by Eliot Peper
Emily reeled in this line of thinking. She was no longer a player in the great game of geopolitics, a puppeteer guiding events from behind the digital veil. She had proven herself unworthy to bear such a mantle. She had been too easily seduced by power. No. She was a fighter. Her aching, injured body was a testament to this new truth. The ring was her realm, and this conversation, these people, bore no relevance to it whatsoever. She set down a replacement cup in front of Lowell.
“Okay, Lowell, you have our attention,” said a statuesque man with a refined Kenyan accent. “And if your respect for our time is as extensive as you claim, you didn’t invite us here simply to present a problem. What exactly is it that you propose we do?”
Lowell grinned.
Emily retrieved the bottle from the sidebar, leaned over, and began to pour.
“It all comes down to one very special person,” he stage-whispered. “Javier Flores.”
Baijiu spilled over the rim of the little cup and onto the table.
CHAPTER 7
“So sorry, sir,” said Emily as she fumbled for a towel. Javier. Her heart was pounding in her ears, her body opening the adrenaline tap but finding her reserves depleted in the wake of the fight. The migraine threatened to return, like storm clouds massing on the horizon.
Lowell waved her away and addressed the table. “Pixie’s right, folks. Commonwealth’s glass isn’t half-empty or half-full, it’s over-fucking-flowing.” He threw back the shot. “The Mongols conquered the world with innovative cavalry tactics. The Europeans conquered it with guns, germs, and steel. Rachel conquered it with infrastructure. It’s brilliant in a sneaky-little-shit kinda way. Win everyone over with how convenient and useful the feed is. Let it spread its tendrils everywhere. And then, once everyone has become totally dependent on your freakishly pervasive system, pull the rug out from under them. Dance, motherfucker, dance.” Lowell drew finger pistols from imaginary holsters and held up his guests. “But while Rachel can build great tech, she doesn’t see herself as a ruler, and therein lies her greatest weakness.”
Instead of fading into the background, Emily was now trying to forge ahead through the murky haze of what was probably a concussion. Niko had done a number on her. But if Javier was somehow implicated in whatever this was, she needed to be able to think. She needed clarity.
“Commonwealth used to be a tech startup,” said Freja. “And even now that it’s sovereign, its internal organization still resembles a typical private firm. As chairwoman, Rachel is essentially a dictator. In theory, she’s overseen by the board of directors, but as in many publicly traded companies, I’d characterize their role as more of an advisory council. Rome under Augustus, Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew”—she nodded to Lex—“or France under the Sun King are imperfect but illustrative parallels. And this progressive-membership proposal is being spearheaded by a single board member: Javier Flores.”
Rizal had sent Emily here to win over a man who was gobbling up fight clubs in the hopes that he might add Camiguin to his collection. Emily tried to remember how Dag had described Lowell, what she and Javier had learned from observing the oligarch via feed. He might have been rich, but he wasn’t driven by greed. He might have been powerful, but he wasn’t fundamentally ambitious. Instead, he loved living on the edge, making dangerous bets, turning everything into a game and everyone into a pawn.
Let it spread its tendrils everywhere. So maybe that was Lowell’s ulterior motive for acquiring fight clubs. He wasn’t adding an illegal gladiator operation to an organized-crime ring. He was aggregating all the tiny pockets beyond the reach of the feed in order to plot the overthrow of Commonwealth. A wave of dizziness washed over Emily. She knelt to clean up the shards of the cup Lowell had thrown, thankful for an excuse to steady herself with a hand on the floor.
“The guy’s a die-hard hippie,” said Lowell. “Even before Commonwealth took itself off the stock market and declared independence, he was an activist shareholder. Solidifying their carbon policy, demanding feed accountability, calling for a bill of user rights, all kinds of zany shit. Drives the rest of the board up the wall. Kids lap it up, though. You know how it is with these utopian revolutionary types. Honestly, I’d find it kinda cute if it weren’t the political equivalent of passing a kidney stone. I mean, let him be a feed star, give him a talk show, offer him a book deal. Just don’t actually let him drive the fucking boat.”
“This proposal is Javier’s brainchild,” said Freja. “Sofia Trevisani, Diana and Dag Calhoun, Liane Otgonbayar, Zhou Baihan, and the rest of the board and senior-management team are going along with it, but only because Javier is putting all his political capital behind the proposal.”
“They’ve got their own priorities,” said Lowell. “Rachel’s on her deathbed, and the word of the day is succession. Javier’s decided this is going to be his final salvo before the queen passes. That’s why we have a chance to actually head this off. Implementing progressive membership will be a massive undertaking. If we can sow enough discord, create enough confusion, and screw up Javier’s plans, they’ll fizzle. Rachel has announced Sofia as her official successor, but whoever replaces good ol’ Leibovitz is going to have their hands full consolidating their position. They certainly won’t be able to force progressive membership. If we can delay things until the crone croaks, we’re golden.”
“What do you have in mind?” asked Barend.
“Our people are working to slow the effort internally,” said Freja. “Raising objections, offering alternative proposals, manufacturing obstacles, things like that. We’re preemptively funding a bundle of academic studies demonstrating the importance of keeping private property inviolable as well as a few think tanks that are seeding press stories explaining how inequality is the natural state of a strong economic system. We’re coordinating with a group of like-minded allies, namely representatives of national governments that see this for what it is: a power play by Commonwealth that will relegate independent nation states to the sidelines as it cannibalizes their tax base and social contracts.”
“Academic studies?” Midori didn’t try to disguise her disdain. “Your plan is to place a few think-pieces? I’m sure everyone will be won over once they read the pithy and statistically significant conclusions.”
Freja assessed her coolly.
“This is all contextual, of course,” said Freja. “Just framing the narrative. The real work is much more targeted. We have a team of investigators digging into Javier’s background. He’s got a private island off the coast of Washington State. We’ll publish footage of it, excavate a few skeletons from his closet, and paint him a hypocrite so his manifestos ring hollow.”
The Island. Another migraine seared through Emily’s left temple. She thought of the students there, all plucked from orphanages and foster homes to be given a real education, a real chance. Javier would not want a team of billionaire-backed muckrakers sniffing through his CV. Emily didn’t either. They might raise some awkward questions about what exactly he was doing after he left Commonwealth’s employ and before he returned as a board member. They had been careful to cover their tracks, very careful. But that didn’t mean there couldn’t be a stray thread somewhere. Emily caught herself staring at one of the prints hanging on the wall, the sensual curves and savage angles seeming to swirl ever so slightly, the ink breaking free of the long tether of reality.
“This still sounds like chickenshit,” said Jason. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, hopefully it’ll be enough. But if even a fraction of the proposal you’ve laid out is true, we need a real insurance policy, not a PR campaign. I’m not betting the security of my portfolio on a clever disinformation ploy.”
“Ahh,” said Lowell, pausing to take a shot. “And Jason brings us to the heart of the matter.” Emily refilled his cup and bused away the empty edamame husks. “The merely rich can afford to rely on things like the rule of law to guard their assets. But guests of your means don’t have that luxury.” He gave Jason an appreciative nod. “You
’re right, of course. We need a backstop, a guarantee. The rumor mill is already up and running, but despite our efforts, Javier has continued to champion the proposal. An obvious approach would be to arrange an unfortunate accident for him—”
“Hold on, hold on,” said Barend. “Surely you’re not about to implicate us all in whatever it is you’re talking about.”
It would be so, so easy. Emily could reach out and snap Lowell’s neck. She could shatter the bottle on the edge of the table and open his throat. The world wouldn’t miss him, and she’d already earned whatever retribution might be exacted upon her. Given the caliber of the company, they’d likely make her disappear even more effectively than she’d managed to do on her own account. Curtains—please exit through the back, folks. No, there won’t be an encore this time around. The suits promise that the show will be returning to town once the star achieves reincarnation.
Then again, surely Rizal, his family, and the rest of the staff would likely suffer the same fate. People this loaded dotted their i’s and crossed their t’s. A supremely discreet security contractor would be dispatched to clean up the mess and would leave Camiguin looking brand-spanking-new. Fight club? No, never. We don’t approve of that sort of thing here.
Worse, whatever designs Lowell had on Javier would be left intact. That, Emily could not allow. So instead of murdering him where he sat, she reached over and placed a small dish of edamame on the table to complement the baijiu, and let her forearm brush his, felt him register the contact.
Lowell raised his eyebrows at Barend in exaggerated surprise. He gestured around with upturned palms. “Implicate you? Here? And how exactly would I do that? That’s the beauty of this joint.” He reached out and smacked Emily’s ass, and she had to repress her instinct to shatter his nose with her elbow. “What happens in a fight club stays in a fight club. Am I right? If it’s not on the feed, it didn’t happen.”
Emily circled the table, refilling cups. When she reached the far end, she glanced back over her shoulder at Lowell, caught his eye, let her frank gaze hold his for a second too long, looked away without smiling, continued around the table.
“And you’re hardly in a position to play Goody Two-shoes.” Jason glared at Barend. “Or was the team who cleaned up the Atacama fiasco not under the employ of the Dutch Royal House?”
Finishing her loop around the table, Emily ran her pinkie lightly across Lowell’s shoulder blades, imagining her fingernail was a poisoned razor blade. Nobody else could see the touch, but he straightened his posture marginally.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen, please,” said Lowell. “We’re all friends here. And friends don’t let friends get jacked. Hence this little spitballing session. And while we’re speculating, I’m sure y’all can imagine that security for Commonwealth board members is airtight. Diana Calhoun has seen to that. Playing hardball against Javier directly would be . . . blunt, and we’d risk significant blowback. However, Freja’s due-diligence team has turned up a tasty morsel. For all his grandstanding, Javier is pretty quiet about his personal life. One person he doesn’t mention in his media appearances is his little sister, Rosa.” Emily’s heart skipped a beat. “And yet we know that they’re extremely close. Rosa’s an art dealer in Addis Ababa, and her security is not airtight. We don’t need to threaten Javier directly. We just need to threaten whatever, or in this case whoever, he cares most about. Our team is already in place. With Rosa safely in hand, I believe we’ll find Javier to be quite receptive to our entirely reasonable appeals. Perhaps he’ll be inspired to stall the project, or even change direction entirely. Family first, right? Voilà! Disaster averted.”
He raised his cup.
The last time Emily had seen Rosa in person was at a ginger-beer bar in Seattle. While they sipped on the extra spicy, Rosa had enthusiastically described the new artistic talent she was scouting in Addis Ababa. But Emily’s mind had been elsewhere, absorbed in constant revisions of the multiyear plan to pass new international climate-change legislation. She had been thinking about the hurricane that had ravaged the Yucatán peninsula, the water-war refugees fleeing Nigeria, what precisely she should say to win Dag to her cause, and how critically important that cause was. Emily had left early, swigging the last of the fizzy beverage and explaining that there was work she had to get back to. Rosa had assured her that she understood completely, squeezed her in a big hug, and kissed Emily on the cheek. All these years later, Emily couldn’t believe how easily she had taken Rosa for granted, how thoughtlessly she had ditched their conversation to return to her own all-consuming project. Were these power brokers rubber-stamping her kidnapping?
Jason raised his cup to join Lowell’s.
“Hold on,” said the woman with the Turkish accent. “What exactly are you getting out of this? You’re not asking us for anything in return. If you were going to do this anyway, why bother to call this meeting at all?”
“My dear Nisanur,” said Lowell, cup still raised. “Please accept this gesture as a token of good faith. Risk nothing. Watch from the sidelines. Enjoy the fruits of my labor. Draw your own conclusions. My hope with this little project is to earn your trust.” The corner of his mouth quirked up into a half smile. “And remember, succession is the word of the day. The end of Rachel’s reign will herald the beginning of something entirely new, something I intend to have a hand in. That is when I will need your support. By then you’ll know you can rely on me. None of us want to live under a technocratic despot, and the easiest way to seize control of the future is to build it ourselves.”
Nisanur held Lowell’s eye for a long moment, then raised her cup. One by one the others raised theirs. Midori looked delighted, like she had been admitted to an exclusive club. The Kenyan appeared bored, as if this was but one of many such meetings this week. Barend was about to say something, but then swallowed his words and followed suit.
Emily wanted to murder each and every one of them.
“To victory,” said Lowell. “May we strike as true as Pixie.”
CHAPTER 8
It was slow at first, a rhythm so drawn out that it wasn’t yet a rhythm, a union of pleasure and pain, the ultimate realization of mutual fantasy. Emily rocked her hips faster and faster, felt Dag grow inside her, barely heard the old bed creaking beneath them. They had been orbiting each other for so long. Their relationship was a curve forever approaching its asymptote but never quite intersecting, becoming tangent only at infinity. Well, infinity had arrived, and first contact had sparked this singularity that was burgeoning inside her as she accelerated, sweat stinging her eyes, the high hat of tingling nerve endings tumbling over the accelerating bass line that could not be denied. She slapped him across the face, then locked her hand around his throat, felt the pulse at his jugular, the fragility of his precious airway. He thrust up and into her, and she met him with equal force, urging him on, every thread of the breakbeat looping into itself again and again, a recursive function collapsing into crescendo, and then he cried out and she moaned his name and she was him bucking underneath her and he was her arching her back, and they were each other and both of them and everything was sucked into the vortex, spiraling slow and fast and inevitably toward the source, and they were lost and they were found and they were one and then it was over.
Emily kept her eyes closed for a few heartbeats, clinging to the receding tide of fantasy, aching for it to be real, for all the rest to be nothing but a bad dream, a psychedelic experiment gone wrong. Could it be possible to turn back time? Could she unwind fate, undo her mistakes, respawn at the last save point and play again?
“Mother of God,” he said, panting. “That was a fuck.”
Her eyes snapped open.
Lowell Harding lay beneath her. Thick white hair covered his chest and protruding belly, which rose and fell as he sucked for air. His arms were splayed out across damp sheets stained with cum and glitter. Cicadas sang. The air was thick and funky with the smell of sex.
Emily slapped Lowell again, backhand thi
s time, and he grunted, his wilting penis twitching inside her. Then she dismounted and retreated to the bathroom. As she peed, the migraine returned with a deep throb. Every joint complained. Every muscle burned. She hadn’t wanted to hate fuck Lowell. She hadn’t wanted to ever see his face again. She certainly hadn’t expected to enjoy it, but maybe a benefit of spending so long painstakingly constructing other people’s digital realities was that she could conjure similarly immersive fantasies for herself.
The toilet flushed with a gentle whoosh. She could still opt out. She could endure the walk of shame back to her little apartment, swallow a sleeping pill, and pretend this never happened. After a brief recovery period, she could return to the gym, coax her body back from the brink of breakdown, and eventually take on her next challenger in the ring. Rizal would try to dissuade her as he always did. Maybe Lowell would buy him out and Rizal would once again attempt to convince her to manage the fight club in his absence. She would decline, or perhaps accept but claim the joint title of manager and fighter, playing the part of both jailor and prisoner in her self-enforced captivity.
She washed her hands, splashed water on her face. Even in darkness, she could make out the whites of her eyes in the mirror, feel the water dripping off her chin, running down her neck and between her breasts, carrying sweat and blood and glitter with it. Niko wasn’t the only person who had died tonight. Emily wasn’t—couldn’t be—just Pixie anymore. The moment Lowell had uttered Javier’s and Rosa’s names, something had clicked. Emily had worked so hard to hide, to banish herself so that she could not inflict more pain on those she loved, to live in this parallel dimension that was Camiguin. But if her goal was to protect her friends at all costs, even from herself, how could she ignore a blatant threat to them from a man like Lowell?
