Everything Abridged, page 17
“Dinner with my employee, in the city I control, using money I gave you. Make time.” The director spoke in a laid-back West Ward accent, which put Nero on edge. Riley’s cavalier tone marked just how much power he had: anyone that questioned his lack of formal grace probably woke up in the trunk of a black van.
“Of course, sir.” Nero had the well-honed manners of the powerless.
An untitled message with two bulky, encrypted attachments appeared in his inbox. After decrypting the first file, Nero dumped the document into the bottom left of his field of vision. It featured a simple block of text:
Subject Name: Redacted
East Ward, Block 12 Resident
Cowardice: 3
Sloth: 9
Social Ineptitude: 4
Left-Brain Decay: 7
Right-Brain Decay: 2
Perceived Status: 7
“What am I looking at?”
“Ms. Redacted.”
Nero laughed dutifully.
“Our six-factor personality profile. Think of it as a zodiac sign that works, or video game character stats for real life. ‘Cowardice,’ ‘sloth,’ and ‘social ineptitude’ are self-explanatory. ‘Perceived status’ is a mixture of income, ego, and all the babble about privilege that undergraduates love. ‘Left-brain decay’ and ‘right-brain decay’ represent, broadly, the decline or stunted development of different types of reasoning. There’s probably a more professional way to put that, but our people have a sense of humor.”
“This seems a little reductive. Aren’t people more complex than six numbers?”
“Nope.”
Four minutes. He’d already broken his own rule, but no date was worth hanging up on the chief of secret police.
“What are these ratings based on?”
“A composite of the status messages, photos, rants, purchase histories, standardized tests, security footage, and web browsing histories that we collect. Getting the raw data is easy, interpreting it takes talent. Open the second document.”
Nero complied. He was rewarded for his efforts with three pages of dense multivariable equations followed by a seemingly endless two-column table titled “Potential Outcomes.”
“This is a small sample of the system we use to predict certain behavior. It’s not perfect—we get it wrong about one out of twenty-five times—but it’s accurate enough for low-stakes operations and perfect for broad social trends. The designers called it nonsense like ‘System Prime’ and the ‘Zero Initiative.’ I just call it the ‘Ouija Board.’ It’s pretty simple—”
The wall of numbers didn’t look simple. It looked like a mathematician’s dream, or a playwright’s nightmare.
“Okay, it’s complicated as hell, which is why we pay you people. Now: Is Ms. Redacted more likely to buy soda in a red, green, or blue can?”
Nero unmuted the bugs. [Well?]
[Give me a moment,] said First. [The algorithm is very . . . involved. I think this is what one of your headaches must be like.]
[Commander, I have suggestions regarding your date—]
[Don’t care. How’s the math coming?]
[Green. Sixty-seven percent of the time,] said First. Nero relayed the answer. He was nine minutes in and could already imagine Diana shocking him into a coma.
“Perfect. Now let’s try something with a little more teeth.” A longer sheet of painful numbers, complete with a longer chart of gibberish, arrived in Nero’s inbox. “How likely is Ms. Redacted to pursue violent antisocial behavior?”
[She has Sloth 9. I wouldn’t worry about her leaving the house,] said Third.
[Commander, I’ve run through the proper numbers,] Second interjected. [If this system’s accurate—which remains unconfirmed—this woman has a fifteen percent chance of committing an act of extreme political violence. Primarily via IED.]
[That’s pretty high,] Nero thought.
[These days? Not really,] said First.
He passed on his second batch of cribbed answers. The director chuckled in the easy, satisfied manner of someone that had just stumbled upon something expensive.
“You’re two percent off, but you’ll get used to it. This third one’s a doozy and gave your predecessor the occasional seizure. Which extremist ideology is Ms. Redacted most susceptible to?”
First solved the new equation in ten seconds, and Nero spent thirty pretending to do it manually. Then he snapped his fingers to exaggerate the effect.
“She tends toward secular individualism, profiteering, and doublespeak. Her best fit would be the Sons of Koch, and her worst would be the East Ward Workers Party.”
“Congratulations, Nero: you’re moving up from freelance. No more censoring pictures of Birdface. Good luck with the date, I hope you and Diana make brilliant hacker-assassin babies together.”
“Thanks?”
“Tell her that the director says hi. And that if she wants to replace me, she’d better shoot straight.”
Nero flushed and cursed. The exchange had taken him thirteen minutes. He spent one more dreading returning to the restaurant. Then, after unlocking the stall and fleeing the bathroom, he doubled back to wash his hands.
8. Diana’s Idea
6:45 p.m.
Diana was, against all odds, still sitting calmly at the table. She’d even ordered a glass of wine, which Nero took as the starting gun for drinking. Drinking was one of his few pure joys, and a tall margarita distracted him from the scene unfolding in the park. Mostly.
“Wow. Things have gotten far, far worse down there,” he said.
“The drones should have them mopped up before we finish eating.” Diana scooped three olives into her palm. “Rebels have no backbone.”
“That big drone’s on fire. A kid just hit it with a Molotov.”
“They can send more, and will. But I was hoping we could keep talking, I feel like we were getting somewhere.”
The first course’s tofu—which he hadn’t gotten to touch—had been replaced with small cubes of diced pork painstakingly arranged into four-inch-tall pyramids. Nero gave the mediocre flavor a pass for the quality aesthetic touch. However, even pointed capstones made of fried beef couldn’t hold his attention for long. Diana had taken off her blazer, leaving a black office shirt with two unemployed buttons. She had the figure mass media had told him he wanted every day since puberty, which made other things easier to ignore.
Since Diana was mostly metal, she would look that way for some time. She was, according to her ID card, thirty-one years old, and currently looked the part. But she would have the same face when she was fifty, and sixty, and so forth, unless she lost a fight against a similar opponent.
Both Nero’s eye and Diana’s everything were Vega-Marius products. Joaquin Vega, father of modern biotechnology, believed that mods offered a chance to be more than human. Brianna Marius, who handled the marketing, thought he was full of shit. Mods were, in her book, a chance to chase the same human ends with maximum efficiency. The pursuit of profit, violence, and simple entertainment would no longer be held back by the inability to hide a miniature flamethrower in one’s kneecap.
Then the government stepped in. As proud Kochian libertarians, Dominion governors walked hand-in-hand with the business community. Toys like night vision eyes were freely available to the public, while flamethrower knees and the like only found their way to government employees. No laws forbade the average citizen from replacing their left arm with a grenade launcher, but few vendors would risk nine-figure government contracts over a five-figure procedure. Joaquin Vega considered this a historic tragedy, while Brianna Marius did the backstroke in a pool full of money.
Nero had read both arguments, and a wealth of counterarguments, before getting his own surgery. Jen’s departure had broken the tie: she hated the idea of mods, and he liked the idea of getting the last word. Retreading all this was his way of avoiding thinking about the riot.
“Earth to Nero,” said Diana.
“I totally agree,” he hazarded.
“Thank you, it is complete insanity. I love the field work, but 2I must be the most betrayal-prone office on Earth. Double agents are par for the course in any agency, but even the loyalists never stop backstabbing each other. Every promotion is over the broken career or body of a coworker. And Logan encourages the chaos, because it makes us easier to manage. That, or he finds it funny.”
Nero quietly mourned his freelance career.
“Consider this: my last partner, Freja, started out as an intern. She worked under my second-to-last partner, Jonas, until she used his computer to leak the names and faces of thirty undercover agents. He was arrested as a defector and sent to one of the more unpleasant South Ward black sites. By the time I compiled enough evidence to clear his name, Freja had taken his job, and he had escaped custody and actually defected.”
“So you turned her in?”
“I never got a chance. My current partner swiped my data, turned her in, and got her job. He happens to be the director’s son, so I have to live with it.”
“Jesus, I think I’d go insane.”
“Unlikely. You seem less extreme than most people, which is refreshing.”
“Thanks.”
“You know, we could get pretty far together.”
“Well, that’s the idea with dating.”
“I meant in 2I. Logan became director by making shrewd alliances. The infighting makes that hard to imitate, but if two rising lights from different departments work together . . . good things can happen. We could pool talents. Share information. Cover each other’s blind spots.”
“I’ve never had a conspiracy pitched to me during a date before.”
“Conspiracies have been based on money, faith, land, and hatred. Why not base ours on sex?”
Nero stopped chewing. Despite high hopes, he didn’t truly expect to make that brand of progress tonight. Or hear his odds discussed so blithely.
“Not love?” he joked.
“Avoid that word on a first date.”
Nero chuckled. He almost had a handle on her sense of humor. It came and went when one wasn’t paying attention, like a riptide. Things were going well. She liked him, and had plans for his future. Namely, as a chess piece in a spy game he wasn’t qualified for. He had to get out. There was only so much he could normalize for sex.
“There were some fliers for a new bar down at the park,” Diana suggested. “It had some kind of musical gimmick. Want to take a look?”
“Sure,” Nero lied, first to her, then to himself. Worse choices had been made out of inertia. He imagined.
8.5. Intermission Two
Third: Homeboy’s heart rate is going crazy.
Second: It’s love.
Third: It’s a fucking coronary in the making.
First: Did Logan’s test bother either of you?
Third: Not really. I’m more concerned with our host’s imminent death by bullet or heart attack.
Second: I agree, the date is more pressing. We can concern ourselves with work on Monday.
First: More pressing than a system that can predict your favorite food? Or your odds of shooting a senator? Or the food that would make you more likely to shoot a senator?
Third: Eh.
Second: The commander’s priorities are clear.
First: Yes, the boss is very worried about sex and/or dying. But we can afford to be a bit more rational.
Second: Supporting the commander’s goals is my duty. Fulfilling that duty is rational.
Third: I try not to worry about shit I can’t change.
First: Fair. But that category should include human dating habits.
Second: Cynicism isn’t a substitute for insight. What do you think about the situation?
First: Among his many issues, including willfully building a better panopticon, the boss has tendencies that resemble desperation. Namely, his desperation. Not just for love, but for any distraction.
Third: I can understand that. Gotta take what you can get.
First: I disagree. I’ve processed over two hundred relationship advice columns in the last three minutes. Dating is like haggling with the universe. You never take the first offer.
Second: Arbitrary. A strategy should expand tactical options, not constrict them.
Third: Wrong, Sun Tzu. A strategy should keep you alive.
First: Don’t worry, I’ve been with the boss for a while. He’ll figure out that this is a bad idea.
Third: Thank fuck.
First: About two weeks after they start sleeping together.
9. Reenactment
7:03 p.m.
After leaving Paradise, Nero was shocked by the lack of activity. True to Diana’s prediction, the riot life cycle of incitement, escalation, and violent state reprisal had run its course. Aside from the vans loaded with twitching suspects, the streets were largely empty of both rioters and riot control officers, and slowly refilling with the consumers and commuters that formed the backbone of Dominion commerce. The odd overturned car or smoke-filled storefront was still present, but hourly employees were already hard at work watching robots sweep up glass and extinguish trash fires.
None of this distracted Diana from recalling the bar’s name: Hyperica. A quick web search led Nero to their promotional website, which used enough obscure shades of red, white, and blue to irritate the nerves connecting the OdinEye to his brain. He copied the text of their home page to a blank word document and read the contents with far less pain.
Hyperica is the leading, and only, bar dedicated to recreating the atmosphere of the late United States, the first global empire to commit political suicide out of boredom. Explore the roots of the glorious Free Dominion through recreations of authentic American food, music, food, outfits, food, racial slurs, and soft drinks.
[That sounds fucking awful,] said Third.
[I need to see this,] pleaded First. [I’m the first machine in history to develop a sense of irony. Missing this would be a disservice to the world.]
[What’s irony?] asked Second.
Diana spent the short walk to the novelty bar making fun of the protesters, while Nero let the chorus of terror that had been screaming in the back of his brain soften to a quiet backbeat. She was, as far as he could tell, more of a threat to the rest of the world than she was to him. And there was a hint of childish pique behind the faces she made at people through police van windows.
A quartet of vintage United States flags distinguished Hyperica’s storefront, hanging above each window. Most businesses avoided displaying flags of any sort: flags invited political discussion, political discussion invited political arguments, and political arguments invited small-arms fire. A greeter stood beneath the largest flag, clutching a clipboard to his side and offering a hollow minimum-wage smile. He opened the door for the pair and followed them inside.
The interior attempted to blend three hundred years of United States memorabilia into a cohesive thematic whole. The resulting chimera was difficult to look away from. Portraits of the Founding Fathers sat next to pictures of rappers, robber barons, theme parks, cowboys, Civil War generals, cereal mascots, and a wrestler turned actor turned president. The speakers played a trap-influenced take on “I Like Ike,” while a bartender dressed like Betsy Ross in Minnie Mouse ears served drinks. Faced with all this dissonant iconography at once, Nero wondered if he’d stepped inside a historian’s fever dream.
“Howdy, my fam! Are we lit this evening?” said the greeter. He wore a black cowboy hat on top of a green zoot suit, complete with a faux gold clock on a necklace. Nero tried to imagine the sex crime that led to someone deserving that outfit, and came up short. “I’m J. W. Booth, fastest gun in the South!”
[What the fuck?] said Third.
[I’m equally confused,] said Second.
[I love this. I love the world,] said First. [Please take pictures.]
He blinked thrice quickly, cuing the OdinEye to take a video. The greeter frowned, meaning he had some familiarity with OdinEye shortcuts. Or, at the very least, the physical ticks of customers making fun of him. Nero dropped a guilty dollar into the tip jar.
“We’ve got some groovy entertainment for you tonight, juggalettes! Is a seat at the bar okay, or do you want to wait for a table?”
“The bar’s fine.” Nero could still feel the weight of the greeter’s resentment, but the man led them to a pair of open seats without comment. The miniature stage in the center of the bar caught his attention. In most bars, the space would have been ideal for standing room, a dance floor, or more seating. Hyperica seemed to put live performances at a premium. The wooden stage had the (hopefully intentional) side effect of pushing everyone closer together, giving the venue a more intimate aura. As long as one’s idea of intimacy could survive a Saturday crowd mixed with a full staff of underpaid actors.
After flagging down the bartender, Diana ordered two shots of whiskey. Nero moved to pick one up, and she covered both glasses with her palm.
“These are mine. I have to beat an artificial liver.”
Nero nodded and then ordered two shots of vodka. The bartender must have been new; they came with the traditional tequila lime and salt.
“You too?”
“No.” He wiped the salt off the rim of his first shot. “Ready?”
For all the time they’d spent out of sync that night, they managed to down their drinks in unison. Then the bar lights dimmed and the greeter took to reading a canned introduction:
“For tonight’s opening act, we have a silent play. The East Ward University Players are something of an institution here at Hyperica, and we’re proud to host their latest production. Please, enjoy The Abridged History of the United States.”
Nero leaned in; he hadn’t seen a play in at least three years. Avery considered theater a ruling-class indulgence, and Nero had never felt invested enough in local talent to seek one out on his own. Yet his anticipation built as student actors scrambled into place, props in tow. The lights dimmed, save for a spotlight aimed at the stage. He discreetly ordered a backup shot as the play started.
