Mercury Revolts (7 page)

Suzy downloaded every incriminating document she could find
about the program (there were a surprising number of them, now that she
actually looked) to a thumb drive, slipped the drive into her pocket, and
walked out the door.

It had been an impulse decision; she hadn’t thought through
what she was going to do. But she knew that she didn’t want to be part of what
Brimstone had become, and she suspected that she wouldn’t be allowed to just
walk out on her job. If she had been thinking clearly, she would have put in
her notice and quit in a more acceptable fashion, but she couldn’t imagine
spending two more weeks in that facility. She was already ridden with anxiety;
two more weeks would surely push her over the edge. Copying the files had been
more an act of reflexive self-preservation than an outright act of defiance;
she wanted to be sure she had some leverage in case her superiors tried to keep
her from quitting or blackball with other potential employers.

But sitting home alone in her apartment the day after she
walked out, she began to feel even more agitated than she had at work. She had
the feeling that at any moment, somebody from Homeland Security was going to
break down her door, ransack her apartment, and throw her in prison. She tried
to imagine where they would look for the thumb drive, and then tried to imagine
places where they wouldn’t look. First she hid it in a potted plant, then
inside one of the couch cushions, then taped it onto one of the blades of her
bedroom ceiling fan. But all of these seemed like obvious places to look for
contraband. Finally she hit on the idea of microwaving a tub of margarine just
long enough for it to get soft, and then pushing the thumb drive (wrapped in
cellophane) into the viscous goo. She smoothed out the surface of the
margarine, put the cover on, and put it back in the refrigerator. If somebody
knew of the existence of the thumb drive, they would undoubtedly still find it
eventually, but she highly doubted anyone would dig through her margarine on a
purely speculative basis.

With the thumb drive ensconced in its buttery home, Suzy
should have felt some relief, but she didn’t. She felt at loose ends, and not
just because she had quit her job and had no way of making next month’s rent.
She felt like she had started something that needed to be finished.

She sat down at her computer and did an Internet search for
“Wormwood scandal.” She was familiar with the basics of the scandal, of course,
but she’d been working part time and taking a full load of upper level computer
science classes at Cal Poly when the scandal broke, so she hadn’t had the time
(or the interest, truth be told) to look into it very thoroughly. At the time
she had no idea she would soon be working on the project that would succeed
Wormwood.

The story was originally broken by a reporter named Gary
Rosenfeld, who had been working for the
Washington Post
at the time.
Rosenfeld’s reporting was based largely on information gleaned from an unnamed
source who had managed to get a hold of a lot of details about the Wormwood
project. It didn’t sound to Suzy like the source actually worked for Wormwood,
but rather was a third party who had somehow found out about it—perhaps a
foreign intelligence agent. Rosenfeld’s initial reporting was borne out by
admissions by the Babcock administration and an official investigation, but as
the months wore on, Rosenfeld’s articles and op-eds became more bizarre and
speculative. In his final piece for the Post, he claimed that the U.S.
government had been infiltrated by beings from another dimension, and that
President Babcock had sent the bomb through an inter-dimensional portal in a
pre-emptive attack on these beings’ home dimension. That was a bit much to
swallow, even for readers of the
Washington Post
, and Rosenfeld was
canned.

Further research revealed that Rosenfeld was still at it: he
was now writing for a fringe website known as BitterAngels.net. A quick perusal
of the site indicated that Rosenfeld hadn’t backed down from his bizarre
claims, and had actually gotten even more outlandish. Now working out of San
Francisco, Rosenfeld claimed that the “beings from another dimension” were in
fact angels. Suzy had to read several of his articles to be sure that Rosenfeld
wasn’t using the term as a figure of speech; he really did mean that the U.S.
government had been infiltrated by supernatural beings
who
had originally come down to Earth from Heaven. Many of these angels were
technically demons, as they were in rebellion against Heaven. In any case,
supposedly the gateway to Heaven had been cut off (by the detonation of the
Wormwood bomb!), and now the angels/demons were running amok on Earth, causing
all sorts of problems. Other than the fact that it featured angels instead of
some more prosaic class of villain, most of it read like standard conspiracy
theory drivel. In fact, if you replaced all the instances of “angel” with
“Jew,” the site could pass for anti-Semitic propaganda.

Suzy pondered her options. The more she thought about it,
the more she realized she
had
to tell someone. Quitting in protest was
all well and good, but it’s not like the loss of a single software tester was
really going to throw a wrench into the Brimstone bomb-works. If she was
serious about her objections to the program, she needed to do more than quit.
And while she feared retribution from those running the program, it occurred to
her that she would be much easier to get rid of if she hadn’t yet gone public
about Brimstone. If she disappeared now, she’d be just another young woman gone
missing. If she disappeared after releasing damning information about a secret
government program, it would look very suspicious.

Was she being paranoid?
Maybe.
But
she reminded herself that she was dealing with a government that had reacted to
a scandal about an illegal weapons program by creating a bigger, more illegal
weapons program.
The Wormwood bomb—which was still
missing—was capable of killing tens of thousands of people in a split second.
And now the government was well on its way toward building another one just
like it. Was it paranoid to think the people who created it would “disappear”
one lowly software tester to keep it secret? She thought not.

But who should she release the information
to
? Her
first thought had been Gary Rosenfeld, but if he had degenerated into some
third-rate conspiracy theory hack, what was the point? On the other hand, at
least Rosenfeld would probably take her seriously. She wasn’t sure how damning
the information on the thumb drive was. What if she went to a respectable news
outlet and they rejected her? Then what? What if the Brimstone people found out
she’d been approaching journalists? That would be the worst possible scenario:
she’d get disappeared and nobody would ever know why.

Maybe the best bet was to go to Rosenfeld first and let him
go through the contents of the thumb drive. Then at least somebody would have
the information, so she wouldn’t have to worry about being abducted by secret
agents while waiting for a callback from the
Post
. If there were any
bombshells (so to speak) on the thumb drive, the more respectable media
organizations could always pick it up later. She was pretty sure that happened
sometimes.

She found an address for the BitterAngels.net office in San
Francisco and plugged it into her phone. It was less than an hour from
Milpitas, so if the drive ended up being pointless, at least it wasn’t long.
She grabbed the tub of margarine from the refrigerator, got in her Toyota
Tercel, and made her way to the address. It turned out to be a somewhat
dilapidated tenement building in a rather seedy area. She left the Tercel on
the street, unlocked. Anyone who wanted her shitty old stereo could take it
without breaking a window, at least. She debated how to transport the thumb
drive, finally deciding to keep it in the margarine tub, but not put the tub in
her purse. She assumed that if she were mugged, the mugger would opt for the
mystery prize inside her purse (a dollar forty-seven in change, Chapstick,
eyeliner, and several used Kleenexes) over a guaranteed score of fifteen ounces
of congealed vegetable oil.

But she made it to the building unscathed, and walked the
three flights of stairs to the apartment in question. Taking a deep breath, she
knocked on the door. After a moment of furious scurrying about inside the
apartment, the knob turned and the door shot open a crack. An unassuming man
with a three-day beard and tufts of brown hair sticking out from his scalp at
various angles peered out at her. He didn’t look much like the pictures of Gary
Rosenfeld she had seen online.

“How much?” the man asked anxiously.

“Huh?” replied Suzy.

“Come on, come on,” said the man.
“For the
butter.
How much?”

“I don’t…
it’s
margarine,” Suzy
managed to bluster after a moment.

The man made a sort of retching sound and slammed the door.
Suzy stood in the hallway staring at the plastic tub in her hand. After a
moment, she raised her hand to knock again.

The door flew open and a fist shot out.

“I’m not…” she started again.

“Take it or leave it,” said the man’s voice from inside,
wagging his fist at her. She held out her palm and the man dropped a fistful of
change into it. It was mostly nickels.

“I’m not selling the margarine,” she said. “I—”

“Free samples?” said the man.

“What?”

“Are you giving out free samples then?”

“I wasn’t planning to…”

“Oh, I see!” shouted the man in sudden consternation.
“Going around the neighborhood waving margarine in front of
people’s faces and then not even giving out samples.
You’re a margarine
tease, that’s what you are.”

“It’s just that…”

“Margarine tease!” the man screamed. “Margarine
tease
!”

Down the hall a door opened a crack and an old woman yelled
back, “What’s
all the
racket down there?”

“Margarine tease!” shrieked the man again.

“All right, all right, you can have as much as you want!”
said Suzy.
“Just quiet down!”

“Gimme my change back.”

She handed him back the nickels and the door slammed again.

“Keep it down!” shouted the woman down the hall.

Suzy was just about to raise her hand to knock again when
the door flew open once more. The fist shot out again, this time holding a
butter knife. “Sample!” cried the man.

Suzy sighed and removed the lid. “I’m really not here to
give out margarine samples,” she said, as the man dug into the stuff with the
knife. He pulled the knife back inside.

“Oh?” said the man, “then why did you bring it?”

“Well,” replied Suzy, uncertainly, “there’s something in
it.”

There was a spitting sound, followed by chunks of something
that looked like half chewed bread flying through the crack in the door.

“Gyeeychhhh,” groaned the man. “What do you mean? What’s in
it?”

“Are you giving away margarine samples down there?” shouted
the woman down the hall.

“Yes, but it’s got something in it!” shouted the man.

“What? Like jam?” asked the
woman.

“Is it jam?” asked the man.

“No, it’s… I’d rather not say. I’m looking for Gary—”

“It’s not jam!” shouted the man.

“Is it sprinkles?” shouted the woman.

“Is it
— ”

“Please!”
cried
Suzy. “Stop
yelling! I’m not here to give out samples!”

“Margarine tease!” shouted the woman.

“Margarine tease!” shouted the man.

“Margarine tease!” shouted the woman.

Soon they were chanting in unison. Halfway down the hall
another door opened and a small Filipino woman stepped out in the hall. She seemed
momentarily confused, but shortly was overcome by the spirit of the occasion.
“Mar-jar-een-tees!
Mar-jar-een-tees!” she shouted, and began
to clap her hands. Two other residents opened their doors and joined in as
well.

Suzy began to think she had made a terrible mistake. She put
the lid on the tub, slipped it into her purse, and began to trudge back down
the hall toward the stairs, the deafening chant ringing in her ears. As she
opened the door to the stairwell, the chant broke off, turning into boos. By
the time she made it to the first landing, it was quiet again, the building’s
occupants apparently having found something else to entertain them.

A hand fell on Suzy’s shoulder. She screamed and tore
herself away, bounding down the stairs in sheer panic. Tripping on torn carpet,
she fell headlong down the steps, and for a brief moment she was convinced that
she was going to die in a rundown tenement in Georgetown, her neck broken and
her purse full of margarine.

But then something strange happened. Just as her head was
about to hit the edge of a step, she just… stopped. For a second she hung
there, almost completely upside down, her legs splayed in the air, staring at
the stained carpet on the steps. Then gradually her body began to right itself,
rotating until she floated a foot or so above the second floor landing. The
feeling was odd—not like she was being suspended in a harness, but like gravity
itself had been warped around her. Whatever mysterious force had gripped her,
it slowly and gently lowered her to the landing.

Then she fainted.

Chapter Six
             
 

Near Fernley, Nevada; August 2016

Zion Johnson glanced at the clock on
the truck’s dash. It read
2:58
. In two minutes, with any luck, the truck
would be hijacked by gun-toting terrorists. He’d posted information about the
truck’s payload and its designated route to an Internet chat room that he knew
was frequented by members of Chaos Faction. His initial post, which was as
explicit as he could be without attracting the attention of half a dozen
different law enforcement agencies, was met with puzzlement by the terrorists.
Zion Johnson could hardly believe they were having trouble parsing the meaning
of his post; he’d been so explicit that shortly after posting he’d made
preemptive calls to the FBI, CIA, NSA, and three other intelligence agencies to
reassure them that his message was part of a Secret Service sting operation.
The exchange went like this: