“E.D.”
There was plenty of partially burned carbon waste around the refinery that she could use to make similar signs. As an afterthought, she added an arrow, pointing toward the refinery. Maybe it would bring the General or her followers so that they could finally reunite.
Everyone needed to understand the General and her promise to end suffering of the kind so many women endured here in the Zone. Many of those she had already told were spreading the word. By the time she was needed, Colonel Kym would have raised a little army of her own.
9
(?)
Naked except for the blindfold, he kept his palms on the bare shoulders in front of him. The line marched silently forward. This time there were no corrections from the electric prods that produced a sizzling, popping noise when they touched skin. At the beginning of their training, those sounds had been accompanied by screams. Even a month ago, they’d occasionally been followed by gasps. Such reactions had now been trained out completely, just as his former identity, Li’l Ed, had been stripped away.
Yet so much more had been trained in. By completing the training, he had become forever intertwined with the greatest organization in history. What he had been before was gone, but in a few minutes he would be initiated into the elite force protecting and enforcing for McGuillian Corporation: the Fold of Unnamed.
The inductees were all bulked up from training, drugs, and genetic tweaks, so much so that it was impossible to tell whether the shoulders in front of him, or the hands on his own shoulders, were male or female.
Not important! Forget that.
Early in the training, thinking of female hands and shoulders in the marching line like this had gotten him stiff, and his stiffness had gotten him the electric prod.
Today wasn’t just another training march or humiliating hazing session, though. This was the induction that would bring him into direct service of McGuillian and the Lord. At last he would be doing hands-on work, directly implementing the Lord’s plan.
The surface they were marching upon was solid and mostly smooth. Concrete. Echoes of their own footfalls surrounded them, and the air was damp and musty. It was a tunnel.
He had learned so much here, and more importantly, he had become so much! Every day there had been physical conditioning and education in everything that an Unnamed could ever need to know: weapons, hand-to-hand combat, torture techniques, modern industrial espionage and sabotage, corporate protocol, communication, etiquette and much more, all delivered in a way that made clear how useless he had been before. No other training so broke down the individual and provided the company with the purest and most fungible cognizance. The process reduced newly reconditioned recruits to their base elements, just like a protein refinery producing usable amino acids.
Stairs, now. Too much give for concrete. First a few, then a short walk, and then a few more. Sounds fell away. This was a big space.
“Class, halt!”
Someone reached in from outside the line, removing his hands from the shoulders. The hands on his own shoulders also disappeared. The inductees were lined up shoulder-to-shoulder and each was instructed to step forward or backward, resulting in a staggered formation. His blindfold was removed, but he could see nothing. The room was pitch black.
A spotlight hit him, so intense he couldn’t see anything at all. His breath quickened. Was this a test? What—
“You are nothing!” a voice said. The voice echoed around the apparently vast room even though it had not been amplified by speakers or his EI, nor even shouted. “We give you,” it said, “your cohort.” The lights changed, shining directly down on them instead of into their faces. It seemed they were on a stage, though it was too dark to see anything beyond the illuminated mass of gigantic naked bodies surrounding him. From the way the sounds echoed in the room and the slight rustlings of the audience, he got the impression that there were hundreds of people out there, probably the entire local Fold.
“You, the I-five-hundred class, have been judged worthy of accepting our holy order as your purpose, your family, and your identity. From this day forward you will serve the Lord and the Organization Whose Confidence is Kept, through perfect execution of Fold directives. Kneel.” The eighty inductees knelt down, bowing their heads as they had been instructed in preparation for this moment.
He would never again utter so much as the word “McGuillian.” From now on the Organization would be as unnamed to him as he was to the rest of the world. The practice ensured that the Fold’s often clandestine missions would never be linked to the Organization by an overheard reference.
“We give you vision,” the voice said.
Others appeared, full-fledged Unnamed in black suits and glasses, moving down the line from both sides, placing upon the inductees’ bowed heads the bullet-proof computerized glasses that marked them to the rest of the world as true Unnamed. They had all trained with clunky old models, but these were the newest and best tech, and the pair they slipped on him had been custom-molded to fit his head precisely. A few moments after the last inductees were equipped, the entire class shuddered in unison as the glasses came to life. Each pair sent signals specifically calibrated to the wearer’s brainwave patterns, in order to improve various areas that had been found lacking. Since he had been determined to be too anxious, his particular pair emitted an electromagnetic wave intended to keep him calm. It worked. He had felt stressed and self-conscious, kneeling naked on the stage before hundreds of people. Now he found himself perfectly comfortable and confident.
“We give you the covenant, the symbol of eternal commitment between the Fold and the Organization Whose Confidence is Kept. We take from you the oath.” Words appeared in the glasses, or perhaps the glasses manipulated something through his EI. The details of how it worked were unimportant, but the glasses, the EI, and his mind all functioned as one, now. The voice came again. “When presented with your eternity rings, recite the oath in turn.”
He heard another inductee begin reciting the oath, but it barely registered. He was too focused on preparing himself for his own turn.
They approached the person next to him. No inductee would dream of turning a head, but he could see with peripheral vision and hear the activity. “Palms down, spread your fingers,” someone said quietly. The inductee spoke the oath. He was up next!
A black pillow appeared before him, with two gold double rings. “Palms down, spread your fingers,” the quiet voice said. The rings slid on, heavy and cool on the two smallest fingers of each hand. He took a deep breath and read his oath as it was projected into his vision:
into the Fold i now surrender
shedding the old to become the new
and as our company’s defender
comfort and self i now eschew
serving the Lord and company
while veiled in anonymity
performing work that must be done
unacknowledged by anyone
from this day forward i steadfastly remain
forever devoted, forever Unnamed
The oath disappeared and in its place appeared a letter-number combination that filled his vision:
IAi547
It was as close to a name as he would ever have again.
Amelix Building, CBD
“Come in, Keiko,” Kessler said. “That’s my good girl.” He sat down and patted both his knees. She came to kneel between them and he stroked her hair.
“It’s done!” he said. “A hundred and forty-one of our Basali translations have now been matched with thousands of appropriate regulations and listed as their purpose. Now our most important regulations have supporting documentation linking them to simply stated and indisputable core values. Amelix Integrations is much stronger today because of our efforts. It’s a great accomplishment, and more than two hundred other translations are being reviewed for a second round at this moment.”
Her face showed such longing and adoration for him that his chest swelled. It was the traini
ng he’d given her that allowed her to achieve those feelings. “It was all you, sir,” she said. “Your gift of recognizing a way to benefit Amelix in what little I’d seen and done. You’re amazing, Dr. Kessler, sir.” Her face was slack and her eyes were turned toward his thigh. He watched her struggle with what he knew was an almost overwhelming desire to rub her cheek against it. Through her recent training, he had instilled a compulsion to touch him that intensified in accordance with proximity. She closed her eyes and leaned closer, approximating the act.
“We’ll go out tonight and celebrate,” he said. “The entertainment district, but let’s watch out for saboteurs with handfuls of powder.”
That had been such a strange attack. Why would someone waste a drug, just to knock him out for a few hours? Had the plan been to rob him while he was unconscious? Maybe the attacker had mistaken him for someone powerful enough to ransom, and then realized the error after the powder was thrown?
He smiled, cupping Keiko’s face in his hands. “I might want to watch you get a lap dance. Or give one.” She purred. He stroked her hair again. “You may touch me.”
“Oh, thank you, sir! Thank you!” she said, rubbing her cheek and neck against one inseam and then the other.
“You’re welcome.” He lowered his voice. “It feels good to be welcome here with me, doesn’t it? It feels so good to know that you are doing just what you should for me, and to get your reward knowing you’ve truly earned it, isn’t that right? Serving me is serving Amelix. Pleasing me is pleasing Amelix. Feel that pathway amplification build and build, making it feel better and better. It feels so, so good, being able to touch me like this, doesn’t it, Keiko, because I am Amelix and Amelix is me? To know that feeling this good is what you earned for yourself.”
“Mmm. Yes, sir.”
“But before we go celebrate, there’s something we must do. It’s Friday.”
She whimpered slightly.
“Now, don’t get yourself into trouble,” he said. “We’re not going to let this wonderful news make us miss your weekly reinforcement, sweetheart. We’ll be out at the club soon, but for now we need to continue with your training…unless you’d rather call it off and part ways. That would only leave you trying in vain to find an equally productive way to serve your company and the Lord.”
Her eyes widened and started to tear up. Her eyebrows knitted together and her mouth worked, silently trying to make words. Of course she didn’t want to call it off. She was much too far along for that. Imagining life without his guidance and instruction at this point would have been like imagining life without bones.
“No, sir. I don’t want to …” She winced. “…To call it off, sir.”
She opened the document for both of them and they each looked at their own EI copy. “Good, good,” he said. “Now, let’s see. How far back had we worked last time?”
“I believe it was the second Friday in June before my fifth-grade year, sir.”
He nodded, looking at the next bolded item on the list of all the Fridays of her short life. More than half were now checked off.
Much too far along for her to turn back. There’s no choice but to go deeper. Keiko can still be dangerous. Departure after Departure, always watching, always scheming, working to pry you loose, to separate you from the company no matter how tightly you cling. Keiko will always be dangerous. Must go ever deeper with this one. Ever deeper.
“Yes, that’s right,” he said. “That’s age ten, I believe. Let’s begin.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, Keiko, I want you to remember the last time we trained you this way, last week. Remember that you drifted down, down, down for me, and pathway amplification amplified that sinking feeling hundreds of times over, plunging deep, deep into the center of your mind. I asked you to tell me when you’d relaxed as far as you could, and we decided then that we’d call that feeling your basement, didn’t we? We set it up so that when I said “Go to your basement,” you would automatically drift down to that same place in your mind, and have that same sleepy feeling like you have when you’re all the way down for me, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s where we should be now, Keiko. Go to your basement, feeling yourself sink all the way down, deep inside the center of your mind. Feel how open and receptive you are to me, your Amelix superior, now. Let your reconditioning guide you down, obeying my commands, drifting down as deep as you can, feeling compelled to drift deep, deep down, all the way down, for me now. And you know that you will automatically obey me when I say to go deeper still, let your mind blossom even more broadly, open it wider and wider for me to pollinate, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go deeper still, now, Keiko. Deeper and deeper and even more open to me than you’ve ever been. Feel the pathway amplification unwinding the coils of your mind, with every bit of suggestibility you discover compounding itself, making yourself a blank slate for me. I bet you’re such a good girl that you just love to make me happy, don’t you? You love to do whatever I want, because it feels so good to please me.”
“Yes, sir. It feels so good to please you.”
“You know what would please me right now? Writing on that blank slate for you. I know you love to make me happy, so I’m sure you’ll enjoy having me share some guidance with you there. I bet it will feel so, so good to let me do that.”
There was a slight pause. Kessler grinned to himself, imagining old-fashioned gears turning inside the girl, gears he had installed, himself.
“Yes, sir.”
“Feel me writing on it now. I’m entering code, there, aren’t I? Computer code that says you will always submit to my will. You will always need me to be your most important authority figure in your service to God and Amelix. Do you feel that now, Keiko? That computer code, tweaking your program?”
Another pause.
“Yes, sir.”
“Now let’s make some memories, dear. I want you to go back to the first Friday in June, before your fifth-grade year. Let’s bring up in our EIs the pictures and clips from when you were that age.”
Video clips and pictures flitted in and out, following a program he’d had her set up for them both, flashing through all Keiko’s recorded memorabilia relating to the date and time in question. Keiko had grown up inside Amelix so literally every moment of her life had been captured by cameras and catalogued, and it was easy to format a high-speed review of what she’d been experiencing at any point in time. The process of reassembling the targeted Friday took only a few seconds, but it plugged them both completely into the mindset of being right there together. “I want you to think about your life at that time.
“Let the experience build and build, detail after detail in your mind, until everything is perfect and you accept completely that today, right now as we are talking, is the first Friday in June before your fifth-grade year. Signal to me that you are experiencing the world as that proud young student, exactly as she was then, by opening your eyes and saying, ‘I’m here, sir.’”
Another pause. This one was longer, and that was good. It meant more details were being assembled and the new memory would mesh better with her existing ones.
“I’m here, sir.”
Her eyes were open, softer and flatter-looking now, having lost the alluring spark of a healthy and ambitious twenty-five year-old salarywoman and taken on a new, irresistible innocence. She beamed at him.
“Here we are, Keiko, on the second Friday in June before your fifth-grade year. You and I are looking at each other now, and I notice from the pins on your uniform that you are in the top twenty percent of your class academically, in the top ten percent for physical fitness, and in the top five percent for dedication. You must be a proud young student.”
“I am a young student, sir,” she said. She pursed her lips and her eyes turned slightly downward.”
“Not proud?” he asked.
“I think perhaps the top one percent are proud, sir.”<
br />
“Ah. But aren’t you growing up in God’s chosen corporation, Keiko? Because that would be something to be proud of, wouldn’t it?”
She smiled again. “Yes, it would, sir. I am a proud young student, sir, you’re right!”
“Do you know who I am, young lady?” he asked, preparing yet again to introduce himself. These sessions went backward in time, regressing week by week to younger “ages” and a younger version of Keiko who wouldn’t remember anything from the previous times. He always had to reintroduce himself to the progressively younger versions, who hadn’t yet “met” him. It was a painstaking process, but Keiko was dangerous. He had to be absolutely sure with this one.
“Yes, sir.” Her broad smile seemed naturally excited rather than the product of amplified pathways. “You’re Dr. Kessler, and you decide things for me and take care of me. You’re my permanent authority figure, sir, like Amelix. You’re my connection to Amelix, my supervisor, and the bridge between me and the Lord.”
His heart jumped.
She shouldn’t remember that!
The illusion he’d established last time had featured a Keiko a week older than this one; she shouldn’t know anything about him at this age, a week younger. Last week, like all the weeks before, she’d still needed an introduction. This was the day he’d been working toward! His authority was becoming completely entwined with her own identity.
“That’s right, Keiko! What an impressive young lady you are. Now tell me, how long will I be your permanent authority figure?”
She giggled. “That’s silly. Permanent means forever. You’ll always be my permanent authority figure, Dr. Kessler, sir. You’ll always decide things for me and take care of me, sir.”
“Wow! You are certainly a smart girl, Keiko, but can you tell me this: How long have I been your permanent authority figure? How long have you needed me to decide things for you, take care of you, and tell you what to do?”
The Book of Wanda, Volume Two of the Seventeen Trilogy Page 19