“I had a bad dream last night,” Tim said. “Let’s leave it at that. It made me lose my appetite.”
“Oh,” Ryan said with a shudder, as though this were an especially heinous outcome.
The second day of the convention-proper would not really begin until 5:30pm. This was not to say that there was not activity in the convention hall or on the stage. Bands played. Civic, charitable, and religious groups made presentations and proclamations. Local Cleveland business leaders delivered remarks.
The Tycoon’s “surprise” cameo—which everyone knew was coming—would occur at about seven p.m. After welcoming the conventioneers, he would introduce his adult daughter, who would be the evening’s keynote speaker. He was scheduled to be onstage for no more than five minutes. Tim could think of no other five-minute period that had ever occupied his mind so intensively.
TruthTeller did not have access to the best press areas inside of the arena, but Dan had taken it upon himself to do some scouting and networking. He inveigled three seats near the top of the arena in the back. It was in an empty section where there were no conventioneers. The seats were very high up. It might have been far from the stage, but they would have a very clear line of sight.
As the day crept on, Tim attempted to prepare pre-emptive stories he could run the moment that the mysterious event happened … whatever it might be. With Google and Facebook (and, as most TruthTeller readers insisted, the NSA) logging his keystrokes, this made Tim more than a little nervous. Accordingly, he wrote several scenarios and tried to spread the sensationalism around. The Tycoon assassinated. The Tycoon revealed to be a zombie. The Tycoon revealed to be a zombie and then assassinated. The Tycoon surviving an assassination. The Tycoon eating someone’s brain on live television. The ejection of protestors who held signs and shouted slogans insisting that a major party nominee was actually a member of the walking dead. The Tycoon delivering absolutely normal remarks and then introducing his daughter, with nothing unusual in the slightest happening.
Of all the briefs he wrote, it was this final scenario that might have disturbed Tim the most. What if nothing happened? He and Jessica were so very ready for something massive and world-changing to occur. But what if nothing came at all? What if, instead, they had to see what was on that thumb drive?
By five in the afternoon, all three TruthTeller staff members were in their seats high above the convention floor. They were alone in this area of the arena. They listened as a no-name cover band provided music. The audience, only half paying attention, clapped politely when they remembered to, but mostly just talked among themselves.
Dan produced three sets of binoculars and passed two others out to his comrades.
“I don’t know if I can sit here until seven,” Ryan objected. “I’ll have to pee. I had too much Mountain Dew.”
“Then sit on the end of the row,” Tim said, moving to the aisle so that Ryan could switch seats with him.
Thus rearranged, they peered through their binoculars at the area immediately surrounding the stage. There were conventioneers, staffers, and omnipresent security. Nothing looked out of place.
“Would you recognize any of the Knights if you saw them again?” Ryan asked, binoculars scanning.
“Honestly, I don’t think so,” Tim said. “I only saw them for a moment, and they were shooting at me. At least I thought they were.”
“Where’s Jessica?” Ryan asked.
“I don’t know where she’s going to be watching from, or if she’s even in the arena,” Tim said.
“Oh,” said Ryan, lowering his binoculars. “So if nothing happens tonight?”
“We’ll find her, or she’ll find us,” Tim replied. “Then we’ll look at the drive.”
Dan was still gazing intently at the stage.
“It’s so locked down, it’s ridiculous,” he said. “I don’t know what the Knights think they’re going to do. You tried to take one step on that stage, ten guys would swarm you.”
“Yeah,” said Tim, taking another look. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and watch.”
Wait they did.
After half an hour, the TV cameras began carrying the convention live, coast-to-coast. The proceedings kicked into high gear. Relatively speaking. The convention was called to order by the committee chair, colors were presented by a military guard, and Cleveland religious officials led in the Pledge of Allegiance and an opening invocation. Then the speakers began. The star of a duck-hunting reality show. The former Governor of Texas. A retired Navy SEAL. A couple of congressmen.
The speeches hit on all of the Tycoon’s favorite themes, each speaker drawing on his own personal story to arrive at the same conclusions. A border wall was needed. The current healthcare system was broken. America had lost its way.
The TruthTeller staff looked on anxiously. The hour was getting late. Tim saw nothing out of the ordinary. He looked at his watch repeatedly. Ryan got up from his seat and went to the bathroom three times.
Then, finally, the former Mayor of New York City took the stage. His remarks would be predictable and brief, and then the Tycoon would make his cameo appearance.
Tim opened his laptop and scrolled through his inbox. There were no last-minute messages from Jessica. No tips having to do with the Tycoon’s appearance, or anything concerning the Knights of Romero.
Tim noticed Ryan and Dan were looking at him.
“Nothing,” he said.
His colleagues nodded. The former mayor wrapped up his talk.
And then everything changed forever.
The lights inside the arena darkened (not completely, but considerably more than one expected at a political event). Strains of Queen’s “We Are the Champions” were piped in. Then a blinding set of footlights came on, right at the base of the stage. A large white screen had been draped behind the podium, and now it was illuminated. As the expectant crowd looked on, a familiar-looking figure stepped into view. Though the lights meant they could see only his silhouette, the crowd roared their lungs out. The Tycoon stepped to his mark and stood there, obviously basking in the applause that seemed as though it might swell forever.
It was only because they were seated so far in the rear of the arena that Tim noticed a corresponding flickering—or something—against the latticework of metal walkways set against the arena’s ceiling. Somewhere up there, metal parts were shifting. Something was moving, as if animatronic parts were rearranging themselves.
Tim elbowed Ryan in the flesh that covered his ribs, and pointed. Then he glanced over to Dan.
“Already saw it,” Dan said, training his binoculars up into the darkness above.
Meanwhile, the footlights on the stage came down just enough to reveal the Tycoon. He wore a dark suit and a bright blue necktie. He smiled from ear to ear. The overhead lights in the arena were slowly raised. A montage of patriotic photographs was projected on the screen behind the Tycoon.
Dan stayed focused on the anomaly happening up above them.
“Drones,” Dan said. “And they look military-grade.”
Tim craned his neck back toward the dark latticework. In the gradually increasing illumination, he saw it too. Or rather, saw them. It looked like five or six drones, small and black, hovering against different parts of the scaffolding. Trying, probably, to remain unseen.
“Did you hear anything about drones being used in his presentation tonight?” Tim asked.
“No,” Ryan said.
“No way,” Dan added. “I got quite a bit of inside info from the technical guys working the AV tonight. There’s a lot of bells and whistles in this thing, but drones ain’t one of them.”
“Some of them look like they have cameras,” Ryan said, peering through his own binoculars.
“Let’s hope those are cameras,” Dan said ominously.
Ryan looked horrorstruck.
“You don’t mean that they’re …” he said, aghast.
“Some kind of weapon?” said Dan. “We wouldn’t be any kind of n
ewsmen if we counted out that possibility.”
Tim spoke up.
“They don’t all have cameras … or guns,” he said. “A couple of them have things hanging from the bottom. Clusters. They look like fancy speakers you get installed in a car.”
Now Dan and Ryan saw this too, but none of them knew what to make of it. The Queen song was lowered completely. The Tycoon stepped behind the microphone and began to speak.
“Thank you, everybody,” the Tycoon said. “I love you. I love you. We’re gonna win, and we’re gonna win bigly. We’re gonna win so bigly. Thank you very much.”
The crowd loved it. The applause rose again. They clamored for more.
Meanwhile, the drones moved out. Gliding slowly and silently, they crept across the top of the arena, high above the action, lost in the metal beams and walkways. Maintaining formation, they inched forward until they were nearly above the candidate. Only then did they begin, every so slowly, to descend.
“Must be controlled by computer,” Dan said, as though he admired the artistry of the flying. “That coordination is ridiculous.”
“Ry, are you filming this?” Tim asked.
“Oh yeah,” Ryan said, shifting his position to reveal the handheld camera at his side. “Not sure what I’m capturing though. It’s so dim up there.”
“Keep on it,” Tim said.
As the trio watched, two of the drones—the camera kind—broke formation and descended to the very edge of the manufactured shadow that encircled the stage. They stayed just out of the light. They were something almost nobody would notice. (And if anybody did notice them, they looked like precisely the kind of thing that was supposed to be there.)
The Tycoon finished his “thank yous” and prepared to read from the twin teleprompters that framed him. At the same time, the patriotic images behind him began to dim.
But something happened. Something the TruthTeller staff caught immediately, but most people in the arena did not. As the official images faded to black, others—similarly rendered and lit—seamlessly took their place. And the two drones that hovered at the edge of the shadow began, very subtly, to glow.
“Projectors!” Ryan said. “Holy cats.”
Tim saw that indeed they were.
As the Tycoon waited for the last of the applause to die down, the drones began to shine new images on the screen behind the candidate. These were not still images, but rather recorded video. The projection showed a scene that looked very much like the interior of the conference rooms located throughout the arena.
In the conference room was a table (definitely the same kind of cheap plastic folding table that every group at the convention had been issued). On the table was a square device not much larger than someone’s fingertip. It was black, and had a small red light on the top. If it had not been displayed as the focal point of the shot, one might have missed it entirely.
“Is that another thumb drive?” Ryan asked.
Tim shook his head wordlessly to say he didn’t know. He looked through his binoculars, riveted.
The camera pulled back to reveal two people standing on the far side of the table, facing the camera. One appeared to be male, and the other female. Both wore business suits, and had lanyards around their necks containing all-access convention passes. However, the camera stopped just short of revealing their faces.
Back at the podium, the Tycoon began the short speech that would introduce his daughter. The audience acted as though nothing were amiss. Perhaps the screen behind the Tycoon would show his daughter walking from backstage out to the podium. Perhaps this visual was intentional.
As Tim looked on, one of the headless figures—the male—reached out and grasped the small black box. He brought it up to the camera, and placed it in the pocket of his jacket. As he did, a red light on the box began to blink, and a noise could be heard reverberating across the arena. It did not drown out the Tycoon, but there was no missing it. Tim realized it was being played by the speaker-bearing drones above. The sound was unmistakable.
Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump.
The Tycoon seemed to notice that some kind of audio feedback was occurring. He glanced down at the monitors at his feet, but did not stop speaking.
After just a moment, the male figure in the video took the box out of his jacket pocket and placed it back upon the table. The red light ceased. As did the familiar noise.
“Oh my God,” Tim said, lowering his binoculars to glance at Dan and Ryan. “It’s a heart monitor.”
Dan and Ryan looked at one another to ask if that could be right. Then all three men turned their gazes back to the screen behind the candidate.
As they watched, the female figure in the suit picked up the small device and put it in a pocket on her hip. Almost instantly, audio of her heartbeat began to play across the arena—slightly faster than the male version.
By this time, the technical crew running the show had begun to realize that something was amiss. Tim noticed them raising and lowering the Tycoon’s audio slightly, perhaps searching for the source of the problem.
After a few moments, the woman in the video took the monitor out of her pocket and placed it back on the table. The background tha-thump abruptly stopped. Then the camera began to move. Someone had picked it up and was holding it at about shoulder-height. At the same time, a third person walked into the shot and picked up the device. It was a young woman with a nearly shaved head. She wore a business suit and kept her face positioned away from the camera. As she held the device, the beating of a human heart could once again be heard reverberating.
At the podium, they were still looking for the source of the malfunction. The Tycoon reached out and touched the microphone before him, bringing it closer to his face.
Back on the screen, the young woman opened a door and left the small conference room, stepping out into the hallway. It was crowded with people and covered with American flags. Everyone wore lanyards.
“That’s today,” Ryan announced. “That’s here, and that’s earlier today.”
“Are you sure?” Tim asked, his eyes still buried in his binoculars.
“The people she’s walking past …” Ryan said. “Those are people I saw earlier, in the same clothes. I’ve got a near-photographic memory for those things. It’s one of the reasons TruthTeller hired me, remember? It made my UFO sightings so reliable.”
Tim did not remember this, but saw no reason to say it. Instead, he remained glued to the video. The young woman walked through the hallways of the arena. It was not clear where she was headed or what she was doing. Many in the arena audience might have thought it was the Tycoon’s daughter, heading to the backstage area to deliver her speech. (Perhaps she had recently changed her hairstyle.)
The woman in the video turned down a side corridor and approached an alcove covered by a curtain. A guard who might have been Secret Service stood beside it. As the guard looked on, she held up her lanyard. He studied it closely, nodded, and waved her through. The camera then lowered for a moment, and displayed only two pairs of men’s shoes. The cameraman was likewise verifying his clearance with security. All must have been in order, because a moment later the camera was raised and passed through the curtain.
Now it showed a backstage area, possibly behind the stage. Equipment cases stacked against the walls. Men dressed in black and wearing headsets studied a wall of monitors. The camera once again found the woman with the short hair. She was striding purposefully past the technical crew toward a group of people huddled at a table. It was easy to tell, even from a distance, that one of them was the Tycoon.
“Holy fuck,” Tim said. “It’s him.”
“And there’s McNelis beside him,” added Dan. “The whole goon squad.”
“That’s the necktie he’s got on right now,” Ryan observed. “See, this is today.”
As the Tycoon came into view, a new wave of alarm seemed to ripple through the technical staff. Men in black clothing and headsets—some, the same men who had bee
n shown onscreen moments before—began peeking out behind curtains and gathering at the edges of the stage. They pointed at the screen, up at the drones, and then, angrily, at one another.
“They don’t know what’s happening,” Tim said out loud. “This is amazing.”
Back onstage, the screen showed the woman with the short hair sidling up to the Tycoon’s inner circle. Now the woman reached into her purse and produced something. A book. It was the Tycoon’s latest. On the cover, he glowered sternly to show his dissatisfaction with the direction the country was headed. As the person holding the camera paused a few steps away, the woman with the short hair approached the Tycoon and waited just outside his inner circle. The palaver concluded and the men stood. The young woman pressed forward. She proffered the book—and also a pen—in the Tycoon’s direction.
The Tycoon continued speaking with McNelis, but gripped the book and pen. As soon as he did, the video froze. Tim suddenly realized this was the first time the broadcast had ceased to be a contiguous, unaltered shot. As the video stopped, a large red circle was superimposed on the candidate’s hip, indicating the viewer should focus his or her attention. Then the video started up again.
The woman in the video watched the Tycoon sign the book. As she did, she jostled herself against him slightly. (The Tycoon seemed not to notice. [Or, if he did, to have liked it.] His smile remained constant throughout.) As she jostled, the woman’s free hand appeared to place something into the candidate’s pocket.
Then the video stopped again, rewound, and zoomed in on the red circle. It was clear that a transfer had been made. The small black heart monitoring device had been slipped into the Tycoon’s pocket.
Then the video started up again. The smiling Tycoon signed the book with quick flourish, and returned both the book and pen to the young woman. Then he and his entire entourage walked out of shot.
Immediately after the transfer of the device was made, the audio ceased entirely. The steady, soft tha-thumps that had echoed across the arena were no more. The implication was clear. The heart monitor had grown quiet because it no longer had anything to monitor.
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