The Liedeck Revolution Book #2: Endgame

by Jim Stark

  "Netlink with Patriot Security office at the Whiteside estate, north of Quyon, Netsite is on file,” she ordered.

  "Inspector Bird,” said a surprisingly old face on her tiny screen. “You're ... Captain Petrosian?” he asked.

  Who the hell do you think? she didn't say—her I.D. was written on the man's screen, after all. “Yes,” she said politely. “I'm on my way to LieDeck-verify Victor Helliwell at the lodge. I'll be at the manor gate in about fifteen minutes. Mr. Helliwell is not to be told that I'm coming."

  "One moment please,” said the Patriot Inspector as he killed the audio-visual export feed from his MIU.

  I hate it when they do that, thought Lilly. There should be an “anti-hold” function on these things. She would have overridden the “hold” if she'd been at an MIU, but Sniffers were limited in this way.

  The sun was close to setting in the southwest, behind a heavily overcast sky, and the thinning light didn't help Lilly's effort to adapt to driving in these demanding conditions. A transport truck overtook her, and passed at a speed that seemed clearly unsafe. Grains of sand—what seemed like bits of gravel—were picked up by his tires, and Lilly suffered a severe jolt of adrenalin as the unintended projectiles noisily pelted her new car. “God damn asshole,” she muttered as she lifted her foot off the gas pedal and fought with the steering wheel to counter the slight wavering caused by the truck's white, swirling wake.

  There wasn't much more than a light breeze outside, but diaphanous waves of loose crystals blew across the highway, shifting slowly in front of her. The wispy snow also billowed up behind the car, making it impossible to see anything in the rearview mirror. The overall effect was strangely hypnotic, and she wondered whimsically if this was the same planet she'd been living on for the last thirty years. Where's global warming when I need it?

  In the dull gray distance she could see a single high-beam headlight approaching ... and bouncing around rather a lot, she worried. Moreover, the light seemed to be to the right of the road, to her right. She backed off the gas pedal again, unsure of what she was really seeing. Seconds later, when the light got closer, she realized it was a snowmobiler who was barreling up the road shoulder on her side, against oncoming traffic. The driver seemed oblivious to any danger as they passed within a few feet of each other—he didn't seem to slow down at all. “Asshole number two,” she snapped.

  "I beg your pardon?!” said a new voice from the dashboard-mounted Sniffer.

  Lilly glanced over and recognized Michael Whiteside, Julia's brother, the president of Whiteside Tech. “Not you, Mr. Whiteside,” said Lilly, with an awkward laugh. “Sorry, I was just complaining to the cosmos about a snowmobiler that roared by me on my side, on the shoulder."

  "I'd appreciate it if you could stop off at the house for a few minutes before you drive on to the lodge,” said Michael, a bit formally. “There's a few—"

  "Sorry again,” said Lilly. “I shouldn't be out there for more than an hour. With your permission, I'd like to suggest—"

  "On your way back from the lodge, then,” interrupted Michael.

  "Of course,” she said. “I should—"

  "Thank you,” Michael cut in. “Net, down, now."

  He's used to getting his own way, Lilly said to herself. I wonder how his son Randy is doing with his putting? She wished she were out on the links in Florida, with “good old Ed."

  Chapter 20

  REALITY COORDINATES

  Monday, February 14, 2033—5:00 p.m.

  Victor Helliwell had lost his midday virtual chess game with Noel, his cook, a game he had munched on as he lunched, alone. The score to date—they had played a game almost every day since the Revolution—was 3,301 games to 2,978, in Victor's favor. He'll never catch up to me now, Victor thought.

  He couldn't remember what he'd done after that game, other than sleep. Now, he stood at the large picture window on the upper level of the lodge, staring at the far shore of Wilson Lake, at the dormant strip of brown that was sandwiched between a bumpy white lake and a suspended gray sky. It was only 5:00 p.m., but darkness would fall on Wilson Lake soon, and quickly. Overlaid onto the windless world outside, he saw a reflection hovering in the glass, its arms folded, staring back ... like a bored Merlin, he mused, but without the pointy hat.

  When Victor had moved into the Whitesides’ lodge “temporarily” ... jeeze, that was nineteen years ago, he thought ... he was just beginning to go bald. Now his forehead traveled up, over and down. A three-inch horseshoe of white hair ran from ear to ear, dipping as it went round the rear, and he had let this stingy crop grow to his waist. With a black wig on, my head would look sort of like a miniature Karl Marx, he thought as he deliberately de-focused his eyes from a dreary Québec winter and caught the odd shape of his broom-like beard in the window. Fool, he added to that thought as he remembered the millions of shriveled-up souls who had dined on raw fear for entire lifetimes under the pitiless religion of communism. Marx should have shut his fucking pie-hole, like me.

  Victor felt like talking. Truth be told, he always felt like talking, sometimes rather desperately. As usual, however, he ended up re-committing to the vow of silence he had taken in 2014, the day that Bucharest was popped by a miniature sun ... with a fucking hammer and sickle painted on it, he said to himself. Of course that “pop” was no more insane than the all-American mini-sun that had vaporized Leningrad a bit less than half an hour later that same grotesque day. It was a Tuesday when all that stuff happened, he remembered with a gastric shudder. That city was St. Petersburg before, he reviewed in his mind, from 1991 to 2012, between the two Cold Wars, and Leningrad from 1917 to 1991, and Petrograd somewhere in there before it was Leningrad, and St. Petersburg before that, since ... He didn't know since when, exactly, nor did he care much—he had reviewed that situation many times on the Net, and had tired of trying to keep it straight in his aging mind. It didn't need a name any more. It was radioactive rubble now ... and for the next thousand years, he guessed. Or forever.

  As the world slowly became blacker, his image was becoming increasingly sharp ... like a twentieth-century negative curing in a bath of silver nitrate, before photography and everything else went digital. He was almost surprised to see that he was wearing the paisley silk caftan again, the green and yellow one that Winnie Jopps had left behind ... that was almost two decades ago ... and had never dared to ask for since. The lodge had computer-controlled electric heat—the fireplaces were only for show—and Victor loved wearing that caftan, with only his skin beneath. Sometimes it seemed like lovely Winnie Jopps was still in it with him, and smelling of those fruit-flavored soaps that she fancied. I wonder if Patriot ever told her I wear the thing? No matter.

  It ravaged his gut whenever a bird mistook reflection for reality, crashed into his bay window and fell to the ground, convulsing, but he was almost immune to the feelings of other people, including Winnie ... well, perhaps especially Winnie. It's ... comfortable, he reminded himself internally as he reached inside the caftan to wipe out an itch on his chest. In fact, it's ... sexy, not that I'll ever get laid again—that's if you don't count my trusty old hand ... or wet dreams.

  He still dreamt about women, about Winnie, mostly, but about other women as well, women he had known, women he would like to have known, fictional women—and the occasional teenaged pixie. It bothered him whenever that happened—the dreams and fantasies he had about barely-breasted gymnasts. There were thousands of Evolutionary clans that celebrated all things sexual, of course, and millions of women and men doing every imaginable depravity on the Net, but Victor's moral code was still rooted in the last century, burned into him by well-meaning Jesus-worshippers. I guess I sort of killed God with my invention, he mused. For better or worse, he added flippantly. No, for better, he reassured himself ... if you don't count all those Godists who jumped off of buildings and ate bullets when they found out their faith was bogus.

  The idea of God sloshed around in his mind. He found it passing strange that t
he job of shedding a myth had proven to be so difficult and painful, and yet the task of creating a myth had always been so easy and natural for the human race. Well, for Human Twos, anyway, he said to himself. It ought to be the other way around. They ought to thank me. They begged for a mirage, and I gave them water.

  His thoughts turned to those flaky monks across the Ottawa River, in Carp, Ontario ... Canada, really ... those Jesus-Eers that Mr. Wu told me about years ago. He shook his head and winced inwardly at the whole Mr. Wu connection. That quiet man handled all of Victor's money, and did it very well, and he was okay, Victor figured, as far as Human Twos went, but ... he keeps interfering with my seclusion for stupid reasons. Oddly, he remembered the one-way call on the Net years ago in which Mr. Wu had first told him that the Jesus-Eers thought that he—Victor—was the Second Coming of Christ, and that they were sort of ... well, they were worshipping him! And he remembered another one-sided Netcall from Mr. Wu, a year or two ago, asking that he give his doctor a semen sample! What the hell was that all about? he wondered then, and again now. And why did I do it? But Victor also knew that it was entirely possible he had been given perfectly sound reasons why he should know or do these things, and had now forgotten. That was part of the price he had to pay for being a total recluse. His mind was as astute as ever, he figured ... but warped, somehow.

  Victor also had dreams about the dead, about all those who had died—by their own hand or otherwise—because of his invention, because of him. They gawked awkwardly at him with melting eyes from the smoldering waste of two great former cities. They cursed his name in a hundred languages as they sailed out from high-rise apartments. They wept for him in parked automobiles as carbon monoxide swam the red rivulets to their waiting brains. They tried diligently not to chip their teeth as they shoved rifle barrels into their own uvulas and pushed the triggers with trembling thumbs. They screamed pitifully for his damnation as they unfastened safety belts and floored gas pedals and steered their cars into the grills of oncoming lumber-trucks. They tensed their faces and clenched their fists as dissonant whistles tried to frighten them into lifting their wet necks from cold railway tracks.

  These nightmares always ended in heart-stopping awakenings, shrieks, and very hard breathing—shivering sweats and withering remorse. Sleep had become Victor's nightly punishment for having tried to rid his planet of illusion, for having invented the LieDeck, the price he had to pay for not taking the easy way out himself. No morning went by that he didn't question whether he could afford this never-ending and self-inflicted emotional blackmail. They're only feelings, he always told himself, and I could change how I feel in a minute, but then I wouldn't be real any more. I'd be ... I'd be...

  He could never quite finish that sentence. What do you become when you adopt fake reality coordinates in order to feel good? A riddle, never to be solved, or solved only on pain of depression? A delusional nutcase, beyond the reach of the best psychiatrist or the latest miracle drug? A Christian?

  Death had become so small for Human Twos, so ordinary. Pizza or Mexican? Golf or tennis? Wine or pot? Live or die? Raise, call, check or fold? Heads or tails? A year or so after the 2014 LieDeck Revolution, the average life span of an Upper American citizen had dropped significantly, this for the first time since records had been kept, and for both genders—and all because of the soaring Human Two suicide rate, which was ... my fault, thought Victor.

  He threw his mind back to a day in the lovely spring of 2014, just before the “Last Holocaust,” as they called it now, when a much younger Michael Whiteside had mouthed off at him. “I'm not so sure the world can handle any more of your fucking discoveries, Mister Helliwell,” he had shouted, or approximately those words. As Victor recalled the day, he had been trying to explain his radical analysis of human consciousness evolution to Michael and his then-girlfriend, Becky, just as the LieDeck Revolution was turning the world into an out-of-control asylum ... and Michael's temper had exploded.

  In the nineteen years since, Victor had thought about that brief outburst often. That incident had played a major role in his spontaneous decision to block out the world, a decision he'd made only days later, hours after the Last Holocaust. He'd found other and better reasons for his decision since that insane time, but even though Michael was only a teenager back then, in the heat of an emotional meltdown, he got it approximately right.

  Human Twos can't cope with any more reality, Victor said to himself. They couldn't cope with the LieDeck in 2014, and they can't even cope with the sliver of reality that remains now that the LieDeck is banned. Any more reality, and the man-made suns will catapult civilization into another nuclear hissy-fit.

  It seemed to Victor that mental health depended on having a steady and sufficient diet of myth and self-deception ... for Human Two, he specified in his mind. He took some solace in the fact that most Evolutionary clan networks were doing what they could to get beyond that pathetic equation by trying to achieve what he had termed “Human Three Consciousness.” To their credit, they had gotten bits and pieces right, sort of. But without the benefit of a LieDeck to verify things—well, it was almost impossible to sort through the interference, the static. It was like sailing on the high seas without a sextant ... and with your eyelids superglued shut, your eardrums perforated, your lips sewn together, your hands tied behind the back and a hole in the keel, he considered. But they can't go back to the old world any more than they can cope with a safe landing in the new world. I've got to let them sink, he told himself ... or swim, he supposed. He wasn't so sure that the former option wasn't the better one for the world.

  He hated people who predicted the future and dismissed scenarios that were unlikely but still mathematically possible. He hated them as much as he hated those smug bastards who insisted on second-guessing the past. No one had the right to say what would ensue if this or that event transpired, and as Victor had helped to prove, no one had that ability, either. The LieDeck Revolution hadn't turned out the way anyone had expected or hoped. Of course I could have been right, he thought. And I still could be, theoretically.

  It was virtually nighttime now, even before the dinner hour, and the hermit noticed in the window that the tables had turned. His reflection was almost as clear as it would be in a smoked mirror. He had to strain to see anything outside, had to force himself to ignore the backwards reality of his ghostly twin, who was afflicted with those strange left-right reversals that so bedevil self-perception ... and introspection, he thought ... unless that's the same thing.

  His mind floated back to last October, when the far shore of Wilson Lake had showed a whole other face. For a short while, back then, he used to rise at daybreak and watch the place swing into action. The air was so still at that hour, and mist would just sort of hang over the water, motionless. The great log lodge faced to the west, a clever decision made generations ago by the late Randall Whiteside's grandfather. The sun therefore rose from behind the hills behind the lodge, and whittled away at the white suspension until the land opposite wiggled into view, a mile away. Victor used to stand on the deck, just ten feet in front of where he was standing right now, and what emerged from the fog was well worth getting up for, well worth setting the alarm for.

  He remembered how the conifers stood out in their permanent green, simply refusing to participate, trying so hard to be the same color as everybody else ... as everybody else used to be, anyway. The deciduous guys, well, they performed a spectacular death dance, a hibernation tango. They stop producing chlorophyll in ... early September, he guessed, and gradually turned into painted ladies before dropping their coats to the forest floor to face the gales of winter naked.

  I wonder why they don't all turn the same color? Some were almost fire engine red, but not too many. There were two or three distinguishable shades of red, and as many of orange, and of yellow ... and of green, as they turn. He didn't want to know the scientific reason why the colors varied so much from tree to tree, or why some trees wore crowns of a hue dif
ferent from their bodies, or why some had cores of lime green that graduated to full red or yellow or orange at the finger ends. It was enough, far more than enough, to enjoy, to drink in the pointless beauty of it, and to wonder at how that shameless spray of autumn leaves somehow managed to make the sky seem bluer than normal.

  I wonder if they think? he mused. It's ... possible. They probably feel. The leaves of some houseplants and some outdoors flowers—sunflowers, for instance—will turn to face the sun as it passes overhead, or as we rotate beneath. Venus flytraps chomp down when a bug lands on them. I wonder how Darwin would explain how they learned to shut down chlorophyll production. Even single-celled animals move and respond to their immediate environment, fleeing danger, taking in nutrients, even if they were other living beings ... especially if they were other living beings. Surely trees have some primitive brand of consciousness, a kind of awareness of the world. Maybe they enjoy growing, producing seeds, watching the next generation struggle to survive and mature? I wonder if they feel wind and rain, or wince when the wolf pees on their feet? I wonder how they know the elements are planning to send them into deep-freeze? I wonder if our bodies anticipate reversals of fortune? I wonder if I should have one last, glorious fling before I...

  Winter eventually yielded to a spring runoff, renewal, a fresh crop of leaves, another time of high suns and warm baths from the sky. Death held no such promise. All the more reason to turn color and dazzle the human race one last time, Victor figured ... if that's what I'm doing, thinking of doing. Life's too short. I'd need ... he contemplated the road ahead, its complexity, its difficulty, the powerhouse U-turn he was thinking of proposing. I'd need a hundred more years anyway, unless there is a God after all, and He's inclined to lend a hand, or a paw, or whatever He's got. Or She, he supposed. Maybe I'm a mere pawn in some secret cosmological chess match, or a knight, or a bishop, or a messiah ... the Messiah! Wouldn't that be a lark, to die only to find out that I was Jesus number two, the Second Coming, and didn't even know it!