The Red

by Linda Nagata

  “It wasn’t my idea.”

  “Shelley, I want to thank you for what you did that night . . . you and the rest of the squad.” He holds out his hand. I take it by reflex—a brief, formal handshake—but I’m puzzled, unwilling to accept that Elliot approves of our brutal, violent mission.

  He adds, “It doesn’t change my opinion of manufactured wars.”

  I smile, more comfortable on familiar ground. “So how did you finally make your escape from C -FHEIT?”

  “Kendrick. He offered me a ride. Did you know that guy flies helicopters?”

  Suspicion bites down hard. Why would Kendrick bring Elliot down here, today of all days?

  “Shelley? What’d I say?”

  Maybe I’m reading too much into it. Maybe this really was the first chance to evacuate Elliot from C -FHEIT, and Kendrick was just taking care of loose ends before our next operation.

  But it hits me that this is my loyalty test, a measure of my commitment to a mission on which there will be no room for divided loyalties, or for doubt . . . but this is not Dassari. This is the real thing. I won’t be talking shit on this mission. There is no conflict in my mind. Bringing justice to Thelma Sheridan is the right thing to do. I think even Elliot would approve. Before today, I never heard him say a word in support of military action—but when the story is set up right, even the cynics are persuaded.

  I smile an apology and grab my duffel. “Your timing is the worst. I have to go.”

  He catches my arm. “Hey. I know you’re the big war hero now, but give me just a minute, for old times’ sake.”

  That catches me by surprise, and not in a pleasant way. I drop into my stonewall expression. “You want to lay guilt on me?”

  “I want you to listen. I want you to think about who you are, and where you are, because you’re trapped here”—he makes a sweeping gesture—“inside this military fantasy land, where everybody thinks like you do.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Information flow. I was doing some digging before the Coma. A group in Austin showed me a preliminary report, along with the 3-D model they produced from their data. And you know what? There wasn’t a whole lot of flow. Not while the Cloud was still whole—”

  “Look, I really don’t have time for a science lesson.”

  “Hear me out, Shelley. This is important, and it’s about you. In theory, publicly available information should be able to flow freely in the Cloud, but it doesn’t work that way because people filter what they hear. So the Cloud gets divided into millions of bubbles”—he presses his fists together—“and information has a hard time moving between them. Filters let some ideas through, but block others—”

  “So? No one’s got time to listen to it all.”

  “—and every one of us winds up trapped in our own little realities. Shelley, when you look at how many filters there are, it’s kind of amazing that most Americans can even tell you who the president is—but some people don’t even know that, and it’s not a language barrier—”

  I try to cut him off. “It’s where you live and who you know.”

  “And who we choose to know.”

  “We pick the friends who share our beliefs and interests. That’s been going on forever.”

  “More so now—or before the Coma, anyway. Tradition­ally, it was hard for people to move between groups. Now it’s easy. Move to the big city. Move south, move north. Search the Cloud until you find the people who understand you. Fit in better by adopting new beliefs and abandoning old ones.”

  Maybe he’s talking about me, I don’t know, but this is not a conversation I need to have. “I’ve got to go downstairs.”

  He puts out an arm, as if to block me from the door. “Step back and look at yourself, Shelley. Don’t you see how hard you’re trying not to hear what I’m telling you? It’s like you’re afraid of what I might say.”

  Am I?

  Elliot takes my hesitation as an invitation to continue. “It’s not a static situation. The filters are getting stronger. People are dividing into smaller and smaller groups, while the number of widely shared memes—ideas or facts known to just about everyone in a large, related group, like the population of the US—is in steep decline, or it was, until the Coma. It sounds strange, but I think there’s more shared information in America now, than when the Cloud was whole.”

  “Because the only information we get is from the mediots.” I maneuver past him to the door, hit the button to open it. “I really do have to go.”

  “I’ll walk with you.”

  The MPs look relieved. “Sir,” one says, “we have orders to escort you downstairs.”

  “Come on, then. Let’s go.”

  The frantic pace of nurses and CNAs moving through the hallway hasn’t slowed, but the presence of the MPs tends to clear the way. I don’t want to announce that I’m leaving, so I just nod and smile at the faces I know. Elliot’s wrapped up in his explanation and ignores everyone. “It’s about perspective. It’s not that what we know is necessarily wrong or incomplete. It’s that what we know and what we believe to be apparent to everyone, isn’t.”

  Two young female CNAs are waiting for the elevator. One I’ve met. She smiles and whispers underneath Elliot’s monologue, “Hi, Lieutenant Shelley,” while the other looks at me with starstruck eyes. One of the MPs looks them over with a bored expression, while Elliot has forgotten that other people can hear him. “Think about the Texas Independence Army,” he tells me. “They were convinced the people of Texas shared their beliefs—”

  “No one shared their beliefs!” the first CNA says with real passion. “And Lieutenant Shelley made sure they got what they deserved.”

  Her anger rattles the MPs. They move between me and the women, while Elliot just looks puzzled. The elevator arrives. “Lieutenant,” one of the MPs says, gesturing for me to board. They tell the women to wait for the next car.

  “The Lion of Black Cross,” Elliot says again as we descend. “I guess fame has its privileges.”

  “Leave it alone.”

  The doors open again. A week after Coma Day, the refugees in the lobby have all been moved out. Unlike the upper floors, it’s quiet, with just a few people around. I check the time on my overlay. Three minutes until Kendrick gets here, and I haven’t seen Lissa yet.

  Elliot sounds dejected as we cross the lobby. “I haven’t gotten through to you at all.”

  “Sure you have. You’ve given me plenty to think about.” I drop my duffel in a chair near the glass doors and turn to the MPs. “I hope your next duty is a little more interesting.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

  “It’s been an honor, sir.”

  Elliot says, “If you’re waiting for Kendrick, he’s driving a silver sedan with government plates.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “Damn it, Shelley!” His angry tone puts the MPs on alert again, but his filters are up and he doesn’t notice. “You’re scaring me. People cutting themselves off from everyone but their tribe—that scares me. We all know where that goes. But it’s worse, because the filters that go up around us aren’t necessarily our choice. It’s like an external agent is working to engineer the distribution of information, and divide us from each other.”

  I look at him in surprise. “An external agent?”

  “This is going to sound crazy—well, maybe not to you. Maybe you’ve already heard of it? A digital entity in the Cloud? An autonomous program, controlling information flow to tailor our perceptions of the world?”

  I have never mentioned the Red to Elliot and there was no reference to it in episode two. He’s worked it out on his own. I’m thinking a lot of people have.

  I turn away from him and look again through the glass. I don’t say anything, but silence can be an affirmation.

  “The rumors are true then,” he c
oncludes. “You have been hacked. That’s the explanation for King David.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “A lot of people are asking questions, Shelley. This report I’ve been telling you about? It was commissioned by Ahab Matugo.”

  Ahab Matugo . . . who sent fighter jets that he wasn’t supposed to have, to slam the border forts and upset the status quo of the war in the Sahel, forcing a cease-fire and new peace negotiations. I should hate him, but I don’t, and it’s not the skullnet that gives me my halo. It’s knowing that I would have done the same damn thing in his place.

  A silver sedan comes in past the perimeter guards.

  “That’s Kendrick,” Elliot confirms.

  “Okay. I hope you can get back to New York without too much trouble.”

  The doors slide open; the MPs salute. “Don’t do anything stupid,” Elliot pleads.

  “I don’t intend to.”

  I still haven’t seen Lissa, but I tell myself I’ll see her later. I toss my bag in the backseat, and get in the car.

  • • • •

  Kendrick is wearing civilian clothes. His farsights, usually so clear they’re nearly invisible, have darkened to a band of smoky glass to shade his eyes. He’s got a couple of days’ growth of gray hair on his head. He’s not wearing a skullcap. “Cut it,” he says in his deep voice as the car slides forward. He’s not talking to me.

  An icon flares in my overlay, then fades.

  “You’re on leave,” Kendrick informs me as he guides the car past the perimeter guards. “Not an easy thing to achieve in a time of crisis, when the nation requires the service of every soldier in the US Army. But you’re on leave, your overlay is no longer recording, and Guidance is not looking through your eyes.”

  It’s not just the recording function that’s been switched off. The network icon is a red X. “I’m locked down again.” This time, there’s not even a link to Guidance. I have access to onboard systems only.

  “Get used to it.”

  If I have to, I will.

  I make myself relax, leaning back in the seat. The refugees who gathered outside the hospital on the day after are gone now. Alongside the sleepy street, the concertina wire protecting the grounds looks like overkill.

  “Did you hear what Elliot had to say?” I ask Kendrick.

  He shakes his head—not in denial, but in disgust. “I’ve been hearing that for a week. He thinks everyone with a skullcap is a fucking puppet. What do you think?”

  “I’m not here because I’m a puppet.”

  The American Coma is real, and it’s not going to lift any time soon. From newscasts I know the economy has tanked. Fuel is in short supply, and goods aren’t flowing for that reason and because no one knows where they should go. Kelly AMC is an oasis, running on photovoltaics and generators, but out in the real world, power outages happen every time load-balancing fails. Air traffic is restricted and only the wealthy can afford the escalating satellite data charges. More Americans are losing their jobs every day—while the rest of the world learns to go on without us.

  Thelma Sheridan engineered this.

  I turn to Kendrick. “So she bought clean hands? You know that for sure?”

  He nods, his gaze fixed on the road ahead. “Yes.”

  “You promised she wouldn’t get away with it.”

  He glances at me. “You ready to do something about that?”

  My voice is calm, but my heart is racing. “Yes.”

  He gives me a dark, disapproving look. “The Lion of Black Cross, ready to jump in with his gun blazing!”

  “Yeah, we pulled off that tactic at Black Cross, but I’m not sure it’s going to work a second time.”

  “Think hard, Shelley. Why do you want to do this?”

  I see those jets again. I see their pilots forcing Thelma Sheridan’s rocket to the ground before it can reach San Antonio, or Austin, or some other place full of people just living their lives.

  “It needs to be done.”

  “There’s no going back from it.”

  “I understand that.”

  “Do you? We’re setting out to slam a dragon. Do you understand that no matter how successful we are, this will always be hanging over our heads?”

  “It is a rogue operation then? I wondered.”

  “This is what we’ve come to. The president is a performance artist and the congressional zombies do what their masters tell them and nothing else, while no one in the ranks above us has the authority to insist that justice be served.” He shrugs. “Well, that’s as it should be. The people have to claim justice for themselves. So yes, it is a rogue mission. If we go, we go on our own authority. We will not represent the army. We will not be funded by the army. We will not be defended by the army. We will be entirely on our own.” He glances at me again. “Still sure you want to play?”

  There’s a gas station ahead on the right, one of those massive ones with six islands of pumps, but only one island is open, and the line of waiting cars extends around the corner and down the block. Some of the drivers turn to watch us with wary expressions as we pass by. Then one man recognizes me—I see it in his eyes. His mouth opens as if to cry out, Hey, are you—?

  The fucking Lion of Black Cross, yeah. There’s propaganda value in it, and not just for the army.

  “Sir, if the army’s not funding this mission, who is?”

  “Private sources.”

  I wait for more, but it doesn’t come. He keeps his gaze fixed on the road ahead, letting me think about things. I asked to come in on this, and he’s trusted me, this far. I want to know more, but the real question is, do I need to? Or do I trust him? “Colonel, how much do you know? How deep in are you?”

  He nods as if to himself. “Core.”

  He’s only a colonel, but he has influence, power, and discretion—more than anyone of his rank should have—and he risked it all in the assault on Black Cross. He risked his life.

  “Okay, then. I’m in.” I glance in the side-view mirror, half expecting to see MPs following, lights flashing as they signal us to pull over, but there are only a few cars behind us, all civilian.

  “See any federal agents back there?” Kendrick asks as he brakes at a red light.

  “No, sir. Not yet.” I watch the cross traffic pass in front of us: one police car and seven civilian vehicles. That’s it. The light changes and we cross the intersection. Kendrick moves into the right lane. “What is our plan, sir?”

  “Our plan is to arrest Thelma Sheridan and bring her to trial. A fair trial. One that will actually consider the evidence against her.”

  “But if she’s already bought clean hands—”

  “The trial won’t happen here. There was an initial investi­gation. I talked to the agent in charge, and the evidence her team compiled is incontrovertible, but Sheridan got it buried under a top-secret classification. So we have no choice. We’re using a legal principle known as ‘universal jurisdiction.’ It’s a snake pit. We’ll be yielding sovereignty and establishing a precedent we are going to regret, but it’s all we have.”

  “Universal jurisdiction,” I murmur, eyeing the encyclo­pedia icon on my overlay. The encyclopedia whispers back to me a summary definition. I learn that universal juris­diction is a legal concept reserved for crimes so serious they are effectively crimes against the world. It allows any state or international organization to prosecute, regardless of where the criminal act took place.

  “Got it figured out?” Kendrick asks me.

  “It means we’re taking her to a foreign court. Is it in the Hague?” I know in a vague way that fallen dictators have been brought to trial there on the authority of the United Nations.

  “That was our first choice. It didn’t work out.”

  “Where then?”

  His eyes narrow; there’s somet
hing bitter in his smile. “We found only one head of state with the spine to do it. Ahab Matugo has agreed to put her on trial for war crimes and humanitarian crimes. The documented evidence has been submitted. An international panel of judges is being assembled. Our part is to deliver Ms. Sheridan. In doing so, there are requirements we must fulfill. We have to prove her identity with DNA evidence. And she cannot be harmed. There can be no indication of torture or abuse, or Matugo will refuse to accept her, or to hold the trial.”

  I’m stunned by what he’s telling me—and relieved too. “I had no idea. This is something at least . . . creditable. I thought we were just going to . . .”

  I don’t really want to say it, but Kendrick knows what I was thinking. “You thought we’d just assassinate her?”

  He looks at me, but I won’t meet his gaze. “So who’s in it?” I ask.

  “You, me, Vasquez—”

  “Not Jaynie. She wouldn’t step outside the lines.”

  “Yes, Vasquez. And your pal, Matt Ransom.”

  “This is for the fucking reality show!”

  He checks the mirrors and takes an on-ramp to a freeway. “So I’ve been told. Episode three. I don’t know whose dumbass idea that show was, but it’s worked for the army and it can work for us.”

  “You want people to know what we’re doing?”

  “Hell, yes.” Traffic is light—there’s no reason for most people to be on the road, so much of commerce has shut down—and within seconds we’re doing seventy. “We’re doing the right thing. If we keep it secret, nothing will ever change.”

  I shake my head in disbelief. “Who else is in?”

  “Other C -FHEIT soldiers.”

  “Chen told me you hand-selected everyone there.”

  “He trusted you with that?”

  “It’s true, then?”

  “We’re a special crew. We share certain personality traits, among them a concern for justice that is not as common as you might like to believe.”

  “Justice over loyalty?”

  “There’s no honor in being loyal to a corrupt system.”

  “You’ve been getting ready for this for a long time. Long before it happened.”