The Rise and Falling Out of Saint Leslie of Security

by Andrew Tisbert

  Everett grew so enlightened in those days, he began to see the identities of past lives in the people around him. When he recognized the hidden spirit of the infamous Jim Jones in his pastor, he felt obligated to warn his fellow parishioners. The pastor, of course, tried to deny this aspect of his past lives, and gave Everett the choice of confessing he'd made a mistake, or leaving the church. Everett could not confess such a lie in good conscience and denounced the pastor and his church.

  Still, the lessons of the visions he experienced back then stayed with him to this day. He could recognize the hand of certain past personalities in his thoughts and behavior, an ability he found quite useful and liberating.

  There were times he suffered overwhelming grief and remorse over some ... things he had done ... to his daughter, and to the little girl's mother. Granted, they had damn well deserved their respective punishments. They possessed wanton, lewd spirits. But in punishing them, Everett often lost control. Something or someone else would take over. Now he knew it wasn't himself at all, but the remnant spirit of the legendary Saddam Hussein. Everett wasn't responsible.

  "Of course, I can't discuss such points of religion with the Atheists,” Everett said out loud, looking up again at his half face.

  They thought they were better than him, they humored him, made grand allowances for his ignorance. But they had something Everett needed—the ability to strike forcefully at Washington. For that he was willing to shut his mouth and take a few of their orders. Smile at their self-congratulating humanist bullshit.

  He was willing to do this, to put up with this quiet humiliation, for one reason. As much as he hated the Atheists, he hated his brother more. He hated Father Washington more than anything in this world. This was why he'd gone through the motions of renouncing belief in God to join the Atheists. Everyone knew that was just a formality anyway.

  "Father Washington.” Everett snickered. “My brother. Your real name is Frankie, you holier-than-thou son of a bitch. Why don't you use it? You think you're better than me. You were the golden boy, surrounded by great wise men, groomed to lead a nation. What you are—everything you have—it was supposed to be mine."

  Everett didn't believe for an instant Father Washington—Frankie—didn't know about his cloned brother. Maybe he pretended not to but, oh, he knew, he had to know. He thought himself above Everett, above the very acknowledgement he had a clone. Everett would see him burn in Hell for what they had done.

  * * * *

  The woman Everett grew up believing to be his mother was a short, black woman named Shantell, cursed with a perpetual look of exhaustion. His earliest memories involved screaming and wailing and slamming doors. Her husband—and it was clear early to him her husband was definitely not his father, even before he understood the significance of his pale skin—was perpetually angry, constantly accusing Shantell of incomprehensible crimes.

  What Everett did understand, without it ever having to be said, was that every contention Shantell's husband had with her boiled down to one single problem: The existence of Everett. He would not find out until much later why this was.

  Frankie's mother—his real mother—hired Shantell to gestate an illegal baby inside her womb. Shantell's husband went along with the plan because they needed the money. But he never liked the idea. It was unnatural to him. And he liked the idea even less when the rich and powerful woman who'd hired them, and who'd agreed to pay their expenses, broke all contact with them. He and Shantell were left with a baby they couldn't afford to raise. By the time Everett was six, Shantell was left to raise him without a husband, too. As far as Everett was concerned, good riddance. The man had done his best to ignore Everett anyway. Well, not ignore, exactly; there was the occasional beating.

  Everett didn't know why his ‘adopted’ parents hadn't tried to expose the illegal cloning. Maybe they had. Maybe they'd been too scared they'd be held responsible for the crime. It didn't matter. Nothing about them mattered. He hated them nearly as much as he hated Frankie, as much as he hated his biological mother's memory. As far as Everett was concerned, Shantell had only done one thing right. She had taken him to visit Washington DC.

  He'd been around twelve or thirteen. Shantell had taken him to the front of the White House, and then to the mall, hissing angry comments under her breath—comments that didn't make any sense. “A boy should know where he comes from,” she said, and; “Reckon I don't give a rat's ass anymore if one of those spooks sees us here.” By then, Shantell annoyed Everett more than anything, and he tried to stay as far from her as she would tolerate.

  He remembered it was in July, and the sun shined so bright it hurt to look at anything. But the grounds along the monuments and the Reflecting Pool were packed with tourists. Children ran weaving through the panels of the World War Two monument. A dog barked at a Frisbee after it splashed into the long pool. Everett had been impressed with the haunted faces of the life-sized statues of Korean War vets, and the massive presence of Abraham Lincoln above him, looking down at the crowd with such a lonely sadness. He'd been less impressed with the giant golden cross erected to commemorate the wars of the Middle East, even if it did flow with thick rivulets of painted iron blood.

  At one point a lift car appeared out of nowhere, tearing open the sky with its painfully loud roar. Children and adults alike raised their heads, shaded their eyes, and jumped up and down as it passed over them. “The President!” they yelled. “It's Father Washington!"

  "Wave to Him,” someone said, and about twenty or thirty people did. That was what impressed Everett most. And Shantell's last comment of the day: “You see, boy? All that belongs to you."

  If Everett hadn't gone to Washington that day he may never have thought to wonder about where he really came from. That was the day his search for himself began.

  Shantell's idea of a proper family household was the perfect portrait hung on their vision room wall, taken a year before her husband left them. Everyone smiling, nothing out of place, no unsightly details exposed. Everett had done his best to disturb the pristine lifelessness of the picture. He burned down a couple houses before he turned fourteen, stole a car when he was fifteen. Saddam had really been taking over back in those days. But he learned an important lesson then, too. It didn't matter what you did. It only mattered who you were.

  Everett finally ran away from home when he was around seventeen, vowing to find out who he truly was. Once the truth became apparent, he vowed revenge. Then he realized there were security guards watching him everywhere he went, constraining him like a straitjacket, suffocating him like a plastic bag over his head. He managed to slip away from them for a long time. He had his face worked on—not too much, just a bit of thinning along his nose, a rounding of his cheekbones. And he started dying his hair. He built himself a life, started a family. But the ‘spooks’ always came back. And then they even had the nerve to steal his only daughter.

  The name he had given her was Terry—they called her Leslie now, the bitch. He'd been stunned to see her on the vision, blowing off the head of that Calvin character. She'd filled out since she was a kid and he almost didn't recognize her. But there she was, his little Terry, a part of the enemy. After the initial shock, it seemed somehow fitting to him she would end up on Frankie's side.

  A couple days later, Everett had been in Albany to close a small-time arms deal. He was buying cartons of machine guns the United States originally gave to guerrillas staging a coup against the Iranian theocracy, who then traded some of the guns for heroin in Pakistan. From there, they were sold on the black market to a group of Israeli Nationals, who wanted to deal with Everett.

  If there was one thing in this world Everett appreciated, it was irony. He'd been sitting in his hotel vision room, chuckling about this irony, when the wall flickered and a commercial for an antidepressant breakfast cereal was replaced by the round bald head of Boris, the leader of the North Creek Atheists cell. “Hey, we need to talk."

  Boris told him about Saint Leslie con
tacting the Calvin operative's little brother. She'd called this poor man and asked to meet him, and he'd panicked and called the USA. Boris wanted Everett's advice. What should they do about it?

  It was all Everett could do to keep from laughing as he asked Boris what they knew about this Saint Leslie. “I mean, you must have conducted some intelligence on her by now, right?"

  "Yes, of course. But we don't know all that much. I mean, there isn't much to know. Her origins are not a part of official record. She seems to have sprung up into Security from nowhere. However, we do know she's central in an experimental program overseen by her superior, Guard Tom Russell."

  "The head mem thing?"

  "Yes. She's the subject."

  Thinking back on it, Everett remembered the complex jumble of feelings that clambered through him at that revelation. If Saint Leslie was the special guard who had the new head mem inside her cranium, then there were certain things that had to be true. First, she had to be precious to Security; but it was unlikely Frankie knew who she was. He wouldn't want his brother's daughter near His inner circle. This made Him vulnerable, politically, because it connected Him to Everett. And if the Atheists could befriend this new hero of the state, then convince her to join them, it would make a powerful statement to the world about Washington's oppression—their own saints were defecting! Few politicians’ careers could recover from such an embarrassment, Everett well knew. Frankie would forever be the Father Washington who lost control of His favorite champion. Forget about re-election. Forget about anything. This was an opportunity for a poignant revenge, right there in his lap.

  And if Leslie had the head mem implant, the United Sons of Adam's intelligence on the project indicated she probably suffered significant memory suppression. It was possible she had no recollection of Everett, her childhood, of anything before her reincarnation as a guard in security. She might be able to stand right in front of him in full ignorance of his identity. She could be his tool, and she would never know who he was, while she helped him gain a long-anticipated revenge on Frankie. How could he resist such irony!

  Everett winked his bloodshot eye at himself in the mirror, and recalled the surprise on Boris’ face when he volunteered to take charge of the situation. “We should help this woman. Let me head the operation if she defects."

  Grinning, he slapped the lift car's steering wheel. He was more excited now than he'd been since he discovered his past life identities. He'd been running around like a madman, making sure the two fugitives had all the help they would need to make their mythic way to the North Creek cell of the Sons of Adam. He'd sent operatives out to stock his camp in the Adirondacks. He'd authorized the use of his favorite safe house in Boston, he'd gotten the scrambler to them, and by now they should be getting ready to take a lift car, he made sure would be there for them, out of the amusement park city. Everything was going according to plan. Within a day or two, they should be hiding in one of his camps, getting ready to get to North Creek.

  Everett couldn't resist taking the chance to see Saint Leslie in person. This was why he'd risked crossing the southern restricted flight zone, and flew out to Hartford to deliver the scrambler himself. Now he was on his way to North Creek from that very meeting, and his nerves were singing!

  Everett, your mind's wandering.

  He was so tired. He shook his head to clear his blurring vision.

  Hang in there, old man. Soon you'll be safe and sound in the Atheist cell underground. Ah, you're a poet. You can get some rest. Clean up. All you need to do now is make sure the head surgeon is lined up for your pretty little saint. Your daughter....

  He recalled how scared he'd been when it finally came to seeing her. The USA set up the meeting place with Roger Calvin. Everett waited in that damned alley for at least twenty minutes before they showed up. He kept telling himself he'd walk right up to them and introduce himself to Leslie. Then he'd watch her face to see if she recognized him. But when he saw them approaching the mouth of the narrow alley, he stumbled backward into the night shadows. The Roger character had to stumble in the dark after him, and follow Everett's soft whispering.

  Everett didn't like Roger right away. He could smell a long, festering fear on this man. Everett pegged him as a chronic loser, a man desperate on the inside but too much of a coward to do anything about it. Roger was an annoyance and completely forgettable. He might survive this experience, if he was lucky, but he had nothing to offer Everett or the United Sons of Adam. Eventually he would just be in the way. Everett decided he'd put him out of his misery when he was no longer of any use to Saint Leslie. Then, from behind the line of shadow, where it was cut by the street lights, Everett turned to his daughter.

  Her face was dappled by dull light, leeching through the leaves of a young oak tree from a street lamp on the corner. She looked grim, as the breeze sighed through the branches. For a second, Everett thought she was glaring directly at him, and his stomach dropped. He felt an instant dread racing through his body, making him dizzy.

  She knows who I am! She can see me and she knows me!

  Overwhelming guilt surged through him. It was like being caught in an undertow. But then the splotched light shifted just a little, and he realized she wasn't even looking in his direction. She stared at Roger's back, apparently waiting for his return. As quickly as his fear emerged, it sank back inside him to an invisible place. He sighed and handed the scrambler to the unkempt man. The pair took off, and he got out of there as fast as he could, haunted by his brief loss of composure.

  The fact is, she didn't recognize you, you idiot. She barely saw you. Her memory's shot because of the head implant anyway. She couldn't possibly know who you are. And even if she could—who would be more afraid?

  11

  Clips from an old Johnny Phallus movie play on Channel 32—a science fiction adventure, about a group of Indians who take over the District of Columbia and subject it to a military occupation. Johnny plays the Indian leader, who heroically puts down the devious, brutal rebellions of the increasingly desperate white men. Station disclaimers and commentary follow the film, pointing out Johnny Phallus's terrorist sympathies.

  The irrepressible Dr. Bankley wags a finger on Channel 64, smiling affectionately at the vision eye. “You see,” he says, “critics typically misuse the term ‘censorship'. We don't live in a totalitarian state. Our media is not ‘censored,’ by definition. What is appropriate to watch, what is appropriate to say, is directed and governed by the more civilized exigencies of the free market, which naturally selects what is good, what is appropriate, and what is important—and weeds out what is trivial, awkward, unseemly, or just in bad taste."

  "In a related story, the War on Misinformation continued today with Rhode Island authorities confiscating seven personal work screens allegedly used to hack into the World Wide Web beyond sanctioned American sites. The teenage owners remain at large. Sources could not say whether or not their actions were related to Atheist organizations, or if the teenagers had indeed been exposed to a virus, but Terror Alert Status was raised across the nation to Arrogant Bloodlust."

  A campaign ad follows, showing a film clip of Father Washington goosing the Secretary of Defense: “Tired of the same old characters in the Washington soap opera? Vote for Democratic Nominee Harry Halfdan in November. Harry Halfdan. Bringing a whole new cast to the Fall line up."

  * * * *

  They traveled into the night and through the next day, stopping to switch lift cars at least a half a dozen times, walking from where they landed one car to where the next one was hidden. It rained off and on throughout the entire trip. It seemed whenever Leslie's clothes felt almost dry it was time to get out and walk again.

  Roger barely spoke. At least she had gotten him to explain their route to her. They were headed to Vermont, to a hunting camp used as a safe house in the Adirondacks, where they could rest. From there they would hike to the Hudson River, take a boat into a town called North Creek and have Leslie's head mem removed
. The Sons of Man were bringing a surgeon from Albany, who would meet them there at the Atheist cell.

  The safest way out of the country was to cross the border into Maine, which meant they would have to fly further north into Canada, and eventually circle south again to reach their destination. The Nation of Vermont was considered a part of the ‘third world', and not a threat in itself to United States security. But it had become a breeding ground for terrorist groups and all its American borders were closely guarded.

  Not every former state that successfully seceded from the Union was considered a third world country. But Vermont had already been weakened by decades of guerrilla warfare before it managed to break away forty years previously, taking with it Albany and the disputed Adirondack Territory. In the early days of the United States’ fragmentation, the Adirondacks had become a haven for groups who made wild claims of persecution, such as the Nation of Islam, several Atheist and ‘humanist’ factions, as well as some Arab Americans who had been officially linked to Terrorist groups as old as Hamas. Refugee camps throughout the Adirondack wilderness had become recruiting areas for extremist, anti-American movements of all kinds. Even a militia group, calling itself the Neo-Green Mountain Boys, who conducted small raids along the southern border and into the Berkshires.

  But for all the anti-American rhetoric from these groups, it was generally believed they were jealous of US affluence. The refugee camps were cesspools of poverty and disease. Sanctions against Vermont stayed in place, while the current government—considered a false democracy by Washington—remaining in power successfully weakened the power structure of Albany. And a competing faction vying for control of the country from Montpelier grew stronger every day, with Washington's assistance.