Anarchy- Another Burroughs Rice Mission

by Theo Cage

“Turn off your phones, your tablets. Somebody is sniffing us. Someone big.”

  “Narus?” Narus Insight was a packet sniffer used by the FBI, a mass surveillance tool that could intercept anything flowing across a network and then store and analyze the data later. Wey was pretty sure Narus couldn’t touch them. He had built in precautions. But—

  “Narus does real-time processing up to a few million users. This was bigger. Very big,” whispered Zerzy.

  ‘You’re dreaming. Nobody can handle that much data.”

  Zerzy shrugged. “Somebody did. It was like whole bloody Internet got sniffed, all of it, voice, video, text, everything for like minute or two. Like earthquake that shook whole planet at one time. Scared ssat out of me.”

  Way knew the word. It was Zerzy’s favorite. Ssat was piss in Russian. Za was just her way of saying the.

  “Whoever did it, has us. They know who we are.”

  Toshi shook his head. “They have nothing. They would have to process trillions of conversations. That would take years. By then we’ll be done and gone.”

  “It doesn’t feel that way to me. It felt like something big and super scary. Breathing on my neck. Look, I still have goosebumps.”

  Wey wanted to touch her goosebumps, but knew if he did, she would break his fingers. And do it with a smile on her face.

  Toshi bit into a cracker. He also had a bowl by his side half full of rice crisps. “How big?” he asked.

  “Like hand of God,” she answered.

  Toshi finished the cracker, shaking his head. “Are we talking a Greek God? Norse? Roman?”

  “Make fun all you want. Something bad is coming. I feel it.”

  “Can I go play God of War then on the PS5? What else is there to do with the router down.”

  “Wait. Nobody leave. We need to figure out what this was.”

  “OK, what was it?”

  “Could it be singularity?”

  “Oh shit.” The singularity, as defined by science, was the moment when the Internet became conscious and took on a life of its own. Most people who understood complex systems believed the singularity would come about within the next twenty to thirty or so years. Not today.

  “You think you could just sense the Internet as a conscious being? Wouldn’t you have to talk to it? Do a Turing test or something?”

  Zerzy was thinking things through. She was straddling her ball chair, her chin on the worktable, her eyes closed, big lashes laying against her alabaster cheeks. Wey was unable to look away.

  “I would talk to singularity. Like friend. This wasn’t that. This was—how can I explain—smart. I saw it coming and then it hid. Like giant bear. I can see it, then I can’t.”

  “What do you mean you saw it?”

  “I was checking trip wires. To see if any had been pulled. To see if any algos had scanned our access points in the past twenty-four. They were OK. But when I start to reset them, there is huge power surge. The voltage went up like this,” she raised her hand, “then down again. Like the whole Pacific Ocean goes up ten feet, then sinks back.”

  “The Internet ocean?”

  “It happened everywhere at once. Not just here.”

  “That’s not possible. You imagined it. You need sleep. You’ve been up for seventy-two hours.”

  “Zerzy’s right. The whole Internet blinked. All at once. It’s freaky. Someone, somewhere is doing something that’s never been done before.”

  “Hey, there’s a lot of guys like us out there who must have noticed this too. Reach out. Contact your peeps. Find out what you can. Something that big can’t hide for long. And when we do find it. Let’s harpoon us a whale.”

  Toshi was talking like he was Ahab in Moby Dick, his gnarly harpoon raised high above his head, out for blood. Whale blood.

  He had a weapon like that. Something he hadn’t told any of the others about. Something he was dying to use.

  尺

  R U L E R

  Quinjang Prison

  THE RED-HEADED DOCTOR ROLLED RICE DOWN a narrow corridor lit by bare sixty-watt bulbs spaced apart every twenty feet or so. The walls and ceiling were made from the same roughly troweled and unpainted cement constituting his cell. It was dank and depressing and the sound of their passage echoed down the tunnel like an ominous dirge.

  They passed countless steel caged doors, solitary cells, warehouses of human misery. Then the doctor came to a wider corridor and awkwardly turned the gurney right.

  These cells, lining each side of the hallway contained barred openings, floor to ceiling. Inside were dozens of prisoners, all skin and bone and vacant eyes. Some were naked, others wearing just dirty stained briefs. The foul smell in the hallway was overpowering.

  “Why aren't you looking after these poor souls?” asked Rice, not able to look away. He jerked on the manacles binding his ankles and his one healthy wrist to the cart. How could anyone allow this, especially a man who vowed to serve?

  “Their stay here will be brief,” grunted the doctor. “Don’t waste your sympathy on them. They are murderers and rapists and con men. Their organs will be harvested soon and some good will come from their mis-spent lives.”

  “You admit to that?”

  “Admit to saving lives?”

  “To using prisoners as organ donors.”

  “They have signed releases of their own accord. It’s their redemption for their sins. They deserve that much, don’t you think?”

  “They treat pigs going to slaughter better.”

  “Yes, they do. Because swine are better than these men. The fat one, on your left? He raped and tortured a dozen young women before he was captured. Horrible things happen in the provinces where police resources are thin and scarce. What would you have us do with him?”

  “This place should be bombed to ashes,” grunted Rice.

  “I won’t disagree. We need newer, larger facilities. This place is a hell hole.”

  Two more turns and the prisoner cells disappeared behind them. The smell also began to fade, replaced by medical odors: the sharp smells of disinfectants and anesthetics and fresh paint. The surroundings looked more hospital-like, but there were still aging fluorescent fixtures hanging broken from the ceiling and water-stained walls. After passing several unmarked doors, the doctor stopped and opened a pale green wooden door with a key and flicked on the lights.

  In the center of the room was a shiny new MRI machine—like finding a brand-new sports car parked in the dining room of Dracula’s castle.

  “We do have some new equipment, as you can see. Do you know what this is?” the doctor asked, pointing at the machine that dominated the room.

  “Magnetic resonance imaging.”

  “Very good. We just call it the magnet here. We’re going to use this device to take a look around inside you and see if we can find any broken bones.”

  Rice scoped out the room. It was basically four bare walls with some computer desks pushed off to the side, a filing cabinet, various extension cords snaking across the floor.

  The doctor closed the entry door and rolled the cart over to the opening in the machine, a sliding table that allowed the operator to maneuver a patient into the barrel of the magnet.

  Rice was expecting at least one guard to be present in the room. He was surprised to see none. He knew enough about MRI’s to know that metal objects couldn’t be used inside the machine due to the prodigious magnetic forces generated, so there would be no guns allowed. But Scarface with his bamboo cudgel would be expected.

  The doctor walked up to Rice and stared down at his face. He laughed, spraying spittle. “Just you and me, Londue. We’re going to have a private chat.”

  Rice grimaced. All he had to use as a weapon was his grotesquely swollen right arm. He couldn’t imagine doing much harm with the damaged wrist. And the pain of contact would probably cause him to pass out.

  “You’ve been an agent of your government and the duplicitous CIA for so long you can no longer see the truth.”

  �
�That’s an interesting statement coming from a torturer and a mad scientist. And a traitor to boot,” said Rice.

  “Just because I was born on US soil you think I have a duty to honor their corrupt power? What if you were born in a rice paddy in Shenzhen province? Would that obligate you to a lifetime of serving Communist rule? Would you have no other choices?”

  “Let’s get this over with. You’re turning my stomach.”

  “You’re not here by accident, Mr. Rice.”

  “When did I say I thought I was?”

  “Do you want to know how your wife is doing? Britt and little baby?” Rice twisted in his restraints.”

  “She has nothing to do with this!”

  “Oh, I think she does. And I saw that look in your eyes just then. The surprise. You couldn’t hide it. You’re getting rusty, Mr. Rice. Your beloved spy craft is not as finely tuned as it once was.”

  “We’ll see how finely tuned it is when I get my hands on your puffy throat.”

  The doctor stepped back and lifted a wooden ruler off the desk. Rice hadn’t seen one since he was in grade school.

  “This is a product of China,” explained the doctor. “Simple manufacture. Chinese Elm wood, stamped in a factory not far from here.” The doctor slashed down and smacked Rice’s swollen left wrist with the ruler. Rice grunted and closed his eyes, strained to reach his wrist with the other hand locked to the bed rail.

  “I used to teach medicine,” said the doctor. “The wooden ruler was a favorite disciplinary device. Painful on the open hand. Much worse on your edema symptoms, the infected joint swollen with fluid. Do you not agree?”

  Rice laid his head back on the pillow and clamped his jaws together. There was no point in denying the pain. It was what it was. The point of injury had to be seriously infected. It hurt too much to be anything else.

  “Are you surprised to hear that your wife is going to have a daughter?” the doctor asked.

  Rice just rolled his head from side to side. Britt and he had agreed not to ask about the child’s gender. How could this ghoulish asshole know something even his wife didn’t know?

  The doctor picked up a probe attached by a white wire to a tv screen. “This is a Phillips K220. Purchased this month with the funds generated by organ sales to India. One of the finest ultrasound machines on the market today. Your wife had a scan a week ago in Scottsdale using a similar machine and she had no idea that the computer chips operating the scanner were manufactured in a special factory in Sichuan province. I’m a part owner of that facility. The circuits we build and sell to American companies can secretly transmit the images produced via internet to our cloud servers. And we can even record conversations taking place in the examination room. Here, I’ll show you.”

  The doctor stepped over to the closest computer screen and tapped the corner. A black and white image appeared, a barely perceptible fetus, upside down, tiny hands and feet visible.

  “These things are hard to read without training, but that’s your daughter. And here—” he tapped an icon on the display, “—is your wife talking to the ultrasound technician.”

  Rice froze. The voice coming from the computer was Britt’s. The female technician was explaining the moving image. “I can see the little hands—”

  The doctor snapped the monitor off.

  Rice had never felt so vulnerable, so helpless. The sound of Britt’s voice, even just a few words, had skewered him to the gurney; he couldn’t breathe. The thought that this so-called doctor had some control over his partner’s fate—

  “Britt’s next examination is in three weeks. I can tell you the time and place. There are things we can do to—”

  “What do you want?”

  “We could cause the ultrasound probe to short circuit and send a charge of high voltage into—”

  “WHAT DO YOU WANT?” yelled Rice, sweat pouring off his face.

  “I want your team.”

  “My team?”

  “I want Grace Daly. And James McKinnon. But mostly, I want your friend, Hunter. I want them here. In this prison. That’s the only thing I want.”

  “If that ever happened, you’d be wishing like hell you weren’t within miles of them.”

  “Be that as it may. Don’t you love that English expression? It’s like a useful little poem you can toss right into a conversation. Be that as it may. That is what I want. And I want it now.”

  “I can’t help you. I won’t help you.”

  “You know you can, Mr. Rice. And you will do it for me and for Britt and your future child. I don’t see how you have a choice. This is classic double jeopardy and you get to pick which chess pieces fall, and which ones stand. What’ll it be?

  婴儿

  B A B Y

  Quinjang Prison

  THE DOCTOR IN THE GREEN SMOCK and the ginger-colored beard slid Rice’s gurney into the MRI machine. Rice was surprised at first, then realized that the hospital bed must be manufactured from non-ferrous aluminum, like the handcuffs, and wouldn’t interfere with the magnet. That was too bad. Him alone in the room with the doctor, unmanacled, would have been an opportunity he was willing to leverage.

  The man in green pushed the gurney into the tube the full length, over six feet. Then he stepped away to the control station at the far wall. Rice had been examined in an MRI only once before but remembered detailed instructions: questions about implants and artificial joints, cautions about the high noise level and staying still. This doctor gave no instructions at all.

  Rice looked up, a smooth white metal or plastic surface only inches from his nose. Then he heard the hum of the magnets powering up. Was this a typical examination or something else?

  “Mr. Rice, have you given some thought to my proposal?” Britt’s face popped up on a small screen above him, a photo taken months before in Arizona next to a giant saguaro cactus.

  “Found that in the cloud. Her phone backs itself up automatically so no pictures get lost. To anyone.”

  Rice stifled a comment, feeling the doctor would only be encouraged if he took the bait.

  “Attractive woman. And capable, too,” mumbled the doctor.

  “I’m not impressed with your tech magic. Most twelve-year-olds can do what you did in a weekend.”

  “OK, fair enough. How about this then?”

  The next image was grainier. Black and white. A frame from a video stream taken by a security camera mounted above the garage doors on Rice’s home in Phoenix. It was Britt returning from a shopping trip, the back door of her SUV opened, her baby bump just visible.

  “Play all the tricks you want, but if any harm comes to that woman or her baby, there isn’t a place on this planet where you will be safe.”

  “That’s original. You are buried up to your sphincter in a multi-million-dollar medical device deep in the bowels of the most infamous prison in the world, and you’re threatening me. In about five minutes you are going to piss yourself, stinking up a uniform that cost about fifty cents to make and coarse enough to scrape paint off a jerry can. Then I will haul your sorry ass back to your filthy hole where rats will be eating your starvation-diet dinner. Did I miss anything? I didn’t think so. I’m usually quite thorough. Let’s get started.”

  The doctor sat behind his console staring up at a color screen.

  “This machine is an fMRI. The f stands for functional. In medical speak that means motion. It takes videos of the activity inside your skull. There are places in your brain that light up when you lie. We discovered years ago that an fMRI is a wonderfully accurate lie detector. Any questions?”

  The only sound in the room was deep ominous rumble. Then the magnets powered up, filling Rice’s head with a pounding bass note every few seconds, like someone was smashing a sledgehammer into the sides of the machine.

  “Question number one,” the doctor shouted. “Is Quinten Hunter a member of your team?” The doctor waited for a full sixty seconds. “Final answer?” Then he pressed a key on his keyboard and Rice let out a t
ight-lipped groan.

  “You probably didn’t notice that your gurney was specially designed. It is bifurcated. In other words, it has two identical sides separated by a thick rubber divider. Your right is positive, your left is negative. Before I slid you into the magnet, I plugged a two-hundred-volt line into your special bed. Aluminum is highly conductive. So, you are essentially strung between two charged electrical plates, connected by your steel handcuffs. And the linen sheet is cross threaded with fine platinum wires to increase conductivity. So, let’s start over. Now that you are better informed. Question one again. Is Quinten Hunter a member of your team?”

  Rice had been tortured before, in the field and in the lab. His government training required him to be waterboarded once; the experience gave him a new appreciation for the power of unrelenting subconscious terror. There is no way to control your reaction to waterboarding: thus, its power to wrench information from its victims. Uncontrollable and naked fear takes over.

  The fMRI torture machine this doctor had created was effective, too. The shocks were full body, which Rice believed were the worst he had experienced. The current surged through his chest, spasming his back muscles. The muscle pain was intense and lasted for long after the surge of voltage ended. Rice tried a few different techniques to test out the capabilities of the fMRI system; half-lies, outrageous inventions, mistruths. The fMRI was very accurate.

  When asked if Hunter was part of his team, Rice answered, “Hunter is part of no one’s team.” Which was accurate and it caused an uncharacteristic silence in the talkative doctor. No shock was administered, but another question followed.

  “Has Quintin Hunter been contributing to your investigation into Lutu?” Rice braced himself. He couldn’t see a way around this question.

  “Hunter has been working on his latest book for the past year.” Another honest answer. Hunter was actively researching his third non-fiction work. ‘The Singularity: Fact or Fiction.’ Rice remembered the mocked cover: a giant indigo butterfly. The doctor shocked him anyway, a brief burst only a second or two in length. Still agonizing, still enough to lock all the muscles in Rice’s back, arching his spine.