The Book of Wanda, Volume Two of the Seventeen Trilogy

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The Book of Wanda, Volume Two of the Seventeen Trilogy Page 21

by Mark D. Diehl


  Her eyes were half-closed. She nodded enthusiastically, but it took a couple of breaths before she answered. “Yes, sir.”

  “Is this getting nice and wet for me?”

  “Always, sir. But much more now, sir.”

  “You know how much I enjoy making you wet.”

  Her lips pursed together in a delicious grimace. “And you know, sir, that you have trained me so well that I truly feel your pleasure as my own.”

  He slowed his hand but didn’t yet take it away. “I do know that, yes.”

  That was enough for now, though she was such an enjoyable plaything it was hard for him to stop. He removed his hand, and placed it back on her knee, where he continued stroking up and down gently with his thumb and two fingers. She drew several jealous glances from the administrators seated nearby, though he was sure none of them could hear her wonderfully frustrated little mewling sounds. The executive shuttle produced its own ambient white noise to ensure the comfort and discretion of its passengers.

  “Our friend Eric Basali is doing amazing work now that he’s Accepted,” Kessler said. “He suggested using the Regulations Department’s electronic contact with clients to push Amelix-friendly subliminals. It’s funny that he’ll never know we already have the wording for it, from our translations of all his early, unguided ranting. Remember when you first brought him to my attention and I told you he might actually be doing the Lord’s work all along?”

  “Yes, sir. I remember, Dr. Kessler. Is that why the preconditioning program was approved so quickly, because we already had the wording for the subliminal messages?”

  “That, and the fact that working in Corporate Regulations means I know how to make things happen.” He smiled. “Our studies with the calls were so promising that we’ve already been authorized to make preconditioning automatic on every call coming into Regulations. We’re even working on ways to incorporate the subliminals into the room’s ambient sound so they’ll be able to influence the entire department all day long. But there’s even better news.” Kessler flagged a page and looked her in the eye to load it.

  “We won our case, dear!” he said. “My arguments persuaded the Board to force the Retreat to release all their subliminals to us for the Basali project!”

  Keiko’s eyes widened. “Really, sir? Oh, how wonderful! It was that provision in two-thirty sub q that did it, I’m sure.”

  He had only told her a few details of the case. For her work she didn’t need to know much about it, and there were always much more interesting activities to occupy their time together. Still, it had come up on occasion, whenever he’d been obsessed with something going on. Big issues like two-thirty sub q had intruded into their private time more than once.

  “It was exactly the two-thirty sub q provision, cutie,” Kessler said, gently stroking her hair.

  “So the Board found against the Medical Doctor, sir?”

  “Well, not precisely. That would engender a dangerously direct confrontation. Remember, the Retreat was the other party in this dispute, not the Medical Doctor herself. They tried to argue that because they worked with the guidance of the Amelix Medical Doctor, all reconditioning was medical and beyond our jurisdiction. The Board agreed with us, though, finding that subsection q was an exception to the rule that Medical Doctors have absolute authority over individual bodies. Because supervising managers have authority to send workers for involuntary reconditioning under employment contracts, the Board found that Medical Doctors must share authority with the Board over individual minds.

  “We phrased it that way to demonstrate that a win for us is a win for the Board itself, because the Board kept as much authority over the employees as possible, and the Board took it! This is an unimaginably huge win, and you were a significant part of it, Keiko! I’m proud of you. We have the mantras you and I put together, and we’ve just gained access to all that subliminal tech. Now Regulations has taken the lead in reconditioning—oops, that’s preconditioning, now—while the Retreat will gradually become obsolete.”

  Keiko closed her eyes and her face went slack. “Mmm. It feels so good to think of all those Departures from that department, sir, of how many resources we’ve saved Amelix.”

  “Yes,” he said. “It makes you excited, doesn’t it? Maybe the most excited you’ve ever been?” He stroked the inside of her thigh.

  She melted into the seat. “Oh, yes, sir,” she said breathily. “And it’s even up for an Innovation Award. It’s so amazing how you got preconditioning in line for it so fast, sir.” Her eyes narrowed further as she licked her lips.

  He smiled. Keiko appreciated his brilliance when so many others couldn’t even see it. Though, thinking on it, he supposed much of what he did would be less effective if more people understood it. “It was simple, really. Everyone accepts the plodding pace at which approval happens because they don’t understand you can switch the order around. Instead of waiting for the project to be approved, and then implemented, and then waiting further for it to prove itself over the long term, I wrote to my superiors at the first sign of experimental success, humbly asking them to nominate the project for an IA before anyone knew about it at all. Then as it went up through the chain of command, the first thing anyone heard about it was that it was worthy of consideration for an award.”

  She straightened. Her eyes narrowed, losing the haze they’d had. “But at that time it wasn’t even an official project, sir.”

  “That’s right. So, by the time the request came up, they were already excited by the development. To a one, they just assumed the delay was some kind of minor glitch.” He smiled.

  Her head quivered, like shaking “no” but faster. “But, Dr. Kessler, sir, that would be intentional misleading of Amelix superiors! If that were allowed…it could lead to a breakdown of the entire hierarchy. It’s a serious threat, sir.”

  The smile stayed frozen on Kessler’s face, but a spark seemed to creep slowly up his spine. He tensed his torso, willing it away before it reached his head and made him panic. He had foolishly assumed that training her so deeply would allow her to see that his way was always the Lord’s way. Instead she was leaping at the opportunity to vilify him as an enemy of the organization.

  This was dangerous. She was dangerous. There was no way to know what she might do, about this issue or any other. He should never have let her see so much.

  “Keiko, you know that my work is the Lord’s work. You’ve known that all your life; it has always been true. God speaks through leaders, and in its wisdom Amelix has given you to me, so that I may be the rudder for your ship, keeping you on course even in strong winds. Everything I do, with you and without you, is in furtherance of Amelix needs and goals!”

  “But, sir, misleading the corporation is immoral.” Her face twitched as if it was trying to decide which way to contort. Her Golden complexion turned ashen. “It is gravely wicked, Dr. Kessler, sir. Amelix in its wisdom gives us our structure and our superiors. Misleading them in any way is substituting our judgment for theirs.”

  “In this case it is still their judgment,” he snapped. “I’m just ensuring they see it in the best light and have the least incentive to reject it out of hand. You and I both know that this project is key for ensuring that Amelix continues to deepen its influence and streamline employee compliance. We are duty bound to Amelix and to God to do whatever is in our power to further the interests of this corporation, and that is what I have done here. Streamlining my way through the bureaucracy is in furtherance of that objective.”

  Her red eyes welled with tears. Her lower lip quivered and her voice rose in pitch. “Power comes from God, Dr. Kessler. It goes from God, to Amelix, to Walt Zytem, and from him, the structure provides us with the power we need to do the Lord’s work. Our power is divine, sir, and so is the power of the executives the company places above us.” Her chest heaved in a sob that sent tears raining to the front of her uniform. “Misleading our superiors is lying to God, Dr. Kessler.”

  “Hu
man events are never as linear as people imagine,” he said. “The order of things gets switched around from time to time. Societies have built themselves to great heights and then collapsed or been bombed back to the Stone Age, over and over throughout history, and yet we imagine our progress is a straight line from the caves to Heaven.”

  He looked at his hands. They were noticeably the pinkish yellow of Golden fear. “And what do you suppose you’re doing here, Ms. Piccola? Questioning the judgment and even the loyalty of your one true supervisor.”

  She stared a moment with her lips pursed and her eyes closed.

  “Go to your basement,” he said. “I am your superior, now and always, given to you by God. I am Amelix, Amelix is me, and you must do as I say. Now the bottom of the elevator shaft…now all the way down the mine. Open to me fully, bloom for me, Keiko. Now we go all the way, down, down, down, to your special room at the very center of your being. Deep, deep, deep down; feel that pathway amplification let you follow my words down, down, down to the deepest part of you.”

  The girl slumped against him, seemingly comatose, but she managed a flat, “Yes, sir.”

  “Good, good. Now in that special room I want you to picture a box mounted on the wall. It’s a fuse box, where all your nerves are routed. Open it up.”

  Her nose wrinkled and her mouth opened partway, as if she were about to protest. “You’re a good girl, Keiko. You must obey me, when I am Amelix and Amelix is me, isn’t that right?” As Kessler watched, her pathway amplification kicked in, changing her impulse to refuse into realization that she was resisting her most important superior. A look of horror flashed across her face as was instantly replaced with the familiar Accepted forced serenity. “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “Good. Now open the box and look inside. You will see wires for all kinds of functions. Some are hardwired, untouchable, like your impulse to breathe and the beating of your heart. There will be many that deal with consciousness and how you think; you’ll recognize those because they have a lot of new wiring from your reconditioning process. There will even be some wiring that you and I have done together. Do you see all those different wires, Keiko?”

  Her blank eyes pointed this way and that, taking in details in the empty space between them. “Yes, sir,” she said finally. Her voice had lost its edge, now carrying only subtle, flat tones of resignation and defeat.

  “Good. Now those are good wires. God’s design gave you to Amelix and me to make you better, and we put those good wires there. They come from the company, installed by the Lord’s grace, either by the Retreat or by me. They help you serve Amelix. As you familiarize yourself with the wiring, note that by remembering certain feelings you can cause the wires involved to glow. When you think of serving Amelix through your service to me, you get all warm and tingly, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  No hesitation.

  Good.

  “Now think of that warm, tingly feeling, and you’ll see those good, good wires start to glow.”

  “Yes, sir. I see them. Good wires.”

  “Yes. Those wires must always stay, must always function just as they are. But there are other wires that are malfunctioning, making you dangerous to good Amelix workers and even to your superiors. Remember the feeling you get when you feel you’ve caught someone doing something, and your mind starts creating stories and connecting them to the observed facts, changing the stories to fit the facts until you feel you’ve figured it out. You feel power, and a sense of great accomplishment when you figure out those stories, those ways to turn in workers, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But in this you malfunction, don’t you?”

  She hesitated.

  “You wanted to turn in poor Eric Basali, and in the end we showed his words were the Lord’s words the whole time. Had he Departed, we wouldn’t have had the insight to precondition all workers all the time, would we?”

  The long pause stretched on.

  “No, sir.”

  “See all those wires that glow whenever you try to put observations into stories. They make you dangerous to Amelix, Keiko, because you malfunction. You no longer need the ability to compile facts into stories. Instead you need only to function like a doctor, or a synthesizer, or a Federal Angel. You see a fact, and follow the decision tree to your required action, if any. The stories are just the result of wild wires sprouting up where they shouldn’t.”

  Her eyebrows sunk downward and her eyelids pushed tighter closed in a perfect expression of shame. Her lips tightened and quivered as if she might cry.

  “Yes, sir. I malfunctioned. Wild wires. Don’t need to make up stories.”

  “Now pull out those wild wires, Keiko. You won’t be needing them ever again.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Amelix

  Keiko knew this was the Amelix building. She had been told that it was, and she had an excellent memory for what she was told.

  Dr. Chelsea was talking. Keiko listened in case something was about herself.

  “Dr. Fauzi,” she said. “Yes, that’s right. I remember now. Amelix labs in…was it Singapore?”

  There was a pause in the conversation. Keiko did not know why. Then Dr. Chelsea began speaking again.

  “Yes, you got them from me. I am indeed aware that you did not request them.”

  Silence again. Keiko did not wonder why Dr. Chelsea had stopped talking. Keiko did not wonder about anything at all. Dr. Chelsea began talking again.

  “I’m sure you understand that there are certain activities that Amelix needs to have handled with absolute discretion. All I can tell you at this point is that I have spoken directly with Dr. Zytem himself about this project, and I am following direction from obvious and absolute superiors. Just ensure the rats are kept on a separate air supply hyper-filtered below zero-point-zero-one microns in both directions, and await further instructions. Thank you for your call. Goodbye.”

  Dr. Chelsea stopped talking again.

  This new lab was off limits to everyone, and sealed behind self-darkening electroplexi. Only Dr. Chelsea knew what went on here. Keiko had special permission to come and go from here. Dr. Chelsea said it was because she was a special kind of thinker and she couldn’t hurt anything. This room was full of hundreds and hundreds of rats in hyper-filtered cages, most containing one nursing mother rat and a whole litter of babies. Keiko helped here, now. She cleaned cages, fed rats, and sent rats to other Amelix offices around the world via interoffice mail.

  Dr. Chelsea said that Dr. Walt Zytem had given Dr. Kessler and his possessions to Dr. Chelsea, and that now Keiko was Dr. Chelsea’s possession. Dr. Chelsea said that soon Keiko would be serving her in every possible way.

  Keiko could not imagine.

  10

  Edge of the Zone

  Furius ducked around a corner, shoving the gun back out to shoot randomly in the direction of the men chasing him. Return fire ricocheted between the buildings, echoing and showering him with bits of brick. He fired several more times and then took off running again.

  No Roman would run away from a battle that was his duty to the Republic, but Furius no longer had any idea what his duty might be. It was clear enough now that his purpose was not to start a new legion.

  Now, having been forced out of the refinery, he was back to being hunted and chased by these wretched Saved. Three sets of footsteps were running up fast.

  He had reached an area that was definitely not the Zone. Massive windowless structures similar to the beetle buildings of the Central Business District squatted here.

  Mr. B’s experiences and memories indicated that all corporate properties should be avoided. He ran toward them anyway. If the place was really so dangerous, maybe his pursuers would give up rather than follow him.

  The three appeared again behind him as he ran. His guns and an apparently pointless kilo of Pink Shit shifted and bounced in his big coat pockets.

  One shot sounded behind him, missing Furius but
striking the building. Three or four guns mounted on the building’s legs whirred and fired simultaneously. They rotated toward Furius but then snapped back as another man behind him fired. The auto guns dropped the shooter and aimed again at Furius, firing this time, but only one shot hit him as the others passed harmlessly through his flapping red cloak. He stumbled, dropping the weapon in his hand and crying out. That shot had gone straight in through his shoulder and out his ribcage, which would have been certain death in Ancient Rome. Here in Iowa, though, they had astounding medications and treatments. Maybe he still had a chance.

  There was one more man behind him, but the shooting had stopped. Momentum carried Furius up to the only opening in the building’s rounded exterior, a set of thick transparent bioplexi doors, which, to his astonishment, slid open. He coughed and shuddered. A silent, insect-like movement near the ceiling drew his eye; another automatic gun aiming at him. Furius kept his hands empty and in plain sight.

  An audio file of a gentle electronic male voice began playing.

  “Welcome, visitor, to the Celarwil-Dain Brain Trust. Please state the name of the patient you wish to visit in order to begin.” Furius coughed again.

  “I’m sorry,” the voice said. “Please restate the name of the person you would like to visit today.”

  Brain Trust! That was where they hooked up dead people to computers to continue using their brains. This place had to have lots of drugs and other medical technology! He just needed a name to get inside. What were family names of this time and place, popular names, names sure to be here? He dug around in B’s memory.

  “Adams,” he said, wheezing.

  An entire wall became a screen and the specks on it became written language when he got closer. Mr. B. had known how to read, and so Furius now did, too. The entire wall was filled with names in almost microscopic type.

  “On this screen are displayed some of the Celarwil-Dain Brain Trust patients named Adams. Please select the one you are here to visit.”

 

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