by Jude Fawley
“You said your parents died when you were in middle school?” the writer asked.
“That’s right. In the Folgers Revolt.”
“Forgive me, but I don’t know much about the Folgers Revolt. I feel like I’ve heard of it, but it was just a little before my time. Could you tell me a little bit about that?”
“Of course. First of all, the fact that it’s called the Folgers Revolt is sort of a disservice to the memory of the people that died there. But by popular decry, that’s what it’s called. And I understand why it’s called that—in a superficial way, the revolt was caused by a large shortage of coffee. But three thousand people didn’t give their lives for coffee. It was much more than that.
“What those people had a problem with was how the shortage was handled—instead of increasing the price of coffee, like standard laissez faire economics would recommend, the coffee was seized by the Government and distributed evenly amongst its members. It might seem laughable in a certain light, but that’s a very clear case of class division. And even though there are so many more examples of class division in everyday life, all of which would seem more serious, for whatever reason that one struck a chord.
“As I said before, my parents were very politically active. They were always participating in public demonstrations, organizing events, things like that. Very passionate people. So they participated. And the Folgers Revolt started out as a peaceful demonstration, just a crowd of people displaying their frustration with the Government. But then a few people got violent, the police were called in, the violence escalated, and soon enough they felt compelled to take drastic measures. Everyone in the crowd was killed.”
“That’s terrible,” the biographer replied, not neglecting to jot a few things down first. “You’d think something like that would be talked about more in the media.”
“Not when the Government controls the media.”
“You seem to harbor a lot of resentment towards the Government. Would you say that it was this incident that caused you to turn down the position they offered you, right before Karma was destroyed?”
“Back up,” Darcy replied. “I never said I resented the Government. The Folgers Revolt wasn’t entirely the Government’s fault—I did some research, and as it turns out Karma only wanted a few of the people there punished. People that had actually committed crimes, and so were in fact deserving of punishment. My parents, if the records are true, actually assaulted a police officer. I don’t know why they did it, but in a sense they brought what happened to them on themselves.
“But many other people died, people that did nothing wrong. And in that respect it was the police officers that made a mistake, even though their mistake was entirely forgivable—they were afraid, they resorted to violence. The real problem was the system. We’d deviated too far from proper human interactions. That’s one of the things I’m trying to correct, as Rex.”
“My mistake. I didn’t mean to misrepresent you,” the writer responded. “It would probably be best if you carefully read this biography over, before it’s published.”
“I have every intention,” Darcy said.
“So, forgetting the resentment, this incident could have caused your anxiety about joining the Government, and contributing to a system that you had fundamental objections to?”
“That sounds reasonable,” Darcy replied. “I’m not a psychologist or anything, and my thinking was never that deliberate, but at the very least that seems to make sense.”
“Very good. What about your motivation for doing Good Works? Did this incident, and losing your parents, contribute to that in any way? I know you’ve said before that it’s pure altruism that inspires you—sorry, paraphrasing—but perhaps an incident like this…”
“No. It got me thinking, but I was only in middle school, after all. If you’re looking for what caused me to focus so much on Good Works, then that would be an incident I was involved in when I was in college.”
“Please, continue,” he said, his pen at the ready.
“So I was sitting in a park, because that’s something I did a lot of back on Earth, where you had to strive to find a reasonably pleasant atmosphere, and this scene developed around me while I was reading a textbook. I probably would have missed the whole thing if amplifiers had been more exciting, but I put it down for a moment’s respite and suddenly it was all happening around me.
“It was City Park, which you might know was the largest Privacy Room in the Americas. You seem pretty young, I don’t mean to offend you by telling you things you already know. Anyway, it’s necessary to the episode that you realize that Karma had nothing to do with it—no one was watching except for people. No one was making decisions, except for people.
“A citizen had somehow gotten a knife to the throat of a police officer. The police officer was defenseless, because somehow he had dropped his Evaporation Pen—perhaps because the man had disarmed him, perhaps because the officer lost his coordination in the excitement, I don’t know. Anyway, one of the bystanders, of which there were many, picked up the Evaporation Pen, had it in his hands.
“I was later to learn that the police officer had been sent to the Park specifically to watch over the man that now threatened to kill him, because the Government had a very good idea that he was a man on the edge, about to perform some drastic act. They had hours of recordings of him telling people about his intentions, making preparations, making threats. But, in the spirit of civic liberty, he was not detained, warned, or anything, until he committed something that was actually a crime. That’s a choice that a society which knows everything must make—whether it is enough to be certain that an outcome will happen to take action against it, or if it must be allowed to happen first.
“And here it was unfolding. The man with the knife had already drawn blood, and the more time went by, the deeper into the police officer’s neck it crept, millimeter by lethal millimeter. Everyone knew that the officer would die if nothing was done.
“And that other man in the crowd, his name was Scott, had his own choice to make—what he would do with the weapon he had in his hands. I watched him fiddle with the range selector, I watched him put his finger on the button that, in small print, says ‘fire.’ And eventually he did. With deliberation he chose three meters, and shot the crazed man in the face with a beam of light. What Scott might not have known is that any skin-to-skin contact would have caused both people to be incinerated, because of the nature of the reaction, but that’s the kind of thing they don’t teach in public school. Anyway, all that was left when the smoke cleared was a police officer with a knife embedded in his neck. Scott was lucky.
“For a time. Scott technically killed a person. And as wonderful as it is to live in a society with a system of law that is both clear and strict, every now and then the law has to make bold, controversial statements about morality. The specific law in question says that killing is only excusable if done in self-defense, and as it happened Scott’s life was in no way threatened. And for whatever reason no provision was made for saving another person’s life, most likely because that becomes too abstract to be tenable.
“A jury of his peers probably wouldn’t have convicted Scott, but Scott didn’t have a jury of his peers. He had Karma, a computer, to decide the consequence of his actions. And yet Karma didn’t see it happen, so there was still a way out for him.
“Do you know who convicted him of murder?” Darcy asked.
“No,” the biographer answered, politely.
“The police officer. And I only know all of this because it was one of those rare cases where witnesses had to be asked questions, and in the end, after Scott was Evaporated, we got to look over all of the files. The man that Scott saved gave him his death sentence. Because the penalty for murder is death.
“One of the things I still find exceptional about all of this is that Scott knew exactly what the consequence was going to be. He said so, right after he Evaporated the man. He said, ‘And now it will have t
o be me too.’ But he did it anyway. He found a purpose, saving a life, that he valued over his own life.
“In fact I have respect for everyone involved. The police officer did what was his duty. He was prepared to die, knowing his assailant would be accordingly punished after his death, if his death were to come—but it might not have. The crime was never committed. By pulling the trigger, Scott precluded the miraculous possibility that the man with the knife would have repented, and let the police officer go. The police officer had the strength of principle to condemn the man he owed his life to, because he had the strength of character to set his personal attachments aside.
“And the would-be-killer himself. His name was Sean, I remember now. One of the other things I had the pleasure of discovering, reviewing the case, was why he was so intent on killing the police officer. His own wife and child had been killed in a violent police raid that had destroyed their apartment building while he was off doing something else. A wall had fallen on them, and so they died. But no recompense was given to him, since such casualties are the occasional price of maintaining peace. Even if the officers could have perhaps been less destructive, were they obligated to? Sean believed so. So he took his revenge the only way he knew how, a man of his obscurity—a police force with less people in it is, by rational argument, capable of less destruction, as long as it is assumed that each person has a maximum capacity for destruction. I might have disagreed with him on that point, but it’s rational nevertheless.
“Those three men met, by random chance, five meters away from me, in a Privacy Room intended to preserve human dignity. It was a miracle of sorts, their meeting—a higher truth disclosed to us lesser mortals. All three people wanted what was best for the world, in a way—they just all saw it differently. And I realized then that I wanted the same thing, I wanted what was best for everyone. It was then that I quit college, to devote my life to the pursuit of doing Good Works, wherever and however I could. It was also around then that I started losing all of my sleep, because I couldn’t get those few seconds of human interaction out of my head. I was haunted. I am haunted.
“The cause of the strength of my conviction? I wanted to make a change. I realized, with absolute clarity, that I could only make a change if I rose above the obscurity that had made Sean’s sacrifice so wasted. To be famous, really famous, I had to possess some sort of skill beyond the average human’s. And not just any skill would do—a man that can hold his breath longer than everyone may get his name in a paper, but it will never be the case that the whole world would want to listen to what he had to say about life—I had to be the best at something everyone was doing, an almost impossible feat. I had to be the best at doing good.
“The Karma way. I went through somewhat of an identity crisis when I had to unidentify science with the ultimate good. But I made it.
“What I wanted to say, from the top of my mountain of fame, is what I’m saying now—that I don’t think Karma was wrong. I owe him everything. And the system wasn’t broken—I just had to improve it. So now, as I sit here on Mars, that is what I do—I think of ways to improve the plight of humanity. I continue to do what I did for so many years on Earth, one Good Work after another. The only thing that’s changed is the scale.”
The writer replied, after catching up, “It’s a wonder that you think you need a biographer at all. I think a tape recorder would have sufficed you just fine.”
Decay 11
A Good Guess
WILL WAS STANDING alone in the green light of Karma’s room. “I thought you said we wouldn’t be meeting again,” he said, trying to lighten the mood, since he was pretty confident that he was going to die.
“Will Spector. Tell me everything you know about Charles Darcy,” Karma said in its deep, inhuman voice.
“You know everything that I know. Can’t you just go through my past, or something?”
“Perhaps I misspoke. You said that you saw a person without a Chip. But he was Evaporated, so we cannot find out how that’s possible. Before you said it, I had not even considered the possibility.”
“How is that you didn’t think… you had to have known, didn’t you?”
“I might have underestimated the human capacity for subversion. I’m still having difficulty comprehending why the system I’ve created hasn’t been better received, especially considering that it is an economic necessity due to the present extensive exhaustion of Earth’s resources. And I knew that there were certain isolated outbreaks of dissention, all of which I have had disposed of, but I never had cause to think that the removal of the Karma Chip was possible to survive, as this would require a high level of surgical skill, and more than one person, and a conspicuous amount of tools, all of which I have in fact been keeping track of.
“Upon the recommendation you provided at the Karma Chip factory, I started going through my files, this time looking for people that were being perceived, but not broadcasting their own signal. This calculation will take some time to make, due to the amount of people involved and the large span of time, but I’ve already produced a few results. They do exist. But more pertinently, I am asking you now about Charles Darcy, and your claim that he was somehow related to the attack made on my factory. How did you make this connection?”
“I was watching him on the Karma Map, and he was saying something to someone at a restaurant about a delivery of uniforms. And the people that attacked the factory were wearing uniforms. It seemed like more than a coincidence to me. And there have been other things, like a reflection of his I saw in a mirror that didn’t look right. I didn’t suspect a thing until Eric mentioned it, but when he did I looked into it, and I think he’s right.”
“Those are leaps of judgment I would have never made. I see no direct causality between the uniforms mentioned in the restaurant, and those worn at the attack. I am looking now at the reflection you describe, in the window of the subway, and I do not see anything wrong. Tell me more about this reflection.”
Will wasn’t quite sure if he was currently digging his own grave. Karma must have known that his heart was racing, and that he was extremely nervous. But he didn’t think he could avoid the question, so he answered it directly. “I think that, somehow, more than one person is being Charles Darcy. And that is how he’s got his fortune. Or at least that explains part of it. I’ve been in his house, and I don’t know how he afforded even half of it. Have you really… not looked into that?”
“These Privacy Rooms have been a hindrance to me for a long time. I’m deactivating all of them as we speak. And as of this moment, I’m making you first in command.”
“Are you serious? How is that possible?”
Karma ignored him. “Now tell me, how large of a threat do you imagine we are facing right now? What do you estimate Charles’ forces to be?”
“I have no reason to believe—”
“I didn’t bring you here for your reasons, do you understand? Make a guess, use your intuition, and let us address this problem.”
He thought for a second. “Well I’ve been thinking about it for a while now, ever since I saw what I believe I saw on my Karma Map, and I’m even more convinced since I got shot by that invisible guy at the factory. Let’s say that he has a way to take Karma Cards safely out of people’s heads. And to put them back in, even, otherwise he could never go back to being himself. That means he has something that can switch them.
“What doesn’t make sense to me is why he would draw so much attention to himself, by buying such a large house, appearing on television, all the things he’s done. He has such a large secret, and yet he’s drawing attention to himself, like he wants to be discovered. Although, he does have an aversion to mirrors, which is smart for a man in his position. He’s at least biding time.” Will became more confident as he spoke, talking quicker and taking larger leaps of deduction.
“Now if he’s taking such a large risk exposing himself, I don’t see why he wouldn’t take the much smaller risk of using all the faceless
people you’ve never heard of, like the guy that just holds the door open for people that no one would remember from one day to the next. He’s got the machine, so why not? Let’s say he’s having them do the same thing he’s doing, earning more money than a person reasonably could, and all of the extra money goes to himself. There’s no saying how large of an empire he could build out of that, but it could be massive, it could be thousands of people. And half of them look similar to the other half, they’re trading off, leaving one invisible and one earning money. And these invisible people are doing all the secret organization stuff.
“But that would mean one of the Chips would have to be gotten rid of, and I don’t know how they would do that. Fake a death or something. Is that possible? Either way, they’ve done it at least once with Charles, and I feel like that means they can and have done it again. Or it’s possible he somehow finds kids before they grow up and get their Chip, and takes them in, raises them, brainwashes them into helping him out. Is that possible?”
“All reported children that did not die before fourteen have been given a Chip, no exceptions. I have kept track of that closely.”
“Either way, if they were kids or if they were adults, these people would have had to disappear from your radar at some point. So it’s nearly the same.
“Well anyway, if I were you, I’d be looking for people that are earning more money than average, that look like people that have died somehow in the past. Faces that don’t match what they should when they pass the window on a building, a puddle of water on the ground, something like that. Is there any way to see who’s been mentioning his name lately? I feel like if he’s doing so much secret business underground, someone’s going to have slipped, and said his name when they shouldn’t.” He was making up half of it as he went, but it felt right.
Karma responded, “Surely you must know how many people have been talking about Charles Darcy lately. I can try, but all of those computations will take time. I will get you a list of names shortly, of people that are suspect and to be apprehended. At this very moment, another attack is being led against a Rehabilitation clinic. I will send officers to counter that threat. But Charles isn’t there, he’s at the City Park. You are going to go to the City Park, and Evaporate Charles Darcy. I don’t care what it costs. Come back right after you do it. Will you require anything?”
