Analog SFF, May 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  So instead of biting his finger off, I said, “Thank you, Herr . . . what should I call you?"

  "You may call me by my name, which is Michael Whitfield.” As he spoke, he loosened the laces on my restraint, which was made of purple nanofiber and looked like the sort of thing you'd use to immobilize a fractured arm, only it completely wrapped my torso and limbs. “There you go."

  I took a deep breath and stretched my stiff muscles within the loosened cocoon. I was still imprisoned, but I was more comfortable. “As long as you're being honest, Herr Whitfield . . . where are we, and what have you done to me in the past nineteen days?"

  "I'd prefer not to tell you our location until we've run a few more tests. As to ‘what we've done to you’ . . . we've merely undone what the Institute did."

  "In other words, you've brainwashed me."

  "Quite the opposite, I assure you.” He looked me straight in the eye. “I give you my word that your mind is now entirely your own, for the first time in your life."

  "Prove it."

  "I cannot,” he admitted. “But I believe you will find that any thoughts you care to think, whether positive or negative toward the Institute or royalty, do not call up any untoward physical reactions. Which was not the case before."

  "The Institute saved the world from apocalypse,” I said aloud, to judge his reactions as well as to test his assertion.

  In the early twenty-first century, the Earth had been on the brink of collapse—economically, ecologically, and politically. But the Institute for Ideal World Governance, a group of wise and selfless people from many nations, had gathered in Geneva and formed a plan for survival: developing, through breeding and genetic engineering, an ideal leadership class; educating and indoctrinating them from birth for skill in government and absolute devotion to the welfare of their citizens; and connecting them to their peers in every nation through implanted transceivers, so that no mistake need ever be made from lack of knowledge, communication, or sound advice.

  Not everyone had accepted this idea. There had been resistance, rebellion, even all-out wars. But the Institute had wisely modeled its new governors on the leaders of bygone centuries, creating a new class of “kings” and “dukes” and “emperors” whose citizens were predisposed through culture, history, and even fairy tales to accept them. Nations led by these new royals thrived; nations that resisted the new order were defeated and assimilated into the network, or simply fell by the wayside. Within eighty years, the planet was united and a new golden age had begun.

  Michael tilted his head and peered at me through his eyebrows. “That's what you've been taught,” he said. “But it's incomplete at best.” And as for myself, as Michael had promised, my own reaction to my statement was nothing more than a sense of intellectual satisfaction and pride. There was no sign I'd been brainwashed . . . not that I could really judge that.

  We spent the rest of that day in the little room where I'd awoken, with me still restrained and Michael asking an increasingly probing series of questions. The quick darting glances of his eyes told me that he was monitoring my vital signs using an implanted display, and his long silences and occasional barely audible subvocalizations hinted at compatriots, in the next room or a thousand kilometers away. It was like dangling a juicy steak in front of a starving man, but I'd been trained for any eventuality, including complete loss of communication. I kept my eyes and ears open, provided as little information as I could, and awaited an opportunity to escape.

  After interminable hours, Michael excused himself and left the room, yawning and stretching his arms over his head. I wished I could do the same.

  For the next hour Michael argued with his colleagues. They were far enough away that even my enhanced ears couldn't discern the words of the argument, but I could tell from the sound of their voices that it was a vehement discussion among at least five people, all of whom were physically present rather than teleconferenced.

  During the argument I tried to squirm one arm free from my restraints, but even loosened somewhat, they held me in an inescapable grip.

  "I'm afraid we have a rather serious problem,” Michael said when he returned.

  "What do you mean by ‘we'?"

  "You and I both. I made a mistake, and that creates a problem for both of us.” Michael paced the tiny room, hands wringing each other behind his back. “You may or may not be pleased to know that you were selected for this operation because of your demonstrated sympathy for reformist groups. Specifically, we are aware of your recent falling-out with your sister, the Queen of North America, over her treatment of the First Peoples insurgents in British Columbia."

  Although I knew it would make no difference, I suppressed my visible reaction. If my squabble with Sissi was known to these rebels, we had a serious security lapse.

  "Based on your record, and my own research into your personal history, I had assumed that once your conditioning was broken, you would join wholeheartedly with our cause. But your reactions to my questioning today indicate that your higher cortical functions are effectively unchanged. The conventional component of your training and education was a much bigger part of your indoctrination than we—than I—had hoped.” He blew out his cheeks, shook his head. “In other words, even without your conditioning, you still believe in the Institute. We knew this was a possibility, of course. No one has ever attempted to deprogram a fully indoctrinated adult royal before."

  "So does this mean I can leave?"

  He wouldn't look me in the eye. “Many of my colleagues would like to kill you immediately. But rather than discard the effort and resources we've put into this operation already, I've convinced them to accept a compromise."

  What kind of compromise, I wondered, was possible between death and release?

  "With your conditioning broken, your remaining loyalty to the Institute is subject to rational argument. I've been given three days to convince you to join our cause.” Now he did meet my gaze, his gray eyes steely. “We do realize, of course, that your obvious course of action is to pretend compliance until you have an opportunity to escape. Please do keep in mind that we will continue to monitor your vital signs continuously. This includes listening through your own ears to everything you say or that is said to you. If at the end of the three days my colleagues believe you are not completely supportive of our cause, or if at any point in the future you attempt to betray us, we will detonate the 150 grams of C-6 we've implanted next to your spine."

  That explained the numb spot in my lower back. He could be lying, of course, but my strategic sense told me he wasn't. And 150 grams of C-6 was enough to completely atomize both me and anyone who was unfortunate enough to be standing next to me.

  "I'm sorry this was necessary,” Michael said, and his face showed a genuine discomfort. “I tried to convince my colleagues not to implant the device, but I was outvoted."

  "That's the disadvantage of a democratic government. If you had royals in charge of your organization, you'd know that the decision was the objectively best choice rather than the most superficially attractive."

  "If we had someone like your sister in charge, you never would have woken up in the first place."

  I had no answer to that.

  When Sissi and I were about seven, I recalled, I saw her poised on a pond's edge, lunging with a splash and emerging triumphant with a frog's big bulgy eyes and throbbing throat-sac sticking out from her little fist. Wondering what she saw in the slimy amphibian, I approached her . . . then watched in horror as she slowly tightened her grip, the frog's legs thrashing in panic as it attempted to escape. “Hey!” I shouted. Startled, she stood and faced me, the frog splashing into the pond behind her.

  "I . . . I just wanted to see how tight I could squeeze it,” she said. “Without, you know, killing it or anything."

  "And how do you know just how hard a squeeze will kill it?"

  She wouldn't meet my eyes.

  I should have reported the incident to our teachers, but I didn't. Sissi
and I were full-blood siblings and shared a special bond, even tighter than the other young royals in our brood; neither of us ever tattled on the other. But I gave her hell over the incident, and she never tortured a frog again.

  So far as I knew.

  "So.” Michael took a breath, held it, let it out again. “If you agree to hear me out . . . if you give me an honest chance to convince you of the justice of our cause . . . I will release you from your bonds."

  "And if I refuse?"

  Michael's gaze dropped to his shoes. “You die."

  "Of course.” I breathed deeply for a while to slow my pounding heart. Michael waited expectantly for my response. “There's an old story,” I said at last, “about a man who was brought before an evil king after stealing a loaf of bread. The king sentenced him to death, but the man offered a deal: ‘Spare my life and I will teach your pig to sing.’ The idea intrigued the king and he gave the man one year to teach the pig to sing. But if he failed . . . off with his head."

  "I'm afraid I don't understand."

  "Let me finish. As the man was being led away, a friend asked him what he thought he was doing. ‘You'll never get that pig to sing!’ The man replied: ‘A lot can happen in a year. The king might die. I might die. The pig might die. Or . . . you never know . . . the pig could learn to sing.’”

  One side of Michael's mouth lifted in an ironic smile, and he inclined his head. “I believe we both understand our situation. But I'm not sure which of us is the pig."

  With that, he began to unfasten my purple nanofiber cocoon. When he finished with the knots, he spread the cocoon open and extended his hand to me. “Your Excellency?"

  Michael and two armed guards took me down a corridor to a door that looked like any interior door. But when we stepped through it, I found myself in a cavernous room as large as a football pitch and at least three stories tall, windowless but illuminated by ancient mercury-vapor lamps. A mezzanine of some sort ran around the space, about two stories up; the collapsed remains of an escalator had once led up to it. The place smelled like a crypt, reeking of decay and ancient dust.

  We were in a shopping mall. One of the thousands of temples to the great god Consumption that stood vacant across North America, abandoned in the great economic tumult of Unification. This one was in reasonably good shape, the crude turn-of-the-century graphics on the stores’ signs still legible, the skylights overhead still intact—though painted black as a shield against prying satellite eyes. The building we'd just emerged from, an ugly gray brick of a thing, was one of several that sat on the vast flat floor of the space. “Where we are standing used to be an ice-skating rink,” Michael explained. “Even in the middle of the summer, people would come here to skate and drink hot cocoa and, of course, shop."

  "Insane,” I said. The American economy had been so bloated with shopping—so imbalanced in the direction of individual consumption—that it had been unable to adapt to the more efficient and sustainable world economy that the Institute had designed. In my opinion, the chaos that followed Unification on this continent had as much to do with Americans’ love of shopping as it did with the historical love of democracy and distrust of royalty that were the usual explanations. “The system was unsustainable. If Unification had not come along, it would have collapsed soon of its own weight."

  "We have only the Institute's word on that.” He pulled a video card from his pocket and handed it to me. “My grandfather grew up in this town before Unification, and he took some videos of this very mall.” The video card showed, in garish turn-of-the-century colors, laughing children and adults ice-skating under these very skylights, just a few meters from where we stood. They wore puffy winter coats and long knit caps; just the other side of a railing, people in summer clothing carried shopping bags and coffee cups. “Look how happy they were."

  "Those happy people stood at the top of a pyramid of social inequality. Their lifestyle was made possible by workers toiling in conditions indistinguishable from slavery—conditions the Institute has nearly eliminated worldwide."

  "Creating instead a broad middle class without any real hope of advancement. You may have eliminated hunger, but the people still suffer from poverty—poverty of options, of ambition. The people who built this mall could dream."

  "But most of them never realized those dreams, and many went hungry and homeless. Today every citizen can expect a decent, comfortable life. Isn't that worth the loss of a few impossible dreams?"

  "Is that your training talking, or the remnants of your conditioning, or is it really you?"

  I realized I didn't know.

  Michael just gave me that lopsided smile.

  We spent the rest of that day and all of the next walking through the decrepit mall and talking, with at least two armed guards covering me at all times. My mind was constantly divided between rebutting Michael's arguments in favor of democracy and unguided capitalism, looking for a way to escape, and assessing the rebels’ strengths and weaknesses.

  I had the most success with the last of those three. Michael's organization clearly had contacts high in the government, but some of our most confidential information was apparently still secret, because Michael and the guards didn't seem to realize just how good my senses were. They also appeared to remain unsuspicious of my subtle direction of Michael's and my walks. Our apparently random wanderings were actually carefully calculated to let me observe every part of the rebels’ hidden facility.

  What I learned surprised me. The rebel organization, which called itself America Reborn, was far larger than just this small group. A communications network diagram, left lying on a desk in an office with the light off, showed me that they had over fifty facilities as large as this one. A conversation overheard through a solid block wall told me they had several thousand members, access to powerful weapons, and a sophisticated training program. Yet my sister the Queen of North America, notable for her zealous suppression of all forms of rebellion, had never indicated to me that she even knew the organization existed.

  It was clear that America Reborn's successful abduction of me, the Viceroy of Germany and Austria, was not just a fluke. If I joined them—or perhaps even if I did not—when they decided to act, they had a significant chance of seizing control of at least a portion of North America, and possibly even holding on to it.

  And, based on my ongoing discussions with Michael, I wasn't certain this would be a bad thing.

  No matter how fervently I defended the Institute government, with its worldwide peace ("except for the constant low-level fever of rebel action,” Michael reminded me), freedom, and prosperity, somehow Michael was always able to match my arguments.

  "We royals do not have nearly as much personal freedom as it seems,” I said as we strolled through the looted remnants of a sporting goods store. “I take the title ‘Defender of Humanity’ very seriously. We are slaves to our citizens; everything we do is devoted to the welfare of humanity."

  "Easy for you to say, from your position above the impenetrable glass ceiling. Even the wealthiest ordinary citizen cannot approach the royals’ opulent lifestyles and personal power."

  "The only reason for the castles, the artworks, and the horse-drawn carriages of solid synthetic diamond is to reassure the common citizens that their government is powerful enough to overcome any problem. Our psychological studies have shown that these trappings do have the desired effect."

  "The powerful have always claimed their luxuries are for the glory of God, or the people, or the state . . . never themselves. But it is the individual who benefits from them."

  Back and forth we went like that, neither able to convince the other.

  Lying awake on a cot that night, in a locked and heavily guarded room, I berated myself for my inability to demolish Michael's arguments. Where was my conviction? Where was my force of personality? Where was the diplomatic skill that had ended the so-called “Gasthaus Rebellion” without loss of life on either side?

  Without my implants and
conditioning, I realized, I was nothing. Indoctrination had given me conviction; constant communication with my peers worldwide had made me appear smarter, wiser, and more capable than I really was. Without these, I was little more than an athlete . . . a genetically enhanced body and senses in the service of a mind no better than average. And that mind no longer knew what it believed.

  I wept.

  And even as I wept, I knew that my vital signs were being observed. I wondered what conclusions they were drawing.

  The third day began like the first two, with a simple breakfast of hot cereal. “Today is the day of reckoning,” Michael said to me as I spooned it up, “and I'm cautiously optimistic. Even though you're continuing to argue against me, I believe you may be coming around to our way of thinking. We'll work together today as usual, and at the end of the day I'll meet with my compatriots and we'll determine what to do with you."

  My heart hammered at the thought. Yes, I wanted to live—but could I bear to do so in opposition to everything I'd fought to defend in my life up until now?

  Frankly, I wasn't certain either way.

  As we emerged from the blockhouse, I subtly edged our path to the left, heading toward a section of the mall I hadn't yet completely assessed. Trails of fresh footprints in the floor's filth and debris told me that this area was one that the rebels were actively using, but I didn't know for what.

  We walked on, talking of history and politics, but as we passed another one of the rebels’ block structures, I smelled something that caught me up short: the distinctive greasy-almonds scent of C-6. It had to be a huge quantity of the explosive for even my enhanced nose to pick it up at that range.

  What could America Reborn be planning with such a large cache of explosives? Properly placed, ten kilos of C-6 could bring down a skyscraper; a hundred kilos could demolish a dam. And the stuff wasn't as stable as some other explosives . . . they must expect to use it soon.