The Book of Eadie, Volume One of the Seventeen Trilogy

by Mark D. Diehl

  Eadie walked toward the center of the room, surveying the Underground Kingdom’s surprisingly impressive arsenal. “How many are there?” she asked.

  The two guides looked at each other. One nodded in agreement as the other spoke. “I believe there are a few more than twenty-two hundred weapons, General … Not quite one for each Subject.”

  Amelix Retreat

  A subsidiary of Amelix Corporation

  NOTICE OF REASSIGNMENT:

  SEEKER OF UNDERSTANDING TO ACCEPTED

  Dear Eric Basali #117B882QQ

  CONGRATULATIONS!

  The Case Management Committee responsible for monitoring your progress has recommended your advancement into the order of the Accepted. A recognition ceremony will take place this evening at 7:00pm in the religious services hall, at which time you will receive your Accepted mirror and collar pin.

  You may elect to return to your previous work assignment as a Corporate Regulations Technician or you may choose to remain at Amelix Retreat to help guide new Seekers toward the light. Please consider these options carefully and be prepared to announce your decision as a part of tonight’s ceremony. Arrangements will be made immediately to facilitate your transition.

  Welcome to the Amelix family of fully Accepted members!

  Outside Fiend territory, near one of the Zone’s minor entertainment areas

  Spiral stood panting over the dealer’s dead body. His voice came out hushed but excited. “I don’t know how you do it, Frontman Saaamurai. Another easy scooore—and this one had tons.”

  Brian sighed, hanging the sword behind his back. “Dealers are eeeasy to find when you know their habits.” He accepted the three bags of powder from Spiral, each one bigger than his head. “Nice work heeere,” he said. “Looks like I chose the right Round to take out toniiight. Check the dead caaarefully—there’ll be weapons up sleeeeves and behind backs.”

  “It’s eearly, sir,” Spiral said. “Still lots of daark hours ahead. We ought to be able to sniff out a few more, eh, sir?”

  “I think so. These three went dooown without a single shot.” His voice quavered as he remembered the sword cut he had made. He cleared his throat, attempting to swallow the thrill of causing so much pain. “Wee’ll stick to blades … avoooid Federal nuisances. If the guns come out, we head baaack. Besides, blades are much morrre fun.”

  20

  Underground, in tunnels leading toward Eadie’s room

  “I don’t understand why you need me for this, sir,” Lawrence said. They had just left the taller main tunnels and turned into one that forced them to stoop.

  “You’re an essential part of the leadership here, Lawrence,” Old Fart said. “She’ll listen to you.” He paused. “Or, at least, she should listen. You’re a hero.”

  Lawrence scoffed. “A hero.” He resisted the urge to point out why that was absurd. Noticing he was again running his thumb over the double gold rings he had taken from the dead Unnamed back at the hotel, he made himself stop. The rings had been taken, not earned. Earning anything was far beyond Lawrence’s capacity anymore.

  They had nearly reached Eadie’s chamber. Old Fart lowered his voice. “You saved her life, Lawrence. You saw the right thing to do and you did it, in a world where almost everyone is too afraid to do that.”

  Lawrence stayed quiet.

  A few more strides brought them to the opening of Eadie’s small tube. There they stood and waited, still hunched over, for her to acknowledge their presence. She was seated on the floor with Rosa, leaning up against the narrow flat wall at its opposite end, illuminated by dreary grey daylight that filtered down from a drain above her. They were talking with their faces close together, and neither seemed to have noticed the visitors. Old Fart cleared his throat.

  Eadie didn’t look up. “What do you two want?” she asked.

  “Eadie,” Old Fart said. “We want to talk to you about your plan.”

  “I figured.” Rosa cupped Eadie’s ear and whispered. Eadie nodded.

  Then there came a long pause, during which none of them moved or spoke. Eadie clearly understood that the other two would have been trained since they were children not to enter a private room without permission.

  Lawrence at last willed his foot to cross the threshold. Rosa was up and standing in front of him before he took a second step.

  “Eadie, I think this is crazy,” he began, rising again to his full height as he tried to push past Rosa. Rosa pushed back, with surprising strength and determination. He looked over her head at Eadie and continued to speak. “I mean, raiding the Central Business District is so far beyond what these people can accomplish … it just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Let ’em in, Rosa,” Eadie sighed, and the pushing stopped.

  Old Fart timidly followed Lawrence into the room. He stopped just inside the entrance, however, his fingers laced tightly together in front of him. “I know you base a lot of your beliefs and your goals on that notebook, Eadie,” Old Fart said, “but from what I’ve seen, it’s nothing but random daydreams from an unhappy office worker. The Subjects are real human beings and they have real problems. You can’t just fling them at the electric fence because of something you read there.”

  Eadie stared from one to another. Rosa settled back down next to her. “I am aware that they have real problems,” she said. “To me, the most obvious one is that they aren’t getting enough to eat. What the Prophet has taught them to do with his little fungus farms is amazing, but their population has grown and grown, and there just isn’t enough food to go around anymore. There hasn’t been for a long time—they’re slowly starving to death. They’re going through training exercises every day, but they’re getting weaker, not stronger. Nobody is going to give them any handouts, and they’ll never be better able to take what they need than they are right now.”

  “But there have got to be easier ways to deal with the food issue,” Lawrence said. “The CBD is fortified and has a pretty substantial security force. Each of the corporations has its own security, too, not to mention the Unnamed that are always coming and going.”

  “And the electric fence,” added Old Fart.

  Eadie folded her arms, looking irritated and impatient. “The electric fence keeps people out if they’re walking along the surface. We can come up from underneath.”

  “Well, we checked that out, because you wanted us to,” Lawrence said. He tried to meet her stare. “The CBD has a separate underground infrastructure, totally sealed from any of our tunnels.”

  “No. There’s a way.” She rolled out the floppy, yellow paper she had in front of her. “I got this map from the Explorers.” She put her finger on the map. “See the train tracks? Some of our tunnels connect to the train tunnels. And according to you—” she pointed at Old Fart—“the train station is right next to the warehouse where all the companies accept deliveries from outside. It’s a single target with enough calories to feed the Subjects for a really long time.”

  Old Fart sighed. “But why try something so huge when there are all kinds of other places we could take from? Smaller, less protected targets like restaurants or bars …”

  “We’re not doing that,” she said. “Restaurants and little stores aren’t the source of our problems. It’s the hierarchy that has created this situation, where a few obedient drones get to live comfortably while the rest of us starve and freeze and kill each other.” She shook her head. “Those people running little shit businesses? They’re like us, just trying to survive. It’s the giants at the top of the hierarchy who keep us all miserable and trapped.”

  “Eadie?” Lawrence said quietly. “Do you see why this sounds insane? You want to ignore the easy places and storm into the one place where we’re guaranteed to fail, all because you read a few scribbles saying that the corporations are the root of the world’s problems.”

  “One hit in the CBD, and the Underground Kingdom is set for a few years,” she said. “Maybe more. If we take those easy targets instead, we’
ll have to hit again and again. We’ll be the new enemy the Feds teach everyone to fear. But one raid using the train tunnels, and they won’t even connect it to the Underground Kingdom at all.”

  “But the CBD security office is also right by the train station,” Old Fart said, pointing at another square on the map. “Even if you overpower the guards on duty there, they might still manage to call for assistance. Corporate, or UE. Maybe Feds.”

  “That’s why we’ve got to get them away from that part of the CBD for a little while, and I think there’s a way to do that.” She pointed at another part of the map. “Over by this gate there’s not much coverage at all because it’s on the side closest to the suburbs. If we brought a big group of people up to the fence, we could make the guards nervous enough to draw them over. That’d give us easier access to the area by the train station.”

  “You’re just going to have a bunch of Subjects pop out of the ground and stand by the fence there?” Lawrence asked.

  “I thought maybe I’d have them protest something, like not being allowed to compete for jobs there,” Eadie said. “It’s a legitimate enough claim, I think. People ought to buy it … at least long enough for us to get what we need from the other side of the CBD. The protesters will come up from pipes in the Zone where there aren’t many cameras. All they’ll see in the CBD are people walking up.”

  Lawrence and Old Fart looked at each other. “It still sounds too dangerous,” Lawrence said.

  “We fight or we starve. One way we have a chance,” she said.

  Dear Mr. Kessler, Sir:

  Thank you for the opportunity to serve our war effort and the Lord’s will by returning to work here at Amelix Integrations. It was truly an honor just to be welcomed back to your department, but I never would have dreamed that I would get to sit in your office and chat with you like that, sir. My new Accepted status has made me your proudest and most motivated employee, sir.

  You asked me to give you a document outlining my proposal for making our department’s output more effective. I will try to do that, here, sir.

  As you know, our calls are already data-mined and sorted by computers. We then read and explain the regulations as they are provided to us by the data-mining computers. But there is always the risk that the callers will misunderstand what we are trying to do, or even simply disagree with the regulations cited to them.

  But if we utilize subliminal programs during the call, not only can we ensure better understanding, but we can also convince every caller that all our regulations are the best moral and ethical choices as well. In other words, we will use the standard data mining in the same way the reconditioning techniques use it, giving every employee a small dose of conditioning during every call.

  Additionally, if we, the Regulation Technicians, are cross-trained in persuasive language of the type used in advertising or in the reconditioning process, we can ensure nearly perfect compliance from every worker throughout the entire Amelix corporate family who consults our department.

  You had also asked me to consider whether this new approach might result in the elimination of a few jobs, sir. I would say that while it is unlikely to have any immediate impact on the number of employees our division needs to function, in the long term it could certainly eliminate the need for a few employees. Once the subliminal and overt manipulation techniques are implemented, more and more workers will become knowledgeable and passionate about corporate regulations, and over time this might result in fewer calls.

  I will do my best to answer any questions you may have, sir. This employee believes that a higher degree of specialization, and therefore efficiency, will allow us to better serve Amelix and the Lord’s will. Thank you for considering this humble idea, sir.

  Eric Basali

  Top Dog’s strategy room, Fiend territory

  “You’re a gift, Samurai,” Top Dog said. “A gift of fate. Nobody brings in more than you. Your arrival proves the New Union’s rise to power is natural and right. As I grow my organization and gain strength, I attract better soldiers, and now it’s growing faster than ever. Everything happens for a reason. My power, your position … you can just feel that it’s the way the world’s supposed to be.” He downed the cognac remaining in his snifter. Brian did the same.

  “Thank you, Top Dog, sir,” Brian said. He kept a mildly amused expression on his face as he struggled to prevent himself from leaping at the man.

  I’ll kill you soon enough, asshole.

  Top Dog looked pensively at Brian. “You have that knack for finding street dealers, too, Samurai,” he said.

  Samurai, come out and play. If I have to talk to this asshole much longer, I’m going to reach across this table and stick my thumbs in his eyes and squeeze until I feel the back of his skull. He loves you and all your crazy shit. You don’t even have to try at getting along with your little pal, here …

  “Yeah,” Top Dog said. “I thought so. I can see it in your eyes. You were a dealer.”

  Brian blinked away his silent murderous rant, nodding his head. Top Dog laughed and pushed forward his empty glass. Brian reached for it, lifting the bottle to pour for Top Dog and himself. Top Dog finished off half of his and Brian quickly copied. Top Dog leaned forward and set down his drink. “Me, too.” He laughed once more. Brian forced a tight smile.

  Top Dog’s gaze ran along the line where the clean, beige walls of his suite connected to the clean, white ceiling. “Lonely life, dealing.” Brian nodded again. “Worse for me than most, I think. I was manufacturing.”

  “Really? What’d you make? Sir?”

  Top Dog grinned broadly. “Street speedballs. What’d you handle?”

  Brian shrugged. “Mostly straight horse. Woulda loved to’ve known somebody with a speedball strain, though. Could’ve moved a lot more with both halves of the equation like that. Sir.”

  “Oh, yeah. It was a great strain. Smack and flake made right in the same flask, by the same bac. When the flask hit carrying capacity and crashed, it left perfect-ratio concentrations. Easy money.” He laughed, shaking his head.

  “And if you don’t mind my asking, sir, how did you end up here?”

  “That’s where you and I differ, Samurai. I never ended up here. I came here on my own, and I came here a leader.” Top Dog sat back, leaning against the wall and nodding to himself. “The strain mutated. That was my first gift of fate, but I didn’t know it right away. When my meanest, toughest customers came crawling back begging me for more, I started to realize what I had. The new strain’s product was like a speedball, but it gave weird pathway rewards for violence, especially for violence causing death.” His face slackened and his eyes widened in a look of euphoric nostalgia. “You’ve killed on Juice. You know. They all felt that rush, and they needed to feel it again and again and again.”

  He finished the rest of the cognac in his glass. Brian offered to pour but Top Dog rose and walked toward his door. “I started with just a few of them. Junkies hooked on the new thrill. They guarded me, and of course my little operation, from the violence of others like themselves. The numbers just kept going up.”

  Top Dog turned, his body framed by the doorway as he literally looked down his nose at Brian. “Before long, I found myself with an army. I took that army into this war zone”—he gestured broadly, indicating the territory beyond his walls—“and built what you see today.”

  Brian stared up at Top Dog’s smug expression.

  “I got you now, too, Samurai. You’re another part of what the fates want for me. Just like all the others.”

  Oh you think so you piece of shit I don’t need you or your Juice I just need blood your blood you arrogant pus blister and I might just take you right now—

  Top Dog strode to the big table. Penciled on a chunk of clean sheetrock were plans for the next mission. Top Dog caressed it with his fingertips, smearing a few of the pencil marks. “This raid’s gonna be the biggest of all. Hundreds of places, all at once.” Top Dog held his glass toward Brian, who
poured again. “I think we’ll have to keep some of them alive to carry all the shit back for us.”

  Brian nodded slowly. “Killing so many innocents so fast will draw a great deal of attention. Sir.”

  Top Dog put both palms on the table. His eyes flashed. “The innocents you speak of are of no concern to me, and I’m disappointed to see that they’re a concern for you, Frontman.” Top Dog stared a moment longer, and then his gaze shifted in the direction of his bodyguards, who waited outside the door. Brian watched, wondering if perhaps the man might call them in to punish him, thrilled with the possibility he might have an excuse to fight and kill.

  “Those people are already dead,” Top Dog said. “They get carted between their shit-sucking jobs and their little rodent cage homes, thinking they’ve got it so much better than the rest of us because they have climate control and synthetic food. They suffer through day after day, defined and controlled by their ridiculous post-Restoration society, wasting resources that the rest of us could make far better use of. Their voluntary enslavement to the giant corporations is what created this system in the first place, Samurai. Your innocents are the bricks from which this shitty society was built. We are the only alternative left.”

  “Of course, Top Dog. This Frontman used the term only because the Federal Agents would be certain to use it in their propaganda campaign …”

  Top Dog relaxed a little. “Don’t worry about the Feds. We’re striking fast in lots of different places, so they’re unlikely to confront us at all. We’ll deal with the Feds when we’re matched, and when we’re outnumbered, we’ll fade.”

  MediPirates Bulletin Board

  Posted by LilliBoo #wT376e:

  Regarding the Dok situation, I remember that his last posts before the murders were about some drug that was making people crazy. Then he went and poisoned fourteen patients (that we know of—maybe more) and disappeared. He can’t be much of a threat anymore, I’d think, with no office and the Feds after him, not to mention the mob of furious people that would be sure to kill him if he ever showed his face again.