by Guy Garcia
The mob surged in a linear orientation across fields and highways, stopping traffic, trampling fences, and fording streams, all the while producing what seemed at first to be an inane yammering of repeated phrases and random outbursts but on closer listening turned out to be a patois of words and half sentences from Swarm’s sermon blended with a polyglot blather of fast-food jingles and housing prices, the weather in Paris and TV newscasts spliced into sputters of letters and numbers. It was an open communications channel, a crowd-generated communiqué of unlimited bandwidth, a language beyond language that vaguely reminded Duggan of the jangling machine-to-machine screech of early computer dial-up connections.
Some of the marchers held up phones that showed blue arrows pointing the way, augmented-reality signposts planted by Swarm to guide his legions to their target in Washington. About forty minutes into the march, the din intensified and the emergent entity began to reorganize itself, with adult males moving to the front and sides and women and youths shifting to the middle and rear. Without even trying, Duggan found himself in the front ranks with the larger men, giving him his first glimpse of what had instigated the reconfiguration. On a ridge up ahead, a five-hundred-man unit of Northcom’s Consequence Management Response Force was blocking the way to the capitol. Floodlights illuminated the grass and trees for at least a hundred yards around, telegraphing the warning that anyone who challenged the troops would be fair game for the array of MEDUSA microwave cannons. Remembering Mansfield’s warning about the disposability of domestic cyberterrorists, Duggan started to move toward the back of the mob, away from the phalanx of troops in full riot gear. A web of hands clutched his shoulders and kept him where he was.
“This is an illegal demonstration,” a bullhorn speaker announced. “Disperse immediately! You have one minute to comply.”
Instead of heeding the army’s order, the mob’s male vanguard lunged forward in a V formation, gathering speed and numbers as they charged the government line. Tear gas shells ripped into the trees and sprouted like white mushrooms on the damp earth. Then Duggan heard a sickening hum and crackle as the MEDUSA cannons were activated. He crumpled in pain as the beam swept over him, a searing, deafening pressure in his head. As the rebels closest to the MEDUSA machines writhed on the ground with blood running from their ears, the men behind them immediately replenished their ranks while others carried the wounded away. A volley of rubber bullets and live machine-gun fire took out another row of attackers. But the rebels, moving with the organized vehemence of enraged insects, kept coming until the dumbstruck soldiers were overwhelmed and manually dismembered by their unarmed adversaries, some of whom stopped to pick up the fallen troops’ guns and weapons while the others forged ahead. The rebels would have won the skirmish if it hadn’t been for the tanks. Incendiary concussion shells blinded and scattered the attackers, who were forced to relent and rejoin the main group as it retreated to the west. Duggan noticed that the arrows on the ravers’ phones had changed, like a GPS recalculating a new route to its destination. It now showed a circumventing path through Amish country, to Lancaster and across the Susquehanna River to York, before turning south again toward the District of Columbia.
The rebel battalion, still carrying the wounded and dead on its shoulders, continued its eastward trek. It wasn’t long before there was another commotion ahead, and Duggan guessed that the Northcom force had circled around the marchers and set up a second blockade. Without discussion or apparent directive, the mob splintered into small pods of five to ten people, fanning out into the countryside to avoid the government troops, traversing a moonlit landscape of thatched-roof farms with pastures of grazing cows and rolled bales of sweet-smelling hay, scattering across grassy meadows bordered by wooden grain silos and pens of snuffling pigs and supercilious llamas. Duggan’s group, four other men and one women, took a northwestern loop that would require a fast pace if they expected to rejoin the others at the river crossing south of Lancaster.
“Did you come to X-ist alone?” The woman spoke in a covert tone as they trekked down a dirt road leading to a covered bridge. Duggan wondered if the girl, a brunette in her late twenties with short hair and an athletic build, was breaking the rules by talking to him. Her sneakers were laced with pink glow sticks.
“Yes,” Duggan lied. “How about you?”
“I came with my brother, but he got hurt in the fighting. Another group is carrying him to Washington.” They entered the covered bridge, which smelled of gasoline and horse manure. “My name’s Janice, by the way.”
“Jake.”
“Nice to meet you, Jake. What are your plans for the emergent reality?”
“Ah, I’m not sure,” he said. “You mean the rave, right?”
“No,” Janice said, lowering her voice. “X-ist is just the beginning.”
“The beginning of what?”
The other men were walking in lockstep nearby, one of them making electric drum noises with his mouth. Duggan didn’t have to try to run away to know they would stop him.
“Own your mind,” Janice said, repeating it like a mantra. “March on Washington, own your mind, own your mind, own your mind. Do it now.”
“Excuse me?”
“Good question,” Janice said, picking up their conversation as if nothing unusual had happened. “There are so many possibilities, a world without borders or boundaries or war. Where do you start?”
“I guess you start right here.”
“Exactly!” Janice whispered excitedly, her bracelet blinking. “This is where it starts. Not being alone or afraid anymore, not hating nature or each other, not constantly feeding the hunger for unnecessary things. That’s the true definition of personal emancipation. The true self is not the individual ego; it’s the sum of everything inside us and around us.”
Duggan wondered what Cara would say about this conversation. Was Janice just parroting what she’d heard or was her bracelet transmitting the words into her head?
“Do you know why we’re going to the White House?” Duggan asked.
“Oh, is that where we’re going?”
The other men halted in their tracks and made a signal to stop. Duggan listened, but all he could hear were crickets and the muted snuffles of sleeping livestock. Then the outline of a man emerged from the murk. He was holding a rifle and waiting for them to get closer. Their flashing wristbands, Duggan realized, made them sitting ducks. “You people are on my damn land,” the man growled. “Do you know what we do with trespassers around here?”
Before he could answer his own question, the biggest male in Duggan’s group sprinted forward, the other men following close behind. The first bullet wounded the leader, but the other two reached the man in the shadows before he could reload. Duggan heard the wet smack of fists on skin and bones breaking, then a strangled scream. There was a short lull, followed by a splash in the creek below.
The two remaining rebels tended to the wounded marcher and motioned to Duggan and Janice. “Keep moving,” they said. “March to Washington. Do it now.”
They walked without talking again for several hours. Once a while, one or two of the men would dash into a house or a barn and come back with food and water. Duggan didn’t dare ask what they did to get it. After a while, he could tell they were getting close to Lancaster. Gradually, like a condensed history of the industrial revolution, the pastoral surroundings and wooden structures gave way to gated stucco houses and electric lights, live animals became canned meats, dirt roads fed into the network of paved highways and billboards. Looming ahead were ads promoting the “Susquehanna Ale Trail” and a giant poster for a sight-and-sound spectacle called “Noah,” which featured a forty-foot replica of the biblical ark floating in a man-made lake.
Human shapes began to materialize around them in the gloom, an influx of volunteers of all types and ages singing patriotic songs and carrying American flags as they joined the surge to the capital.
The marchers converged in Lancaster’s historic downtown, where TV crews broadcasting from the scene added to the carnival atmosphere. Hoots and applause echoed off the brick buildings as the swollen ranks of the rebel army greeted each other and fresh recruits passed out water, beer, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Duggan watched in amazement as an expanding throng of newcomers from all directions joined the rebels in white. And as Tom paused to absorb the scale and implication of the impromptu people’s pageant, he glimpsed something he had not seen in a very long time, maybe not ever: a self-regulating congress of Americans of every age, shape and social stripe, nodding and moving together, extremities linked and voices chiming in unanimous agreement.
A pickup truck loaded with apples crawled through the teeming streets with a trio of young men lobbing fruit from the back and shouting “Compliments of the Meta Militia!” A poster on the tailgate showed a picture that Duggan recognized—it was an image of Westlake wearing his microwave crown of thorns. The caption underneath: “Who killed Donald Westlake?”
Duggan caught two apples and handed one to Janice.
“Thanks,” she said. “Is this Washington?”
“No, it’s a city called Lancaster.”
“Sorry, I’m from Kansas.”
“We have to cross the river to a town called York. Then it’s another hundred miles or so to Washington.”
“Oh, jeez,” Janice said. “I’m sure glad I wore sneakers.”
“Listen,” Duggan said politely. “It’s been really nice meeting you, but I’ve got to get out of here. Will you help me?”
Janice frowned. “We’re not supposed to let you leave.”
“Who told you that?”
“Nobody. I just know.”
“Janice, I like you,” Duggan said, “and I can tell you’re a good person. But if I don’t get to Washington soon, a lot of innocent people could get hurt, and by that I’m talking about the people around us right now too.”
“I believe you, Jake, but that’s the whole point,” Janice said. “We’re not afraid anymore. It’s the artificial isolation of individuality that makes us feel vulnerable and scared.”
Duggan didn’t need to turn around to know his two guardians weren’t far behind. Would they abandon their limping comrade to chase him? His best opportunity to escape was before daybreak, which was just a few hours away. But he also had no doubt that if he tipped off Janice to his plan, she’d turn against him.
“Janice, what does ‘own your mind’ mean? How can you own it when you don’t even control it?”
Her body stiffened, and when she turned, her eyes drilled into him.
“You’re not paying attention, Agent Duggan,” she chided in a low register.
A quiver of apprehension ran up Duggan’s spine. “How did you know my name?”
“You’re wondering if you are talking to a girl from Kansas or the man who jumped off the roof before you could shoot him,” Janice said. Her bracelet was blinking again. “The truest answer is neither and both.”
“Why are you doing this? Why are you leading these people to Washington?”
“Nobody is leading anything,” Janice said sternly. “I’m nobody and everybody. I’m nothing and everything.”
“So then why even bother to advance evolution? Shouldn’t people be allowed to choose for themselves?”
“That’s the whole point,” Janice said. “It’s time for us to embrace the obvious.”
“So why are you leading your army to Washington?”
“Agent Duggan, I told you that I’m not leading anybody. The meta mind doesn’t need an instruction manual. The path to our evolution is already inside us and all around us. Only those who oppose freedom of mind will be left behind.”
“Like Donald Westlake?”
Janice made a face that didn’t look natural on a pretty young woman. “He was a victim of your techno-industrial war machine.”
“Is that your phrase? Or something you got from Kenneth Ulrich?”
“Ulrich’s Militia and the Swarm are on a parallel course for the moment, but we don’t share the same motive or ultimate destination.”
“So then why declare a war on the government?
“Only free minds can fully flower. The government needs to understand and reflect that. There is no need for a material struggle. We only do what is necessary for our self-defense. It’s you and your kind who turn weapons on the innocent and incite violence.”
“So then why haven’t you killed me yet?”
“Because it’s important for you to see this, to understand what’s actually happening. Our species is on the brink of an evolutionary leap, and you are on the wrong side of genetic history. But there’s hope for you yet, Agent Duggan, because if the seed of transformation wasn’t already taking root in your consciousness, you wouldn’t be able to hear me.”
Duggan took a breath and slowly exhaled. “Okay, so if I’m already part of you, can I at least borrow your phone?”
Janice gave Duggan a chastising look and wagged her finger. “That’s the dumbest thing you’ve said all night.”
As the rebels approached the Wrights Ferry Bridge, there were shouts and howls of dismay. The Northcom task force, reloaded and itching for a fight, was hunkered down on the other side of the river, waiting. Without hesitation, the mob altered course and spilled over the embankment toward the water. One by one, the biggest males took positions along the riverbank and locked arms until they had formed the first span of a human bridge. As the befuddled troops watched from above, succeeding waves of men climbed over the others and extended the chain until it reached the opposite bank. The rebels began pouring across the Susquehanna while a platoon of warrior males regrouped to confront the outflanked reserve. All at once, the main group poured down the bank toward the human bridges, pulling Duggan and his escorts along with it.
In the commotion of splashing limbs, detonating fragmentation bombs, and sputtering machine-gun fire, Duggan managed to discreetly separate from his captors and drift away. He waited until he was halfway across the living viaduct to dive downriver, staying submerged as long as possible to avoid detection. He surfaced gasping for air, exhausted and worried that at any second Janice and her goons would find him and drag him down to the bottom. He grabbed onto a floating chunk of wood and hand-paddled downstream, trying to conserve energy, waiting for the clamor of the battle of Susquehanna to subside behind him. After a while there was only darkness and the clammy grip of the current.
Duggan turned onto his back and allowed himself to be swallowed by the murk, imagining he had drowned, held down by Swarm’s soldiers until his lungs filled and he sank like a stone. Was that how it felt to lose one’s individuality, he wondered, and become one with the uber mind? Duggan didn’t fear death, but during the past few days, as his sense of reality was upended by murderous cyber-terrorists and rampaging techno-rebels at war with the US army, he had begun to feel a gathering sense of dread, a disheartening unease that Swarm’s goal of social catharsis had already been achieved. The deeper damage of Swarm’s movement didn’t come from the actions of his mesmerized followers, it was how his rants about the next phase of humanity had found tinder in the lives and minds of ordinary people, Americans who had reached a point of such faithless exasperation that they were willing to rip away the tattered façade of civilization just to find out what was behind it. The chill that Duggan felt wasn’t just physical, it was also the creeping conviction that no matter what happened when the Xist-istas reached Washington, the country he knew and loved had jumped its rails in ways that that nobody had even begun to fathom.
Duggan drifted near a deserted boat dock, and he used the last of his strength to swim to it and haul himself out, dripping and covered in weeds and river slime, like a primordial ancestor taking its first tentative steps on dry land. Duggan staggered toward the deserted service road and tried
to get his bearings. Hitchhiking was a lost cause in his current state, so he walked for what seemed like miles before he found a shuttered mini-mart with a working pay phone. His first call was to Cara.
“My God, when no one could reach you, I started thinking the worst.”
“You have no idea how beautiful it is to hear your voice.”
“Jake, are you drunk?”
Duggan managed a weary chuckle. “Just tired. Where are you?”
“I’m in Washington, with Eric. He’s been working with the army to set up an amplification device for PHAROH.”
“But I thought you said …”
“Forget what I said. When Eric told me what happened at the festival and that you were in danger, I had no choice. Agent Nutley authorized a transport to pick me up and bring PHAROH to Washington.”
“Jesus,” Duggan said. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m not sure. A mini-mart somewhere in western Pennsylvania.”
“In Lancaster? It’s all over the news. They’re saying it’s the beginning of some kind of civil war.”
“Just tell Nutley to GPS this phone and send a helicopter.”
While he waited for the pickup, Duggan pondered his conversation with Swarm. The leader of a leaderless army that carried its own dead and built bridges with their bodies like ants, marching on Washington to do what? It didn’t make any sense. If Swarm’s goal was to fan the evolutionary flames of the entire species, why would he bother to start a war he couldn’t win?