Maker Messiah

by Ed Miracle

  In that moment, Philip resolved never to call him Spook again. No matter what lay ahead, so long as he drew a breath, this great, weeping grizzly would be his Uncle Orin. Who soon enough became his second father, the one who believed in him, even before Tanner did, who made Tanner pay attention and get to work.

  Orin didn’t know physics from flapjacks, but he bet everything he owned on what Philip was doing. Without Orin’s strength and nurture, Philip could not have achieved his vows: to remain among the living, to create a quantum duplex, and to jolt the world in a new direction. Without Orin, there would be no Powerpods, no Makers, no advent. And the hole in the universe once occupied by him was also the hole in Philip’s heart.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Tanner said. “Playing Johnny Appleseed with the Cambiars was his idea. You warned him.”

  Philip quit rocking. He splayed his hands on the floor, pressed the aching cold into his palms. “He was having the time of his life over there, giving away encrypted satellite phones and sneaking the uncensored internet into China, his little joke on official stuffed shirts. He thought the Chinese would be so distracted by their Maker problems he could give away a few more Cambiars, then sneak out through Hong Kong. But he was wrong. We were both wrong. I should not have announced Makers until he was home and safe.”

  A ray of sunlight projected through the gap between the hangar doors and cast a bright line at his knees. Philip stroked the line as if to draw it closer, as if its brilliance might confer wisdom or sympathy. People in pain did that. They imagined patterns or voices that weren’t there to help them survive their terrible moments.

  Philip unfolded himself. He picked grit from his damaged knuckles and wiped his face with a solvent rag. Inspecting his hands again, he considered their thirteen-point-seven-billion-year-old protons and electrons, bequeathed to him through his parents’ love. Even real consolations came with righteous burdens.

  Tanner joined him on the floor. “He was my friend too.”

  Philip nodded. There was so much left to do.

  NINETEEN

  Victorville, California. Thursday, April 30

  Day Thirteen

  “They don’t get it,” Tanner said to his computer screen. Last night, after working four days with only twelve hours of sleep, they had finally given in to their need for distraction and opened a fifth of Cabo Wabo. This morning, Tanner’s black eyebrows arched like hairy caterpillars.

  Philip ignored the facial larvae. Cantina chants still echoed in his head. Anejo, anejo, reposado. Anejo, anejo, reposado. En tequila es verdad. Aguave forever, Amen. For each age of tequila, imbibe one shot, sing the verse, and repeat. Until you wake up with concrete kissing your ear as you dance quite slowly with the floor.

  Philip groaned and rolled over. Tanner had gulped tequila shooters all night, daring him, racing him, while Philip employed tactical sips, nominal tastings that should have transported him to oblivion smoothly, with milder effects. Yet the liquor disappeared apace, one sip at a time.

  Now, behind two crispy eyeballs, a squadron of regrets demanded his response. Unmoved by the tide of alcohol, they stood precisely in the order he’d left them. First came Karen in her shimmering gown, a vision of hope and possibility. Then his parents, his sister, his uncle—four dead faces. Every friend except Tanner, gone or abandoned. Alcohol did not forgive him his long and contemptible record of hurting everyone he loved.

  He probed his mouth with a corncob tongue, seeking moisture, a single tear of sympathy.

  “They don’t get it,” he rasped, testing his voice.

  Tanner ignored the croak from the floor and focused on the poll results displayed on his screen.

  “We are dead in the water,” he said. “It will be two weeks tomorrow, and domestic Maker conversions remain fewer than ten percent of all Pods, even in California. Overseas, it’s worse. Short Fat Guy reports no new enclaves have formed anywhere. Just loners and a few neighborhoods are experimenting, biding their time, waiting to see what happens, while the Folks-in-Charge-of-Pounding-Us keep pounding us.”

  Philip raised himself on a tender elbow. Auto-resonant hairs thrummed upon his scalp. “What fat guy?”

  “Art Buddha, Short Fat Guy. High-profile internet blogger. Number-one Maker enthusiast.”

  Philip belched. “Index case.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind.” Philip thrust himself upward, approached the vertical before falling back. He launched again and managed to sit.

  Tanner regarded this milestone with indifference. “The cure is behind you.”

  “Agua,” Philip croaked. He crawled to the office refrigerator. The first swig of water hissed as it lapped his mouth and irrigated his tongue. He drank half a liter without pause. “Gawd, that’s good.”

  “He’s running a survey.” Tanner leaned back, crossed his hairy arms.

  “Who?”

  “Art Buddha.”

  Philip rubbed his eyes. He appraised their hangover cure, the green oxygen tank, twenty paces distant across a granite-hard floor that no longer loved him.

  “He’s promoting our cause. Wrote a manifesto for you to read. I downloaded it.”

  “Nuh.” Philip coaxed his limbs to ford the expanse, urged them to go, go, go until they delivered him to the shrine of all combustion, where he collapsed.

  “You call this oxygen?” He inhaled from a squishy mask. “They got better oh-two in Cleveland.” He imbibed the antidote and let the morning curdle.

  Tanner rapped his screen. “He’s up for a chat. Wants you to read his masterpiece.”

  Philip scaled an office chair, spun it about and sat, sucking relief by the liter. The cure was working. His headache subsided. Across the desk, Tanner activated a speaker.

  “You da boss? I gotta say dis to da boss.” A middle-aged Hawaiian, by tone and inflection. “Go get dat Boss Man, hey? We gotta parlezvous, Brah.”

  Philip swiveled toward the Fat Buddha avatar grinning fixedly from Tanner’s screen. Its animated lips wrinkled as it spoke. “You dere, Boss Man?”

  “He’s here, Fat Guy.” Tanner released the key, aimed a yes-or-no look at Philip.

  What was Tanner doing? Philip laid down the mask and turned off the gas.

  “He’s on our side,” Tanner said. “Pseudo-Zen intellectual. Loves Makers. Loves sharing. Hates gatekeepers.”

  “Hey, Boss,” said the Buddha’s smeary lips, “I punked dat name for you. Dat name it went viral. Hoo boy! You da Freemaker now.”

  Philip suffered a tequila twitch and a sour burp.

  Tanner pressed a key. “Speak to us, Fat Guy. He’s listening.”

  “Boss, you makin’ a big mistake. You leavin’ us out, Brah. You gotta tell da peoples, or you gonna go honohono, stinky-stinky, like da kine roadkill.”

  Philip looked at Tanner. Huh?

  “We stickin’ our necks out, and our big fat bue-tocks, way out for you, Brah. We swimmin’ da bay, but we gettin’ nowhere. You gotta tell da peoples why to keep swimmin’, an’ where dey goin’. Or dey gonna quit, Brah. Go surfin’ instead. No more enclaves ‘cause nobody likes you.”

  Philip squinted. “Who are you?”

  “You gotta tell ‘em, Boss. Tell ‘em what dey gonna get when dey swim dat bay. New lives, new customs, new mores. A brand new ethos.” The voice tightened, turned flat and mid-western. “Sharing the common bounty is going to change our psyches, Mister Machen, not just our jobs and our stuff. Makers are changing the way we think about the world, the way we feel about each other. I can say it a million times, but it won’t mean squat until they hear it from you or feel it themselves. Money empowers elites, but radical sharing empowers everyone who owns a Maker. You have to save us, man.” Then he resumed his Island Boy shtick.

  “You da Big Kahuna, Mista Freemaker. You gotta tell da peoples. Or dey gonna drown.”

  “I did tell them . . . .” Philip scoffed. “The Maker Handbook, appendix one, downloaded onto every Cambiar. It’s there, waiting for them to—” />
  “No!” Fat Buddha’s jolly smile didn’t falter as he shouted. “You da one waiting, Boss. You da one waiting for dem. But dey ain’t gonna see nothin’, ‘les you put it in dey face. All da time, you put it in dey face. Tell dem da story, ‘til dey see it too.

  “Like dis. Who da owner of you? You da one? Or you alla time sell youself, jes to put lime in da coconut? Maybe you wanna be da owner of you, ‘stead a da Man, ‘stead a da Company, ‘stead a da Kahuna dat owns you. You gotta be free, Brah. No more chump. You get some Maker Makers an’ make whole family free. Not maybe, not someday. Real peoples be making real freedom, right now.”

  Philip massaged his temples. He had no plan, that was true, but why plan the obvious? Just do it.

  Tanner reached for the speaker. “We got it, Big Guy. Thanks for the heads up.”

  “About dat manifesto—”

  But Tanner killed the link and swiveled to Philip.

  “Everything Art said, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  Philip cast about, rubbed his wrist, gazed at his scar, freshly tattooed to keep it from fading. All his work, years of struggle, his family murdered, Uncle Orin executed—by people who didn’t get it.

  He stood, fetched another water from the fridge, and sipped. If he started to preach, that’s what people would hear—preaching. A few might listen, but most would tune him out.

  “Why can’t they figure it out, Tanner? Why do we have to spell it out for them?”

  “Pattern recognition,” Tanner said. “They’ve never seen it before, so they don’t have a reference. People can only build what they can imagine, which is not so much. You gotta tell them what it looks like, Boss, a world of neighbors using Makers to share and live free.”

  Philip sat and sipped. Everyone still expected scarcity, struggle, domination. Their default assumption was that ancient code of survival, predating law and religion, and baked into every culture. Winners take what they can, as their natural right, as natural as scarcity, and too bad for the losers. Why can’t people see how Makers blow the doors off that crap? That a new social order is brewing right in their backyards at the speed of Maker copies?

  They are the Freemakers, not me.

  Terry Quinn’s lawsuit had forced him to reveal Makers too soon. Ryle’s Theorem said Makers wouldn’t tip over their social acceptance threshold and persist in the culture until there were eighty-million of them worldwide. In his own way, Uncle Orin had worked for that goal too.

  “I don’t know if Big O truly believed in Makers, or whether he helped us just for fun. With Orin, you couldn’t tell sometimes. But he gave his life for us, Tanner. He was spreading the word over there, you know? Getting people to copy and share.”

  He drew his Cambiar from a pocket and keyed it to display a status update.

  “They’re killing our satellites,” he said. “Let’s get this beam engine back in the plane. Then I need to call Tiffany Lavery and find out who was that reporter who interviewed Karen.”

  TWENTY

  Oakland, California. Friday, May 1

  Day Fourteen

  Today, Everett would have begun flying for Montana Skies, but instead he and General Johnson sold thirty-six Powerpods. If you owned one before midnight, when possession of Maker paraphernalia—cones—became a federal crime, the authorities could not claim you used illegal means to acquire it. All week, Marcy had lingered upstairs, doing Marcy things, not tracking any Maker stories, and Everett’s decision to dump Montana Skies was feeling more and more foolish.

  In just two weeks, three hysterias had swept the country: the currency collapse, the commodities implosion, and the financial market wipeouts. People continued to stock up for the emergency, though some stores, fearful that Maker copies would put them out of business, were limiting sales to onesies—one of each item per customer. Meanwhile, bloggers and the news media were showing laid-off truckers, idle factories, and lines of unemployed workers queuing for benefit checks. As usual for a Friday afternoon, the mood on Grand Avenue had lightened, but Everett’s confidence was swinging in and out of existence with each passing hour.

  Near sunset, General departed with Charlene, leaving Everett to lock up the store. He hadn’t seen Marcy all day, but as he finished hanging the plywood window covers, she appeared at the foot of his ladder, a vision in tight slacks and a sequined jacket.

  “There’s a party,” she said. “Last chance to share stuff before they outlaw Makers. It’s two blocks. We can walk.”

  Everett feigned disinterest. He descended the ladder and stood deliberately close, tugged at his Shoes-for-You T-shirt.

  “Forgot my party duds.”

  She leaned into him, eyes full of mischief.

  “How about those sexy leather pants you ride around in, and that cute leather jacket that tapers to your butt?”

  “The ones with bugs on the front?”

  “All work and no play makes Jack a pain in the ass,” she said. Her voice went as husky as wood smoke. “Best tamales and red sauce you’ll ever eat, Flyboy.” Then she fired a flirty smile straight into his lust-addled heart.

  “Okay,” he said and clamped his jaw against a rush of gratitude. She might be gaming him, but he could game her too.

  They secured the store and hiked uphill to Mira Vista Street, to a whitewashed bungalow behind a blue picket fence. A thumping bass rhythm assaulted them from an open door where an ageless Vietnamese in a baseball cap eyed them from the porch. As they opened the gate, the man put down his beer.

  Marcy introduced Ray Vu, who smiled broadly as he hugged her. Ray shook Everett’s hand.

  “Welcome to the wake,” he said. “We are saying goodbye.” He pointed to a stack of Maker cones bound for collection at the curb. He gestured to his door. “Come in, come in. Terri is in the kitchen.”

  He ushered them to a display of bottles and glassware.

  “Help yourselves, folks.” He shouted over the din. “The bar is open. Cold stuff in coolers under the table. Did you bring something to share?”

  “Movies.” Marcy produced a paper sack.

  Everett shrugged, embarrassed. “Swiss Army knife?”

  Marcy patted his hand. “I ambushed him, Ray. Didn’t give him time to change clothes.”

  Ray appraised Everett’s boots and leathers.

  “Swiss Army is cool. Our trading table is in the back room. Park your stuff there and help yourselves to anything you want. Except for Terri and the kids, that is.” He laughed at his own joke, then excused himself to the porch.

  The living room crowd was lobbing paper balls into a flaming fireplace, some kind of game. A skinny teenager scuttled to the newcomers.

  “Hey, mister, have some ammo.”

  Everett accepted the boy’s offering without enthusiasm, discovered a fifty dollar bill.

  “We got money to burn.” The kid leered. “You didn’t bring a thousand dollar bill, did you? I’m going to paper my room with thousand dollar bills, as soon as I can trade for one.”

  Everett shook his head, handed back the fifty.

  “We have gold, too, but that stuff won’t burn.”

  Everett stood mute, so the boy slouched away and rejoined his friends.

  At the bar, Marcy poured cold Chardonnay into a tulip glass. Everett tasted an unfamiliar Scotch but abandoned it for a beer. Together they strolled through the crowd.

  Ray must have brought his Powerpod through the patio doors because the machine stood in a bedroom to one side, its top cone festooned with a banner: Sharing Machine (Not a Maker). A Sharing Table, designated by another sign, held a profusion of loot: recordings and jewelry, coins and watches, liquor, a tuxedo, a blender, computers, smartphones, and Cambiars. Three sandwich bags of foliage labeled “Portland Oregano.” Nothing he regarded as rare or precious. No shoes.

  Marcy searched the table while he copied his Swiss Army knife. Was the one he returned to his pocket the original or the copy? Did it even matter?

  Three young boys rushed into the ro
om, jostling each other. They copied a candy bar twice, then ran off, giggling and punching each other.

  Marcy scanned a tray for titles before adding her movies. At the table’s edge, an unmarked baggie of white powder caught Everett’s gaze. Soap? Rat poison? Cocaine? He sipped beer and fingered the bag while Marcy delved into the jewelry. He snatched the white stuff. Face powder, maybe, or heroin. Nothing on this table belonged to anyone anymore, so why was he hoping Marcy did not see him tuck it up his sleeve?

  He shouted over the noise. “No way I’m going to haul everything from this table for you.”

  She waved him off. “I’m shopping. I’ll carry it.”

  This was the response he wanted. He made his way to a bathroom, found the light, and locked the door. As white powder flowed cleanly into the toilet, tension eased from his neck. Ordinary problems were bad enough. He didn’t want any anonymous powders screwing up the evening.

  He soothed his hands under warm water and returned to Marcy. She led him to the kitchen.

  “You must be Everett.” A black-eyed, black-haired pixie grinned up at him. “I’m Teresa Vu. Call me Terri. Marcy told me everything about you.” She giggled.

  Everett accepted her hug and noticed the flour now transferred to his jacket.

  “At last,” he said, eyeing the dough on her breadboard, “a real treasure.”

  “Everett likes to eat,” Marcy said, then laughed at the look on his face.

  “Me, too, Everett.” Terri patted her own ample frame. “Welcome to Tortilla Heaven.” She handed him a plate with silverware rolled in a napkin.

  “Everything is in trays outside,” she said. “Help yourselves, guys. I gotta turn down that damned music.”

  The patio was cooler, less frenetic, and suffused with pinkish-gray twilight. Everett loaded his plate with steaming rice and beans, fish tacos, pork tamales, and topped them with a fragrant sopapilla. A squeeze of honey made it perfect.