Shuteye for the Timebroker

by Paul Di Filippo

  I had never gone to college after high school. Although I was a smart kid, I found that I had no ambition, couldn’t sustain any goals. I blame that attitude on my powers. The arbitrary nature of death, as exemplified by my own abilities, left me feeling that life could end at any time, and that nothing was worth struggling for.

  So I told Van yes, I’d like a job.

  I became his secret hit man. I killed anyone he asked me to. Mostly fellow criminals, but quite often not.

  The money was very, very good. And I lived a peaceful, satisfied life.

  * * *

  No Dave ever uses my name when hailing me over the intercom. I suppose they are only following orders in this regard, too. Instead, they simply call out, “Attention!” Some Daves bark out the word as a command, while others are more polite, even saying, “Attention, please.” The woman is one of the polite ones.

  Today I am reading when the call for attention sounds. It’s one of the brusquer Daves. I put down my book. It’s a good book about a guy who is fed up with his life and moves to a little house in the country. Sounds like my situation, except I wasn’t really fed up with my old life, and I didn’t get to choose my retreat.

  The command for attention is followed by the instructions I’ve come to know so well.

  “There is a photo awaiting you in the door. Retrieve it and perform your standard function on the subject.”

  “Sure thing, Dave,” I reply.

  I go to the lone door in my apartment. Set midway in the door is a hinged panel. I pull down the panel and a receptacle big enough to hold a cafeteria tray piled with food is revealed. Of course, the far side of this space is blocked by another panel, this one locked. I often speculate about whether this delivery system is a box bolted to the outside of a normal door, or if the door itself is very thick, like one of those blast doors in a government bunker. This is how I get my magazines and fast-food meals delivered. And also, of course, the photos of my victims.

  The photograph this time is generically similar to most of the others I’ve processed so far. It’s a portrait of an Arab-looking young man: largish nose, wispy beard, disorderly black hair, fanatical eyes, grim mouth. An improbably jaunty scarf is tied around his neck. As usual, there is no information given as to his name or age or nationality. His crimes are not detailed, either. All that I need to know is that the people who control me want him dead.

  I take the photograph back to my comfortable recliner and go to work.

  Something about this victim’s impregnable smugness, his air of righteous zealotry, irritates me, and I decide to go slow and be thorough.

  1 picture myself jamming the barrel of a pistol up his nostrils, shattering cartilage. I twist the gun cruelly before I blow the top of his head off, splattering the wall against which he’s posed with his brains. I take an automatic rifle and use every bullet in its magazine to cut him literally in half. I duct-tape several grenades to his crotch and pull the pins. I use a knife on his eyes and tongue before severing his jugular veins. And so on.

  At the end of five minutes, I’m quite sure that this man, wherever he is on the planet, is dead.

  One less terrorist to undermine global civilization. One less Chechen or Algerian, Taliban or Syrian.

  Or so I hope.

  * * *

  I often wonder if there is anyone else on earth with my powers. If such a being exists, perhaps he or she is in the employ of rival powers, and one day my own photo will fall into their hands.

  This is a strangely comforting thought.

  * * *

  Maybe you’ve read about the study that investigated the efficacy of prayers in the healing process. The researchers found that patients who were prayed for by friends and relatives and who knew about the prayers healed faster. But then the experimenters went one step further. They got strangers to pray remotely for certain patients and never even told the patients they were getting such special attention.

  And the subjects still healed faster than average.

  That study seems to provide some sort of explanation for what I do.

  Except I don’t say prayers. I say curses.

  And I doubt the same god is answering mine.

  * * *

  The way I found out that my power worked on photographs of people, on shadows of their souls, as well as if I were standing right next to them, was like this.

  One day when I was about twenty-two, I was reading the newspaper and came across an article about a local drunken driver who had wiped out an entire Asian family while they were crossing a street. He was one of those unrepentant types who refused even to admit he was at fault. Said something about the family jaywalking. I had actually known the people who were killed. They weren’t close friends or relatives, but they ran a variety store in my neighborhood. I stopped in there a lot, and the owners were always nice to me.

  Upon learning how these people had died, I got so pissed off that I started doing my thing on the newspaper photo of the drunken driver at his arrest.

  On the evening news I heard he had died in custody of natural causes.

  This was the mysteriously apt death I would discuss with Van Tranh at the funeral.

  Just like when I had first discovered my powers, I had to do a little experimenting with this new photo trick. I found out that a photo had to be no more than twenty-four hours old for me to succeed in killing the victim. Freshness counted. There must be something about a persons nature that continually changes with time and makes them a different person than they were the day before. I don’t like to use the word soul, but maybe that’s the part that changes, gets updated with experience. Also, the image of the victim’s face had to be highly detailed. Remote shots of little human smudges didn’t cut it.

  I wondered if television pictures would work as well. I tried, but the results were inconclusive. You know why? No single image stayed on the screen long enough for me to concentrate on! When was the last time you saw a person’s face occupy the screen for three minutes without some kind of interruption, even if it is only a change in camera angles? And that was enough to reset my efforts to zero. But my captors must’ve thought there was a possibility I could do it, since they blocked the TV here from reception.

  I would have liked to have seen certain obnoxious TV personalities keel over live on camera. But I never got the chance to make it happen.

  * * *

  Of course I sometimes wonder if I am insane, if I am not alone in a padded cell hallucinating all this. But then I remember killing Tony Grasso, and all the killings that followed over the years, in such clear and vivid detail that I am again convinced of the reality of my present situation. And I don’t believe I could have come up with such a delusion on my own. Mutant soldier in the war on terrorism. Before my capture, I never gave two thoughts to the war on terrorism.

  Now, of course, it’s with me all the time.

  * * *

  Two weeks after I killed the young Arab wearing the scarf, I got my usual delivery of delayed newsmagazines. My employer makes sure the issues aren’t current, just in case any photos were taken twenty-four hours before distribution. In the coverage of the Middle East, I saw pictures of a public funeral where my victim was the corpse. The text claimed he was a Hamas organizer who had been poisoned by infidels.

  Well, yes, I suppose so, after a fashion.

  * * *

  I don’t believe I’ve yet specified exactly how long I’ve been doing this job, playing my part in the war on terror. Almost three years now. I was abducted in early 2002.

  Is my activity the reason why the United States has not experienced a domestic terror attack since September 11?

  I like to think so.

  But I can’t be sure.

  * * *

  It’s not as easy to get a suitable photo of a terrorist as you might imagine, but it’s not that hard, either. I keep waiting for a picture of bin Laden, for instance, but it hasn’t shown up yet. He must be hiding really well. Or maybe for some re
ason they don’t want him dead yet. Generally speaking, if a Western operative could snap such a photo, they’d also be in a position just to assassinate the guy outright, and they wouldn’t need me. But lots of times, it seems, unwitting and greedy people close to the victim will provide a photo for money, thinking, what harm could it do?

  I am the answer to that question that they must never learn.

  * * *

  Thinking about souls some more, I find additional comfort to support me in my work. If people do have souls, then I’m only liberating their essences from their imperfect shells, returning them to the source for another try at a better life, maybe.

  I think I read some similar philosophy once in a science fiction novel.

  * * *

  It’s good to be unemotional about what I do. Killing Tony Grasso was really the one and only time I felt pure hatred for any of my victims. After that, it was always either just a job or an experiment. Between the ages of thirteen and twenty-two, I estimate that I caused the deaths of only about fifty people. That’s only roughly five per year, a record that shows admirable restraint, I think. Even the terrorists don’t push my buttons. I dislike what they’re trying to do. Civilization doesn’t need toppling, especially by jerks who offer only crude substitutes they intend to enact in its place. And I’m as patriotic as the next guy, so I’m pleased to be able to help my country. But all my killing is basically as simple to me as breathing. It’s just something I do to stay alive.

  * * *

  The photos come to me in random batches. No one can predict on any given day whether many terrorists or just a few will be careless enough to get photographed. Sometimes many days go by and I don’t receive a single photo. Other times, I get three or more in the same day.

  After killing the terrorist with the scarf, I had a long break. I cooked elaborate meals, tossed darts, and read. I asked for extra DVDs.

  But then came a busy period.

  I had to kill two or three people a day. Strangulation, disembowelment, explosions, falls from great heights—my imagination really got a workout.

  * * *

  And on that topic: I find that I need to envision new styles of death from time to time, in order to keep my mind from wandering during the killing process. Luckily, the modern world offers no shortage of novel methods of dying. The news and entertainment media alone can keep me supplied with an endless flow of imagery to borrow. I do a lot of beheadings lately.

  * * *

  “Attention! There is a photo awaiting you in the door. Retrieve it and perform your standard function on the subject.”

  After the busy period, this is the first call for my services in several days. Without any haste, I walk to the door and find the photo of my next victim.

  Surprisingly, the fellow is a middle-aged Caucasian man, European-looking. Not your usual terrorist. But then again, I read that terrorists have been recruiting just such types recently, converts to Islam mostly, to avoid being easily profiled. I have some vague memories of seeing his face before. He could be a terrorist sympathizer like John Walker Lindh or that Australian guy held at Guantanamo. But in any case, my job is not to question why, but just to make him die.

  So I do, using several new methods I picked up from reading true-crime accounts of serial killers.

  * * *

  Sometimes I wonder if the nonrational, unscientific, mystical response that I represent to the war on terrorism was not inevitable. The rhetoric and actions of the terrorists are so archaic, so delusional, so hallucinatory and superstitious that the only effective countermeasures must partake of the same qualities. One has to be a shadowboxer to fight shadows.

  Even if my powers were a lie, even if I were not killing anyone, perhaps the deliberately leaked news of my government-sanctioned existence would be an effective antiterrorist weapon in itself.

  * * *

  My regular delivery of newsmagazines stopped for three weeks. I asked the Daves why, but they wouldn’t answer.

  Of course I immediately suspected that they were hiding something from me. But I wasn’t clever enough to figure out what.

  * * *

  Having this power of mine is not really such a big deal in the end. I couldn’t use it to become fabulously rich, or to rule the world. At least, I couldn’t figure out any way to accomplish those things. All it did was earn me an upper-middle-class income without much exertion. Then it got me locked up here.

  I am forced to conclude that killing people, even remotely and without laying a hand on them, is just not very useful or creative. It’s an activity with limited potential for payback.

  * * *

  The Dave who summons me today is the somewhat friendly woman, and she sounds unusually nervous. I have never heard any of the Daves sound uncertain before.

  “Attention, please. You have, um, new reading material awaiting you.”

  From the door I bring back to my chair an issue of Time magazine from three weeks ago.

  Inside, I learn the identity of my Caucasian victim.

  The Canadian prime minister.

  This is what they have been hiding from me.

  I should have remembered his face! I study the news religiously. But who could remember such a bland, innocuous, Canadian face?

  I trigger the intercom.

  “Who are you? Why have you chosen to show me this now?”

  But there is no answer.

  * * *

  The Canadian prime minister, I knew, did not see eye to eye with the president on foreign policy.

  It seems the definition of enemies in the war on terror has broadened.

  * * *

  I wish I had studied more history, instead of math and science. Is this treachery among allies just part of the game of global politics? Is a move like this demanded by the harsh and unrelenting times we live in? What should I do if ordered again to kill another player from “our” side? My native intelligence and haphazard self-instruction only stretch so far.

  * * *

  I wish now that I had never discovered my powers, never killed Tony Grasso or all the others.

  But I suppose it’s much too late for that.

  * * *

  I’m pretty certain that it’s the same woman who summons me the next day again over the intercom. I can’t think of her as Dave any longer, and would like to know her real name. But I don’t dare ask. Astonishingly, she asks me a question.

  “Attention, please. We know you read the magazine. Do you still want to continue to help us set things right?”

  Something in the tone of her voice compels me to say, “Yes—yes, I do.”

  She sounds relieved. “Very well.” She reverts to the formula, as if finding comfort in the rigid protocol. “There is a photo awaiting you in the door. Retrieve it and perform your standard function on the subject.”

  With some eagerness I snatch the photograph from the slot.

  It’s a picture of the president.

  But there’s something else accompanying it. A gift.

  A hand mirror. Small, like a woman would carry in her purse, but big enough for the task.

  * * *

  I really wish I could be sure about souls.

  Editor Lou Anders, who commissioned this piece, has a knack for bringing out the best in me, it seems. His various original anthologies are conceptualized so clearly, and feature such intriguing conceits, that I’m inspired to go all-out, creating universes that are more complex than I might normally strive to create at the short-story level.

  Anyone who’s ever tried to keep up with our hectic 24/7/365 culture should be able to relate to this story—which also draws inspiration from R. A. Lafferty’s classic “Slow Tuesday Night.”

  Shuteye for the Timebroker

  Three a.m. in the middle of May, six bells in the midwatch, and Cedric Swann, timebroker, was just sitting down to nocturne at his favorite café, the Glialto. He had found an empty table toward the back, where he would be left alone to watch the game.

>   The game on which his whole future depended.

  He took a rolled-up Palimpsest flatscreen from his pocket and snapped it open; the baby freethinker within the screen, knowing Cedric’s preferences, tuned to a live feed from Pac Bell Park. Shots of the stands showed that the brilliantly illuminated park was full, and that was good news, since Cedric had brokered the event. A time-broker was nothing if he couldn’t deliver warm bodies. But the box score displayed in a corner of the screen held less happy tidings.

  The Giants were losing 4-6 against Oakland, with only one more inning to go.

  Cedric winced and crumpled, as if he’d been pitchforked from within. He had fifty thousand dollars riding on the Giants.

  The bet had been a sure thing, intended to offset some of his debts from a recent string of gambling losses. But the fucking Giants had been forced to bench their best pitcher with injuries just prior to the game. The lanky Afghani newbie had been moved up from the Kabul farm team to boost the fortunes of the San Francisco team after their disastrous ’36 season, and he had indeed done so. But now his absence was killing Cedric. And the club’s remaining players were stumbling around like a bunch of fucking sleepers!