The Beam- The Complete Series

by Sean Platt

  “Just a sec,” Leo replied.

  Dominic leaned down, looked sideways into Leo’s eyes, then reached a big paw into Leo’s line of sight and snapped his fingers. The fingers blocked Leo’s view of the clock. That was unacceptable.

  “Move your motherfucking hand!” Leo yelled, slapping at it.

  Dominic flinched and drew back. Then his face regained its policeman’s solidity, and he leaned in again, keeping out of Leo’s direct line of sight.

  The hand had two more laps.

  Dominic was still looking at Leo’s face. His own, from the corner of Leo’s eye, lit with realization.

  “Noah West, Leo. You’re completely dry.” He snapped his fingers, this time off to the side. “Leo, are you dry?”

  “Shh.”

  “The package they sent was supposed to be enough. I brought more. Just a little because I had to be creative to get it. But being ‘The Man’ has its privileges, and I know exactly how sensitive the sniffers are and how much I could bring. It’ll get you a few days. Omar swears up and down that he’ll have more soon. He’s got a new girl who, again, he swears up and down is the best he’s ever had. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say I have good reason to believe Omar this time. I have a Plan B in place if he fails me. Again.”

  Dominic reached for his pocket. When his hand was halfway in, he stopped as if debating with himself. Leo, even through his intense concentration (one lap to go!), could see that Dominic felt flip-flopped. He hadn’t come here to deliver dust. The dust was a by-the-way — a secondary errand he’d decided to run while at the compound for another reason. But Dominic never came to the compound. He’d come for something else, but now here he was, making drugs his first order of business.

  The hand came out of Dominic’s pocket, holding what looked like a pack of gum because it mostly was gum. Inside were foil-wrapped sticks of synthetic chewable material that hadn’t improved since Leo had been buying Doublemint and Fruit Stripe. The only difference in Dominic’s Doublemint was that two of the sticks inside, when unwrapped, would reveal themselves to be grayer than the others. If you placed those two into a bowl and tapped them, they’d break into a scree of high-grade narcotic pebbles.

  “Here,” said Dominic. “Just fix. You look like you’re going to pass out.”

  “Pusher,” said Leo. Then, all of a sudden, the idea of calling Dominic a pusher struck Leo as hilarious. He barked laughter.

  “Go ahead,” said Dominic. He pulled the pack away and began to unwrap it. “Here. I’ll break it up for you.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Noah Fucking West, Dom, just shut up for a minute,” said Leo.

  Or, more accurately, a half minute.

  Dominic watched him for most of that half minute. He was beginning to say something when the magic clock-hand passed its goal. At that point, Leo raised the rock he’d fingered from the small plastic bag and shoved it under his tongue as if it had been burning his hand. Then he leaned back, closed his eyes, and exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d held.

  “Fuck,” said Dominic, watching. “What the hell, Leo?”

  Leo held up a finger to tell Dominic that he was conscious, aware, and going nowhere. A larger, more typical dose of dust would make him nearly catatonic — surrounding him with a haze in which the most spectacular, ethereal, nature-exploring and pleasurable things would occur. But this was only one small rock, and all it was doing (all it was already doing, blessedly) was clearing the cobwebs. His foot would finally stop tapping. He’d be able to focus on something other than the clock. He’d be able to function. For slowly recovering Lunis addict Leo Booker, normal was the new high.

  Dominic shifted to rise from his half squat, but then Leo opened his eyes and said, “Wait. Here I come.”

  His anxiety had departed. Latent anger diffused like steam from a pressure valve. He felt once again inside his body, not watching it from above and loathing it.

  Keeping his eyes on the old man, Dominic sat opposite Leo, making his chair groan. It had been made by Organas, with an Organa mindset. Few Organas were overweight, but Dominic was. The wicker creaked with protest.

  “What are you doing, Leo?” he said.

  “Trying to detox.”

  “From Lunis?”

  Leo nodded. He felt like he’d run a sprint. Every word required more effort than it should have.

  “I didn’t think that was possible outside of a hospital.”

  Leo closed his eyes briefly then reopened them. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  “Or you’ll die. Or kill someone.”

  “Like I said, we’ll find out.”

  “You don’t have to ration like that anymore,” Dominic said, his eyes wide and concerned. Maybe even outright frightened. When he’d entered the room, he’d appeared confrontational, as if steeled for a fight. Leo’s plight seemed to have softened him. “I can guarantee you a steady supply.”

  “I appreciate that, Dom. But do you remember how I used to tell you that we all prefer to believe pleasant lies rather than face an unpleasant truth?”

  Dominic nodded.

  Leo shook the tiny bag and rattled the few loose gray rocks. “‘Moondust opens your mind.’ ‘Moondust is spiritual.’ ‘Moondust allows you to see truths The Beam cannot.’”

  “Lies?”

  “At least partial truths. I’d say it opens the mind, and we’ve made it spiritual. But we say those things as rationalizations. Nobody talks about addiction and dependency until the supply runs low.”

  “You really think you can just quit?”

  Leo left the question with space it deserved then slowly nodded. “Yes. I think I can.”

  “And the others?”

  “I’d like to be optimistic, but I seriously doubt it. Some of the people who live here practically became Organa because of Lunis. In my day, it was hippies and marijuana. Before that, it was hippies and just about everything you could swallow, smoke, or shoot. You embraced the lifestyle, and the drugs came with it. You didn’t have to wonder if you were an addict if you did things that way. You could just tell yourself that you were a hippie, and got whatever went with it. But we’re addicts, Dominic, true and true. There are some people I might be able to convince to see things that way, but even Leah has her doubts. I don’t know if she actually needs to be high to work her magic tricks or not, but she certainly thinks she does.”

  Still leaning against the chair’s back, Leo thought of the way Leah had navigated through District Zero to find Crumb, as if floating on instinct. He thought of the story she’d told him about finding the diary, and her preceding prescient visions on the train into the city. All of those things had been handled without more than baseline Lunis in her system, with Leah not truly high at all. What would she say if he pointed that out? Would she say that none of that had been hacking, and that it was hacking that required the drug…or would she argue that everything was hacking in the age of The Beam, reality and the digital worlds melding in each moment like the vision of herself as a melting spoon of chocolate?

  Dominic extended the pack of gum toward Leo. “Here then. Take this. There will be more.”

  Leo shook his head, ignoring the pack. “This wasn’t what I wanted for Organa, Dom. It snuck up on me. Now that I’m weaning, it’s like life is showing me truths that moondust cannot. And once I saw those truths, it was all there in front of me, as if I hadn’t been a perpetuator of the lie.”

  “What lie?”

  “That we’re every bit as plugged into the system as everyone on the grid. And that as long as we’re addicted, we’re vulnerable.”

  “To a supply cut-off,” Dominic said. “But what if I can get you stocked up? You can bunker down with stores for months or years.”

  Leo’s head tilted. He was still trying to make sense of Dominic’s earlier mood, before he’d watched Leo struggle and nearly crash. The police captain had come in ready to argue, and was now acting like a willing savior.


  “What do you have up your sleeve, Dom?” said Leo.

  “What’s the withdrawal like?” Dominic countered.

  Leo shook his head in a quick, almost distracted motion. “What? Why do you want to know?”

  “Just wondering. You’re really able to do it yourself?”

  “So far.”

  “Is it painful?”

  “Brutally. And exhausting.” Leo eyed the captain. “You ever done dust?”

  “Me? Noah Fucking West, no!” Dom looked offended, like a bullshitter.

  “I’ll just say this,” said Leo. “You get out of the haze, and it’s like the dust gets fingers out of your brain that you didn’t realize were there. It’s like it sits in your mind and whispers to you that everything’s fine. I suppose it’s that way for any addiction, be it dust or another drug…or food or The fucking Beam. ‘It’s okay; you’re perfectly normal; you could quit if you wanted.’ All lies. So even if you got us a year’s supply, what then? A year isn’t forever. We’ll always be chasing supply.” He gave Dominic a look. “Like any addict.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Besides, there’s control within control. There’s been a real edge to the dust lately. It’s like they changed the formulation. It’s not making people as mellow as it should. Instead, it’s making them edgy. I’ve woken up with horrible headaches, feeling like I’ve been hollowed out. It’s a lot harder to imagine dust as being natural and benevolent and a carrier of universal truths when it makes you feel like the bottom of an ashtray in the morning.”

  Dominic was nodding.

  “Know what I mean, Dominic?”

  Dominic blinked. “Oh, sure. But for you, for the Organa, I mean? Nothing really changes from my end. You still need supply.”

  “Change takes time. So yes, unfortunately we still need supply. Enough to keep it from getting as low as it has been.”

  “Have you been rationing with the others?”

  Leo nodded. “Some. And people know I’m doing it. It’s edging on panic.”

  “The relief shipment didn’t help?”

  “A bit, but I had to ration that too. I didn’t know if you’d been arrested.”

  Dominic’s head cocked. “Arrested? Why would I have been arrested?”

  “Your last call came from NPS.”

  “My call came from my handheld.”

  “But you were at NPS when you made the call.”

  Dominic stood. “Fucking hell, Leo. Are you Organa, or are you hackers? You need to pick one. You can’t be both.”

  “Don’t blame me, Dom. Leah told me. I didn’t even ask. She needed to find something on the canvas I keep here specifically to accept important calls like y — ”

  Dominic rolled his eyes and head at the same time. “Oh, bull-shit, Leo.”

  Leo looked up.

  “Listen to you. You can’t just say, ‘My canvas?’ You have to defend it while you’re talking about it? To me? In private?”

  “I was just saying that — ”

  “That you’re not a hypocrite? Because if you had a canvas — an ordinary, everyday canvas, not that different from the ones used by people down on the main grid — then you’d definitely be a hypocrite, right? But it’s okay if you keep it specifically so I can call you, right? So it’s my fault. Or at least, it’s necessary to carry on the good fight against The Beam and the big crooked society you’re out here to avoid.”

  “Dominic…”

  “I had a talk with NPS, Leo. Yep. You’re right. I was arrested. I used my one phone call to make sure you got your goddamned dust, courtesy of Omar Jones, who is just as helpful as he is an evil son of a bitch. They busted me, again thanks to Omar, but do you know why they let me go?”

  Leo said nothing.

  “They wanted to go after a bigger fish, and wanted my help to catch that fish. Someone I knew about. Someone with an extensive, highly disruptive criminal past.” His eyes bored directly into Leo’s. The old man watched him, seeing the boy he’d mentored all those years before. Seeing the policeman he’d become, trained too well to miss clear connections, a man who had earned more respect than to be played for a fool.

  “Sit down, Dominic,” said Leo.

  The captain didn’t sit, holding his bolted eyes to Leo.

  Leo sighed. “Please.”

  Slowly, Dominic sat back down. Again, the wicker chair protested.

  “Fine,” Leo continued. “You want to know it all? I have nothing to hide. As I’m sure NPS told you, I once led a rather violent group known as Gaia’s Hammer. We embraced technology as a sort of poetic irony. Way I saw it at the time, humanity hadn’t learned the evils of putting their machines above the machines of the natural world, so we would have to show them. It became a matter of pride to use the system against itself. We had the best hackers. We had the best upgrades. Did they tell you about my fist?” Leo held up his bony old arm, its skin sagging.

  Dominic nodded. Much of the confrontation had melted from his face. He seemed surprised that Leo hadn’t tried to bluster, and was now robbed of his best conversational weapons.

  “That was a long time ago,” he continued, lowering his arm back into his lap. He looked down, seeing his loose skin as if for the first time. He was older than a person should be. Leo hadn’t had any new enhancements other than emergency medical nanobots for over forty years. He was finally the old man nature had intended, and in time, he’d die a natural death. He was a few decades behind, but he was finally getting to where he was supposed to be.

  “If NPS pulled you in to talk about me,” he said, “I suppose they must think I’m up to my old tricks.”

  Dominic nodded again. “They think you’re preparing to revisit the Gaia days.”

  Leo laughed.

  “Are you?”

  The laugh fell from Leo’s mouth as if hot. “Of course not. You know that.”

  “Do I? I thought I knew you all along.”

  “Did I ever lie to you, Dom?”

  Dominic seemed to think. Then he said, “Don’t try to bullshit me, Leo.”

  “I’m not bullshitting you and never have. I was the teacher; you were the student. You never asked me how old I was, and if you had, I’d have told you. It’s true; I didn’t volunteer that I used to lead an anti-establishment, quasi-military organization. But you tell me, Dom — when is the right time to bring something like that up in conversation?”

  “This isn’t funny, Leo.”

  “It’s at least a little bit funny.” Leo smiled.

  “Goddammit, Leo.”

  “What was I supposed to do, Dom? Give you my history? When you met me, I was a younger version of the man I am today. Biologically speaking, I’m probably in my seventies now. When we met, I was biologically in my thirties. I haven’t enhanced since Gaia made the deal with the NAU. I’ve kept my end of the bargain. I was already prepared to stop that life, and I did. My own change preceded the change they forced upon me.”

  “Why weren’t you arrested?”

  “Oh, I was. They wanted to crucify me. Public execution. But someone higher up the chain wanted to make a deal even more. I was ready to take it. I became the natural, granola-crunching man I am today. The same man you met in school. The things I taught you then, I still believe and abide by today. So how did I lie?”

  “It was an error of omission.”

  Leo thought then pulled his legs up from the floor and sat in the chair Indian style.

  “You’re right. I apologize.”

  Dominic waited for more, but there was none.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. I’m sorry for not informing you. Now you know. And today, I really am the old Organa man I seem to be. I’m not planning anything, which you already know if you gave it any thought at all.”

  “No secret plans? No new technologies meant to fight technologies where they live?”

  “How would I coordinate something like that, Dom? I wouldn’t know how to make the call to arms, or to accept the call if i
t came.”

  At that exact moment, there was a trilling sound. Leo actually hung his head and sighed.

  “What’s that, Leo?”

  Leo fished his handheld from his pocket. “Another error of omission.” His thumb hovered over the screen, preparing to take the call he shouldn’t know how to take on the handheld he shouldn’t have because he was an old hippie. “Honestly, I just forgot.” His mouth opened halfway then closed, and he added, “Okay, I’m a hypocrite. And sometimes I want to check my mail without taking a goddamned train.”

  Without waiting for Dominic’s answer, he pressed the screen and took the call. Voice only, of course. Over-the-air video up here was highly unreliable. For 2097, Leo thought, audio-only calls were just shy of grinding spears into tips using rocks as sharpeners. If he was a hypocrite, at least it was only partial hypocrisy.

  “Leo,” said a female voice. “I’m here.”

  Leo nodded internally. She’d headed into the city to see Crumb, who was now Stephen York. He’d asked her to check in while she was there, but he’d forgotten all about her errand during the fascination of the clock and his own tapping feet.

  Leo eyed Dominic, who was eying him right back. “Did you talk to him yet?” he asked Leah.

  “No. My handheld doesn’t seem to work right inside the building.”

  Leo had noticed that too. But why would she bother calling before going in rather than waiting until after? The whole point was to get an update from the old man, and she hadn’t had time to get one yet.

  “Great,” he said. “Have fun.”

  “That’s it? You don’t have more to tell me?”

  Now Leo was just confused. She was a big girl and didn’t need hand-holding. She knew Crumb (even though he was York now; Leo should really keep that in mind) as well as any of them. Arguably, now that he was no longer a crazy old man ranting about squirrels and was instead a father of the network, Leah probably knew him much better than Leo ever could.

  “No,” said Leo.

  “So I should just go in? Just talk to him about whatever?”

  Again, Leo glanced at Dominic. He seemed curious, and Leo wondered what this conversation must look like to the police captain, who could only hear half of it.