We Can Save Us All

by Adam Nemett

  “Your dad also dropped some pretty intense shit on me about human cloning,” David said. “Care to comment?’

  “It’s sad,” said Mathias. “Dad’s convinced himself that Edison’s death was part of an elaborate DARPA experiment. There is an experiment—that part is real, I’ve seen aspects of it—but it was only funded and launched about ten years ago, well after Eddie’s death, and it’s not really focused on cloning, per se; it’s about engineering artificial chromosomes as a platform for introducing large DNA vectors into human cell lines to engineer more complex functionalities. Shit, it’s basically creating superhumans, now that I think of it. But it’s not cloning. I worry about Dad.”

  “I worry about you,” said David.

  “That’s kind.”

  “I just committed a federal offense, I think,” said David. “I pointed a pistol at him, okay? Please do me a solid and tell me I’m not doing all this to protect a crazy person.”

  “You want me to be Superman, David. But what defines Superman? Seriously, I’m asking.”

  “He’s strong, he can fly, saves lives, does good. Truth, justice, American way, all that crap.”

  “Do you have a pen?”

  “Why would I have a fucking pen?”

  Mathias took from his fridge a jar of blood. “I know you’re still skeptical,” he said. “But the rest have crossed that threshold and I need you here with us.” He unscrewed the top and dipped his fingers into the red goo. “The Silent Dance will be your revelation. I can see it. You’ll feel us zero in, and we will move like birds together, a single strong unit.” He grabbed a piece of paper and fingerpainted. “Surrender to it, zero in, and you will see with your own eyes a hero that can fly, that saves lives.” He handed David the bloody paper. It looked like a shield, with words that read: DEI SUB NUMINE VIGET.

  David gingerly gripped the corner of the gross thing. “What does that mean?” he asked.

  “I have no idea. It’s just what I see. It’s what you’ll see when your hero flies. You know?”

  David knew what he knew. He knew what he believed. He knew what he had to do. He was terrified, but he smiled and clapped Mathias on the back. “I’ll take care of you.”

  David retired to his room to think, to work, to google Mathias’s nonsense. Dei sub numine viget meant, roughly, “Under God’s Protection She Flourishes,” Princeton’s official school motto. David was sick of riddles and koans. USV enclaves were waiting for a communiqué. Concrete instructions on next steps. So he and Haley recorded an encoded video message, uploaded via Fu’s crazy system of rerouted IP addresses. He detailed the Silent Dance, all the particulars.

  But once the USV settled down for the night, David walked outside, snuck into the tool shed, and dialed the secure number Colonel Blue had given him.

  Mathias’s father answered the phone by saying, “If you decide not to take my job offers with DARPA, Booz Allen, or the agency, you’ve got a future in acting, Business-Man.”

  David again detailed the Silent Dance, all the particulars. And where exactly Mathias would be stationed. He reminded himself: the mission was more important than the man.

  “University chapel courtyard,” he concluded. “Probably only two bodyguards. He’ll be in the exterior pulpit on the south wall, Friday night at eight o’clock is when it starts.”

  “I thought time was irrelevant,” the colonel scoffed.

  “Occasionally it’s important.”

  “I trust you, David, to do what you have to do. You’ll rise to the occasion. This is the best thing you can do to protect them.”

  “I’m a man of my word,” David replied. “But if I’m selling out Mathias, just promise me—”

  “We have a deal,” said the elder Blue. “You and your girlfriend will be protected.”

  iii.

  Costumes again. This time: suits, ties, tails.

  “You look dashing,” Haley told him, flowers in hand. Did he? David thought he looked just okay. He’d left László’s blazer at The Egg—it would be a messy night—and instead wore an awful fire-sale tux. It fit well at the store but had somehow grown too big since then. Was he shrinking?

  Blink. A bowling alley. Blink. Claire Shiller on lane six getting smaller in the distance. Blink.

  “You’re sure it doesn’t look like I’m shrinking?” David asked.

  “Dude, you’ve gotta stop asking me that,” Haley said.

  David scanned Haley’s body with upturned palms. A tribute to her.

  She liked the way she looked, too. Feeling glam in a French-blue dress with a formfitting bodice, delicate spaghetti straps, her breasts looking firm and shiny and fantastic. Her silver hair was pulled up, defying gravity. She let David take a deep breath of her head and whisper, “Vanilla.”

  She slipped her hand into his.

  David squeezed.

  She squeezed.

  They played like this. Pulsing back and forth in rhythm. “Stay close to me tonight,” he said. “Whatever happens, I’ll protect you.”

  She batted her lashes and said, “My hero.” But what she meant was I will protect myself.

  Protection was now key. After Colonel Blue’s visit, SITS had doubled down on security.

  When they try to shove you—and they always open with a shove—move like a matador. Get them off-balance. Swing down to control their arms, then up to strike the nasal septum, delivering a shock to the cervical spine. Bring his face to the ground. End it quickly. Move on.

  This was Self-Defense 101, as taught by Peacemaker and Sergeant Drill.

  With the entitled grace of tomorrow’s elite, David and Haley strolled toward the chapel, toward McCosh Courtyard, the venue for Princeton’s official spring formal, which the USV was about to ruin. David found it exceptionally silly for Princeton to plan an outdoor dance at this moment in history, what with the world exploding outside their bubble. But it was a Princeton tradition, one of many taken too seriously.

  “We’ll rebuild stronger than ever before” was everyone’s line.

  What they meant was We’re being destroyed.

  Somewhere around Monday, the American Evangelical Alliance suicide-bombed the Wailing Wall—claiming preordained, noble sacrifice—and most thought Jerusalem wouldn’t last the month. Fundamentalists are doomed, David thought. For those who can’t see the comic within the cosmic, everything will burn. But here in this funny place called college, David still had a chance to protect his followers.

  That’s all that mattered anymore. Taking care of his flock. Protecting and providing for. That’s why Mathias had to go, David told himself. Not because David was power-hungry, ready to elevate from number two to head honcho. And not because he wanted Haley’s former lover out of the way. No, Mathias was sick. Possibly a sickness. You have to cut out the cancer before it spreads.

  The last Super Fucking Fire Zero had more exiles than initiations. Mathias was growing more paranoid and quick-triggered, ready to remove anyone deemed weak. He said he needed to purify the pack before they all arrived at the Null Point, that this was the time to separate the men from the heroes.

  “What about the women?” Haley had asked him, quite publicly. “Do we threaten you?”

  “I’m not threatened by you,” Mathias said. “I’m thrilled by you.”

  Zoe didn’t make the cut, however. And this was Haley’s call. David thought it was due to Zoe’s new role as one of Mathias’s preferred lovers—“His fucktoy,” Haley called her.

  But no, it was something else.

  “You whine too much,” Haley said to her. “We’re all scared—you’d be crazy not to be—but that doesn’t mean we act like victims. More importantly, you can’t be trusted. You were there on Halloween, Boo Berry, you were supposed to be my sister. Can’t blame you, but can’t trust you.”

  Haley mercifully gave Zoe the option to leave quietly, voluntarily, rather than suffer the public humiliation of exile by fire. Which she did. Mathias remained the singular chieftain, with many left in his rot
ating harem.

  Leading the pack to McCosh was the power couple of this particular night: Britt and Fu, arms linked. She’d helped with the psychological rationale for the Noise Machine, but this was Fu’s night to shine. He’d built the thing and composed the music, and all the USV heroes would be his instruments. David loved seeing Echo in a tux. It Girl looked red-carpet-worthy in a slinky white number by Someone Important. Haley and David wandered over to schmooze.

  “Let’s see the backyard,” Britt sang as they approached. Haley twirled. “Ugh!” Britt said. “My kingdom for an ass like that.”

  “Are you in charge tonight?” asked a mild-mannered Fu to David.

  “No,” he said to Fu. “You are.”

  “Business-Man’s here on pleasure?” drawled Britt, puffing a cigarette.

  David opened his mouth to display a Pez pill dissolving on his tongue. The stress of the preceding week had ground him down. He knew he’d narced on the USV, or at least Mathias, but he was doing the right thing. Any minute now, Navy SEALs might rappel from stealth choppers to vaporize them all. He tried to put it out of his mind. David needed a night off. He was sick of being in charge, the secret king, holed up in some turret. He was sick of the USV machine. It was mid-May, probably. After tonight, they’d either be free of Mathias or all go to jail. If tonight was to be their last dance, their last free day on earth, David wanted to be a beast.

  He waved in Fu to tell him a secret and whispered, “I’m shrinking!”

  — Ø —

  McCosh Courtyard was a long lawn walled in on three sides by Gothic architecture. In the lawn’s center stood the towering Mather Sundial: a twenty-foot tall limestone column holding some astronomical sphere and a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice, a pelican—the bird once believed to nourish its young using its own blood. On sunny days, the tower cast its clockwise shadow around the lawn, a favorite landmark, a perennial stop on campus tours.

  This was the USV’s target.

  Haley had handed off much of the filmmaking for the night to two of her assistant directors, OS Infinity and Stanley Jewbrick, who’d affixed bodycams to a dozen heroes and arrayed tripod cams to capture and distribute their spectacle widely. It was only spitting tonight, but weeks of rain meant Haley’s heels sank into the soft ground. Under the event tent, USVers disguised as cumberbunded catering staff passed their trays, briskly plucked of grilled vegetables, seasonal fruit, carved beef, pills. Blink. David saw the bar mitzvahs of his thirteenth year. He saw vague outlines of orthodontured middle school BFFs lip-syncing in oversized Elton John sunglasses. Blink. Blink. Blink. Tracing paper on top of reality.

  A fake waiter skipped over to David and Haley, eager to please. He brushed his shaggy hair aside and displayed a tattooed zero, right there on his forehead. David believed his name was Ted.

  “Cocktail, sir?” said Maybe Ted. “Cigar? Cigarette? Pez?”

  “Don’t forget these, sir.” Another pseudo-waiter had sidled up and handed them wireless earbuds, packaged in a self-charging white case that looked like a thing of dental floss. Fu’s factory of electrical engineers had completed their massive effort to install miniature receivers in hundreds of pairs of earbuds. Soon, all of them would be dialed into Fu’s ham radio frequencies.

  Haley and David each popped another pill, accepted a cocktail, put in their wireless earbuds.

  They mingled. A few hundred kids in tuxes or dresses. Many USVers. Normal students just here to party. Plenty of faces David didn’t recognize one way or the other.

  The night slowly began to speed up.

  The dance floor was being rocked by Party Shooz, an eleven-piece wedding band in red sequined vests. They played all the Motown favorites. Once the USV cut the band’s power, Peacemaker’s generators would become the USV’s power source for the night and help transmit Golden Echo’s improvised opus—the real music for the event—via wireless ear-buds. No amps. No noise complaint.

  David glanced skyward. Echo was now in costume, setting up his transmitters in the south pulpit attached to the chapel exterior, as they’d planned. Ultraviolet stood in the shadows behind him, looking darkly heroic. He was exactly where David told the colonel he’d be.

  Party Shooz’s searing rendition of “Love Shack” suddenly cut off.

  Echo’s music took its place in the USV’s ears.

  Only the deep bass drum at first, the central metronome they’d all lock into. The pulse.

  Echo’s musical-industrial complex was impossible to explain. He’d load something here, twist that dial, press buttons with the meticulousness of a master chef. He was the king of multitasking, always stirring two pots, two turntables. David really did love Fu Schroeder. Underneath Golden Echo’s beats were sets of psychoacoustic instructions, looped into the fabric of the sound. Echo Music. Haley and David turned from the pulpit and joined the mass under the tent. Once aboard the dance floor, Haley said, “Let’s dance like old people.”

  She grabbed his shoulder and palm, attempting a proper waltz. David placed a hand on her exquisite hip. She pressed herself against him. The top of her chest plumped, as if holding back some delicious juice. At once, David felt the rush of blood. He blinked. An image flashed again. Haley’s face blurring into Madeline’s face at homecoming that time.

  “Are you getting lots of superimposition, too?” David asked her, trying to shake it off.

  “Yeah,” said Haley. “I’m feeling it really strong. You were just my dad for a second.”

  “Gross,” said David, hard as a rock. They parted momentarily, focused on their pulse beats.

  It was getting a little weird.

  Every so often, the pulse stopped and a tonggg sounded bright and clear in their ears.

  The Seventh-Minute Stop.

  Silence and stillness. Catch your breath. Okay.

  Then things grew deeper and dirtier.

  Haley accompanied David arm in arm to a grassy patch against the chapel. She spun and kissed him hard on the mouth and he kissed her back, hard, wanting to press his face right through hers until it came out the back end and she sprang from the back of his head till they were Janus, god of beginnings and ends and end and end and end and end and—

  “I’m kind of freaking out,” Haley said, her voice shaking a bit. “This is really intense.”

  “Are you okay?” David tried to ask, exhaling audibly. He was kind of freaking out, too.

  “I think this batch of Pez is bad. I feel like something else is in control.”

  And suddenly, shifting, David softened. He smiled at her eyes and said, “Something else is.”

  And she softened, too. “I can hear you inside me,” she said, and giggled. She asked him if he’d hold her hand and he said yes, and he squeezed, and she squeezed back, pulsing in rhythm.

  — Ø —

  Haley’s ears are not David’s. They’re a different one of Echo’s frequencies.

  His is this:

  … BOOM… . . . BAP… BOOM-BAP… BOOM… . . . BAP… BOOM-BAP…

  He vocalizes along with dozens of others. Hers fits the silences. Hers is this:

  Tik… . . . . . . ta-ka… . . . ta-ka……. ……. . Tik… …. . . ta-ka… . . . ta-ka… . . . . . . . . . . . . Tik . . . . . . . . .

  She hears other parts throughout the courtyard. Echo likes to play with contrasts. Bass and treble. One rhythm is intricate and fast, the other simple and thick. One staccato melody, the other a single extended drone. It all blends perfectly. The USV becomes unified, one record turning, and Echo is their Human DJ, twisting the center spindle.

  But they are not alone this time.

  From outside their earbuds they hear other audio—arrhythmic, unmixed. Screeching brakes of armored vehicles pulling to the far edge of the courtyard. Shouted commands. Feet on pavement.

  Riot cops are here.

  They pour from tanklike trucks and squad cars. They rise up on roofs. They hover in helicopters, penning the naughty children into the courtyard.

  There is another gr
oup alongside them. Baseball helmets and ski goggles, carrying their own shields and guns, waving flags bearing the insane emblems of monsters. They carry torches.

  What is happening?

  It is daytime again. And it’s then—when?!—for just one brief blip that David realizes he has no idea how long they’ve been doing this psychotic shit. He finds Haley again, grabs her wrist, and she grabs his.

  “Stay close to me,” he says. “Whatever you do.”

  “We are sharing the same face,” she says. “I can’t get any closer.”

  The USV comes together, forming a huge clump of humanity around the sundial, as per their doctrine: the best offense is a strong defense. Zero in. Pull together. Lock arms. Stay stiff.

  Machines begin their work, but it’s too late. An array of circular saws with diamond blades goes to town on the base of the stone pillar. Heroes pour constant streams of water over the stone, keeping the dust to a minimum while they tear down this monument to time.

  David looks up at the chapel pulpit. Where is Mathias? Has he been captured already?

  And now he looks across the lawn at these people amassed against them. What has the USV done so wrong? Is it the fear of property damage, somehow more important than human life? The vague religiousness of this statue? Who has called the cops? Who has leaked to the neo-Nazis?

  “Throw down your firearms,” comes the call from across the field.

  Oh, right, David remembers. The USV has guns now. They have invited this trouble and have no moral high ground to escape their own flood.

  The opposition is dressed in its own costumes. Uniformed riot police and, separately, an uninvited third party of self-uniformed militia, armed to the teeth.

  The cops back off, regroup. Peacemaker’s crew establishes a barricade—upturned tables from the event tent, crisscrossed chairs, metal trash bins—like that giant French wall of garbage from Les Misérables. They wear masks covered in vinegar to help when the tear gas comes. Each side shouts epithets across the field:

  “Liberal elite cucks!”

  “White Nazi fascists!”

  “Pussies!”