The Manhattan Prophet

by Jake Packard

  Right after the Exchange, the Alliance cracked down on competitive news distribution. They placed powerful homeland-security measures on their patron city-states dependent on their goods and services, and exercised broad control over the power of the local governments and private security forces under their influence. They forced many TV stations worldwide to go belly up. With just a few news outlets remaining, it resembled the meager choice of channels offered as in the early days of television, leaving no real competition or industry watchdogs. The leftover field gave some illusion of free press to the surviving billions desperate for info, and made it easier for the multinationals to censor the news. Of course entertainment like reality TV, sensationalistic drama series, and game shows proliferated because they captured the attention of the masses and helped sell the products of the multinational corporations.

  As the spread of smart personal devices increased along with the power of their processors, alternatives to these traditional avenues of news coverage evolved with the Alternet. Hackers broadcast their version of the news stories on surrogate frequencies piggybacked onto those of the multinationals. The technology seemed similar to graffiti paintings in the subways whose messages rolled along with the trains, appearing and reappearing no matter what vigilance the corporations placed on wiping it out. Their privatized militaries continually waged war upon these alternative news forms, with savage punishment doled out to perpetrators they smoked out of the confused cyber landscape.

  So Ira Fine and Marty Gold walked the tight line between ethical journalism and pleasing the powerful hands that fed them. They reported what news they could in this restrictive environment, while running one of the most lucrative corporate ventures of the 21st century. As they put away personal fortunes that guaranteed them and their ancestors the most comfortable lives available on earth for generations to come, they rationalized it all by saying to themselves that there haven’t been any real moral principles in the news for decades. Profit motivated the industry from the beginning, not the truth.

  They smiled at each other by the only monitor with a picture in the frame in the control room on West 66th Street. It showed an empty podium with the seal of the First Army draped behind, an eagle carrying an olive branch in its clenched talons. Ira remarked that the squirrel killers public relations should have placed a dead rodent in the eagle’s fist, because no one really cared about political correctness anymore. This morning they had two employees shot dead and two missing and presumed dead, and that, as well as this next televised press session, would bring in billions.

  The buzz of chattering news people that filled the studio quickly quieted to a hush when General Pellet approached the podium in his swanky uniform that created an image of total control.

  The General stepped up to the microphone. “In light of the tragic circumstances surrounding this afternoon’s newscast, I’d like to make a short statement; then I’ll be open for a few questions. At approximately 3:30 this afternoon, on the corner of 89th Street and Fifth Avenue, a band of heavily armed terrorists originating from inside Shantypark attacked a peace-maintaining unit of the First Army as they prepared to secure a video transmission location in the area. The combatants surprised the troops with automatic fire and grenades, killing seventeen soldiers and thirty-six bystanders, including two of the news crew from ABCCN, two others of which were abducted and presumed dead. Before the army could respond in a coordinated effort, the assailants fled.”

  A low volume mumbling moved through the room. A man in a brown tweed suit, with a burgundy bowtie, typing notes on his tiny qwerty, raised his hand. The General recognized him and he and stood up. “General, and we all agree,” indicating his fellow journalists, “that we are honored in calling you General, which we believe is the appropriate title for your position.”

  The crowd of paparazzi burst into a short laugh. The General gave a smarmy smile because he knew he could squash them all like small animals.

  The reporter continued, “Considering the events of the past few hours, including the positioning of troops around the perimeter of Shantypark, why is there no official response from City Hall to this attack on your men?”

  “Ronald, as you know, the mayor is still unavailable, involved as we speak in top secret talks with the leaders of the technological world, which shows you how serious this new threat is. Ten years ago when we were called in by the Alliance to protect the people of New York City tand free them from the ravages of gang war and terrorism, Shantypark became an established, yet necessary, evil in society. A city-state with laws such as ours can’t exist in a state of anarchy. We also cannot abandon the helpless and the truly innocent whose diseases keep them locked up with these blatant criminals. However, we also can’t allow these elements in our society to infect the healthy. We are a professional army hired by the multinational corporations who underwrite this entire city. We train every day to protect their investment according to their evaluations. We have done our part to keep the peace. During my command, things have stayed stable between our society and that which is confined to Shantypark, until now. It is obvious to me that something new is causing this first direct outbreak of violence from the gangs in more than ten years.”

  The reporters, smelling good juice, jumped to their feet, each clamoring to ask the next question. Pellet pointed to a familiar face. The others, disappointed, sat back down grumbling.

  “General!” exclaimed a lady in a blue dress, white cardigan, and wearing a straw hat. She waved her Samsung Galaxy XII. “Are you saying that the disappearance of Salem Jones is connected with this violence; and as a follow-up, do you think he is now inside Shantypark as popular sentiment seems to feel?”

  “Simply, Marcia, the answer is yes, and yes.” The ostensibly erudite roared to its feet loudly vocalizing its excitement over these succinct but powder-kegged assumptions.

  “If that’s the case,” the straw hat lady continued, “does the First Army have any intention of reversing Mayor Storm’s historic agreement by making an incursion into Shantypark.”

  But the General walked away, not bothering to give a no comment.

  As the mad tapping of palm-sized wireless technology began beaming words through an orbiting satellite, the only TV camera allowed in the room shut down upon Pellet’s quick and sharp departing glance.

  Back in the control room, Marty and Ira, with yet another sad smile, felt the look he gave meant a direct warning to them.

  * * * * *

  Blackouts

  Theodore Roosevelt Storm believed a boy needed to get a job and earn his own money. He practiced that belief on his son. So at the age of ten, the future mayor, John Kennedy Storm delivered pizzas after school for Sharif and Hussein Konakli, two Turkish brothers who bought a small Italian eatery on Morningstar Avenue, a couple of doors down from the apartment he lived in with his dad in Harlem. Young Jack liked the feeling of having his own money, buying his own stuff.

  Ten-year-old Jack and his Dad lived in a very tough neighborhood. They suffered robberies and shootings every night. Hookers, gangsters, gamblers, and drunks commonly strolled the thoroughfare, tripping the light fantastic amongst the omnipresent drug dealers located on every savage corner. Several times when out on a delivery, a gang of middle school dropouts mugged Jack at knifepoint. Kids he knew by name and where they lived robbed him of his money and then, for fun, they rubbed his nose in the hot, oily mozzarella cheese he carried in those square flat boxes.

  Some of his friends and neighbors in the hood thought Theodore crazy to send a young boy out there in the night all alone. But Theodore would always slough off their criticism with a strong rebuff, and said it created strong character. He felt proud that his son could go out there in the dark world and fend for himself alone. Prophetic when Jack look at how alone he always felt now.

  Years after the catastrophic loss of loved ones, and after much hard work, most people finally can get used to the loneliness. Mayor Storm really never had the chance. The need to
make sense out of the mystery of life and death, why some survive and others die, had to be shut out from his consciousness early after the disaster so he could save the city he loved. He had no opportunity left to save the family he loved, and within the gigantic abyss his city had fallen, he had no time to grieve.

  Sam said the forced subjugation of these heavy traumatic emotions gave rise to these recurring blackout events later in Jack’s life. Of course, a great friend, but no friggin’ Sigmund Freud.

  The blackouts always started like an echo, perhaps from an indistinct memory of a sound, a hushed inhalation of satisfaction from his past, a snuffled sneeze, a baby’s gurgle. They continued with voices, somewhat recognizable, parts of phrases, catches of music, caught in the drift of an elusive energy. Then his ability to react became frozen by these forces, leaving him incapable and incommunicable.

  As of yet it had not interfered with the running of government, and nobody but Sam knew. But lately they seemed to come when he needed himself the most, when his city-state, his people, turned to him to pull another rabbit out of the hat. And, it kept getting harder to hold the blackouts back. It drove Sam nuts that Jack now admitted he sometimes doesn’t care, that he liked his thoughts being cleansed, whatever that meant.

  Watching Pellet’s emergency newscast today, while stuck in a teleconference with the multinationals, Jack fell into the spin. He had to keep quiet, allowing those he disagreed with to proceed without him.

  Alone once again late at night in the armored room in his office, locked away from everything except his computers, his eyes gazed upon the picture next to his monitor, the only image of his dead family that he allowed in his work place. He looked at it hard and wished he could go back to that slice in time scientists swear still exist in their abstract equations made out of the chalk dust fading on their blackboards.

  Today’s teleconference made him feel like a kid again getting his face rubbed in pizza. How long had this conspiracy existed? And, how far has the set-up progressed? Now what’s going to become of that poor girl offered up as a sacrifice earlier today? What did Deganawida mean by an entity in my eye? And why does it feel I am running out of steam in this most crucial of times?

  The washing machine kicked into another cycle and his thoughts went sudsing around. And then a light opened in the swirling center, and the soft lathering glow caused tears to trickle from his eyes. And the familiar smiles in the photo on the shelf started singing tender hymns, of places across the river, in the rolling fields of redemption, in the land of milk and honey, in a melody that seemed like a mantra, jumping octaves and down fifths . . .

  * * * * *

  The Tent of Perdition

  At the bottom of the hole the raiders tore Herbie away from Maria and knocked him unconscious. Upon awakening he found Maria nowhere near to be seen. Then he realized his own nakedness, tied to a cross. He lay on his back on thick wooden beams with his arms outstretched to each side. Around him he could hear the jarring tones of MP12s banging out gutter hop downloaded from the Alternet. He heard pinging sounds, like popcorn in a microwave, coming from the other side of a canvas divider. The smell of human excrement from untended outhouses permeated the walls of the tent in which he tried to grasp the shocking fact of his bizarre imprisonment.

  Then he got it. Shantypark. In a tent. Maybe even one he had seen before from the window of the editing suite on 62nd Street.

  On the other side of the canvas walls surrounding him, the gang who had attacked them at the broadcast site and forced them down the hole, gathered around video screens watching bootleg porn. They midnight snacked on popcorn and guzzled Jack Daniels smuggled through the tunnels by the keenest of their sources, squirrel killers no doubt. The good whiskey could fetch a better price than homegrown smizz, but the thugs kept the best stuff for themselves.

  Herbie felt so tired, drugged; he didn’t have much strength to keep from falling backwards into that iron-walled subconscious state from which he had just managed to escape, a place where he had no recollection of sound or living substance.

  Off in the distance he heard a drumbeat and the dancing of hooves. Percussion so evil it could clear angry rats out of sewers. A chill wind blew in from under the tent and his skin shivered. The throbbing racket seemed to be coming towards him.

  He fought the fading in and out, for how long he could not tell, straining himself to stay awake, the drumming clinging to the periphery of his senses. The drugs felt relentless, and the fatigue numbing and bordering on the absolute. But he had to keep his eyes open, he had to stay alert. His arms, stretched out on the splintered cross, felt bloodless, empty of strength. And the cold settled within him, his entire body immobilized. He wanted nothing more and at the same time nothing less, than sleep.

  Coming from all sides they descended on him, lifting him on the cross into the air over their heads. Soon they placed him down, leaning the crucifix vertically against a tent stake. Out of the corners of his eyes he could glimpse a procession of unwashed men, chanting, grunting, and moving in ways robotic to a funereal beat, like all the Internet clips he had seen of filthy-looking gangs that ruled the world in Shantypark. But these images that frightened him to the core did not come from a screen. They carried sticks and staves and spears and poked away at a defenseless young girl . . . and then his body flailed against the ropes, his bound mouth screamed in futility and the gags ripped into the corners of his mouth.

  The gang dragged Maria into the tent, barely dressed in a burlap sack.

  The disguised guardian angel Maria thought walked with her grew wan, and it withered away as the last blast of drugs they gave her faded. Surrounded by these frenzied animals her bewilderment gave way to the idea of something grossly wrong.

  They dragged her to the raping station and set her kneeling on all fours upon it. They ripped off the burlap bag exposing the perfect skin on her perfect body and a horrid cheer dinned her ears. She waited naked on her knees for the devil.

  Lifted on the cross above the mob, Herbie had a first row seat for her imminent ruination, his body heaved to no avail against the excruciation of the bindings holding him to the cross.

  The drunken men milled around her celebrating with the vulgar euphoria that accompanied the worst kind of evil. They flipped her over on her back. They tugged her legs apart. A captain with facial disfigurement held her head, laying her neck vulnerable to the executioner’s long black sword unsheathed in a striking position.

  Maria’s mind could not understand the mixed sounds and visual fluctuations that caused her wild heartbeat. And what was that creepy guy in the black hood doing with that sword? Fear crept in, and then terror.

  A path parted within the sea of demons, and the beast stepped through, stopping in between her widespread legs.

  Gregor unzipped his pants and the gang roared. He began to masturbate in preparation of defiling her helpless womanhood.

  Then from up high, a celestial vibrato invaded the fury. It sang up an octave, and then down a fifth, and then up another octave, and over and over again.

  Another path revealed itself through the creatures. Herbie saw a small black boy lead a calm tall man by the hand through the cringing crowd of miscreants, until Salem Jones stood face to face with Gregor, blocking the way between him and the girl.

  “Get back, Gregor, you are faithless and perverse,” commanded Salem, and Gregor stepped away in awe, as did the rest of his stani horde.

  Herbie heard the astral music grow in volume and watched with astonishment as the beasts intent on this wanton evil cowered as their leader froze.

  Salem Jones removed the long trench coat he wore and covered Maria’s body, lifting her off the unholiest shrine. Surveying the silent stani gang, his eyes on fire like seismic eruptions on Mount Sinai, he bellowed all the way to the furthest alleyways on the street map of time. “Shame upon you!"

  The gang recoiled as if ducking volcanic debris.

  Salem looked up at Herbie, stunned and tied upon the cross. �
��Bring this man to me.”

  They laid the cross back down on the ground. Ibrahim appeared out of the crowd, untied Herbie, and helped him rise to his feet. They followed Salem as he carried Maria out of the tent of perdition.

  Gregor, hunched and seething amidst his horde of skulking gangsters, remained frozen in Salem’s presence, holding his shriveled organ in his heinous, trembling hand.

  * * * * *

  Part 4

  Third Day of the Prophet

  Video Conference

  The monitors blinked on in the armored office just as Jack Storm stepped out of the bathroom, freshly shaven. Dressed in a pressed suit and polished shoes, “You are looking dandy,” Sam said. Three hours of shaky sleep on the office couch, two cups of joe, one minute in a cold shower, ready to go. It’s going to be a busy day in offices everywhere in the world.

  Already in the sound booth, Milos, the Mayor’s main techie, hooked up connections with the other geeks working techie in high places throughout the world, making sure things were right for when the big guys start the talking.

  Sitting down in front of his camera, Jack could just imagine the palace in The Hague, where the chancellor would most certainly be. Storm-troopered to the max, the Euro-giants would be sitting at little round tables with spotless white tablecloths, sipping tea and shooting brandy as pre-pubescent ballerinas pirouetted for their pleasure on checkered tile floors. Two blocks away, standing by campfires burning synthetic logs donated by Seattle, Inc., which inherited the Pacific Northwest after the Cascadian tsunami, would be the Cro-Magnons of the Green Army. At constant vigil in their outposts by the canals, socked in by the fog, they could only stare with dare at the opulence, too cold, too hungry, and out-gunned to put on a good fight that night.