Maker Messiah

by Ed Miracle

  Marcy led him to a picnic table near a lemon tree where General and Charlene were engrossed in their dinners. Had the Johnsons conspired to bring him here to cheer him up? The food and the beer found their marks, and when Marcy sidled against his leg, nothing else mattered. For a moment, he wished he’d brought those diamond earrings Alonso had given him. When the music softened, couples got up to dance, just like a real party.

  A girl of twelve or thirteen crossed the patio, lugging a bucket of kitchen waste. In the corner of the yard, she opened a gate and climbed a step ladder. She dropped her bucket into a Maker top-cone. When she shut the lid and pressed the button, there came a rush of water flowing down a drain. Apparently, a hose and a float valve kept the top-cone filled, and her trash turned to water in the opposite side cone. Having finished, the girl took a new bucket from a stack, shut the gate, and returned to the house.

  Half a beer later, as Everett sliced his last tamale, a mountainous woman in a flowing blue caftan approached their table.

  “You must be General Johnson.” Her voice boomed like a man’s.

  General stood and accepted her ring-encrusted fingers.

  “I’m Alicia Maybury, and I need your help, sir.”

  Marcy stood also. “Hello, Councilwoman.”

  General gave his niece a look. Ms. Maybury widened her smile.

  “Marcy, yes. I believe we chatted during my reelection campaign.”

  When no one offered her a place at the table, Ms. Maybury dragged a chair to join them.

  “Sit, please, Mr. Johnson.” Her tone left no doubt she knew the rank of a shoe salesman and that of a city councilwoman.

  “Oakland is dying, sir. Some say it was beyond hope before that idiot and his machines, but now even the better neighborhoods are threatened. We really must reinvent our communities, and we don’t have much time. We need to make some hard choices.”

  Her gaze alighted on Everett, registered a demerit, and flicked back to General.

  “You have stature among us, sir. We need you to employ that stature now. Please help us form a self-protecting neighborhood. I support President Washburn’s Maker ban, but that won’t stop the criminals, will it? We need every able person to help us preserve order and decency. If we fail, the vermin will take over, as they have on the west side. If you and I and a few others don’t take the necessary steps, we shall be forced from our homes, driven into the streets by hooligans. Shall we become refugees from our own neighborhood?”

  She leaned toward General, who cleared his throat.

  “Well, I haven’t thought about it.”

  She leaned further, nose to nose.

  “Please, do think, General. We are meeting tomorrow at nine, at St. Joseph’s. At noon we will host a community-building rally in the park across the street. Please think about what you can contribute—as a leader—because we don’t have time for elections. Those will have to come later.”

  “I can do media and computers,” Marcy offered.

  “Excellent, Ms. Johnson. Please bring your man with you.”

  Everett cringed. He was Marcy’s man only when she needed him.

  General stood and strained a smile. Ms. Maybury slapped her thighs and stood with him.

  “I’ll leave you folks alone now,” she said. “Thank you for your time. Please join us tomorrow.” She offered her hand to General. “It was a pleasure meeting you, sir.” She nodded to the others.

  Marcy stopped her. “Are you forming an enclave? Like Prospect Shores?”

  Ms. Maybury stiffened. She addressed General, not Marcy.

  “We have a few square blocks to defend. A military man should appreciate the concept. When sanity resumes, we can open our streets and rejoin the city. So this is temporary.” She drilled Marcy. “No Maker enclaves.”

  Then smiling again at General, “If there’s someone you’d care to recommend, sir, please let me know.” She pressed a card into his hand. “Thank you, folks. Have a pleasant evening.”

  Despite the warm food, a chill swept through Everett. Marcy must have felt it, too, because she snuggled against him, inviting his arm.

  “Quite an experience,” Charlene said.

  “Guess that’s what it takes,” General said. Then to Marcy, “You didn’t set this up, by any chance?”

  “Negative, sir.” She raised a hand. “Scout’s honor.”

  “Then why is she after me?”

  Marcy shrugged. “You going to do it?”

  He pursed his lips. “I don’t want to be on anyone’s list. I’m no politician. Just an old sailor gone to seed.”

  Marcy batted her eyelids. “You forgot the part about cute and sexy.”

  Charlene coughed.

  General reclaimed his seat and focused self-consciously on his food.

  The sopapillas and tamales truly were the best Everett had ever tasted, even after they cooled. He sipped Budweiser until Terri Vu emerged from the house, headed straight for him.

  “Come with me, young man. You’re gonna love it.”

  Marcy trailed along while Terri charged through her guests, towing Everett into a well-stuffed garage. Before them stood a white plastic booth, brightly lit, with a dressing mirror facing the open door.

  “Did you ever use a laser tailor?” Terri said. “You go in there, and you take off your clothes.”

  He chuckled until Terri poked him.

  “Not everybody,” she said, “just you. Take off your clothes and press the button. It tells you how to stand so the lasers can do the measuring. Then, while you get dressed, the computer calculates how to cut any piece of clothing you want—except shoes—and it downloads that to a cutter. Soon as you pick the styles and the fabrics, it cuts perfect panels. You turn those over to somebody who knows what they’re doing with a sewing machine and, I swear to God, you will never go back to rack clothes. Ray’s company makes the booths and the cutters, and we just love the clothes. You wanna try it?”

  “I’m not getting naked for any laser.”

  “Oh, you scaredy cat. Check this out.” Terri passed him a silky chestnut shirt with French cuffs and sparkling amber studs. He fingered the sleeve.

  “It comes with matching underwear.” She giggled. “Just kidding. Get in there and let me do a shirt for you. I’ll sew you a number that will drop Marcy’s jaw.”

  Marcy helped her push him into the booth.

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “A shirt. I’m not dropping my pants so you can blackmail me.”

  Marcy’s Cambiar chimed, and she turned away to answer it. Everett strained to hear, but Terri shut the door. When he emerged a minute later, Marcy was ending the call with a flat “Okay” and a stunned expression.

  Terri handed him a memory chip.

  “Your dimensions, big guy. I’ll call Marcy when your shirt’s ready.” She seemed enormously pleased. “You’re gonna love it, kiddo. I promise.”

  Marcy stared at the phone in her hand.

  Terri indicated a table stacked with shirts, slacks, and underwear, all neatly wrapped, as if on sale.

  “You guys are not still doing laundry, are you?” She checked back and forth between them, then laughed. “You are.” She put her hands on her hips. “You gotta stop that stupid laundry stuff.

  “Look, you clean your clothes and fold them in wrappers like we do. When you change in the morning, empty your pockets and toss your old duds into your Maker. Oops, I mean your laundry machine. Then you copy what you want to wear. Just put one copy back on the shelf when you’re done, and you can wear brand new clothes every day. Jeez, I thought you single, upscale kids would be way ahead of us married stiffs.”

  “What about the ban?” Everett said.

  Terri shrugged. “We put some cones out by the curb like they said. Now they can mind their own business.”

  “Terri, we have to go.” Marcy slipped her arm around Everett’s waist, daring him to resist. They followed Terri back into the house, where they retrieved Marcy’s loot sack. Prominent on the Sharing Table l
ay another baggie of white powder.

  General and Charlene were outside, dancing, so Everett and Marcy waved farewell. At the front door, they said goodbye to their hosts. Terri insisted on a big hug for each of them. Ray kissed Marcy and shook Everett’s hand. “You guys take care,” he said.

  When they reached the sidewalk, Marcy whispered, “I just landed the biggest interview of my life, and I need your help, Everett. Please? Tomorrow night.”

  Precisely what he had hoped for, though he wasn’t going to say so.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. She drew his hand beneath her jacket and snugged it to her waist. “I’ll protect you.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  When Everett got home that night, a flatbed truck blocked the driveway, and a mob of yawning cardboard mouths filled the living room. Bobby was building boxes with masking tape. “You sleep with her?”

  “None of your business.”

  “But she conned you into that illegal party.”

  “It was a fiesta, Dad. Just a party. Remember fun? Or was that too long ago?”

  “It was a party for making booze and drugs and counterfeit with a one-hundred percent illegal Maker machine.”

  Everett hung up his riding gear.

  “I suppose those extra pistols you copied today are not counterfeit? There’s a grace period to surrender the cones, Dad, so don’t give me your life-of-crime shit. You know I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “President Washburn is giving people a chance to set themselves straight, Son. Makers are illegal right now, tonight. The authorities are going to round them up like diseased cattle. Copying those guns was my bad.

  “But you,” he said, “you gotta start thinking about the consequences of what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with. We can’t take any more hits. If the cops connect you to this Maker monkey business, they are going to throw your butt in jail and yank your pilot license forever. Did you call about your suspension?”

  Everett strode past him, to his bedroom. The license could wait. Day after tomorrow, he was going to video-record an interview with the fabulous Marcy Johnson.

  Bobby followed him, leaned on the door jamb.

  “While you were over there making another mistake, I called Jesse Cardoza. He says we can stay at his ranch in Livermore until we find another place. There’s a toilet and a shower and space for two beds. Unless you’re moving in with Ms. Hot Pants.”

  Everett peeled his shirt and unbuckled his belt. Moving to Livermore would shorten his commute by half.

  “Jesse loaned me his bobtail truck. Said we can store our furniture in his barn, now that the weather’s dry. I told him we would come first thing in the morning.”

  Everett threw himself onto the bed, and recalled Marcy’s sandalwood scent.

  “Night, Dad.”

  “So tomorrow we move, Maker Boy.”

  In the morning, Bobby shambled through the kitchen, sour and puffy-eyed. Across the breakfast table, he sat smoking, not eating, always a bad sign.

  They loaded Jesse’s truck with their cartons, headed west across the Altamont, and shoveled the load into a corner of the Cardoza’s steel barn. Bobby kept a steady pace, only resting when Everett drove them back to Tracy.

  “I couldn’t look him in the eye,” Bobby said, “yesterday.”

  Everett imagined the conversation. “Hey, Jess, can I borrow your truck? And, by the way, do you have a spare room?”

  “We won’t stay long,” Everett said, hoping it was true.

  Bobby kneaded his fingers, cracked his knuckles. Tracy lay twenty minutes east of Livermore, and he didn’t dare stink up Jesse’s truck with tobacco smoke.

  Their second load was furniture and bedroom things, which took two hours to load, haul, and stuff into Jesse’s barn. During their return to Tracy, Bobby switched on a radio talk show.

  “It depends on whether you think we can stop this thing,” the host was saying.

  “How are we supposed to know?” a caller demanded. “Makers are hurting the economy, but if we don’t keep one in reserve, our families could starve before the government straightens things out. How are we supposed to know?”

  “Makers are immoral,” said the host. “That’s what you need to understand. Think about it, folks. In one week these machines have wiped out all the cash in the world and brought every major corporation to its knees. Trillions of dollars gone. That’s our national wealth, gone. Makers are forcing people to cheat each other with counterfeit, and when the last business closes because it can’t compete with all that free stuff, then the layoffs will be permanent too. We could be facing the Antichrist, my friends.

  “As a legendary actress once said, ‘Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.’ Our next call, from Marty in Idaho Falls, will continue right after these messages.”

  Something clicked inside Bobby and he switched it off. He fumbled a cigarette to his lips, letting it dangle like an unlit fuse. Last time he looked this awful was when Mom left for Canada.

  “Somebody has got to stop that son-of-a-bitch,” he said.

  Everett couldn’t see how catching Philip Machen or calling him names would make any difference. His machines would still be there, hidden if necessary. But telling people what to think, he wasn’t doing that.

  “It’s just more stuff,” Everett said, hoping to deflect the hostility brewing next to him.

  By lunchtime, they had loaded Bobby’s dirt bike and the last household items. Then they made sandwiches and sat on the back steps drinking copied beers and gazing at the refrigerator strapped to the truck, a bulky white monument to their labors. Only their tools and hardware in the garage remained, plus one more item.

  “What about our Maker?”

  Bobby lobbed a half-empty beer at the machine. It clunked off a strut and rolled foaming in the grass.

  “Leave the cones for the landlady,” he growled. “We paid for the Pod, so we’ll keep it, but we are not going to cheat anybody with more counterfeit.”

  Everett shrugged. They might need those cones, later, but right now he had a more urgent concern.

  When Bobby went inside to pee, Everett rushed to the truck. He wrestled Bobby’s dirt bike aside and unlocked the gun safe. Racing Bobby’s bathroom noises, he copied the little Seecamp pistol, a stainless job that looked like a toy. Seven shots, .32 caliber.

  Last night was a mistake all right. He should not have told his father. From now on, he wouldn’t talk about Marcy or what they were doing. From now on, he would make his own decisions. He slipped one pistol into his back pocket and returned the other to the safe. Bobby didn’t need to know.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Berkeley, California. Sunday, May 3

  Day Sixteen

  At 5:00 am the next morning, Everett hunkered with Marcy in her car near a dark and vacant public playground. Headlights that might be a cop swept over them. Two strangers in a white Mitsubishi would attract suspicion in this upscale neighborhood, but the car turned away. A greater worry was that Marcy had exposed herself by pursuing this interview. He patted the stainless steel assurance in his jacket pocket.

  “So, how do you know it was him?” he said. “Somebody could be leading you into a trap.”

  “Well, it was a Cambiar number and the digital signatures checked out, plus I could see his face, okay? His voice was the same too.”

  Three sharp knocks on the right-rear window sent Everett’s hand to his pocket. He shoved Marcy down and steadied his tiny pistol between the headrests. The intruder crouched beside the car and shined a light under his big white chin. When Everett took aim, the flashlight winked off.

  “It’s the bodyguard,” Marcy said. “Put that thing away.”

  “Unlock his door,” Everett said. He held a spotlight in his left hand, the gun in his right. Nobody was going to take them without a fight. When the door opened, he triggered the light and shouted, “Hands. Show me your hands.”

  The man covered his face against the brilliance as he ducked
into the back seat. He was a big guy with a big head and lots of glistening black hair. Famously hairy arms.

  “If you agree to be searched at our destination,” the man said, “we will continue. Otherwise, this conversation is over, and we will watch you leave.”

  “Shut that thing.” Marcy swatted Everett. “You’re blinding everybody.” She extended her hand across the seat.

  “How do you do, Mr. Newe. I’m Marcy Johnson. This is my cameraman, Everett Aboud.”

  The guy shook her hand. Then he gripped her seat and squeezed the cushions flat.

  “We accept your conditions, Mr. Newe. I apologize for Everett. He’s a little nervous.”

  “All right,” Tanner said. He withdrew his hands and shut the door. “Straight ahead, please.”

  Everett stuffed the light and the gun. He started Marcy’s car and drove up the empty street. He didn’t know this part of Berkeley. The highlands were upper-middle-class or downright rich. White and Asian. Not many blacks or browns up here.

  Marcy spoke to Tanner, “You knew him in high school?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And worked with him ever since?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?” Marcy peered into the gloom behind her.

  “‘Cause we were doing stuff that was way cooler than working for The Man.” His voice smiled for him.

  “And?”

  “And he brought me along, Ms. Johnson. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much, but he saved me from eating my gun, you know, when I was down. I couldn’t help him when his family got killed, but he remembered me being there, trying to help him, and he came back to Michigan afterward, just to bring me along. We’re not gay. We’re not related. But we’re family. Capiche?”

  They rode in silence for three blocks until Tanner told Everett to turn uphill, and they arrived at a driveway concealed by dense shrubbery. The pavement rose steeply for fifty yards, then leveled to a carport beneath the house, where Everett parked. He killed the lights and stopped the engine.