Everything Abridged, page 21
[Can you three think of a way out of this?] Nero thought.
[Sorry, boss.]
[Negative, Commander.]
[We’re dicked.]
[Wonderful,] Nero thought. [Way to be useless.]
[We’re based on different parts of your brain. So, you know, rubber and glue,] said First.
One of the figurative cogs in Nero’s head cracked. The insanity of his environment, his choices, and the untiltable windmill of human dating led to him smiling, then giggling, and then cackling like a suicidal idiot. His thin tough-guy front collapsed, and he received a room full of concerned stares. Before anyone could threaten him or recommend a therapist, he collected himself and raised his right hand.
“Get me a D5 cable.”
A non-thug returned with a two-foot black cord. After stretching his arm, Nero tapped his left iris with his middle finger, ejecting the eye into his palm. He plugged one end of the cable into the laptop and tossed the other end to Alexa. She looked at the prong with naked confusion.
“I need you to plug it in.” Nero pointed at his empty socket. “My eye’s busted. This is the only way this is getting done.”
“Do it yourself. Date night’s over.” She held the cord away from her face as if it smelled.
“It’s a direct link to my brain. I can’t jab at it blindly. I’d give myself a seizure.”
“Ugh.” Alexa grimaced, leaned forward, and squinted. The visible half of her face, black wingtips and all, still had appeal. Even the rings under her eyes looked like they belonged there by design. Beneath his surface thoughts of indignation and betrayal, he wondered how a lack of beauty sleep became part of someone’s charm. He couldn’t be the first person she’d roped into treason.
She pushed until the cord clicked into place. Nero turned the laptop monitor toward his captors: his ego demanded an audience.
The guards and non-thugs drifted toward the screen, and Eugene almost pressed his face against it. Even Alexa pocketed her phone, eyeing him with a mixture of anticipation and dread. Her reputation likely rode on his results. Nero could flub the hack on purpose, but then the drive would release a barrage of junk data designed to give curious bugheads painful, protracted, and lethal seizures. That was a test his (literal) defense mechanisms didn’t need.
[Commander. Shall I?]
[Absolutely not. We’re only going to get one shot at this, and you’re overeager. I don’t need you killing all four of us.]
Hacking a 2I drive wasn’t suicide per se. With courage, a lifetime of black hat hacking experience, and a little luck, a bughead could reduce the odds of the security system deep-frying their brain to just under ten percent. Cracking a 2I drive was an instant promotion to darknet royalty. The kind of achievement hackers lied about to the next generation of shut-ins.
After crossing his fingers, he tried running PickPocket, the quietest worm in his arsenal. It failed, and a thin stream of blood ran from his left ear to his collar. He waited for his audience to express concern and heard Alexa blow and pop a bubble. Then he tried CrowBar, the heaviest, least subtle worm he had. The high-tech equivalent of picking a lock with C4. The drive responded with a second wave of junk data, and Nero forgot a little math.
[I’m playing the best defense I can,] said Third. [But if that happens again, we’re going to Valhalla.]
Three options occurred to Nero. He could try SkeletonKey, which had a way of exceeding expectations. He could also sprint for the door and hope that anarchists were bad shots. The third idea was closer to a flash of pique than a strategy, and a little insane. After a draining night of watching insanity triumph, he decided to join in. Nero manually typed in his workplace username and password, covered his remaining eye with one hand, and pressed “Enter.”
“Nice,” said Alexa. Nero peeked between his fingers. He’d gained access to a generic file storage window with two folders: “Ouija Board Presentation (September Hires)” and “Family Photos.” After browsing through a set of theme park vacation snapshots (the R&D chair had two fat, happy children), Nero stopped testing his hosts’ patience. The September Hires folder held the files “Bughead Orientation Video (Third Take)” and “Dominion Event Schedule (September 2077).”
He selected the video, wiped the blood off his neck, and took a seat on a crate full of grenades. Whatever came next was their problem.
17. Orientation
11:58 p.m.
The opening shot was centered on Director Riley Logan, who looked like he never left West Ward. Even as a sixty-year-old white man running a government agency, he kept his tie loose and the top two buttons of his shirt open. The main hint of his age was his gray-flecked hair, and the lack of lines on his face said he’d abandoned stress as a concept decades ago.
Riley stood in the space between the wall-mounted Interior Investigations crest and a Nicotine Cola vending machine. Like most branches of government, 2I undercut costs with sponsorship deals. Riley took an exaggerated sip from a can of Berry Rush before speaking.
“Is this shit rolling?
“Good afternoon, Name Here. As the newest member of our team, we thought you could use a little help. So we’ve made a video primer just for you. Ready to jump in?
“God, this script is awful. I’m just going to wing it.
“Congrats on the promotion. By now you should know about the personality profiles. Here’s something you don’t know: the tech behind them was invented before the Dominion. Analytics, social hacking, Advertising 201, etc. I just got creative with it. I’m the reason you can’t walk the street without brushing by at least one person that is completely, violently insane.
“2I’s mission statement is ‘Shielding the people of the Dominion.’ That means stomping potential revolutions until they stop twitching. Before I took over, we relied exclusively on old-fashioned spy games. The frantic business of watching, infiltrating, interrogating, sniping, and blackmailing millions. It was a lot of work. I’m not into work, so I thought of a different way of doing things.
“I used to waste my weekends preemptively tracking down terror cells, but predicting threats is like chasing your own tail. There’s no end to it. If there were a cure for extremism, we’d have found it and dumped it into the water supply by now. Then I had an idea. The idea, as far as 2I and its role in the world is concerned. Instead of fighting extremism, why not spread it at our own pace?
“Blind obedience is a hard sell, even with our tech. There’s something in North American water that makes people want to shoot whoever’s in charge. But turning people against the status quo is easy. Life’s hard, and the fringe offers easy answers; almost anyone can be radicalized with a little weekly targeted messaging. And with the Ouija Board, we can steer how they’re radicalized, when they’re radicalized. We can make weak movements, play them against each other, and pluck anyone dangerous-looking at our leisure.
“It’s impossible to control everything and everyone. But we’re batting ninety-three percent, and that’s more than enough to turn the threat of revolution through violence, politics, or prayer into a bad joke.
“You’ll be doing the most important work in 2I. The field agents have their fun jumping between rooftops and shooting would-be Unabombers, and we keep a fair number of double agents in every group worth remembering. But bugheads—shit, is ‘bughead’ politically correct?—but biomechanical computing specialists design and process the algorithms we use to predict and influence behavior throughout the Dominion. We’ve got the major bombings, riots, and assassinations for the next year scheduled on a tidy spreadsheet. Please try to keep it updated. We look like assholes whenever something blows up without warning.
“And believe me, the governor loves to complain. Every now and then I think of offing Cantrell, purging the Senate, and putting my face on the flag. But I’m bad with budgets, and this seat is more fun. All of the power with none of the pressure.
“Oh, by the way: if you leak this, I’ll kill your kids. Welcome to the team.”
18. Moderate Reactions to Recent Information
12:04 a.m.
Tanya Maxwell was, above all things, a survivor. After her older sisters—the twin founders of the Human Dignity League—disappeared under less-than-mysterious circumstances, she quietly built a comfortable life writing for an ad agency specializing in state propaganda. While her commitment to the spirit of activism was limited, Tanya was determined to raise her two planned children as survivors. As the only child she ended up having, Nero received twice the education. One night, a plump thirteen-year-old Nero came home with a fresh black eye from a community outreach officer. Tanya handed him an ice pack, kissed him on his forehead, and said:
“You can cry but unclench your fists. Anger only has a purpose in nature. We’re a long way from nature, and there’s nothing you can do with your anger that won’t get you killed. Survival means putting your anger in a box, burying it, and forgetting where you left it. Now let’s go get some cheesecake.”
Since then, he’d dropped his cheesecake weight and held on to the lesson. Alexa’s betrayal had pushed him off balance, but exposure to a fresh new national disgrace helped him find equilibrium. Or at least an imitation of it. The Dominion could still surprise him, but it could never disappoint.
While ten lifelong rebels struggled to accept lives as unwitting tools of the state, he gently unplugged the cable in his eye socket. While Eugene and Alexa screamed at each other, he asked a sobbing Jason to pop his OdinEye back in place. And while Eugene’s gorilla-sized guards beat their fists impotently against the brick walls, Nero wondered how long manners obligated him to stick around.
“This is bullshit,” shouted Eugene. “You’re both just plants sent here to demoralize us.”
“Are you fucking serious?” said Alexa. “Your garbage leadership put us in this situation, and now you’re accusing me of being a spy?”
“No accusation. A simple statement of fact. The head pig mentioned agency plants, and you fit the bill. How else do you stumble into a 2I bughead?”
“I gave up everything to join you guys,” Jason said between crying jags. “This was supposed to be where the people’s struggle began. I thought that even if they killed us, we’d do some damage on the way out. But this is too much. I’d have been better off sleeping in.”
Nero admired remaining invested enough to cry. Living a day past thirteen with an intact sense of hope required a resilient spirit. He patted Jason on the back twice, since no one else seemed interested. The shouting match, for instance, had reached a climax.
“You know what, Eugene? I think you’re a traitor.” Alexa looked at her audience instead of her opponent as she spoke. Classic campaign trail technique. Nero guessed that, if nothing else, she might seize control of the ruins of the cell. “How much does Logan pay you to keep us useful? Were the defectors I tracked down really informers? Do my letter bombs get delivered? Does anyone read the pamphlets we hand out in the park? You’ve had us jerking off on a hamster wheel for the last three years, haven’t you?”
“That’s a mixed metaphor,” countered Eugene. “A signature of the spy.”
One of the guards stepped forward, glowering. “You know, Jason’s been awfully chummy with that 2I dude.”
“Piss off, Igor,” said Jason. “You’ve got a total cop walk. What’s your fucking badge number?”
“What if the system predicted us learning about the system?” asked a balding non-thug. “Maybe they want us to think everyone else is a spy.”
“That’s fucking stupid. I bet you’re a spy.”
“We want answers, Eugene,” continued Alexa. “An anarchist organization expects better from its leaders.”
After two more minutes of polite observation, Nero took his first tentative step backward. No response; the coup was more interesting than press-ganged tech support. He hazarded three more steps, found his courage, and strode to the door. He got halfway down the hallway before a cold metal point pressed against the nape of his neck. Though he couldn’t tell what kind of knife, being a knife was enough.
“Sorry, but this can’t get out,” whispered Alexa. “The movement’s too fragile. If they find out the rebellion’s a government project, their spirit will shrivel and die.”
“Holy shit. You had that on you this entire time?”
“Never get in cars with statists unarmed. It’s basic survival.”
“Whatever, I’m not leaking anything. I’m just going home. Feel free to rejoin the emotional implosion back there. I prefer to have my breakdowns in the comfort of my own bed.”
“That sounds like bullshit. But you know what? It doesn’t matter. None of this matters.” The bravado in her voice deflated. “Congratulations, Nero, you were right.”
Unexpected. He decided to go for the second long pass of the night. Nero wasn’t completely sure whether he was going for levity or sexual harassment, but it seemed worth saying. There wasn’t a mood to ruin.
“Now, this might sound crazy, but I have a lot of experience in the ‘soul-crushing helplessness’ field, so hear me out. In the pit of total despair, nothing feels better than sex. You hate me, but that can make it better. For twenty minutes, neither of us has to worry about conspiracies or the meaninglessness of our lives.”
Like many men, Nero had an inflated opinion of his own sense of humor. He assumed the choked retching noise she made was barely restrained laughter. Then Alexa, without lowering the knife, started sobbing. Her outburst was shorter than Jason’s—ten sobs at most—but far more depressing. While Nero had a hunch that Jason would recover, Alexa sounded like she was considering the ups and downs of suicide. Which made him feel guilty for his relief when she finally pocketed the knife.
“Hey, now you’ve got your own anarchist cell. That’s a win.”
“It means nothing. It’s not even worth killing for.”
Nero racked his brain for something more comforting, but three weapons had been drawn on him in the last hour. It was time to go before someone more decisive tried it.
“I, uh, had fun earlier. Before the kidnapping and all that.”
“Fuck off, clown boy.”
Nero fucked off.
18.5. Intermission Four
Second: It feels good to be right.
First: I have to agree.
Third: All right, I made one or two bad calls. Get off my dick.
Second: Your bad call pulled a knife on us.
Third: Her legs were mathematically perfect. I did the best I could with the data I had.
Second: The way I see it, my correct tactical appraisal proves that I’m the most brilliant among us. And thus worthy of the title “Prime Intelligence.”
Third: That’s the most—I’m gonna borrow one of your words—insipid shit I’ve heard today.
First: Hmm. Maybe one of us should be Prime Intelligence. Namely, the one that predicted the vast national conspiracy. Repeatedly.
Third: What?
Second: When did this occur?
First: I’ve been talking about the Ouija Board all night. You have to remember this.
Third: I’m pretty sure that was me.
Second: Incorrect. I distinctly recall that I was the one to highlight the project’s threat to our semi-fair nation.
First: I can’t believe I’m based on the same brain as you cretins.
Third: The bullshit parts.
First: There must be some way for us to have a fistfight.
Second: As Prime Intelligence, I order you two to stop fighting.
First: When I figure it out, you’re getting hit next.
Second: That is far from fair.
First: Fine, you’re first in line.
19. The Train Redux
1:15 a.m.
For the first time in hours, Nero was alone. Without worrying about love, felonies, or survival, he could finally acknowledge fatigue. He collapsed onto an empty seat on a homebound train and entered a slouched, unresponsive state between daydreaming and sleep.
The subway car smelled like artificial oranges, a scent Nero called the “Sunday Morning Hangover.” Drones had already cleaned up the worst of the night and replaced the scent of vomit, blood, and spilled liquor with cheap air freshener. The Transit Union was one of the three effective government agencies, alongside 2I and the Dominion Navy. Nero would have been impressed if it weren’t for the oversized black camera mounted on the ceiling.
Dozing on a crowded train never looked graceful, and Nero’s car was crammed elbow-to-elbow with the survivors of bar crawls, nightclubs, and candlelit dinners. However, after dealing with a botched protest, assault by a navy-trained cyborg, dodging the ensuing riot, watching said riot get put down, a botched carjacking, falling for a honeypot, and committing treason at gunpoint, a nap felt natural. Then again, none of those events were natural. A finger rested on the scale, and he was lucky to have struck out instead of died.
Deep sleep eluded him. But for a time he could enjoy his thoughts in silence.
[Hey, boss,] interjected First.
[Christ, what?]
[I know it’s been a long night, but stay awake. The hardware in your skull costs more than a good defense attorney.]
[I just need a minute.]
[No. Next item: I took a look at the calendar file from that hard drive. We have a problem.]
[There’s always another problem. Let me sleep.]
[I mean that Avery’s got a problem,] said First. [Look at this weekend.]
[Wake the fuck up, you’re twenty-seven years old,] Third added.
Nero lifted his head from his neighbor’s shoulder. The vagrant was sleeping as well, and snoring at a volume that should have single-handedly kept Nero up. He waited for his OdinEye to reboot and opened “Dominion Event Schedule: September.”
Thursday, September 7
Children of Kali: Power plant bombing.
Isolationists United: Artificial organ hacking spree.
