7th Son, page 21
“Keen,” Thomas said, impressed. “How many languages can you speak?”
“Fluently? Including pig latin, nine.”
“Cool,” Thomas and Jack said simultaneously.
Jay grinned, then waved it off. “So anyway. Wading and waiting. That’s what analysis it. Patience.”
Kilroy2.0 grunted and turned his face from the glowing screens. “Foo. This isn’t working. Conspiracies don’t play in the sun. Spider’s catching flies, but the data’s no good.”
Jack nodded and rubbed his beard. “That’s what I was afraid of. I think we’re looking for the right things. I just don’t think we’re looking in the right places.”
“What do you mean?” Thomas asked.
“Kilroy2.0’s right: conspiracies thrive under stones. The places we’re looking—newspaper clippings, autopsy reports—they’re too mainstream. I think Thomas’s idea is sound; I just think we need to search in places a little less—”
“Pedestrian,” Kilroy2.0 said.
“Exactly. Let me give you an example,” Jack said. “My university calls the media when it’s itching to boast about something—but only when it’s ready to boast. There are many studies being conducted in my department, for instance, that we wouldn’t dream of making public until we’ve completed the research and finalized the results. And only then if it’s something significant that proves alumni dollars are being well spent.”
“Talk about cause versus committee,” Thomas said.
“It’s a cruel world,” Jack replied. “What I’m getting at is this: Perhaps there are reports of the phenomenon John’s describing, but they’re so significant—or insignificant—that there’s no reason for the information to be released into the mainstream. Maybe there are people out there who are examining parts of Alpha’s trail, but don’t have the necessary backstory to understand its importance. Or maybe they do have the backstory, but don’t want the information to get out.”
Jay leaned forward and looked at the computer screens. “Universities, like yours?”
“Perhaps, but that wasn’t what I was thinking,” Jack said. “I was thinking more up your alley: government agencies. I’m thinking we should start with the Centers for Disease Control, see if they’ve found any NEPTH-charge victims.” He turned to Kilroy2.0. “We need to go federal. Can you get us where we need to go?”
Kilroy2.0 grinned. “Let me call some friends,” he said, already typing.
The windows filled with obits and autopsies vanished from the screens. With a few deft mouse-clicks, several smaller windows began to pop up. Thomas recognized a few of them from TV ads—three AOL chat windows flickered on-screen; MSN Messenger winked to life on another. The contact lists on each went on forever. There were also programs he didn’t recognize: down_low, Cloaque, secURL. One, called BlackHat, had a grinning skull and crossbones icon in its upper left-hand corner. Still another was merely an empty window with a blinking cursor in its center. These were programs found off the beaten path. Decidedly un-Pedestrian.
Kilroy2.0 had been holding back the big guns.
This was another peek into his mind, Thomas realized, Kilroy’s connection to the myriad con-spir-a-cies in which he undoubtedly believed. Funny. Conspiracy theories didn’t seem so ludicrous anymore.
“You really know how to work these things, don’t you?” Thomas said, clapping Kilroy2.0 on the shoulder.
Kilroy turned toward him and winked. “Kilroy2.0 is everywhere. Evverry-where.”
Thomas shuddered. Kilroy2.0 chuckled, then turned back to the computer screen.
And they entered his world.
The three clones quickly saw that Kilroy2.0 had hacked the online chat programs, so they worked together. Whatever he typed in the simple, featureless window in the center of the monitor appeared on all the other chat screens. They watched the letters simultaneously appear one by one on the baker’s dozen of active software windows. Thomas felt gooseflesh ripple across his arms. Big Brother isn’t watching, he thought. He’s broadcasting.
On the thirteen chat programs, this message appeared:
> Kilroy2.0 is here
And every window suddenly sprang to life; each computer monitor swarmed by an armada of pop-up message windows, each from a unique name on Kilroy2.0’s buddy lists. MSN Messenger and AOL IM chimed repeatedly, like a doorbell gone mad. Black-Hat’s skull icon burped robotic laughter. The prophet had come to preach to the faithful. They were all online, all flooding Kilroy2.0 with questions and riddles and praise-be-unto-hims.
cthulhu_call: Speak to us, Messiah
silent(e): i n33d ur h3lp
it’s_a_wonderful_lie: Where have you been
Special(k): Tell us
wicked_lil_critta: Tell us, please
codeshaman: Where did you go?
three-five-zero-zero: Please . . .
Kilroy2.0 leaned back in his seat, a sly grin of satisfaction emerging on his lips. The computers continued to chime, the messages overran the monitors. Why. How. Is the time nigh. I have questions. I have information. Tell us where you were. Speak to us. Speak to us. Please speak to us.
The windows kept on and on—dozens now. That slippery smile never left Kilroy2.0’s face.
Thomas turned to Jack and Jay and whispered, “Go tell it on the mountain.” Or under it. A whole world of them out there, just under the surface, talking their special talk. A point-and-clique.
“Fascinating,” Jack said. “How many are out there, do you think? Dozens? Hundreds?”
“Does it matter?” Jay asked. His eyes were wide; the color had drained from his face.
No, not really, Thomas’s mind answered. They’re out there and they think he’s some kind of cybermessiah. He preaches from nowhere—from evvrery-where —and they listen. Part priest, part prophet, part diety, all blasphemy . . .
Kilroy2.0 gazed up at the clones. He waved a hand toward the monitors, toward the maelstrom of pop-up windows.
“My flock,” he purred.
“You’ve got quite a fan club, Kilroy,” Thomas said.
“Oh, yes.”
“Are they all hackers, like you?” Jay’s voice trembled, betraying the cool expression he was trying to maintain.
“Most,” Kilroy2.0 said, turning back to the screens. His voice sounded disinterested. You bore me, norm.
“They read your sermons, don’t they?”
Kilroy2.0 nodded at Jack’s question. “They read the things you never read. My homilies about the shadows, my speeches about the squirming earthworms in our government, the transmissions from beyond, the plagues unleashed by the Adversary, the dark matter—and what it really is . . .”
Thomas’s eyes met Jack’s. The look said everything that need not be said. Let him speak. Let’s learn.
“. . . the chemtrails in the sky, the low-frequency Kokomo and Taos ‘hums’ in our ground, the cameras on our street corners, the radiation in the groundwater, stolen supercomputers, the eyes everywhere, watching us, always watching us, always watching us.” Kilroy2.0 licked his lips, nodding. “Always. Watching. Us.”
The chimes were a roomful of grandfather clocks now. The windows piled over each other, cascading like rows of solitaire cards. Kilroy squinted at the monitors.
blackjack: Please speak to us
J3nnyB3ntoBox: Are you there?
anthropohedron: speak speak speak speak speak
Kilroy2.0 began to type again.
> It is a night of insurrection. In? SecURL. Out? Logoff.
Almost a third of the instant message windows immediately blinked off the screen.
Kilroy2.0 tittered knowingly. “Some of them are afraid of the call to arms,” he said to no one. “Most of them are not. You see the loyalty? These ones will create the force we need for storming the data beaches. Right now, they’re activating their trackscramblers. They’re shifting their CPUs into secURL shells. They will be our stealth fighters.”
“They can’t be tracked. That’s what you’re telling us.”
“Indeed, Jay.”
“What about us?” Jack asked. “Can anyone trace our signal?”
Kilroy2.0 sighed and ran his fingers through his greasy hair. “Newbie,” he said, exasperated. “That was the first thing I activated when I sat here at the workstation hours ago. Been stealing 7th Son bandwidth from the beginning. No one knows we’re doing this. Not even 7th Son. The 7th Son computers monitoring us are convinced I’m still googling every newspaper obituary published in the past year. But I’ve been in the slipstream of the facility’s subnetwork, mooching off its muy muy high-speed satellite uplink the whole time.”
“What does that mean?” Thomas asked.
“It means Kilroy is transmitting to his flock from outer space,” Jack said.
Kilroy2.0 nodded furiously. As he typed his next message, he whispered, “Just like God.”
They watched Kilroy2.0’s message rak-a-tak to life on the monitor.
> I am in the hands of the Adversary. I am well, but have no time for explanations. Need information located on the CDC intranet. Need your help to access it. Unleash your worms. Your swarmers. Your warez, hacks, kraks, all the so-called “malware” the Adversary despises. Post no graffiti, take no credit. Tonight you rise from the shadows for your prophet.
> One goal. Deluge the network. Pummel the CDC servers. Let the lawkeepers gaze at your distraction. Let them wring their hands. Let them squirm. Let them talk. Let them scheme. Be the diversion I need.
> You are many, but act as one. For two hours, the Network will be yours. Be the ghosts in their machines. Be the poltergeists in their attics, the chaos they fear above all. And then disappear. I will do the rest.
> This, I ask of you. Comply?
Kilroy2.0 executed a key combination on his keyboard, and the message was zipped to the chat programs. A second passed.
Jay gasped. At least seventy new message windows flashed on the screen at the same time. The chimes and BlackHat’s skull laughter sang through the computers’ speakers.
“Is this really happening?” Thomas whispered.
Jack nodded at the screens. “There’s your answer.”
Oh, yes. Message received. Replies posted.
They all said the same thing:
I comply
I comply
I comply
TWENTY
A. U. Rookman didn’t give a piss about a great many things. Being old and rich—and let’s face it, America, being A. U. Rookman—had its privileges. One of the great many things A. U. Rookman didn’t give a piss about, for instance, was “bad” cholesterol. The bacon and egg and medium-rare-steak-extra-gravy-on-the-mashed-potatoes cholesterol. These days, doctors were waving their hands in the air about the stuff like a gaggle of Holy Rollers at a tent revival, wailing on about how you should avoid the “bad” cholesterol and eat more foods with the “good” cholesterol. A. U. Rookman didn’t give a piss. The doctors were telling him to eat more fish, and Rookman didn’t like fish (’cause it tasted like goddamn fish) so he didn’t. No, sir. Give A. U. Rookman a slab of Texas longhorn any day—and don’t jew him on the A.1., fuck you very much.
Bad cholesterol. This, coming from the same bunch of bookworms who’d told A. U. Rookman in the late eighties to avoid eating foods high in cholesterol, period. There was no “good” cholesterol back then, no yin to the cholesterol yang, if you wanted to get philosophical about it. Hell, when Rookman was a boy, you piled on the eggs and bacon and scarfed it down with a shit-eating grin.
And that’s why Rookman still drank two raw eggs for breakfast. (He didn’t give a piss about salmonella, either.) Every morning, one of the help would bring him a crystal goblet filled with the syrupy stuff, both yolks bobbing inside like great big eyes, like the snotty globs in a lava lamp. He’d scoop the goblet from the platter, raise it to the sky as if making a toast, and slurp it down in one breathless gulp. During the ever-increasing house calls in the past five years, the doctors had discovered this ritual and had given him six kinds of grief about it. He would wave the words away. For those who knew him, this was A. U. Rookman’s way of saving his breath to say the words I don’t give a piss. And in these wretched golden years, goddamnit, saving breath had become a necessity. The cancer. The old-timer’s.
Rookman was turning eighty next year. He rarely looked in the mirror anymore; he hated the wraith’s face that stared back. He was, according to his own harsh self-summation, a wheezing mess of a man who’d spent too much of his life spending his fortune in hazes of cigarette smoke, inebriation, and misplayed poker hands. The booze and the smokes (and the drugs for a while, we can’t forget the times we hit the slopes) were his lifelong companion, the common-law wife that’d stuck by him when the times were good and bad. They’d been particularly loyal when times were bad. Now he was reaping the whirlwind, and all that bullshit about “good” cholesterol and “bad” cholesterol and healthy living didn’t amount to a hill of ass-tootin’ beans, if it ever had.
Not that Rookman regretted it. A. U. Rookman hadn’t become A. U. Rookman by entertaining navel-gazing idiocies such as regret. He’d been through four divorces and had endured the headline-grabbing antics of his shitbird son Lionel, but he never felt regret. Regret was a gutless thing, a thing that implied fallibility. And A. U. Rookman never made mistakes. Ever.
Still, as he’d felt his body wind down like a music box over these past seven years, he had felt another breed of gutless emotion slip into his mind. Fear. It was going to end, it was all going to end much sooner than later, like the unnerving off-key plinks and plunks of that music box, an impending dirge, a death rattle, something slowly fading from the earth . . . then gone. It was bad—goddamned bad—and it was going to end. And he was afraid. Afeard, as his daddy used to say.
Which was why he was sitting at his bedroom desk (this morning’s empty goblet still resting on its edge like a trophy), staring into this computer screen that he would have felt great satisfaction throwing through his bedroom window if he had the strength to lift it . . . not that it would shatter the bulletproof glass. The world of ledgers and ticker tape and typewriters had gone the way of the dodo. A. U. Rookman couldn’t keep up anymore.
But he could. He would, once this little under-the-table deal was seen through. Rookman had made many of his billions in under-the-table deals—the closed-door meetings, the surveillance sweeps, the payoffs, the line to the White House, and, yes, the more-than-occasional use of discreet folks who worked outside the law. Many of those deals had taken years to finally bloom into windfalls. But none were like this. And things were close to blooming now. Very close indeed.
He would experience a rebirth, and then he’d make a killing.
The little clock icon at the top of the computer screen chimed 4:30 p.m. That was Rookman’s cue to start the videoconference. He steered the computer mouse toward the appropriate screen icon and launched the application. The spasms in his chest began—not now, goddamnit, I don’t give a piss about you, you fucking cocksuckers, not now—then the rattling cough started, erupting from his throat like cannon fire. One of his hands instinctively reached for a fresh handkerchief in the small pouch on his wheelchair; the other hand clutched the oxygen mask in his lap. His body quaked as the coughs increased. He tried to keep his eyes on the screen (the video window was winking to life now), but couldn’t. They snapped shut as he whooped and retched.
Breathe, you old bastard, breathe breathebreathe . . .
Finally, he spat a wad of bloody phlegm into the handkerchief and placed the mask over his mouth and nose. The canned air rushed into his lungs, and things were better. For now.
Rookman opened his eyes, wiping away the tears as he did so. He gazed at the screen.
John Alpha stared back at him. The youngster was smiling.
Then: part one.
A rumor had circulated through the press back in ’94 that when a president was elected, he had to make a special phone call within three days of his acceptance speech. That call would, the rumors claimed, be to one A. U. Rookman, founder of Rookman Oil Inc. George, a now-defunct political magazine, had quoted an anonymous source as saying, “When a man’s crazy enough to run for president, he’s crazy enough to think he’s the most powerful man on the planet. Once in office, he learns very quickly that he is not. That’s why every president since Kennedy rings up the old man. Just to say hello, get the formal blessing. It’s like the senior-class president asking the high school principal if he can pretend to be leader for a while.”
The rumor wasn’t true, of course. President-elects had two days to make the call, not three.
The leaders of the Free World were all meek as lambs when speaking with A. U. Rookman. Insiders called this phenomenon Rookman’s Rules. For many things, they were the only rules in town. If you knew oil and politics, you knew A. U. Rookman was the Dangerous Man, the Big Planner, the slippery Texan with an ace stashed up his sleeve, the wildcatter with whom you should never fuck.
By 1960, Rookman had made it clear that he wasn’t a card-carrying member of the “big oil” industry. He was the big oil industry. His influence on politics could be likened to plate tectonics: patient and nearly silent, but impossible to ignore. His political strings were long and tight. For example: After the OPEC embargo of ’73, Rookman had concocted an idea to ensure that he’d never again be squeezed by the towelheads. He applied political pressure from the shadows, the result being the Energy Policy and Conversation Act, which Gerald Ford made law in 1975. Under this law, the federal government could purchase and store up to 1 billion barrels of crude oil, none of which could be used unless there was another national fuel crisis. While the first 412,000 barrels purchased for this new cache were Saudi crude, Rookman Oil Inc. had provided the lion’s share of the reserves since—and made tidy and quiet profits decade after decade in its name.
In the late 1970s, A. U. Rookman convinced Detroit’s Big Three to play along with his quiet political push to create an apparently pro-consumer, pro-environment plan that would apply strict miles-per-gallon standards on passenger vehicles to increase fuel economy. But the scheme had a delicious loophole: sport utility vehicles could be classified in the same category as light trucks, which had much lower MPG standards. The punch line? After a decade or so in which the Big Three would focus on making more inexpensive, fuel-efficient cars (and barely break even), they would start pushing the sport-utes as the Next Big Thing. Larger, and allegedly more dependable in inclement weather, the SUVs would become the “new station wagon.” By building family-oriented SUVs on truck chassis, auto manufacturers could sidestep pesky fuel-economy standards and particularly stringent passenger-car bumper and crash regulations.
