Dreams in the Tower Part 3

by Vrana, Andrew

  * * *

  As he stood outside the menacing door, Mike realized this was the first time he had ever even been to Leutz’s office. First and last, he couldn’t help but think. Just as he was about to knock, Lom’s boring face showed up on the little screen above the lock. “Right on time,” Lom said, and then the door opened automatically.

  “Come on in Mike,” Leutz called from the other side of the vast room, which was at least twice the size of Mike’s office. “Have a seat,” she said. He crossed the room to her desk, noting how ornate and expensive the furniture and décor were; Leutz had never been very subtle.

  With a feeling of dispirited acceptance, Mike dropped into the soft chair on the near side of the heavy mahogany desk and waited for her to tell him his fate. He looked at her face, made bold by his apathy, and she stared back, caressing her glasses with a sharp finger.

  “I’d offer you a drink,” she said, “if you didn’t already smell like you soaked your suit in cheap whiskey.” Here it comes, Mike thought. “Really, Mike,” she said, leaning back, crossing her arms and taking him in with a predator’s gaze. “You didn’t have this problem before Project Unify, as far as we can tell. I’ve chosen to ignore it up until now, but that’s not an option anymore.” She sighed—and then did something that took Mike completely aback: she removed her smart glasses. Her blue eyes looked absurdly out-of-place with nothing to hide behind; her age suddenly showed blaringly on her tired face.

  “What is it, Mike?” she pleaded, softness in her voice. “The stress? I need to know how I can help you.”

  “It’s…” Mike began. But what would he say? That he was scared? That he could no longer deal with being complacent in bribery and murder and all the other crimes Silvan committed on his quest for power? The truth was, Mike wasn’t exactly sure what his problem was, but he did know that the source was Silte Corp.

  “It’s nothing…,” he began stubbornly; then, honesty seeping through uncontrollably, “It’s everything. It’s the violence. It’s being trapped in the Plaza. It’s the…the guilt.”

  “Huhhh…” The noise she made was something like a sigh. “Well, Mike, you’re not alone. Everyone in this building feels the same way you do—it’s just we’ve all gotten so good at pushing it deep down. You know, cram everything behind these inauthentic shells or something like that.” She looked away, twirling her glasses absently in her hand. But rather than her usual boredom, her look was one of poorly-masked worry. “You’re different, and that’s why you are so important. But I guess that’s also your big fault, isn’t it? The truth is…the truth is we—no I am scared, and if I can’t rely on you…well then I guess I’m all alone up here.”

  “I’m sorry…” Mike said, unsure of what else to say. This whole situation was beginning to make him uncomfortable; this woman sitting across from him was more human now than she had ever shown before, and the effect was strange. Somewhere down beneath the scotch he felt pity.

  “Don’t apologize,” she said. She opened a drawer and pulled out a small plastic pill bottle, popped it open and slid a circular white pill into her palm. “Take this.” She handed it over to Mike, who studied it in his hand.

  “It’s okay,” Leutz assured him. It’s Sobril, a new drug fresh from the OpenLife R&D department. It negates the effects of alcohol, to some extent. After all this chaos is over these things will be on shelves in every convenience store and supermarket in the world. Take it.” Mike shrugged and flipped the little pill into his mouth, swallowing it with a gob of saliva. “Give it a few minutes,” she said.

  They sat there in silence for a minute or two and then all at once Mike felt his fuzzy drunkenness receding, leaving not even a headache in its wake. “That’s amazing,” he said.

  “Isn’t it?” Leutz had put her glasses back on and was her usual stony self again, her brief little show of vulnerability gone as quickly as it had come. It almost felt to Mike like it hadn’t even happened at all. “No more hangovers,” she said. “No more worrying about driving home. Keep this bottle. And don’t even think about drinking on your way to work again. Got it?”

  “Yeah—uh…yes, of course. Thank you.”

  “Good,” she said. “Then we can move on to your assignment. Lom hasn’t given me much to feel good about at this point.”

  And there it was: the second hammer blow. Just when Mike got rid of one of the worries gnawing at his insides she smacked him back to reality with the other. He had never been a procrastinator before—and he still wasn’t. He simply believed people’s privacy should be left alone. If he could discover anything new through normal means fine, but he wasn’t going to become just like one of the hackers they were fighting against; he wouldn’t drop to such a low level. But what would be the cost?

  After a few moments of focusing on something in her glasses’ display, Leutz said, “It’s time for a progress report, Mike. Have you found anything yet or not?”

  “Well, not really.” Mike spoke carefully and—he hoped—calmly. It was one thing to reveal his lack of progress; it was something entirely worse to make Leutz suspect he was somehow involved with her enemies. “I mean, I haven’t noticed anything.”

  “Oh, Mike, you don’t think we’re only expecting you to notice things, do you? Perhaps before I failed to convey the level of intensity this task involves.” She sighed and drummed her fingers on the wood desk. “You haven’t seen any unusual behavior whatsoever? Anything at all?”

  “Well, there is something.” He had to bring it up now, as much as he hated the idea. She probably already knew, anyway. “Bellowe is…” he lowered his voice, even though it was ridiculous to think anyone else in the building could eavesdrop on them up here. “I think Carl Bellowe is having an affair with Diane Salpollo.”

  Leutz stopped her eye movements and focused completely on Mike. “An affair… No, I don’t think so. But you definitely know the two have been meeting privately?”

  Nodding, Mike said, “At least once, late at night.”

  “Hmm.” She paused, thoughtful. “I think we can rule out a sexual relationship based on what we know, but this is the first I’m hearing of secret meetings between the two. We don’t have any surveillance footage of the two meeting privately, so they must be covering it up—with a high enough level of technical skill to warrant outside help, no less. The fact that they conveniently ended up on the same floor is looking less and less like a coincidence. Good work, Mike.”

  Surprised at this praise and at her certainty that his assumption about a romantic relationship was wrong, Mike simply sat there. Since he had entered the office and sat down in this chair his perspective had gone through a complete reversal, and he couldn’t believe his luck. But his newfound smugness died on his face when he saw Leutz’s serious glare.

  “Okay then,” she said. “Your next job is to get in there and find out what they’re up to. You’re going to join them, Mike.”

  “Join them? Are you asking me to—?”

  “Absolutely. It may take a while, but I suspect they’ll have a much easier time accepting someone who is as new to Silte headquarters as you, especially if they know about this guilt you’ve been going through lately. Get in there. Do whatever you need to. You don’t have access to anything that could harm us, and you shouldn’t be in any type of danger as long as you’re in the Plaza. They wouldn’t risk doing anything drastic right under our noses.”

  “I…I understand,” he said. I need a drink, he thought.

  “Excellent,” she said. “You can report to Lom as soon as you get in. Though, if you’d rather come here in person to report, I won’t be upset.”

  The smile she flashed him then was an even more unsettling sight than the bodies in the streets.

  22

  “I’m coming up, Captain,” Dellia called as she briefly paused her ascent up the carpeted stairway to the Wyles’s musty little wheelhouse. “So put your dick away and turn the porn off.”

  “None of that goin’ on up here, Miss D
ellia,” Lester the captain yelled back, his voice echoing off the rusty, off-white metal walls. “That’s what I got a private cabin for.”

  Grinning brightly, Dellia climbed the last few steps and emerged into a cloud of stale smoke and sweaty air: the now-familiar perfume of the captain’s nest. She found Lester in his usual position, lounging back in his bolted-down chair with his work boots up on the desk beside the console, his arms behind his head and a cigarette smoldering between his lips. As she approached, he took a deep drag and put his cigarette in an ashtray by his feet.

  “I’d ask how I earned the pleasure of another visit from you,” he said, “but I think I already know why you’re here again.”

  There was only one other chair in the wheelhouse—an uncomfortable metal seat also bolted to the floor. Dellia sat in it and spun it around to face the captain’s seat. “You know me too well,” she said wryly. “It’s not that I don’t like talking with you or anything, but there are more urgent things happening right now.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Lester’s face darkened slightly as he gazed out through the window, squinting at the sunlight shining off the tall stack of shipping containers on the center of the ship. After a while he looked down and grabbed his dying cigarette for one last drag before he snuffed it out. “We’ll dock in Savannah before dawn,” he said solemnly. “I won’t tell you how close I was to crossin’ the Atlantic first and takin’ the long way around. I still haven’t had word if we’ve been discovered.” He swung his legs down, sat straight up, and turned to face her with an uncharacteristically morose look. “He may be dead,” he said. “Nkimba.” His Gulf-coast drawl stressed the ‘N’ when he said the name. “I sent him out on the speedboat. Maybe not quite enough gas to get to the coast. Definitely not a solid enough ID to be safe if he does make it there.” he paused sullenly. “Either way, if anyone was following us, they’ll be following Nkimba now. At least until they realize the boat they’re following is about a hundred times too small.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, looking through the large windows at the churning sea to avoid his eyes. “But you know why I have to get to Georgia and the CDC as soon as I can.”

  When she turned to look at him again, he was back to his absently jovial self. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I just always imagined humanity’s savior as some sort of buff action hero guy or something.”

  “Well I’m not the one who can save us,” Dellia said, turning her chair to face the front of the boat. “That honor goes to a little mutant strain of Silvan’s virus that probably would’ve come about eventually on its own without my interference. I’m more like a conduit or a catalyst or something.”

  “Whatever you are,” Lester said, “I’d put my whole crew at your disposal if that’s what it took.” He turned back to his console and control panels and produced another cigarette from a battered pack in his chest pocket. He stuck it between his lips, lit it with a silver zippo and sucked heavily on it for a while.

  “So we’ll make it to Savannah before dawn?” Dellia asked. “Like late tonight?” She turned her head away to avoid breathing in the smoke he was exhaling.

  “No,” he said. “Early tomorrow morning. Around four.”

  “Four a.m.” She got up from her seat and grabbed the rail along the wall to steady herself against the boat’s rocking. “Then I’ll be back here at three-thirty. I’m counting on you to get me off of the boat quickly and quietly.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry about that. They’ve already worked that stuff out.” He put his feet up again and leaned back as far as his chair would allow, puffing on the cigarette that stuck out of his mouth like some absurd paper and ash tongue, trailing smoke curls to the ceiling. “See you in the morning, then, Miss Dellia.”

  She nodded and left the captain to his relaxation, holding her breath against his most recent puff of smoke. She went down the first set of stairs, but instead of continuing on down to the level where the cabins and facilities were she went behind the stairs and out onto the deck. As soon as she got outside, the late afternoon sun hit her face, making her squint and turn away, so she went around the towering wheelhouse section to the port side of the deck. There, she leaned on the rail and looked out at the steadily rolling water, breathing in the brine and the fishiness wafting up in the spray off the sea. As far as her eyes could see there was nothing but white-crested, slowly churning ocean stretching on like infinite space. If she stayed here a few more hours, she might just be able to make out a slim strip of distant land before it became too dark for her to see anything more than the moon and stars and their shimmering mirror images on the water’s surface. Then there would be nothing else until the lights of Georgia’s coast glittered in the distance.

  The wind whipped her hair around over her face. Time to do something about that, she thought as she swept it to the side. She had gotten by unnoticed without much effort up until now because of the help the crafty AC hackers had given her, but that help would end now; she didn’t want it anymore if it meant she was under their control. So the hair would have to come off, just to make it a little harder for her to be recognized. And she could wear baggier clothes to make her gender and body type more ambiguous. Maybe she could borrow some stuff from Jason. Would that be too much to ask of him considering what she was about to do?

  But right now she didn’t want to think about that.

  Right now she just wanted to lean on this rail and watch the slow, monotonous rolling of the ocean. The sun was hot on her neck and the wind whirled her hair everywhere, but there was solace in that blue-green vastness; something in the stretching depths made the entire world’s problems seem small and insignificant. The oceans were old—billions of years old—and they had done this same dance while continents rose and collided, while lesser seas formed and dried up, while entire families of organisms evolved and went extinct in what would seem like brief moments to the oceans if they had minds to observe such things. Oceans shaped the land, they birthed life, consumed death—and they would probably be little changed long after the last complex life was gone from the earth. It was easy to forget about even the most desperate situations of humanity’s civilizations when you thought about the oceans.

  Eventually, though, Dellia would have to turn her back on the soothing water. So she did; she pushed off from the rail and navigated her way back to the door and then down to the lower deck, her mind never fully leaving the peaceful scene she had turned away from.

  23

  “Congrats on your bill passing. Glad you’re on my side for once.”

  As Chris read the message from Alana for the third time, he still had trouble believing what had happened. He had never heard of anything getting done this fast in Washington—at least not in the last fifty years or so. After he gave his presentation, the late morning vote on the Freedom of Non-Physical Persons Act had been a narrow success. A mere hour later, it had passed the House overwhelmingly. And now, a few minutes before 5 p.m., the president had given his support, and the mocking messages and calls Chris had been expecting before the vote were instead words of congratulation.

  Not that he was complaining or anything.

  Running his hands through his hair to smooth out the day’s excitement, he straightened up in his desk and made sure nothing below his lapel would be in the camera’s view; he wouldn’t want the water pitcher or one of his desk ornaments getting in the shot and making him appear unprofessional for the final interview of the day. It had been his idea to do this interview in his own office rather than a more typical setting like a conference room or somewhere outside with the Capitol building as a backdrop. This particular interview was something he had agreed to reluctantly, so he was at least going to do it from the comfort of his own desk, in his own office.

  “Two minutes, Senator Colmin,” Baz said, popping up on the wall screen across from the desk.

  “Great,” he said. “Let me see the shot. Give me a standard background.”

  Up on the massive screen his image
from the shoulders up appeared in front of a hulking white marble pillar with an American flag draped from a pole off to the side. He used the screen as a mirror to straighten his collar and adjust his tie. For once, he was happy with how his hair looked, but he wished he had thought of bringing in a makeup artist: the shot was close, giving his face much more exposure than he was comfortable with at the end of a very long, tediously eventful day. But that was the price of celebrity, as fleeting as it was in this sensationalist town.

  “Do they know what’s off limits?” Chris asked. This was Bare Facts News, a citizen-driven online news outlet dedicated to getting to ‘the truth’—not one of the corporate media giants that probably wouldn’t press him on anything more dangerous than what he thought of the Anti-Corp protest tragedy.

  “I have briefed them on the topics you requested be off limits,” Baz said, “and I will be standing by to cut the feed at your discretion. Ten seconds, Senator.”

  “Switch it over.”

  “—and, in a stunning show of cooperation, the bill later passed the House and received executive approval from the president.” The host—Brendan Drex, if Chris remembered correctly—barely looked thirty. He had a trendy, over-styled haircut and a stubbly beard, and his suit was an informal tan color, with a green shirt and no tie; it was as if he had done everything he could to make the average viewer know that this was alternative media.

  “This swift action has caught analysts by surprise,” Brendan Drex said. “But we hope to demystify the situation if we can, starting with our first guest of the evening. With us on a video call from Washington is Senator Chris Colmin of Texas, primary sponsor and sole champion of the so-called AI Act. Senator Colmin, thank you for joining us tonight.”

  “Thanks for having me Brendan.”

  “Now, Senator, as a member of the Libertarian Party you have previously spoken out against equal rights for non-human intelligences. Many people are wondering, why the sudden change in your stance on this issue?”