“What are you going to do to her?”
“A work camp, of course. Actually, two—a summer camp in Arizona, and a winter camp in Alaska—where she’ll be free to work out in nature, eighteen hours a day. It’ll be wonderful for her rehabilitation.”
“That will kill her!”
“And you’re the one who’s going to order it.” I gape at Lydia with my incomprehension. “Haven’t you heard? President Bradford is making you my boss. Karl’s, too. You’re going to oversee the entire Department of Technology. Part of your job description is sentencing Technology offenders to the work camps. It’s wonderful!”
“I want to see Bradford!”
“Surely. He’s dying to meet you.”
51
A guard gives me a ten-speed bicycle and a hand-drawn map to the White House.
To my surprise, I handle the bike as well as I did in my school days, when my friends and I used to ride BMX in the abandoned construction sites near my dad’s apartment. That said, after just a few minutes of pedaling, my ass is raw and my hands riddled with blisters. Still, I pedal harder yet only to realize I’m lost, because the guard has failed to properly label any of the streets with names. Instead he simply calls out landmarks, both real and imagined. One instruction on the map says, “Turn left at the intersection where President Bradford remarked that a team of deranged robots from Mexico raped and murdered an entire kindergarten class.”
I throw the map down knowing full well Bradford has no interest in enforcing any anti-littering laws harmful to job creation. I ask a woman pushing a baby carriage for directions to the White House.
“You’re Henri, aren’t you?” the woman says excitingly. “I recognized you immediately!” After rattling off precise turn-by-turn instructions, she asks for a photo, forcing me to remind her she’s had her gram removed. “Oh well,” she says, “if no photos with celebrities is the price to pay for a fairer society, so be it!”
At the gate of the White House, an entire team of uniformed guards let me pass through undisturbed, each of them saluting as they say, “Doctor Henri, sir!” There’s a party in full-swing on the White House’s front lawn. I recognize senators, congressmen, and supreme court justices, all in various state of intoxication. As well as the elected and appointed officials, there are countless people I don’t recognize—friends, family, and constituents—also enjoying the festivities. I’m greeted with shouts of glee. The vice president immediately presses me to shot-gun beers with him. He chases his with tequila, but I refrain. I must stay sharp for Bradford.
The president is manning the barbeque. He’s dressed in a T-shirt and jeans with an apron stained in barbeque sauce and charcoal. Despite the slovenly appearance, I’m struck by a certain magnetism. He smiles warmly as he loads burgers and sausages onto the grill, his eyes clear and bright, then wipes his hand on his apron before extending it. I give it a good squeeze, but he does me one better, placing his free hand on my elbow and jerking me toward him. When he lets go, there is a brown spot on my shirt, where he touched me.
“Henri, my good man, it’s so wonderful to finally meet you in person.”
“Mr. President,” I say. “We need to talk.”
“Do you like barbeque, Henri?” he asks, and hands me a plate full of baby-back ribs. “Because I absolutely love barbeque. It’s fun, it’s social, everyone can feel good at a barbeque, it’s a real crowd pleaser. And best of all, it requires no technology, only fire and meat.”
The president cracks open two beers, laughing heartily as he does, then slings an arm over my shoulder to lead me into the Rose Garden, where Dr. Hines is busy pruning, having somehow weaseled his way into a job on the White House’s grounds crew.
“Mr. President, it’s about Serena.”
“I understand you met with Lydia this morning,” he says. “Such a wonderful woman, even after having suffered so unbearably. She deserves better, and now she’s going to have it.”
“Yes, sir, Lydia is a fine woman, but I’d like to discuss Serena.”
“Henri, I can’t tell you enough just how glad I am to have you join the team. You’re going to make a really fantastic addition to our organization.” The president leans over a bounty of yellow and pink buds, shoos away several bumblebees, and inhales. “I owe you a heaping debt of gratitude,” he says, his face the picture of serenity. “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be president. It was your martyrdom that spurred the people to get out and vote. You gave this movement its legs.”
“As a favor to me, then, sir, I need you to let my friend Serena go.”
The president laughs uproariously.
“I appreciate your loyalty but I’m going to explain to you how it’s misplaced. People like Serena have sold the citizens of this nation on a false hope. They promised that technology would liberate them from the mundaneness of having to go to work each day, giving them more time than they could ever imagine to pursue all variety of noble ambitions, be it music, art, or even science. But the last thing society needs is more creatives. Can you imagine anything as awful as a world full of painters, composers, and for God’s sake, novelists? Thank goodness, we’ve been spared that fate. You see, Henri—most people aren’t so clever. They don’t have anything close to resembling talent. There is no possibility that the average man can create something of value. Absent this talent, what do they do with all this newfound time? The answer is—nothing. The best thing we can do for people, Henri, is to put them back to work. Allow them the opportunity to provide for their families. It’s the American dream, after all.”
“With all due respect, sir,” I say, “what kind of society will we have if the best and the brightest are punished?”
“Don’t you see? Serena is the embodiment of man’s two most cardinal sins: pride and greed—the two overlapping, merging, multiplying the other’s effect. Such a combination is a recipe for throwing open the gates of hell!”
“But to reconstruct society in your vision will take big thinkers.”
“Aren’t you a big thinker, Henri?”
“Serena is a thousand times more talented.”
“Yes, perhaps. And yet she’s not nearly as useful, not, at least, for my purposes. You know, Henri, I really want to make things work for you. But first you must prove you can be loyal to our project.”
“Sir, may I ask why you’ve brought me here?”
“Don’t be silly, Henri. Unemployed truckers and bartenders have little value, in terms of propaganda. But a well-esteemed doctor, whom the people believe has thrown away his privilege for the good of the many? That I can use. And I must say, I’ve done so, masterfully. In fact, you’re even more popular than I am. It’s true, I’d hate to lose you, but you’re far from indispensable.”
“What is it you want?”
“Prove yourself by sending Serena to the work camps.”
“I won’t do it.”
Bradford steps right up to me, his heavy belly being the only thing between us, and he presses his finger into my chest. “Would you like to go in her place?”
“Forget what you think you know about me, and what you think you know about Serena. She was my best friend for twenty years. I would never sacrifice her to spare myself.”
“People who are preparing to hurt someone very badly often talk kindly of them beforehand—deck them with flowers, as they say—by way of compensation! Now if you’ll excuse me.”
The president sets down his beer, unzips his fly, closes his eyes, and begins to relieve himself all over the flowers. In this moment, I have a brilliant idea. From my wallet I take the suicide pill and inch toward the President’s beer. But—me, assassinating the President of the United States? What an awful cast of bedfellows I’d go down in history with! John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, Leon Czolgsz, Charles J. Guiteau? On the other hand, I consider, my murder would be fully warranted. I’d be remembered as the great savior of the American people, I’m certain. I’d be saving them from themselves, really, since they’re
the ones who voted him in—under false premises, of course, having been seduced by Bradford’s use of my likeness. No, this terrible injustice must be undone.
Yet, by killing Bradford, it’s possible I’d be dooming civilization’s last chance for a better, more gratifying way of life. Surely the direction we’ve been headed for the past century isn’t sustainable. Look at where it’s led us: The Earth’s climate has been irreparably changed, its oceans are polluted, its forests and mountains are destroyed, the air is carcinogenic, the animals are nearing extinction, and, mankind, the only species who should’ve benefitted from all this chaos and destruction, has never been more aimless. I put the pill away just as the president finishes pissing.
“If I agree to go in her place,” I say, “you’ll spare her?”
“This is not what I wanted for you, Henri,” Bradford says. “But it’s your choice. If this is what you desire, then, let’s get on with it.”
52
Two guards take me away. I’m loaded into the back of a bicycle-powered rickshaw. A sign hangs from its side that reads, “Tours of Washington D.C. $5.” One guard pedals and steers, while the other shares the carriage with me, holding a dagger against my side.
It strikes me that where catastrophes may have many independent causes, without fail, almost as if supernaturally engineered, they always converge in a way to produce a single terrifying event. These random life occurrences—my affair with Taylor, the sacrifice of my job, befriending Lydia at Anodyne, Karl’s revenge against his former employer, Bradford’s exploitation of me for his own nefarious ends, my relationship with Serena—they’ve all conspired to my fate, a slow death in the work camps!
I make a final tally of all the things I’ve failed to do in this life. The list is staggering—everything from not getting to watch Julian grow into a man, to not getting the old band back together, to never having had Virtual Reality Sex with those Chinese college students. Seeing this, I lose all powers of concentration. My spiritual anguish is profound. My nausea is total.
In front of Lydia’s building is parked a stagecoach—far more elaborate, pulled not by a bicycle, but by three horses. Its carriage has been retrofitted into a makeshift jail cell, complete with steel bars, a cot for sleeping, and a small hole in its floor for defecation. Its drivers are waiting to take me to Alaska.
“I want to see Serena one last time before I go,” I say.
“Of course, sir,” a guard says, “anything for the man who helped save humanity from the machines.”
I’m escorted past the trash, through the hotel’s foyer, into the side room. The guard pulls on the last remaining book on the shelf, opening the secret door. Another guard struggles with a kerosene lamp. He goes through a half dozen matches before he can get it lit. He is, I realize, fighting hard not to cry. When I place a hand on his shoulder, he explodes with tears. I stand by helplessly as he hands me the lamp and the keys to Serena’s cell.
Even though you’ve been lousy in this life, I tell myself, perhaps God will see something redeeming in your courage.
The idea of reincarnation, which has never appealed to me, now appears the best possible outcome. I make a plan to atone for my sins in Alaska, with the hope of being reborn as a bird or a frog.
Serena is waiting. Despite the cell’s conditions, she’s as immaculate as ever. It hardly seems possible, what with the water dripping from the ceiling, the humidity, the bugs, and the moss.
“Henri, thank God, it’s you,” she says.
“That’s right,” I say, staring at the ground. “It’s me.”
I am on the verge of unlocking the door when a force wells up. “Don’t you feel any guilt for everything you have,” I say, “when so many people are living lives devoid of meaning?”
“Why should I feel guilty? I haven’t done anything wrong! I’m an innocent victim!”
“A victim?” I ask, scratching my head. “Innocent?”
“Henri, I’m the only one left strong enough to stand against society, whose will hasn’t been eroded to the point where I’ve contented myself with so little just for the sake of honoring harmony, uniformity, and humility.”
An image of Serena lording over an army of robots fills my mind. “Yes, that’s right,” I say, fumbling to get the key into the lock. “You can’t stop progress.”
“Get on with it, Henri.” Serena grabs onto the cell’s bars, shaking them with all of her might. “I have responsibilities that need my immediate attention!”
“I don’t know how you can live with yourself after all the casualties you’ve inflicted!” I shout, my voice sounding remarkably like Bradford’s. “You’re the author of countless horror stories!”
It dawns on me that there is a second way people talk when preparing to hurt another. They don’t always deck their victims with flowers, by way of compensation, as Bradford put it. Instead, they slander the person, to give themselves the courage to carry out their act. I take the suicide pill from my wallet and hand it to Serena. “Take this.”
“Euthasol?” she questions. “Why would you give me a suicide pill?”
As I run back up the tunnel, I can hear Serena shouting, but I pretend it’s the howling of the wind. To carry on in this world, I have no other choice. The guard is waiting for me at the door to the tunnel.
“Take her to Alaska,” I say, handing him the keys. “I’ve got to help Bradford fix our country.”
Acknowledgments
In the spring of 2016, I was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. One day, while sitting in a meeting at work, I reminisced about a life unlived in Eastern Europe—something I had become fixated on after having watched an Anthony Bourdain travel show on Budapest. By meeting’s end, I had bought a one-way ticket and drafted a resignation letter.
Three weeks later, I landed in Budapest, not knowing anyone, and with no place to live. For the next five months, I committed myself to the business of novel-writing. Outside of this book, the best thing to materialize from my time in Budapest was my friendship with Daniel Young. I won’t use these pages to detail any of our bad behavior, but I would like to thank him for keeping me well fed and for all the good fun.
I would also like to thank D. Foy, my novel-writing mentor, for reading so many drafts of the manuscript and for all his keen insight. Every writer needs a great reader to help figure out what’s working and what’s not, and D. Foy is the best.
Of course, I’d like to thank Lindy Ryan and the Black Spot Books team.
Additionally, I’d like to thank my NYC-friends who have supported me throughout this venture: Ariel Ashe, Paige McGreevy, Carolyn Cohen, Jason Craig, Shirley Cook, Tracy O’Neill, Hannah Lillith Assadi, and Michael Seidlinger.
Last, but surely not least, I’d like to thank Isabella Isbiroglu. She makes life better in every way.
About the Author
Matthew Binder is the author of the novels High in the Streets and The Absolved. He is also a primary member of the recording project Bang Bang Jet Away.
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