A Dark Perfection

by James, Mark

  He spoke as he removed the pouches, “To answer your unspoken inquiry, yes, I know who you are. And, yes, I know of your predicament. I do not step into situations, shall we say, without knowing what I am stepping into. I may be reciprocating a favor, true, but there’s still no use ignoring that which has served me well.”

  “I don’t expect an answer, “Jack said, “but a favor for whom?”

  Guilford smiled, “You are correct, no answer will be forthcoming. I’m happy to do it, though. I owe my life to this person.”

  He crooked his head towards Lani, who had initially stayed by the column, then had slowly moved up at a backward angle.

  Guilford missed very little. “Ms. Keno, please join us. Entirely, that is. As a courtesy, please holster the Glock.”

  Small, clinking sounds drifted down from an upper window, a bird tapping against its reflection. Guilford turned his head sharply, held perfectly still for three seconds and, satisfied, resumed his machinations in the briefcase.

  He pulled out metal legs hidden in the bottom of the briefcase and extended it into a small table. He then carefully arranged the contents: scissors, scalpels and trays. The fireplace crackled behind them as Lani moved closer, the light sparkling off the instruments.

  They moved up next to him, staring down. Jack focused on the scalpels.

  Guilford sensed the hesitation, “There should be no worries, Mr. and Mrs. Patterson. I’m harmless as a fly. A fly in amber, as it were. Well, a scorpion fly, perhaps.”

  He smiled at the last of it, knowing that he was teasing them along, his theory being that he must get some fun out of all of this.

  Jack and Lani looked at each other. “The Pattersons?” they said at once.

  Guilford removed a short stack of passports from his vest pocket. “First, you will exist as the Pattersons. Then, if need be, you will become the dashing Ronald Holcomb and his sultry mistress, Jan Gillette, together, it seems, just another tragic, love-struck duo out on holiday. Of course, the tragic and love-struck parts are up to you, your respective acting abilities, that is. I simply provide the staging.”

  Guilford smiled again to himself. He had always loved the taunt as much as the chase. When he’d been in the field – for what now felt like years – the darkness of humor was what had kept him centered in the middle of the chaos, surviving on the edges of death. Old habits died hard.

  Jack wasn’t in the mood for games. “The Patterson part, explain it.”

  Guilford paused, recognizing himself in the voice. He turned his head slowly towards them, almost a whisper, as if he held a secret truth, “Do you know what you are heading into?”

  He focused on them, “Do you know what the Surveillance-Net is, its deeper capabilities, its meaning?”

  Jack waited.

  Guilford smiled to himself. Evidently, this was not going to be as much fun as he had hoped. Well, he observed, the better for them.

  “Have you heard of the flying orbs? Wonderful, nasty little things…”

  Mac had offered Jack a general briefing on the Surveillance-Net before they’d left the Maryland cottage – but perhaps, not on everything. As Mac had talked, Jack had sensed something in his friend. Perhaps, it had been in the subtle twitch of facial muscles, or when Mac had turned away too quickly at the end of his sentences.

  “Go on,” Jack said.

  Guilford’s body relaxed as he moved closer to them, pausing.

  “Then, tell me, what do you know?”

  Jack squinted.

  “I need to know this,” Guilford explained, “in order to judge your capabilities in the field.” It was as if he had suddenly become another person, his tone turned to stone.

  Jack told Guilford what Mac had told him at the cottage: the cameras, the computerized behavioral typing, the widening Surveillance-Net installation and their need to move quickly and stay in front of the expansion. “Stay to the rural locations, stay to the quieter places,” Mac had said.

  “It’s too late for that,” Guilford said. “The threshold has been operationally met. They are operating in real-time. That’s why I am here. To help you disappear. As it were, to hide in plain sight.”

  Guilford looked up at the moon, hazy in the high window, and thought for a moment.

  “The orbs are titanium in construction,” he finally said, “made to appear as if they were the newer cameras that one routinely sees at traffic intersections – ergo, no one will even notice. Not only there, however, but also in every store and hotel lobby, in every elevator, on the tops of every building. And with the fear of the Theater Bombings so close at hand, the clamor for more cameras from the citizenry has reached a high din.”

  “But, of course, they’re not looking for cars or crime – they’re looking for you and me. And everyone else – studying our facial contours, our gaits, the snippets of our conversations, if they can glean them, analyzing accents, possible ethnic origins. In sum, they’re constructing a behavioral DNA map of the world’s population. You see, what our unseen masters have not, as yet, been able to do to our genes inside, they’ll now do to the rest of our bodies, from the outside.”

  “And then, of course, there is this more nefarious aspect of their construction: the little contraptions can fly. Mind you, not very far – only a mile or so – but if you ever hear a far off whirring sound, you might want to pay a tad more attention. Once activated, they detach from their perches and, like military drones, can pursue whatever target they’ve visually locked onto. They’re remotely controlled, of course, by their masters, of course…”

  Guilford looked up to the window again. Lani followed his eyes.

  “But wouldn’t we see them, wouldn’t everyone?” she asked.

  “Ah, one would assume so,” Guilford smiled, “but that is the second nefarious part: they possess stealth nano-refracting technology. You’ve never heard of it, of course, but the DARPA wing at the Pentagon has been working on it for years. It’s not perfected for military field applications, it’s still imperfect, but it works partially for our dear little orbs. You see, their titanium skin is impregnated with millions of microscopic nano-tubes that are refractive at certain angles, like millions of tiny mirrors. The human eye is then fooled, only seeing a phased patch of light refracted from the surroundings directly around the orb, not of the orb itself.”

  “But wouldn’t people still notice?” Lani pressed. “Humans are quite sensitive to visual incongruency.”

  “Again, one would assume so, but is it so? Hummingbirds populate the Midwest, yet how many Chicagoans have ever seen one? They move so fast that you don’t even know they’re there, you merely turn to where they once were. That is also a human reaction; like when a bird flies by in the dark.”

  “At first, you will have the UFO-like sightings and the vague photos in the National Tattler, but if the orbs aren’t flown too much, i.e. if our masters can possibly restrain themselves, then this shouldn’t be too much of a problem. But you’re right, eventually the public will find out. The masters, however, have already strategized this eventuality and, of course, by then it will be too late. Certainly, there will be the worn out clamor from the ACLU-types, but our masters will simply counter with a Madison Avenue-style propaganda campaign that simply convinces everyone that without the cute little orbs the Mongol hordes will surely, oh surely, be coming over the proverbial hills tomorrow. If need be, an international crisis will be created as a diversion and further justification, whatever is deemed necessary. There might even be the seemingly random and gratuitous video on the evening news showing the orbs stopping a robbery, spotting a lost child, etc. It has been done a thousand times over a thousand years. Everyone wants someone to tell them that everything will be all right. They’ll protect you and you only have to give up some of your freedoms…”

  “Well,” Guilford said after a pause, “perhaps we should get started.”

  He moved over to a chair and motioned for Lani, “Ms. Keno, please, if you could. Lean back, yes, head t
ilted.”

  She sat down in the chair, Jack watching closely as Guilford leaned down. His hands, now in surgical gloves, held a tray and the silver spatula-type instrument. From the tray he removed a lattice-like film and began moving towards her face.

  Before she could protest, he said, “This is a collagen scaffold. It will hold the matrix in place and allow the substrate to fully adhere to the skin. The false epidermal liquid contains cells just like your skin. Those engineered cells are ‘programmed’ to recognize your cells and mold to them, literally becoming an extension of the host’s skin.”

  Lani looked up, “Please, tell me it’s removable.”

  “Certainly, and it wears off in three to five days. At which point, you’ll have to reapply it. I will show you how. Actually, the central problem is not with the artificial skin itself, but with the White Angel orchid extract that morphs the artificial cells’ color to the shades of your face. That extract loses its effectiveness in three to five days.”

  Jack recalled the white orchid information from Aisha’s files and from Takamura’s briefings. He continued to watch as Guilford spread the liquid over Lani’s cheekbones and forehead, subtly changing the contours of her face.

  “I can’t change the base aspect of your beauty, detective, you will retain that, but I can make the computer’s eyes pass over you, because one of its weaknesses is that it moves too fast, it is always looking for the next face. And, presently, it doesn’t have sufficient referent information – it has not looked at enough faces – and is still compiling that database. In three months we’ll certainly need to adapt our strategy, but for now the eye-in-the-sky is still a teenager, distracted by everything. Our goal is to keep it from seeing you, just long enough to prevent it from locking on.”

  “The problem is, Mr. O’Neill, your height. And for you, Ms. Keno, your distinctive skin color. Not many people have golden Polynesian skin tones and are walking through a London train station. I can provide colored contacts to hide Ms. Keno’s rather rare eye color, but we don’t have the time to treat her entire body. And, sir, I can certainly make you taller, but not shorter. Do you know how many men exist in our little world who stand over six foot three inches in height? Answer: 6.8%. And women with Ms. Keno’s skin type and petite stature? Say, 3%. Now, conduct a quick probability analysis: how many such people are walking together in London at any given time? Yes, you begin to see the problem. As I said, however, the Surveillance-Net is still ‘booting up’ and this should allow the time you need to slip by.”

  Guilford finished with Lani’s face and inserted the brown contacts. He then completed Jack, giving him a thicker brow and a small rise to the bridge of his nose.

  “Ah,” Guilford smiled, standing back and admiring his work, “a classic Roman profile. I should have been an artist.”

  Lani looked over, laughing, “Not bad. Rugged...”

  “You’re one to talk,” he laughed back. “You look like a librarian!”

  “Well, a very sexy librarian…” Guilford said, laughing along. “As I said, not much can be done there. As for you, Mr. O’Neill, I was thinking more along the lines of a professor, but still old world. I think we’ve captured the looks, don’t you?”

  Guilford moved over to the suitcases he’d brought with him and opened them, removing a set of men and women’s clothing from each. He handed black-rimmed glasses to Lani and rimless ones to Jack. Lani turned to the fireplace and held up the white blouse, jacket and long, pleated skirt. “Librarian?” she smiled. “I was actually thinking more like Masterpiece Theatre.”

  “And what’s that?” Jack asked, pointing to a roll that sat next to his clothes.

  Guilford leaned over, opening the rolled up hand towel, revealing several pouches. He reached into two of the pockets and pulled out clear bags filled with unidentifiable white pieces. He removed the pieces and walked over to the stand, screwing the pieces together. When finished, he held up a small, angled instrument in each hand.

  “Ceramic,” Guilford said proudly, handing one of the weapons to Jack. “But not the usual types. Beneath the nonmagnetic ceramic shell, they possess a material layer that resonates at a certain frequency, making it look like an innocuous blob of cloth to the scanners. Of course, if anyone should search through the suitcases they’d recognize it as a weapon, but, absent that, nothing will detect them. Ceramic bullets, too. You can leave the Glocks with me – they’ll do you no good after here.”

  After here…

  Guilford retrieved the tray and its contents as they all moved towards the fire as he proceeded to conduct a tutorial on the artificial skin’s mixing and application.

  “Apart from that,” he concluded, “I think you are good to go. Or, at least, you will have a sporting chance against…the masters and machines of our world, such as they are.”

  Jack was not so sure. “So, you think…” he smiled, his eyebrows arched behind his new glasses. He was trying to keep their humor about them. Like Guilford, he knew how it kept one centered.

  Guilford stood erect, smiling with the recognition of one operative to another.

  “Oh, one last thing,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a shiny object. Jack attempted to look closer as Guilford walked over to Lani, smiling and taking her hand.

  “To complete the act,” he said, slipping the ring on her finger. “Don’t get too excited, love, it’s only zirconium.”

  He then gathered his bags and instruments and, in a practiced regimen, quickly put them in their places, retracted the legs and closed the suitcase. He donned his overcoat and walked towards the front entrance.

  As his last lesson, he paused at the open doors, the night wind and tree branches whistling behind him.

  Like a skeleton deconstructing itself, he slowly contorted at his hips, removing the short stilts that had given him his gait. He slowly peeled the artificial skin from his cheeks and forehead and the acne scarring disappeared, the skin below young and supple. He removed his hat and last-century spectacles and replaced them with designer Italian frames. He was suddenly sleeker, agile, modern.

  He smiled, the accent now gone, “Remember, my new friends, the world is a lattice of illusions. We are only in a movie directed by ourselves. Co-directed with God, as it were. A dream within a dream.”

  He smiled a last time, “Good luck to you both.”

  The door thudded shut and they looked at each other, dumb-founded.

  “Well, we sure fell for that one!” she laughed.

  “Impressive,” Jack said, shaking his head. “To be fair, though, I think everyone falls for that. He was a pro.”

  Jack moved over to the fire, looking into it, “And, of course, that’s good for us.”

  “How’s that?”

  “We’ve been given another start, another chance.”

  She could hear his tone harden.

  “A chance?” she asked.

  He turned, dead seriousness in his eyes, “A chance to get ourselves out of here.”

  †

  Alannis Scott-Minor, Chief White House Correspondent for one of the largest cable news channels, yelled out, “No, Mr. President, what I’m asking is, why the delay? Your administration has had this information for nearly a week. At least that’s what Senator Seefeldt was telling us this morning.”

  Walker flashed his famous smile, never giving an inch. “Well, Alannis, I think I’ve already answered that in my opening statement. But, alright, let’s look at this from a different angle…”

  Mac was watching the press conference from the Oval Office television. He was only a few feet down the hall, but it felt light-years away. For Osborne, these news gaggles were like watching Christians in the Roman Colosseum, starved lions lunging against their chains. Since the theater bombings, the White House press corps had gone rabid – seemingly, like everything else these days.

  Another question was yelled over the others, the reporters jumping to their feet and jockeying for attention, “The Iranians, sir! Whe
n will you engage in direct negotiations?”

  Walker flashed his smile and Mac moved over to the windows, the manicured lawn stretching out like a calm lake. Yes, he considered, a president’s work is a balance between chaos and calm, each event running into the next; placid one moment, churning like a flooded river the next. People were constantly pulling President Walker this way and that, each new crisis yanking him forward. It seemed that, sometimes, their only escape was in sleep. And yet, even in their dreams, the world would intrude: in the faces and in the eyes, another swollen river.

  The president smiled down at another thrown question, deflecting the sting.

  That morning, Mac and the president had been in the middle of their usual 7:30 a.m. briefing when Tazewell had rushed in, warning that an 8.2 magnitude earthquake had been detected by our Pacific buoys and that Japan would be under a tsunami watch by eight. At nine, the president visited an elementary school accompanied by Senator Barbara Turner, the photo-op part of their push on the education bill. By three that afternoon, the NSA informed Walker that the Pakistanis were rattling their cage and that the Indian Prime Minister, weakened by his pause following the Kashmir incursion, wanted to rattle back.

  A President must hold so many circumstances, so much responsibility, behind each easy smile. He must contain those circumstances within himself, never allowing the events and memories to overwhelm him. It is a balance that each president must ride upon. For, if not, like a biblical flood, the roll of history will overtake him, carrying us all along.

  Mac heard a final, angry shout from the television. A few moments later President Walker walked in, the adrenaline still running through him.

  “Well,” he beamed, “wasn’t that just invigorating! Hey, did you catch Malcolm in the front row getting ticked every time I passed him over?”

  He tossed his suit jacket over a chair.