by Mark Souza
“Are you ready?” Nastasi asked.
“As I’ll ever be, I guess.”
Nastasi removed his tunic from the rucksack and pulled it on. He then affixed a black plastic band around his neck and handed one to Hawthorne.
“It’s an amplifier,” he said. Hawthorne strapped the contraption to his neck and Nastasi straightened it for him.
“Let’s go,” Nastasi said.
Hawthorne’s intestines felt weightless, as if he’d crested the big hill on a roller coaster. His mouth was dry and vocal chords tight. A nervous nod was all he could manage.
Outside, Nastasi moved quickly toward the center of the Circle towing Hawthorne by the hand. People took notice of the strangely dressed albino giant. They scurried out of his path. Trouble was brewing; they sensed it, like ozone before a lightning strike. Nastasi climbed the steps of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, stopped at the first landing, and raised his arms.
“Viktor Perko tried to murder Chief Justice Hawthorne. Then he lied to you,” Nastasi screamed, his amplified voice echoed off the building facades. “He told you the Judge was dead. But he is not!”
A few passersby stopped to watch and listen, but most kept on with their routine, trying to avoid being late for work.
Hawthorne knew well what drew the attention of net browsers and people alike. He pulled his pistol from his pocket and fired into the air until the gun was empty. The onlookers closest to him dropped to the ground, frightened. Even Nastasi was startled. But Hawthorne now had the attention of everyone in the Circle, and possibly the world.
Chapter 40
The largest screen in Viktor Perko’s array flashed as the image switched from stock market reports to a scene in Freedom Circle in front of his building. When he saw the giant standing on the steps of the monument among the crowd, he felt a familiar sense of dread. But this was the last time the white freak would interfere with his business. This time he had murder charges to answer for, a Supreme Court Chief Justice at that. If he resisted arrest, and Perko hoped he would, security agents would have authority to kill him on the spot. Begat without its powerful leader would no doubt die in short order.
His showing up alone was a definitive sign Begat members were jumping ship. Being implicated in an infamous bombing was probably more than they had bargained for. A wave of glee warmed Perko’s skin. His old heart accelerated. This was the most pleasure he’d experienced in quite some time. Better even than the day he pushed the bomb into Moyer Winfield’s hands. The fulfillment of his dreams was coming to fruition.
He picked up the phone to call Security Services. Then he noticed the little man next to Nastasi. John Hawthorne, another face he dreaded. He turned up the sound.
– Perko’s lies. He tried to kill me with a bomb and then blamed it on Begat. And why? Because he wanted control of the only thing he didn’t already control – the Supreme Court. Now he owns that too. He wants to control you. He wants to control me. He wants to control everyone. And how does he get away with it? He does it with a promise. The promise that if you work hard enough, or maybe get lucky enough, you too can have it all.
It used to be called the American Dream. But that’s all it is anymore – a dream, an illusion. A promise unfulfilled. A lie. That promise, that hope, keeps all of you working, and keeps you from revolting. But the reality is the game is fixed. You have to play by his rules with his cards, and they have been stacked against you from the start.
But it’s the illusion of possibility that keeps us moving in step to his drum, like a donkey chasing a carrot on a string dangled just out of reach. But even a donkey will stop chasing eventually, unless he gets a taste of the carrot once in a while. And it doesn’t have to be much, just the smallest of nibbles. So every now and again someone wins the Lotto, or someone advances in their job – just enough to show it’s possible.
Well I’m not a donkey and I’m not dead. And neither are you!
Perko clicked the sound off. At the bottom of his screen, the net hit counter was reeling faster than a slot machine, the numbers on the right an illegible blur. The sixth digit ticked along like a clock counting off seconds. The eighth digit rolled to five. Fifty million were watching with hundreds of thousands more every second. Perko picked up his phone and was connected by Reception to the Director of Security Services.
“Look at the net, idiot. Get your men to my building now and put a stop to this, or I’ll have you rehabilitated and fill your post with someone who can do the job. Do it now!” he screamed.
He glanced back at the screen. The counter was over sixty million and still climbing. In the five minutes it took a squadron of agents to surround Hawthorne and the giant, the counter was well over two billion. He placed another call to Reception. “Get Louis Berman in my office, immediately!”
Moyer stood on a ladder in Brother Duffy’s apple orchard. Concentrating on what he was doing seemed next to impossible. He was distracted by what was happening sixty kilometers away; sensed the heightening tension.
“Mr. Winfield?” rang a high melodic voice.
Moyer stared into a pair of brown eyes the color of bottle glass. The boy on the ladder next to his, Joshua was his name, was the Connors’ middle boy. Joshua had his mother’s blond hair and soft features and his father’s square jaw, broad shoulders and stocky build. In time, he would grow to be a powerful man.
“You need to put the apples in the bag gently or they’ll bruise, and bruised apples rot. A single rotten apple can ruin the whole bin.”
Moyer grinned sardonically, not because he was taking orders from a freckle faced boy, but because Moyer knew less about what it took to survive in this place than an eleven year old. He twisted the next apple off the branch careful to retain the stem, and nestled it down into the sack strapped to his shoulder. He reached for another. Pain shot through his neck. Weakness overtook him. Moyer was going to faint. He tried to clutch the ladder to save himself. His knees buckled.
“Mr. Winfield!” Joshua yelled.
Moyer felt weightless. Time slowed. He fell backward. Blue sky filled his vision. He collided with the wagon, which only vaguely registered, skipped off the bed and onto the ground and lost consciousness. Before he did, he knew Nastasi and the Judge were dead.
Joshua rushed through the door of the farm house with a wild look in his eyes and no color in his face. “Mr. Winfield is hurt bad,” he said with a quaver in his voice.
Robyn barely had time to take it in when Armal Connors came through the door carrying Moyer in his arms, walking in choppy bow-legged strides under the strain of Moyer’s weight, face flushed pink.
“Let’s get him upstairs,” he said. “I’d be much obliged if you opened doors for me along the way.”
Robyn gazed at her husband, limp and still. She couldn’t tell if he was breathing. He appeared dead. Reflexively, Robyn settled a hand on the gentle swell of her belly. Dread pressed its cold numb fingers around her. Would she have to raise their child alone?
Robyn caught the exasperation in Armal’s eyes, noticed Moyer lower in his arms and remembered what he’d asked. She ran for the stairs taking them two at a time. At the top, she threw open the bedroom door and caught it as it rebounded off the wall. She ripped the blankets off the bed and tossed them in the corner leaving only crisp white sheets and a pair of pillows.
Armal entered the room sideways, leading with Moyer’s head. He was moving faster now. Moyer’s head hovered just above the floor as the last of Armal’s strength petered out. Moyer’s body dropped quickly as Armal hurried to bridge the distance to the bed. With the last of his strength, Armal hoisted Moyer up and barely cleared the mattress before collapsing to his knees.
Robyn stripped Moyer down to his underwear and then laid her head on his chest, listening. His heart thumped slow and strong, like tympani against her ear. She sat up and blew out a heavy sigh to release some tension. And maybe that was a mistake. Her wall of control started to crumble. The prickle of tears swelled at the bac
k of her eyes. Fear had kept her focused on something other than herself. This wasn’t the time to be weak.
She studied Moyer’s body. It was more muscular than when they’d left the city. His eyes were half open and motionless. She raised one of his lids and his pupil didn’t respond. Her eyes stopped at his arm. The outside of his forearm bulged at an odd angle. She pressed her fingers along his skin and found a hard protrusion underneath.
“I think he busted his arm,” Mr. Connors said.
Robyn nodded. “I think so too,” she said. “What happened?”
“He fell from a tree. Joshua saw it. He says he landed badly.”
In the city, she would have sought out an air cast. In the city she would have had access to the web to help her determine what to do. She tried to recall her childhood first aid training while a member of The Citizen Scouts. She looked at Armal. “Could you cut me a couple of branches a little thicker than your thumb?” she asked. She held her hands a third of a meter apart, “About this long, and as straight as you can find. And see if Betsy has some clean rags we can tear into strips.”
After Armal left, Robyn covered Moyer with blankets and made sure his damaged arm remained exposed. Betsy Connors came in carrying a clump of blue cloth tatters she’d already ripped into strips. She paused at the door looking at Moyer then at Robyn. Concern deepened the lines in her face. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Betsy’s sympathy punched through the wall of purpose Robyn had erected to keep her emotions in check. Robyn’s hands fell limp and her body wracked as the first sob belched out. Betsy tossed the rags on the bed and rushed to cradle Robyn as if she expected her to collapse.
“Please help. He won’t wake up, Betsy,” she bleated, mucus clogging her nose. She stared down at her belly, “I can’t do this alone. I need him. His child needs him.”
Betsy rocked her side to side shushing quietly in Robyn’s ear. “It will be all right. We will do what we can and let God do the rest.”
The tone of what she said was comforting, though Robyn didn’t trust their God. She had listened to the readings in church and tried to keep an open mind despite Moyer’s scoffing. But it seemed to her that if God was kind and capable of everything claimed in sermons, He would have kept Moyer from getting hurt in the first place.
Armal returned with a pair of willow switches and looked frazzled.
“I can get Brother Duffy,” Armal said, “he’s good at treating animals and knows about mending bones.”
Robyn stepped away from Betsy’s embrace. “I can do this.”
“Are you sure?” Armal asked, “I can have him here in a couple hours.”
Robyn fixed her eyes on his, “I can do it,” she said, “I broke my arm as a kid. I remember what they did to set it.”
She sat on the bed and shifted her position so she straddled Moyer with her feet near his shoulder. Wedging a foot in his armpit, she latched onto his wrist with both hands, leaned back and pulled for all she was worth. Moyer didn’t resist. She heard a pop as the bone snapped back into position. Moyer didn’t as much as flinch. It was not a good sign considering it took three men to hold her down while her arm was set, and she was only nine at the time.
She let her fingers slip from Moyer’s wrist. The strange lump in his arm had disappeared. She put willow switches on either side and lashed them in place. It wasn’t pretty, but it would keep the limb immobile. The Connors knelt beside the bed, hands clasped, heads bowed, mumbling out quiet prayers in unison. Robyn lay down at Moyer’s side, her curves melding with his. She stroked his hair, helpless to do anything more.
Moyer floated adrift in darkness, awash in a sea of pain. It wasn’t his pain – that he could deal with. It was the pain of others, a pain he couldn’t fend off. Claws ripped at his wrists. Cords crushed his throat. Water filled his lungs. Bitter poisons coated his mouth. He hoped for a doorway, a beacon, a way out. Barring that, he hoped for death. Then he wondered if perhaps this was death – if perhaps he had found the Hell described by the elders in church.
He had the feeling he was sinking, getting colder. It reminded him of a time as a child when his father took him swimming at PenroseLake. Near shore was a long section of chest deep shallows, the bottom sandy and firm. But a few meters further from shore, a ledge dropped steeply away. He tried to swim underwater beyond the drop-off to find the bottom, but lost his nerve and turned back for the surface before he did.
He found a heavy rock and pried it from the bottom. He pushed himself over the ledge clutching the stone, letting it propel him down. Water rushed along his skin, it grew dark and cold, colder by the second. Pressure crushed his ears. It occurred to him when he could no longer see, that this might be a one way trip, and yet he held fast. The rock thumped into something solid and stopped. It was the bottom. He had found it. A strange sense of accomplishment and fascination washed over him. The rock settled into thick, sludgy muck.
It was icy cold and dark at the bottom. After a moment, he realized he couldn’t stay and rushed upward, clawing and kicking as hard as he could. A fire ignited in his lungs, a small flame at first, but the burn continued to grow and Moyer knew he was in a race for his life.
As the light above him brightened, a gray ring of popping bubbles crept in from the periphery and narrowed his field of vision. Muscles burned and his strength ebbed. His heart hammered hard, the sound of it resonating up his neck into his ears. Scorching pain begged his lungs to release his air.
Though he saw the surface, it felt as though he was no longer moving. A voice within tempted him to stop, to rest, to release his air and end the pain. The gray ring narrowed his vision to a pin hole. His efforts became slow and feeble. Just as he lost hope, he broke through the surface. He gasped. Cold air rushed into his lungs displacing pain. His muscles gave out and he floated for a while on his back. His vision slowly returned to normal, the blue of the sky intensifying to a color he’d never seen before.
Hair brushed Moyer’s cheek, and warmth pressed along his side. He turned and saw Robyn lying next to him. Felt her stir. Her eyes opened and met his. She smiled timidly and a tear streamed across the bridge of her nose and fell on his shoulder. She kissed his cheek. Dull, throbbing pain turned his attention to his arm. It was trussed up with rags and sticks. Tears steamed down Moyer’s face and he tried hard not to sob. A weight pressed at his heart.
“My friends,” he said. They’re gone.”
“Not all of them,” Robyn reminded.
Chapter 41
Monday, 22 October
Louis Berman settled his weight into a chair across from Viktor Perko. He blinked rapidly adjusting to the overhead spotlight. He nervously fiddled with the knot of his tie. The tendrils of the lightning-like scar splitting his scalp glowed pink, as if it was some sort of mood ring. And if Perko had to guess Berman’s mood at the moment, it was frightened and nervous — a rarity for the big man.
Perko sat leaning forward resting one elbow on his desk while impatiently drumming his fingers. “Where is Mr. Martinez?” Perko asked.
“He stopped at the restroom, sir. He’ll be along shortly.”
Perko glared past Berman, toward the front of his office. Berman turned and spotted Petro Martinez walking through the doorway carrying an electronic clipboard. The Brazilian eased into the seat set out for him beside Berman and flashed a tense smile.
“I wanted to thank you for your work on the Worm. It proved a valuable tool for addressing the unpleasantness of last week.” Perko smiled and the two men before him relaxed. “Unfortunately we’ve had approximately 420 million suicides in the Americas this past week, and though the rate has slowed, people are still killing themselves.
“Do you know what affect this has had on production and sales?” Perko didn’t expect an answer, and waited a few beats to let the impact of his concern sink in. “How was this defect permitted into the product? I was assured all issues had been addressed and the program was ready.”
Berman’s cheeks flushed. He
nodded toward Petro. “Mr. Martinez here was responsible for testing and developing program buffers.” Berman offered his underling an odd smile that was part apologetic and part relieved, though not in equal proportions. It was clear the Berman’s primary goal was to get his ass out of the vice, no matter what that took.
Petro stammered for a moment trying to recover his equilibrium. “Ah, ah, we did have some suicide issues in testing, but we attributed the problem to a deviant test sample. The subjects were prisoners. It was felt that whatever mental defects that didn’t permit the prisoners to integrate into society might be responsible for the suicide rate; and that the problem would not manifest in the general population to the same extent.”
Perko stroked his chin while he glared at Petro. “What was the suicide rate in your test sample?”
Petro consulted his clipboard, bringing up the test data with a few finger strokes. “Thirty-four percent, sir.”
“Thirty-four percent,” Perko repeated in disbelief. “One in three. Do you know how many dead that will translate into? Over two billion tuned into that little fiasco in the Circle, and now a quarter of them are dead. Our partner corporations are very upset.”
“We did install buffers to reduce this affect,” Petro blurted.
“And did you retest to see if they worked?”
Petro glanced at Berman looking desperate, as if he were drowning and hoping for rescue. There would be no help from his supervisor who merely stared blankly ahead without saying a word. “No, sir,” Petro said.