Tracey’s face instantly flushed a deep purple. She took half a step backward, seeming to want to run from the room. “S-s-sir?” she stammered, on the verge of a full-fledged panic attack.
“Just a joke,” said Zanders with a reassuring smile. He pulled the tablet computer from under his arm.
“Oh,” said Tracey weakly. “OK.” She didn’t look very reassured, but the abject panic had passed.
Zanders tapped a few keystrokes on his tablet computer and then handed it to Gamaliel. Gamaliel frowned, looking at the screen. It looked like this:
“What the hell is this?” asked Gamaliel.
“It’s exactly what you think it is,” said Zanders. “You’ve seen what happens when I give Ms. Bowen a simple verbal command to do something she feels uncomfortable doing. Now try it with the Myrmidon system.”
Gamaliel frowned. “You want me to try to make her cheep like a bird?”
“Well, I was hoping you’d be a little more imaginative than that,” replied Zanders.
Gamaliel regarded Tracey, who was watching him suspiciously. “Like what?” he asked.
Zanders shrugged. “Anything you like.”
Gamaliel stared at the screen. He wasn’t used to coming up with ideas. Usually he just followed Tiamat’s orders. After a moment’s thought, he clicked the I want to… radio button and then typed:
kiss mr. zanders
He tapped the Submit Command button at the bottom of the screen.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Tracey walked up to Zanders and planted a kiss right on his mouth. Then she stepped backwards, a look of horror creeping over her face. “Oh my god,” she said hoarsely. “I don’t know why I did that. Mr. Zanders, I’m so sorry!”
Zanders had turned almost as red as Tracey had been earlier. “Er, that’s, um, OK, Tracey,” he stammered. He turned to Gamaliel, trying to reclaim his businesslike demeanor. “As you can see, the subject takes full responsibility for her actions. She has no sensation of being manipulated whatsoever. As far as she is concerned, she simply decided of her own—say, what are you doing now?”
Gamaliel was giddily typing something else into the tablet.
“Give me that!” snapped Zanders, grabbing the tablet. “You’ve had your—”
“Hey!” exclaimed Gamaliel. He had intended to type “Kiss everyone in this building,” but Zanders had caused him to brush the Submit Command button before he was finished. He had gotten as far as “Kiss everyone.”
Tracey took a step toward Gamaliel, wrapping her hands around his neck and pulling his head toward her. She gave him a long, very enthusiastic kiss. The she let go and ran out of the room screaming, “Oh my god I’m so sorry!”
Her remorse lasted until she ran into a rotund woman with a clipboard in the hallway. Tracey bent over, pulled the woman’s head back, and planted a kiss on her mouth. The she ran off again, screaming apologies.
“Nice to see Tracey coming out of her shell,” observed Zanders.
“Remarkable,” said Gamaliel. “How long will she keep doing that?”
“Until she collapses from exhaustion,” said Zanders. “Then she’ll get up and continue on her quest to kiss everyone.”
“Everyone?”
“That’s what you typed. Everyone.”
“Can you override the command?”
“Of course. But I think this might be good for morale. Anyway, the urge to kiss everyone will fade as she gets farther away from the transmitter.”
Somewhere down the hall, Tracey screamed another apology.
“Where is the transmitter?”
“For testing purposes, we’re using a very small one here in the building. Its range is only a few miles, so Tracey will most likely limit her kissing spree to the Provo area. Obviously the production transmitter has a much greater range.”
Gamaliel nodded. “Good work, Zanders,” he said. “When will you be able to start mass producing them?”
“We’re converting the machinery now,” Zanders said. “By the end of next week we’ll be producing ten thousand a day.”
“All right,” said Gamaliel. “That should do for now. Depending on how things go over the next few days, we may need you to bump up those numbers.”
“Bump up the numbers?” asked Zanders, shocked. “How many people do you plan on…?”
A glare from Gamaliel silenced him. “That’s not your concern,” he said. “Just be ready for a big increase in demand.”
Chapter Thirty-four
Costa Rica; August 2016
Balderhaz’s reaction to the arrival of Tiamat and the rest of the group was anticlimactic, in that it was precisely the reaction he’d had to the arrival of Mercury and Perp a few days earlier: he rushed them inside and then proceeded to deal with whatever animal happened to be on the ceiling at the time.
Mercury tried to explain how Michelle was using Lucifer’s intelligence apparatus to create a worldwide totalitarian state, but Balderhaz didn’t seem particularly interested. It wasn’t that he was apathetic, but rather that he was so paranoid already that nothing Mercury told him seemed particularly remarkable. Balderhaz had long ago had enough of conspiracies, double-crosses, and plans for world domination, which was why he was hiding deep in the jungle of Costa Rica. What Mercury had first taken as a symptom of insanity was in fact merely good planning.
The eccentric angel’s ears perked up when Tiamat started talking about building another MEOW device. Balderhaz had apparently been rather proud of his success with the last one, and had been a bit put out that it had been destroyed in a terrorist attack. In fact, he seemed to view the destruction of the MEOW device as the chief tragedy of that day, which solidified Mercury’s impression that Balderhaz’s moral compass was a bit off. If Michelle ever got her hands on Balderhaz, she’d likely be able to convince him to do just about anything as long as he found it an interesting technical challenge. Mercury made a note not to let that happen.
Balderhaz and Tiamat began working on the device that same day, leaving Mercury, Eddie, Suzy, and Perp to entertain themselves. Balderhaz had at one point given up inventing to become a fairly respectable tennis instructor, and he remained an aficionado of the game, but he hadn’t had room in his Costa Rica hideaway for a court. The best he could do was a ping-pong table in the basement, which served as the primary source of recreation for the group for the next three weeks. Suzy was virtually unbeatable, which frustrated Mercury, who was himself a mediocre player despite his unmatched wingspan. Mercury resorted to cheating, using minor miracles to increase the spin of the ball or change its shape suddenly before it hit Suzy’s paddle. Suzy responded by enlisting Eddie and Perp in her defense. Eddie nullified Mercury’s attempts to harness interplanar energy for his own benefit, and Perp went on the offensive, causing the ball to miraculously pass through Mercury’s paddle. Rather than admit defeat, though, Mercury responded with a series of complex rules governing the use of miracles during gameplay. The situation continued to escalate, culminating with Suzy’s paddle being turned into an angry lobster. This is what passed for entertainment while Tiamat and Balderhaz perfected the new MEOW device.
Finally they did finish it: a metal box just a little bigger than a typical Balderhaz Cube. Mercury could hardly believe such a tiny device was capable of ridding Washington, D.C. of angels, but then he didn’t think much of the hair dryer at first either. Tiamat and Balderhaz seemed to work relatively well together. There was some arguing toward the end of the project that had Mercury concerned, but they seemed to have worked it out, whatever it was. Now the question was how to get the device to Washington, D.C. and activate it.
There was general agreement that Mercury would be the one to deliver it, since everybody more-or-less trusted him, but activating it was going to be a problem. The device had to be activated manually, but any angel in the vicinity of the device at the time of activation would be rendered completely incapacitated by it. The effect of the MEOW device decreased as one got farther from it; those a hu
ndred yards or so away would most likely be able to get out of the area, but any angel closer than that wouldn’t even be able to think clearly enough to put one foot in front of the other. At a distance of about a mile, the device’s output faded to a barely tolerable screech.
In any case, it was going to be impossible for any of the angels in the group to activate the device and then get safely out of the area. Tiamat wouldn’t have blinked an eye at sacrificing any one of them, but nobody was about to volunteer to be trapped indefinitely in a place within the excruciating emissions of the MEOW device. That left only one possibility.
“Fine,” said Suzy. “I’ll do it. But can I take a commercial jet to D.C.? I’m kind of over the whole flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants thing.” Mercury had carried her from Texas to Costa Rica, and her hair still hadn’t recovered.
“Sorry,” said Mercury. “You’re on the no-fly list for sure. You’re lucky you know some angels, or you’d never fly again.”
“I don’t feel lucky,” said Suzy. “So what do I do with this thing, exactly? Just flip a switch and drop it in a planter somewhere near the Capitol?”
“No, no!” exclaimed Balderhaz. “It has to be permanent! You can’t put it anywhere somebody can just pick it up and walk off with it.”
“He’s right,” said Tiamat. “That’s why the original was in the cornerstone of the Capitol. Nobody could remove it without attracting a whole lot of attention.”
“Well, we can’t very well put it back where it was,” said Eddie. “They’ve already repaired the cornerstone. And we can’t get it inside the Capitol or any other important building, like the White House, because it will set off the metal detectors. They’ll think it’s a bomb.”
“It doesn’t have to be anyplace special,” said Mercury. “We’re not going for symbolic value. It just has to be someplace central in D.C. Find a construction site where they’re pouring concrete and toss it in.”
Suzy wasn’t entirely convinced it was going to be as easy as Mercury made it out to be, but she reluctantly went along with the plan, in part because she was promised a full makeover as part of the deal. Her hair was going to be a disaster after flying halfway across the world again, and in any case her current coloring would make it far too easy for the authorities to identify her. Undoubtedly she was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list by now.
Mercury flew her to Alexandria, Virginia, where she had her hair and nails done—she opted to go with a soft pink for the nails and a dark brown for her hair that was close to her natural color, along with hair extensions, since Mercury was paying. She wasn’t sure where Mercury came up with the cash; she suspected he was literally creating it out of thin air. Which was, as she understood it, basically what the Federal Reserve did, so it was all the same to her.
Next they went clothes shopping. Mercury had little patience for shopping and his taste ranged from garish to godawful, but Suzy did acquiesce to his demands to “dress more like a chick.” In college and then at Brimstone she had gotten so tired of being hit on by socially inept dweebs that she had somewhat unconsciously adopted a style somewhere between disaffected Goth and committed lesbian. She wasn’t feeling the bright red leather miniskirt Mercury insisted would somehow “bring out her eyes,” but they compromised on a suitably cute-but-professional jacket-and-skirt ensemble. She then picked out a purse, the primary purpose of which was to hide the MEOW device, a pair of serviceable flats, and a pair of dark sunglasses.
They flagged down a cab and Mercury instructed the driver to drop him off at Arlington Cemetery.
“You’re not even going into the city with me?” asked Suzy.
“I don’t really want to be within a mile of that thing when you turn it on,” said Mercury. “You know what to do. Just meet me back at Arlington when you’re done.”
“How will you know when it’s on?”
“Trust me,” said Mercury. “I’ll know. I was about six blocks away when they activated the first one.” He shuddered. “I could feel it in my molars.”
Suzy nodded. His reluctance to be near the device was understandable.
“So,” she said. “You do this kind of thing a lot?”
“Well,” replied Mercury, “not this particular thing.”
“Right, but foiling diabolical plans for world domination?”
Mercury shrugged. “Sometimes the plan is to destroy the world,” he said. “Michelle’s a dominator. Well, dominatrix, I guess. Like Tiamat. They’re dominatrices. Lucifer’s a destroyer. Thankfully he’s in custody.”
“In Heaven.”
“Last I knew, yeah. He was trying to deliver a nuclear bomb there—the Wormwood bomb. But this FBI guy and a friend of mine pulled a switch on him, so Lucifer ended up in Heaven empty-handed.”
“You have a friend?” asked Suzy. She didn’t mean it as an insult; she just had a hard time imagining anyone putting up with him for an extended period of time. Perp didn’t count; that guy was even weirder than Mercury.
“Had,” corrected Mercury.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Suzy.
“No, no,” said Mercury. “She didn’t die or anything. My understanding is that she got sent back in time by a glass apple filled with croutons.”
“She what?”
“It’s hard to explain,” said Mercury, in a tone that indicated he didn’t really want to go into it.
Suzy couldn’t help smiling.
“What?” asked Mercury, seeing the odd look on her face.
“You miss her, huh?”
Mercury shrugged. “I’ve been around a long time. I don’t get too close to humans. They don’t stick around long enough to make it worthwhile.” He turned to look out the window.
She didn’t press the issue, but for some reason she suddenly felt better about this crazy mission they had embarked on. Mercury put on a good act, but underneath the bombast and sarcasm, he was pretty human himself.
A few minutes later, they reached Arlington Cemetery. Mercury got out of the cab and Suzy directed the driver to drop her off in front of the Capitol Reflecting Pool. The plan was to find a construction site somewhere within the area between the Capitol and the White House.
She paid the cab driver with a couple of Mercury’s crisp Andrew Jacksons and set off on a self-guided walking tour of Washington, D.C.
Chapter Thirty-five
Washington, D.C.; August 2016
By the time Suzy had spent three hours walking every inch of sidewalk between the White House and the Capitol, she decided the shoes had been a mistake. Plenty of those high-powered political types wore sneakers on their lunch breaks, after all. At least she’d had the sense not to pick the stiletto heels she had her eye on. If she’d have been wearing those, the free world would have had to just pack it in.
The best location she’d found for the MEOW device was a half-finished overpass a few hundred yards northwest of the Capitol building. Large cylindrical supports had been set in concrete, and Suzy thought if she could reach the top of one, she could drop the metal box down inside one. Assuming the supports were hollow all the way to the concrete, it would be very difficult to get it out of there without tearing out the column. The supports were a good twenty feet tall, but part of the concrete had been poured already, forming a roughly step-like structure. She was going to attract some attention climbing up there, but it couldn’t be helped.
She waited until the street was mostly clear, then slipped off her shoes, grabbed the MEOW device from her bag, and hopped onto the first tier of concrete. As soon as she did so, a police car rounded the corner.
“Shit!” she yelled, making her way across the narrow strip of concrete to the next section, which reached to her waist. The car’s flashers went on. Suzy scrambled on top of the concrete block and continued to the next section.
The car pulled up a few yards from the overpass and the driver got out.
“Miss,” said the young man who’d stepped out of the car. “Please get down from there.”
“I
t’s a free country!” shouted Suzy, who was now on the third tier of concrete and was starting to get vertigo from the height.
“It’s a safety issue, Miss,” said the police officer. “You could fall.”
“Why don’t you go arrest a corrupt Congressman or something,” Suzy yelled.
“Miss, the next time a corrupt Congressman climbs up an unfinished overpass at great risk to his own personal safety, I promise you I will do whatever I can to address the situation. What do you have in your hand?”
“None of your business!” Suzy shouted, clambering onto the fourth tier. From here she thought she could reach the top of one of the supports.
“Miss, please show me your hands.”
Suzy ignored the officer, daring neither to look down nor at him. She assumed he was pointing a gun at her. So much for her personal safety. She slowly got to her feet, with both arms wrapped around the metal column.
“Show me your hands!” So much for “please.”
The top of the column was still a good two feet over her head. Suzy felt like crying. There was no way she could reach.
She turned to the cop, who did indeed have a gun pointed at her. “Look,” she said, holding out the MEOW device. “It’s just a metal box. It’s nothing.”
“Miss, set down the box.”
Suzy sighed. She was becoming resigned to the fact that she’d have to settle for just flipping the switch and hoping for the best. The device would still work; it just wouldn’t take very long for Michelle to get rid of it. Presumably she had at least a few human agents in the area; all she had to do was pinpoint the location of the device and dispose of it. Balderhaz had designed it so that the once the device was turned on, it couldn’t be turned off. It could be destroyed, but it would take quite an impact—like being hit by a 747, for example.
Of course, first she had to open the lid of the box and flip the switch. Which could be difficult if Officer Public Safety actually intended to shoot her.
“OK,” she said. “I’ll get down. You can even arrest me, if you want. Or shoot me, whatever you need to do. But I have to do something first. I have to open this box and flip a switch.”
Mercury Revolts: (Book Four of the Mercury Series) Page 20