The Phone Company

by David Jacob Knight

  After a brief argument about who would drive, Bill had climbed behind the wheel, ruining Steve’s entire plan. Steve had climbed in with him anyway, but only because . . . he honestly didn’t know why.

  “What stinks?” he said, rolling down his window despite the cold. The stench was so terrible it masked the smell of alcohol pouring off Bill. It reeked like they’d passed something dead in the ditch.

  “Marvin was planning something,” Bill explained. He hadn’t looked at the road at all. His eyes were always locked on whatever was happening behind his glasses. “That’s why they wanted him dead.”

  Something terrible occurred to Steve. He almost didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to voice the concern lest it made all this real. “That smell, that isn’t . . .”

  “No,” Bill said. “It’s just a deer. I’ve had to live off whatever I killed.”

  Steve bought it, knowing the bridge would likely crumble under the reality of trying to drive across it. He knew the smell likely came from Marvin’s corpse, but the deer made some sort of sense, too. And his talk with Aaron had led Steve to assume investigators had found Marvin’s corpse. Which meant it would be in the morgue, not cooling its heels in a moving van.

  Besides, what could Steve do at this point? Jump out of the car? Freak out?

  “So that’s why you killed him?” Steve said. “Because PCo told you to? You killed Marv for those assholes?”

  “No, you don’t. . . . It was like I was the car, and someone else was driving.”

  “Huh.” Steve didn’t know what else to say. He had to admit, he was angry. He felt kind of like a jerk, but here Bill was, putting him in the absolute worst possible danger, least of which was driving severely impaired. And yet Bill didn’t seem to think any of this was that big a deal.

  Marvin dead.

  JJ missing.

  And that voice in his ear.

  A woman’s voice.

  “Is PCo going to have you off me, too?” Steve said.

  “It doesn’t work that way. They didn’t need Marv.”

  “But they need me.”

  Bill seemed to watch the road map in his glasses. He had once called sarcasm a defense mechanism, and Steve now fully appreciated what that meant.

  Without the biting armor, Steve would be left with brief moments of clarity, where he realized that, if he weren’t so terrified, if he weren’t so confused and so frantic to find his son, he never would have stepped foot in Bill’s Mystery Machine.

  At least he’d gotten used to the smell.

  “Did you know Marv thought he could talk to the dead?” Bill asked. “His dead son, Chuck?”

  “Big deal. Who can’t?”

  “He didn’t need PCo, and they didn’t need him—that’s my point.”

  “Yeah? And what about you? Do you hear voices, too?” Steve asked, looking at Bill’s earwig.

  Bill shook his head. “Marv once told me our government has all this advanced technology way before its time. They just keep it under lock and key.”

  “What, like toasters?”

  “But then every now and again, they release some of it to the public. Like the telemetry in your car. And now the NSA’s building quantum computers so they can break through any encryption. They can spy on anything they want to, only someone’s already done that. I was looking it up, and I guess Tesla was talking about cell phones over a century ago, can you believe that?”

  “Tesla invented the Tether,” Steve said. “Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “No, I’m telling you all those guys were working on something, something weird. Like Tesla, he had his thought camera. Edison, he had his spirit phone. I’m not kidding, look it up.”

  “Oh, I believe you,” Steve said.

  “Yeah, so Tesla comes up with this thought camera way back in 1890-something, and the idea just disappears. Until now. Now they can plug a screen into your brain and see what your eyes see. You look at a cup and there it is, right there on the screen. It’s crazy. But if they’re just now telling us they can plug our brains into screens, how far along is that technology, really?”

  “I’m using it right now.”

  “So I always think, what if you combined all this? The quantum cryptography, all of it, all into a single device? They’ve been messing with telepathy for a very long time. I’m talking thoughtography, spiritography. Remote viewing and telekinesis. Necromancy. These phones, they’re not technology.”

  “Okay, Marv,” Steve said. “Can we skip to the part where we go find JJ? Pull out your crystal ball, whatever it is you’ve got to do?”

  “I’m telling you, they’re into everything. They’ve been trying to come here for a very long time because they need to be here, in this place.”

  “Because of the low crime rates?”

  “Because it’s special. Because all the death and what the Indians did, their rituals and things, the caul’s stretched thi . . .”

  Bill trailed off, and Steve heard the woman speaking through his earwig again. “No,” Bill said, “I’m going to show him. I don’t care what you say, it’s happening.”

  “Show me what?” Steve asked.

  They pulled into Marv’s place. They just sat there in the gravel lot while Bill took an earful from his girlfriend.

  “No,” he kept saying. “I won’t. I’m not going to do that. Because. He’s my friend.”

  Steve stared at him openly now, watching Bill talk through his beard, which had bits of debris in it; twigs and things. Bill didn’t even seem to notice Steve looking. He never acted this way, not even drunk. Not even blackout drunk. Bill didn’t normally sound like this, either. Having studied so much literature, Steve was good at remembering voices. Bill’s sounded different, right down to his choice of words.

  “Hey,” Steve said, but Bill ignored him, engrossed in his conversation with his girlfriend. “Hey, take that crap off your head and talk to me.” Steve reached over and plucked out the earwig.

  Bill screamed.

  It was the worst sound Steve had ever heard, worse than a crying deer. Bill swiped for his earpiece, but Steve shrank against his door, popping the latch.

  The door screeched open, and Steve sprawled out into the lot, gravel biting into his side. Bill leapt out and tromped around the van. Steve scuttled back. Rocks dug into the scab on his hand.

  Sweating, heaving, eyes red and bulging, Bill bore down. His gun was out.

  “Give it,” he said, measuring out his steps.

  Steve climbed to his feet, dusting off his free hand, abrading the scabs with a wince. He put the earpiece next to his head and heard whispering, like trees. “Hello? Hello? Who the hell is this?”

  a woman said; it was the same voice Bill had been talking to this entire time.

  “Give it back,” Bill said. His knuckles had gone white around the grip of his gun. It looked like the revolver wanted to spring up at Steve’s head, but Bill was forcing it down. “I need it.”

  “Why?”

 

  “You want to find your son?” Bill said.

  “I want my friend back!” Steve found tears boiling out of him, and he wiped at them in defiance.

  Bill shook his head as if he couldn’t believe this shit. He pulled out a pack of Montclairs and lit one up. “It’s fine,” he said, pacing, smoking. “She’s in my head. I don’t . . .”

  < . . . try again.>

  Flicking his cigarette, Bill walked off into the maze of junk. “Hold it hostage if you want, I’m leaving.”

  “Damn it.” Steve tossed the earwig through the passenger window and followed Bill into the junk.

  Just call the cops, he thought, making his way past columns of toaster ovens and microwaves. He didn’t want to get Bill in trouble, but he couldn’t help Bill either. Couldn’t protect Bill from himself. Couldn’t protect anyone els
e.

  Steve started punching 911 into his old numpad. I can’t, he thought, clapping the clamshell shut. I can’t do that to him. He could, however, leave the number dialed in and keep his thumb on the CALL button. Just in case.

  Nodding, Steve flipped his phone open again and stepped up to the mouth of the Dead Zone. Crap, he thought. He hadn’t even walked in, and his phone had already lost its signal.

  Crap, crap, crap.

  The cell tower was right there! He could hear it thrumming! And yet Marvin’s Faraday cage worked all too well.

  Bill disappeared down one of the forks around a huge knot of lead pipe, and Steve ran to catch up, putting away his phone. He probably wouldn’t have called the cops anyway. Probably. Otherwise, he would’ve gone back to find reception. He’d made his choice.

  Marvin’s Shack of Silence was wide open when Steve came to the stretch of tackle boxes and crates full of old pennies, lead slugs, and pull tabs from aluminum cans. He could see now, because enough junk had been moved out of the way: the outside of Marvin’s shed had been coated with what was probably lead paint. There were old cans of it stacked to one side, splattered with the same dingy white.

  “You in there?” Steve asked, poking in his head.

  Bill stood facing the wall, scanning his glasses across the conspiracy web. It had grown.

  There were now multiple interconnected webs, some only attached by strands, some by the sticky mass of black widows. Steve saw a shell casing on the board, webbing out to a picture of Bill, which then branched out to a picture of Graham, and one of JJ.

  Bill leaned into the corkboard with a fat black marker. Below JJ and Graham, he scribbled, “Who drove?”

  “What, you think one of them made you do this?” Steve said, crossing his arms. “You think JJ made you kill Marv? You think he made you kill Tupac too?” he said, gesturing at the old do-rag.

  “I don’t know, maybe JJ. He did steal my gun.”

  “Did you ever stop to think someone might’ve been driving JJ as well? I mean, why would JJ want to steal your gun, Bill?”

  Steve had meant it sarcastically. Using the Tether to control things that had electronic brains (like Steve’s car) made some sort of sense, but this whole idea of controlling people with your phone was absurd. Yet Bill startled at the thought.

  “I don’t know. She’s keeping that part from me.”

  “Who?” Steve said.

  Bill blinked. He pointed to the ear where the earwig used to sit. “Aaron.”

  “Bill,” Steve said. He actually felt sorry for him. It wasn’t Bill’s fault he was acting this way, not really; he had something wrong with him. Maybe severe alcohol poisoning had finally damaged his brain. “You do know that wasn’t Aaron, right? You were talking to a phone tree.”

  “She showed me this,” Bill said, turning back to the web. “But she won’t show me all of it.”

  Steve stepped inside to get a better look at the web. Bill, or maybe Marv, had pinned up a picture of the data center, placing it at the middle of the web. Chuck had been relocated, smiling now in a group of kids collected around a clipping from five years ago—an article showing Vedder’s stretched, alien head.

  Surrounding the data center, Bill had doodled old graves. Off to one side he’d added an angel, tipped on its side, its wings broken. “They can hear everything,” he’d scrawled next to the graves.

  Underneath that, there was a circular scribble labeled “The Seal,” situated over an abyss branded “The Crack.” Next to The Crack was a big question mark: “Power? Where do the cables come from?”

  “What is this?” Steve said, tapping The Seal. “Is that . . .?” He looked closer at the slab and saw the plaque for the First Step.

  Bill nodded and pointed to a phrase, repeated over and over again across the entire board:

  It’s all connected

  The same slogan popped up again and again in little speech bubbles stemming from the picture of Graham.

  “It’s something about usage,” Bill said, “like maybe minutes, or followers.” He pointed out a group of mug shots and school pictures, about two dozen in all, clustered under the heading “Top 12???”

  There was Cathy from the diner and old Mrs. Hayworth. There was Bonnie and Clive. Some of the pictures were x-ed out, like Kelli Anderson’s and her littlest boy Sam’s, as if Bill had been eliminating suspects. There were still more than twelve pictures he hadn’t crossed out.

  “Hey!” Steve said, looking closer at the suspects. “What’s she doing on here? Take her down!”

  “I can’t,” Bill said, glancing at the picture.

  “Sarah does not belong on your little board!”

  Bill looked at him as if he were crazy. “She’s number one, Steve, I can’t take her down.”

  “Number one what?”

  Bill went to answer, but Steve held up a hand.

  “You know what? It doesn’t matter. You’ve obviously had too much to drink, so please, listen to me very carefully. Do you? Know where? To find my son?”

  “You think it’s alcohol that’s making me this way?”

  “I do.”

  “Really? Because my whole career I kept fooling myself that I had a problem, but you know what?” Bill gestured with the gun as he spoke, gesticulating more and more wildly. “I was actually better when I had a few. Sober, your thoughts start shouting over your instincts. Your brain’s always caught up with second-guessing and useless crap. Drunk, though, or a little buzzed? My brain’s always been a lot dumber than my gut. You go back and look at our clearance rate, and I guarantee you the cases we solved all correlate with when I was off and running beside the wagon.”

  “Okay, okay,” Steve said, holding up his hands. “You’re better drunk, all right?”

  He’d made a mistake not calling the police. He knew that now. He’d known it ever since crossing that bridge. But he’d forgiven himself, had convinced himself it wasn’t in either of their best interests to turn Bill in. Steve just hadn’t realized that, while the bridge was fake, the drop was very real.

  “Listen, Sarah’s all alone. I need to get go—”

  Bill tapped the photograph of Graham. “This guy, he’s got JJ. This guy’s connected to everything, come on.”

  Steve followed him out of the shed, out of the Dead Zone, but stopped immediately when his phone found the tower. He stepped down one of the forks to hide.

  “What’re you doing?” Bill said.

  Steve blushed, phone to his ear. “What’s best.”

  Bill read something on his glasses and cocked his head, as if, indeed, “Aaron” had an open line right into his mind. Steve kept an eye on Bill’s gun. The number rang and rang.

  “I don’t care,” Bill finally said. “Call them if you have to.”

  “You know it’s the right thing to do,” Steve said, although he knew it wasn’t. There wasn’t a single action he could take that wasn’t terrible. “If it’s like you say, if someone can control you, then I’m doing you a favor. There’s not much they can make you do if you’re behind b—”

  <911, what is your emergency?>

  Steve hadn’t expected this. He had called the sheriff’s office before and had always talked to a live person. Not a phone tree.

 

  “She’s protecting me,” Bill said. “She promised she would.”

  “Operator,” Steve said, ignoring him.

 

  Steve thought he was getting somewhere until he’d circled right back to Robo-Aaron.

  <911, what is your emergency?>

  “Stabbing,” Steve said, hoping to trick the system.

  She then went on to list Steve’s r
outing number, account number, and PIN (his and Janice’s anniversary).

  “I told you,” Bill said.

  “Shut up.” Steve pressed END and stared at his phone.

  “What now?”

  “I don’t . . .” Steve met Bill’s eyes, except Bill was reading the information on his glasses. “Just take me back to my car. Will you do that?” He would have walked, but it was too far and Sarah needed him.

  “Fine,” Bill said.

  They both climbed into the moving van, and Steve tried not to puke from the smell.

  CHAPTER 34

  “Graham,” Bill repeated, and Steve could hear the automated response in the earwig.

 

  “Fenstermacher.”

  Bill had reclaimed his earpiece from the oddly spotless floor of the van, which would have been truly spotless if Steve hadn’t tracked in lichen, needles, and debris from the woods around his wife’s grave. He had to wonder: could an investigator pin this particular species of lichen, or this particular composition of soil, on an exact spot on the map?

 

  “Yes,” Bill said.

  Some far part of Steve’s self, maybe similar to the part that had gotten used to dental visits, that extremity of the mind that had built up enough tolerance to the anesthesia of shock that it could still sort of think and be aware of itself, told him, yep, he was in shock.

  “Okay,” Bill said.

  Steve stared at the passenger-side floor mat. The rubber traction had worn down like a fingerprint, still holding some of the original whorls. It’s all connected, Steve thought, in just enough shock not to question what he was seeing.

  A bit of paint, just flecks now, chipped and cracked and generally worn off the mat, still clung to part of the moving van logo, even after all these years; it colored the whites of the mascot’s eyes and nothing else.

  Full and joyful, the mover boy’s eyes bubbled out of his Big Boy-era head, cartoonishly large for the smaller Popeye body. He wore a rubber cap over his rubber Brylcreem hair, effortlessly balancing a house as if it were a burger on a tray.