The A.S.P.s were a different matter. The poor things didn’t even know they were sick. Their brains were so gone, so riddled with disease, that they actually believed that they were normal, and that the Variant-Positives and Clears were the freaks. Which, one good look in the mirror should have told them, was not just wrong, but completely ridiculous. All right, sure, there were exceptions, but overwhelmingly, the Anti-Socials were simply ... well ... unattractive. They looked unhealthy, and congenitally so. And this was true of even the least afflicted and most cooperative among them, the ones they allowed outside the Zones to work in the Residential Communities, who Billy sometimes saw in passing on his way to Finkles or Big Buy Basement. The ones they didn’t let out were worse. Their skin was terrible, either dry and cracked or overly oily, and probably stank. Their hair was all greasy, clumped, and matted, or it was powdered with dandruff and crawling with lice. Most of them seemed to be missing teeth, which was certainly caused by periodontitis. They bathed infrequently, clearly never flossed, didn’t use condoms, and smoked tobacco. Something like sixty percent, it was said, were chronic Diplastomorphinol users. The rest were mostly alcoholics, or were killing themselves in some other fashion. Billy could not begin to fathom what went through their tiny, enfeebled minds. How they went on, what they lived for, why they didn’t just euthanize themselves, were questions he had never been able to answer. Still, despite his instinctual revulsion (which any healthy organism felt when confronted with some obvious abnormality among the members of its potential gene pool), he was, above all else, a Clear ... so whenever he saw their photos appear on the screen of his Viewer on KILL CHAIN LIVE!, or even when he was just playing KILL CHAIN, and was confronted with their unrelenting pain, and pointless physical and emotional suffering, he felt himself overcome with compassion, and not just for the Target at hand, but for every living, needlessly suffering, uncorrected sentient being ... that, and an irresistible urge to take them out as quickly as possible.
KILL CHAIN LIVE! on Channel 16, had been on the air for some twenty-five years. It ran at 2300 nightly, except for Sundays and major holidays. ** Billy Jensen had been watching the show, religiously, since the age of twelve, which technically his parents should have prevented, but nobody ever checked that stuff. The production elements had changed through the years as styles went in and out of fashion and new technologies came online, but the basic premise remained the same. Targets posing imminent threats, usually in some Recovering Area, but occasionally in one of the Quarantine Zones, were acquired, locked on, and taken out, typically by a laser-guided AGM 660 Godsend missile, the classic air-to-surface munition manufactured by Pfizer-Lockheed, which was one of the major sponsors of the show. The 660 Godsend, a solid fuel rocket, equipped with either a standard condensed or “indoor” thermobaric warhead, and a Semi-Active Laser Homing guidance system that was totally unrivaled, was the ordnance of choice of Security Services throughout the United Territories. Not only was the Godsend a first class weapon suitable for use in both open and urban Emergency Threat Containment environments, but by licensing the use of its in-flight footage to KILL CHAIN LIVE! on Channel 16, Security Divisions of leading corporations, like the Hadley Corporation of Menomonie, Wisconsin, were doubling and tripling their profit margins. Hi-Def Real-Time NoseCam feed provided PixelPerfect footage of the Godsend’s dizzying Mach 2 descent through diaphanous webs of fluffy white clouds like some monomaniacal avenging angel. Average flight time was 26 seconds, during which the Operator needed to hold the crosshairs steady, painting the target, which was often moving, for the Godsend’s onboard laser seeker. The last few seconds were always a blur, so you had to wait for the slow-mo replays and satellite footage from other angles to see all the details and determine the score. For the overwhelming majority of Targets, death was instant, and presumably painless, unless a Target was exceptionally good, or whoever was manning the UAV screwed up somehow, or something malfunctioned. Normally, the Targets, whoever they were, males mostly, but sometimes females, and sometimes groups, or “hives” as they called them, were vaporized never knowing what hit them. Before the strikes, you’d get their backgrounds, names, photos, medical histories, ages, associates, whatever there was. Then came a ten-minute call-in segment, when they read out people’s Fleeps and Tweaks, followed by some kind of medical expert, who Billy Jensen generally ignored. The current hosts, Dr. Roger P. Greenway and Susan Schnupftuch-Boermann Goereszky, were fairly attractive Variant-Positives whose job it was to look “concerned” or “deeply interested” or “wildly excited” while talking into the camera continuously as their line producers talked in their ears, telling them what to do and say.
“Susan, I think we’re getting the yellow.”
“I’ve got that here as well, Roger.”
Susan Schnupftuch-Boermann Goereszky, who sometimes did the news on Sundays, was “live” at her desk on the KILL CHAIN LIVE! set, a technological phantasmagoria officially located in Studio B of the Channel 16 Broadcast Center. Dr. Greenway was hunkered down in an undisclosed secure location, probably somewhere down the hall, surrounded by screens and wires and panels of buttons that nobody knew what they did.
“Susan, we’re definitely yellow here, Susan.”
“Still no sign of Witherspoon, Roger?”
“Nothing yet, but there must be something, or we wouldn’t be getting the yellow, Susan.”
“Roger, we’re going yellow in the studio. ”
The infinity cycs in Studio B slowly faded from orange to yellow. Susan Schnupftuch-Boermann Goereszky cleared her throat and adjusted her posture. An ad for Anabastastic Plus, a painless anal bleaching compound, popped up right in the middle of the screen, which didn’t have anything to do with anything, so Billy minimized and stacked it with the others.
“Susan, it feels like something’s happening.”
“Is something happening?”
“Feels like it, Susan.”
“Still no sign of Witherspoon, Roger?”
“Susan, we’re getting ... hold on, Susan. Someone’s talking ... yes, good. We’ve got a location.”
“Which satellite, Roger?”
The feed from various orbiting satellites was flipping past in one corner of the screen ... overhead shots of abandoned buildings on nearly identical empty streets.
“Do we have a number on that satellite, Roger?”
“Hold on, Susan. It’s coming in now.”
Susan Schnupftuch-Boermann Goereszky rolled her neck and flared her nostrils.
“2230. 2230. Satellite 2230, Susan!”
Dr. Greenway wrenched his neck now, rolling the tension out of his shoulders. Billy smiled and scanned his messages. Nothing that couldn’t wait ten minutes.
“Got him, Roger! There he is now!”
Satellite 2230 was up and feeding a beautiful tracking “god shot” of Carlos Witherspoon barreling out of some random building which was now on fire.
“Looks like that building’s on fire there, Roger.”
“Yes, it certainly does, Susan. It appears we’ve got some boots on the ground. They seem to have flushed him out there, Susan.”
“Oh no. Are they going to take him themselves?”
“Possibly, Susan. We just don’t ... wait. Wait. Yes. I’m getting something.”
Consummate professional that she was, Susan Schnupftuch-Boermann Goereszky went straight to Real-Time Operator Feed, a risky move, but she just had a feeling. Carlos Witherspoon ran for his life, across an avenue and into a field, heading for a grove of crumbling buildings.
“We’re getting something …”
“I’m on it, Roger.”
The RTO Feed came up sharply, crosshairs groping and feeling for Carlos, who was doing a crazy zig-zag pattern across the field where there was no cover.
“Green, Susan. We’ve got a green here.”
The cycs in the studio went to green.
“Going green in the studio, Roger.”
Operator 225 was up. A silhouette showing hi
s operator number and season statistics, which were all exemplary, appeared in the lower right corner of the screen.
“What can we say about our operator, Roger?”
“Susan, Operator 225 has 93 kills, 15 collateral, EEA of 2.1.”
“Pretty incredible numbers, Roger.”
“That’s right, Susan, and it’s only April.”
Operator 225 was good. Really good. Like circus shot good. Billy had seen him bank a missile off one moving vehicle and into another, wasting an entire family of Targets with virtually zero collateral damage. Another time he’d flown one down a stairwell and into the lobby of this building, vaporizing everyone hiding in the lobby while the others upstairs went on with their breakfasts. What he was doing with Carlos Witherspoon was dancing the crosshairs back and forth against the direction and matching the speed of his zig-zag pattern across the field. Billy gave him, like, another twelve seconds before Carlos reached the safety of the buildings.
“This operator is amazing, Susan. He’s leading the target.”
“We’re watching it, Roger.”
The Foxtrot button on the RTO screen lit up suddenly.
Billy smiled.
“FOXTROT, SUSAN! FOXTROT! FOXTROT!”
Dr. Greenway leapt to his feet, bringing his crotch up into the camera. Billy chuckled. Carlos ran. Susan Schnupftuch-Boermann Goereszky kept her composure and went to NoseCam.
Southeast Region 423, wherever that was on the planet Earth, was rushing up into the screen ... a blur of shuddering white and red and orange lights with squiggly tails, the patchwork grid of endless cities bleeding into other cities, indistinguishable, like a storm of stars, as the Godsend missile screamed down out of the night from twenty kilometers up. In a window in the lower left corner of the screen, Operator 225 was sweeping the delicate crosshairs back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, dancing with Carlos, intersecting him ... now ... now ... now ... and finally ...
“WHOA! Unbelievable precision!”
“Absolutely textbook strike!”
“That’s got to be one for the highlight reel, Susan!”
“Let’s take a look at the replays, Roger.”
The screen was already subdividing into an assortment of slow-mo replays of the kill from sixteen different angles. Billy froze one in which the missile hung in the air over Carlos Witherspoon, ten or twelve meters above and behind him, its cherry red nose cone pointed at the spot the stride he was taking would carry him into in approximately 0.06 seconds. In another window, he pulled up and readied the login screen of the K/B network. His shift began in forty-three seconds.
“Never knew what hit him, Susan.”
“His needless suffering is over now, Roger.”
“Not to mention the threat he posed, Susan.”
“Any details on what that was, Roger?”
“I’m afraid not, Susan. Definitely serious, though. Oh, look at that shot on Satellite 60! You can almost see the expression on his face.”
Billy pulled up his algorithmic script.
“Roger, we’re getting some breaking news in.”
“That is a dead center hit there, Susan!”
“Roger, we’re breaking away for a second.”
“Say again, Susan.”
Susan was gone. The picture had cut to a stock montage of Jimmy “Jimbo” Cartwright, III, founder and CEO of Finkles, who had been battling cancer for several decades, and who had suffered some sort of major setback. Senior News Anchor Chastaine Chandler, a stunning young Clear with designer lips and no hips at all who Billy had a crush on, appeared in a window in the upper right corner. Sadly, Jimbo’s condition was grave. The family had gathered at the Cartwright compound, filming on the grounds of which was not permitted, and had issued a statement thanking Jimbo’s millions of loyal customers and fans for their millions of emails, and Fleeps and Tweaks, and prayers, and ongoing customer loyalty. Chastaine Chandler took a beat, shook her head in disbelief, and wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.
“I’d like to play a Fleep we received from a Finkles customer in Region 220 ...”
Billy Jensen swiped her away and logged onto the K/B network.
“K/B Customer Service Solutions. This is Billy. How can I help you?”
Long-Term Relaxation
Six weeks earlier, Valentina, who, as you may or may not remember at this point, was on her way to visit her mother, had no idea where she was anymore. She knew she was somewhere in the underground labyrinth of Breckenridge Village, “a Retirement Community,” but she didn’t know where that somewhere was, or how, exactly, she had ended up there, or how one got from wherever that was to wherever it was one had to go to get back to the place she had started in order to take a different route and hopefully end up where she was going.
Breckenridge Village, “a Retirement Community,” was a city-sized glass and chromium cluster of geodesic dome-like structures that rose up out of the surrounding suburbs like a squadron of alien Mayan spaceships. Home to just over two hundred thousand cognitively compromised Long-Term clients (and their doctors, aides, and insurance adjustors), it provided the finest in Healthcare services, assisted living, and social activities, in a thoroughly stimulating yet relaxing environment to which most of the clients were completely oblivious. The Breckenridge Group of HealthCare Companies had spared no expense on design and furnishings. The sumptuous lobbies, with their wall-to-wall mirrors, marble floors, recessed lighting, atrium gardens, fountains, et cetera, had all been individually appointed to reflect the various tastes and budgets of the clients’ loved ones when they came to visit, which they tended to do on Sunday mornings, approximately 8.6 times per year. The Residential Units themselves, which were slightly less sumptuous and much less mirrored, were segregated according to the clients’ or the clients’ loved ones’ abundance levels, the Weston Unit for the super-abundant, the Greenwich Unit for the seriously abundant, the Henley Unit for the very abundant, and so on down the abundance scale .
Valentina’s mother, Catherine Briggs, was a Breckenridge Village “Special Needs” Client. She shared a “semi-private” room (with adjoining dayroom and shower facilities) in Breckenridge Village’s “Seaview Unit” with thirty-two other Special Needs Clients.
The Seaview Unit, which currently offered one hundred and twelve such semi-private rooms, was a twenty-eight story concrete tower out on the southernmost edge of the complex that was almost totally impossible to get to and which most people thought was a parking garage. Its windows (which were all on the southern side, so facing away from the rest of the Village) looked out onto a fake lagoon, the surface of which was a solid layer of bright green algae and stagnant slime. Around the lagoon were some artificial palm trees, plastic herons, and a couple of flamingos, which due to the heat had melted slightly. Catherine was up on the 20th floor. Up there with her, gumming their tongues, the wispy remnants of their burned-out hairdos jutting out at unfortunate angles, medicated past all need for restraints, were Dotty Drinkwater, Cindy Chu, Katja McGruder, Latonya van Buren, and the rest of Catherine’s Special Needs roommates, except for those whose turn it was to get their weekly bath and grooming, which was pretty much the highlight of everyone’s week. Due to their troubling medical histories, Special Needs Clients didn’t get many visitors. By the time their loved ones finally consigned them, usually after years of grief, stress, and social stigmatization, to Long-Term Care in the Seaview Unit, these loved ones felt they had done their duty and now, finally, it was time to let go. On top of which, no one was entirely sure that the clients even recognized visitors, or the aides, or even their fellow clients, preventatively medicated as they were.
For Special Needs Clients like Catherine Briggs, the Seaview Unit was the end of the road ... a warehouse for the afflicted abundant. Virtually every Retirement Community operated one of these Special Needs units. They weren’t featured in the online brochures, but for those whose loved ones could afford the service, they offered around-the-clock Long-Term Care t
o drug-resistant family members who were facing an A.S.P. designation and relocation to a Quarantine Zone. As long as the patient-in-question’s symptoms hadn’t progressed to attempted violence, and one was carrying the proper insurance, or could otherwise demonstrate ability to pay, Special Needs clients could live out their days, in relative comfort and anonymity, in a pharmaceutically stabilized state, and spare their loved one the disesteem and embarrassment flowing from “designation.” Loved ones could choose from an assortment of levels of accommodations, menus, Content, and personal hygiene and grooming options, creating customized Patient Care Packages according to their budgets and the patient’s needs.
Valentina’s father, Walter F. Briggs, a Junior Partner at Pincus, Sarkovsky, so fairly, but not quite comfortably abundant, had chosen the “Seaview Standard Plus,” one step up from the basic package, and even that had been a bit of a stretch. He’d had to liquidate most of their assets to cover the Up-Front One-Time Pre-Pay (GD 26 million after rebate), and now, even with Valentina and Kyle helping out as much as they could, every year, come 15 January, he found himself struggling to make the deductible (thirty-eight percent of the annual fees). In order to bump up his billable hours, he’d relocated, ten years back, to F.E. Region 124, learned a few words of Japanese, and bought a small condo with bamboo floors and a partial view of Lake Shikotsu, which during the winter you could sometimes swim in. Valentina hadn’t seen him for years, except of course on the screen of a Viewer. He’d fleeped her during the Christmas holidays, back when she was suffering those cranial zings. They’d chatted, briefly, about her pregnancy, and how happy Walter was for the two of them, and she’d casually inquired about her mother. *
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