Vigilance

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  Delyna narrows her eyes at him. It was not a request, she notices, but a command.

  “Come on, come on, come on!” he says.

  You’ve been coming here for over a year, she thinks, but all you ever give me is orders.

  She reluctantly picks up the remote control and changes the channel to ONT. She’s dreading the sights, the sounds—but it seems it’s not here yet, if it’s really coming: right now the channel shows another episode of that screaming guy, the one who’d been saying lesbians were infiltrating America’s utilities sector.

  But then the credits roll . . . and the screen darkens.

  Why am I still here? she thinks miserably.

  The dreadful hum fills the South Tavern. The patrons stand and gather before the screens, whooping and chattering and quivering like religious zealots at a sermon.

  Why didn’t I leave this awful place? Why did I stay here?

  McDean watches, barely breathing.

  The screen is black, accompanied by a low hum. (They have developed this hum to the point of perfection, a frequency sampled from earthquakes in Japan—the noise instantly triggers anxiety in some primal annex of the human mind.)

  Then the screen abruptly changes to black-and-white newsfeed of riots, seething crowds of filthy protestors pouring down the street, throwing bottles, cans, rocks.

  A husky, smoky, masculine voice says, “Are you prepared?”

  A montage of pundits and chyrons and headlines: TERRORISM ON THE RISE? followed by COLLAPSE OF LAW AND ORDER and CRIME RATE SKYROCKETS.

  Then a blur of worried white faces, one after the other, their sentences layered on top of one another: “. . . threatening all inside . . .” and “. . . possible for a civilization to even sustain itself?” and finally, a sober old man saying, “. . . without a doubt, our future is absolutely, totally, completely in jeopardy.”

  McDean checks the numbers, the feeds, the hits, the mentions: they’ve octupled, nontupled, near-exponential growth, a rapid blur of panic out there in the heartland.

  He sees the main trends, with one word predominant: Where?

  Where’s it going to happen? Who’s going to get it? Who’s ready?

  God, I love this, he thinks, his pulse pounding. God, God, God, I love this.

  Again, the voice says, “Are you prepared?”

  Night vision video of some nondescript Middle Easterners swarming an embassy, AK-47s chattering and popping. Drone footage of missile sites being bombed.

  Tattered little boats pouring into harbors, piled high with desperate refugees. Filthy shantytowns full of hollow-eyed brown children. A desert encampment on fire.

  The voice says, “Are you alert?”

  Another montage of respectable, concerned-looking pundits (McDean can’t remember if any of these people or stories are real or generated, though he knows it honestly doesn’t matter) saying, “. . . we simply aren’t focusing enough on our law enforcement and our defense strategies . . .” followed by “. . . the bad guys are ahead of us. They’re slipping through our filters, our screens!” and then, “. . . technology is not dependable. It can be compromised. Everything can be compromised . . .”

  The montage ends in a clip of the man himself, Shawn O’Donley, saying, “The true fight will not come from some branch of the military, or the government, or law enforcement. The true fight, the strongest defense, will come from us. From us. From patriots, from the foresighted and the true of heart, who can see the threat—and have the bravery to meet it.”

  It gives McDean goosebumps every time. O’Donley, of course, hasn’t been that articulate or composed in years, but Andrews is just a fucking wizard, and he made that clip happen in less than two days.

  The voice fills the room, thundering, “Are you VIGILANT?”

  Dramatic music floods the room—drums, French horns, noble but troubled. The screen changes to a slick, brightly lit studio, glowing with reds and blues, and a huge desk. Behind the desk sits a woman with bright blond hair, ruby lips, and a solid blue dress (Pantone 653). The voice says, “Live, from ONT studios . . . we bring you tonight’s Vigilance!”

  “Adjust your scripts if you need to, gents,” says McDean. “But only slightly. It’s balls-to-the-wall time now.”

  Almost instantly, a betting pool emerges from the commotion in the South Tavern. The man in the Oklahoma hat is the one leading the charge, wheeling through the small throng of people and saying, “ . . . can’t get any traction in Vegas, not from here. But if you want in, now’s your chance, okay?”

  Delyna watches them, bewildered by this eruption of rituals. They bet on the environment selection, then start formulating how they’ll bet on the shooters. Then her phone vibrates—it’s the bar owner, Martin.

  She picks it up, and she hears his voice: “Hey, I was gonna come in, but I’m trapped where I am. You got people trapped at the bar, yeah?”

  “Yes,” says Delyna. She knows what he’s going to say.

  “Excellent. Put on happy hour prices for drinks and appetizers. And can you stay late tonight? You never know how long these things can last. Once they had a fuckin’ siege, went for hours. Hours, Darla!”

  She sighs inwardly. She knows she can stay late tonight. “Yes, sir,” she says.

  “Great. And hey—you stay safe, okay, Darla?”

  “Yes, sir,” she says. She doesn’t bother correcting his mistake. He gets irritated when she does it, and she can’t afford to lose shifts or her job.

  He hangs up. She turns to Raphael and says, “Get your shit ready. Happy hour pricing.”

  He laughs. “God damn. Gotta make a buck, huh?”

  “I guess.” Delyna picks up a chalkboard, scrawls out HAPPY HOUR UNTIL VIGILANCE ENDS, and slams it on the bar top loud enough for everyone to hear.

  The small crowd turns, sees the board, and claps. Then they pivot back to the show.

  McDean watches closely as it begins. The camera closes in on the woman at the desk—she’s reading papers, actual paper. Nobody does that shit anymore, but their audience loves it. They think it makes her look intellectual.

  The woman stares into the camera. Her face is serious, but her eyes are alight with excitement. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” she says. “I’m Stacey Robwright.” Robwright is, of course, the sort of high-powered, conservative, cosmopolitan lady that John McDean’s Ideal Person absolutely adores. “Tonight, America’s mettle, its resilience, and its fortitude will be tested yet again in Vigilance. Will American civilians be up to the challenge? Will they be ready to face the many threats that have invaded our nation? Can they prove themselves to be the defense force we desperately need for our culture, our heritage, and our way of life to survive this day and age? We’ll find out soon enough.”

  McDean watches Robwright’s face carefully. The spacing between her eyes, the shading on her cheeks, the way her hair falls across her brow. Then he chides himself for bothering—Andrews has poisoned his brain. She looks fine. She looks great.

  “Joining me is Bob Bowder,” she says, “who’s on the ground at the city where our next Vigilance will take place, but the specific environment has yet to be revealed. Bob, what can you tell us?”

  The feed changes to a white man of about thirty, with dark hair and handsome features. He looks like a former shortstop or tennis player, a slick, talented guy who knows exactly how talented he was. There’s always a ghost of a smirk around his mouth, like he’s imagining how easy it’d be to fuck your wife. “Good evening, Stacey, great to be with you here for another Vigilance. I’m here in Daileyton, Indiana, just outside of Fort Wayne—and Daileyton is the town that will be tested before the watching world. Our three potential Vigilance sites tonight are an ice rink, a mall, and a train station. Let’s learn about them.”

  “Looks good?” asks Andrews in the control room.

  “Yeah,” says McDean. “Yeah, looks good.”

  All of it, of course, is bullshit. ONT does not employ two individuals with the names of Stacey Robwrig
ht or Bob Bowder. It does not own a garishly lit, red-and-blue studio. The only thing ONT sent to Daileyton, Indiana, was a shitload of money to pay the contractors that make up their handler and security teams.

  All of this—all of it—is generated. The images of Bowder and Robwright are drawn from actors hired to walk around, talking and moving in certain fashions over a couple of weeks (McDean knows this, because he fucked the girl who created Robwright’s base movements, in his private bathroom), but otherwise, it’s a show of ghosts, just shadow play and noise. Bowder, Robwright, and all the other “experts” that the audience watches are programs that Andrews and other coders have created.

  McDean’s people manage the raw data, the lines, and the scripts. They call it the “faces and pipes” aspect of production, just voices and visages. About half of it is literally drag-and-drop: write a sentence or a fact, drag it, and drop it into the AIs’ feeds. Computers make the rest: the images, the sounds, everything, all calculated to appeal to the marketing analytics they develop every nanosecond of every day.

  The show moves on. Bowder narrates a few feeds of security cameras and hacked drone videos from the three potential environments—this video, of course, is supplied by Neal and Darrow. It’s all very, very well done.

  “The question,” Bowder gravely intones, “is: have these people prepared themselves?”

  The skating rink and the train stations aren’t potentials anymore, of course—the mall is the place. It’s set in stone now. None of these feeds are live now, either—this is footage from two to three hours ago. Right now, the rink and train station have probably erupted into a panic as people hear that they might be the site of a Vigilance.

  But the mall continues as normal. Darrow and Neal are very, very good at limiting communication in or out of a chosen space. And besides, the actives will be introduced soon.

  McDean passes by Perry’s pit and watches as the software scans his input, isolating key phrases and numbers in seconds. Perry idly watches the program mine away, absently spitting chaw spit into his giant plastic cup.

  “We now go to Jessie Gramins, who’s here to tell us about tonight’s contestants,” says the collection of pixels and soundbites that claims to be Stacey Robwright.

  “Thanks, Stacey.” Jessie is generated to be an older black man, serious and thoughtful, like a law professor. (McDean knows his target audience can only tolerate black men over a certain age. If they skew too young, his audience will categorize them as a threat—even if they don’t know it—and that can hurt their TMAs.) “We’ve got three contestants in tonight’s Daileyton Vigilance. The first is Conor Stewart, age twenty-three, from Kokomo.” The kid’s mug shot pops up in the corner. He looks skinny, resentful—perfect. “We’ve got the classic signs here: a dropout, troubled family, inability to connect with others, and—perhaps the most classic sign here—a disrespect for his national legacy. Here’s an essay that Stewart wrote in high school, questioning the ability of America’s armed forces to seal the deal and bring home victory abroad.”

  Images of the text flash up on the screen. On split screen, Stacey Robwright shakes her head, looking shaken. “Sad.”

  “Isn’t it?” says Gramins. “Isn’t it?”

  “That’s not what the boys on the front lines want to hear at all, no,” says Robwright.

  “Nice,” McDean says to Perry. “Very nice.”

  “Thanks, hoss.” He spits chaw into the cup. “Thought you’d like it.”

  “Next up is Michael Rison,” says Gramins, “and this is a very striking story: his father lost his job at the lumber mill six years ago, after the mill closed down due to unfair competition from abroad.” His photo shows a thick, small-eyed, sullen boy with a scrubby patch of chin hair. “Rison fell into crime and drugs after this—I’m told he harbors a lot of anger.”

  “Well, I would too,” says Robwright, feigning outrage. “It just makes me wonder—when are we going to do something, anything, about China?”

  “Maybe tonight will change America’s mind,” says Gramins. “Time will tell, Stacey.”

  This talking point is automatically drawn from the trending topics on ONT’s platforms. China is a constant draw—ONT’s viewers have always dreaded and hated it, even before it surpassed America in . . . well. Everything.

  “And our third and final contestant is Gabriel Bonnan, a transplant from Iowa, where as you know, Stacey, the state is involved in a thoughtful, ongoing debate about heritage and patriotism—and Bonnan was on the front lines.” They show an image of Gabriel Bonnan in a suit and tie, his hair expertly parted, his tie expertly tied, standing in a line of well-muscled, white, dapper-looking young Nazis. It is incredibly, incredibly real-looking.

  “Holy shit!” says McDean. “Andrews, Jesus . . . Wow!”

  “You’re welcome,” says Andrews.

  McDean tamps down his astonishment, and reconsiders this. “I guess we’re going with the nice spin on Bonnan?”

  “The audience we’ve pulled . . . they love them some white boys, that’s for sure,” says Perry.

  “Even if they’re fucking Nazis?”

  “Hey, man,” says Perry. “White is white.”

  It never fails to amuse McDean: his target demographic, his Ideal Person, absolutely worships the Second World War—and yet, when it comes to genuine, actual Nazis at home, they curiously don’t mind so much.

  “Bonnan fell out of the Iowan civil rights movement after it was infiltrated by bad actors,” continues Gramins on the screen. “And, like many youths in America, he was lured away by urban drugs, and their sex gangs.”

  “Aw, we gotta work on that shit,” says McDean. “‘Sex gangs’? How the fuck is that in the algos’ vocab?”

  “It’s being pulled from newspaper reports,” says Andrews. “Apparently, local news in Indiana is pretty terrible.”

  “Let’s try and get some better filters put together, please?” says McDean. “Indiana local news might be shit, but I don’t want their dumbass turns of phrase filtering back into Vigilance.”

  On the screen, Stacey Robwright sits up, listening. “I’m . . . I’m being told that, yes, Vigilance is indeed very close . . . As always, we do not yet know the location of tonight’s Vigilance, but the three active shooters are ready to pick their arsenal as they prepare to assault the moral fabric of this nation.”

  “Cycle it up,” says McDean to Ives. “Start pummeling similar locations with ads—other train stations, sporting event sites, other malls.”

  “Already on it,” says Ives. Shortly, McDean knows, countless mall shoppers in America will glance at their social media feeds and see sponsored ads of a mall just like the one they’re in right now—only, that one might be the site of a Vigilance. Mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters will tune in, see security feeds of families just like their own—people just like them—and wonder: Are they gonna make it? Are they vigilant enough? Am I vigilant enough?

  The main ONT feed cuts to overhead feeds of the active shooters—Stewart, Rison, and Bonnan. They huddle in the handlers’ shuttles, reviewing the gear in the box before them. Each piece of gear is held behind a little glass shutter: once they exceed their points, all the shutters lock. McDean’s always worried that they’re going to pick a grenade, pull the pin, and blow up the handler’s shuttle right then and there—but their marketing research has done its job. Every time, they pick people who genuinely, really want to carry out a mass shooting.

  Stewart proves to be a dumbass. He picks the body armor, a Klimke 78 pistol, and an extended clip, using up all of his one thousand points. This is the stupidest possible approach—the armor is unwieldy if you’re not used to it, slowing you down, and a pistol takes actual marksmanship to use. Unless he had police training—and McDean knows he fucking didn’t—he’ll be slow and ineffectual.

  Rison is somewhat smarter. He chooses a pistol, two grenades, and a better entrance. However, grenades are not as stupid-proof as people think. They take training, and McDean h
as seen lots of Vigilance competitors accidentally blow themselves up. Lots.

  This choice provokes indignant scoffs in the control room. “What’s with these dumbasses trying to mix it up?” says Darrow. “Are they working from a spreadsheet or something?”

  “I told you,” says Perry. “These boys are too stupid to put on their own goddamn pants.”

  But Bonnan . . . Bonnan goes for the classic: the AL-18 assault rifle, with an extended clip and a stim. A whole lot of firepower at an obscene rate, and your blood running hot with amphetamines and God knows what else.

  “Running some social media polls,” says Ives. “People are already voting like nuts, speculating who’s going to win. The guy with the grenades is ahead—they like that ‘shock-and-awe’ shit. The betting markets in Las Vegas have picked up instantly. Narrative’s coming in well, generating .86 on the engagement scale.”

  “And the number of interactions?” asks McDean.

  Ives whistles. “We’re breaking numbers, chief,” he says. “Over two million in thirty seconds.”

  McDean takes a slow breath. That’s exactly what he wanted to hear—and they haven’t even revealed the environment yet.

  The show pulls in some pundits who analyze the shooters’ choices, discussing what sort of urban environments their weapons would be ripe for. “This is exactly what we saw in the house-to-house warfare in Canada,” says a man in military fatigues. “I don’t know if Rison is taking tips from soldiers—but I’d say he’s definitely got a very aggressive, very urban-oriented strategy in mind, very shock-and-awe.”

  Time for the ad break, right before they open the doors and all hell breaks loose.

  “We’ll be right back,” says Stacey Robwright, smiling triumphantly.

  * * *

  The ads flicker by, one after the other, timed perfectly. McDean’s eyes trace them like a general watching cavalry units cross a battlefield.

  Soft-cover toilet seats. Armor-piercing rounds. Catheter delivery services. Security cameras. Car cameras, for the internal and external. Walkers. Editions of the Holy Bible. Limited edition plates commemorating the latest American disaster. Drugs. Drugs. Medical services. Comfort robots. Some more drugs.