The Book of Wanda, Volume Two of the Seventeen Trilogy

by Mark D. Diehl

  The pause this time went on much longer. She knitted her brows and squinted, pursed her lips, and wrinkled her nose. “I…I don’t know, Dr. Kessler, sir. I’m so sorry.” She bit her lip and a few tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “It’s all right, sweetie,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll give you the answer.” She brightened. “The answer is also forever. I have always had this role of authority in your life, and I always will.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Thank you, Dr. Kessler.”

  “You’re quite welcome, Keiko.”

  Amelix Building, CBD

  Sandy and Dominic, the hosts of the popular show “VIPs & Qs,” had interviewed hundreds of people, but to Zabeth Chelsea’s eyes they seemed as nervous as she was. Their guest was the world-famous Amelix CEO Walt Zytem, a lean, Statused man with intense blue eyes who seemed completely calm as he appeared before a live audience of millions.

  Sandy and Dominic should be nervous.

  Since the company had been given its power by God and therefore represented the will of God, leadership was close to heaven and Dr. Zytem was the Lord’s hand on Earth. Since this show was an Amelix program, Zytem was also the hosts’ ultimate superior and conduit to the Lord, just as he was for Chelsea and everyone else in God’s chosen corporation.

  And he’ll be asking me questions in another minute!

  Finally allowed to experiment on the Rat Gods again, Chelsea had designed some simple tests that demonstrated their abilities without irritating them too much. Chelsea’s reports had been passed up the chain, and now Walt Zytem himself had taken an interest in Chelsea’s work. Now he’d scheduled a teleconference with her for after this interview, which was itself being done by teleconference. At the moment, he was denying allegations that Amelix had secretly developed a series of injections that could skyrocket IQs, called the “Intelligence Cocktail.”

  It was true; scientists at Amelix had created such a thing. Chelsea had worked on it a bit, herself, and the injections did make human brains process more information more quickly. She suspected she knew why Zytem was lying now, telling them he’d never heard of it.

  “Okay, Dr. Zytem, sir,” Sandy said, smiling. “As a reporter I have to ask, sir. How do we know you’re telling the truth when you say Amelix has never developed the Intelligence Cocktail?”

  “Sandy, you’ll laugh, because it’s so simple. The reason you know I’m not lying is that I have no reason to lie! If we had such a product, we’d be disclosing that fact and selling it. Why not?” He smiled broadly and shrugged into the camera, and an unseen audience made a collective “ah” sound.

  Chelsea knew why not. Right now the human brain had more than enough storage, recall, and processing capability to do anything the current Efficiency Implant system required of it. Increasing human intelligence, by itself, might make workers slightly more productive, but experimental data proved it would also make them significantly more difficult to manage and control. Even Brain Trust minds of higher intelligence were more difficult to standardize. If used by itself, the “intelligence cocktail” would actually harm overall productivity.

  However, when combined with a neural networking project Amelix labs were working on to improve the coordination of the connected comatose Brain Trust employees, the “intelligence cocktail” could become a way to turn fewer Trust brains into increased storage and faster recall. The patents on those two technologies together could be incredibly valuable. Other major corporations might pay a high price for such an advantage. Whether or not they chose to market it, the new technology would certainly be useful to Amelix as a way to streamline the company’s own productivity and reduce costs of operation.

  For now, they had to keep it secret. News of the “intelligence cocktail” merely hinted to competitors about the direction of their research. A little market analysis might lead those competitors to follow in the footsteps of Amelix Integrations and develop the truly valuable treatment, the one capable of forcing individual minds to surrender completely to the higher network. At this point it was best to deny and obfuscate, and hopefully throw them off track. Having Walt Zytem on the show to deny it once and for all was risky because it could draw even more attention in the short term, but allowing widespread speculation would have been worse.

  “So, Dr. Zytem, sir,” Dominic said. “You’re telling us the proof that Amelix Integrations never developed an intelligence cocktail is simply the fact that Amelix never announced the development?”

  “Ha, ha! That’s a great way to put it, Dominic. Amelix has a duty to maximize profit; it’s the purpose of our very existence. We are all bound to pursue the company’s interest with our hearts and souls, and we can’t very well do that if nobody knows about our products.”

  Both hosts laughed.

  “Well, there you have it, viewers,” Dominic said. “Straight from Dr. Walt Zytem, himself. Thank you so much, Dr. Zytem, sir.”

  “Of course.”

  The visual component changed to footage of small Golden children perhaps four or five years old, marching complicated military drill patterns with intense expressions on their little faces. “Up now is the story of what one Amelix pre-elementary program outside Melbourne is doing to ensure greater cohesiveness among—”

  Her EI signaled a call and she switched to take it.

  “Dr. Chelsea,” a young man’s voice said.

  “Yes, this is Dr. Zabeth Chelsea.”

  “Stand by for Dr. Walt Zytem.”

  A psychic effervescence bubbled from her chest up into her brain. She was standing by for Dr. Walt Zytem! His interview had just been simulcast to millions, and now he was calling Chelsea about her work. She would have been less nervous addressing millions of people live, even unprepared, than she was now, waiting to talk to God’s representative on Earth.

  “All right, tell me about the rats,” she heard suddenly. Her EI showed him as if he were standing right there—glowing blue eyes and Statused features—the face she’d revered all her life: Walt Zytem.

  “Hello, Dr. Zytem, sir,” Chelsea said. “I—”

  “No time for all that,” he said. “Just tell me about the latest developments.”

  “I assume you mean the maze experiment, sir? We took each animal—” She couldn’t say Rat Gods. “Each animal, one per day, and let it learn a unique maze, in a separate room from the others, and obviously sealed from outside air. Then one by one we put the others into the same maze, and they all knew it instantly. Such a feat could be accomplished through mere communication, which would be unusual enough in itself, but we wanted to see whether they were capable of anything beyond that. Next, we put each rat into an identical maze at exactly the same time. Each rat moved as if it were a finger on a hand that was trying to figure out what object it was holding by feel alone, and each one seemed to understand its place on the hand, one always taking the farthest right option, one always taking middle right, and so on. At every intersection, each of the four took a different course and followed that path as far as it went, then doubled back to the last decision point. As soon as one found its way, every rat knew the entire maze and ran through it as if it had a map. We repeated that experiment many times and added other tests, such as distractions and threats in only one of the identical mazes, at critical times. Other rats reacted to loud noises and flashes in the mazes at exactly the same instant as the rat reacting to the actual stimuli, timed to the nanosecond. We no longer believe it’s communication, sir. The observed behavior in these recent experiments indicates a single, shared consciousness.”

  He nodded. “I got that from the materials provided to me. What else?”

  They take over my body, my emotions, my thoughts, and it feels better than sex! They made Wanda sick, but not me! They chose me!

  She had to tell him. Reconditioning compelled her to tell him. She wanted desperately to share absolutely everything she knew. He would have questions. He would probably even want to meet her in person! It would be wonderful, finally having
true fulfillment of her fantasy of meeting this corporate demigod, this link between heaven and Earth, but she couldn’t form words about the Thrall. They just wouldn’t come.

  “Did you prepare for this meeting at all? I asked you what else.”

  “An unauthorized employee observed the behavior first, sir. She was properly Departed in accordance with standard procedure for transgressing a security boundary: interrogation and release. She said that being around the animals made her feel nauseated and violent. None of the authorized workers experienced such phenomena, sir. Since only Accepted are given security clearance to work with the animals, we now believe that the rats have the ability to cause this sickness in non-reconditioned employees.”

  “What’s next?” he asked.

  “I would suggest a study with non-reconditioned workers, sir, though of course there would be security concerns with those people around such a sensitive project.”

  Zytem was silent a moment. “I’ll have the Unnamed bring you a few Departed before dumping them in the Zone. They’ll need to be kept under lock and key, but at least we’ll keep good security over the project that way. Keep me posted.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now, in spite of the fact that you haven’t learned much about the animals since your initial discovery, your work on this ground-breaking development effectively makes you our company’s leading neuro-communication scientist. I’m putting you in touch with another innovator in the Des Moines office: Gregor Kessler. You’ll be working together on a project that builds on both your work and his, and for this I’ve elevated your clearance levels. He will report only to you; I am giving you full control over him, his staff, and his other resources. You will report only to me.”

  Thank you, Lord!

  “Yes, sir. Thank you for your trust, Dr. Zytem, sir.”

  The Zone

  “There’s too many!” Kym said, nearly hysterical. Furius rubbed his eyes. “An’ some of ‘em got guns, now. We won’t last the night,” she added.

  “I’ve survived worse,” Furius said. As a Roman conqueror he’d faced these situations before. “They’re not catapulting burning shit and dead animals at us, at any rate. Though I suppose we’re the ones with all that. With the fence and the guns around this place, they won’t get in here.”

  Outside the steel gate, the ones who called themselves Saved paced in the street. About fifteen of them, it looked like. Furius had no idea why these people wanted him dead, but there they were, trying to find a way inside.

  His legions would have protected him, had they formed. Pink Shit had brought all kinds of individuals from various points in history, but none of them had yet proved useful to him at all.

  They were all supposed to be Romans! They were supposed to salute and do what they were told!

  “I’m bribin’ the hell out of this truck driver and gettin’ the fuck gone,” Kym said. “They’re gonna get in here, and the General needs me alive. If you got a fuckin’ problem with that, go ahead an’ shoot me now.”

  The trucks came in and out easily, being wired like the fence, which meant their computers shot anyone crossing a certain threshold or aiming a weapon. That armed mob was no match for the filthy hunk of plastic that had rolled in here to collect amino blocks.

  “I’ll come with you,” Furius said. She eyed him sideways. He gestured at the lab equipment on the table against the wall, still producing Pink Shit. “Brought nothing but inferior, insolent soldiers and a handful of whores. Whatever I’m here for, it’s not to build a fucking Roman legion.” He snatched a dirty satchel off the desk. “You think this would get us a ride? It’s full of mons.” A mon was the highest-value casino chip available, with a value of ten thousand, which seemed roughly equal in value to the other plastic discs these people called gold coins. Each casino made them slightly differently, but all mons played little holographic videos inside it so as to be instantly identifiable and difficult to counterfeit. Unsure of prices and values, Furius regrettably had to rely on Kym to work with this bizarre money system.

  “It’d pay his wages for a thousand years. Don’t give him that. You give that to me. That’ll move me out of the Zone. You owe me that, you drug-dealing Roman psycho. Tell me you don’t and I will fuckin’ cut you.” She was talking through her teeth. Her wild, reddened eyes streamed tears.

  He handed over the bag. “Take it,” he said. “I’ll say this of dying: Afterwards, you just can’t make yourself care about money. Bribe the guy, and you can take what you want. You’ll be free of me, and rich, even.”

  “He doesn’t care about giving us a ride, ‘specially if he’s gettin’ paid; it’s not like he owns the truck. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

  It wasn’t a problem at all. Kym kept the bag closed and made the transaction with pocket change. She undid the latch, lifted the curving hatch-style door and together they slipped under it and into the single seat next to the driver. Kym tucked the satchel under their knees, and out they drove. One of those gathered outside threw something at the truck, but its guns blasted the incoming object before it hit. Another gun pivoted and dropped the assailant before he could recover from the throw. As soon as the truck was out, the mob rushed through the open gate and began looting the garbage.

  They drove maybe twenty blocks in total, zigzagging this way and that through the dark and sometimes wide streets of the zone. The truck stopped. “All right, that should be far enough for you,” the driver said. Furius figured out the latch and opened the door. He stepped out and straightened his back. A giant drape of woven metal unrolled from where it was secured along the top of the truck, smashing into him and shoving him to the ground as it slammed the door shut. Guns on the truck’s hood, roof, and rear deck all tracked him as the drape slowly rolled itself back up and the truck drove off.

  New Union Territory

  “Come in, Rounder.”

  Rus was still awed by the sound of it. He was now a Rounder, and Patrol Leader Coiner had called for him. “Yes, sir,” he said proudly, stepping into the Patrol Leader’s personal quarters.

  Coiner sighed. “The New Union needs leaders, Rus. We’re expanding faster than ever. Every Wild One knows the only choice is to join us or meet Unity, unless he wants to become one of those simpering Saved while we finish wiping them out. You were promoted early, not just because you were the best in your class, but also because we have more missions than we have leaders who can carry them out.”

  Rus cleared his throat. “I’m proud to serve the New Union in any way, sir. Do you mean I’ll be leading missions, sir?”

  Coiner gave him a thin smile. “You think I’m going to give you command of a Round. I’m not. It’s actually something much more than that. As I said, we need leaders. But certain missions require leaders who haven’t been with us very long.”

  “I don’ get it, sir.”

  “Once in a while we have an operation that requires some camouflage. Most of our Rounders are too gnarled from battle to pull this one off. You’re fresh enough to maybe make it happen, if anyone can. Still got most of your teeth, both eyes, ears, that sort of stuff. You’re gonna deal for us in the entertainment districts.”

  “A drug dealer, sir? Just a dealer, like every other swinging dick in the Zone, sir?”

  Coiner’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t push me, kid. Personally, I don’t think you’re up to this job. I’m stunned by how much power Top Dog is making me move to the lower ranks these days and I’m kind of hoping you’ll be the bad example that makes him rethink it. And no, not just a dealer like every other swinging dick.”

  Rus’s guts felt flash-frozen. Coiner could kill him for insubordination, and Rus had just pissed him off. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, Patrol Leader. I’m just…very proud to serve in any way, sir.”

  “So you’ve said. Anyway, yes, you’ll be dealing, because that’s where we need you to be, and if you’re there you might as well be bringing in cash for us. We get enough product from our maneuvers, capturing dealers and the lik
e. Might as well turn some of it into chips. But your true purpose will be to function in a chain operation Top Dog is calling Project Goldblood.”

  Coiner peered out into the hallway through the gaping concrete doorframe, lowering his voice. “You know how Top Dog is integrating all the different races in the New Union? He sees all races as equally useful, that’s why he doesn’t tolerate anyone using race to divide us. Right now there’s only one race we don’t have: the Golds. For the time being that’s good: It gives us a common enemy. We’re just the natural races, and the Golden people are the strange, genetically modified, different foes we have to slaughter.

  “Eventually, though, Top Dog wants the Golds brought under New Union control, too. He just can’t have the membership knowing about it yet. We need everyone hating them now, but in the future we want to be able to bring them on as soldiers. That’s where you come in.”

  Rus closed his mouth, which he realized had been involuntarily hanging open in disbelief. He cleared his throat and shook his head slightly. “I’ll be kidnapping Golds, sir? So they can join the New Union?”

  “Yes, but not in the way you think. You’ll kidnap them, but just long enough to dose them with Juice. You grab them, force it down their throats with a syringe, and then you let them go. Just make sure they know who it’s from. Eventually they’ll all come back to you for more, and you’ll cultivate our first Round of Golds. If you get enough of them hooked for us, we might even form an entire Front of Golds.”

  Amelix Executive Shuttle

  The executive shuttle whipped along, over mostly empty streets on its way to the Amelix Executive Quarters. Kessler smiled down at wide-eyed Keiko, perched on the edge of her seat, glancing this way and that. Only people of the highest value to Amelix, their families, and their submissive subordinates were allowed to take this shuttle. Today was Keiko’s first ride.

  He ran his hand farther up her thigh, giving her crotch a gentle rub. “Are you enjoying the ride, my dear?”