The Liedeck Revolution Book #2: Endgame

by Jim Stark

  Venice rolled the camcorder after she was helped down a ladder to the staging area that had been prepared by the monks for the evacuation of their “savior.” She got a shot of the monk who stayed in the fallout shelter just in case Victor Helliwell ("Jesus,” in the minds of the monks) returned from the dead. She aimed the camera up the narrow vertical column of rock as the delighted Jesus-Eer waved his goodbye. This vertical part of the tunnel was fairly dark, and the inside of the shelter was brightly lit, so unfortunately, the monk appears as a silhouette (that tape has now been digitally enhanced, but it is still hard to make out his facial features). This monk was the only immediate casualty of the explosion at the lodge.

  Venice also took several clips of the group loading themselves into the short electric train that had been used for years to ferry equipment, monks, dirt and rock into or out of the tunnel. The train trip took more than an hour—the top speed was only eighteen miles per hour, twelve miles per hour on the uphill part. Her film shows the train jiggling along as it went from Wilson Lake to the lowest point, under the middle of the Ottawa River. The tunnel had ceiling lights every fifty yards, and viewers can see the three color-coded pipes that were fastened onto the walls of the rock-walled tunnel, on the left as the train was traveling. One pipe was for the electric power supply, one for incoming fresh air, and one for outgoing stale air. (There was a fourth pipe system underneath the tracks that one can't be seen on the tape—it was for sucking out all water that had leaked down from the river through fissures in the rock.)

  Doreen Whiteside, Michael's mother, was quite old, and she spent much of the train ride screaming in terror or praying, loudly. Gil Henderson was located two cars in back of Venice, who was sitting just behind the engine. At one point, he called to her to pass him the camcorder, to let him have a turn, but she refused. Venice captured the sound of the gang singing “Happy Birthday” to Randy Whiteside (he made a wisecrack about this being his most memorable birthday so far), and then singing “Happy Wedding” to Randy and to Yolanda “Lucky” Dees after they hollered out their marriage plans.

  The electricity failed when they got past the uphill section and were rolling along the level part on the Ontario side, the last section before they got to the Diefenbunker. Most fortunately, Venice's camcorder was running at that moment, so she caught the sound of Doreen Whiteside going into emotional collapse. The voices of Michael Whiteside and Gil Henderson can be heard in the pitch dark as they appealed for calm. The monk driver then shouted his now-famous curse, and he turned on a flashlight a few seconds before the rumbling sound began. And then the ground shook. You can see the flashlight quiver as Venice continued to record what she was sure would be her own death, the death of them all.

  The monk at the front told everybody to sit tight until the “earthquake” was over—that took a full nine seconds. Then, one by one, all the people were helped out of the open cars and guided up to the front of the train. Venice explained in the dark that she had to turn off the camcorder while they formed a kind of human snake, hand-in-hand, to walk up the narrow tracks to safety. The human chain consisted of the three rescue-monks in the lead, then the six Whiteside family members, then Lucky, Lilly, Sébastien Roy and his two children, Noel, Doctor Valcourt, and Gil Henderson, with the five remaining monks of the security force pulling up the rear—twenty-two souls in all. They were less than two miles from the Diefenbunker when the backpack nuclear device destroyed the Whitesides’ lodge across the river, but it took the group an hour and twelve minutes to walk that short distance. The mood was somber, and the words were few—or so it was reported later.

  Venice turned the camcorder on again briefly when the entrance to the Diefenbunker appeared in the distance as a dim glow. Randy made a remark, caught on tape, about how this bizarre experience could bring new meaning to the old expression: “light at the end of the tunnel.” The group—with the exception of Doreen Whiteside—was in a state of uninhibited euphoria for that last leg of their journey (unfortunately not recorded). Even the monks had “let their hair down,” it was said, and they had joked giddily about their good timing and fortuitous planning (while giving most of the credit to God, of course).

  When they finally arrived at the Diefenbunker, Venice started recording again. There was only one smiling monk waiting there to greet the party of refugees, and he lost his smile abruptly when he learned that Victor—the Son of God to him—was not only dead, but vaporized. (Dozens of monks had seen the rising mushroom cloud across the river as they tended their vineyards in Carp, and had subsequently retreated to the Diefenbunker, locked themselves in and prayed for the deliverance of their “messiah"—to no avail, of course, but the Jesus-Eers wanted it noted in the public record that that's what they did, and that they prayed as hard as they could.)

  Venice got a good shot of the one-monk welcoming committee and the train's monk-engineer discussing this revised version of reality, and the waiting monk got his smile back readily as soon as he learned from the engineer (who had learned it from Lilly and Michael) that Victor Helliwell had unequivocally denied being the savior. In fact the monk who had been waiting for them had laughed when he said: “God works in strange and wondrous ways.” Still, he thought it might be prudent to wait for three days before declaring Victor Helliwell officially dead, “in case he lied about that.” (The other monk, the engineer, tried to hide his face when he explained to his leader that if Helliwell really was the savior, he wouldn't likely lie about it!)

  Venice had been excluded from the long planning sessions that took place inside the Diefenbunker, so sadly there exist no sound- or video-recordings of that, other than the anecdotal recollections of the participants. Venice fully intended to use her camcorder to interview all the escapees before the sending of the squashy was carried out, but she ran out of tape (those old analog devices only took three-hour tapes, and there were no spare tapes at the Diefenbunker, natch).

  * * * *

  No retrospective would be complete without a few words as to the particular fates of the key players.

  Julia Whiteside had a miscarriage only weeks after the great escape, but that turned out to be for the best. The male fetus had deformities from all the time Julia had spent with Victor; she was exposed to radiation emanating from the open lead box behind his bed, embedded in the wall. Fortunately, her own health was not affected. She was told in 2035 by Mr. Wu, her trustee, that Victor had been the donor of the sperm with which she had been inseminated, and she was extremely disappointed to learn that his remaining specimens at the sperm bank had been destroyed (as were all other specimens that had been stored within 200 miles of the Wilson Lake detonation). Julia formed a pleasant union with Sébastien Roy for thirteen years, and she joyfully became the de facto mother to his two children, Chantal and Rejean.

  Becky Donovan-Whiteside finally got past her problems with wealth and landed a job as an executive assistant to Lilly Petrosian. She stayed married to Michael Whiteside, but insisted that the manor house north of Quyon be turned into a “closed clan,” a brand of Human Three Evolutionary life that is not very far from the norm, except that the entry of any new member requires the unanimous consent of those already there. Also at Becky's suggestion, this new clan at the manor was called “Little Victor-E."

  Since 2033, Lilly Petrosian has also lived at Little Victor-E, known colloquially and locally as “the mansion clan.” And as a reward for her heroism, she was selected by the revivified United Nations to head up the Global LV Agency, the civilian agency that uses LieDecks to police the human race, much as the WDA had done before. (Of course now, most people need no coercion or reminding, and Human Threes are allowed to simply confirm their Human Three Consciousness rather than answer the four questions that the WDA had always used.) Advanced technology allows Lilly to do her work from Little Victor-E, over the V-Net.

  Lilly Petrosian and Michael Whiteside have a warm relationship, and although they never married, they are as much a couple as it pleases them bo
th to be—this with Becky Donovan-Whiteside's full blessing and support. There was a period of time when Lilly considered having a child, but in the end, she couldn't face bringing a new life into a world that was still dismantling doomsday technologies and trying to counter the deadly global warming trend that her ancestors had left as their toxic legacy. Lilly had settled for spending quality fun time with other people's children, inside the mansion clan and in the town of Quyon, as well. In fact, she volunteered regularly at a day care center that she had personally financed, as a penance for any harm she may have done in the past ... as a WDA agent.

  "Good old Ed” Tumson, Lilly's former lover when she lived in Miami, was given a life sentence with no chance for parole. After four months of incarceration, he utilized the prong of a prison fork to puncture both his eardrums and to blind himself. He has since refused to learn any form of communication. Lilly went to visit him once in 2035, and she did get him to stop trying to starve himself to death (he'd been fed intravenously for five months at the time and weighed just 113 pounds), but to this day, he is a silent shell of a man, essentially waiting to die.

  Sébastien Roy's children grew up and moved to clans that were more to their liking, after which Sébastien grew tired of Julia's limitations. He met another woman over the V-Net, and in 2046, he moved away from Little Victor-E ... to her clan in Los Angeles. Julia didn't mind, and Sébastien took that—incorrectly—as a sign that she didn't care. He retired back in 2051, although he continues to help out at a primary school whenever he gets bored.

  Noel Lambert, the big French cook from the Whitesides’ lodge, became the head cook for Little Victor-E and enjoyed his last few years of life, both socially and sexually. He had never really been accepted by people (with the exception of Victor Helliwell) in the past, just employed by them, so life was all new and exciting for him. He fell down the stairs to the basement in 2038 (he'd been secretly drinking), and died without ever regaining consciousness.

  Big Wus lived to the age of fourteen. His health was just starting to deteriorate when he got struck by an eighteen-wheeler on Highway 148. The truck's driver was devastated that he had killed the dog who was credited with teaching Lilly Petrosian to not be such a “tight-ass” (a label that the former WDA agent laughingly applied to herself in her public life profile).

  Michael Whiteside consolidated his Human Three Consciousness about a year after the fall of the WDA. In 2035, he was chosen as the leader of the Québec E-party. (These Evolution-parties, or E-parties, emerged worldwide as a political force in 2034, after the WDA folded, and now they form the Human Three governments of many municipalities and dozens of nations around the world.) He became the first Anglophone prime minister of the Francophone nation of Québec after two terms as Leader of the Official Opposition in the Assemblée Nationale. His efforts to convince the new UN to require the teaching of second languages to children all over the world saved French (and all “dying” languages) from slipping out of use and into oblivion.

  Michael also regained control of Whiteside Technologies, although he delegated most of those responsibilities to others. The company invested hundreds of millions into the development of highly advanced instantaneous translation MIU programs which were necessary to counter the dynamic of the Net, a dynamic by which English was becoming practically the only “used” language in the world. Michael's French went from passable to fluent, but after one uneventful term as prime minister of Québec, he decided to retire from both politics and business. He now paints landscapes—quite well, according to the critics—and his absolute favorite activity is taking walks (in decontaminated areas of the estate) with Becky, Lilly or other “friends.” (He is frequently asked to be a candidate for the new WHOC, but he just isn't interested in going back into politics.)

  Gil Henderson retired to write his memoirs (his life profile, for the World Identity Bank) immediately after the great escape of 2033, but he was forced back into the saddle a month later by the new UN. He was asked to chair the “World Commission of Inquiry into Criminal Activities within the WDA.” He simply could not refuse the opportunity to suss out the truth one more time, and bring wrongdoers to justice. He eventually got his golf handicap down to a respectable twelve in 2042. In 2046, on his sixty-ninth birthday, he died of a massive heart attack while on the backswing of his third attempt to escape the dusty clutches of a steep-faced Bahamian sand trap (now respectfully referred to by local golfers as “Henderson beach").

  General George Brampton clammed up totally during the hearings of what became commonly known as the “Henderson Commission.” He was convicted of a very long list of offenses (far too many to mention here), including the murders of Victor Helliwell and Lester Connolly, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He spent his the final four years of his life in a mental hospital, where he died, shunned and forgotten, in 2038.

  Sheena Kalhoun cooperated fully—it's said “enthusiastically"—with the Henderson Commission. It turned out that General Brampton's cadre of fixers (like Richard Nixon's “plumbers") were a tiny group of loyalists, twenty-one in all. Only two escaped capture, and these two are thought to have committed suicide rather than face reality (they are in many quarters “assumed” to be the agents who “disposed of” Lars Johannsen). With Ms. Kalhoun's help, it was finally learned that the WDA had played no role whatsoever in the assassination of Randall Whiteside, Michael's father, back in 2014.

  Because of Kalhoun's attempt to stop the attack on the lodge and her cooperation with the Commission, she got only a ten-year sentence. She spent those years in a penal institution near Manchester, England, which employed daily CQ-assist sessions for the re-education process. When her time was up, she decided to stay on and help others. She feels she can never become fully Human Three because of her past, but she is happy, and has learned a useful trade—weaving. She suffers from a terrible sleep disorder—basically nightmares—that began the very day the Whitesides’ lodge was destroyed (meaning the 2033 attack, of course).

  Yves Lacombe, the president of Canadian Press, was given the Order of Earth Award by the UN for his participation in what is now often called the “Great Historical Act.” His career had been ruined by his act of faith, and the UN wanted to make things right again. Recipients of slightly less prestigious UN awards included Annette Blais, Tirone Lucas, Victor Helliwell, posthumously, and all those who escaped from the fallout shelter out on Wilson Lake, although the several monks of Jesus-E couldn't accept even this modest honor for fear of “compromising their humility.” Yves now lives in retirement in Nassau, where he plays a lot of golf (he was playing with Gil Henderson the day that the famous reporter collapsed and died in the sand trap).

  Annette Blais, the former administrator of Victor-E, also lives at Little Victor-E, the so-called mansion clan. She learned from the Henderson Commission that the WDA was behind the stroke that killed her husband, former bishop Steve Sutherland, in December of 2031 (George Brampton cold have been tried for this murder as well, but in his sorry mental state and considering his other convictions and sentences, it was generally thought there was little point to the holding of yet another trial). She retired in 2036, and wrote an unheralded novel called Squirrel Fever, which seemed to be about her husband and about the Lars Johannsen she had known and cared for (Lars apparently liked to “squirrel hunt” with all his lovers).

  Randy Whiteside tried hard to turn pro, but a disobedient putter continued to be his downfall. He didn't make it through the PGA's dreaded Qualifying School for two years straight, and settled for teaching golf at the University of Mexico. He married Yolanda “Lucky” Dees, but that union ended after a few months. She was Human Three through and through, and Randy found all that stuff to be as silly and empty as a religion. Lucky eventually married a botanist, who fathered their only child, a girl (Victoria).

  Doreen Whiteside finally got over Randall's death when her eternal question was answered by the Henderson Commission. It wasn't the WDA who killed him. It was “thos
e blind, rabid, fundamentalist Christians” (as she always called them in her life profile), who blamed her husband for introducing the device that put the lie to their faith. Doreen spent her last years on an unsuccessful and somewhat pathetic campaign to force the UN to ban all religion. She died of cancer in 2044, apparently quite satisfied that she had fought the good fight, even if she'd lost.

  Venice Whiteside was far too young to deal with the celebrity status that was thrust upon her as a result of the videotapes she had made. She reveled in it for a while, then became depressed when people moved on to other things. It took her a year to get back to normal, after which she decided that being a productive and happy Human Three was enough for anybody. She has a nine-year-old son now, and teaches English literature at a college in North Vancouver, in the brand new country of British Columbia.

  (Venice also spent a small fortune—she had a large fortune, after all—trying to locate the three reel-to-reel audiotapes that Victor Helliwell had made in the decade preceding the Revolution and then hidden somewhere on the Whiteside's estate, near the lodge on Wilson Lake ... with no concrete results. She finally accepted that understanding the far-reaching impact of Victor's lie detector and his theory of human consciousness evolution were better achieved through ongoing observation and scholarly inquiry, but many people still regret that we will never be able to compare the way things actually turned out with Victor Helliwell's expectations of the way things would turn out.)

  * * * *

  And what of the world?

  The United Nations discovered that the World Identity Bank, designed and started by the WDA, was to have included the aspect of keeping tabs on all civilians. The advanced technology was readily reconfigured to prevent that abuse, and by 2039, the vast majority of all citizens of Earth—ninety-one percent—were creating their life profiles and leaving them on archive at the WIB for their descendants.