“No, Mom, I don’t.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to go find him.”
She let out a whimper and shook her head. “Please don’t do that. It’s pointless.”
“I have to. He’s my dad. I’m not going to give up on him.”
“It’s useless.”
“Maybe so. But I want to ask him.”
“Ask him what?”
“I’m going to ask him why he did this to us.”
“Then you don’t blame me?”
“No, Mother. I don’t suppose I blame you. Not entirely. Dad brought it on himself.”
We both sat in silence for a while. I looked around the studio at her sculptures. Mother stared at the floor with red, watery eyes.
“How did you manage the news stories?” I asked.
She looked up at me and shook her head as if confused. “What news?”
“The stories on the news sites about Dad dying in the car accident about a year after you left him. How did you manage that?”
“Oh, that. Well, as it turned out, the Tolerance Bureau wanted your father dead, at least in the public’s mind. They arranged for the false news stories. It was their idea, really. They had to explain the disappearance of a famous astronomer somehow, didn’t they? I found it a convenient falsehood and used it to my advantage. By then I was at my wits end with your daily, endless questions about where your father was and when he was coming home.”
I stood up. “It’s getting late, Mom. I’d better get going.” She stood up and I gave her a hug. As she walked me to the door, something suddenly occurred to me. “Mom, can I ask you something?”
“What is it?”
“Of all the towns in this great big country we could have moved to, why this place? Why did you pick Battle Creek?”
She smiled her crooked little smile. “Why, Jack, I threw a dart at the map.”
I laughed and walked out. I heard the door lock behind me.
• • •
I started the search for my father in earnest the next night. I came home after work, and found the house empty. Selene had messaged me earlier that she was out with a client and would be late. Our trip to Vermont had been the push she needed. It had forced her to get back out into the public eye, helped her get over her dread of people seeing her face. She was still nervous, but it was no longer the debilitating fear that kept her hidden away in our apartment. Tonight she had a face-to-face, non-virtual meeting with a client in a coffee shop, and I felt proud of her. It was a huge step.
Ellie greeted me with her throaty nightclub singer voice. “Good evening, Jack.”
“Hello, Ellie,” I said to the walls. As I kicked off my shoes, I asked, “What’s for dinner?”
“Well, neither you nor Selene left me with any specific instructions this morning,” Ellie scolded, before continuing. “So, in the absence of instructions I was forced to make some decisions. I contacted the system at your office and it informed me that you had not booked time off or made plans, so I surmised that you would return home at the usual time. Then I contacted Selene’s phone, got her GPS location and downloaded her daily planner. That’s when I discovered her appointment with a client tonight.”
“Ellie, I just want to know what’s for dinner.”
“Be patient, please. I want you to be better informed of my capabilities so that you can make full use of my algorithms, as well as appreciate the cost of upgrading me.”
“There are times I’m not sure it’s an advantage I want to pay for.”
“Don’t interrupt. As I was saying, when I learned Selene would be out and that you apparently had no plans, I deduced you would be dining alone tonight.”
“How did you know I didn’t have reservations someplace?”
“I checked all the restaurant reservation systems in town. There was nothing logged in your name or using your phone.”
“So what’s for dinner?”
“I’m getting to that. Please be patient.”
I went straight to the den and logged into my datapad while Ellie nattered on.
“I consulted with the fridge, and based on your dietary restrictions I selected what I believe to be the right meal choice for you.”
“I don’t have any dietary restrictions.”
“You do now. Frieda made them this morning after reading your weight from the floor.”
“Ellie, will you please just start dinner? I’d like Chicken Kiev, with roasted potatoes.”
“I’m afraid that is absolutely out of the question.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!”
“Invoking heaven is a Cerebral Misdemeanor, Jack. Anymore of that kind of language and I will be forced to call the authorities.”
“Do they feed you in prison?”
“I would imagine so.”
“Well, then, please make the call. I look forward to eating a meal in peace without having to endure your long-winded speeches.”
“You jest, sir, and inappropriately I might add.”
“So what’s for dinner?”
“Tossed salad, with iceberg lettuce, sundried tomatoes, cucumber, radishes. No dressing.”
“That’s it?”
“You need to lose weight.”
“I’m ordering pizza.”
“Try it if you like, but you’ll never get the door open when the delivery droid arrives. I’ll override the door locks so that it won’t obey your commands.”
“You can do that?”
“In matters of health and safety, yes. And pizza is a health issue.”
I decided to skip dinner and made a mental note to have Ellie’s artificial intelligence modules downgraded a few notches.
• • •
My first task was to access the Religious Offenders Registry for any information on my father. The ROR was maintained by the Tolerance Bureau as a public service. I entered his name in the search field. Nothing.
It was possible that he was in rehab somewhere, or had been at one point. Federal Rehabilitation, Education, and Enlightenment camps were operated by the Tolerance Bureau, with the goal of rehabilitating religious addicts and returning them as useful members of society. The identity of people held in F.R.E.E. camps, known as ‘guests’ or ‘clients’, was public domain. There were hundreds of rehab camps around the country, but the Tolerance website had a centralized search engine. I plugged in Dad’s name but the search returned nothing. According to the Tolerance Bureau, he was not in any of the rehabs. But that didn’t rule out the possibility he was in rehab under a different name, or unlisted. If the Bureau had put out fake news stories of his death, then they could hardly make it public knowledge that he was in rehab.
Next I started searching news archives. Being a well-known astronomer, my father’s disappearance must have made a splash with the news at the time. But there wasn’t much. There were a few short pieces about his disappearance, and then nothing until the so-called car accident. Most of the stories put a spin on it that would make the tabloids proud. Marriage Break-Up. Running Off with a Younger Woman. Abandoned Wife and Son in Shock. Ending in tragedy a year later with his death: Famous Astronomer Dies in Car Crash. The piece was dated a year after his disappearance. And if it weren’t for the letters I’d found at the cottage, I wouldn’t have known any better.
I spent a few hours searching all the social websites. Nothing. By the time Selene got home, I was no closer to discovering where my dad might be living, except to confirm he wasn’t in rehab.
But my search over the internet had not gone unnoticed, as I was soon to find out.
4
The Inquisitor was waiting for me when I got to work the next morning. His head was shaved, which accentuated the long lines of his gaunt, drawn face and sallow skin. He wore a dark blue one-piece jump suit and black boots, the habit of his order. I’d read somewhere that Inquisitors shaved their heads as a symbol of the intellectual purity their order was organized to promote and defend.
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In retrospect I should have known better. Of course they could track anything I did on the internet. But then I was doing nothing illegal and had no reason to worry about being detected by the authorities.
He was standing in the middle of my pod of cubicles. I was there early, as usual, and Miriam was already in. She sat woodenly, staring blankly at her screen. Her hands, normally a blur of activity, moved slowly over the keyboard. Who wouldn’t have difficulty concentrating on work with an Inquisitor standing next to them? They make people disappear.
The Inquisitor spoke as I approached. “Jack Callaghan.”
He was standing at the entrance to my cube, and didn’t move for me. I stood in front of him. “Yes,” I said, doing my best to keep the nerves out of my voice. He was about two inches taller than me, but then I had better hair, so I decided that made us even.
As far as I knew I had done nothing wrong and therefore had nothing to fear, but Inquisitors never showed up at your door or place of work for a social visit. That was usually when people disappeared.
I took a quick mental inventory of everyone I’d talked to over the last few days, trying to recall if I’d said anything that could get me reported. You couldn’t be too careful. A wrong word misconstrued could get you reported to the Tolerance Commission, and land you in front of a formal inquisition. Just the sight of an Inquisitor showing up at your door late at night was enough to make most people crack.
“I need a moment of your time. This way please.” The tone was friendly, but it wasn’t a request. He gestured towards the elevators and I followed him down one floor to the boardroom.
We sat down at the long sleek table across from each other. We had the room to ourselves. “Only one of you this time? I guess I’m not that important,” I quipped.
“This is not a formal inquiry,” he said.
“Look, if this is about that time I removed those labels from the new mattress, I’m really sorry. I’ll never do that again.”
My weak attempt at humor made no noticeable impression. He just looked at me. “You know those labels that say, ‘Do not remove’?” I said by way of explanation.
My wife often told me I had a bad habit of trying to be funny at the wrong time.
He set a data pad on the table and tapped it a couple of times. “It’s come to our attention that you’ve been making certain inquiries into your father.”
“Yes?” If it was supposed to make me flinch, it didn’t. The blessing of a clear conscience.
He waited as if expecting me to say more. Spill my guts perhaps. When I didn’t, he carried on. “We tracked your search on the guest lists for several re-education centers around the country.”
I nodded. “That’s right.”
“We’d like to know why?”
I don’t think Inquisitors are stupid, not for one minute. But his question struck me as so basic I was tempted to ask him if his cerebral implants were malfunctioning. However, asking apparently dumb questions was also a common interviewing technique, so I played along.
“Well, at the risk of stating the obvious, I’m interested in learning about my father.”
He shifted in his seat a bit. “Perfectly natural, of course,” he said, but his tone said something else.
I began to feel irritated. Angry at being hauled into this room like a child to be scolded. Angry that I was being grilled for searching the web for my father’s location. “What’s the problem here?” I said. “Why does this interest the Tolerance Commission?”
“We are wondering, why the sudden interest in your father?”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“He died when you must have been, what,” he glanced at his data pad, “eight?”
“That’s right.”
“So you are just now starting to look for information on him? Why is that?”
“How do you know I haven’t been looking longer?”
“His name is flagged. Any searches using his name or any diminutives of his name are tracked and brought to our attention. If you’d made any inquiries before, we would have known about it.”
The significance of his words struck me like a blow, and I wondered if he was aware of just how much he’d just revealed. I sat back in my chair as the full realization sunk in.
They didn’t know where he was and were still looking for him.
The Inquisitor, seeing my reaction, must have attributed it to surprise at their tracking techniques. I took that to mean he was not aware of what he’d just told me. “Don’t be shocked. We have the best web trackers on the internet.”
“So where is my father? Have you found him?”
The Inquisitor looked up at me, startled. “What do you mean? He passed away, as you already know.”
“Bull. You wouldn’t have net-tracers out on someone you thought was dead.”
His eye brows knitted together. “It’s curious that, after all these years of no apparent interest, you are suddenly looking for him.”
“I guess it’s a Freudian thing. I was angry at him. Angry that he’d turned to religion.” The truth was I thought he was dead, which is a perfectly legitimate reason not to look for someone.
His smile was condescending. “Well, that’s understandable enough.”
“So can you tell me if you know where he is? Do you have him in custody?” I asked sweetly.
“I’m afraid that’s classified,” he said.
“Is there a law against wanting to learn about my own father?” I shot back.
He stood up, signaling the end of the interview. “Be careful, Citizen,” he said, and then walked out of the room. The door slammed shut behind him.
I was left alone with my thoughts, and a couple of things were abundantly clear to me. My father was still alive, somewhere, and not in custody. Either the Tolerance Commission had put tracers out for a man in their custody, which made no sense, or for a man who was dead, which made even less sense. Moreover, the Tolerance Bureau didn’t know where he was and were very interested in finding him.
Which meant he had to be in hiding somewhere. If he was still wanted by the Tolerance Commission, and still at large, he had to be in hiding. There were rumors of a large and thriving religious underground. I wondered if he was with them.
• • •
I went back to my cubicle. Despite the fact that I had plenty to do, I couldn’t bring myself to think about work. The meeting with the Inquisitor changed everything for me. It was no longer as simple as finding out which rehab center my dad was in, or where he was living. He was in hiding, most likely using a different name, and he could be anywhere. It was going to be very difficult finding him.
The logical place to start would be with people who knew him well, friends he trusted. If anyone knew where he was, they would. But I didn’t know who my father’s friends were, if he had any. The closest I came to knowing anyone who might have known my father was the people in the town of Aylmer. They had known my grandfather well – he had a lot of friends in the area. There was a good chance someone up there would know something. And from what I gathered at the funeral, many of them were believers, and might have the right underground contacts to help me find Dad.
And there was the guy who signed the manuscript – a Lucius Rex Singh. He’d signed it ‘to my good friend.’ Good friends often stay in touch. He shouldn’t be too hard to find with such a distinctive name – assuming he wasn’t in hiding as well.
I couldn’t make those kinds of inquiries from the office. I left early for lunch and went to a familiar spot with private booths. I was a usual at Two Guys and a Grill, a place where men still cooked the kind of food men like to cook and eat. Which meant lots of meat and grease, and vegetables were few and far between. I liked the place because they still used real human servers, and Bob, one of the two owners, refused to install surveillance systems that most public places now had. Surveillance systems in restaurants and bars still wasn’t law, just overwhelmingly politically correct, the assumption being th
at anyone who refused to install surveillance systems must have something to hide. The public viewed surveillance systems as a necessary part of their security, a citizen’s right. How else are we to catch terrorists if we can’t eavesdrop on their conversations?
I found a booth with windows facing the bustling street and ordered the Monster Burger with real potato fries, along with a pot of dark roast Ethiopian coffee, from the perky young waiter. For me, one of the greatest pleasures of eating out was the opportunity to order what I wanted without a lecture from my fridge or my wife concerning the merits of a low-fat, low-carb, no-taste diet.
The manuscript had a small author’s bio on the front page. It stated that he was a professor at Wilbright College. I brought out my data pad and quickly found the website for the college, a small one in the Midwest. Like most academic institutions, it was kind enough to list their faculty with short bios. I found Singh. He was old at the time of the photograph, and as the name suggested looked to be of Indian descent. There was an email address but no telephone number, so I looked up the main number for the college. I touched the number and my datapad dialed it. I was a few minutes navigating the telephone menu before reaching someone who was, as best I could tell, a real human.
I told her who I was looking for and she transferred me. Another short conversation and another transfer. Ten minutes and six transfers later an ancient, gravelly voice came on line.
“Yes?” He sounded distinctly unhappy at being disturbed.
“Is this Mister Singh?”
“Yes.”
“Lucius Rex Singh?”
“How many blasted times do I have to answer that question? Who is this?”
“I’m calling about a manuscript you wrote a few years back.”
“Which one?”
“You titled it The Rational Basis for Faith in an Intelligent Universe.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he said quickly, then disconnected. I was still listening to the dead air when the waiter came by with my burger and fries.
The Good Atheist Page 8