“Hello?” a muffled male voice called. “The doctor downstairs sent someone up to this apartment. I need to speak with her.”
Eadie’s mind raced through defensive strategies. Feds were too big, too fast to fight outright. If a hand reached through the door she could slam a shoulder against it and slash the wrist. If he kicked the door in—he had to see the frame was already shattered—she wouldn’t get that chance. Of course a Fed would kick in the door and keep that distance between himself and what was on the other side. What to do then? She could lunge at his throat with the knife but Feds had arms as wide as her waist; he’d just knock her to the ground—
“Eadie?” the voice came again. “Are you in there? It’s me. Uh, Lawrence Williams the Seventh.” The whisper rose to a whine. “Can you let me in, please?”
Eadie stood still.
“Eadie?” Lawrence jiggled the handle, pushing against the door.
She stepped to the side, pulling the chair away and letting him stumble forward into the room. Before he could regain his balance, she grabbed him by the neck and flung him to the floor, raising the knife to strike at anyone who might have come with him. There was nobody else in the hall.
She pushed the door shut and braced it with the chair again, then snatched one of Lawrence’s wrists and pulled it across his body, immobilizing him under her shin as she put a knee on his chest. Her other knee pinned his arm to the floor. She lowered the knife to his throat.
“Why?” she hissed.
Lawrence’s body arched upward as he craned his neck. “Eadie? Is that you?”
She put the blade’s point on his forehead, guiding his head back to the floor.
“Why did you tell the Feds where I was, Lawrence the Seventh?”
“I didn’t mean to! I swear, really! They got the location from my EI!”
She released him, got up, and switched on the light.
“Wow, Eadie, you look different.”
“Yeah. I went to try and clean up a bit and I found this black hair dye in the bathroom.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “Not much of a disguise, but it can’t hurt. I thought I would help myself to some new clothes, too.” She gestured at her outfit. She now wore a faded, nearly threadbare black pantsuit and gray spongy shoes instead of her uniform Mary Janes. “Mrs. Klaussen didn’t mind.” She nodded towards the dead woman.
Lawrence followed her gaze and gasped. His eyes shot back to Eadie and widened.
“Did you …” he began.
“Dead when I got here,” she said. Clenching her jaw made the wound on her face itch and throb more. “I don’t just go around killing people, you know.”
“Of course,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry.” Then he looked around the room and was startled again by the Prophet’s trancelike posture at the tiny table.
“Oh. He’s alive,” Eadie assured Lawrence, with a slight smile. “As far as I know, anyway. So how did you find me here?”
“Oh,” he said, climbing to his feet. “Some woman told me where I could find the General.” He shrugged.
Eadie groaned. “The General. Of course.” She turned to the Prophet. “And I bet I know where she got that idea.”
“Maybe it’s not such a bad thing, Eadie,” Lawrence said. “That Fed had slapped the woman around. He scared her almost to death, but apparently she never told him where you were. She told me, but not them, because she believed you really are some sort of general who’s going to lead a revolution and free the whole world. Or something like that. She even waited with me until the Fed left—he was following Dok on foot, but I don’t know where—and she helped me into the building through a back way. You know those Federal vehicles have cameras that automatically perform face scans of everyone who comes near. They’d have identified me in seconds.”
She lowered herself into a chair, placing the knife back on the table. “Well, we seem safe enough for the moment. And even if we aren’t, it’s nighttime in the Zone. We can’t go out wandering the streets.” Lawrence looked around the room for an unoccupied chair, and not finding one, sat down on the floor.
Eadie rubbed her eyes. “I guess we’re stuck here.” She shook her head, muttering, “I hope Dok’s all right out there.” She sighed and shrugged. “So, Lawrence Williams the Seventh. What do you study at that college of yours?”
Fiend territory
Brian turned his head again. A pair of eyes stared out of the darkness, a few centimeters from his face. There was no sound.
Something rustled off to the side, and something else rustled along the wall behind him, and another shifting noise sounded behind the Fiend who was eye to eye with him. All of it was distinctly louder than the wind-blown sleet which still pelted the building. Intentionally louder. They were letting themselves be known—at least fifteen, maybe twenty.
Fiends are supposed to move in small, loose bands, like maybe four or five. Why so many?
“We know you are alone,” the closest one said. “We have been watching you since you entered this domain.”
“Why—“ Brian’s voice cracked. “Why didn’t you kill me, then?”
The face came closer. “You think we’re stupid?” Brian recognized the raspy voice of a heavy drug user. The breath smelled of grease and wet filth, like a backed-up drain. “A lone man shows up here while there’s still daylight, walks straight down the middle of the street, doesn’t even bother protecting himself from the rain. Everyone knows this area’s controlled by the New Union. So we figure either you came to join us, or you came to meet the Unity … or you could’ve been sent in by some other gang to set yourself up as bait. But we checked all around and there’s nobody but you.”
Brian feverishly searched his memory for everything he’d ever heard about Fiends. Though the various gangs constantly attacked and slaughtered each other, Fiends all seemed to share a common, essentially nihilist culture. To them, Unity was the idea that life and death are the same. He blinked, swallowed, blinked again. Meeting Unity: Dying.
“So are you here to join the New Union, or to meet Unity?” The face stayed where it was, about a finger’s width from Brian’s.
Brian swallowed, suppressing a shudder. “I have come,” he said, “to join the New Union.”
The face backed slowly away. A fist smashed into Brian’s nose four quick times and he collapsed to the ground.
Amelix Retreat
A SUBSIDIARY OF AMELIX INTEGRATIONS
Reconditioning Feedback Form
Seeker of Understanding
INVOLUNTARY, GRADE ONE
Subject: Eric Basali, #117B882QQ
Division: Corporate Regulations
1. Please describe your relationship with Amelix Integrations, including your feelings about the company and your interactions with it. Honesty is imperative.
My head feels different in this place, and not just from the overt psychological manipulation. The new meds you’re synthesizing for me are making it harder to process things. My increasingly desperate sexual needs are so out of character for me that they’re clearly not natural. I’m not sure whether it’s just from the pathway amplification or perhaps you’re drugging me for that, too.
At first I was sure I’d be brought before some committee and made to apologize for my comments here, but nobody has ever mentioned this feedback at all. I guess it fits with the reason the staff is so deadpan and apathetic around here. It’s the process, the drugs, and the pathway amplification that do the work; there’s no need for personal involvement.
But truth has value even when nobody’s listening, at least to me, because I’m still a conscious being. That’s what consciousness is: the all-consuming need not simply to know, but to understand, and understanding can be drawn only from the truth. Now my search for truth is just a struggle against the chemicals and the rigor and the isolation. You try to make truth so painful that my brain stops trying to figure out what is real, and that’s how you substitute your twisted, corporate vision of the world for my own sense of r
ight and wrong. Thinking is my problem, so you’ll punish me until I stop.
It’s going to be a long several months.
I asked Andrew the Accepted about the reconditioning process and how the company could possibly consider putting me through it to be a good investment. I mean, how many years do I even have left to sit at my desk?
“You’ll serve Amelix for a long time after you leave your desk,” he said. His eyes widened and his voice took on that rolling, unmistakable Accepted tone, dripping with serenity and conviction. “Reconditioned brains don’t just function better in the ambulatory world. They work better in the Brain Trust, too, providing better retention and processing for hundreds of years. Equally important is the investment in future ambulatory workers. You’re ten times more likely to raise children who will be reconditioned when you’ve been reconditioned, yourself.”
2. Please share some details of your experience here at Amelix Retreat today.
This can’t be day 3 already. I don’t feel I’ve slept at all.
The food they serve here isn’t all that satisfying. In fact, it consists of mostly sweets, but I tried to eat breakfast today, hoping to keep up my strength. Then came group therapy. Full of synthesized sugar and nauseated from pathway amplification, I sat holding my head as my group berated me.
“Your illness is your own fault, 2Q,” Burt told me.
“Your self-serving insistence on clinging to your own ideas has robbed Amelix of the intellectual energy you owe it,” 6T said.
“What’s so great about your thoughts?” Burt asked. “Amelix has hundreds of thousands of brains, in ambulatory workers and in the Brain Trust. What ingenious idea are you going to come up with on your own that some part of Amelix hasn’t already considered?”
The war game was horrific and the people I encountered were despicable. I thought being prisoner to you people was bad enough, but those Andro-Heathcliffe people aren’t even human. Two of them captured me today and the man held a gun on me while the woman squatted over my face to urinate. Burt happened to be the one to find me. He shouted for the others, chasing the pair away, so he got to reward himself today, if only to a level 3. I was incredibly jealous, watching him.
Later, as you probably observed for yourself through the hidden cameras in my room, I tried to take advantage of a spare moment and masturbate. It was pointless, of course. I discovered that access to pleasure centers in my brain is now completely controlled by the EI/pathway amplification loop, which is itself under your control. I experienced almost no physical sensation, but my mind became consumed with the idea that unearned pleasure is forbidden and wicked. Then pathway amplification kicked in and I became violently sick. Now it’s clear: I feel only what you want me to feel.
At religious services we sat on the floor, swaying back and forth, chanting, “The Lord provides through Amelix.” I didn’t want to do it at first, but then it started to feel like electricity was flowing through my body as we all chanted it together, and gradually, all the hostility I’d felt in group disappeared. Writing about it now is even starting to take away some of the nausea I was feeling just a minute ago.
I never cared about religion. Never saw any point in it at all, really. What difference did it make if God was watching me, presenting me with problems to solve and judging me on the outcomes? The company already provided more supervision and criticism than I could stand. Today I learned that there’s another side to feeling watched like that. When you do precisely what you’re told and surrender your will completely, you can bask in divine approval.
When chanting was over, I asked a quiet lady called CZ (“Seazie”) why there was never any story or doctrine included in worship sessions. She was uncomfortable speaking because I guess we were supposed to be meditating, but she whispered back quickly. “We’re supposed to be learning how to get along,” she said. “That’s what reconditioning is. Why focus on details that might invite questions and conflict?”
I guess I understand that. Though you mandate that we be intensely religious, you want us to adopt only the superficial parts of religion that everyone can agree on.
3. Please describe the important relationships in your life.
I’ve always felt alone, my whole life, but it’s never been so frightening before. Why do I end up huddled in the corner of my room, terrified that there’s nobody else in the building, desperate for the reassurance of the slightest human contact? Even though the whole group is as predictable as a computer program, they are all I have, and I think they’re keeping me from going crazy in here. My guess, or maybe my hope, is that you’ll see that as a positive sign.
What is group really for? Why the constant criticism from my peers, the pressure to criticize myself? Why the collective mandate on pleasing a generic God, a pro-corporate ruler and benefactor, one who (conveniently) presents no distracting backstory or controversial tenets? Why must I watch my groupmates get rewarded with physical pleasure doled out on a one to ten scale? You’re breaking me down, making me see myself—and all individuals—as insignificant while building Amelix up to appear ever more righteous.
You ask me to surrender my consciousness because you want me to accept my employer as my deity. If God planned my life and Amelix controls every aspect of that life, then Amelix is my God.
4. Please share any additional thoughts or comments.
From the moment we are born we are told over and over that our job is our purpose and organization will move us forward. Apparently, human advancement is too important to let actual humanity get in the way. But what are we advancing toward?
Vacuum
Sato spoke to the mist.
“You will hear this. Now, or perhaps when you are back here and I am in control of the body again, you will hear this message and know. You try hard to suppress me but I can break through. I know this body is still alive, and so it will still function for my mission. You cannot banish me, and you cannot escape. We will separate only when the mission is complete. Never before.” Sato opened himself to feeling the body, concentrating on the location and position of the limbs …
“You have let the block down! It is my turn to take control.”
The old lady’s apartment
“Okay, so you think I’m wrong,” Eadie said. Lawrence smiled to himself as he noticed she was covering her nose and mouth. The old lady’s body was giving off a slight odor now that they had warmed up the room a little, but of course he was used to this smell from visits to his grandparents’ room. It didn’t make up for crumpling to the floor in front of her at the diner, but at least he could show he had a different kind of toughness. “But you haven’t explained why you feel that way, Lawrence. Prove to me I’m wrong.”
“I don’t have enough information,” Lawrence said. He glanced at the Prophet, who was slumped against the wall in a chair. The dirty, circular mark on his forehead seemed to shine in the light of the single candle Eadie had found.
Was she doing this just to taunt him, to make him even more desperate to reach out through the EI and have the world’s wisdom at his disposal? Somebody somewhere had already proven he was right, he was sure, but he couldn’t access it without opening himself up and giving away their location. Being disconnected like this was more than a simple inconvenience. It was as if a lifeline had been cut off, and Lawrence felt a profound sense of isolation and frustration, one that had begun to manifest itself physically as well as emotionally.
“What do you mean? You don’t understand the point I’m making?” Eadie asked.
“No, I get it. You said that education and intelligence are different things, and the fact that someone has an education doesn’t necessarily mean the person is smart. But I said that intelligence is knowledge, so education, as the source of knowledge, has to be the source of intelligence, too. Then you said education isn’t the source of knowledge, and now you’re calling it brainwashing and trying to tell me that school doesn’t actually provide any knowledge at all. Right?”
“
What I said is that school doesn’t provide any knowledge that can’t be found someplace else. So why don’t you have enough information to show me how I’m wrong? I don’t get it. What more information do you need?”
“Well, I think it should be obvious. I need to do some research, to find out what people have said on the subject.”
She laughed at him. Not a mean or spiteful laugh. More like he was a small child who had done something cute. It stung like a blow from his father’s “grade cane,” being laughed at by the girl he’d so often fantasized about—a mere waitress—who he’d wanted to raise up from her miserable, degrading situation.
“Don’t you see, Lawrence? That’s what I’m talking about. You just proved my point.”
“How can needing more information prove that education is the same as brainwashing? Really, Eadie, I don’t think you’re adequately prepared for this discussion.”
“Look,” she said. “You have to decide which position to take, right? You can either agree with me that education is really just a process to bring you into society’s pattern—to fill you with all the rules and positions and manners and whatever—or you can disagree.” She smiled condescendingly at him, as if he were a four-year-old telling her he wanted to be a cowboy. The scab on her face stretched and crinkled “And you’re telling me you disagree, but you can’t tell me why. You need to go do research before you can tell me your opinion!” She smiled broadly, raising her eyebrows. “Don’t you get it? Don’t you see why that’s funny?”
Lawrence shook his head.
She placed her fingertips over her eyelids, massaging gingerly as if he had given her a headache. “What you’re doing right now is proving that you can’t tell the difference between indoctrination and intelligence. You can’t tell me you feel one way or another because you need to go read what other people have said. You can’t form your own opinion until some expert gives it to you. And that’s what you learn in school: ‘Believe the experts,’ right? ‘Memorize what they say.’ If you want to argue with them, you have to find new experts; or if you’re really courageous, check their bibliographies and try to find places where they misquoted somebody else.”
The Book of Eadie, Volume One of the Seventeen Trilogy Page 13
