by Eliot Peper
This time it was Javier’s turn to glance between Dag and Diana. His sigh bore a heavy burden. He looked down into the film of grounds at the bottom of his cup and then up at Emily.
“It’s taken everything I have to get the initiative to the brink,” he said. “And this revelation about Lowell could destroy everything.”
“Couldn’t it also inspire people to get behind it?” asked Emily. “Nothing unites people like a common enemy.”
Javier shrugged.
Diana drummed her fingers on the table. “Everyone is at each other’s throats,” she said. “It’s all very diplomatic in the worst possible way.”
“Diplomats,” said Dag, “are people who murder you politely.”
CHAPTER 21
“I need to think,” said Javier. “Let’s walk.”
So he and Emily waved off the car she had ordered via feed and set off down the street. The enterprising roots of gnarled oaks thrust up through the sidewalk, as if the concrete was but a minor distraction. Many of the houses were well kept, but there were a few brooding hulks covered in rotting shingles that looked ready to collapse into themselves. A vulture cruised overhead, spiraling up thermals and surveying the terrain below, sharp eyes ever on alert for carrion.
A strange kind of jealousy fermented inside Emily. Having followed Dag’s life inside and out for so many years, she had half suspected she might find herself unfairly resenting his marriage. But she wasn’t envious of Diana’s relationship with Dag. Instead, seeing the fullness of Dag’s life highlighted the emptiness of her own. He had a wife, two children, an artistic passion, a cottage on a hill. She had . . . ghosts.
The thought carried a bitter aftertaste. How could she begrudge someone who had suffered as Dag had, often at her own hand, whatever happiness he had managed to win? It was a small miracle the vulture didn’t spy out the corruption in her soul.
They passed large outcrops of rock and descended pedestrian stairs sweet with the smell of honeysuckle. A drop of sweat trickled down her spine. The darkness of Javier’s silent brooding was out of place in the afternoon sunshine. His gaze was turned inward, his expression dour under the dappled light.
“My dad told me this fairytale when I was little,” said Emily, remembering how his stories had been the soundtrack to her stargazing, polished by retelling until they were smooth pebbles in her heart. “There was a little girl who grew up in an ancient kingdom. It was a beautiful place, full of snow-capped mountains, dense forests, and fertile soil. The king was a good man who treated his subjects with kindness and respect. The little girl was the daughter of a carpenter, but she would always escape her father’s lessons to play at swords in the woods.”
How odd, that after so many years the stories stayed with her, never fading. “One day, an old knight was passing through and saw the girl slashing and stabbing at imaginary foes with a willow switch. The old knight took pity on the girl, perhaps because he had no children of his own, and sponsored her training in arms up at the castle. The carpenter didn’t like the sound of that, but the girl insisted, and finally her father agreed. Nine years later, the girl was a knight and was admitted into the seven-member royal guard, sworn to protect the king and each other at all costs.”
As the story gained momentum, Emily recognized her father’s phrasing and inflections bleeding into her own speech. “On her first anniversary as a royal guard, a dragon descended on the kingdom. It was huge and black and furious, and fire gushed from its mouth as if it had swallowed a sun. Once it had gobbled up the goats and cows and sheep, it began to feast on the villagers. In a single breath, it burned down buildings her father had spent years constructing. The king ordered his archers to shoot the beast out of the sky, but their arrows bounced off its scales. Then, the king sent his soldiers to seek out the dragon’s lair, but none of them returned. Desperate, the king finally sent his royal guard.”
As a child, eye pressed to the telescope, Emily had imagined how it might feel to receive such a royal mandate, to know that the world depended on you. “Together, they trekked into the mountains, following the trail of scorched earth. Up past the tree line, the high country was rocky and rugged, all sheer cliffs and barren expanses of granite. At last they reached a cave that looked like a dark wound in the side of the mountain. Bones of all shapes and sizes were scattered around the entrance, and smoke trickled out in wispy tendrils.”
As she spoke, Emily wondered how a dragon might ravage the hills she and Javier were strolling through, how the oily eucalyptus would explode and the bay would go up in steam and the terrified residents would cry out in disbelief at myth made real. The residents of this fairytale kingdom had never believed in dragons until one had arrived. And Emily’s own hometown of Los Angeles had been reduced to smoking rubble. What was a dragon anyway except for danger that defied comprehension?
“The battle lasted seven days. It was a blur of sweat and blood and fire, an extended siege in which the guards and monster pulled out all the stops and, having tried everything in the book, invented entirely new tactics. Finally, all were spent. The dragon collapsed onto the rocks and the knights beside it. But the knight who was the daughter of a carpenter pushed herself to her feet one more time and drew her sword. She stumbled up to the massive head that was the size of a horse cart, planning to stab the beast in its only unarmored spot: its eyeball. She reached her target. The sclera was orange instead of white, and the ovoid pupil was big enough for a child to squeeze through. But in that giant alien eye, she saw not hate, but precisely the same fear and exhaustion she herself felt. So she sheathed her blade and whispered something into the dragon’s ear. And the great beast blinked and then rose up on its haunches and launched itself into the sky, flying off over the mountains, never to return.”
That was the best part. She had always secretly wished the story ended there. But as Rizal would say, The show must go on. “As they stumbled back to the castle, the other guards demanded to know what she had told the dragon, but she refused to share her secret. Bloody, worn out, and reeking of sulfur, they reached the throne room, only to discover that the king had been murdered by his younger brother in their absence. The guardsmen drew their swords one final time, killing the traitor and then each other. For while they had saved the kingdom, they had broken their vow to protect the king.”
They crested a small rise, and the view opened up. The fog was gone now, and the bay glittered under the afternoon sun. Even at this distance they could see the rainbow of color formed by the flowering vines that climbed the suspension cables of the Bay Bridge, transforming the famous spans into the world’s largest hanging garden. Across the water in San Francisco, the impossibly tall graphene skyscrapers of Commonwealth’s American headquarters jutted up into the infinite blue like slender daggers. The breeze carried the taste of brine. This was where the feed had been born, the headwater of the digital river through which they swam.
“That,” said Javier, “is a seriously fucked-up story.”
“I remember reading some article that counted the acts of violence in children’s stories,” said Emily. “Rape, murder, abuse, decapitation, maiming—it’s all in there. Hansel and Gretel is about cannibalism. Funny how we’re more honest with our kids than we think we are.” She imagined the teh tarik arcing from cup to cup without a single stray drop. “The thing I took from that particular story was how we have to be perfect. We can’t settle for saving the king or the kingdom. We have to save both, or lose everything.”
A plane lifted off from the Oakland airport, angling up into the sky as drones made way for it in an endless feed-choreographed dance. The seagulls lacked access to the flight plan, but those the jet engines didn’t scare away, the algorithms made sure to dodge. This was a kingdom where the very thing that made it so beautifully efficient was also the thing that made it vulnerable. Power gave you leverage and made you a target at the same time.
“You know I’ve always loved Disney feed dramas,” said Javier, and his voice was sa
d instead of hostile. “My favorites were always the ones about best friends. But just like with your fairytale, I never liked the endings. Somehow the best friend always wound up dead or betraying the hero. The sidekick was more narrative device than person, a mere container for whatever lesson the protagonist had to learn. That’s bullshit. The sidekick is the hero of their own story. Isn’t it honorable to help friends achieve their dreams? To support the causes of people you love? To care about something, someone, other than yourself? Sidekicks should be celebrated. Why are they the ones who always have to get shafted?”
Javier sighed. “I’ve just never wanted to be alone, you know? And that’s what leadership is, almost by definition. It’s taking a step forward when everyone hangs back, raising your hand when others balk. And when people follow, take your lead, it’s intoxicating and isolating in equal measure. Every objective you achieve becomes yet another layer of lacquer on the mask that separates you from everyone else, that warps their perception of you and your perception of yourself. When I look in the mirror now, I can’t figure out where the mask ends and my real face begins. Thank the gods I have Markus to keep me grounded, because that uncertainty is just another wedge that pries relationships apart, that formalizes what should be easy and codifies what should be implicit. The way people look at me now . . .” His narrow shoulders slumped. “There is nothing on earth more terrifying than adoration.”
A single red balloon drifted up from some backyard birthday party far below them, nudged this way and that by the wind, trailing a ribbon. Shocked and scared at her own audacity, Emily reached out and took Javier’s hand. He didn’t flinch.
CHAPTER 22
As the car whisked them through the empty streets of San Francisco, Emily reviewed the results of her research on the members of the Commonwealth inner circle that would be her audience this evening. She browsed through the vast mosaic of bios, photos, video clips, profiles, résumés, interviews, and notes, trying to relax her focus and let her attention feel its way through the morass. Intricate rhymes fizzed over heavy beats, the music lubricating her intuition. The data available on the public feed was a far cry from what she’d once been able to tap with Javier’s exploit, but it still provided useful context, clues that hinted at what made these people tick.
Beside her, Javier’s long fingers fidgeted in his lap as he stared out at the harsh fluorescent cones of streetlights flickering by. The motley crew populating Emily’s feed were his colleagues, his fellow players in whatever enigmatic games determined the course of Rachel Leibovitz’s accidental empire.
Or maybe not so accidental, knowing Rachel.
The car pulled to a smooth stop in what appeared to be an industrial district.
They disembarked. Before them rose an enormous warehouse, a hulking, black mass like a hole torn from the night. Emily thought of the dragon’s cave in her father’s story. Two bouncers who would have fit in at Rizal’s flanked the entrance, and a single oil lamp illuminated wrought-iron letters mounted above the bronze-bound oak doors.
ANALOG
So this was it. This was the place where Dag had revealed Javier’s exploit to Rachel and ended the Island’s clandestine efforts to make the world a better place. This was the place that had inspired Rizal and his fellow fight-club proprietors to go feedless. In a world of constant connection, this infamous club was a shadow node, a void that shaped everything around it.
The expressionless bouncers opened the door for them, and Emily and Javier stepped into a small anteroom.
“Welcome to Analog. My name is Nell.”
Nell stood at a wooden podium. Red satin curtains rippled gently behind her. Strikingly beautiful in a way that would delight glamour aficionados, she wore knee-high suede boots and a conservative black dress with an innovative cut that revealed glimpses of flawless dark skin. There was a tiny retro air-force insignia pinned on her left breast. Her pale-gray eyes sparkled with sardonic humor and made Emily feel that she was the sole focus of Nell’s attention.
“It’s good to see you, Mr. Flores.”
“You too, Nell,” said Javier.
Nell consulted a paper list, but Emily was certain she didn’t need the guidance. “And it looks like this is your first time with us, Ms. Kim. It’s always a pleasure bringing new friends into the Analog family. Now, while I’d love to chat, I know you both have business to attend to. They should be ready for you in there.”
Nell pulled aside the curtain for them. “Ms. Kim, newcomers often find Analog . . . disconcerting. Just take a deep breath and feel things out.”
“Thanks,” said Emily. “I’ll be fine.”
Stepping through the red satin, they emerged into a cavernous space lit by flickering oil lamps hanging on slender chains from the high ceiling. A long wooden bar ran down the left side of the room, shelves upon shelves of liquor rising up behind it. The opposite wall was covered in thick tapestries depicting royal boar hunts and fortresses under siege. Bow-tied bartenders muddled herbs and polished glasses. At the far end of the hall was a hearth large enough that their car could have driven through it. The whole place smelled of smoke and oiled leather.
But the pop and hiss of the roaring fire could not mask the deeper silence. Emily closed her eyes for a moment. Eric B. and Rakim’s incandescent anthem “Paid in Full” had cut off midhook. All the notes she had assembled had vanished. The sum total of human knowledge, the hub of human communication, and the engine that drove human civilization were suddenly beyond her reach. She couldn’t access the records of their ride, her inbox of unread messages, or even the local time.
The feed was gone. The umbilical cord that connected her to the digital fountainhead had been severed. There were no more murmurings from the endless news cycle, no more prompts delivered just in time to smooth the bumps of life, no more small reminders that she was never truly alone, that she was but a part of a beautiful, terrible, boundless whole. It was as if she were stargazing and between one blink and the next, an impenetrable fog had covered the sky, obscuring the cosmos.
Blood roared in her ears and adrenaline flooded through her veins. Her muscles flexed, her mind loosened, and she found herself waiting for Rizal to announce her to the assembled throng, to call her to the ring. Emily had never been to Analog before, but this feeling of profound disconnection was anything but new to her. The Camiguin fight club was feedless, and she had conditioned herself to associate this uncoupling with imminent violence, with the conviction that she would kill or be killed, with the desperate compulsion to face her own extinction.
A hand touched her arm, and it took every ounce of Emily’s will not to murder its owner on the spot.
“It can take some getting used to, but I think you’ll come to appreciate it,” said Nell.
After she had quelled the urge to retaliate with extreme prejudice, Emily found herself absurdly grateful for the intercession. This was not Camiguin. This was San Francisco, and she was standing in a social club, not a fight club. She relaxed her muscles, remembered Nell’s advice, and took a deep breath. The melancholy notes of a lone oud fell on her ears like raindrops. The gentle pressure of Nell’s touch was an ecstatic connection, two spacecraft docking after an interstellar voyage. The sharp whiff of paraffin reminded Emily that there might be a reality outside her own. Whatever battle awaited her here, it would not be fought with fists.
She opened her eyes.
So, this was Analog. In which booth had Dag handed over their exploit to Rachel all those years ago? Where had Lynn Chevalier pinned the exposé of the century on Vince Lepardis? What vintage of bourbon had Malignant Kernel been drinking before their epic breakup brawl? It was here that Cory Doctorow had assembled the core group of activists that would reform global copyright laws. Mara Winkel herself had visited here before laying bare Wall Street’s most ambitious money-laundering operation and putting an ice ax through the eye socket of its mastermind on national television. This place attracted intrigue like a magnet, and every rumor of infamy
further stoked its reputation. Spies, celebrities, entrepreneurs, artists, scientists, politicians, and journalists made pilgrimages to this feedless shrine to dream and scheme and gossip. The arc of history refracted through Analog like sunlight through honey.
And there, at its center, around the circular table in the middle of the floor that had been cleared of all other furniture, sat the council that would determine their fates.
CHAPTER 23
Her presentation complete, Emily reappraised the faces around the table. This was the convocation Javier had wanted so badly to avoid.
Diana spoke first. “I’ve ramped up security on the entire board to three degrees of separation. That means heavy algorithmic filtering of every signal and expert review of all red flags. We’re doing randomly assigned physical security audits as well, and each of you will be leaving here with a bodyguard.”
“No need for that,” said Baihan. His voice carried the strange inflections of a Mandarin speaker who had learned English from a South African. “I already have a full team.”
“I realize that,” said Diana. “But we’re assigning one anyway. Please consider it a gesture of good faith from Commonwealth.”
Baihan looked like he was about to object again, but Liane spoke first.
“I work from our San Francisco offices,” she said. “Surely, there’s no need—”
“Everyone will leave here with a bodyguard,” said Diana firmly. “I know it’s annoying. Your objections are noted, but we can’t afford to take any chances until we have the situation under control.”
“Annoying?” Sofia’s singsong Italian accent accentuated her ironic tone. “Is that what this is, Diana? Or do you just want an excuse to peg one of your spooks on each of us?”
Sofia was beautiful in a hard way. Commonwealth’s heir apparent had dark hair that was pulled back in a tight ponytail and she wore a Bhaskara Markoff suit that accentuated her lean muscles and total absence of body fat. Her cheekbones could have been chiseled from marble, and although she looked like she might have just collected successive golds in Olympic track and field events, Sofia’s real expertise was network engineering. After escaping the dissolution of the European Union, Sofia had managed to obtain one of the rare American refugee visas. She and her family had started a new life here in the Bay Area, and Sofia had built a long career at Commonwealth, a career that would culminate when she took over as Rachel’s successor.
