by Dave Swavely
I modified the search to “Saul Rabin neural manipulation,” and nothing came up that was directly related. There were many entries about Saul Rabin and manipulation, but they were all critiques of his governing decisions and leadership style. Many of these sites referenced his famous last press conference many years ago, after which he had decided to stay away from the media and let Paul and D act as the public spokesmen for BASS. I had seen the video of it many times before but wanted to watch it again with “new eyes,” so I brought up one of the clips listed.
“Please comment on the repression of minorities in San Francisco,” a female reporter says.
“Who’s being repressed?” Saul answers.
“LGBT and PPB groups, for one.”
“Nonsense,” Saul says in an angry tone. “There are no new laws under BASS that didn’t exist before it. We haven’t even made any public statements about any of those lifestyle preferences … no new laws or even statements concerning gays, not for lesbians, not for bisexuals, not for transgenders, not for pedophiles, not for polyamorists, and not for bestialists, or for any other types of people for that matter. And don’t forget that BASS has given staggering amounts of money to AIDS and AIMS research and treatment.”
“Then why have so many people left the city since you’ve come to power?”
“A lot of criminals have left the city,” the Mayor says, turning to his son next to him and flashing that twisted smile obstructed by his scar.
“But what about many activists who have no criminal records?”
“I don’t know, ask them,” he says, getting irritated again. “Nobody makes anybody stay or go.”
“We have asked them, and they say that you want to control people too much.”
“No, they want too much control!” Pointing at the reporter. “I am the duly elected leader of this city. We can’t have too many hands on the wheel; we won’t get anywhere.”
“You were elected after you were in power and many people had left, fearing what you would do.…”
“I can’t help how people read me, or if they read me wrong. And at the beginning, we really couldn’t have too many hands on the wheel … when you’re crashing, that’s the last thing you need.”
“You are a tyrant, like every other one in history,” she says with a loud voice, more to the crowd than to Saul. “Who can only rule by control and manipulation!”
“Listen, you little bitch,” the old man is shouting now, “I’d control things more if I could, and if I knew it was best for the people of this city … and I’d manipulate your punk ass right out of it!”
At this point Paul stepped in, calmed down his father, and concluded the press conference in a softer and gentler way; and, along with D, had conducted all of them ever since. I remembered hearing that afterward, Saul was regretful about this ugly scene, which was broadcast all over the world, of course. I also realized that it was probably a key event (or setback) in his wife’s efforts to reform his speech patterns, and I wondered if she had chastened him for his comments about control as well. But since Mrs. Rabin had died seven years ago, I could see how he might now have reverted to the control problem, even though he continued to honor her memory in the language department.
Not wanting to risk any more exposure on the Web, I took off the glasses. I was locked in a living hell without a key, but at least things were becoming more clear in my mind. I used to view Saul Rabin’s last press conference as impressive evidence of his chutzpah, that he was not willing to back down to special-interest groups pushing their agendas. But now I was starting to see it as oppressive, rather than impressive.
I heard movement from the stairs, and a guilty feeling shot through me. I sat up straight and wiped the sweat on my face with my sleeve, looking over just in time to see Lynn appear from the stairs. She looked briefly at me, went across the kitchen to get her Black Death book, and walked back to the stairs. As she started up them, she said, “I love you,” without looking at me, then disappeared.
I shook my head, thinking that loving her was a lot easier than understanding her.
I forced myself to my feet, still groggy, thankful that some of my anger had been swallowed by the sleep, or maybe released by the dreams. I traversed the kitchen and climbed the stairs. Lynn was in our room, on the bed, reading the book with her knees drawn up in front of her. I assumed the same position next to her, reading along with her for a little while, hoping to find comfort in the book myself.
She was at a part where the author was describing flagellism, a religious practice that arose during the plague. It was an attempt on the part of some fanatics to appease the wrath of God and end the suffering by inflicting pain upon themselves. They thought this self-abuse could somehow atone for the sins that had caused the pestilence. The author quoted from a fourteenth-century eyewitness named Jean Froissart.
The penitents went about, coming first out of Germany. They were men who did public penance and scourged themselves with whips of hard knotted leather with little iron spikes. Some made themselves bleed very badly between the shoulder blades and some foolish women had cloths ready to catch the blood and smear it on their eyes, saying it was miraculous blood. While they were doing penance, they sang very mournful songs about nativity and the passion of Our Lord. The object of this penance was to put a stop to the mortality, for in that time … at least a third of all the people in the world died …
I continued reading for a while, but didn’t find that it made me feel any better. The poor wretches who went through the plague had it bad, for sure—but at least none of them had murdered their own daughter and friend. And it was beginning to bother me more and more that the subject of this cruel deity seemed to be popping up at every turn during my ordeal … I had enough to worry about with the enemies I could see. On the other hand, the book’s references to death and atonement did lead me to some ideas about my situation that were strangely cathartic. Paul was right, of course, that acting on my own, I could never take out the old man without dying in the process. But perhaps that was exactly what I needed to do—take revenge on my enemy and make restitution for my own crimes in a glorious orgy of mortal violence. And I began to feel that the resulting oblivion would be far preferable to living with all this.
But the metaphysical shadow that had been following me prevented me from committing to that course. As I thought about how I would carry out this murder/suicide and pictured myself doing it, the theme of Hamlet’s most famous speech nagged me. I had seen the play dozens of times, and years ago I had even memorized the “to be or not to be” soliloquy. I couldn’t remember it word-for-word now, but I knew the point. What if there was a life after this one? And what if we have to answer for what we do here? That fear of the unknown is enough to keep even the bravest man from taking his own life, according to the Bard. I took comfort from this amid my own cowardice, because I had to admit that even if my death would make everything right, I still didn’t want to die.…
At some time during my ruminations, an exhausted Lynn gave up on the book and rested her head on my shoulder. As I watched her fall asleep, I again felt a tiny surge of hope that we could somehow come out on the other end of this. So I decided to go with Paul’s more cautious plan, hoping that I could manage to suppress my craving to blow the old man into a thousand bits, or dismember him slowly.
“Act like everything is normal,” Paul had said. I would try my best for now, but if my friend’s approach took too long, I would take it as a sign that Saul Rabin and I should pay for our sins together, in one bloody act of expiation.
* * *
At dawn I left Lynn sleeping in the bed, showered, dressed, took off in the aero, and checked the glasses, just as I had the morning before. Once again there were two messages from Paul, and a clip of Harris, which Paul had attached.
“You need to see this,” he said. “Harris fell into it somehow, and got it rated by Reality G. They say it’s legit.”
Reality Guaranteed was the premie
r “genuineness evaluation” service in the world, formed under federal American law years ago, during the initial rise of computer crime. In addition to identity theft and credit fraud, audiovisual technology had progressed so far by then that any Tom, Dick, or Harry could produce albums, movies, and various forms of pornography featuring popular media figures, without the stars themselves ever being involved. These were marketed so widely on the wild wild web that certification with services like Reality G became necessary for consumers to know whether their purchases were authentic. The news could be faked, too, so a video clip couldn’t survive with any credibility unless it received their stamp of approval.
The end of Paul’s message said that this particular clip had already been distributed and broadcast on numerous news services, but because it had started with Harris, he sent me the freak’s “world premiere” showing.
“… And it seems that the James Bond of BASS is looking more like a Benedict Arnold,” Harris was saying when the clip began, with the usual nausea-inducing, ADHD-directed visuals flashing and swirling around him. He began singing again: “Ooooh, really makes me wonder if he had something to do with the recent Death By Dissection of his immediate superior! Nooooo, that could never be, right? A war hero confined to an office job could never get itchy for more action or power, would he? Naaaaaah. Don’t worry about this Dark Knight, folks—just hope to Hades that he doesn’t want your job.”
A little hand from one of his tattoos stretched out to make a huge one, which pointed at the viewer.
“And as for you, Mikey Mouse, when they put you away in that overgrown dungeon formerly known as a church, well, What More Can I Say?… Don’t bend over for the soap!”
As he was laughing hysterically, the clip of me came on. It was a close-up from a room in the castle that I didn’t recognize immediately, and this is what I was saying:
“I’m sick of this place. I’d like to burn it down. I’m sick of the old man, and I’d like to slit his throat and drink his blood.”
It was me, no question. And I even remembered saying it.
9
On the way to the city, I made a few calls to various departments regarding the murder investigation. The circulating video clip made me even more uneasy than I already was, because it made me look like a loose cannon, and I was afraid that someone might make a connection between me and D’s death before Paul and I could confront the old man. I had experienced similar smears before, but none when I was actually guilty of a crime. So I tried to look busy about finding the killer. There were no leads yet, of course.
The disk with the incriminating image on it was burning a hole in my datafold, but so far I had thought of only one way to dispose of it safely, and that would have to wait, for now. I couldn’t ask Harris about the black op at this time, because if he knew anything more about it, his comments might be overheard, and if he didn’t know anything, I wouldn’t feel as good about what I was planning to do to him.
By the time I reached the castle, I was fairly sure where and how the incriminating video clip of me had been taken. So I parked the aero, rode the elevators, and passed through two security checkpoints until I reached our executive lounge. Once there, I tried to recall where we had each been sitting during the conversation, and which camera would have captured me from the angle in the clip. When I was fairly sure it was the visible camera (a nickel-size protrusion high on one wall) rather than the hidden one, I headed for Internal Security.
Upon entering the ISec floor, I paused for a moment, then walked to Tara’s office, feeling the usual mixture of pleasure and guilt, but with an extra dose of guilt this time. She is the most appropriate contact for this, I rationalized, and then felt more guilty for having to explain myself to myself. Before I could ring her door, she appeared behind me.
“Can I help you, Mr. Ares?” her voice said. I turned, and tried not to notice how good she looked. Instead of drinking in her milk-chocolate skin and dark brown hair, I tried to picture Lynn’s pale white and streaked gold. Tara’s handsome frame, almost as tall as mine, was harder to ignore, as were the memories that immediately flooded into my mind. I had managed to delete some through time and practice, but others were harder to erase. And seeing her reminded me of D, who had taken great pleasure in congratulating me for “expediting the process of evolution” by dating one of “his people.” I had pointed out to him on several occasions that Tara’s mother was almost white, to which he had shrugged and pronounced it a “transitional stage.”
My rush of emotions must have shown through, at least slightly, because she cocked her head and looked at me curiously, but also hopefully. “I would really like to help you,” she finished with a caring smile. For some reason, this sparked the odd feeling of anger that was hanging around inside me, which in this situation actually helped me to regain my composure and stay focused on the business at hand.
“Yes, you can, in fact,” I said tersely. “I want you to find me something in the camera room.” She concealed her feelings about as well as I had, saying, “Follow me, then,” through a disappointed sigh.
A few moments later, we were seated in front of a bank of screens as the software searched through years of digital video to find the images we wanted. While she was setting up the search by fiddling with the hardware around us, she glanced over at me almost as much as she looked at the equipment, and she leaned across me a few times to reach some of it. She did that exactly two times, to be precise, and I did notice her nearness more than I wanted to admit. I tried to think of Lynn again, not wanting to add to my already overwhelming load of guilt.
The system must have found the keys it had been given, because a screen in front of us flashed on, showing a scene of three men reclining and talking in the executive lounge. It was shot from the camera I had seen, which was looking down on Paul, D, and me from its spot on the wall. I told Tara to rewind it, and we watched the whole discussion:
“… But she didn’t know,” D said. “I’ll check again in a few days.”
“That reminds me,” I offered. “I talked to Franken yesterday.” I noticed that I was smoking one of those legal cigarettes, though as usual I didn’t seem to be enjoying it very much. I had given up the real ones—finally—when I came aboard BASS’s tight ship.
“What did he say?” Paul asked. I took a moment to respond, trying to remember the exact words.
“‘I’m sick of this place. I’d like to burn it down. I’m sick of the old man, and I’d like to slit his throat and drink his blood.’”
Paul and D looked at each other and snickered. “I’m not surprised,” Paul said. “He’s on about ten different drugs, the second five balancing the first five—you know how it goes. He can’t be held responsible for his actions right now, but he also can’t be an agent anymore.”
“Let him go, and give him a class-C,” Darien suggested, looking at Paul, who nodded.
I told Tara to pause it, and asked her how someone had gotten a close-up of me. “Like this,” she answered as she zoomed in the view so that only my face was on the screen, the smoke floating in front of it. “Then they just copied it.” It occurred to me that the smoke made me seem even more dangerous, because no one who saw the clip would know that the fake cancer stick was legal.
“So how many people could have done this?” I asked.
“You can count them on your hand—that I know. You saw how I needed your codes to access the upper levels.” She reached forward and touched the tops of each of my fingers lightly, starting with the little one, as she named the suspects. “Rabin Senior, Rabin Junior, Anthony, and you.” She touched the last finger a little longer, stretching out the word. Then she tapped my thumb. “Maybe the big bodyguard, I don’t know. Because the old man has a personal security room upstairs in his suite, you know, with access to all the cameras. There’s always at least a few of us here, so someone would have noticed if one of you big shots came in and was fiddling around with the database.”
She thought for
a few seconds, then nodded. “I would say the clip came from the penthouse terminal.”
I knew that the only ones who had access to that equipment were the Rabins, so it was clear that the likeliest suspect was the old man. I also remembered that Harris had called me James Bond in his commentary on the video, which was Saul’s pet name for me. But why would the old man want to leak this clip and make me look bad to the public? So no one would believe me if I uncovered his shadow project? And how had he come across that exact portion of the tapes? Had he searched the security archives for hours and hours just to find something incriminating? Or did he sit up there in his dark tower, watching us constantly and remembering everything we said?
“Thank you, Tara,” I said, getting up to leave. “You’ve been a big help.”
She put her hands on the fronts of my thighs as they were rising, and gently pushed them back down onto the chair. Then she leaned close.
“Michael, losing your daughter has got to be so hard for you,” she said softly, but with a slight gleam in her eye where there should have been a tear. “This is when you need me the most.” She moved even closer. Her hands still rested on my legs, and now our knees were touching. “Everyone will understand, with what you’re going through and all.”
“Lynn won’t understand,” I said, my mouth going dry. Tara bristled visibly, which made me feel bad because I was making her feel bad. This was the merry-go-round I couldn’t seem to get off—I knew that I needed to finalize this, for the good of us all. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it, because I feared hurting her. And there was also that motivation I had finally admitted to myself, that I liked the fact that she was waiting for me. She was just such a perfect specimen of a woman—physically, at least—only an object to me, yes, but almost overpowering in her raw appeal. Then again, that was exactly what Lynn was not—an object. Lynn was my friend, and the mother of my little girl.…