“Thank you, Instructor,” Daiss said. “Good afternoon, brothers and sisters. Recently I worked a stakeout, impersonating one of the Zone’s self-proclaimed doctors. The perpetrator in our murder case had been one of his customers, and we took over the operation of the medical office in hopes of finding and capturing her. Through Instructor Samuelson’s guidance I now understand that the assignment actually produced much more.
“I’ll admit that at first this assignment was difficult for me.” He smiled. “Next time you get frustrated dealing with those idiot dust monkeys, just be glad you’re not snuggling up to play doctor with them,” he said, gesturing with his hands raised as if in surrender. His audience shared an understanding chuckle.
“But as Zetas, we must understand the Zone in the finest detail we can manage. While I was waiting there and hoping the assailant would appear, I questioned the various Zone inhabitants who showed up seeking care. I specifically asked for information concerning every other practitioner in the area they had seen. Our guy was clearly the favorite among his patients, but there were eleven others in pretty close proximity. We set up surveillance at each of those practitioners and followed some of their patients for a time, collecting observational data about their care and their patterns of recovery.
“Our sample of patients and care techniques was broad enough that Task Force Zeta was able to assess the effectiveness of these practitioners. In most cases, treatment at such places did improve the health of the patients seeking care. That is, as we struggle to get these Zone populations under control, these witch doctors are working against us somewhat successfully, helping to ensure that they survive and reproduce in wild-type ranges.”
Daiss glanced at Instructor Samuelson, who nodded, releasing him. He made his way back to his seat as Instructor Samuelson began again.
“Thank you, Brother Daiss. Now, as interesting as all that is, there’s something else we’ve learned from this project. We’ve taken over one of the networking sites frequented by these unlicensed practitioners, called MediPirates, and made a discovery that changes the game for us significantly. Specifically, we have identified a new and alarming epidemic.”
Through his EI Daiss examined the first image his Instructor had linked for this assembly, of the MediPirates site. “This page is their big board, where topics are posted. The subsequent discussions appear as links,” Samuelson said. As Daiss watched, one link blinked and expanded into a series of posted comments.
“The epidemic relates to this topic, posted by our own Dark Dok.” Instructor Samuelson read it aloud.
MediPirates Bulletin Board
Posted by Dark Dok #cB449d:
Patient came in covered in a white powder which I assume is some street drug, though spectrometer came up with no commonly known substance. Patient became increasingly catatonic and has been motionless last three hours. Pupils unresponsive but vitals otherwise normal. Administered 0.9% IV NaCl to flush it out, tried talking to him to snap him back to the world of the living, but I’m running out of ideas. As a last resort, I’m now trying some Asian folk medicine, burning incense and striking a chime, hoping maybe it’ll stimulate his senses and get him moving again. Does anyone have any idea what I might be dealing with, here?
“It turned out that this powder was causing a kind of schizophrenia,” Samuelson continued. “After the catatonic state, victims were waking up—some after a short time, others after days—convinced that their bodies had been taken over by some other person entirely. Suddenly lots of other cases were popping up on these MediPirates posts, and it was clear that an event was underway which would have serious repercussions in the Zone. To gain control of the information sharing as best we could, we commandeered the MediPirates site and slammed the door on this online discussion, only showing each member a fraction of the total responses and stalling posts about it until we reviewed and released them, giving preference to the ones that were the most misleading or gave the most useless or dangerous advice. When possible, we let the worst of them converse with each other to replicate the site’s function more authentically, while the more adept site visitors experienced higher rates of technical difficulty.”
The image changed to a slide show of posts, moving too quickly for any of them to be read. “We believe we were successful in convincing the group that the problem was relatively small and contained, to maybe three or four patients. Our compilation of MediPirates posts from the Des Moines Zone currently shows more than ninety reports of this phenomenon, however, and the last thirty were made in the last two weeks. We believe this will soon become a pandemic.
“Unfortunately, we don’t yet have a sample of the drug, which at this point we’re calling Pandora Powder. However, it’s clearly burning through the Zone at an accelerating rate, producing more of these Individuals—that’s the name we’ve given the new personalities that appear, Individuals, with a capital I—as well as increasing societal disorder as they permeate the Zone community.
“With this group here today, the most trusted and elite cadre of Zetas in this area, we can be frank. Task Force Zeta exists, not only here but all around the globe, for the purpose of sealing off the world’s various Zones in order to protect legitimate corporate interests, wherever they may be. As yet, no Zetas have put forward a compelling claim as to why any particular Zone should be closed off from civilized society. Too many CBD salarymen and salarywomen frequent the entertainment areas for it to be an easy sell. Yet now it appears that this could be just the impetus we’ve been waiting for; the chaos resulting from this new plague could well lead to desperate cries from civilized areas to seal it off for good.
“For now it is crucial that we keep this information to ourselves. When the Pandora epidemic builds to the crisis level we expect, we’ll release a statement that this is an unknown disease. The resulting medical quarantine will usher in the strict border controls we need.”
Schafer House, Ltd
“You should feel your EI reconnecting with the outside world in a moment,” Drya, the woman escorting him, said. “Per your revised agreement with McGuillian Corporation, you won’t be getting your name back.” Together the two of them walked down a wide hallway.
“That’s fine, ma’am” the man who had been called Li’l Ed said. “Though it does feel strange to have no name at all.”
“They’ll assign you a letter-number combination as you’re processed in, but the name is gone forever.” She smiled, in the same intense, pathway-amplified, Accepted way he now did. “There’s a reason they’ll call you an Unnamed Executive, you know.”
“Nobody calls me anything just yet, ma’am.”
“I call you sweet,” she said. “I wish I could see you once your body’s all amped up.”
It was his turn to smile. Now, with pathway amplification, smiling made his heart pound. “You’ll never see me again. Though I might see you, from the other side of my dark glasses. Thank you for being a wonderful guide in my reconditioning process, Drya. I won’t forget you.”
They stopped at a door. She cocked her head at him. “I wonder if that’s true. Not forgetting, I mean. I don’t know how many of your old memories they let you keep when you become an Unnamed.”
She unlocked the door with her EI. His own EI suddenly connected again with the outside world, making his body shudder slightly as the wave of information washed through his mind. They entered an elevator and began ascending.
“Whoa, that’s strange. I wonder if EIs take a while to recalibrate. If the date I’m seeing were right, I’d only have been here for a few weeks. It’s been a few months, at least.”
“No, it’s right. Two weeks, three days. It’s not an accident that your sense of time is distorted. With wave manipulation, it’s easy to alter your perception. The times you thought you were spending a night sleeping were actually the briefest of naps, breaking each twenty-four-hour period into what you interpreted as several days and nights. Your diet was almost exclusively high carbohydrate and low p
rotein, which made it easier to keep you in a trance state. It was important for you to believe you were here for an extended stretch, because that helps your mind accept that the reconditioning process is inevitable; your brain no longer reaches beyond its immediate circumstances. It becomes convinced that there is no other way of life.”
“Fascinating!” he said. “I did feel that way, like maybe I was never going to get out of here.”
“It’s a process that was refined for use with involuntary admittees. Sometimes they actually do take months, but the manips make it feel like years to them. The system monitors everything, from the way you enunciate words, to the number of times you blink per minute, to the changes in your heartrate and breathing when assigned tasks that relate to your future job assignment. Once your metrics are within specified parameters, the program flags you for release.”
“I feel privileged to be the beneficiary of so much thought and focus,” he said.
She nodded with a satisfied grin. “Note, though, that you must never discuss these aspects of your experience with anyone. As you know, we’re working to make McGuillian one hundred percent Accepted, and it would be detrimental for incoming candidates to be aware of the time manipulation inherent in the reconditioning process.” She looked into his eyes. “The sense that it will never end is an important part of each candidate’s reconditioning. One who came here expecting it might resist, leading to increased time, energy and expenditure. That would be bad for McGuillian. Do you understand?”
He had almost imagined telling someone, simply because it was an interesting fact to share, but before the thought had even gelled she had shown him how doing so would waste McGuillian resources. If she’d been just a bit slower, letting the thought fully form first, the realization that he’d been daydreaming about something bad for the company would have torn open a chasm in his mind, freezing rational thought in the now familiar blast of terror that pathway amplification always brought whenever it fed upon guilt and doubt. “I won’t tell anyone!” he said with desperate quickness. His mind flooded with good feelings, now, amplifying the satisfaction of having decided it so firmly.
Drya smiled again. Accepted always smiled with quivering lips. “I know you won’t.” The elevator stopped at the ground floor, admitting them to a vast entryway the size of a Traverball field. She headed for a set of glass doors some distance away.
“I do have one more question,” he said. “Can you tell me why we get pathway amplification? I asked my handler, but all he said was that the motivations for corporate actions were beyond his rank. It occurs to me that perhaps it’s like the duration issue, where maybe it’s okay for me to know now. It just … it seems strange to turn up our emotions so we have to constantly fight to control them, when the process could instead have made us calmer.”
“McGuillian will turn down your emotions with drugs,” she said. “But if the reconditioning process turned them down permanently, it’d be harder to motivate you. During your training, every experience, every decision, and every thought is reinforced by enhanced emotion. Choices and behaviors that are encouraged by McGuillian result in intensified joy, pride, or pleasure. Unsanctioned ideas and actions produce amplified feelings of terror, shame and remorse. Through this process, the company establishes itself as your guide, your source of reason and stability. The sense of peace the drugs bring is a gift from the company—and of course it’s one that can be taken away. Without active chemical management, Accepted would become suicidally unstable within a matter of hours.” Her face was mostly expressionless, but she raised a shoulder in a mechanical shrug. “This is by design. Accepted hold all our most powerful positions, and we can only trust them when they are receiving precise care from the McGuillian Medical Doctor. We need to be sure that if their chemistry varies even slightly from prescribed norms, they’ll immediately remove themselves from the population before they do any damage to the company. Anyone trying to skip doses or otherwise subvert the absolute authority of the McGuillian Medical Doctor will simply be gone. For non-Accepted, a suicide attempt means involuntary reconditioning, but for those who have already been reconditioned, nothing more can be done to maintain the worker as an asset. The company makes certain there are no unsuccessful attempts among Accepted.
“Don’t tell anyone that, either. You know why. Oh, look! Your escorts are here.”
Standing just inside the doors was a pair of Unnamed Executives, in their smooth black suits and sunglasses.
“Good luck to you, my young friend,” Drya said. “I’m sure you’ll do McGuillian proud.”
Near the Saved clinic
Rus was in position, lying prone in the long shadow of a building. This was his first large-scale raid on the Saved, where he was allowed to use his primary weapon instead of just his blade. There was still nothing to gain for himself—the Saved seemed poorer than ever—but all this killing was going to give him one hell of a rush.
His New Union stealth techniques and camouflage were so good that Saved passed right by him without noticing, even though there was still plenty of daylight. Rus had more than a hundred New Union Elements with him today, though most were considerably farther back.
Juice’s weirdly sharp aftertaste had a way of making the whole world smell like blood. His system revved at the thought of it splattering, coating him as he slashed, stabbed, and shot, warm and heavy against his skin. He’d be coming home sticky today, even if he did end up mostly using the rifle.
The crowd in the street grew much larger and louder. A door opened and a group came out. It was difficult to tell how many were at the core of it all, maybe ten or twelve, but the crowd surrounding that central group was easily a few hundred. The spectators surged toward the central figure, packing themselves in until, tightly wedged together, they moved slowly away from the door as a unit. Rus peered out from his hiding place to see who could be commanding this much attention.
Him!
Rus knew his place. He was committed to serving the New Union faithfully and forever, but that face brought his mind back to an unsettled score from before he’d been claimed. The man still had the forehead scar Murph had given him. It was the fucking Garbageman, who’d killed Murph and cheated the Bridges on their biggest deal! The last time he’d seen that fucker, Rus had been a scared, sad kid. Now, as a well-trained and equipped New Union Element, he had his chance to erase that shame.
The raid was due to start any moment.
The rifle.
One shot from right here, and the Garbageman would cease to exist. Even on Juice, though, a single shot wouldn’t be satisfying enough. Not in this case.
There was something wrong with the way the Saved seemed to flock around the Garbageman and hang on everything he did or said. The way they fawned and leaned toward him with wide eyes and blank faces didn’t seem to be rooted in the fear he would have expected.
He’s their leader!
The more he watched, the more obvious it became. These people were doing what the Garbageman said. If he wasn’t the leader, he was at least pretty high up in the Saved organization. Now Rus could kill him in service of the New Union, and maybe even get recognized for an important kill, while righting the Bridges’ past wrong.
There were about a hundred people around him, staring at him like they were tranqued. Maybe instead of Juice, the Saved were hooked on some kind of barbituate.
The signal to start the raid would come any second.
Full auto, up close so he can see my face? No, too many of them for me to be that close when I hit.
The ones closest to the Garbageman were armed. Using the gun would be risky.
He still had that Unnamed firebomb he’d been saving! The crowd was distracted enough that he could use quietwalking and camouflage to get right up near the Garbageman. Rus would watch him cook, along with a whole street full of his followers. He had seen the blacksuits use the bombs often enough that he knew how far he’d have to throw it.
Of course, Rus would hav
e to unfade long enough for the fucker to see who was killing him.
The Clinic
The Saved were developing a militaristic social structure similar to that of the Horde or CBD. Wanda had failed to convince the leadership of her devotion and was now the practitioner they trusted least, but Porter often sought her out with matters like this.
“The One has graciously provided an additional fifty or sixty mattresses, maybe as many as twenty as full beds,” Porter said. “We’re setting them up across the street for now. You should be able to put patients in there in another hour or two.”
“The clinic certainly needs the extra beds and space, sir,” Wanda said. Porter was one of the most powerful Saved, and it had been made clear to Wanda that calling him sir was not optional. She found it hard to express any gratitude for the extra beds when she knew they must have come from relatively peaceful little neighborhoods on the fringes of what had been Horde territory, which the Saved had recently raided, Fiend-style.
“This war is filling the beds faster than ever, sir,” she said, mostly to fill the silence.
Porter looked at her expectantly. She realized that she’d made an indirect reference to the Saved soldiers who would be filling the beds. The Saved demanded various mantras for different situations, but the gist was always the same. They said it was to keep everyone’s mind on what they called the holy nature of the conflict.
“May the One keep and protect his brave soldiers,” Wanda added hastily. Porter nodded once, slowly.
“This struggle is a true test of our faith and devotion,” he said. “From forty thousand we’re now down to twenty-five or so.”
“Yes, I know. Sir. I see so many wounded Saved heroes, may the One keep and protect them. I live among them here at the clinic around the clock.”
The Book of Wanda, Volume Two of the Seventeen Trilogy Page 17