by Matt Ruff
“No.”
“I just want to look at—”
“No.”
“OK.” I shrugged, and jabbed a finger at a random locomotive. “What’s that one called?”
“The Burlington-Northern.”
“And that one?”
“The Union Pacific.”
“And that one?”
“The Illinois Central…Listen, I don’t have time to name every—”
“Ooh! What about that one up there?”
“The Southwest Chief.”
“That one’s pretty slick. Does it come in other colors?”
“No, it doesn’t…Now I’m really kind of busy this morning, so if you aren’t sure what you want—”
“What about monkeys?” I said.
“Wh-what?”
“Monkeys.” I smiled at him. “It’s freakish, I know, but when we were kids my brother was a big-time Curious George fan, and he never totally outgrew it. Do you have any trains with monkeys on them?”
“No. I don’t have anything like that. I’ve never heard of anything like that.”
“What about a case?”
Arlo bit his lip again.
“You know,” I continued, “like a carrying case? Since my brother got into the hobby, he’s made some…interesting new friends. So I thought he might like a case to carry his trains in, when he goes to visit them. You got anything like that, say about this big? In a nice black, maybe?”
A phone began to ring in the store’s back room. Arlo turned his head towards the sound. “You want to get that?” I asked him. It was obvious he did—at least, he wanted to get the hell away from me—but it was just as obvious he was afraid of what might happen to his toys if he left me alone with them. “It’s OK,” I assured him. “I promise I won’t touch anything while you’re gone.”
That really made him nervous—as he headed into the back, he took a last look at the train layout, like he was sure I was going to trash it the minute he was out of sight.
Which, come to think of it, wasn’t a bad idea…
As I stepped back towards the layout, my foot kicked something. It was the magazine Arlo had been reading when I first entered the store: Model Train Enthusiast’s Monthly, something like that. The cover photo showed a sleek locomotive chugging towards a railroad crossing, where—this was weird—a pewter figurine of a boy with a soccer ball had been placed on the tracks, his back to the oncoming train.
The locomotive had a monkey on its side. Not Curious George, or any other friendly cartoon simian—this was a badass nightmare monkey, with sharp fangs tipping a blue-and-red snout. THE MANDRILL, screamed the caption, ON SALE TODAY.
Inset in a box in the lower right-hand corner of the magazine cover was a second, smaller photo, of two women in train-conductor uniforms. The uniforms must have been digitally added, but the doctoring job was so skillful that I almost didn’t notice that the women were me and Annie. The caption on this photo read: “They’re coming for you—details, pg. 23.”
The door to the store’s back room was locked. I kicked it until it wasn’t. The space beyond was lined with more shelves, but instead of trains they held teddy bears, cereal boxes, and toothpaste dispensers…There was a workbench, too, covered with papers and tools, and a couple of empty soccer-ball cartons.
Arlo was gone, of course. I ducked out a side door into the alley. There was no sign of him there, either, but that china doll I’d first seen almost two weeks ago was still sitting in the dumpster, still holding out its hand to shake. Someone had dropped a paper bag over its head.
I broke out my headset: “Hello? Anybody?”
“This is True.”
“Arlo’s on the run,” I told him, hoping this wasn’t news.
“What happened?”
“The short version is, his monkey friends sent him a warning…Please tell me you saw him leave.”
“We’ve had some difficulties with the surveillance.”
“Ah, man…”
“I’m tasking additional resources to the search as we speak; Dexter shouldn’t get far. How long ago did he—”
“Hold on.”
A corkboard had been mounted on the wall above Arlo’s workbench. Looking back at it from the alley door, I noticed that the board didn’t hang quite flush. When I grabbed it by the edge and pulled, it swung outwards. “Holy shit.”
“What?”
“I found the briefcase.”
“You did?”
“Arlo must’ve been in too much of a hurry to take it with him.”
“Perhaps,” True said warily. “But before you open it—”
“Too late.”
There was a brief silence, and I had this clear mental picture of True pursing his lips. “Very well,” he continued. “Describe the contents, without touching them.”
“Right…The case is foam-lined, with slots holding what look like digital stopwatches. Each watch has three small buttons on the left side and one big one on top—don’t worry, I’m not going to push any of them. The brand name on the watch-casings is—”
“Mandrill.”
“Yeah.”
“This next question is very important, Jane. Are any of the stopwatches running right now?”
“Counting down, you mean? No—trust me, that’s the first thing I’d have mentioned. But there is some bad news: Arlo may have left the briefcase behind, but it looks like he took a couple of the watches with him. Two of the slots are empty.”
“All right, I’ll notify the other teams. What I need you to do next is look around the area where you found the case. Can you see anything that might indicate where Dexter is headed?”
“Maybe…” I moved aside a soccer-ball carton. “There’s a map of SFO airport here.”
“Are any of the terminals circled?”
“Yeah, all of them…Listen, True, assuming these watches are what I think they are, is Arlo going to be able to get them through airport security?”
“That’s an irrelevant question.”
“Why?”
“He wants to blow up a crowd, not an airplane. All a security checkpoint will do is save him a few steps.”
Oh, right. “OK then, let’s stop him before he gets there. You want me to go after him on foot, or—”
“No. Stay with the briefcase until Catering secures it.”
“What? Wait a minute, I’m supposed to be hunting Arlo, not—”
“You’ve done your job,” True said. “Stay with the case; another operative will get Dexter.”
“Shit, True…”
He wasn’t listening. I could still hear him on the headset, but he was talking to other people now, ordering a close watch on all bus stops, cab stands, BART stations, even the parking garage where Arlo’s grandmother kept her car. Between that and the general surveillance blanket already covering the neighborhood, Arlo would almost certainly be picked up within a matter of minutes, and there was no way he was getting to the airport. I should have been happy about that, and content to have done my part without any foul-ups, but of course I wasn’t.
I stuck my head out the alley door again, on the off chance that Arlo had doubled back to let me take care of him personally. No such luck. I locked the door, and carried the briefcase into the front of the shop to wait for Catering.
Arlo’s train layout was still running. I watched the remaining passenger train wend its way through town, past the miniature city hall, the department store, the candy shop, the church, the police station, the school…
The school. It was wood, not brick, but just like the real elementary school at Orchard and Masonic, it had an attached playground: a fenced-in lot, packed with tiny figures.
I got back on the headset: “True, forget about the airport. I know where he’s going…True?…True?”
I ran outside. The taxi had taken off, and when I looked up at the second floor of the hotel, Annie was gone from the window. I kept trying the headset, getting back mostly static; but in between the stre
tches of white noise I caught snippets of other transmissions, enough to figure out that I wasn’t the only one having communication problems.
The school was only seven blocks away, and Arlo had enough of a head start that he might already be there. I had to hope that, knowing we were looking for him, he’d opt for a slow and stealthy approach.
I took off running. Four blocks later, as I rounded the corner onto Masonic, I saw an off-duty cab stopped for a red light just ahead. “Hey!” I shouted, and started towards it.
The world changed color. Like the firing of an NC gun, the explosion of the Mandrill bomb was silent: a bright noiseless flash of orange and yellow with a translucent cab-shape at its center. I felt something pass through me—the shockwave, I guess, though it was more like a jolt from a power outlet—and then I was flat on my back.
I sat up slowly. Steam was rising from my arms, and my face felt hot. I got to my feet—we’re talking at least another minute, here—and went to check on the taxi.
The vehicle itself had suffered remarkably little damage. The windows and mirrors had all shattered and fallen out, but the chassis seemed untouched, not even lightly scorched. The driver was a different story. It was like he’d spontaneously combusted: all that was left of him was a pile of smoldering clothes. I leaned in for a closer look, caught a whiff of something awful, and pulled back gagging. That’s when I noticed the pedestrians: three separate pairs of shoes in the crosswalk in front of the taxi, each with its own accompanying clothes-pile.
I gagged again, and my knees buckled. It was OK: I needed to check beneath the taxi anyway. Sure enough, in the shadow of the undercarriage I saw the remains of a burst soccer ball.
I got back on my feet. In the distance I could hear the school bell ringing: recess. I tried to hurry, but the best I could manage was a drunken stagger.
By the time I reached Orchard Street, the school playground was already full of kids. Arlo Dexter stood just outside the fence, slipping another soccer ball from a canvas bag. I pulled my gun and tried to draw a bead on him, but my arm wouldn’t steady.
I needed to get closer, like point-blank range. I stepped off the curb and immediately stepped back as a car swerved to avoid me. Arlo heard the horn blare and looked over his shoulder. We locked eyes. He smiled and stuck his tongue out, then raised the ball above his head and cocked his arms to throw.
A shopping bag full of soup cans caught him square in the face. He went down hard, dropping the ball, which only bounced once before Annie swooped in and grabbed it. She did a neat half-pirouette and relayed the ball down the block to another cab driver, who dropped it into an open manhole at his feet.
“Are you all right, miss?” someone asked. It was just some guy walking by; he’d missed the show across the street, but noticed me. “You should be careful waving that around,” he said, pointing to my NC gun. “The cops, especially these days, they might not realize it’s a toy until it’s too late.”
“You’re right,” I said. “Thanks for the tip.”
I swayed a little on my feet, and he reached out to steady me. “You sure you’re OK? You’re not on anything, are you?”
“Not yet,” I told him, “but I hope to be, soon.” I started laughing.
Then I looked across the street, and my laughter died. Arlo had gotten back up and had his hands around Annie’s throat; she was smacking him in the head to try to get him to let go. As they grappled, they were edging towards the curb.
“Annie!” I shouted. I raised my gun again, but this was an even more impossible shot. All I could do was watch as their fight carried them out into traffic.
This time, the delivery truck didn’t even try to stop. Arlo went down and got swept under the wheels, but Annie was knocked up and away. She flew diagonally across the intersection and crash-landed on the hood of a parked car.
She was still conscious when I got to her. I pushed my way through the crowd that was already gathering around her, and immediately launched into a line of bullshit about how she’d be OK if she could just hang on. She shut me up with a glance.
I’d like to tell you that she died at peace, relieved at the thought of being reunited with her son. But this was no Hallmark ending. She was in a lot of pain, and she was scared. Maybe just scared of dying, but maybe—I think this is it—scared that saving that playground full of kids hadn’t been enough, and where she was going now, she wouldn’t see Billy again, even looking both ways.
Right before she went out, she grabbed my wrist and said, “Pay attention,” one more time. Then she muttered something, which, as usual, I couldn’t quite make out. But I was in tune with her now, and so I knew it had to do with the truck that had hit her.
I looked up, and the crowd parted, and I saw it: a black-paneled truck, idling in the distance. The driver was leaning out the cab window, watching Annie’s death scene through a pair of binoculars. Watching me. When he saw that I saw him, he pulled his head back inside the truck cab. The truck’s taillights flashed, drawing my attention to the mandrill painted on the back door.
“Hey!” The crowd had closed up again; I started pushing people aside, flailing my arms. “Hey! Stop that truck! Stop that truck!”
But no one would listen to me, and by the time I fought my way clear, it was already too late—the truck had turned a corner, and like a model train going into a tunnel, it vanished.
white room (iv)
ONE OF THE FLOOR TILES HAS TURNED black. She’s prodding it with her foot as the doctor comes in.
“Maintenance had to replace it,” he explains. “One of the other inmates was feeling claustrophobic. She tried to dig her way out.”
“What did she use, a chair leg?”
“A ballpoint pen. My colleague Dr. Chiang got called away in the middle of a session, and he made the mistake of leaving his belongings on the table.”
“Your colleague. So you weren’t there when it happened.”
“No, it was on one of my days off. You doubt the story?”
She shrugs. “Nice job of color-matching.”
“If you’d like, I could call maintenance back in and have it pried up.”
“Don’t bother. Even if the organization put something under there, all you’d find is an ordinary patch of floor.”
“What would they put there, though? Some sort of microphone?”
She shakes her head. “The spy gear won’t be in the floor.”
“Meaning it is here somewhere?”
She glances at the smiling politician on the wall. “Eyes Only,” she says.
“You’ll have to decode that for me, Jane.”
“I told you about Panopticon, right?”
“‘The Department of Ubiquitous Intermittent Surveillance?’”
“That’s the one. Eyes Only is one of their intel-gathering programs. It uses these miniature sensor devices that are kind of like contact lenses, only smaller and thinner—so much so that they’re undetectable without special equipment. Now in theory you could plant these things anywhere, but in practice Panopticon only puts them on eyes. Representations of eyes, that is: photographs, paintings, drawings, sculpture…Any time you see an eyeball that’s not in an actual person’s head, there’s a chance it’s monitoring you.”
“How much of a chance?”
“Nobody outside Panopticon knows for sure. If you ask, they tell you, ‘Less than a hundred percent, but more than zero.’ It’s a joke, see? ‘Ubiquitous intermittent surveillance’ means they aren’t always watching, but they always might be.”
“Do you think they’re watching now?”
“I think the odds are closer to a hundred percent than zero.”
The doctor reaches to take down the photograph, but it’s fixed firmly in place. “Well,” he says, “I suppose I could get a towel or a washcloth to drape over it.”
“Don’t bother. I don’t really care if they’re watching. Besides, those aren’t the only eyes in the room.” She points to the identification badge clipped to the fro
nt of his lab coat. “And you’ve got more photo I.D. in your wallet, right? And maybe some snaps of the family?”
“They can see out of my wallet?”
“No, but they can hear.”
“The Eyes have Ears?”
“It’s an imperfect metaphor. Panopticon’s run by geeks, not poets.”
The doctor takes out his wallet and does a quick survey of its contents. Peering into the billfold, he asks: “Do they put these devices on currency, too?”
“Oh yeah. Smart money, they call that. They use it to track cash transactions.”
“Interesting,” says the doctor. “And disturbing.”
“It’s scary when it works. But that’s the other half of the joke: the Eyes go blind a lot, and they miss stuff—whole trucks, sometimes.”
“Who told you about Eyes Only? Annie?”
“We covered it in dream class. But I guess you could say it was Dixon who really schooled me on the subject.”
“Did Mr. Dixon work for Panopticon?”
“A subdivision of Panopticon,” she says. “One that you really don’t want watching you…”
Malfeasance
I PASSED PROBATE.
I wasn’t expecting to; you’d think letting your Probate officer get killed would pretty much guarantee an F. But the Loose Ends team that collected Annie’s personal effects found a half-finished progress report that said I showed “real potential,” which I guess was enough to bump me to a D-minus.
A month later I got my first assignment as a full-fledged Bad Monkeys operative, at an old folks’ home in Russian Hill. A doctor in the critical-care ward was playing God with the senior citizens. He’d put stuff in their IVs to cause a cardiac arrest, then call an emergency code and bring them back to life. Sometimes he’d “save” the same patient two or three times before their systems couldn’t take it anymore.
He’d been at this long enough that the nurses on the ward were starting to get suspicious, and he probably would have been busted eventually, but the organization got wind of him first. Panopticon did a background check and found out he’d worked at three other old folks’ homes before this one. When Cost-Benefits heard that, they decided enough was enough.