by Melody Clark
Standing before him was the man in the gray suit who had sat among them and questioned him so harshly on various phases of SAGE. He was now introduced to him as Sherwood Porch, working in development with Croftdon Industries. He tapped on the overhead display to awaken it and then displayed a digital diagram.
“We had to be fully certain that you had no knowledge of this before we could come to you with it,” Porch said. “Your father – Thomas, I mean, felt certain you knew nothing about it, but we demanded conditions of disclosure. We didn’t tell Andrew because he’s close to you and we were concerned that he might say something. Don’t blame Thomas for the secrecy. Blame us for it, as well as the cheap theatrics.”
“How about someone just tell me what this is all about?” Edward asked.
Porch nodded. “The bits you discovered are only a portion of a larger and vastly more complicated program. It was created to work in conjunction with the SAGE system, which, of course, was built by you and Andrew. It seems to have been created externally, by another group of programmers. I’m sorry to have to inform you that the purpose of the other program was to weaponize what you fellows have created.”
“That’s impossible!” Edward said, laughing nervously, “I was promised from the very beginning there would be no weaponization of this. It was a ground floor condition for my even working on this project. My father knew how I felt about that.”
Sherwood Porch looked for a moment to the others and then back to Edward. “I realize that, Eddie, but I’m sorry to say he lied to you. We feel his whole purpose for reaching out to embrace this bridging program was to access our inner files to see what we had decoded of his program. He used you to get to us.”
“Do you have any proof of this at all or is this some plot to get at my dad?” Edward asked sharply.
Porch looked over to Thomas.
Thomas nodded with a lengthy sigh. “Play it for them.”
Porch himself reached over to tap the overhead display. The speakers gave forth:
What about Edward? He went insane when we suggested bringing in the NSA.
Leave Edward to me.
What if he finds out. It could rupture the whole –
I said leave him to me. I know how to keep him in line. I’ll keep him on the team. Eventually, he will realize it makes the ideal WMD. It’s just a matter of him maturing a little.
It will be hard for him to decode what we’re doing. As long as you hold up your end, I’ll handle mine.
The first voice he barely recognized as a business associate of his father’s. The second he immediately knew was his dad’s.
Edward stood up from the chair and walked to the very end of the library – to a corner where he might face the wall for a moment alone. Revelation rushed through his head – a form of gravity compelling into place all the pieces of things that hadn’t made sense over the last few months. The voice was indisputably Wendell Bakunin’s.
What were the alternative explanations? Could there be any?
“They will play on your sympathies,” his father, Wendell, had said. “They will try to engage your affections.”
But so did Wendell. And Wendell had gone farther. He had lied to him. Outright lied to him. He was the one in the midst of deception.
Eddie pulled his cell phone from his pocket. Sherwood Porch immediately placed his hand on it.
“Eddie, we have to ask you to not contact Wendell,” Porch said. “We do not want to alert him that we know this until all of the information has been gathered. There’s a lot we don’t know that we need you and Andrew to discern.”
Edward shook his head. “I’m not calling Wendell. I’m calling someone whose only loyalty is to me. I need someone to talk this out with.”
Sherwood Porch looked toward Thomas who nodded in reply. “That’s fine,” Porch said.
Edward leaned over, the phone to his ear. After a moment, he said, “Ken, get your ass over here. Now.”
The simple act of opening a door hadn’t seemed momentous to Edward until the moment he turned the doorknob and opened the front door to Croftdon House for the first time. At that moment, he felt the moments align. He sensed a directional change in the tide. It almost felt like a betrayal of Wendell, but what didn’t right now?
Ken held up both his hands. “Before you say anything, I think I know what you’re upset about. I don’t know much, but I can tell you what I know.”
“You know something about this, too?” Edward stormed back at him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You were in the middle of planning this project,” Ken said, his gaze straying toward Thomas who was walking up beside them, “and I couldn’t tell you anything for sure. I just had my suspicions.”
“Come in, Ken, please,” Thomas said from behind them before he led the procession into the sitting area.
Ken looked quickly around at the people around them, but he situated himself in a central chair and turned his first words toward Edward. “You remember when you went up to April Lake with your ex- girlfriend?”
“Sure. About a year ago. Why?”
“Yeah, and Wendell paid for the whole trip, right? To help you get away?” Ken leaned forward, as if to close the circle to just the group of men. “Your father had a big deal business meeting. Multiple bigwigs including a few old guys wearing blue and green jackets with medals and shit on them.”
“Military?”
“Not just military. Pentagon. But they were there on the QT. They were all wearing overcoats and hats, like they didn’t want the Pentagon to know that they were there. Anyway, you know how your dad always invited me into meetings so I could fill you in on whatever the subject was when you got home? Well, that time, he didn’t. He didn’t even tell me about it. The cleaning lady did, in passing, wanting to know what it was all about. She thought I’d know. I didn’t, and I still don’t.”
Edward surrendered slowly to a nearby chair. He leaned backward against it. His words sounded as empty as he felt, “You’re sure of this?”
“Sadly, I’m really sure, Eddie. Really sure.”
Edward shook his head. “There’s no innocent explanation for that.”
“No, there’s not.”
“Where is Arvo Nurmi in all this? You don’t think they sent him with me just to keep an eye on me?”
“That’s exactly why I think they sent him with you, and to also monitor the situation,” Ken said. “But Arvo is just a foot soldier in this. He’s not where you want to direct your venom. I’m afraid that Wendell is in this deeper than you or I want to believe.”
Edward scowled hard at the words. “His militarist friends play on his paranoia. He listens to them because they manipulate his fear. You and I are the only ones who didn’t do that. When he started shutting us out, is when the trouble really started. He’s gone so far over the brink, I don’t know if there’s a way to bring him back again. But we have to try.”
“What do you suggest?” Thomas asked.
“I have to talk to him.” Edward looked toward Sherwood Porch, who was sitting and listening quietly. “I have to try to get through to him. He may listen to me –”
“That audio file is not the voice of a man who may be reasoned with,” Porch said.
“You don’t know him,” Edward said, pleading. “My adopted father means well. He’s a good man. He came through cruel circumstances. He’s mentally ill because of them. He was made that way. But I have to try to reach him. I think he will listen to me.”
“You know my opinion on this. I vote no contact, but my vote is just ceremonial,” Sherwood said, “the board members are John, Thomas and Andrew.”
“I vote with Edward,” Andrew said.
“There’s a big damned surprise,” Tad said, from a rear corner.
“Shut up, Toad,” Andrew replied.
“My vote is with Sherwood,” John said, standing near the fireplace, to the oth
er side of the circle. “Which should hardly be a surprise. No offense intended to Edward, but I’m afraid my sympathies with Wendell are very limited these days.”
Edward looked over at John. “Maybe because you helped with their limitation?”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand your comment, young man,” John replied.
“No,” Edward said, “I don’t imagine you do.”
“Mine is the third vote,” Thomas said, barging through the disagreement. “Many years ago I made the choice to think of my father instead of my son. I have come to regret that decision beyond any other regret that I have ever felt. As such, this time, I’m siding with my son. My vote is with Edward.”
Edward turned around quickly to look at Thomas. He smiled and laughed in what could only be called stupefaction. “Thank you!”
Sherwood looked toward Tad. “You have an auxiliary vote to force a tie-breaker with the secondary board in case you disagree with their decision.”
Tad unleashed a loud laugh across the room. “What? And get in this squabble? Forget it. As always, I take the coward’s way and vote with the majority. I cast my lot in with the family septic.”
“There’s a big damned surprise,” Andrew shot back.
Edward looked slowly but certainly over at Tad. “Family septic?”
Tad gestured toward the room. “Well, you didn’t expect me to side with you without getting a dig in, did you?”
“Not really –– Toad.”
“You’re really getting the hang of it now.”
John walked forward to stand in the center of the circle and thereby take command of the room. “I wish to place on record my disagreement with this approach. I am certain it will not bring about the desired results.”
“We know that, Father,” Thomas said sharply, “you have registered your dissent very clearly, as you always do..”
“Mark my words, this will not turn out well,” John said.
“You have been heard,” Thomas replied, looking toward Edward. “Eddie, it’s evening in Boston. Will Wendell be reachable?”
“He may be,” Edward said.
Thomas looked for a long moment at his own father, and then slowly turned his attention back to Edward. Thomas nodded. “Make your call, Eddie.”
“Thank you,” Edward said again, his gaze meeting Thomas’ eyes, making certain the meaning of his words had been conveyed.
Thomas smiled. “Not necessary, son.”
Edward withdrew his cell phone. He clicked it over to display his seemingly endless phone book. He clicked through the necessary sequence and waited for the call to complete. On the other end, the phone rang. Eddie could almost see his father’s leather and blond wood desk with its assortment of phones, tablets, other devices.
Wendell’s voice mail picked up. His blunt, terse reception message played through.
Edward said quickly, “Dad, it’s me, call me at your first opportunity. I’m very distressed at something I’ve just learned. Please, call me.”
He hung up the line.
“So now we wait,” Ken said.
“Mark my words,” John added from his corner, “we have just set in motion actions which may have great consequences.”
“No, Father,” Thomas said, turning to the older man, “you help set it in motion many years ago. Eddie is just trying to stop what you started.”
Chapter Five
There had to be a cogent pattern he could find to help him define for himself the overall purpose of their discovery. Clearly, the program had been weaponized. But what manner of weapon did they hope to make of it? That was the question that gnawed away at the nerve-bound bottom of his soul. The symmetry behind it seemed clear – it was doing something it shouldn’t be able to do, doing it in an alien language he couldn’t comprehend, and functioning at a higher level that seemed devoid of any context he might use to predict its purpose.
“So what do you do,” he asked the script as it flittered across the screen. “What are you for?”
“Oh, my fucking god, don’t you septics ever sleep?” Tad’s voice joined in from the hallway.
“I’m awake, too, you know,” Andrew replied. “Don’t I count?”
“Of course not,” Tad replied. “You never count. Just the septic.”
“Okay,” Ken said to Eddie from the library chair where he was watching from, “what the hell is a septic? He’s easily said it fifty times now.”
“Rhyming slang,” Edward replied drily, “septic tank. Yank. Isn’t that clever?”
“Oh, like you’re the ones they flushed into – okay,” Ken said, nodding, looking over at Tad. “Hey, Tad, pretty much just fuck you.”
“I thought you were Canadian,” Tad said, squinting over at him. “Anyway, it wasn’t directed at you. My familial role is to be a punishment from God to my brothers. I didn’t choose the natural order of things, did I? Do not interfere with the hand of the Almighty.”
“Well, I am more a septic than you are. So like I said, fuck you.”
“No, thank you.” Tad looked at then displayed his wristwatch. “It is nearly 2 AM.”
“That’s true, it’s way past your naptime, Toad,” Edward said. “You know, Andrew, we need to change his nickname. I’m thinking Big Ben is more suitable.”
“Ach!” Tad said, grasping at his side. “Because I’m a clock, isn’t that clever?”
“Big Ben is the bell, Saint Stephens is the clock tower,” Edward said, swinging Tad a pointed glance. “Not bad for a septic, huh?”
“I have to admit, I’m tired,” Ken said, rising from his chair. “I’m going back to the hotel. Eddie, you coming?”
Edward shook his head. “I have too much work to do.”
“How the hell are you keeping your fucking eyes open?” Tad asked.
Edward pointed to the trash bin filled with empty Red Rover cans. “That and your godawful coffee.”
“Are you serious?” Tad said, suspiciously. “You’re a septic. Your tea is stronger than English coffee.”
“Once again, Tad, you can shove your septic,” Ken said, standing to leave the room. He looked over at his friend. “Edward, call if you need anything. And no, I won’t say anything to Arvo.”
Ken hadn’t been expecting a deep conversation with anyone at all, short of a morning confrontation with Arvo, but the resonant plod of steps behind him as he left the library for the great room told him he might be being pursued. On instinct, he spun around to face-off with his stalker, and Tad maneuvered to block Ken’s passage to the front door.
“Do not lie to me,” Tad said. What kind of speed is he taking?”
Ken looked at him through a veil of exhaustion. “Speed?”
“What the fuck is he on?” Tad asked again. “He works 20 hours at a time. He’s bouncing all over the place except when he crashes. You don’t get that from energy drinks or coffee or both. I’m a doctor and, as both Eddie and I will be loathe to admit, he’s my brother. What is it?”
Ken turned around, to look in the direction of the library. He lowered his voice to just above a whisper. “All he’s on is herbal supplements right now.”
“I didn’t ask you that. I mean what is he coming off of?”
Ken surrendered against the door and then leaned into the wall. He watched steadily now in the library’s direction. “Privacy is very important to Eddie. Loyalty, too. He is passionate about making his own decisions and protecting his personal business.”
“A compulsion for privacy and independence is often guarding a core of shame. From the way he’s mainlining the energy drinks and caffeine, and the way he’s sucking down that inhaler, obviously he’s jouncing off one hell of an amphetamine buzz. What’s he on? Tell me or I swear to God I’ll forcibly catheterize and piss test him.”
Ken nodded in a kind of tired surrender. “All right, I’ll talk. I’m not sure. Uppers and downers of some kind. His stuff isn’t marked.�
�
“You work with the bastard. How can you not be sure?”
“Because I didn’t start him on it!” Ken shot back. “You’re yelling at the wrong guy. Wendell and his people hooked him. Eddie was strung-out when I hired on with Wendell. By the time I realized Eddie was an addict, he was too far gone. He wouldn’t listen to me or anyone.”
Tad sent his gaze to the ceiling. “Wonderful. Fucking wonderful. How long has he been on it?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You have some idea.”
Ken thought through the tired haze for a valid reply. “Since he was 15 or so. Maybe younger.”
“Fifteen? Fifteen years old? Are you seriously fucking telling me that Eddie has been strung out for over half his life?” Tad asked, whispering as loudly as possible.
