by Jim Stark
Gauthier jotted down a few calculations on paper—something he hadn't done much since primary school. He underlined the last number he'd written down: “78 million!"
"We can talk now, with the Net down,” said Michael. “Just seventy-eight million?"
Gauthier smiled. “I'd say that's enough, and that's just from the first transmission of one thousand. The second transmission would reach a fifth of that—about another fifteen million—and so on. I'd figure—mmm—at least a hundred million total, after deducting duplications. We got the job done."
The two men shook hands. Gauthier wanted to know what they had just done, but Michael put him off momentarily. He used a ham radio to contact Gil Henderson at the Canadian Press building. “It's me, Michael,” he said. “Over,” he remembered to say just before pressing the button on the microphone.
Gil had sent the squashy from the CP building to a Netsite that he had memorized when he was still at the Diefenbunker, and he had no idea that the person receiving the squashy would be Michael Whiteside. In an instant, it all fell into place in his mind. The two monks we dropped off ... one of them was Michael ... it must have been Whiteside Technologies we stopped at ... they needed time to set up a program to maximize the speed and the reach of the distribution ... of course! He had already plugged in the ham radio at the CP Building, as he had been instructed to do by Annette if the Net were to crash. He realized now that the planning for all this was better than he'd thought it was. “So, did we make it?” he asked. “Over."
"We done good,” said Michael. “We got it out to maybe a hundred million MIUs—don't ask how. God be praised,” he added. “Over."
Those Godist words were the signal to meet back at Jesus-E. The WDA would be no problem now. WDA agents would be unable to communicate with their handlers during the SuperNet blackout, and they were not the type of people to take any serious decisions without covering their precious derrières.
Gil looked at his watch, and took a spontaneous decision. “I'm not going back there,” he said into the mike of the Canadian Press ham radio. “I'm going to the airport and then to New York. I'll be needed there ... and then I'm retiring ... to write my life profile, my memoirs, and play golf. Good luck to—uh—all of you. Over."
"I'll use the radio to—yeah, that'll work—I'll have the corporate Learjet warmed up and waiting for you at the Ottawa International Airport,” promised Michael. “The pilot's still loyal to me ... I think. Did you get the squashy sent to your boss? Over."
"Yep,” said Gil. “And I'm sure it got downloaded to quite a few Times subscribers in the time before the Net crashed, so I guess we got the biggest scoop of all time. Over."
"You're...” Michael wasn't sure he should say this, but he decided he'd better do so. “You're ... sure the WDA won't shoot the plane down?” he asked. My plane, he thought soberly, even though it wasn't any more, technically. “Over."
"The game is done, my friend,” said Gil—he never liked explaining fundamentals to amateurs. “We won; they lost; they know it; the rest is just following the script. They're not all evil, you know; there's clearly a few bad apples in there somewhere, but mostly, they're just ... the wrong people in power in the wrong institution for these ... new times. Over."
Michael wasn't sure it would be quite that simple, but Gil was the one with the vast experience in such matters, and he had told him at the Diefenbunker that real pros know when to resign. “Having a checkmate conceded to you is even sweeter than achieving an actual checkmate,” Gil had said, authoritatively.
"Good luck,” offered Michael. “Over and out."
By the time Gil ended his radio exchange with Michael, Yves Lacombe was sitting at an MIU, entranced, watching the first minutes of the first tape—the one Gil had started at the cabin on Wilson Lake and finished at the lodge. The Net was down, for the first time ever, but the electrical grid was fine ... a good sign, thought Gil.
"I gotta go,” Gil said. “No no,” he said when Yves hit the “pause” button. “Knock yourself out ... enjoy. We'll talk later, when I'm back home and you've seen the future.” He reached over and released the pause button, and he smiled as Yves’ journalistic head rotated automatically back to the screen.
Gil put his rough brown robe back on—no sense inviting trouble—and then he kicked the real monk in the shin, hard.
Diefenbunker ninety-one jumped around on one foot, yelling “ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!"
"What the hell did you do?” asked a shocked Yves Lacombe.
"I kicked him,” said Gil as he pulled his hood up and over. “Back,” he explained.
Chapter 87
EPILOGUE
2053 (Twenty years later)
The three analog videotapes that Gil Henderson had converted into a sixty-three-second digital squashy (along with a fourth tape, mentioned below) are housed behind glass in the Victor Helliwell Memorial Chamber that was added onto the United Nations complex in February of 2035. Perhaps appropriately, the Helliwell Chamber is located inside the underground concourse, and is as windowless as the old fallout shelter on Wilson Lake, where the body of the reclusive inventor and social visionary was essentially cremated by a backpack nuke, as windowless as the Diefenbunker, where silent monks still live, many of them the same monks whose misguided and zany zealotry inadvertently saved the day ... the world, really ... back in 2033.
Digitized copies of the three key tapes run continuously inside the chamber, along with a presentation derived from a fourth tape that was shot by Venice Whiteside as the unlikely collection of “heroes” made good their harrowing escape. There are a couple of pews in this subsurface room, put there at the request of the monks of Jesus-E—for those who might wish to pray. Not many people ever visit the Helliwell room in person, and few of those use the pews, at least not to pray. The entire presentation is available on the new V-Net (the VirtualRealitySuperNet) in 3-D and ultra-fi, and that often-visited Netsite is as good as the real thing—some say better. Since 2033, there is scarcely an adult or a child over the age of ten who hasn't perused that set of records, or written a term paper about those epochal events, or spent weeks in a chatroom, discussing and debating this last great human upheaval.
The first tape, the one that was done by Gil Henderson, was immediately recognized by his peers as a journalistic masterpiece. Even though he had to use very crude analog technology, and had the weight of the world quite literally on his shoulders, he dissected the issues one by one, and laid out the basis for the fall of the WDA, and for its reform.
He got all the facts known to Captain Lillian Petrosian, Colonel Lars Johannsen and electronics magnate Michael Whiteside during the long session they conducted at the small cabin on the western shore of Wilson Lake, and the fact that they all had to whisper has made this recording into a work of art as well as an essential historical document. At times, the sound of WDA helicopters can be heard in the background as they searched the Québec bush for their two missing agents, their two “traitors."
Colonel Johannsen, who had a badly broken wrist at the time, told the complete story of how, as an ersatz apprentice plumber, he had placed the lead box inside the wall of the Whitesides’ lodge, and how it dawned on him years later that he had been made into a murderer by the WDA. He spoke candidly of his reasons for not coming forward before he did, and for not telling Evolution that he was a WDA mole. Many people thought that he was somewhat doubtful of his own rationale, but after-the-fact LieDeck-verification of the tape made at the cabin was impossible, because they were whispering at the time. The continuation of this tape, at the Whitesides’ lodge, was done in full voice, but of course most of Lars’ previous comments or responses weren't repeated there. Gil Henderson did ask him to affirm in full voice that his whispered words out at the cabin were all true, and Johannsen did that, but memories can fail, and there is still debate as to the character of this man.
No trace was ever found of Colonel Johannsen. It is generally assumed [Editor's note: To “assume” the
veracity of something is not a rational process, and amounts to baseless guesswork. This comment on the assumed fate of Colonel Johannsen is included only because those who make this assumption are numerous, and insist that their point of view be included here.] that WDA agents found him and disposed of him before the WDA was felled. But the lead box with that pesky pellet of plutonium in it was discovered under the front step of his hunting shack, one mile behind Victor-E, exactly where Annette Blais had hidden it. It is also generally assumed [Editor's note: To “assume” the veracity of something is not a rational process, and amounts to baseless guesswork.] that if Lars was tortured before he was killed, he didn't talk.
The last words spoken by Colonel Johannsen into the camcorder were prophetic. He was on the second floor of the Wilson Lake lodge, in the bedroom where Victor Helliwell had lived in silence for all those years. He was holding the lead box in his good hand, and he was in pain from the fractured wrist. “I can die in peace now,” he said. “Freedom!"
That word—"freedom"—was the word Lilly Petrosian had spoken when she let the squirrel escape, and it was also the word that Johannsen had written on the note that had lured Lilly out to his hunting shack that second time. Netshows and books tend to paint Lars Johannsen as something of a hero, who meant by that word to declare the world free of the terrors of the WDA, free of the dangers of Human Two Consciousness. He wasn't the first agent to become fully Human Three in the course of doing undercover work for the WDA, but he is thought to be the only one who actually got away with his deception long enough to make a real difference.
It is impossible to recount here all the aspects of the long tape that was made by Gil Henderson, and those who are interested in knowing more can access the source [the V-Netsite is at larsj.NYT.com/GilHenderson/WDAtape]. It is sufficient to say here that the stories of all three of the interviewees—Michael Whiteside, Lars Johannsen and Lilly Petrosian—were LieDeck-verified using Helliwell's original prototype device (except for the whispered sections, of course) and their evidence was demonstrably incontrovertible. Unbeknownst to all but a few WDA agents and officials, the organization was corrupt. It was involved in, and it was ultimately sustained by, criminal activities ... activities that went up to, and included, murder! “The rest,” as young people like to say these days, “is the rest of history, the second part, the part that is permitted to happen only by the fact that we humans finally got the first part right."
The second tape, the Helliwell tape, was made as a favor for Venice Whiteside, for her to put in her personal life profile. Venice was only twelve at the time, and as an aspiring journalist, she did rather well in what was her first serious interview. She got Victor to admit that the LieDeck device was really invented by one George Cluff, whose life story is regrettably lost forever. Victor Helliwell had only perfected the device, and he remained convinced to the end that his former friend and boss (Cluff) was murdered by the World Democratic Alliance, long before the LieDeck Revolution. (It was formally established in 2034 that his suspicions were warranted. The World Democratic Alliance, precursor to the World Democratic Authority, had brought down a plane that Cluff was on, and resulted in several other deaths, deaths that were covered up in WDA documents under the bizarre Human Two term, “collateral damage.")
Venice Whiteside also got Victor to confess that it was fear, more than any plan of penance, that actually motivated his years of silence. As subsequent events have revealed, that fear was very well founded, and in fact the sacrifices of his social life and his mental stability were instrumental in facilitating the return of freedom and democracy to planet Earth—albeit through his deprivation-induced alter ego, “Eyeball.” Victor also revealed to the young Whiteside girl that his own CQ was actually quite low, and was dependent not so much on any natural bent as on the courage of his intellectual convictions and a will of titanium. “I'm a super-controlled Zilla,” he told Venice. (He laughed as he said it, but when this taped comment was later LieDeck-verified, it became clear that Victor at least believed it to be true.)
When he kissed Venice at the end of that interview, it seemed to be his goodbye kiss to the world. Although the interview was over, Venice had left her camcorders set in the “on” position, so she captured that image, that delicate kiss on the cheek. As everyone knows, a stylized version of that touching picture is now featured on the official emblem and flag of the LCAE, the LieDeck Celebration Association of Earth.
Of interest is the fact that Victor Helliwell, for all his brilliant insights, was not able to foresee that in a few short years, it would become socially gauche to use a LieDeck in any clandestine manner, a sign of a lack of trust that is naturally found rather insulting by Human Threes. He also failed to appreciate that the policing function that was previously performed by the WDA was destined to carry on as before, even after civilian control was reinstated in the world body (which of course is once again known by its former name, the United Nations, albeit with the addition of the directly-elected World Parliament, or WHOC—see below).
This interview was the only one ever given by Victor Helliwell, and it is often said that he seemed “nice” mostly because Venice Whiteside was then a child, but also due to the fact that he was blitzed out of his gourd on painkillers. In any event, Venice asked most of the key questions that would have come up had the interview been done by the redoubtable Gil Henderson.
The third tape was sixteen minutes long, and was made by Michael Whiteside inside the fallout shelter under the log lodge on Wilson Lake. It was an eloquent call for the total reform of the world body, but it was obsolete even before it was formally Netcast. The WDA fell quickly in the wake of Gil Henderson's powerful exposé, so quickly that Michael's appeals for a return to civilian control were just not needed. Still, his effort serves as a sort of secular prophesy, and when the times are considered, making that tape was quite a courageous move for this wealthy Québécois. Many people still access that impromptu soliloquy on the V-Net, if only to remember and feel the depth of the wounds that drove such passion and gestated such a great hope for a far freer tomorrow. Children today have no knowledge of what the world was like back then—more precisely, they are not able to adequately translate their cognitive knowledge of these events into an affective appreciation of the situation (not that that matters much to Human Three adults, although it is generally assumed that it should matter to everyone to some extent [Editor's note: To “assume” the veracity of something amounts to baseless guesswork.]).
Of course Michael Whiteside did propose one very constructive idea. It is often said that this suggestion at least facilitated the rapid ascension of Homo sapiens from the false security of militarism to the tasty vicissitudes of true freedom. He was a party to the plan to send out the now-famous squashy which doomed the WDA, and it occurred to him that in a wired world, that process could also work in reverse! If one person could reach out and touch every other person in the whole world (or at least every MIU) in less than half an hour, then every person in the world could participate in a singular Netevent in a very short period of time!
He therefore called, in June of 2033, for the holding of a global referendum to affirm and endorse the return of the world body to civilian control and to muster support for the elimination of all nuclear weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction. He said the vote could be done over the Net—what was then the SuperNet—using the bioID slots to prevent multiple voting or cheating. His argument, now a pillar of UN philosophy, was that no power on Earth could ever legitimately deny or even protest a clear mandate that emanated from the entire human race! Today, that analysis is considered to be rather self-evident, but no one who mattered had ever said it before, at least not in so many words.
It took the United Nations an exasperating three weeks to formulate the wording of a proper ballot, but the electronic voting took only nine days. The “global mandate” rolled in at an incredible 86.9 percent, and opinion polls have shown that the same referendum, had it been co
nducted in 2038 or beyond, would have yielded a plurality in the order of 94 percent (of course it must be remembered that the vast majority of voters in 2033 were only Human Two). Michael Whiteside was given kudos for the very notion of harnessing people-power in this new form. It took six long years after the referendum to dismantle the WDA's (the UN's) arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, but the problems causing this delay were technical, not political. Now, of course, the world is free of this particular Human Two terror, and indeed of all Human Two terror.
(Michael had also suggested in June of 2033 that another element be added to the ballot for that original world referendum, the idea of a directly-elected World House of Commons, or WHOC. He saw this as a third body that should to be added to the UN's General Assembly and Security Council, where the representatives of nation states sat—representatives of national governments, to be precise. It took eight more years before a second world referendum was held on that issue, but of course now the WHOC exists and is filled with directly-elected Members. And as the WHOC gets used to functioning as a truly democratic world government, thought is finally being given to the idea of phasing out the other two houses, or at least diminishing their powers.)
The most interesting tape, many people say, was the fourth one, the one that didn't get downloaded onto MIUs all over the world on that fateful day back in 2033. Young Venice Whiteside had borrowed the old analog camcorder from her father in the fallout shelter to interview her Grandma Whiteside for a segment of her (Venice's) life profile, and then she kept shooting footage, as it was then called, throughout much of the escape.
She didn't capture the actual scene where the monks made their startling revelation in the Whitesides’ shelter, and that is unfortunate. However, she did interview a monk about that event a couple of hours after they all dragged themselves into the Diefenbunker over in Carp, Ontario. He was a peculiar man, perhaps fifty years old (one never really knows with these people), and he described for Venice the scene at the lodge (Venice and the two Roy children were in a bedroom in the shelter at the time, with Julia). This monk found it very funny that the gang of non-monks would doubt that “God would provide."