by Sean Platt
“Kick her over here,” he said to the man behind Natasha.
Natasha looked back, ready to tell the encroaching soldiers to fuck themselves, but then she heard a slumping noise as her head turned. By the time she was looking fully backward, the Beamer had fallen into an untidy pile, his Fawkes mask flickering away, turning back to the shiny black of his helmet visor. A moment later, the same happened to the Beamers flanking the stage.
Natasha looked forward. The man at the foot of the stage seemed unsettled. The hand holding the stunner started to shake. If it was already activated and he dropped it, half of the room would be dead. Luck of the drop would decide which half.
“What did you do?” said the man. His smooth manner was buckling. His hand shook. His hold on the stunner started to falter. Natasha found her mind filled with an insane thought: Could she grab the stunner from his hand? And if she could, was there anywhere safe that she could throw it in time?
Around the room’s edges, Beamers’ knees unlocked and sent them sliding to the floor. Soon, the man in the middle was the only intruder still standing.
“What did you do?” he yelled.
Before Natasha could answer, his grip failed, and his hand opened. The stunner’s dead man’s switch opened, and the device’s live half — currently facing away from Natasha — started to flash.
The crowd screamed.
Natasha lunged. Her heel caught, and she tripped. She struck the floor then looked up, trying to right herself. Her mind began counting. How many seconds before a stunner blew? They were designed to be held, not thrown, fired off in just one direction. It might not have long of a fuse.
Two seconds. Three.
But before she could so much as prop herself up to reach for it, the perfectly circular haze of a police containment force field shimmered into existence around the stunner. The field’s operator had either poor or excellent aim because he made the field too large. It encapsulated the stunner and most of the Beamer’s arm, but it swallowed three quarters of his head as well. When the field formed, it was as if someone had severed the Beamer at the boundary with one quick slice. His one-armed, quarter-headed body spasmed then folded to the floor and poured blood as if from a spigot.
Fascinated, Natasha watched the head, arm, and weapon inside the floating field as it hovered in front of her. The surprised-looking head, its visor askew, lolled to the side. She could see where the man’s jawbone had been molecularly separated from its remainder. The surreal sight lasted only a second, and the stunner blew. There was a soundless flash as the field was bathed in a perfectly circular black char. Then the thing popped like a bubble, and there was rain of coal-colored dust that had once been flesh and bone.
“Clear!” shouted a voice.
Natasha suddenly realized she was very, very tired. The crowd seemed equally exhausted. Everyone in the room began falling unconscious to the floor.
Gas, she thought. They hit the Beamers with nano soldiers then gassed the room to be sure.
It had to be the police. Directorate, savior police. And then, sure enough, the far doors burst open, and a line of riot officers wearing gas masks stormed the room, guns up and waving.
In her final conscious moments, Natasha realized that someone was touching her hair. She tried to look up but couldn’t lift her head. The hair-toucher seemed to realize this and bowed into her line of sight.
It was Isaac, wearing a small mask and a riot vest.
“Good morning, baby,” he said.
But it was nighttime.
And with that thought, Natasha did the only sensible thing and fell asleep.
Leo practically grabbed Leah by the arm and dragged her into his house. She was walking by, and he’d been waiting for her. He felt relatively sharp after having dosed, but also foggy. That was good. As recently as just a few days ago, he hadn’t felt any clouding effects, but that was because the dust had its claws in him. Now, with his head clearer, he could see the addiction — and the mental addling — for what it truly was.
“Leah,” said Leo.
“In a minute, Leo.”
“Leah,” he repeated, as if she hadn’t replied.
“Literally one minute,” she said.
Leah was still trying to walk, tapping madly on her mobile, as Leo held her forearm. Leo, calm but simultaneously frazzled by what Dominic had told him and what might be coming, felt infuriated looking at the device. She was in an Organa village, for shit’s sake.
Leo reached out and slapped her mobile. It dropped into the dirt.
“What the fuck?” she said.
Feeling a quarter of his age (apparently, dust put a weight on your shoulders that you didn’t feel until it was gone; who knew), Leo bent down and snatched the mobile before Leah could. He turned to his house and tossed it inside.
“Fetch.”
“What the hell, Leo?”
He was already behind her, pushing. He realized he was somewhat manic, but he had an excuse. Leo was detoxing, and his village was about to descend into violent anarchy. Mania was the least of his worries.
Once inside, Leah retrieved the mobile, inspected it for damage, and dusted it off on her sarong. Then she resumed looking up at Leo like he was insane.
“I stand by my ‘What the hell.’”
“This is an Organa village, and you’re walking around like someone in DZ, picking at your goddamned handheld. Do you have any idea how that looks?”
“Noah West, Leo. Dominic was just doing it. And Crumb.”
“You mean York.”
“Yes, whatever. York.”
“Dominic isn’t Organa, and Crumb — I mean York — isn’t himself. Or I guess he finally is himself. People look at Dominic the way Amish people would look at a yuppie — baffled but tolerant. And they look at York like…well, like Crumb.”
“What’s a mish?”
“Amish,” Leo corrected.
“That’s what I said. Mish. And what’s a yuppie?”
Leo shook his head, still feeling himself slipping too close to mania. His movements were too speedy, overly eager. He’d pay for this tomorrow, when his old bones and muscles caught up.
“Look,” said Leah. “I just need to answer some mail. Or watch for mail. It’s stuff you’d approve of. You of all people, Leo.”
“You can’t walk around with a fucking handheld, Leah. People are on-edge already.”
“But Dominic brought you more dust, so that’s soon to be handled.”
“Well…”
Leah had been picking at the handheld’s screen but now let it hang at her side as if forgotten. “Oh, no. What is it, Leo? Tell me he brought us something.”
“Something.”
Now Leah was the one who looked manic. She began to pace the small hut.
“Shit. Shit. Not enough, though. He didn’t bring enough. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“I’m detoxing, Leah. As an experiment. It can be done.”
Leah saw right through that. She stopped, met his eyes, and said, “Well, that’s great. But did you do it in a day? By surprise? Because you had to, not because you decided to?”
“I decided on my own, but…” Leo was disappointed that he wasn’t reaping any congratulations for weaning. Lunis was highly addictive, and he thought his accomplishments thus far, mostly through experiment, deserved some kudos. But Leah seemed more worried than congratulatory. He let his sentence hang, unsure where it was going.
Leah was still pacing. “Shit. Shit, Leo. How low are we?”
“Extremely.”
“It’ll get bad. You know that, right? Honestly, I’m wondering if those of us who know should run.”
Leo shook his head but knew she wasn’t serious. Leah wasn’t a coward, but the idea had a certain merit. If they all ran — and in totally separate directions, each staying away from others — they might do okay. They’d have to go cold turkey, but at least those who survived withdrawal would have no one to fight while they were going through the worst
of it.
“What do you think we should do?” said Leo.
“You’re asking me?” Leah’s eyes, as she looked back, were almost comical. Leo was old enough to be her great-to-the-Nth-degree grandfather and was looked upon by the Organa as if he were Gandalf, but the truth was that Leo didn’t have any mysterious knowledge that the rest of them were lacking. He was a man doing the best he could with what he had, and right now was fresh out of hope and ideas.
“You’re a heavy user,” he answered.
Leah rolled her eyes. “Thanks.”
“It’s not a judgment. I just mean that you know the drug better than the rest of us. To most Organas, it’s recreational, or a lifestyle thing. They’re going to cry like someone stole their bong then they’re going to have violent temper tantrums. But in the end, this shortage just takes away a toy for most of them — hell, me included. But for you and a few others, it’s almost vocational. One might say ‘required’ — a word that, in this context, would please some opportunists who make a lot of money from people in need. I need to know what it’s like for you.”
“Withdrawal?” Leah tapped her chin. “I’ve never gone into full withdrawal, but the bit I’ve had isn’t fun. I’ve had to go without for a few days. That’s stretching my limits.”
“I wasn’t asking what withdrawal is like. I was asking about your high.”
“You know what being high is like, Leo.”
“Not like you do. I’ve been puzzling this a lot during my detox, trying to figure out what the hell to do. One thing that keeps popping back into my head is the story you told me about drugs and The Beam.”
“That was ayahuasca, not Lunis. No comparison.”
“I just want to understand what you do. How you use Lunis to…what? Enhance your connection to The Beam?”
Leah sighed then sat in one of Leo’s chairs. “Okay. Fine. You know the history of Lunis?”
Leo nodded. He knew it well. Far, far better than Leah did, in fact, but this wasn’t the time to discuss that.
“Well, I’ve puzzled it out. Because supposedly it was the first Organas who invented it, right? In a Timothy Leary lab?”
Leo swallowed. That was how the story went, yes.
“I guess Lunis always worked, but until they figured out to farm it on the moon — turning the formulation into those lovely little gray rocks through science I don’t understand or care about — it was only a fun drug, like pot. I’ve heard the idea was to help minds detox from tech, or something.”
“The Beam changes the way people think enough to alter the brain,” said Leo. “If you’ve ever seen someone who’s used to hyperconnectivity but who has to disconnect for a while, they become almost unable to pay attention for lack of stimulation. Their brains acclimate to distributed thinking and constant inputs, and once disconnected, they’re barely able to function. In my day, they had something called ‘attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,’ and it’s like an extreme version of that. The scientists who first formulated Lunis were trying to find a kind of methadone, which was a drug that mimicked heroin enough to make withdrawal easier for addicts. Lunis was supposed to bridge the gap. To help the Organa learn to think without all of the connectivity that the first of us were used to, or that backsliders got themselves hooked into when they were in cities.”
“Okay,” said Leah, nodding. “Well, for me, it doesn’t exactly make it easier to be disconnected, so at first that doesn’t make much sense. I mean, Lunis is also known as a hacker-immersive facilitator, and that’s the opposite of what you were just saying, right?”
“Sure,” said Leo. He tried to focus. This felt important. He wasn’t sure why, but despite knowing Lunis’s sordid history, few people truly understood how it worked beyond mere physiology. Understanding the spiritual component of Lunis’s hold, if there was such a thing, might help him understand how to break it. And, maybe, how he himself had managed to do it, against all odds.
Leah’s face was scrunching up. Leo took it for a look of hesitation, or confusion.
“What?”
“I feel dumb saying this. What I think, I mean.”
“Just say it.”
“It’s unsubstantiated. Total hearsay. Like, just my opinion.”
“Nobody is going to sue you, Leah. I asked for your thoughts, so please…give them to me.”
She sighed. “Okay. Well, you just mentioned what I told you about the ayahuasca. When I was in that haze, it felt like The Beam connected us all but was also its own thing. Almost like a life form.”
Leo nodded.
“Well, I told you how, at the Beam’s very core, I sensed the curled-up…hell, ‘spirits’ is as good a word as any, or at least their intentions…of those who had built it. I sensed that The Beam had grown far beyond those core things, but they were still shaping it from the inside. Almost like how a kid is shaped in part by his or her parents.”
“Genetically, you mean.”
Leah shook her head. “Closer to imprinting. They say that when a baby looks at its mother, it forms an attachment that is later impossible to break, like the mother is being imprinted right on the baby’s psyche, like a stamp set in concrete. It’s closer to psychological than genetic, but I’d almost say ‘spiritual’ is better.”
“Okay.”
“Well, that’s what those things in the center of The Beam felt like to me. Like The Beam had become its own entity, but that it couldn’t help who it had imprinted upon. It had its own mothers and fathers, and they — the people themselves, I mean — were sort of hard-coded into the software. Not literally, but…” She paused. “Hell, this is hard to explain.”
“It makes sense,” said Leo, now taking a chair for himself. “So this is what you feel when you do dust to do your hacking?”
Leah shook her head. “No. Totally different drug. Ayahuasca let me see what I feel might be the truth about The Beam, and that includes how I use moondust to interact with it. Do you see?”
“Sort of.”
She held up a hand and made small motions as she spoke, as if underlining an important point. “What I’m saying is that I think the Beam’s core — not its literal center, but its…its innate nature, say, or its true nature — is really above technology. And I think that…” She sighed and rolled her eyes, the gesture silently saying, and I know how this sounds…“I think the reason that a drug intended to disconnect users works for people like me is because it gets all of the technology out of the way and lets me connect on a deeper level.”
Leo felt something give inside of him. Nameless but important.
“You think I’m nuts,” she said. “Like a ditz with my head in the clouds.”
Leo shook his head. “No, I don’t. I’ve been around for a long time, Leah. I believe in things we can’t see. And things we can’t compute.”
“It sounds crazy to say out loud, but…” She exhaled. “Shit, Leo, I’ve never felt like I’m hacking when I do my best work. Like with Crumb? When I broke his brain? If I told you what that looked and felt like…”
“You told me.”
“Well, does that seem like hacking? Or does it seem like something more spiritual? Every time you ask how I do what I do, I say I can’t explain it…but that’s because I don’t know how I do it. I only know that it takes a Beam connection, my mind, and Lunis.”
“And you think that the Lunis lets your brain push aside the ‘extra technology’ and speak to the Beam’s core.”
She nodded. “Or to another core. Like Crumb’s mind.” She shrugged. “Stupid?”
Leo shook his head. “No. It makes a lot of sense.”
“Does it help you with our shortage?”
He shook his head again. “No. Not for most. Maybe for you, but most people don’t use it that way.”
“Why doesn’t it just make people like you said? Like with the not-paying-attention disease?”
Leo shrugged. “I’m sure it’s something having to do with chemical dependence. Coming down. I’ve see
n my share, across many drugs.”
“But you managed to get off it.”
“In progress.”
“But I was right, wasn’t I? There’s not enough time for everyone to do what you did.”
“Worse,” he said. “If experience has taught me anything, it’s that people can only make change stick if it’s something they want. But you know how people are. I hate to admit it, but a lot of Organa are Organa as an identity thing: They want to be nonconformists. Lunis is part of the package. If they’re barely the Organa ideal, how are they supposed to have the strength of will to wean themselves from one of the most addictive drugs ever created?”
Leah shook her head.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said.
Leah shrugged. “You could ask Crumb.”
“What’s Crumb supposed to know about this?”
Leah laughed. “Okay. Crumb wouldn’t know. But this new guy, Stephen York? I heard he invented The Beam.”
Leo sat up. That was a real possibility. It seemed unlikely that York would know much about pharmacology, but he did know the technology it was supposed to work on, perhaps better than anyone alive. There might be something that York would have to say that could help. It was worth a shot.
“Where is he?”
“Out front somewhere.”
“Do you mind sending him in?”
“Sure.” Leah stood then slipped her handheld out of her pocket. Leo could see a new notification on the screen, indicating that his home’s status as a wireless hotspot had apparently returned.
“Leah,” he said.
She looked over.
“If there’s something you absolutely must do with that handheld,” he said, “head back into the city to do it. I don’t want you out here walking around using it in public. Especially not now, with everyone…” He almost laughed. “…with everyone about to go into withdrawal from ‘detoxing away from technology.’”
She nodded then began walking toward the door. Again, he called to her. Leah turned back.
“I know you have more than your rationed share of moondust. I can see it in your face. You’re not scared enough.”
Leah looked like she was going to protest but then shrugged.
