Mercury Revolts (26 page)

Perp’s brow furrowed and his
lips pursed in concentration. Mercury knew he was trying to think of some
objection, some reason not to betray Balderhaz, but there wasn’t anything to
say.

“Put eggs in warm water to
bring them to room temperature before using them for baking,” Perp offered at
last.

“I hear you, brother,” said
Mercury. “I hear you.”

Chapter Thirty-three
       
 

Provo, Utah; August 2016

Gamaliel touched down just outside Provo,
Utah. He could easily have walked the last few miles, but it was easier just to
accept a ride. Single women tended to pull over when they passed Gamaliel by
the side of the road. He was built like the guy kicking sand in the wimp’s face
in the back of old comic books.

So he rode into town in a RAV-4 with a chatterbox single mom
with a bad dye job and lips full of collagen. She offered to buy him a drink,
but he demurred, having her drop him in an unkempt industrial area about a
quarter mile from the nondescript building that was his destination. The RAV-4
lingered by the curb for a good minute after he got out, and Gamaliel shuddered
as he imagined the over-primped woman leering at his hindquarters. Human women
could be downright creepy.

Eventually she sped off to whatever soccer game or AA
meeting she was on her way to, and Gamaliel turned toward the building. The
building was surrounded by a twenty foot chain link fence topped with barbed
wire. Two armed guards stood at the entrance, but Gamaliel didn’t slow down or
say a word to them. He glanced at one of the guards and the gate swung
open.  He walked through the gate and approached the building.

It was one of the ugliest buildings he’d ever seen; a great
big concrete block with a sagging pitch roof and walls coated with some kind of
weird façade of river pebbles. There were no windows, and the doors were of the
flat steel variety, badly dented and painted an uninviting shade of brown. It
was, in sum, about the last place one would expect to find a technological
innovation that was about to change the world.

Gamaliel approached one of the doors and knocked. Just below
eye level, at a slightly cockeyed angle, was a label that appeared to have been
created by one of those little clicky label makers you can buy for three
dollars at an office supply store. It read:

MENTALDYNE

After a couple of minutes, the door opened and a pasty,
balding young man beckoned Gamaliel to come inside. He wore a nametag that read
“Zanders.” A tablet computer was tucked under his arm.

Gamaliel and Zanders walked past several clean rooms and
laboratories where technicians wearing anti-static suits labored on various
projects, finally reaching another steel door. Zanders punched a code into a
pad near the door and then opened it. They stepped inside a small vault lined
with shelves. The shelves were empty except for a single small cardboard box.

“This is the first batch,” said Zanders, motioning to the
box.

Gamaliel picked it up.
“How many?”

“Two hundred,” said Zanders. “That’s what she asked for.
Will that be enough?”

“More than enough, I should think,” replied Gamaliel. “Have
they been tested?”

 Zanders frowned. “They’ve gone through the same
testing as the other chips.”

“That’s not what I mean,” said Gamaliel. “I want to know if
you’ve tested the… additional feature.”

“Oh!” exclaimed the man with a smile.
“Of
course.”

“And?”

“I’ll let you judge for yourself.” He pulled a cell phone
from his pocket and made a call. “Tracey?” he said after a moment. “I need you
to come down to vault six. Right now, please.”

Less than a minute later, a young woman dirty blond hair
appeared at the door to the vault. She was cute in a mousey sort of way. “Sir?”
she asked quietly. “You asked for me?”

“Hello, Tracey,” said Zanders. “This is Mr. Gamaliel. He’s a
very important Mentaldyne investor. Mr. Gamaliel, this is Tracey Bowen. She
works on the assembly line for us. How long have you been with Mentaldyne,
Tracey?”

“Eight years, sir.”

“And do you like it here?”

“Yes, sir.
It’s
steady work and the management treats us nice.”

“Very good, Tracey.
How old are
you?”

“I’m thirty-three.”

“Kids?”

“Two, sir.
Max is ten and Lily is
eight.”

“Are you married?”

“No, sir.
My boyfriend… he left two
years ago.”

“But you’re doing OK?
You and the kids?”

“We get by alright.
Especially since that
bonus last month.”
Tracey grinned, revealing a mouth full of sparkling
but slightly crooked teeth.

Zanders turned to Gamaliel. “Tracey volunteered to test the
new chip. We gave her a small token of our gratitude.”

Gamaliel nodded impatiently. “Could we dispense with the
small talk and move on to the test?”

“Just establishing a baseline,” replied Zanders. “I want it
to be completely clear that Tracey is just a typical Mentaldyne employee who
has not received any coaching or preparation for this test.”

“Sir,” said
Tracey,
“am I going to
be taking some kind of test? I’m not very good at tests.”

“Yes,” said Zanders, “but there’s no need to worry. This is
a going to be a very easy test. You’re just going to do what feels natural to
you. Do you think you can do that for me?”

Tracey’s brow furrowed. “I guess?”

“Excellent,” said Zanders. “Tracey, could you please flap
your arms and cheep like a baby bird asking its mommy for a worm?”

Tracey’s face instantly flushed a deep purple. She took half
a step backward, seeming to want to run from the room. “S-s-sir?” she
stammered, on the verge of a full-fledged panic attack.

“Just a joke,” said Zanders with a reassuring smile. He
pulled the tablet computer from under his arm.

“Oh,” said Tracey weakly. “OK.” She didn’t look very
reassured, but the abject panic had passed.

Zanders tapped a few keystrokes on his tablet computer and
then handed it to Gamaliel. Gamaliel frowned, looking at the screen. It looked
like this:

“What the hell is this?” asked Gamaliel.

“It’s exactly what you think it is,” said Zanders. “You’ve
seen what happens when I give Ms. Bowen a simple verbal command to do something
she feels uncomfortable doing. Now try it with the Myrmidon system.”

Gamaliel frowned. “You want me to try to make her cheep like
a bird?”

“Well, I was hoping you’d be a little more imaginative than
that,” replied Zanders.

Gamaliel regarded Tracey, who was watching him suspiciously.
“Like what?” he asked.

Zanders shrugged. “Anything you like.”

Gamaliel stared at the screen. He wasn’t used to coming up
with ideas. Usually he just followed Tiamat’s orders. After a moment’s thought,
he clicked
the
I
want to…
radio button and then
typed:

kiss
mr. zanders

He tapped the
Submit Command
button at the bottom of the
screen.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Tracey walked up to Zanders
and planted a kiss right on his mouth. Then she stepped backwards, a look of
horror creeping over her face. “Oh my god,” she said hoarsely. “I don’t know
why I did that. Mr. Zanders, I’m so sorry!”

Zanders had turned almost as red as Tracey had been earlier.
“Er, that’s, um, OK, Tracey,” he stammered. He turned to Gamaliel, trying to
reclaim his businesslike demeanor. “As you can see, the subject takes full
responsibility for her actions. She has no sensation of being manipulated
whatsoever. As far as she is concerned, she simply decided of her own—
say
, what are you doing now?”

Gamaliel was giddily typing something else into the tablet.

“Give me that!” snapped Zanders, grabbing the tablet.
“You’ve had your—”

“Hey!” exclaimed Gamaliel. He had intended to type “Kiss
everyone in this building,” but Zanders had caused him to brush the
Submit Command
button before he was finished. He had gotten as far as “Kiss everyone.”

Tracey took a step toward Gamaliel, wrapping her hands
around his neck and pulling his head toward her. She gave him a long, very
enthusiastic kiss. The she let go and ran out of the room screaming, “Oh my god
I’m so sorry!”

Her remorse lasted until she ran into a rotund woman with a
clipboard in the hallway. Tracey bent over, pulled the woman’s head back, and planted
a kiss on her mouth. The she ran off again, screaming apologies.

“Nice to see Tracey coming out of her shell,” observed
Zanders.

“Remarkable,” said Gamaliel. “How long will she keep doing
that?”

“Until she collapses from exhaustion,” said Zanders. “Then
she’ll get up and continue on her quest to kiss everyone.”

“Everyone?”

“That’s what you typed.
Everyone
.”

“Can you override the command?”

“Of course.
But I think this might
be good for morale. Anyway, the urge to kiss everyone will fade as she gets farther
away from the transmitter.”

Somewhere down the hall, Tracey screamed another apology.

“Where is the transmitter?”

“For testing purposes, we’re using a very small one here in
the building. Its range is only a few miles, so Tracey will most likely limit
her kissing spree to the Provo area. Obviously the production transmitter has a
much greater range.”

Gamaliel nodded. “Good work, Zanders,” he said. “When will
you be able to start mass producing them?”

“We’re converting the machinery now,” Zanders said. “By the
end of next week we’ll be producing ten thousand a day.”

“All right,” said Gamaliel. “That should do for now.
Depending on how things go over the next few days, we may need you to bump up
those numbers.”

“Bump up the numbers?” asked Zanders, shocked. “How many
people do you plan on…?”

A glare from Gamaliel silenced him. “That’s not your
concern,” he said. “Just be ready for a big increase in demand.”

Chapter Thirty-four
                 
 

Costa
Rica; August 2016

Balderhaz’s
reaction to the arrival of Tiamat and the rest of the group was anticlimactic,
in that it was precisely the reaction he’d had to the arrival of Mercury and
Perp a few days earlier: he rushed them inside and then proceeded to deal with
whatever animal happened to be on the ceiling at the time.

Mercury tried to explain how
Michelle was using Lucifer’s intelligence apparatus to create a worldwide
totalitarian state, but Balderhaz didn’t seem particularly interested. It
wasn’t that he was apathetic, but rather that he was so paranoid already that
nothing Mercury told him seemed particularly remarkable. Balderhaz had long ago
had enough of conspiracies, double-crosses, and plans for world domination,
which was why he was hiding deep in the jungle of Costa Rica. What Mercury had
first taken as a symptom of insanity was in fact merely good planning.

The eccentric angel’s ears
perked up when Tiamat started talking about building another MEOW device.
Balderhaz had apparently been rather proud of his success with the last one,
and had been a bit put out that it had been destroyed in a terrorist attack. In
fact, he seemed to view the destruction of the MEOW device as the chief tragedy
of that day, which solidified Mercury’s impression that Balderhaz’s moral
compass was a bit off. If Michelle ever got her hands on Balderhaz, she’d
likely be able to convince him to do just about anything as long as he found it
an interesting technical challenge. Mercury made a note not to let that happen.

Balderhaz and Tiamat began
working on the device that same day, leaving Mercury, Eddie, Suzy, and Perp to
entertain
themselves
. Balderhaz had at one point given
up inventing to become a fairly respectable tennis instructor, and he remained
an aficionado of the game, but he hadn’t had room in his Costa Rica hideaway
for a court. The best he could do was a ping-pong table in the basement, which
served as the primary source of recreation for the group for the next three
weeks. Suzy was virtually unbeatable, which frustrated Mercury, who was himself
a mediocre player despite his unmatched wingspan. Mercury resorted to cheating,
using minor miracles to increase the spin of the ball or change its shape
suddenly before it hit Suzy’s paddle. Suzy responded by enlisting Eddie and
Perp in her defense. Eddie nullified Mercury’s attempts to harness interplanar
energy for his own benefit, and Perp went on the offensive, causing the ball to
miraculously pass through Mercury’s paddle. Rather than admit defeat, though,
Mercury responded with a series of complex rules governing the use of miracles
during gameplay. The situation continued to escalate, culminating with Suzy’s
paddle being turned into an angry lobster. This is what passed for
entertainment while Tiamat and Balderhaz perfected the new MEOW device.

Finally they did finish it: a
metal box just a little bigger than a typical Balderhaz Cube. Mercury could
hardly believe such a tiny device was capable of ridding Washington, D.C. of
angels, but then he didn’t think much of the hair dryer at first either. Tiamat
and Balderhaz seemed to work relatively well together. There was some arguing
toward the end of the project that had Mercury concerned, but they seemed to
have worked it out, whatever it was. Now the question was how to get the device
to Washington, D.C. and activate it.

There was general agreement
that Mercury would be the one to deliver it, since everybody more-or-less
trusted him, but activating it was going to be a problem. The device had to be
activated manually, but any angel in the vicinity of the device at the time of
activation would be rendered completely incapacitated by it. The effect of the
MEOW device decreased as one got farther from it; those a hundred yards or so
away would most likely be able to get out of the area, but any angel closer
than that wouldn’t even be able to think clearly enough to put one foot in
front of the other. At a distance of about a mile, the device’s output faded to
a barely tolerable screech.

In any case, it was going to be
impossible for any of the angels in the group to activate the device and then
get safely out of the area. Tiamat wouldn’t have blinked an eye at sacrificing
any one of them, but nobody was about to volunteer to be trapped indefinitely
in a place within the excruciating emissions of the MEOW device. That left only
one possibility.

“Fine,” said Suzy. “I’ll do
it. But can I take a commercial jet to D.C.? I’m kind of over the whole
flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants thing.” Mercury had carried her from Texas to Costa
Rica, and her hair still hadn’t recovered.

“Sorry,” said Mercury.
“You’re on the no-fly list for sure. You’re lucky you know some angels, or
you’d never fly again.”

“I don’t feel lucky,” said
Suzy. “So what do I do with this thing, exactly? Just flip a switch and drop it
in a planter somewhere near the Capitol?”

“No, no!” exclaimed
Balderhaz. “It has to be permanent! You can’t put it anywhere somebody can just
pick it up and walk off with it.”

“He’s right,” said Tiamat.
“That’s why the original was in the cornerstone of the Capitol. Nobody could
remove it without attracting a whole lot of attention.”

“Well, we can’t very well put
it back where it was,” said Eddie. “They’ve already repaired the cornerstone.
And we can’t get it inside the Capitol or any other important building, like
the White House, because it will set off the metal detectors. They’ll think
it’s a bomb.”

“It doesn’t have to be
anyplace special,” said Mercury. “We’re not going for symbolic value. It just
has to be someplace central in D.C. Find a construction site where they’re
pouring concrete and toss it in.”

Suzy wasn’t entirely
convinced it was going to be as easy as Mercury made it out to be, but she
reluctantly went along with the plan, in part because she was promised a full
makeover as part of the deal. Her hair was going to be a disaster after flying
halfway across the world again, and in any case her current coloring would make
it far too easy for the authorities to identify her. Undoubtedly she was on the
FBI’s Most Wanted list by now.

Mercury flew her to
Alexandria, Virginia, where she had her hair and nails done—she opted to go
with a soft pink for the nails and a dark brown for her hair that was close to
her natural color, along with hair extensions, since Mercury was paying. She
wasn’t sure where Mercury came up with the cash; she suspected he was literally
creating it out of thin air.
Which was, as she understood it,
basically what the Federal Reserve did, so it was all the same to her.

Next they went clothes
shopping. Mercury had little patience for shopping and his taste ranged from
garish to godawful, but Suzy did acquiesce to his demands to “dress more like a
chick.” In college and then at Brimstone she had gotten so tired of being hit
on by socially inept dweebs that she had somewhat unconsciously adopted a style
somewhere between disaffected Goth and committed lesbian. She wasn’t feeling
the bright red leather miniskirt Mercury insisted would somehow “bring out her
eyes,” but they compromised on a suitably cute-but-professional
jacket-and-skirt ensemble. She then picked out a purse, the primary purpose of
which was to hide the MEOW device, a pair of serviceable flats, and a pair of
dark sunglasses.

They flagged down a cab and
Mercury instructed the driver to drop him off at Arlington Cemetery.

“You’re not even going into
the city with me?” asked Suzy.

“I don’t really want to be
within a mile of that thing when you turn it on,” said Mercury. “You know what
to do. Just meet me back at Arlington when you’re done.”

“How will you know when it’s
on?”

“Trust me,” said Mercury.
“I’ll know. I was about six blocks away when they activated the first one.” He
shuddered. “I could feel it in my molars.”

Suzy nodded. His reluctance
to be near the device was understandable.

“So,” she said. “You do this
kind of thing a lot?”

“Well,” replied Mercury, “not
this particular thing.”

“Right, but
foiling diabolical plans for world domination?”

Mercury shrugged. “Sometimes
the plan is to destroy the world,” he said. “Michelle’s a dominator. Well, dominatrix,
I guess. Like Tiamat. They’re dominatrices. Lucifer’s a destroyer. Thankfully
he’s in custody.”

“In
Heaven.”

“Last I knew, yeah. He was
trying to deliver a nuclear bomb there—the Wormwood bomb. But this FBI guy and
a friend of mine pulled a switch on him, so Lucifer ended up in Heaven
empty-handed.”

“You have a friend?” asked
Suzy. She didn’t mean it as an insult; she just had a hard time imagining
anyone putting up with him for an extended period of time. Perp didn’t count;
that guy was even weirder than Mercury.

“
Had
,” corrected
Mercury.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Suzy.

“No, no,” said Mercury. “She
didn’t die or anything. My understanding is that she got sent back in time by a
glass apple filled with croutons.”

“She what?”

“It’s hard to explain,” said Mercury,
in a tone that indicated he didn’t really want to go into it.

Suzy couldn’t help smiling.

“What?” asked Mercury, seeing
the odd look on her
face.

“You miss her, huh?”

Mercury shrugged. “I’ve been around
a long time. I don’t get too close to humans. They don’t stick around long
enough to make it worthwhile.” He turned to look out the window.

She didn’t press the issue,
but for some reason she suddenly felt better about this crazy mission they had
embarked on. Mercury put on a good act, but underneath the bombast and sarcasm,
he was pretty human himself.

A few minutes later, they
reached Arlington Cemetery. Mercury got out of the cab and Suzy directed the
driver to drop her off in front of the Capitol Reflecting Pool. The plan was to
find a construction site somewhere within the area between the Capitol and the
White House.

She paid the cab driver with
a couple of Mercury’s crisp Andrew Jacksons and set off on a self-guided
walking tour of Washington, D.C.

Chapter Thirty-five
                       
 

Washington,
D.C.; August 2016

By
the time Suzy had spent three hours walking every inch of sidewalk between the
White House and the Capitol, she decided the shoes had been a mistake. Plenty
of those high-powered political types wore sneakers on their lunch breaks,
after all. At least she’d had the sense not to pick the stiletto heels she had
her eye on. If she’d have been wearing those, the free world would have had to
just pack it in.

The best location she’d found
for the MEOW device was a half-finished overpass a few hundred yards northwest
of the Capitol building. Large cylindrical supports had been set in concrete,
and Suzy thought if she could reach the top of one, she could drop the metal
box down inside one. Assuming the supports were hollow all the way to the
concrete, it would be very difficult to get it out of there without tearing out
the column. The supports were a good twenty feet tall, but part of the concrete
had been poured already, forming a roughly step-like structure. She was going
to attract some attention climbing up there, but it couldn’t be helped.

She waited until the street
was mostly clear, then slipped off her shoes, grabbed the MEOW device from her bag,
and hopped onto the first tier of concrete. As soon as she did so, a police car
rounded the corner.

“Shit!” she yelled, making
her way across the narrow strip of concrete to the next section, which reached
to her waist. The car’s flashers went on. Suzy scrambled on top of the concrete
block and continued to the next section.

The car pulled up a few yards
from the overpass and the driver got out.

“Miss,” said the young man
who’d stepped out of the car. “Please get down from there.”

“It’s a free country!”
shouted Suzy, who was now on the third tier of concrete and was starting to get
vertigo from the height.

“It’s a safety issue, Miss,”
said the police officer. “You could fall.”

“Why don’t you go arrest a
corrupt Congressman or something,” Suzy yelled.

“Miss, the next time a
corrupt Congressman climbs up an unfinished overpass at great risk to his own
personal safety, I promise you I will do whatever I can to address the
situation. What do you have in your hand?”

“None of
your business!”
Suzy shouted, clambering
onto the fourth tier. From here she thought she could reach the top of one of
the supports.