Everything Abridged, page 22
Arson Defense League: Arson.
Agency Response: N/A.
Friday, September 8
Pacifist Armada: Assassination attempt on Michael Cantrell.
Abrahamic Union: News anchor beheading.
Neo-Monarchists: Liberty Park suicide bombing.
Agency Response: Eliminate head of Abrahamic Union.
Saturday, September 9
Multiple Factions: Liberty Park riot.
East Ward Worker’s Party: Graffiti of bird on post office wall.
Sons of Koch: Mall bombing. Clinic bombing.
Agency Response: Complete purge of East Ward Worker’s Party.
Nero couldn’t think of a positive interpretation of “complete purge” and stood up to force himself awake. With his eye ruined, he was reduced to using his cell phone to check on Avery. After two dial tones, he heard a tinny recording of a female voice.
“The number you’re trying to reach is associated with an enemy of the state. If you’d like to sponsor the trial, press one. If you’d like to leave a message reprimanding their disloyalty, press two. If you’d like to reserve a seat during the execution, press three. If you’d like to purchase the corpse, please hold.”
20. The Apartment Redux
2:20 a.m.
One hour and three caffeine pills later, Nero made it home. The front door’s cylinder had been shot off with something destructive. From what little he grasped from video games, the spread implied a shotgun. The EWPD were innovators in excessive-force technology, so it was hard to be certain.
Avery would have commented on the redundant excess inherent in capitalism. Because different departments barely communicated, one agency had broken into Avery’s home and taken his things, and another had broken into his fling’s home to arrest him. Pure waste. Given law enforcement rivalries, nothing the EWPD found would make it to Avery’s show trial.
For a casual observer, distinguishing the aftermath of the police raid from the mess they usually lived in would be a challenge. To Nero, the apartment looked ransacked. The well-defined pile of fall clothes had been strewn about the room, commingling with the winter coats and laundry. The thin layer of order that slobs relied upon had been destroyed.
Moreover, half their appliances had been destroyed or stolen. But that was a given.
[What should we do, boss?] said First.
“I don’t know. Maybe we can visit him in prison?” Nero said aloud. There was no one to overhear him talking to himself.
[Nigga, are you fucking serious?!] said Third.
“What do you want from me? Maybe if I sell everything in here that isn’t broken, I can get him a decent lawyer. That’s all I’ve got.”
[Commander, if I may.]
“No.”
[I must. You show excess ingenuity when it comes to saving yourself. Perhaps if you applied the same mentality to this problem?]
“The best way to save yourself is staying out of trouble. I told him that every day for four years. There’s still just enough left of the world to live quietly and comfortably. It’s not my fault he couldn’t put his anger in the box.”
[Box?] asked First.
[Who cares?] said Third. [It’s just going to be another excuse. I’m ashamed to come from any part of this dickless wonder.]
“And what would you geniuses do?”
[Blackmail 2I? We know about the Ouija Board,] suggested First.
“Oh, brilliant. Then they can send someone with all of Diana’s hardware and even less restraint. I bet I could evade them for an entire half hour.”
[We could work with the Children of Kali.]
“Dead end. Working with them just means getting executed in a group instead of a solo event.”
[It doesn’t matter what we suggest,] said Third. [Bitch boy here’s already decided not to try.]
Since he was arguing with robots in his own brain, there was no way to storm away from the conversation. Still, for effect, Nero flipped off the empty room, lay down on the couch, and turned his back on the wall. Judging by the silence in his head, the gesture translated.
21. Nero Flips His Shit
3:13 a.m.
Nero had gotten used to living with a three-man commentary track. The swarms had started out bland but developed distinct personalities within the first month. The first time Third cursed, Second quoted Sun Tzu, or First made fun of his wardrobe, Nero experienced a flash of genuine pride. He’d also complained about the bickering but rarely did anything concrete to discourage it.
Now he faced a complete lack of noise. If the bugs had anything to say, they were keeping it to themselves. He’d become persona non grata in his own brain.
“Honestly? The chatter’s gotten old. I’m more than ready for a little silence. Maybe I can get through making a snack without listening to a bad boke-tsukkomi routine.”
He waited for the clapback. Second and Third were easily baited, and First took any opening for a clever riposte. More silence followed. Nero moved on to the freezer, one of the few appliances left unharmed by the raid. An array of frozen burritos greeted him: he relied on comfort food after a rough night, and today had to qualify.
Nero watched the burrito spin in the microwave for three still minutes, waiting for a quarter pound of fake meat to fight off the thoughts vying for his attention. The microwave window was the apartment’s main source of light, giving half the room a soft yellow glow.
One low-pitched beep ended the spinning and his trance. Nero lightly tugged at the door with two fingers. It didn’t budge. He tried his whole right hand, and then both hands with his foot braced against the kitchen cabinet. He pulled in frantic jerks until the veins around his wrists became visible.
He remembered his mother, breathed, and looked at the control panel. This wasn’t new: the neutered software often malfunctioned and refused to open the magnetic lock. Nero’s bugs usually handled that problem, so he’d never bothered replacing the thing. Now that he was getting the silent treatment, a plastic wall stood between him and greasy relief.
“Fuck it.” Nero wedged a fork into the crack between the door and number pad. The head bent backward and stayed stuck in the door.
“Third! Open this fucker!”
Nothing.
“First!”
Nothing.
“Second! It’s an order.”
After more nothing, Nero stomped to his closet. Any action was better than thinking about the dozen small ways that he lived in a bad joke. He returned to the kitchen with the “People’s Slugger,” a splinter-covered artifact from Avery’s pre-graduation athletics and post-graduation rioting. Nero took a light, slow test swing, tapping the tip against the microwave screen. Then he squared his shoulder, planted his feet, and raised the bat.
He waited for a voice to tell him to stop. Nothing. He swung.
A layer of plastic and glass shards now covered his dinner. After giving the wall a follow-up swing, Nero dropped the People’s Slugger, gently reached past the wreckage of the microwave’s front door, and picked up his burrito. He dumped the inedible remains in the garbage, which Avery had neglected to take out.
“You’ve made your point. After a purge, 2I processes new prisoners at headquarters. Management likes to make the judicial branch crawl to them, so Avery should be there for another day or two. I’ll think of something. I don’t know what, but something.”
[Thank you,] said First. [Start by getting some sleep. You look awful.]
[Commander! The mutiny was their idea. Please don’t hold it against me, I understand the nutritional and emotional importance of the late-night burrito,] said Second.
[Until I see results, you’re still a punk,] said Third.
22. A Nicer Apartment
5:38 a.m.
Nero stared at the ceiling for two hours before giving up on sleep. Panic outclassed any energy drink. He opted to get started, left the bed, and opened his egg carton. After passing over the street-legal OdinEyes, he picked up a black market Biclops V. While the OdinEye line was designed around basic imitation of a human eye, the Biclops emphasized power over not scaring children. It looked like a smooth silver ball and housed a small cloud of nanites that could adjust to the needs of the moment. He passed his reflection on the way out and doubled back for his sunglasses.
[Is that thing legal?] asked First.
“We’re plotting at least one act of treason.” Nero said dryly.
[Point.]
He took to adding up his agency connections, since taking 2I on alone felt like a dramatic form of suicide. As a freelancer, he was a social nonentity in the office. Other bugheads considered him unwanted competition for promotions—a fear validated by recent events—and left him out of the weekly office happy hour blackouts. They might have felt more secure with a union, but the last governor had decided that those conflicted with practical freedom.
As for the field agents, he knew only one.
Despite her message, he was surprised when Diana accepted his call. He’d processed the earlier exchange as a drunken impulse, and assumed that shooting him was in the top three of her to-do list.
“Are you coming to the party? You have not RSVP’d.”
He readjusted to the lack of contractions. “I need your help.”
“Intriguing. Is this a booty call?”
“No. I know it’s the ass-end of the day—or morning, I guess—but do you have a minute to meet up?”
She forwarded her address, leading him to a sixth-floor apartment in a neighborhood an order of magnitude more expensive than his. Hazard pay must have been worth something. That, or she’d fallen into the East Ward trap of spending ninety percent of her income on rent.
His instincts told him to fix his hair before knocking. The inch he’d grown at the top of his fade looked good with a little love, but he missed the days when combs were for other people. After thirty seconds of using his cell phone camera as a mirror, he privately swore to return to the pseudo–buzz cut worn by the lazier half of his family.
Diana, on her own time, wore loose gray sweatpants with the Sports-Max logo over the right leg and a Central Ward Dragons basketball jersey. (There were five professional teams in the entire Dominion, which simplified marketing.) Her face was covered in light blue moisturizing cream, and her braids were tied into an impromptu beehive that kept them from falling onto her mask. Said beehive looked ridiculous, completing an image that would have made Nero laugh if it weren’t for his state of panic.
“Explain yourself.”
“Everything 2I’s told us, or the rest of the country, is a smoke screen.”
“Explain ditching me at the bar,” she corrected. Somehow the niceties of their date were more important to her than any national disaster. That was familiar. Nero felt a pang of sympathy for First’s struggle.
“It’s like you said, too much too soon. If it makes you feel better, I almost died twice because of it. For reasons very relevant to you, if you’ll get off of the date for a second—”
“We are not getting off it. I am notably angry at you.”
That struck him as a lie. The last person that she’d been angry with had lost blood, and Diana didn’t strike him as someone with patience for passive aggression. She was also smirking, which made him feel like the target of a practical joke.
“Sorry. Punch me later.”
“You will have to do better for a boot—”
“This isn’t a booty call. I’m going to show you that the world you know is a lie.”
“Are you still drunk?”
“A little, but that’s beside the point. Please just let me inside. We can’t talk about this in the hallway, anyone could be listening. If you don’t hear me out, my best friend is probably going to die.”
There was, among the technically oriented people of the world, a universal look of exasperation. It came from the fifteenth attempt to explain something very basic to someone very slow. Nero was surprised to find it on Diana’s face. She looked like she’d just spent an hour trying to teach binary to a bull terrier.
“I will indulge you,” Diana said, very slowly. “But first I have to ask: Are you sure that this is not a booty call?”
Somehow, Nero caught on. He gave her a less-than-subtle elevator look and forgot his original response.
[This might sound crazy, but I think that sleeping with her will help our pitch,] Nero thought.
[Uh-huh,] said First.
[I need to convince her that 2I sponsors the rebellions she despises. That’s not an easy sell. A personal connection might make it easier.]
[Whatever you say, boss.]
“Can I come in?” Nero asked. He tried not to sound overeager. He sounded overeager.
“Take your shoes off at the door.”
Nero didn’t know where the exact line between “meticulously organized” and “obsessively organized” lay, but he suspected Diana was on the wrong side of it. A meticulously organized apartment might have a neatly arranged shoe stand. Diana had a four-column rack sorted by type, color, wear, and brand. Surprisingly, the sneakers outnumbered the formalwear. Nero would have asked what her sport was, but six college basketball photos lined her dresser. She was committing fouls in half of them.
“Before we do anything, I really should start explaining this situation,” Nero began.
“Take off your clothes.”
“Okay.”
Nero got rid of his jeans without thinking, but the shirt made him more self-conscious. Years after dropping weight, exposing his stomach still put him on edge. Halfway down his buttons, he decided to play his trepidation off as seductive delay. The resulting dance looked ridiculous, but it was better to look childish than nervous.
“Cute,” said Diana. She began wiping off her mask with a paper towel, leaving patches of green around her ears, nose, and hairline. Her sweatpants had already disappeared, which demanded his immediate attention. Nero climbed into bed, getting skin care products smeared onto his forehead, hands, and waist. By the time they were fully entangled, they were both covered in random swaths of green moisturizer. In defiance of decades of marketing color coding, it smelled and tasted like pineapple.
Nero considered himself a sexual generalist. It was impossible to know what fetish a modern partner would bring to the table, especially after online dating and unlimited pornography had brought the fringe to the center. People were as likely to break out a ritual Sumerian mask as fuzzy handcuffs, so he tried to be adaptable. He was mentally prepared to fulfill most basic roles, and several obscure, transgressive ones.
None of this helped. Sex with Diana was straightforward and aerobic, and pushed Nero’s unaltered and minimally athletic body to the edge of serious injury. A wise man might have tapped out or at least called for a water break. But Nero was driven by a lethal mixture of lust, pride, and emotional need. So it was a small mercy when Diana let go of his ear and stopped moving.
“Well. This is embarrassing, but my left battery just ran out of juice. Could you plug me into the wall outlet?”
“Mmph,” Nero grunted.
“See the green cord connected to the power strip? The port’s on the bottom of my left foot, right next to the barcode.”
“Gnnf.”
“Look, I can only feel half of this. If you finish without plugging me in, you might not live to regret it.”
The threat worked. After watching him connect an AC adapter to her heel, she gave him eyes that made his night of near-death experiences worthwhile. He spent the last four minutes on his back, scanning the room for a water bottle. There wasn’t one in sight, and the first thing he did afterward was make a beeline for the kitchen sink.
“Have fun?” Nero shouted down the hallway. Surprisingly, Diana had a sink full of grimy dishes. He had to move a stack to make room for a cup, which convinced him she was still human.
“Acceptable.”
He decided, for his ego, to assume that she was messing with him. After finishing (and washing) a tall glass of water, he limped back to bed. Sex didn’t lift the cloud of anger that had hovered in the background over the last two decades. But he could think with more clarity and speak without second-guessing himself.
“I’m going to ask you a question. And I need you to promise me you won’t get angry, violent, or both.”
“Of course.”
“Why don’t you use contractions?”
“I am from Central. My team made fun of my accent, so I developed a more professional, neutral manner of speech. I think it is a good fit for the flavor of life here.”
“Right. Could I hear how you talk at home?”
“No. There is no reason for me to embarrass myself like that.”
“Just try it.”
She hesitated.
“Don’t tell anyone, but I talk to Momma like this.”
A genuine surprise. The I was an Ah, the speech was faster, and a hint of melody replaced the flat monotone. The voice was more natural, more human, and an iron wall against any kind of professional advancement. Nero thought of a recent film about the Alamo.
“You can talk to me like that.”
“I would rather not. I am going for ‘mysterious assassin,’ not ‘hayride operator.’ You will learn to enjoy the affectation.”
“Diana, no one that wants to live sleeps with a mysterious assassin. The mystery is usually their plan to kill you. That’s half of why I ran off.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re a real dick sometimes, y’know that?”
“Wait until I tell you about the conspiracy. You’ll hate it.”
“That’s real? I thought you were just trying to get my attention.”
Nero had more to say, but his body chose sleep. He buried his head in the pillow and passed out.
23. The Coffee Shop
11:52 a.m.
Nero made his case in Cousin Auntie’s, a coffee shop chain that specialized in looking independent. He sat at one of four plastic park-style tables and drained the second of three Expresso Grenades before finishing his spiel. He stacked the empty cups at the edge of the table by a bowl of complimentary downers. Diana’s end held a lone pastry, which she inhaled within thirty seconds.
