Black Jack

by Rani Manicka

  Then she opened her computer and went to the Play God website. The ones who had resisted, stayed warm, and said no, were only in their thousands, but the ones who had been seduced by the snake and found an excuse for murder had made the yes figure fascinating to watch. In the beginning it had climbed quickly, but then its rise had become more and more rapid, and now it was changing so fast that the numbers were blurring. Kim sighed.

  The sun was setting on all their collective souls.

  Leaving her computer open, she went to retrieve her toast. It was already cold. She ran her finger on the buttered side and offered her finger to the cat to lick. The cat diligently went to work. Kim ate and watched the boy and thought of the sad, desperate woman who had gone to David Icke for help. The thought made her feel quite tearful and she was about to look away from the sight of the boy when suddenly she thought she saw something. She stopped chewing, hurriedly swallowed the bit of bread, and, leaning very close to the screen, squinted at it. She remained in that position for thirty-one minutes, and then it happened again. Now she knew.

  It was Saturday, but she picked up her phone and called Dan.

  “Who’ll carry the coffin?”

  “I,” said the Kite,

  “If it’s not through the night,

  I’ll carry the coffin.”

  - ‘Who killed Cock Robin?’,

  Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book (1744)

  ‘Except for his brain activity, which is abnormally high, all his bodily functions including breathing and heartbeat have reduced to almost hibernation levels,’ explained Carter.

  Kite looked at the screen that charted Black’s brain output. It appeared jagged and fast. ‘Under what circumstances would you normally see such a brain pattern?’

  ‘Normally one wouldn’t, and certainly not for this long. This is the signature of someone who is in a state of extreme panic and fear and perhaps even terrible pain. A normal human would pass out, go into parasympathetic shock, and even dissociate, but his brain has been in this state for the last four hours.’

  ‘You may leave now.’

  Carter went out and the door shut behind him.

  For a moment Kite remained where he was, close to the door. Then he inched his wheelchair forward. Little by little he conquered a foot of ground. He could feel himself begin to sweat, but he continued to push forward. Another foot was won. But then he stopped, unable to go an inch closer. He shivered with some unknown dread. Uneasily, he retreated to his original position and gazed at the boy’s staring eyes and face. Even that was difficult to do. There was something about this boy that unnerved him, and made it impossible for him to be in the same room as him. Nobody had ever had this effect on him, and he hated the power the boy had to intimidate him with nothing more than his presence.

  It was obvious that he was suffering greatly, but in his suffering he seemed to have gained even more of this natural force field. His power was increasing, which was worrying. Before, Kite remembered, he could go halfway into the room. Now, next to the door was the best he could do.

  He rubbed his forearms and glanced at the screen. 3,472,223 stood with him, and a mere 267,907 bleeding hearts had done themselves out of a hundred bucks. There was no way the boy could win. He maneuvered his wheelchair carefully in a tight circle, never turning his back on the still figure on the bed, and left the room with a great sense of relief. Outside in the corridor his assistant was waiting for him. He dropped his mobile into the inside pocket of his jacket and straightened.

  ‘Get me out of here,’ Kite said, whirling past him. His wheelchair was speeding so fast his assistant had to run to keep up.

  ‘There has been some development with the investigation. One of the officers, a young woman, has noticed that the film of the boy is not a live feed.’

  ‘How did she do that?’

  ‘She observed the boy’s eye movement repeated every half hour and figured out that the film was on a loop.’

  Kite nodded, impressed. ‘Bright girl. Can we use her?’

  ‘No, she has “opinions”.

  ‘Shame. Throw something her way.’

  ‘Of course. When would you like us to do so?’

  ‘As soon as can be arranged. Make sure there is full worldwide media coverage of the event.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Fish has been in touch. The brotherhood requests an audience tomorrow at noon.’

  Kite nodded absently. The more distance he put between him and the boy, the better he felt. But only when the boy was dead would he be at ease. They finished the rest of their journey in uninterrupted silence.

  Blessed are the weird people, misfits, writers, mystics, painters, troubadours, for they teach us to see the world through different eyes.

  - Jacob Nordby

  Kim put her first mug of coffee for the day down on her table and asked, ‘What’s going on?’ The other team members were excitedly crowded around Dan’s workstation.

  Mary looked back and chuckled. The sound came from deep within her throat. ‘Our players have made a mistake while trying to contact you.’

  ‘Contact me?’ Kim walked quickly toward her colleagues.

  ‘Yep, while you were sleeping. We’ve got a location.’

  Kim’s forehead furrowed. ‘We do? How?’

  ‘We caught their email on the exit node.’

  ‘What? We intercepted them on the last hop of their tracks. The technology that has confounded our best minds so far didn’t expect us to be monitoring exit traffic! With all their savvy sophistication they didn’t install SSH tunnels or a VPN or a private bridge into their communication system. Not even a Whonix? I don’t buy it. And I’m surprised that you guys do. Anyway, what did he contact me for.’

  ‘Just wanted to crow.’

  ‘Looks to be an abandoned warehouse downtown,’ Steve said.

  Kim’s frown deepened. She looked at her colleagues in frustration. ‘An abandoned warehouse, downtown? No way!’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Dan, but he already knew; he just wished it was otherwise.

  ‘Doesn’t fit the rest of the MO.’

  ‘You hanging around to drink your coffee, Meers, or coming to find out what’s in this warehouse?’

  Kim put on her black jacket with FBI written in yellow on the back over her green sweater and followed him. Outside they got into his Chevy Impala and Dan floored the pedal. The SWAT team were already mobilized and waiting for orders to storm the warehouse. An ambulance was on the ready. As they rounded the corner, they saw that the press were also there.

  ‘Who told them?’ Dan shouted.

  ‘Whoever wants us all here,’ Kim said.

  Dan gave her an irritated look.

  They pulled up a little distance from the padlocked gates. One of the SWAT team came forward.

  ‘The surveillance robot we sent in shows the place is empty.’

  Dan gave the go-ahead and then man said, ‘Go,’ into his mouthpiece. Instantly his team poured into the building through the front, back and roof. Through her earpiece Kim could hear their distinctive ‘Go, go, go’ orders. She put her fingers on her mouth and waited. A few minutes later the team leader radioed back, ‘Clear.’

  The SWAT team leader came out of the building. He looked around, found Dan’s eyes, and shrugged.

  Dan walked toward the open door with Kim following close behind. At the doorway he stopped abruptly. That it was a set-up to bring them there was obvious instantly. Kim’s mobile took an incoming message. She looked at it. Unknown number. She opened the message.

  Good detective work, Ms. Karajah.

  Better luck next time?

  She stared at the words for a bit longer, before showing them wordlessly to Dan.

  ‘Who the hell is Ms. Karajah?’

  ‘Many years before I was born my father changed his name, before he left Palestine for the land of the brave and the free. There is no record of his old name in this country and probably not
even in Palestine anymore.’

  ‘Jesus, who are these people?’

  Kim looked around them. The interior was vast, dim and completely empty but for a chair with an open laptop on it. It had strategically been placed under a skylight. Light full of dancing dust motes streamed onto it. A photographer’s dream. They walked toward the arrangement, their footsteps echoing in the silence. The screen showed the boy in his white room. Kim reached a hand toward the screen.

  ‘Don’t touch anything,’ Dan warned. ‘For fuck sake…’

  Kim’s voice was calm. ‘Why? I’ll bet a year’s salary that this entire place is cleaner than a obsessive compulsive’s hands after he’s washed them. We’re not going to find a single fingerprint or a speck of DNA.’

  ‘Even experts make mistakes.’

  Kim unzipped her jacket. ‘Do you ever get the feeling, Dan, that we are chasing ghosts? That we are purposely being led on a wild goose chase? Have you ever wondered why you were given this case?’

  Dan looked at her suspiciously. She was the best in his team, but he didn’t like the way this conversation was going. ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘Think about it. Why isn’t NSA’s Utah Data Center helping us? With their super computers we might stand a chance.’

  ‘Ever heard of Executive Order 12333?’ Dan queried sarcastically. ‘NSA has no mandate outside of collecting information that constitutes foreign intelligence and counterintelligence.’

  ‘Yeah, sure. Ever heard of the Patriot Act? They’re not helping because somebody don’t want them to. Because we’re not meant to get anywhere. Whoever is playing this game is too rich and powerful.’ She pointed to the screen. ‘That’s two hundred million right there. In cash! Who’s got that kind of money and is able to mobilize it worldwide without leaving a trace? Who wants to? And admit it, possessing technology that’s higher than the FBI’s?’

  Dan’s eyes were withering. ‘Can we just do our jobs?’

  ‘Is that what our oaths say? Look the other way when our government engages in wrongdoing and outright corruption - ‘

  ‘Have you come across something that suggests our government is involved?’

  ‘No, but - ‘

  ‘Good. I’ve got to go sort out the media,’ he said, beginning to turn away.

  ‘Did you vote?’

  He looked at her strangely. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Not even to vote no?’

  ‘Not even to vote no, he said, but his mind was already outside with the gathered media.

  Kim ran her finger along the bridge of her nose. Dan looked at her mouth. That mouth was meant for different things. ‘But at some point,’ the mouth said, ‘one has to stop wondering about who and think of the why. Why do they want us to vote?’

  ‘Oh fuck. You’re not going to start your conspiracy theories again, are you?’

  ‘OK, you tell me. What’s the agenda here?’ Kim waved her hand to encompass the whole space. ‘What’s the purpose of all this? When you don’t know the why, you can never hope to defeat anything.’

  ‘Right, let’s hear what you think is the “why” of all this, then.’

  ‘In a strange way this actually reminds me of 9/11.’

  Dan’s jaw dropped open but Kim ignored him and carried on.

  ‘An intricately choreographed ritual performed on a grand scale, amplified incalculably by the electronic media. Would we be closer to the truth if we viewed this spectacular, highly symbolic theatre of cruelty being broadcast to millions of people as a transformative Satanic black mass? Where the “pews” are filled by entire nations? Could it be we are all being alchemically paganized and brutalized? That, by the very act of voting, we are becoming active participants in their ceremony of human sacrifice.’

  Dan looked at Kim in disbelief. ‘You’re crazy, you know?’

  Kim shrugged. ‘Or we could put it down to cognitive dissonance?’

  ‘What? Just because I don’t subscribe to your Satanic black mass theory I’m suffering from cognitive dissonance?

  ‘OK. let’s hear your theory, then.’

  ‘I’ve got no time for this,’ he dismissed, and turned away from her.

  But Kim called out, ‘You do know that you’re never going to find him, don’t you? They’re going to kill him, Dan.’

  Dan didn’t turn back. ‘Don’t touch anything,’ he cautioned, his voice harder than he had intended. His footsteps echoed in the empty space. The door slammed. She walked to the screen and stared at it. The yes figure was climbing with dizzying speed. ‘Where are you, kid?’ she asked the small, motionless face.

  The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

  - Henry David Thoreau

  Mummified inside the icy shadows between the living and the dead, Black’s brain had been pulsing and racing so frantically for escape from that never-ending torment that he almost missed the faint sound. When the burning had stopped, the frost had come. Slowly, inch by inch, he had become entombed inside ice. The intense pain of the ice was worse than the searing. Don’t panic, he had told himself and tried to keep some air in his lungs. But he was not breathing air. How could there be pain without the body? he thought, but there was pain, piercing pain. He became immensely confused. Was he already dead?

  Like a sightless, crouching creature that must scent its prey, he did not try to raise his immobilized eyes toward the pale light that filtered into that terrible place, but tried desperately to sniff out the faint sound.

  ‘Look through my eyes.’

  That voice - barely audible, but he thought he recognized it - brought the first crack of movement into his congealed, terrorized body. He turned his grateful face toward the heavens, but the immediate effect of his release from the complete lockdown was the flowering of a new agony, white hot, inescapable. His skin hurt so much that it was as if he was being flayed. His throat unlocked and he moaned soundlessly.

  ‘Are you there? Oh, God, are you there?’

  Every small movement was followed by immense pain, but it was better than his hellish frozen state, and his stiff fingers grasped and pawed painfully in that eternity of bleakness for something that he could latch onto. Anything with some color or movement. There was nothing.

  He fell upon himself, destroyed and defeated. It was hopeless. He must have conjured up the sound. No one traveled this damned road. The freezing gray of the place had swallowed him whole and sucked everything out of him. He could no longer think like a human being. He cowered with blind fear, his mouth as dry as ashes. The cold was getting colder.

  ‘Look through my eyes.’

  There: that sound again.

  Black’s mouth moved silently. ‘Green.’

  Despite the intolerable agony, he raised his eyes, the needles in them plunging deeper, and tried to peer into the half-opaque nothingness that enshrouded him. But it remained impenetrable. He began to cry hopelessly. His tears burned a path down his cheeks. He was damned eternally. It was only his mind playing tricks with him.

  Then he felt it, the first miraculous rush of warmth inside him. The warmth grew. He was not alone. Green was inside him. Suddenly he was no longer looking through his eyes but Green’s. And how the maze changed. He began to make out shapes. As he looked he saw the black pits of nothingness and…escape. A narrow, blackened path lit up as his eyes fell upon it. His limbs were warm once more, his skin amazingly painless. He moved his legs toward the path. His gait was confident, tall.

  ‘Thank you, Green,’ he tried to whisper, but his voice was like sandpaper that rasped his throat and made it burn. As soon as his foot touched the path, Green was gone. His limbs were so weak that he could not do more than drag his body slowly along the path. On either side miles of icy twilight. Not daring to look left or right, he kept his eyes fixed on the path ahead. The path he traveled came to an abrupt end. A steep drop into a yawning black void. It was so vast that Black knew if he fell he would be falling forever. He was but an ant in that dead landscape.
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  ‘Jump,’ he heard in his head.

  Black didn’t hesitate. The blackness of the void was infinitely preferable to the desolation and madness he would leave behind. The air rushed against his ears and grasped at his body like long, freezing cold fingers. He screamed and the screech reverberated eerily in his own ears. He could vanish without a trace in this blackness. But he didn’t vanish and he didn’t crash.

  He was caught.

  The fractal tunnel had appeared out of nowhere and connected itself to the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands. His euphoria was unimaginable. The tunnel released him as suddenly as it had taken hold of him. He dropped out of it and landed on his hands and knees. In his vision were the ends of Green’s watery robes. He sat back on his haunches and slowly raised his head and looked into those beautiful eyes, so dear and yet so unfamiliar.

  He could no longer hide behind the truth that he had ignored because it was more fun to pretend otherwise. Green was not a human boy with skin that lit up and glowed. He was a being who was infinitely, indescribably, and incomprehensibly more advanced and intelligent than any human. Those few seconds of seeing through his eyes had changed everything. It was not just the vividly saturated colors or the incredible celestial sounds.

  In Green’s world, time did not flow as humans perceived it, but was simultaneous, which was why he could access any time or place on Earth and come and go as he pleased. And since every thought and action is recorded and all real communication in the cosmos is telepathic, nothing appeared to be hidden from him and others like him.

  In those few moments Black had understood the entire universe and accessed with breathtaking clarity and detail its workings, but those moments were slipping out of his fingers. His own mind could not stretch to those heights of perception. Soon even those would be gone forever. The life humans experienced using their five senses was but a pale, artificial dream by comparison.