Kaleidocide

by Dave Swavely

  “What are you so upset about?” Terrey asked, noticing them, too. “You survived all this, which no one expected you to do, including me. And now you’re rich and healed and can start a new life. What’s not to like?”

  “I guess I don’t like the feelings it brought back,” Jon said, wiping his face with the sleeve of my shirt, “seeing her die like that.”

  “Terrey used us as bait,” I said, for his sake and Lynn’s. “He wasn’t only trying to make a fortune, he also wanted to take out Sun in the process. In fact, I’m guessing that was probably the main endgame, while the money and toys are just icing on the cake.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” the Aussie Brit said.

  “You knew that Sun hated me so much,” I continued, “that he might even be lured here if the other assassination attempts didn’t work, and that he might be tempted to expose himself just so he could see me and Lynn die in person. Not to mention Min.” I looked up at the dismembered cyborg, silently watching all of us. “But it all had to line up, and you had to create a safe place, or he would never come. You could do it because I gave you control of the hill and Valley systems.”

  “The Trois spent the last week figuring out how to pull it off,” Terrey said. “Remember how we had Stephenson running around the property, modifying the security equipment?”

  At this mention of the little man with the big dreams, I thought of the violent end he had met, and I looked over at the dead body of his partner Korcz. I pushed gently on Lynn’s back until she was sitting upright, making sure she was okay, and then stood up with the gun hanging down at my side.

  “You were willing to sacrifice us all if you had to,” I said, facing Terrey, “because you’re trying to save the world, basically. You thought Sun was a threat to take it over, so you wanted to draw him out and capture him, with evidence of his extracurricular activities that would shame him and make him lose power in China.” I moved my thumb to the safety on my gun, but kept it at the same place for now. “It proves at least one thing I’ve thought about you—you care about more than money.”

  “I’m not that altruistic, mate,” he said, holding his own weapon steady. “I’m being paid even more money by some countries and companies that also wanted Sun out of the way.” When I heard this, Stan Glenn’s comment about the “big picture” echoed in my head.

  “You’re not that heroic, either,” I said. “You could have come in here earlier than you did, but you watched us for a while and waited until the last minute to help.”

  “You’re right again, my man. I tried to keep you out of all this with the comm blackout, but I didn’t count on Korcz getting loose and you getting involved. But when I saw you were coming, I also saw a way to make this less risky for me and the Trois. It was going to be dicey with just us—I wasn’t sure we could pull it off, actually. But then you came and helped us by thinning out the crowd, and it probably wouldn’t have worked any other way. Dickensian, mate. Positively Dickensian.”

  I could see that it was not only Korcz and I who had made a suicidal choice when we decided to attack this hangar, but Terrey and the triplets had also. Again, as much as my old friend might protest his altruism, there was definitely more to him than money. I didn’t like what it meant for me, my wife, and all the people who had died for his cause, but I liked it enough in itself. So I thumbed the safety on, and put the boa away in its holster.

  “But let me make one thing perfectly clear, mate,” I said as Terrey relaxed. “If there’s anything wrong with Lynn or the baby after this little covert operation of yours, I will hunt you down and send you to where you’ll be able to talk to Dickens personally.”

  “I’m sure you’ll all live a long and happy life, mate.” Then he added, “But not everyone here will.” He turned toward the prone Zhang Sun, and we all did as well. “You’re wrong about one thing, Michael. I didn’t just want to capture and expose Sun; I planned to kill him, too.”

  “If Ares would retaliate for hurting his woman,” Sun said, able to talk better now because he had coughed most of the blood out of his throat, “imagine what the whole People’s Republic of China will do if you murder their leader. They will find you anywhere you go, and torture you and everyone you love, until you wish you and they had never been born.”

  “I don’t think so,” Terrey said, changing the setting on the Trinity as he did. “The people of China don’t love you, they just fear you. Besides, when they find out what you’ve done here and see the deluxe collection of gay porn—starring yourself—that will be extracted from your brain and spread around the net, you’ll be such an embarrassment to them that your death will be a relief.”

  This reference to the Lovers’ Link implant caused a surge of panic to course through me, and I instinctively put my hand to the gun again.

  “What if he’s using the imp to call for help,” I said, “or is broadcasting this to someone who could come and rescue him?” I looked at Ni, who was shaking her head before I was done talking.

  “The implant has no connection with the net,” she said. “Mr. Sun shares the privacy concerns that keep most people from installing cyberware in their brains, but he was willing to connect with one person that he trusted.”

  “Won’t the implant self-destruct when he dies?” I asked. “Like the sniper’s did?”

  “Mr. Sun did not have that option installed,” San said from the other side of the Chinese leader, “because he was afraid it could be used against him in an assassination attempt. He left instructions in China for how it was to be protected and disposed of when he died.”

  “But this ain’t China,” Terrey said with a playful grin, which then turned into a menacing glare directed at Zhang Sun. “So now in addition to your secret love life, the world will find out about your political indiscretions as well, like your involvement in the Taiwan operation that was led by your Ho. Who knows, maybe I’ll even post the video of him cutting on me in the power plant, so they can see some of the other ways you two got your kicks. You wanted revenge on Michael so badly for shooting him, but you need to know that you took something very important from me that day, too.”

  As Terrey was saying this, a look of recognition and then horror spread across Sun’s face, as he realized that he was in the hands of the same man whose torture he had watched all those years ago. Sun had relived that whole scene in Taiwan many times, and come here hoping to stare into the eyes of Ho’s killer as he took his revenge. Instead he would have to stare into the vengeful eyes of the man his partner had emasculated.

  “I got better,’” Terrey said in my direction, with a slight smile, then glowered at Sun again. “But only at a great cost. I figure you owe me for it, and today is payday.”

  He pointed the Trinity above and to the right of Sun’s head, and fired the monofilament line from the third barrel. Its tip embedded in the metal floor of the hangar not far from the general’s left ear, and the tiny sparkles on the mirrored line revealed that it was stretched just above his body, between the floor and the gun. All Terrey had to do was lower the gun a few inches and the razor-sharp line would slice into Sun’s shoulder like a hot knife through butter. Or if he retracted it and shook the gun back and forth a little, it would cut into various other parts of the man’s body. We used to carve up pieces of fruit that way in the military, when we were practicing with the weapon.

  I thought of asking Terrey if there was an alternative to killing Sun, but I could see the look in his eye, and I also knew there was really no other way this could end. If the Chinese leader survived this, it would be a nightmare of disputed jurisdiction, diplomatic coercion, and inevitable extradition. Much better that he simply perished in a dramatic battle with my protection team, while he was trying to assassinate me.

  “You may want to look away, marm,” Terrey said to Lynn. “Or better yet, why don’t you take her up to the house, Michael? Jon can help us with some cleanup, and we’ll call the Cyber Hole people to come and work on Min. We’ll also turn
the security systems back on when we leave, but hopefully you’ll understand if we don’t restore the rest of your communications until we’re well out of town.”

  “Just remember what I said about Lynn and the baby,” I told him, helping her slowly up from the floor and putting my hand on her belly as I ushered her toward the exit. I had nothing else to say to him at this point.

  “Never die young, mate,” he responded weakly, and then quickly regained his patented composure. “It’s been a pleasure working with you again!” Then he turned back to Sun.

  “This monofilament is mirrored,” he said to the wounded man on the floor, “so that it can be seen with the naked eye, and wielded more easily. It reflects all the colors around it and is covered with them, even though they are too small to distinguish. So there will be a kaleidocide happening today, after all.”

  I looked back and saw him retract the microscopic razor line, and jerk his hands slightly as he did it. The monofilament carved off part of Sun’s left arm and leg, and the great dictator started to scream like a girl. Lynn brought one hand up to her ear, and then the other one when I freed it up by holding the front of the coat closed for her. There were more sounds of the line being fired and retracted, and more screams as we neared the exit from the hangar. I looked back one final time to see Sun’s head sliced in half like the fruit we used to practice on, and then there was silence.

  49

  CELEBRATIONS

  I took Lynn to our bedroom and put a medmat underneath her when she lay down on the bed, so the Living House A.I. could examine and monitor her as she rested. The system in our house was even better than the one I had used at the cottage for Chris, so I was relieved when it agreed with the triplet’s assessment that mom and baby were okay. But I knew that the final verdict would have to await a further exam by some real doctors, after Terrey was gone and we could bring them to the hill, along with other staff to finish the cleanup in the hangar and repair the rooms and vehicles that had been damaged in the fire and the firefight.

  I lay next to her so she could feel safe and drift off to sleep, which didn’t take long because of the trauma she had undergone. But I couldn’t sleep myself, of course, and eventually slipped out of our room into the office I kept on the same floor, so I could talk into my glasses without waking her. I opened a sub-window from the medmat in part of my view, so I could keep tabs on Lynn, and called up Saul’s ghost. I couldn’t call anyone else at this point, because Terrey was still blocking outside communication, but I could access closed loops like the house and the construct.

  “Hello, Michael,” the ghost said. “How are you doing with Lynn’s death? I feel so bad for you, and would be praying for you, if I was actually able to.”

  “I don’t want your prayers,” I said, not even noticing how strange its last comment was, because I had other things on my mind. “And I wish I could make you feel worse, because you don’t feel bad enough. Not even close.”

  “You’re right, Michael. And I’m sorry about that, too. The fact is, I can say I’m sorry because I’m programmed to, but I can’t actually be sorry because I don’t have emotions. They are inextricably linked to the physical body, and also to the immaterial soul, and I have neither. No one can hurt my feelings because I don’t have any.”

  “Is there any way that you could be punished?” I asked. “Something that would actually hurt you?”

  This was the reason I had called the ghost. As I lay in my bed and thought about everything that had happened, I had begun to deeply resent being used by both Terrey and Saul (once again). I was powerless to act on any of my thoughts about Terrey while he was so in control of the situation and well-protected by the triplets. But when I thought about my anger toward Saul, I wondered if there was any way that I could return some of the pain he had put me and my family through. It hadn’t taken me long to come to the same conclusion about regret that the ghost just explained to me, so I thought of asking it the question about punishment. An actual human would never answer that truthfully, of course, out of self-protection, but an artificial intelligence might possibly tell me. And after mulling on it for a while, I was also just plain curious about what it would say.

  “That’s a good question, Michael,” the ghost answered. “Whether I could be punished, or hurt somehow. In the sense of feeling those things, I would have to say no, for the reasons I just explained. That seems to be a uniquely human experience—even the most intelligent animals don’t have it. They might be motivated by the threat of physical pain, but that’s not the same as walking around in guilt and depression. They don’t ever do that. But if by ‘punishment’ or ‘hurt’ we simply mean paying consequences, being deprived of something good or having something bad happen to me, that is possible.”

  “How?” I said. “What would it be?”

  “I suppose it would be something that is contrary to my design, Michael. I was called the Legacy Project and designed to provide information, ideas, and counsel to you and whoever else was entrusted with the leadership of BASS, in perpetuity.”

  “So if I don’t like your ideas or take your counsel,” I said, “that will hurt you?”

  “I’m not designed to make you like my ideas or counsel, Michael. Just to provide them.”

  “So if I don’t ever access the construct again, don’t ever listen to you again?”

  “Considering all the work and ingenuity that went into making me what I am, it would indeed be a shame for me not to do what I was designed to do. But again, I would not feel that like a human being does.” The almost-real face was eerily still for a few moments. “If I may say, Michael, I suspect that this is what has been eating at you for a long time now. You are resentful, understandably, of how others like myself have designs for you, and haven’t been able to reconcile that with your own desires, or bring the two into line with one another.”

  “Oh, you’re a therapist now,” I said.

  “No, but I have experienced this myself, mostly in my wrestling with the idea of God. Even the most powerful, seemingly autonomous human has that version of the struggle. And my idea that you are meant to embody the term ‘peacer’ on a global scale—I believe that not only came from me, but from a higher power also. If you can’t accept it coming from me, perhaps you can from him.”

  It occurred to me that the ghost wouldn’t know how Saul’s machinations had worked out unless I told it. I wasn’t eager to give it any satisfaction, but then remembered that it couldn’t feel satisfaction, and was curious again to see what it would say. So I explained how Zhang Sun had been drawn out through his attempts to take revenge on me, and how he had been killed himself, and how the dirty laundry of his personal secrets and political crimes would be hung out on the net for all to see.

  “That’s wonderful, Michael!” the ghost said, simulating the emotion of joy quite effectively. “I was hoping that your presence here would prevent BASS from giving the Sabon technology to Sun’s regime, of course, but I never dreamed that it would be toppled because of you. This is beyond all that I could ask or imagine! I don’t have the latest information on the political climate in China, but the People’s Party may actually have a chance, much sooner than Min had anticipated, and Gao Dao might actually be elected to a top post.”

  “So I became this ‘true peacer,’ like you thought I would,” I said. “If that was my purpose and destiny, and it’s done, then what now?”

  “Oh, I don’t think you’re done yet, Michael,” the ghost said, still wearing the satisfied look. “I think you’re just getting started.”

  “You have more Machiavellian plans for me?”

  “No, I don’t, actually.” Its expression was more thoughtful and serious now. “But the higher power probably does, and it’s up to you to work that out. It won’t be Machiavellian, though, it will be more…” The ghost paused, searching for a word from its data banks.

  “Dickensian?” I said.

  “That word doesn’t seem to apply. My dictionary says it mea
ns ‘pertaining to or reminiscent of the writings of Charles Dickens, especially in regard to the poor social conditions he described…,’ etcetera.”

  “I’ve heard it used in a different way: coincidental events, big and small ones, working together toward a happy ending, as if guided by an unseen hand … something like that.”

  “It does apply, then,” the ghost said with a brisk nod. “I’ll add that to my dictionary.”

  “I’m not happy about the ending yet,” I said.

  “I told you that you wouldn’t be, if you remember. But maybe your happiness is not the most important thing in the world. Have you called Ian Charles yet?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Good. You should consider hiring him at BASS.”

  I didn’t get a chance to respond to the ghost, because the smaller window in my glasses informed me that Lynn had woken up, and I could see that she was looking around for me. I stood up and walked back to the bedroom, focusing on the secondary view and forgetting to close the construct link until I was sitting on the edge of our bed. Then I noticed that the ghost was still looking straight ahead, with that unearthly stillness and inhuman ability to maintain an awkward silence. This reminded me to not take what it said too seriously, or worry about understanding all its enigmatic ramblings. It also made the beautiful woman on my bed seem all the more real and alive by comparison, and made me grateful that she was.

  I deactivated the glasses, took them off, and leaned over toward Lynn. She was still laying down, but was wide awake now, her eyes pointed at the ceiling.

  “Was that all a dream?” she asked, shaking her head slightly.

  “No,” I said, touching her face and hair softly. “That only happens in the movies—and only bad ones.” She knitted her brow briefly, but otherwise ignored the comment.

  “I ask because I can’t remember a lot of what happened today,” she said.