by Sean Platt
Timothy was always too timid. He said he wanted to take his time, to find the right way to make his big changes. But it sounded to Wallace like cowardice, a craving for steak without killing the cow.
“You’ll never ding the universe if you’re unwilling to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. This is how change gets made.”
“Not for me.” And Timothy walked away, leaving Wallace to decide whether greed or his partner mattered more — the means or the inevitable ends.
Chapter 2
The Change
“How are you feeling?” the counselor asked Ephraim.
He looked around the small room, wondering if he should respond with sarcasm. How did she think he felt? He wasn’t handcuffed to the chair and no bars were visible, but the door was locked, and the small window was made of reinforced glass. He’d shit in a stainless steel toilet this morning while his cellmate watched too closely. Oh yes. He felt peachy.
“Same as last week,” he said instead.
The counselor — she’d introduced herself as Ms. White — scribbled on a paper pad. Interesting. Traditionally, if an inmate was going to use an ordinary object as a weapon, a pen was much better than a tablet. Was the prison system low on funds? Or was this a nod to Ephraim’s last victim’s death-by-tablet?
“Have you had any disorientation?”
“You mean the kind that comes from being in jail, trying to avoid a raping?”
“When you were brought in, you claimed you were suffering from paranoia. Have you felt paranoia?”
“Every time I drop the soap.”
“Delusions? Hallucinations?”
“I’m not sure. How’s my petition for transfer to a mental institution?”
“It was rejected again, Mr. Todd. I told you that last time.”
“I forgot. Because I’m crazy. Because I have all this disorientation, delusions, and hallucinations.”
“And you can’t petition again for a while. I told you that last time, too.”
“Are you seriously telling me that even if I killed you and shit on your corpse, claiming the devil made me do it, they wouldn’t take me to a nuthouse?”
Ms. White looked down and made a note. She was old. Ephraim wondered if she was into the porn game shows that were so popular today.
She looked back up.
“With your review rejected twice, there isn’t a strict need to continue our sessions. Would you prefer to stop them?”
Ephraim thought. The clear answer was no. Every minute he was meeting with a counselor was one where he didn’t need to fear a shiv in the back. He’d thought that prison might be safer than living on the outside, but that hadn’t been the case. People had as little patience with him inside as out.
Everybody resented the guy who’d crapped down the beloved Eden’s throat, and Ephraim had done so twice. First, he’d burned the archipelago to the ground — and then he’d returned to disturb Wallace Connolly and kill his son before reconstruction could be completed. What an asshole.
“No,” he said. “I don’t want to stop.”
“Because it seems like you don’t want my help. You only want to make jokes.”
“I only joke because I’m uncomfortable.”
“So, then. You’re uncomfortable.”
“And afraid.”
“Of what?”
“The other prisoners. Of being here forever and never getting out.”
“What about your paranoia?”
Ephraim leaned back, exhaled, tried to reset. “It’s gone.”
“Gone?”
Ephraim nodded. “Ever since my MyLife was removed.”
“Most long-term MyLife users who have their implant removed report a sense of immediate loneliness and profound isolation.”
If insanity wouldn’t get Ephraim a ticket out of here, then he didn’t want to sound nuts. Instead of telling Ms. White that his MyLife had been talking to him and making him confused and paranoid, he shrugged.
“Do you still question your reality?”
“My reality is all too real these days.”
Another note on the pad. “Have you had any visitors?”
“Who would visit me?” Ephraim asked.
“Family. Friends.”
“I don’t have any. My mom and I don’t talk. It turns out I never had any siblings other than Jonathan, and he’s on Eden. And what friends do I have?”
“Ms. Roberson?”
Ephraim laughed. “If Fiona could move her arms, she’d have busted in and wrung my neck by now.”
“You’ve talked a lot about Ms. Norris.”
Ephraim sighed. If Wood hadn’t believed most of Ephraim’s story, the counselor certainly didn’t. She knew that he claimed there were two Sophie Norrises — an almost-fifty-year-old one in LA who wouldn’t talk to him anymore and a clone in her twenties who no one could find. Maybe Agaléga had her, but no one was talking.
He shook his head.
“You know,” the counselor said, crossing her legs and tapping her pen on one knee, “there is a place that people in your situation can turn to.”
At first, Ephraim didn’t know what she was talking about. Then his eyes flicked to her wrinkled hand, to the web of flesh between her index finger and thumb. And of-fucking-course there was the tattooed symbol of The Change. Great.
Ephraim grunted, not trusting himself to commit in one direction or the other. Some of these people could be ordinary folks, no different from semi-practicing Catholics or Protestants. Others were zealots who reinforced the religion’s reputation as a cult.
Ephraim was locked in a room with Ms. White, so he’d better play it as subtly as she’d allow. Membership was in the tens of millions. Rumor had it that The Change occupied powerful positions all over the world, planted as secret envoys like the Illuminati.
“Have you spoken to Papa Friesh?” she asked.
“I don’t know him, so no.”
But she hadn’t meant it literally, and his answer had been the one that always prolonged the discussion. Dammit.
“You don’t need to know Papa Friesh personally to speak to him.”
Right. Praying. Because all the most reputable religions had living gods at their head, wandering around in their city-sized mansions.
“Oh.”
“He’s there whenever you need him.”
Ephraim looked away.
“Are you reluctant to become a believer? Even in your situation, when everything seems lost?”
How was he going to get out of this? Ephraim didn’t want to start something. Even normal religions made him uncomfortable. Cults that were slowly claiming the nation seemed exponentially worse.
But after a few tense seconds, Ms. White let it go. She looked back at her pad and scribbled another note.
“What else is on your mind these days, Mr. Todd?”
Ephraim looked into her eyes for signs of zealotry. Was this a trap to get him discussing God from a different direction, or was it a truly new topic?
“I wonder a lot about Eden.”
“How so?”
“Jonathan and …” He paused, not wanting to say “the real Ephraim” for fear of sounding crazy. “One of his right-hand guys was on the island when they took me away. The guy was cuffed, but I never heard what happened to him. So I wonder. I was brought back alone, but did anyone else come back separately? Was anyone else arrested at the same time?”
“It’s a bit beyond my understanding, but seeing as it was Mauritius border patrol who arrested you.”
“I know. Extradition and all that. But then what? Was Eph—” Goddammit. “That other guy ever sent back to the States?”
“That’s not something I’m supposed to discuss with you.”
“But what about Eden? I mean, it’s operating, isn’t it? The commercials—”
“Mr. Todd, I’m not supposed to—”
He exhaled heavily. “You’re a person, not just a prison shrink. You walk around out there every day, seeing the things that
I can’t see in here. You get the world’s vibe. So that’s all I’m asking. I don’t need for you to break confidentiality or tell me things that you shouldn’t. This question isn’t from inmate to counselor. It’s from Ephraim to …”
Dammit, he didn’t know her first name.
After a long silence, she finally uncrossed her legs then set her pad and pen aside. “Okay. As a citizen, outside of my job, I’ve noticed the vibe you mention.”
“And is it …?”
“It’s not good. The world has become a vile place, ruled by ungodly values and filled with devilish forms of entertainment. For many people — especially those who have not yet embraced the light of Papa and The Change — Eden was the one thing they held on to. Even if most people could never visit the island, they came to see it as a false Heaven. Wallace Connolly is their blasphemous savior. You know how it was and still is. Think about it, Mr. Todd. Where can you go without noticing Eden’s influence? It’s not just the commercials and the way people play them on a loop just to feel their comforting presence. The way Eden has braided itself with the zeitgeist is both genius and insidious, from event sponsorships to—”
“And now?”
“Now?” Ms. White smirked. “You crucified their god, Ephraim.”
“Wallace has been dead for years.”
“Not Wallace. Not the god himself. No, Ephraim. You killed his son. Recognize the symbolism?”
“It can’t be as bad as that.”
“People hate you. They want you dead.”
“What about you? Do you want me dead?”
“Call me crazy, but I believe you can be saved.”
He let that go. “What’s happening on Eden? Who’s in charge?” Then Ephraim remembered a necessary elaboration. “I mean, other than Connolly’s ghost.”
“I don’t know.”
“Is my brother there?”
“I know nothing about your brother.”
“But you know that Mauritius Border Patrol came to arrest me, right? What happened next? Is Eden under siege? Director Wood told me that—”
“You don’t need to worry about GEM,” she interrupted.
That was unexpected. Ephraim stopped, then slowly said, “Why?”
Ms. White became flustered. She cleared her throat. “Because you’re in the prison system. They have no official power here.”
“Has Wood been trying to get in here? Does he want to talk?”
“I don’t know.”
“Has GEM gone to Eden? Supposedly they were working with the people on Agaléga to—”
“I don’t know,” she repeated.
“But it’s running. Eden is operational.”
“It seems to be.”
“If GEM has gone to occupy it, to freeze or monitor operations, then they must have found proof that what I told them was true! About the clones and—”
“I’m sorry, but I just don’t know.”
Ephraim’s shoulders drooped, his eyes on the floor.
Chair legs squeaked. Looking down, Ephraim heard the thick clack of Ms. White’s low heels as she approached him. A hand settled on his back.
“If you’re going to heal, you’ll need to stop worrying about Eden and GEM, so you can start thinking about yourself.”
Ephraim shook his head. There wasn’t any point.
Why think about himself? He barely mattered; Ephraim knew that now better than ever before. He was at the start of a what felt like an endless sentence, with parole years away.
“The good news,” she said, her hand still on his back, “is that it’s almost over for you.”
Ephraim blinked at the floor.
He heard more clacking of sensible heels.
Then a lock. The swing of a door.
By the time he looked up again, Ms. White was gone. But there was someone else.
It wasn’t a visitor.
It wasn’t a counselor.
And it wasn’t a guard.
“Mr. Todd?” said the man in the doorway.
He was wearing a suit. There was a subtle bulge where his left arm met his body, unmistakably a firearm.
“I’ll need you to come with me. Immediately.”
Chapter 3
A Well Mannered Shove
“We’re leaving?”
“Yes, sir,” said the man in the suit, holding Ephraim’s arm in a polite but unrelenting grip. “Please keep moving, sir.”
“But …”
There wasn’t more to say. They’d just passed their second clutch of guards. Doors were open, the guards ignoring or perhaps even oblivious. They weren’t paying any attention, almost as if Ephraim and his escort were ghosts.
Ephraim turned his head as they passed the visitor’s area, down the long beige hall to reception. More doors. More guards. Seconds later he was looking back. A fat sergeant manned a desk, paying no attention to the men waltzing out sans paperwork and permission. Ephraim had done his intake at that desk. It was where he’d left his wallet, his watch, and the device that once lived behind his eye.
“This way, Mr. Todd.”
“Who are you?”
“It’s fine. The car is over here.”
“Car?”
“Be glad they didn’t put you in Riker’s. I imagine you’ve had your fill of boats.”
They were outside. Ephraim couldn’t stop looking back, now watching the front doors of the Queensboro Correctional Facility fade like a bad memory.
He looked up and around, suddenly and inexplicably agoraphobic. He’d been inside for too long already, institutionalized in a blink. He wasn’t used to skies wider than those he saw in the yard, surrounded by towers and fences. Manhattan loomed to the west, but the world was an ashy gray.
“But … the jail …”
Ephraim resisted. He turned toward the building, forcing his escort to grip his prisoner’s jumpsuit. “Where are we going?”
“Right here, sir.” Indicating a long, black Paramount. Worth three hundred thousand credits if it was worth a nickel. The last automobile line to be made fully electric because Paramount owners could afford to give zero fucks, about the environment or anything else.
“No, I mean, are you letting me go? I’m supposed to …”
But what? What was he supposed to? He didn’t have the right questions because he was grasping for prerequisites.
“Watch your head, Mr. Todd.”
A man wearing a black suit and a chauffeur’s cap stood beside the open door of the car. From twenty feet away, Ephraim had been able to see the sparkle of the bar along the Paramount’s far wall. Jeeves was gesturing for him to enter and the man with the gun under his jacket was gently pushing on Ephraim’s back like a cop leading a suspect into his cruiser.
But he’d already been arrested.
“Who the hell are you people?”
“Time is short,” the man said. “I must insist.”
Ephraim looked up at the chauffeur for help. He wanted to say: This guy is abducting me from my comfortable jail cell. But the chauffeur just smiled and nodded, holding the door as if it might spring closed.
Ephraim grabbed the door frame once his ass was already mostly inside, suddenly afraid that the door would close and lop off his hand like a falling guillotine.
“Wait a minute!” he blurted. “What the fuck is going on here?”
“It’s handled, sir.”
“What is handled?”
“It will be explained shortly.”
“You’ll explain shortly?”
“Watch your head. It’s a low entry.”
And the chauffeur, now joining forces with the armed escort, put his hand on Ephraim’s other shoulder and gave him a well-mannered shove.
“It’s not far, Mr. Todd,” said the escort.
Then Ephraim was resting against plush leather. The door slammed.
And the doors locked.
There were noises outside, and then the divider lowered a few inches.
He saw the eyes of his escort up
front, riding shotgun. Apparently, Ephraim had the pimp’s suite in the Paramount all to himself.
“Anything we can get for you, Mr. Todd?”
“How about a fucking explanat—!”
But the divider was already closed.
Chapter 4
For Protection
There was a GPS screen in the back seat, beside a second bar filled with sparkling crystal decanters. Ephraim had already opened and sniffed two. One might be brandy. The other was whiskey.
The GPS showed a map and a blue line, presumably indicating their trip. If this was a blind abduction, then his abductors sucked. Because he knew where they were going, down to the address.
On one end of the blue line, Queensboro Correctional Facility. On the other end, a Long Island area labeled as Old Westbury. According to the display, they had 35 minutes remaining.
He couldn’t lower the divider, but there was a button beside its dead controls labeled INTERCOM. Ephraim pushed it.
“Yes, Mr. Todd?”
“Who are you people? Where are we going?”
“Somewhere better.”
“And you are …?”
“Doing well, sir. Thank you.”
“How can you take me out of prison without, I don’t know, signing me out or something?”
“Would you like to go back?”
“Yes. Take me back.”
The man laughed.
“I want some answers,” Ephraim said.
“Like?”
“I asked you who you are.”
“My name is Lucas.”
“And?”
“And Leslie.” Then, a tad defensively, “It’s a man’s name, too.”
“Who do you work for?”
“Riley.”
“I mean—” Ephraim said, as confused as he was frustrated.
“The trip will pass more quickly if you’d care to watch a program, Mr. Todd,” said Lucas-with-the-gun. “We have a full juke. Do you see the remote, there in the pocket on the door?”
Ephraim looked. “Yes, but—”
“Very good sir.”
A static click. The connection was closed.
Ephraim pressed the intercom button again.
“Yes, Mr. Todd?”
“Where are we going?”