Swarm

by Guy Garcia

“She said something about going to stay with relatives for a while. But you’re welcome to try.”

  Duggan hung up and called the number Palladino gave him. On the second ring, a man with a familiar voice answered the phone.

  “Wasson?”

  “Hello, Agent Duggan. How’s your soccer game?”

  “What are you doing at Marty’s house?”

  “They discharged me a week after you left—spineless motherfuckers. Maybe we weren’t as covert as we thought. Should’ve known they were watching us the whole time.”

  Duggan could tell from the slight slur in Wasson’s voice that he’d been drinking.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Duggan said.

  “Laura’s kinda messed up over Marty. We’re all messed up, aren’t we? Every fucking one of us. I came to help Laura with the kids, but nobody’s home.” There was a pause. “We should have helped Donny—bunch of dick-less cowards. We all saw the scar on Donny’s neck, but we just looked the other way.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Mitch.”

  “Agent Duggan, did you send Marty the video?”

  “What video?”

  “The video of Marty shooting Donny. That’s why Marty tried to kill himself. I figured you already knew that.”

  “No, I didn’t. The video came from Marty’s helmet camera, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah. But those pictures of Donny all wired up and the memo … That wasn’t Marty.”

  “Who else knew about the video?”

  There was another short pause. “After the shooting, a lot of people came and went. They confiscated everybody’s stuff—cameras, laptops, you name it.”

  “And the video of the shootings was still in Marty’s camera?”

  “I guess.”

  “Was one of the guys who came and went named Kenneth Ulrich?”

  “I don’t know. Who’s that?”

  “Good-looking guy with steel-rimmed glasses and a blondish beard.”

  “Maybe. It’s not something I would have noticed.”

  “Was it something Donny Westlake would have noticed?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose. It’s none of my business. But I’ll tell you this: whoever sent that video wanted everybody from the base to see it.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because they sent a copy to me too.”

  “Dr. Palladino told me that Marty’s suicide note said he was doing it to protect Laura. Do you know why Marty would say that?”

  “Maybe he was feeling like a liability.”

  “One more question: Did you leave the lime-green Post-it message for me on Donny’s computer?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you lied to me.”

  “No.”

  “How’s that?”

  “That night at the base, you asked me if I put the Post-it on Donny’s computer, and I said I didn’t, which was true. I wrote the words, but the Post-it was already there.”

  27

  They came dressed in white from small towns and big cities, from the sunstruck suburbs of Phoenix and Miami and the hipster meccas of Williamsburg and Portland, from the well-heeled beaches of the Carolinas and the multicultural precincts of Atlanta and LA, from the redwood forest and the gulf stream waters, in cars and boats and planes and trucks and buses, from England and Brazil and Bali and Japan and Mexico and Denmark, and a hundred backyard backwaters where techno wasn’t even in the vocabulary. They came alone and in couples and groups, friends and lovers, brothers and sisters, fathers and sons, saviors and sinners, orphans and outliers, drawn toward the intertwined Xs they could see from miles away, sensing that the translucent beacon soaring above it all was there for a reason beyond LED dazzle and dangling circus swingers. They wore the clear plastic bracelets on their wrists as badges of honor, physical proof that they had answered the call and paid tribute to the tribe, raising their arms for the automated scanners in an inadvertent salute to their fellow dancers and dreamers, whose numbers were increasing each second, until the burgeoning throng looked back to see who was behind them and returned raised fists to the fresh arrivals in a sign of solidarity and welcome and a roar of mutual recognition rose up from both sides of the turnstiles, a spontaneous anthem to the aggregation of familiar strangers before anything had even happened yet, except that something already had and everybody felt it and knew it.

  Up in the DJ module, Xander and Tom heard the shouts and marveled at the parade of fans pouring past the jeering anti-rave hecklers and patrolling police vans. Fifty feet above the ground, with a view in every direction, the circular enclosure seemed to Xander like a starship hovering over a planet of upturned faces.

  “God bless America,” Xander effused. He turned to X-ist’s first guest DJ. “Are you ready to take the helm?”

  “Aye aye, Commander X!” The electronic luminaries and their comely crews feted each otherr with animated fist pounds and tequila shots. Somebody turned up the trip-hop on the capsule’s monitors until the room was shaking on its hinges and all aboard were swept up in a pristine moment of unbridled levitation.

  Tom tugged on Xander’s shirt and pointed to the staircase. “Let’s go higher. I want to show you something.” On their way out, Tom hit a button and the peal of cathedral bells, pumped through a half-million-watt sound system, reverberated through the valley.

  Duggan, who was checking e-mails at the NCSD command post set up under a row of weeping willows, flinched from the momentous clanging. It was like the Berkeley carillon magnified a hundred times. “What the hell?” He surveyed the crowd as several dozen agents milled around in white T-shirts and jeans, checking their guns and touching base with undercover spotters positioned around the grounds. Susan Oliver was there too, perched demurely on a plastic folding chair under the trees in her best Lucy in the Sky dress.

  Eric handed Duggan a pair of earbuds connected to a wire running to a small plastic pack. “Put them on when the music starts,” he instructed, “and they’ll cancel out any microwave beams. I already passed them out to your men.”

  “Thanks.” Duggan stowed the wave-deflector kit in his pocket. “What’s so amusing?”

  “Nothing. It’s just that I never thought I’d see a bunch of Homeland Security agents dressed in white and rocking glow sticks and EDM backstage passes.”

  “Me neither,” Duggan said. “Any sign of Swarm or zeph.r?”

  “No, just the usual cell phone noise.” Eric pensively tapped the screen of his mini-tablet. “I heard on Twitter that the US Army just joined the party.”

  “Yeah, they’re bivouacked just a few miles away.”

  “Did you know the army was authorized to deploy MEDUSA? It stands for Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio.”

  “Believe me, I made it clear to General Mansfield that those things are only to be used as a last resort …”

  “That’s not what I’m getting at. Remember when I told you about PHAROH and how the main problem in our field test was a lack of amplification? Well, it occurred to me that if PHAROH could be connected to MEDUSA, the signal might be strong enough to disrupt zeph.r.”

  “That’s an interesting idea, but it’s too late. Besides, Cara nixed that option, remember?”

  Eric shrugged. “I’m just saying.”

  “What about the emergence computer model at NSA? Did you ever get a number?”

  “Thirty thousand, theoretically. But there wasn’t time to test the model for errors. Plus, the correspondence between density thresholds for grasshoppers and humans is still pretty inexact, to say the least.”

  Duggan barked into his wireless. “What’s the count at the door? I need you to close the gates when it reaches twenty-five thousand.” Duggan listened briefly before answering. “Because that’s the limit—that’s why. If the organizers push back, tell them they can take it up with the sheriff o
r the mayor or, if they prefer, they can talk to the commander of the Eastern National Guard.” Another pause. “Yes, I’m serious.”

  Duggan turned back to Eric. “I want you to stay here with Susan Oliver. If you pick up a signal, text me immediately and I’ll meet you both at the VIP entrance to the main stage.”

  “Roger that,” Eric chirped.

  A ticktock tattoo began to tap from the speakers, the sonic countdown to blast off. On cue, the crowd erupted as synthetic fanfares underlined the DJ’s digitally distorted voice:

  Are you

  ready?

  Are you

  here?

  Are you

  ready

  to

  X-ist?

  Duggan flinched again as his wristband lit up and started blinking in neon yellow.

  Eric seemed mesmerized by his own flashing bracelet.

  “You like this shit, don’t you?”

  Eric nodded. “What about you, Agent Duggan? You can feel the beat, right? I’ll bet you’ve got some moves.”

  Duggan looked at Eric to make sure he wasn’t joshing. “I can dance to anything if I’ve had enough to drink. But I’m more of a blues and classic rock kind of guy.”

  “That’s cool too.”

  “Yeah, it is. Just keep your ears on the radio and your eyes on that screen. I’ll be checking in every fifteen minutes.” Duggan went over to where Susan Oliver was sitting. “Susan, I must say you’re dressed appropriately.”

  “I asked you to call me Lucy, Agent Duggan.”

  “Sorry, Lucy. Are you still okay with what we’re planning to do?”

  “He’s here. I can feel his energy.”

  “That’s good, Lucy. Stay here with Deputy Agent Wightman. When we’ve confirmed that Swarm is on the premises, Eric will escort you to the VIP stage entrance and we’ll take you up to the lower platform so your boyfriend can see you, okay?”

  Lucy nodded, but her eyes were fixed on the rotating bauble in the sky.

  “Damn, how tall is this thing?”

  Xander was following Tom up the metal stairs encased in the upper arms of the polyhedron.

  “Almost two hundred feet to the top, remember?”

  “I mean the X part. You’re not getting me up on that freaking Eiffel antenna.”

  “Don’t worry,” Tom said, “we’re almost there.”

  They emerged through a trapdoor to the roof just as the clouds ignited in orange and violet streaks over the trees. The St. Elmo’s tower rose another sixty-five feet above them, and four retractable cranes with trapeze bars attached to the cables were folded against its base. To the east, it was possible to discern the early evening lights of Philadelphia.

  “Holy shit,” Xander said, firing up a joint. “You can see the whole damned state from here.” He pointed to the steel spire’s pinnacle. “That’s where you’ll make your blue lightning, right? And those cranes are for the trapeze artists to fly over the crowd during my set.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not what I want to show you.”

  Tom led him to a ten-by ten-foot cube made of wire mesh. “It’s a Faraday cage.” He opened the door, motioning for Xander to follow.

  “I get it,” Xander said. “This is where you incarcerate the guilty ones, right?”

  “Actually, it’s the opposite,” Tom countered. “The first one of these was built by Michael Faraday back in the 1830s to shield people from electromagnetic radiation. I had it put in to protect the workers in case of lightning storms or if something went wrong with the St. Elmo’s fire, but I brought you here so you know where to go if things get too crazy tonight.”

  “How crazy is ‘too crazy’?

  Tom handed Xander a pair of binoculars. “See all those anti-rave demonstrators and cops?”

  “Yeah, dude, that’s why we hired our own private security.”

  “Now follow that road over there, about three miles to the south. What do you see?”

  “Trucks, people.”

  “That’s the US Army, Xan. The haters at the gates with their signs and insults are trying to pick a fight. They know the authorities are just looking for an excuse to come in and shut us down. The DJ booth is shielded, too, but if things get hairy, I want you to get the gun and meet me here, okay?”

  Xander put down the binoculars. “If things get hairy,” he repeated. “Why do you need a Faraday cage? There aren’t any thunderstorms in the weather report.”

  “It’s just a precaution, you know, for surveillance or stray microwave beams.”

  Xander’s eyes narrowed on Tom. “Are you talking about the government or Swarm? You think he’s here, don’t you?”

  “Swarm isn’t a person or even a program, Xan. You said it yourself. Government troops are here because there’s a war brewing, and X-ist just became ground zero.”

  Xander threw the joint down and stubbed it out with his shoe. “You knew this could be dangerous, and you still talked me into doing it.”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do, Xan. Because it’s time to take a stand while we still can. Look at that crowd—they’re not here just for a good time. They showed up in spite of everything, because they want to belong to something. What Swarm is talking about—this fight for who controls the way we think, what we think, where and when we think—is just the beginning.”

  Xander shook his head slowly. “That’s what the cage is really for, isn’t it, Tom? You’ve bought into all this paranoid propaganda about mind wars, transmitters and cameras under every rock, mini-drones behind every cloud. You even have your own doomsday box on the fifty-yard line. Christ, it’s just too rich, man. The cops don’t have to put you in a cage; you’re already doing it to yourself!”

  “And what about Sedona,” Tom shot back, “your little star-fucker fortress? Turning your back on the fans who follow you and need you, refusing to take sides—that’s your cage, Xan.”

  “At least my cage has a view.”

  Tom put his palm on Xander’s back and led him to the roof’s edge. He reached over and raised Xander’s arm to the crowd, and thousands below instantly responded with a deafening cheer of jubilation. “So does mine.”

  As the rave progressed, Duggan’s wristband had changed along with each DJ set, from yellow to green to red. In minutes, DJX, the headliner and final act, would take the stage. What was next, purple? With a hologramic appearance by Prince? Still no sign of Swarm. Could someone have tipped him off? Then again, there was also the possibility that Wightman’s crowd threshold theory was actually working.

  Duggan spoke into his wireless. “Door status?”

  “We closed it down at just under twenty-four thousand,” the agent reported. “But I’ve got to tell you, sir, there are a lot of pissed-off people outside the gates, not to mention the anti-techno agitators. So far we’ve been able to keep them apart and hold everybody back.”

  “Good. Let me know if anything changes.” Duggan’s next call was to Wightman. “Eric, it looks like your crowd limit idea is working—either that or Swarm is saving his ammo for DJX.”

  “Or Swarm is DJX.”

  “We already checked into that. Xander Smith was in Spain when Swarm was meeting with Cara in Austin. If Swarm is here, Lucy is still our best bet to lure him out. How’s she doing?”

  “Lucy’s fine,” Eric said, “but she keeps saying she can ‘feel him.’ Kinda creeps me out. I’m picking up some trace zeph.r radiation from people’s phones, but nothing more than you’d find at the local mall these days. Plus, the wristbands are making a lot of signal noise. I think X is planning something special for the grand finale.”

  “Just keep your eyes peeled and keep your phone on in case I need you.”

  “Will do. Ten-four.”

  Duggan’s wristband and the X tower blazed alive in electric blue, and X-ist erupted in a paroxysm of s
creams and exultation. A bone-rattling tone, like the blast of an ocean liner’s horn, announced the festival’s namesake and main attraction. Swathed in a form-fitting white astronaut’s jumpsuit, DJX emerged onto the elevated module and bowed to the cheering crowd as fireworks exploded and glassy sheets of water cascaded into a hidden moat. From his nook at the core of the DJ module, Tom oversaw the audiovisual effects, including a new set of hands-free controls he designed with the Rife manual to shape and modulate mood and intensity by transmitting signals to the X-ist bracelets.

  Just as Xander had envisioned, the show began with the rubbery twang of an Asian Jaw harp, harmonically tweaked and boosted until it dissolved into a jagged waltz of shuffling beats, Native American chants, and thunderstorm effects. A churning polyrhythm began a steady ascent to the drop, where it wobbled and veered into a swaggering stomp, a goliath’s footsteps shuddering deep into the planet’s core. For the ensuing hour, Xander conducted an aural tour of the galaxy, buzzing past planets and spewing quasars, whizzing around moons and meteors, pausing to strum the rings of Saturn and evoke the scattered jostle of asteroid belts before resuming his astral trajectory toward the flaring heart of the solar system.

  DJX stoked the crowd with flanged progressions and shredded chords, prodding the revelers into harder and faster gyrations, until the lights blacked out and the entire valley was illuminated by a pulsing ocean of blinking blue bracelets, each wrist oscillating with its own spiraling constellation. Then, as the aerialists descended from the cranes like spastic butterflies and St. Elmo’s fire unfurled blue tendrils into the cloudless sky, Tom used flickering lasers to paint the air with the fractal prelude to “Stardust.” This was the moment he had been preparing and waiting for. This was the prophecy that the Hopi elders had feared, and this was why Tom had spent endless hours rearranging ones and zeros into a program that could integrate the biotech matrix of music and nature and thought and spawn the next iteration of the species. “Let the Blue Kachina dance,” he said.

  “Oh, shit, it’s happening!” The radio wave detector on Wightman’s screen was jittering in the red zone. He texted Duggan:

  Zeph.r signal is off the hook! Use your earbuds!