Forced Conversion

by Donald J. Bingle

  On the other hand, she was impressed with the manner in which he had spoken to the hermit. Maybe it was because the ConFoe had apparently been captured by the old guy, but there was none of the ego, none of the swagger of the ConFoes she had previously encountered. There was no spewing of vulgarities, no threat of violence or torture, no hurrying the victim along to the doom of his soul, just a slightly-sanitized version of the history of conversion technology.

  When she had silently sworn to let their words determine their fate, she had been thinking of the second man—the one that she had feared might be a ConFoe contact. But number seven—his name was apparently Derek Williger—had done nothing tonight to deserve death. More importantly, she still might gather some useful intelligence for Sanctuary before she did what she eventually would have to do. She lay quietly as the men wandered out separately to use the facilities and returned to the comfy cabin, with Derek shutting the cabin door firmly behind him on his return.

  There would be time enough tomorrow. At some point she knew she would have to intervene, to save the old man from the predation of his government, but now she too would rest. She slid carefully out from beneath the porch and made her way to a thicket at the far edge of the small lake. She silently ate a charred MRE and lay back to fall asleep, the stars twinkling silently far above her.

  * * * * *

  Far, far away to the southwest, hundreds of miles from Maria, someone else stared at the twinkling stars and cursed their silence. Time was running out for Hank and Ali and for their research. The equipment was failing and was irreplaceable. And still no answer came. Only a few had not abandoned the cause, but Hank and Ali would stay ‘til the end.

  Hank coughed, the cool, dry air irritating his throat as he inhaled, causing him to hack again, harder. He, too, was failing and was irreplaceable. And, once he and Ali stopped listening, mankind would never know.

  Hank looked at the input again. It was fuzzy and unreliable. And it kept getting worse, despite his and Ali’s technical expertise and considerable diagnostic efforts.

  “There’s nothin’ to do, but reconfigure,” he said to Ali. “We’ve gotten everything we’re gonna get from this one.”

  Ali’s shoulders slumped. “Are you quite certain? A reconfiguration will be a substantial effort. It is not like we can just press a button.”

  “Hell, Ali,” said Hank amiably, “you and me, we passed on the easy path a long time ago. Ain’t nothin’ worthwhile, you don’t gotta work for.”

  Ali nodded. “This is undoubtedly the situation.” He got up from his chair. “We had best commence, then.”

  “Ain’t nobody gonna do it for us,” drawled Hank, as he pushed back his swivel chair and rose to help.

  Chapter 10

  It had to be Saturday. His nose and his ears confirmed it while his eyes were still closed, his mind still half-asleep. The sizzle and pop of Mom cooking up breakfast in a big ol’ iron skillet—the heavy scent of frying fat in the air—guaranteed it.

  Mom always cooked up a big, hot breakfast on Saturday morning, even when bacon and eggs began to get expensive. A bacon and egg sandwich on buttered wheat toast was Katy’s favorite meal and, given all that she was denied, Mom could not help but give Katy her favorite meal once a week. She was similarly generous to Derek, allowing him to eat nothing but a big bowl of heavily buttered popcorn for the Sunday evening meal.

  Derek’s eyes fluttered open, but Mom was nowhere in sight. Instead, a grizzled old hermit whistled softly to himself while he fried up a mess of potatoes and elk fat. The visage of the old man and the aches in Derek’s painfully adult body quickly reminded him of where he was and what he was about. Sadly, he realized that he had most assuredly already experienced the best moment of the day. He looked around the room, daylight streaming in the picture window and the open door—too high and too dry to worry about mosquitoes up here. Kyle caught the small movement of Derek’s head and stopped fiddling with the frying potatoes long enough to walk a steaming mug over and set it on the end table next to the couch.

  “Coffee?” croaked Derek, incredulously. Where would this hermit get coffee? Not even the ConFoes had coffee anymore, though they had plenty of beverages with a morning kick to them—caffeine or otherwise.

  “Hmmmph,” grunted Kyle. “Mountain tea. This ain’t the Ritz, y’know.”

  Derek pulled the cup towards him and gave it an expectant sniff. “What’s in it?”

  “Roots, wild-rose petals . . . hell, don’t get too fixed on what’s in tea, boy. It’s all just dried weeds in a bag.” The hermit scraped his fixings onto two plates and plunked them down at the table. “Best get up and eat while things are hot. Then you can finish your sales pitch and we can both get about our business.”

  Derek scrambled up and over to the heavy wooden table. Not even stiff muscles and a full body ache could slow him from sitting down to a hot meal laden with grease and carbohydrates. As he ate, he made an effort not to think of the quaint domesticity of the old mountain man. It wouldn’t do to think of him as some kind of folksy grandfather or, worse yet, as a good friend. It could make things difficult when the geezer made his choice and Derek did what he had to do.

  Instead, he hunkered down and focused on his food and what he still had to say and what he would do, what he was duty bound to do, when the time came.

  * * * * *

  The smell of food cooking was almost more than Maria could bear. Ensconced again in her hiding place under the wood plank porch, she, too, focused on figuring out what she would do next.

  * * * * *

  Kyle finally prompted the discussion as Derek sat back from his cleaned plate. “Is this an age thing?”

  “Huh?” said Derek, wiping the grease from his mouth with the sleeve of his uniform.

  “Y’said folks can convert to livin’ in computers and y’said somethin’ ‘bout mandatory conversion. Well, God knows the HMOs and the insurance companies, they was always complainin’ ‘bout the high cost of keepin’ old folks alive ‘past their time,’ whatever the hell that means. So I figured that maybe they make old folks convert as a means of getting rid of ‘em, so’n they can save money and all. Hell, the governor of Colorado said some darn foolishness ‘bout a ‘duty to die’ once, even.”

  Derek smiled. The old coot was pretty sharp, but then he supposed you couldn’t be too stupid and eke out an existence for years on your own in this place.

  “You’re kind of right, but it’s got nothing to do with age or insurance companies.”

  Kyle waited silently for him to continue.

  “You moved out here partly to get away from the press of civilization, but you have no idea how pressing civilization got after you moved on. The fundamentalists in most countries got their way and outlawed abortion and most types of birth control, but did nothing to stem the promiscuity that had arisen when those things were both legal and common. Population surged—there were more than three billion Chinese alone and almost two billion Indians—the Hindu kind—even after the nuclear exchange with Pakistan. There simply wasn’t enough food, certainly not enough clean water, to support twelve billion people on earth and counting.”

  Kyle scratched his beard and frowned as he contemplated Derek’s words. “Zack, he was always complainin’ about them damn Californicators, as he called ‘em, stealing all of Colorado’s water. And he did say somethin’ about some riots in Denver one of the last times he came by.” The geezer somehow seemed even older as he thought about the world’s woes.

  “Lots of the big cities had riots, and riots meant fires and destruction. Of course, destroying the infrastructure of commerce didn’t do much to help an already bad situation.”

  “So, you’re sayin’ folks, they thought they would have a better life in the computer, in a virtual world?”

  “Sure. Think about it Kyle. In a virtual world, you don’t really use up any resources. There is an unlimited supply of virtual water and the crop yields can be programmed to be anything you want them
to be . . . because nothing is real. It just seems real.”

  “So folks . . . desperate folks . . . would convert so they could provide for their family . . . or at least seem to . . .”

  “So their kids could have a better life than they did. It’s the age-old motivating force of every generation, Kyle. Virtual reality made it attainable for everyone.”

  “And the government, they went along with this?”

  “They encouraged it, Kyle. Every year it cost tens of thousands of dollars and a heap of taxes and resources to keep a family going in the real world. For less than a year’s worth of those same resources, the family could be converted over into one of the virtual worlds and never cost the government a dime again.”

  “S’long as the family agreed to kill themselves and their kids to do it.” Kyle spat into the stoked ashes of the fireplace with undisguised disgust. The globule evaporated instantaneously as it hit—the tangible liquid converting into an ephemeral gas that dissipated up the chimney. “Sounds like every cult I ever heard of.”

  “You’re not dead when you’re in the computer, Kyle. Your consciousness just resides in a different place, forever. And instead of a desert of sand and starvation, you have a silicon chip of plenty and immortality.”

  “And people, they do this?”

  “Almost everybody has.”

  Kyle’s hands fluttered, as if to wave off Derek’s implied offer. “Like I said last night. No sale. T’aint crowded here and I don’t want to go no place where it is, even if’n I got all the food and water and ‘resources’ I could ever want. ‘Sides, with most everyone else gone, things will be just right for me here.” He stood, obviously finished with the conversation. “I ‘spect you best be on your way.”

  Derek made no move to stand. “You remember, Kyle, I said there was a Mandatory Conversion Act?”

  Now the old man was clearly riled. Kyle’s face grew beet red and his gnarled hands curled into tight fists. He strode abruptly up to his still-sitting guest, bending down to meet Derek’s impassive gaze face-to-face. “You go to hell, boy! You go to some damn virtual hell! I ain’t on no welfare and I ain’t usin’ anybody else’s resources or costin’ the damn government a single, solitary damn dime. So you just git off my mountain and tell them I ain’t interested.” He spun around with amazing alacrity for his age and marched over to the partially open door. He grabbed the inside latch and pulled the door fully open, stepping back and to the side as he did, turning back so as to face his no longer welcome guest, his movements as much a demand for departure as his angry words.

  Derek had half closed his eyes during the exchange to keep out the spittle flying from the old man’s mouth as he shouted. He began to speak as he turned toward his angry host. “Everyone has to make a choice . . .” His words suddenly faltered mid-sentence. He was no more ready for the sight that greeted him at the door than was the irate old man.

  Silhouetted by the bright sunlight was a lithe woman in a gray jumpsuit cradling an automatic weapon. Her brown hair fluttered in the breeze, revealing a small scar along her jaw-line that made her pale features look somehow less delicate without ruining her stern beauty. She stepped slightly forward and put her left foot down so that her boot would block any attempt to shut the door on her. She trained her weapon on the stupefied ConFoe and turned her head slightly toward the startled cabin-dweller around the edge of the door. “Mr. Williger was about to explain that you have to choose between immediate conversion and immediate death. I’d like to discuss expanding your menu of alternatives.”

  The old man glared angrily at Derek, his steely gray eyes boring into his erstwhile guest with venom.

  “That right? You were going to kill me, if’n I didn’t agree to your godforsaken conversion?”

  Derek hesitated to reply. This was not how orientation was supposed to go, according to the ConFoe training manual. Of course, it wasn’t supposed to be interrupted by a gun-toting mal getting the drop on you, either. He considered his words carefully—lying would be sure to alienate his subject and aggravate his undoubtedly self-righteous, armed opponent. “I was just beginning to explain that mandatory conversion was not . . . limited to welfare recipients when we were . . . interrupted.”

  Kyle gave Derek a grudging grunt of acknowledgment. “Anything else you hadn’t gotten to yet?”

  “In his haste,” the mal intoned sarcastically, “Mr. Williger has glossed over a number of salient points. Religious persecution. Torture. Murder. Genocide.”

  Derek nodded his head slightly. “That’s what it has come to,” he agreed to his enemy’s obvious astonishment. He struggled to find the words that would justify what the Conversion Forces had become, but his courses in orientation had never contemplated a true debate—just a unilateral explanation and responses to frequently asked questions and protests that would ease the subject to accept conversion, hopefully without ever getting to the subject of the unpleasant alternative. With a shake of his head, he cleared the rote explanations out of his mind and pared all that he knew of ConFoe’s existence down to its bare essentials. “It’s really just a matter of self-defense,” he said simply.

  That was a mistake.

  The mal soldier’s finger tensed on the trigger of her weapon. The look of revulsion and disgust on her face was so intense that Derek could almost taste the bile rising in her throat himself. She did not shoot, but her words slammed at him like a burst of automatic weapon fire. “You hunt down peaceful citizens and kill them in self-defense? You torture them until they deny their religion in self-defense? You poison the crops and burn down the forests in self-defense?” Her eyes flamed with anger and disbelief—her gun remained tightly focused on Derek’s center of mass.

  There was no advantage to lying, even if the truth cost Derek his life. It saddened him that Katy might never see him again, but the truth saddened him even more. “Yes. At least the killing . . . the genocide is in self-defense. The torture is an unfortunate byproduct of the process which I loathe as much as you.”

  The woman started slightly at Derek’s reply. She seemed at a loss for words.

  * * * * *

  Kyle wanted nothing more than to have been left in peace, to know nothing of the conflict between these people, nothing of the bizarre and grisly politics of the civilization that he had long ago left behind, but it had intruded itself upon him. Now, his mind churned. All the options seemed to have as a prerequisite the death of someone in his cabin. This earnest and angry young woman would kill Derek and leave. Or Derek would kill her and, if Kyle refused his invitation of conversion, then kill him. Or Kyle would be forced to kill them both. Not that he was in control, at least not yet, but none of those choices appealed to him. Moreover, now that he was infected with partial knowledge, the puzzle of it all would likely drive him mad if the two of them were to die in the obviously coming fight. Suddenly, he was glad that Henrietta never had to see what the world had come to. He also realized that, much as he instinctively sought to live, some permutations of how things might play out would bring him to her—and maybe that wasn’t so bad.

  He intervened by instinct. “Seems to me, if’n I have to make a choice that’s eternal, I oughta hear both sides first.”

  “That’s fine by me,” said the woman curtly. “Some of us believe in informed consent.” Her grip on the assault weapon remained tight, however, and her aim did not waiver from her ConFoe opponent.

  Derek spoke. “It seems to me that full and frank discussion is rarely . . . facilitated by the threat of summary execution implicit in being at the wrong end of an AK-47.”

  The mal soldier continued to glare at her ConFoe opponent.

  Kyle spoke up. “Man’s got a point, missy. My house. My risk. What say, I take your gun and stash it with the others and we talk it all out? ‘Twouldn’t be fair otherwise.”

  * * * * *

  Fairness.

  Now there was a concept that Maria thought had long ago left the world. But if it lived, it would have to l
ive in the hearts of the Believers and in old-timers like Kyle. Just thinking about it calmed her slightly. Her finger relaxed on the trigger.

  The idea of vengeance for the fire in Sanctuary’s valley still compelled Maria, but this ConFoe was different, odd. He was still dangerous, but not in the same way as those apes that had pursued her and set the fire. And deep down, she could only distinguish her military acts from those of her foe because she believed herself to be a freedom fighter. This ancient mountain man deserved a choice . . . a real choice . . . an informed choice. She would be fair to Kyle. She would even be fair to her ConFoe enemy.

  Besides, the ConFoe was weaponless and seemed pretty beat-up. She calculated she could take him if she had to, gun or no.

  She slowly lowered her weapon and let the old man take it. Derek continued to sit at the table calmly.

  “Thanks, missy,” said the old gent.

  “The name’s Maria.”

  “Thank you kindly, Maria. Now if you two can avoid killin’ each other for a few minutes, I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

  Kyle headed out the door, shutting it behind him.

  Maria looked at Derek without expression. “I killed your friends, you know.”

  He looked back at her without passion. “They weren’t my friends. They were just . . . my squad.”

  His uncaring attitude confused and somewhat disturbed her. Her right eyebrow unconsciously arched slightly.

  “They killed your friends, I think,” he continued.

  “Don’t you know?” she said flippantly. “You were there, weren’t you?”