts, of course.
His phone rang. He folded the paper. “Yes?”
“She’s here. Coming down the Barrier Highway. White sedan. Alone.”
“You’re sure?”
“Got a lot of technology here, Eliot.”
“Yes. Thank you. How long?”
“Thirty minutes.”
“Thank you. I’ll take it from here.” He tossed a few bills onto the table, left the coffee shop, and walked to his car. Once the engine was running and the air conditioner moving, he made a few short calls. Just to confirm that everyone was where they were supposed to be. It had been three months since Woolf had fled Washington with a stolen word; everything that needed to be in place already was. But still. When it was done, he put the car into gear and drove toward the wall of mullock.
• • •
He drove about a mile out of town and parked his car to block the road. It was symbolic: Woolf would have no trouble steering around him. The idea was that seeing him would impress upon her the futility of continuing.
He climbed out and waited against the car. It was winter, supposedly. A rush of birds passed overhead, filling the air with their grating calls. Cockatoos. At dawn, the noise was incredible. Like the whole world was tearing apart. He was sleeping in a motel and one night woke to find an insect the size of his palm on the pillow. He didn’t even know what it was. He had never seen anything like it.
He felt an urge to call Brontë. He had been thinking about her again. It was this assignment: too much time, too much waiting. It was Woolf. Watching her kick down the walls planted the thought in his head that it could be done. Call Brontë, he thought. Right. Ask how she’s doing. No reason. Just felt like a chat.
They had been students together, almost twenty years ago, attending the school that she now ran. He still remembered the bounce of her hair the day she’d come to class, the books clutched to her chest, the angle of her nose. He’d basically fallen in love with her on the spot. Well, no, that wasn’t accurate; that implied a binary state, a shifting from not-love to love, remaining static thereafter, and what he’d done with Brontë was fall and fall, increasingly faster the closer they drew, like planets drawn to each other’s gravitational force. Doomed, he guessed, the same way.
They’d held out a long time. Years? It felt like years. But maybe not. They had been seniors, anyway, not far from graduation. He knew this because Brontë had given him her words. A yellowed envelope, curling from use, and inside were dozens of slips of paper, each bearing a word.
“Use them,” she said. The lights were off so they would be able to detect anyone approaching by the shadows thrown beneath her door. But he could see her face clearly enough. “I want you to compromise me.”
He couldn’t remember his own response. He might have tried to talk her out of it. Might have not. He’d thought a lot of things and it was too long ago to tell the difference between choices real and imagined. Almost all of his memory was about her: the way she lay back on the bed, her bare shoulders gleaming. Her face as he whispered the first words. He’d been clumsy, that first time. It had taken him a while to find the place between awareness and compromise, the sub-lucid state of low consciousness that laid the body open to suggestion. When he put her under too far, her face would slacken; when he brought her too close to the surface, her eyes would focus and she would tell him to do more. He touched her breasts and her nipples felt hard and urgent against his palm. Her hips rose from the bed. “Fuck me,” she said. “I want you to fuck me.” She whimpered and growled like an animal. He worried about the noise, said, “Quiet,” and she began to hiss, a kind of noise he hadn’t heard anyone make before. Goose bumps undulated across her skin. Waves followed the touch of his fingers. Her hips rose and fell, and when he touched her there she issued a high, barely audible keen, like escaping steam. He worried he’d broken her, and brought her up, and desperation flashed across her face and she begged him to take her down again. When he did, she gave a long sigh of satisfaction, a noise of complete unself-consciousness that signaled he was very close to the core of her. He moved his hand between her legs and into the wetness he found there. “In me,” she said, the words becoming a chant, gasped into his ear over and over as her fingers clawed at his back, and he was unable to stop himself. He unbuttoned his pants. He entered her and the instant he did so, her body turned to iron, a thing made of hot steel. He climaxed within moments.
They lay together for hours. He knew he should leave before dawn, lest someone see him slinking from her room, but he couldn’t bear to part with her. He held her as she gently rose toward full consciousness. They kissed. When light began to leak into the sky and he couldn’t put it off any longer, he rose from the bed. She walked him to the door—her naked body in the moonlight, he would never forget that—and said, “Next time, I do you.”
A cockatoo screeched from a nearby tree. He drew breath, exhaled. This was not a time for reminiscing. He would not be calling Brontë. It was ancient history. And it had ended badly. Or perhaps not badly, but not well. Then they had graduated and gone to different parts of the organization and that had been that. He had no idea whether she thought about that time anymore, whether she did so with shame or regret. It was impossible to tell. Impossible to ask, without exposing himself.
One day, I’ll kiss her again. The corners of his mouth twitched. One more kiss. What a thought. Ludicrous. Still. There was no harm in fantasy. Not if he recognized it as such. He would let himself keep this one, he decided. It was a nice thought to have.
• • •
Two hours later, he heard tires crawl across dirt. A white sedan nosed around the corner. It was driving very slowly and stopped as soon as it saw him. The windshield was a solid sheet of sunlight. The engine died. The door opened. Woolf emerged. Emily. She was thinner.
He said, “I appreciate you stopping.”
She raised a hand to her eyes and turned in a circle, scanning the terrain. She was wearing a dirty T-shirt and jeans. Possibly the word was tucked into her waist, although it didn’t seem like it. Had she left it in the car? Maybe she already realized it was over.
“How did you cross the Pacific?” he said. “I ask because there’s a pool going.”
“Container ship.”
“We searched a lot of those.”
“You searched mine.”
He nodded. “Fairly pointless, when people can’t be trusted to report when they find you. It’s why you’re shoot-on-sight now.”
She looked at him. Her expression was very measured, very controlled. If she’d been shedding her training, it wasn’t evident. “So what are we doing, Eliot?”
“I’m sorry.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Oh? You’re here to kill me?”
“Well, that’s disappointing. Kind of extremely disappointing, coming from you.”
“I thought you might respect it, coming from me.”
“Yeah, you know what? Not so much. Not so much.” She shook her head. “How about this, Eliot: You pretend like you never saw me. I go to Harry. Him and me disappear. End of story.” She watched his face. “No? Not even that?”
“You must understand, I have no choice.”
“I love him. Do you understand that?”
“Yes.”
“If you did, you’d know I don’t have a choice, either.”
He said, “I can give you one hour. You can spend that with him. Then you say good-bye and you walk back down the road. That’s the best I can offer you.”
“And I decline your shitty offer. Three months I’ve spent getting here, Eliot. Three months. And they have not been easy months. I didn’t go through that for an hour.” She shook her head. “I think we should be clear on the fact that you can’t stop me from doing anything I want.”
“Where is it? In the car?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Do you know what it is?”
“A bareword.”
Her head tilted. “Is that what it’s called? Huh. I just know what I read in old books. They didn’t have a name for it. Or rather, they had lots of different names. The only thing those stories had in common was every time a word like this turned up, it was followed by mass enslavement. And death. Also towers, for some reason.”
“You are describing a Babel event.”