Amped

by Daniel H. Wilson

  EMERGENCY CIVIL CONTROL ADMINISTRATION

  ***

  Instructions to All Implanted Individuals

  Living in the Following Area:

  Allegheny County

  All implanted individuals will be evacuated from the above designated area by noon next Tuesday. No implanted person shall be permitted to enter or leave the above described area after 8:00 a.m., Thursday, without obtaining special permission from the provost marshal at the Civil Control Station.

  Be notified that the Civil Control Station is equipped to assist the population affected by this evacuation in the following ways:

  1. Give advice and instructions on the evacuation

  2. Provide services with respect to the management, sale, storage, or other disposition of most kinds of property, including real estate, equipment, household goods, boats, automobiles, livestock, etc.

  3. Provide temporary residence for those in family groups

  4. Transport persons and a limited amount of clothing and equipment to their new residence as specified below.

  —Partial text of Gen. John D. Meyer’s evacuation order

  “Think you’re superior to me?” jeers the dirty-faced homeless guy. “What do you carry, sir? Why are you so clean?”

  My stomach clenches in on itself. This squirrelly little man came out of nowhere. Outside the federal detention center, I climbed down to the highway next to the river. Under seething skies, I crept along the riverbank until I was out of downtown. Stole clothes from a backyard. Crawled under a bush and wrapped my knees in my arms. It took thirty minutes of teeth-gritting concentration to come up from level five. Eventually, I fell asleep with the trash and leaves. Somewhere along the line, I ended up in the neighborhood of Polish Hill.

  Tattered relocation posters are plastered everywhere. A whole lot has happened in the weeks I spent locked up. Lives have changed forever. It’s hard to grasp the fact that we have always been one executive order away from this.

  Most of the row houses here are boarded up in plywood and squeezed together suffocatingly close. Each house split from its neighbor by a narrow three-story-tall slat of darkness. The bum must have been crouched in the gap-toothed void between abandoned homes. Hiding. Or waiting.

  The amps who lived here have now been sequestered away like a virus, cut out of the heart of the city and dropped in a petri dish so they can’t infect the rest of the population. Traumatic surgery, leaving this hemorrhaging hole in the center of the neighborhood. Buildings, whole blocks, collapsing in on themselves without enough occupants inside to give them a purpose.

  The hobo jabs a stubby finger at my temple and throws words like rocks. “I said what’re you endowed with, buddy? What foul gadgetry yet lingers in your nog? What’s your frequency?”

  He creeps closer, hisses, “Are you with me or against me?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I sputter. My hands rise up defensively, awkwardly filling the space between us. But the blue-eyed squirrel man bobs just out of reach.

  The little guy is an amp, I realize. A nodule perches on his temple like a cancerous mole. He is standing too close to me, his lips moving too fast. His eyes are too pale—a clear, disturbing blueness that somehow floats apart from his dirt-smeared face.

  “With me? Or against me?” he shouts at my face. “With me or against me!”

  He’s loud and shrill and he moves too fast, but he’s an amp. My own kind. So I take two steps back and I put out my hand. “I’m Owen,” I say.

  A sudden smile breaks out on the man’s face. He dives forward and grabs my hand in both of his. Shakes it up and down with gusto. It’s like nobody has shaken this man’s hand for years.

  “Peregrine,” he says. “Name’s Peregrine, friend. But I’ve adopted the simple moniker of Perry on account of the laziness of idiots and impertinence of the fools who infest this burgh like a swarm of lice-ridden plague rats.”

  “Okay,” I respond, gently pulling my arm back. Perry focuses intensely on my face and speaks in rapid-fire bursts. His sentences are studded with ten-dollar words.

  “You’ll notice I’m loquacious and you’ll rightly surmise it’s on account of this medical implant lodged here in the old dusty cortex. I love the taste of words, sir. And each logos spawned from my lips, sui generis, mind you, carries the ambrosial tang of an exquisite candy. And I’m afraid that I’ve got quite the sweet tooth.”

  He flashes bruised teeth at me.

  “A gentleman such as yourself will understand that my intellectual curiosity is piqued by that telltale seal of otherness that stamps your temple and marks you as a fellow amp, as they call us. And at the risk of appearing obstinate and demanding, I’d like to return to the previous line of questioning in which I implored you to share the nature of the gadgetry cocooned within you.”

  “You want to know about my implant?” I ask.

  “Cocoon,” he purrs, eyes half lidded. “Oh, now that’s a good one. Ex-quisite.”

  “Uh, Perry?”

  His eyes flutter open, like headlights flickering on. “Sir?”

  “It’s for epilepsy,” I say.

  “Ah, the shakes. A woeful fate, indeed. But you’re not alone, friend. The United States government cured many a pal of mine. The schizos, the alkos, and the bipolars. Even cured my own indisposition toward the mental muddle of autism—with a heaping dollop of paranoia for flavor. But, praise God, the taxpayers fixed those of us under the bridge by the miracle of modern science.”

  He flinches at the sound of his voice echoing. “How much did they cure you?” he whispers.

  “How much?”

  “Well, they can cure you a little or a lot, can’t they?”

  I think of my father and Jim. The discussion they must have had when I was just a boy. I remember the flashing dance steps on the ground as I sidestepped that guard.

  “They cured me a lot,” I say.

  He considers me briefly, then digs out a worn plastic ruler from under his filthy coat. He dangles it over the cracked pavement.

  “Put your fingers around this but don’t touch,” he says. “When I let go of it, pinch your fingers together.”

  “Okay.”

  “Sheep fucker,” he says, then drops the ruler. My fingers pinch by reflex, even as Perry’s strange words hit.

  The little man grabs my wrist.

  “Hold it. Right there. Don’t move a muscle.” Perry bends over and inspects the ruler. His lips twitch as he does the math in his head. “You caught it at zero point zero seven centimeters. With the speed of gravity, seven milliseconds. Visual reaction time …”

  Perry looks at me, rubs his hands together greedily.

  “Why, you have been cured a lot.”

  Perry’s eyes go to my maintenance nub, then he glances up and down the empty street. “I don’t doubt your veracity a whit, young gentleman. Only the brainiest amongst us yet walk the streets unmolested. What with these confounded roundups.”

  “Roundups?”

  “Indeed, sir. How have you ever managed to fall truant to that information—”

  “I’ve been in jail.”

  Perry waits for me to continue. I don’t.

  “Fair enough, then,” he says.

  “Where are they taking the amps?”

  “Why, to the under-bridge, sir.”

  “Under what bridge?”

  “The bridge is the fair shore where many of us once lived in peace—before tasting the apple, you see? The bridge dwellers dissipated, it’s true. Set sail for the shores of normalcy. Bewitched by that flirting specter of gainful employment.

  “But lately, a great exodus from Mundania has begun. Under government mandate many a bridge dweller has returned and more. Countrywide they’ve come to the central repository. By train, by plane, and by hoof. The amps, sir, have come home to the under-bridge.”

  Lucy and Nick.

  “Do you mean the west Pittsburgh Federal Safety Zone? Can you take me there, Perry?”

  �
��A wise notion, sir,” he says. Then the little man smiles up at me, a glint of anticipation in his eyes. “You’ll find that twisted folk linger out here. Some were amped before the technology was ripe, you see? These leftover amps are fierce and rotten. Under-bridge is the safest place to be, sir.”

  As the sun sets, Perry leads me through the forgotten fissures of Polish Hill, down narrow alleys where our shoulders brush sweating concrete walls. Over weedy lots where the grass is ingrown with ancient trash. Down endless rusty railroad tracks.

  We stop briefly in a back lot where trash bins squat in the shadow of a looming megastore out front. One arm hooked over a trash can, Perry roots for stale bread and continues his monologue. “Lucky, we are. Yes, sir. Lucky to live in this cutting-edge era of progress. When men can aspire not only to be well and healthy, but to be better than well. Better than healthy. If you ponder it, Owen, why, it’s clear that you and me are technological marvels of the modern age!”

  Finally, we reach the deteriorating Washington Crossing Bridge. A few hundred people mill about in what looks like half a campground and half a swap meet. The stained concrete is layered with blankets and sleeping bags and bulging plastic sacks. Windblown empties rattle over the concrete, barely audible under the muted hum of conversation and the sporadic roar of traffic overhead.

  Perry throws an arm around my shoulder, gestures to the mesh-covered belly of the towering structure overhead. “Welcome to the under-bridge.”

  Weeks of scraggly beard cover my face, but I keep my head down anyway. It has become a habit. I try to shush Perry and take in my surroundings.

  National Guardsmen in camouflaged gear ring the shaded area under the bridge. Their eyes are veiled by shining new riot helmets, watching everybody and settling on nobody. Long black batons hang on their hips, rifles hanging from chest straps. Side by side, the men might as well be statues. They aren’t looking through us but past us.

  Hundreds of Pure Priders mill across the road, watching the under-bridge.

  Beyond the bridge, a crumbling warehouse the length of a football field squats on a vast paved expanse. Coils of barbed wire have been thrown haphazardly over the cracked cement in a wide ring around the building. The area inside swarms with men and women and children. I make out a game of baseball; they’re using torn cardboard for bases. The massive warehouse doors gape open. Thousands of people shuffle in and out.

  This must be the safety zone. And where I’m standing is the processing station. Amps are coming here voluntarily, just to escape the wrath of angry Priders.

  A ragged column of amps wait in line to enter. Men and women, each with a maintenance nub, holding sleeping bags and backpacks and garbage bags stuffed with clothes. Dragging suitcases and trunks ahead a foot at a time as the line sluggishly creeps forward.

  A guardhouse at the front gate processes the families. Just beyond the processing station, beyond the fence, ragtag shops are set up, built out of plywood. Newcomers are buying and trading for food and first aid kits and blankets.

  The people on this side of the fence are either bargaining with one another or in line. Dozens of kids mill around. Some stay near their parents. Others travel in packs, carrying sticks and shepherded by stray dogs. The kids are dressed okay: clean clothes, new shoes. And now that I think of it, most of the dogs aren’t strays. A golden retriever with tags pads by me, bushy tail slapping against my legs.

  As I stop to take it in, Perry shuffles nervously.

  “How long has this been happening, Perry?”

  “The recall order went in three weeks’ past. After the attack. Locomotives materialized here more than a week ago. Spilled the bulk of the amps.”

  “Are there other camps like this?”

  “Another half dozen, at least. They say Central Park accommodates over twenty thousand. Corralled the Daytona speedway entirely. Probably only ten thousand here at the under-bridge. These personages are the stragglers,” says Perry. “Tried to stay out and learned the hard way what’s best for them.”

  “How long are they keeping people here?” I ask Perry.

  “Why, until they’re safe,” he replies, nodding at the street where Priders roam. “Now come along with me. I want to introduce you to someone.”

  I take a deep breath of the musty air and feel the vibration of the bridge traffic overhead rattle through my chest. To my left, I notice a man peeing against the wall, wobbly kneed and singing. The soldiers watch impassively. Barbed wire glints in the light of the setting sun.

  Lyle’s plan is stalling. The amps aren’t fighting. They’re obeying.

  “Come along now,” says Perry. He eyes the guard station desperately. Then his face darkens. He focuses on something just over my right shoulder. He speaks without looking at me: “Come, sir, let’s absquatulate,” he says. “Right quick.”

  Perry jabs a thumb into the air to motion me to follow and I see that his hands are shaking. I glance over my shoulder and spot a small misshapen head attached to a crooked torso moving toward us, balanced on what look like black stilts. Emaciated black arms hang menacingly from the torso’s sides.

  It’s the wire man. The nightmare shape that nearly killed me in Detroit.

  People scatter before the lurching gait of the man thing. I watch a father usher his two children away, losing his place in line without a thought.

  Perry grabs my arm and tries to tug me away. “Let’s motivate,” he whispers. “That’s Mr. Cordwainer and he’ll busticate us for a lark, sir. You’d best give your full credence to that fact.”

  The wire man’s head lolls in our direction. A pink stripe crosses his brow, a gash that’s healing slow. I make eye contact, and there is an instantaneous shock of recognition between us. Perry whimpers and stops walking.

  “Too late now,” he whispers as the monster staggers toward us. “Cordwainer is quicker than a jumping spider. If he has to give chase, it’ll go worse. He’s an angry man. Word is he used to peregrinate via skateboard until Uncle Sam granted him new legs. But he didn’t stop there, did he? Got the arms amputated, too.”

  The wire man stops before us and twists his body off-kilter to aim his shrunken, crippled head at me. “Hello, thirteen,” it says, lisping toothlessly over the words. “Thought you might come through here. Been waiting for you.”

  “Cordwainer?” I ask.

  The creature’s eyes slide over to Perry. “Yes, that’s my name,” it says. “I see you’ve made a convenient friend.”

  “Simply, uh, simply, took him on as a parergon,” sputters Perry. “Escorting my companion and his personalia safely through the willowwacks—”

  “I didn’t know about Lyle,” I say, trying to focus on Cordwainer’s face, to ignore the rest of that horrible mess. “I didn’t realize what was happening …”

  But Cordwainer is staring at Perry.

  “What’s in the pocket, Perry?” he asks.

  Perry pulls his coat on tighter.

  “I would have saved Valentine if I could,” I say.

  I glance sidelong at the soldiers, but they stare right through us.

  “Empty your pockets,” slurs Cordwainer.

  Perry just gapes at him, his floating blue eyes wide and round with terror.

  “No?” asks Cordwainer. Then, smooth and fast as a riptide, the wire man lunges and grabs Perry with one spider arm. His other arm flies forward and back three times. One, two, three punches and then the celery-stick crunch of Perry’s cheekbone caving in. Jams his claws into Perry’s pockets and rips out the contents in a swirl of papers. He drops Perry wailing onto the cement.

  Perry begins to crawl away.

  Reaction time. It’s defined as the length of time between sensing a stimulus and responding to it. I caught Perry’s ruler quicker than a snake strike. That was fast. This is faster.

  I ball my left hand into a fist and hurl all my weight into a short, vicious left hook. Cordwainer is already dancing back, but the punch connects in his solar plexus, in the precise spot where a bund
le of wires plunges beneath his skin to interface with the motor nerves embedded in the muscles of his belly.

  Cordwainer’s legs drop out from under him like somebody flipped a switch. He falls forward and wraps his coat-hanger arms around me. “Stop,” he hisses, hanging from me, his legs twitching like half-squashed bugs. “Stop and look.”

  A crumpled piece of paper lies at my feet, rocking slightly in the phantom breezes from unseen cars and trucks whining across the bridge overhead. My own face stares up at me in black and white, a crude photocopy.

  IF YOU SEE THIS MAN … it reads.

  I let Cordwainer steady his feet.

  “You’re faster than last time,” he says.

  A few dozen people shake their heads at us, muttering. Kids whisper to each other and point, pantomiming the fight. Perry continues to crawl away.

  “He was leading you to them,” says Cordwainer, pointing at the guardhouse at the front of the line. “Your photo is in there. Twenty more yards and these soldiers would have taken you. If you want inside, sneak in.”

  “About Valentine—”

   Cordwainer stops me with a wave. “Val is gone, but those of us who are left can still try to keep the peace. Lyle was right that there will be a new world. Just not the one that he wants.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “Be careful,” says Cordwainer. “The reggies are massing and they are angry. Soon, they may be angry enough to strike. And then everyone in this place will die.”

  Associated Press

  * * *

  Crowd in Florida Demonstrates at “Safety Zone” as Backlash Grows

  BY DENNIS JAY

  DAYTONA BEACH, FL (AP)—A violent and perhaps predictable backlash is spreading across the nation as details emerge about Astra—the extremist amp organization that planned and carried out the attacks in Chicago, Detroit and Houston.

  Police from Daytona, Florida, and several nearby counties turned back 3,000 Pure Pride marchers—some blatantly displaying holstered arms—as they tried to march through the front gate of the Daytona Speedway Federal Safety Zone late last night. Hundreds of demonstrators were arrested, said Daytona Police Chief David Wilson. There were no injuries and demonstrators were kept outside the main entrance of the Daytona International Speedway.