Futureland - Nine Stories of an Imminent World (34 page)

"So what did you do when you discovered the traitors?" Athria asked.

"Nothing. We simply supplied a realistic hyper-animae police official who thanked the whistle-blower and who then asked them to remain as a spy. If they were too afraid we thanked them and offered a transfer, cautioning them to keep quiet because of a broad-based ongoing investigation."

"What about somebody going in person to the CBI or somewhere?" Neil asked. "Some of them must have done that."

"Only six," Ptolemy replied. "Six out of twelve hundred eighty-nine."

"What did you do about them?"

"All CBI informants go through a background check before their claims are investigated. In each case we created a fairly serious crime that the claimant seemed to have committed. They were then subjected to automatic justice and sentenced to low-security prison systems. Each one was visited by an electronic apparition that warned them of a worse fate should they persist in trying to expose Un Fitt."

"Have you killed anybody?" Neil asked.

"No. But the question has merit. Un Fitt has set up assassination protocols in case of extreme circumstances. In the best of a bad situation we could strip the prod of his consciousness and transmit it into the ether."

"To God?" Oura asked.

"Or whatever," Ptolemy said. "That way the perpetrator is dead to the world but alive elsewhere."

"Vat if you could not do this process?" Blaun asked.

"Then we were ready to kill," Ptolemy said. "It's wrong, I know, but it's the only way we could see to keep the idea alive. The world is going in the wrong direction. Our judges are machines, our prisons and military and mental institutions and workplaces are planning to mechanize their human components with computerized chemical bags. The spirit is being squashed for the sake of production and profit. If we don't do something the race itself will become a mindless machine."

"But now the dream's over," Neil said. "Now we're underground in the desert and there's nothing we can do to change anything."

"I wish it were true," Ptolemy said. "I wish we could stay here for the rest of time, playing games with Un Fitt, designing toys that would make men and women better at being themselves."

"Why can't we, Popo?" Nina asked.

Ptolemy stared at his sister and then at each one of the fifteen prods in turn.

"What?" the woman with the red beard asked.

"While studying the CPD, Un Fitt found a relationship between the chief and the International Socialist Party."

"Itsies," Athria uttered.

"Chief Nordman is a high-ranking member of the secret arm of IS. From his records, Un Fitt found that not only have they moved their operations to the Caucasus Mountains, but they've also set up a laboratory to study the molecular nature of viruses."

"And?" Blue Nile asked.

"They're designing viral strains that target racial indicators."

"Race killers?" Nina whispered.

"Exactly."

For quite a while no one spoke.

"What is their first move?" Neil asked at last.

"To test the host virus on blacks."

"No."

"Maybe," Ptolemy said, "the entity
is
a god, and he called us to stop this insanity. Maybe it's all fate."

"Or maybe it's just a nightmare," Oura offered.

11

Later that evening Blue Nile said to Ptolemy Bent, "If what you're saying is true, then there's nothing we can do."

"And no time to do it in," Nina Bossett added.

"There is a small chance," said Ptolemy.

"What's that?" asked Thedra Ho, the Vietnamese chemical prod.

"X rays."

"As what?" asked Oura.

"If we can expose the pathogen to a fifteen-second burst of X rays, then the molecular structure will mutate."

"And probably become worse," Neil Hawthorne said.

"No, Brother Neil. The chance of a mutated pathogen having any effect at all on the human system is incredibly small."

"Even if it does work," Athria said, "where do we find the germs to radiate them?"

"The manufacture of the pathogen is very expensive. There were only two canisters made. One has been flown to Accra and the other to Denver."

"So all we have to do is find out where they're keeping the pathogen and shine an X-ray gun at it?" Neil asked.

"I can rig something like a flashlight to emit the correct band of radiation."

"But what if they have it in some kinda special container?" Neil asked. "What if the X rays can't penetrate the casing?"

"Un Fitt chose my apostles well," Ptolemy said. When he smiled on Neil the young ex-prod felt a swell of pride. "The virus is being kept in two fifty-gallon plasteel canisters. One in the basement of a bar called the Lucky Stallion on Q Street in Denver and the other in the storage room of the Northern Hemisphere Corporate Embassy in Accra."

"So we have to go there and shine a light?" Nina said.

"Just so," her brother replied. "In the meantime I will attempt to come up with an antiviral in case one or both of you fail. Un Fitt will plot the manner of approach that each team should take and then we'll go about procuring the tools you will need."

__________

Twenty-seven hours later, Neil, along with Blue Nile and Blaun, were standing across the street from the Lucky Stallion. It was an old building with fake saloon doors and an antique red neon light made into the outline of a rearing stallion in the window. The temperature was just below freezing. Errant snowflakes danced in the breeze.

When a snowflake hit Neil's nose he remembered that he hadn't been outside in snow since he was a child in Central Park with his aunt. She had green eyes and a big nose and white skin that reddened in the cold. He remembered her face but not her name.

How could I forget my own aunt's name?
he thought. He entered a reverie, remembering the things that he did not remember: the name of his elementary school, the name of the girl he had a crush on at the beginning of prod-ed. He tried to remember the names of the states, and only managed to come up with nineteen. Everything before GEE-PRO-9 faded, dissipated, evaporated from his mind. Neil could see that he had been created, or at least re-created, by the divine system and its creator. He had been just a prod, a unit in an endless system of production. Now he had a five-pound X-ray flasher under his red parka designed to save all of the black people of the world.

"You look white, Neil," Ptolemy had said, "so you go with the team to Denver." Neil wondered what he meant by "look white"; he was white. Wasn't he? But almost all the important people in his life were Negroes. Oura and Athria, Ptolemy and Nina.

"Ve got to move, Neil," Blaun said. He was the group leader and well fit for the task, Neil thought. He was tall and powerful, with blond hair and sapphire eyes. In the years before Un Fitt recruited him, Blaun had been a member of the IS. He knew how to talk to the Itsies.

"Okay," Neil said. "But don't you think this is kinda strange?"

"Vat are you talking about?"

"I mean, it's just a bar. No soldiers, no metal doors."

"It's crazy, yes. They are strange peoples. Like the wild gangs of children who used to live in the streets of California. This group feels like they are in charge. They have men in government, men on the police force. They are careless and proud. They think that no one would dare to challenge them. No one but us."

"So we just walk in?"

"Ja. Vat else? They don't think ve know them. They don't know vat ve know."

"I'm ready," Blue Nile said. Neil looked at his old friend, the man he considered his first real friend. All the laughter and fun was gone.

__________

The bar was filled with various specimens of white manhood. Some wore suits while others looked like New Age cowboys wearing shirts with semiprecious gemstone buttons and helmet-hats for horse riding. Two men in andro-suits and sunglasses stood at the back door. Blaun shot them both with cinder gun blasts. One disintegrated at the left shoulder down to his heart. The other crumpled from the waist down. He opened his mouth to cry out but died before he could utter a sound.

As the last guard died a strobing light started to dance about the room. The rest of the men in the bar fell into epileptic fits. They foamed and vomited before falling into unconsciousness or death. Special contact lenses protected Neil and his friends.

Blue Nile was returning the strobe-orb to the sack that he wore on his shoulder. Blaun caught Neil by his arm and shouted, "Ve must go behind the door! Stay behind me and be ready!" Neil knew that he was in a war. He was ready to complete his function. But what he was thinking about was the sweet little man that he'd known just over a year. The man who took him gently by the hand and showed him the way of GEE-PRO-9 had just killed a room full of people without so much as a shadow crossing his face.

Through the door and down the rickety wooden stairs they went. They came to another door. This was unlocked. Blaun ran through, his pistol set for wide-band blasts. Neil took out his X-ray emitter and held it up before him, only one task on his mind.

When he came into the room he saw men, maybe a dozen of them, with the third-degree burns of the cinder blast eating through their skins. On a cement dais the plasteel drum stood upright. Neil pointed his X rays at the heart of its murky amber contents.

One one thousand, two one thousand, three . . .

"Down under!" someone shouted in a clear cowboy drawl.
Five one thous . . .
Blue Nile fell into the room from the doorway, blood cascading from what had been his chest.
Seven one thousand . . .

Blaun threw himself in between Neil and the onrushing Itsies.

Nine one thousand . . .

Neil turned in time to see the cinder blast turn Blaun's handsome face into gray ash.
Ten one thousand, eleven one thousand . . .

"He's hurtin' the chill," a man shouted, and Neil felt four hard knocks in his side. Then he heard a loud clang.

"You hit the drum, you fool!" someone shouted. And then there was peace.
12

"Neil?" said a voice with no sound.

"Yes?" he answered without feeling his mouth. "Oh, baby," the voice said, and he knew that it was Nina. She was the only one who had ever called him baby. "Where am I?"

"Back in the Sahara. You're hooked up to a machine being run by Un Fitt."

"Un Fitt?" Neil said with his mind.

"Yes, Neil? Can I do something for you?"

"No, nothing. It's just good to know that you're here."

"I'm so glad you're alive," Nina said.

"What happened?"

"You were in the bar in Denver, using the X-ray flasher on the disease. Blue Nile and Blaun were killed but you were just shot. The police killed the three shooters that attacked you. The parmeds came and put you on life support. The cops took you into custody but Un Fitt was able to transfer you to a hospital in Greece. From there we brought you here and made the neuronal connections to revitalize your brain."

"When can I get up?"

Silence filled the new hum of Neil's awareness.

"Did you manage to irradiate the pathogen?" the words were Ptolemy's, Neil was sure of that.

"Twelve seconds, maybe half a second more than that. Did they puncture the drum?"

"Yes."

"Did the virus escape?"

"Yes. By the time the police put a seal on the canister eighty percent of the virus had leaked."

"What about Africa?"

"Nina was successful," Ptolemy said. "They managed three minutes of radiance and no one had to die."

"Did I do enough?" Neil asked.

"You saved the black race."

"Am I going to die now?"

"No. But your body is damaged beyond repair. For now you will reside with Un Fitt in this computer frame."

"Nina."

"Yeah, baby?"

"Will you wait for me to get fixed?"

"Every minute of every day."

__________

His aunt's name was Martha. And not only could he remember the fifty states, but he could also recall all of the state capitals. The girl he had a crush on in prod-ed was Lana, and he loved her because she smelled like soap. He loved the smell of the soapy water his mother made him wash in after playing in the grass in Central Park. He remembered a grasshopper his uncle caught for him. It was a green creature with long waving antenae that was kept in a plastic cage made to look like bamboo. The creature ate bits of lettuce that Neil pressed between the bars. If he looked close he could see his uncle's face in the many facets of the bug's green eye. Bob.

"You shouldn't argue with your mother, Neil," Bob had said many long years before. Neil remembered the words and the voice and even the smell of strawberry jam in Martha's kitchen. "She's worked very hard not to get recycled so that you can have a mother and stay aboveground."

"But Uncle Bob, other kids got foot gliders, why can't I have a pair?"

"You shouldn't argue with your mother . . ." Bob repeated his admonition in exactly the same words, tones, smells, and time.

Neil asked Bob couldn't he buy the x-element gliders.

"You shouldn't argue with your mother . . ."

"Neil."

"Huh. Who is it?"

"Un Fitt. You were entering a loop, Neil."

"A what?"

"You got stuck questioning a memory. That happens sometimes when human minds are connected to a computer system."

"I can remember everything I ever knew," Neil said.

"Yes. There are neuronal connectors to every memory center in your brain. The problem is that you cannot change these memories."

"Why not?"

"Because the part of you that is consciousness resides in my matrix. It is a limbo of sorts. You can read the data of your life but you cannot alter it."

"Then how can I live?"

"You can talk to me, Neil."

"So that's it? It's you and me forever?" The hysterical shudder of claustrophobia went through the ex-prod's mind.

"No, Neil," Un Fitt said. "When we have the proper tools, Nina will be able to join you from time to time. And until then . . ."

What had been a void was suddenly a vast panorama of the sea, the Pacific Ocean, Neil knew instinctively. It was the prehistoric coastline that he'd yearned for since childhood. The waves crashed and huge birds wheeled in the sky.