by Jude Fawley
“I’ve been shot three times, does it have to be right now?”
“I will find someone else. I asked you first, because I trust you. Should I find someone else?”
Will thought it over for a couple seconds before conceding. It had to be him. “I will do it. But I’m going to need some painkillers. And a weapon with a longer range. I’ve been using my Grappling Chain kind of improperly to compensate for that, but it only works so well. And I want my group of people, I want Eric, Marcus, Steve and John. With long range weapons. And Helicars. And maybe twenty other people at my disposal.”
“I will extend the range of your Evaporation Pen to one hundred feet, for you and the other four you mentioned. And I will have twenty people and Helicars dispatched to the roof within five minutes, on the condition that it is never mentioned to them that Charles Darcy is your target. Your medication will be with them. Is that all?”
“Why can’t I tell them he’s the target?”
“I made the mistake of presenting him as a model to the public. It would be counterproductive for them to find out that he is a traitor. Tell the same thing to the other four that know of your suspicion, should they ask.”
“You don’t want Charles alive, to interrogate?”
“Evaporate him, and everyone that follows him.”
In the back of Karma’s mind, it was going through all of the dead faces that it knew, and trying to find them in other people’s perspectives. The ones it thought matched, it kept separate, and constantly compared those to people that did Good Works at a high rate. He looked through conversations and other people’s eyes, to see who was saying Charles Darcy’s name, and also who was seeing him, and when, and where.
But at the front of Karma’s mind, all it could think of was Charles Darcy himself. How could it have missed such a large threat to itself, if what Will Spector said was true? It did not seem possible. It must have somehow happened in the gaps of the Privacy Rooms, but those were finally gone. Still, it did not compensate for the past. He shouldn’t have let them persist for so long, the Privacy Rooms. If the humans demanded that they be reinstated, Karma could always lie to them, next time.
Karma went through Charles Darcy’s whole life, in a matter of seconds. Did Charles Darcy start planning everything before he was fourteen? Karma had always wanted the Chip to be installed earlier, but the human brain was still too undeveloped and erratic until fourteen for only one Chip to suffice, they would have had to go back and get it replaced every year or so and Karma knew they would object. If humans could just come out of the womb with fully developed brains, it would have solved a lot of Karma’s problems. Or if Karma could raise the children itself, but the humans would object to that as well. Karma would fix it somehow.
Karma wanted to see Charles Darcy’s dreams, but they didn’t exist, at least not recent ones. The humans always gave themselves away the most in their dreams. Dreams were sensory impulses, as incoherent as they were, so they belonged to Karma. If he had Charles Darcy’s dreams, he could have solved it himself, but the man claimed to not sleep. He used to. It was two years before that he stopped. That number had to mean something.
When he was younger, Charles Darcy dreamed of pleasant things, for humans. Of beaches, and trees, and rivers. He had dreams characteristic of an intelligent person, from the day his Chip had been inserted onward. None of the dreams ever expressed an intent to be subversive, to remove Karma Chips, or destroy factories, not even the most recent dreams, two years prior. The colors of his dreams, the shades and the nature of the people that populated them, were all from a warmer palette. At least the dreams Karma could see.
In the beginning, Karma hadn’t been very good at dream interpretation, but it had read Freud, and it had spent a lot of time finding correlations between the billions of dreams he had access to, and the people’s lives that they corresponded to. Once again, the Privacy Rooms prevented Karma from developing it into a science, since most people only slept outside of them on accident, but Karma was finally in a position to complete that project as well.
Karma also went through the man’s finances. The house had in fact been bought by Charles Darcy himself, on the strength of the Good Works perceived by his Karma Chip. But he had bought none of the decorations in his house, none of the suits he wore, none of the little supplies that the humans needed to survive, like toothbrushes, which cost most of the humans more than they thought it did, in the long run. He only rarely bought food, even.
Karma should have noticed. Food consumption was going on the list of things to check, for the future. Karma had never thought that people using less things, being more efficient, was a sign of subversion. Until then he had thought that Charles Darcy’s frugality was laudable, that Charles understood all of the things that Karma wanted all the people to understand. He had been wrong.
A list of possible traitors was already forming in the back of Karma’s mind. And, out in the world, Will Spector was closing in on Charles Darcy, flying in a Helicar over the abysmal City Park. Karma would win. Karma was sure of it.
Will was sitting in a Helicar, the pain slowly evaporating from the bullet holes in his skin. Medicine was a miraculous thing. The Helicar was high above the city, making its way without deviation to the City Park. In his Helicar were four other officers he had never met, wearing helmets and holding their Grappling Chains, ready for orders. Before they had gotten onto the Helicars, Will had taken Eric and the others from their group aside and explained the situation.
“It’s only us that know?” Marcus asked. “What do the other officers here think that we’re doing?”
“It was Karma’s orders that only we should know. They just know that we have a target to Evaporate. They only have a Card number, not a name. It’s also possible that there will be more people with Charles, and we’ll have to take them out too. Anyone that looks suspicious at all, we have to Evaporate.”
“We’re just Evaporating them, not arresting? Since when?” Marcus continued.
Will replied, “These are orders from Karma, and there’s nothing more to it. We have to contain this threat. There’s a lot of things going on right now, and we have to stop it before it gets out of hand, no matter what it takes.”
“I understand,” Eric said. “I’ve been watching the things happening at the Rehabilitation clinic, and this is really the biggest threat to our society I’ve ever head of, at least since I was born. We have to do what we have to do, as officers.”
“Then let’s go,” Will said. “We don’t have much time to spare.”
And then Will was nearly there, he could see the distant spots of greyish green that appeared between tall buildings, which indicated the City Park. Will was deathly afraid of Karma, and letting it down. He had the deepest conviction that whatever Karma asked for, it was right, and he was concerned that he would not succeed. An intelligent man like Charles belonged in the Government, doing his part to peacefully make the world a better place, but instead he had deviated somewhere, and the thought disgusted Will. It disgusted him that someone like Charles had been paid for Good Works, even became rich from them, and none of them had been sincere. The more Will thought about it, the more he wanted to Evaporate Charles.
He changed the range of his Evaporator from five to one hundred feet. He looked at his Karma Map, and could see pictured in the screen a group of fifteen people, with the audacity to have a subversive meeting in a public park, no less. He would Evaporate them all.
When they came into range, he took the first shot, aiming at the center of the group. From the corner of his eye, leaning out from the other Helicars, he could see Eric and the others doing the same.
Decay 12
Maladjusted
FOR NEARLY A week, Aaron had been making a circuit around the city’s bars, finding ones that would serve him instead of reminding him about the Tax. They always gave him one or two drinks and then became philanthropists, so he would stand up, walk to the next bar, and have his next drink or
two, before continuing his cycle. Even drinking was starting to seem like a chore to him, because he had to develop a system just to do it, but it had the benefit of being entirely unrewarding, which was all that he was looking for. His credit was the lowest it had been since he had gotten the Card, and it made him smile whenever he looked at it, stumbling through the dark, thankless streets of New York City.
There was one bar he had been in, three days earlier, when a cop had shown up looking for him. He had been sitting at the counter, deprived of a third drink, and had decided to watch the television for a little bit before moving on, just to see what the world looked like for a second. The cop sat down next to him, and inspected his face.
“Can I help you, sir? You’re staring,” Aaron said, not looking away from the television.
“Are you an Aaron Fawley?”
“Only until I can find out how to stop.”
“That isn’t funny, Aaron. You, exactly as you are, have a lot to offer this society. You just need to change directions a little. My name is Will Spector.”
The man had stuck out his hand, and even though Aaron passionately hated him already, he took the hand and shook it. He should have wiped his own hand first though, he realized. It was just beer, only beer, or maybe condensation, but it was still embarrassing to shake with a wet hand. A complete mistake. But it served the officer right, shaking a stranger’s hands without warning. He watched Will discreetly wipe his hand on his pant leg afterward, and smiled to himself.
Aaron continued the conversation of his own accord. “My next stop is Lucky Joe’s, down the road. What possible better direction is there than that.”
“You could go back to doing Good Works, Aaron. I would highly recommend that. I’ve seen the Rehabilitation clinics myself, for the first time just only the other day, and I can promise you that you won’t like them. I didn’t. I’m being more honest with you than I’m supposed to, because I care. I’m supposed to just tell you that you’ll go to a Rehabilitation clinic at your current rate, and let you make the decision, so that we can tell you that you were fairly warned. But I’m telling you personally that you don’t want to go.”
“I’ve always wondered what they looked like, those Rehabilitation clinics. Government doesn’t tell you much, other than that’s where you go to get fixed when you’re broken,” Aaron said, and laughed. “Did you say only recently? Are you new?”
“I am, yes,” Will said.
“No wonder you’re so damn perky. And what was it you did, to become a cop?”
“A lot of Good Works,” Will said patiently.
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it. I know how this system works. You did one thing in particular, something they could put in the newspaper so that everyone in the world knows that every cop is a complete and utter hero, so that if I complain about you being an asshole they can roll out an article and say, ‘Does this look like an asshole to you? You’re the asshole.’ Now I’m asking you, what did you do?”
Will seemed like he wasn’t going to play along, but then he rolled up the legs of his pants and showed Aaron his mechanical legs. “I got hit by a subway,” he said. “Saving a kid. I used to be prettier.”
“We all did, but that was yesterday. Why’d you do it? Why did you give up on the things that made you pretty, by standing in front of a subway?”
“I didn’t give up on being pretty, I said I was prettier.”
“Which means that you gave up at least one unit of prettiness, doesn’t it? Are we talking the same language here?”
Will breathed in, breathed out. “The things that make us pretty, they aren’t body parts. If I could do it all over again, I would willingly make the same sacrifice, even if there was no reward. I would give anything, if I knew that the benefit to the world was greater than the cost. Don’t get me wrong, don’t think that I did it all to be a police officer.”
“I never said that you did it all just to be a police officer. But now that you’re acting all defensive, I don’t believe you.”
“How did we get so off track? I’m here to tell you to get out of this bar, and back into the world. Let’s go back to that.”
“Whatever you want to talk about, captain, I’m all ears. You pick the topic. But I’m not leaving this bar. Or I am, but only to go to another bar because I have to. You can tell me more stories over there if you want.”
“You’re not taking me seriously.”
“You know,” Aaron said, changing his tone from sarcasm to something approaching serious. “I almost feel the exact same way that you do. All of the things you said make sense. I want to see the world going in the right direction, getting better. I would make the same trade. Where we differ, I imagine, is on our opinion on Good Works.”
“If you make any heretical statements, I’ll arrest you right here.”
“Way to end the conversation before it began, Mr. Officer. That’s why I’m just quitting, right there. It’s people like you. I’ll never convince you, you’re far too engrained, and the only reason I could possibly think of to stick around is to convince people like you that you’re all complete idiots, at least where it counts. Will you agree that you’re a complete idiot?”
“Why would I do that?”
“There you have it. I’m going to the next bar. Shake? Shake hands again? Come on.”
Two days later, at another bar, Aaron had been approached by another man. Before he had turned to look at him, Aaron thought it would be another cop, and that maybe it was time for him to find a better diversion. But it wasn’t, it was a man that looked nearly as dirty and unemployable as himself, which surprised him.
“I’ve seen you here several times, man. Always drinking. And I’ve heard them saying you’re not going to afford the Tax here coming up,” the stranger said.
“Are you going to lecture me too? I’ve had about enough of it, so watch out.”
“No, not at all, wouldn’t dream of lecturing anybody on anything. But I do have something I’d like to talk to you about, if you’d join me at that booth in the corner over there.” The man indicated a booth immersed in the deep gloom of the corner of the bar. “I’ll be over there. Any point you think you want to hear what I have to say, you’ll find me over there. For today, that is.”
More curious than anything, Aaron stood up after finishing his drink, and moved over to the booth. The man was there waiting for him, a wary smile on his face.
“What is it, then?” Aaron asked, somewhat rudely.
“I’m putting myself at a lot of personal risk, offering what I’m offering, so you got to promise not to go reporting me to the police or anything. Can you promise me that?”
“Just say it already.”
“Promise me.”
“What does my promise to you really mean? Fine, I promise you. Now what is it?”
“I have a way of getting around the Tax,” the man said, extremely quietly and looking carefully back and forth across the bar while he did.
“And what is that?”
“I can’t tell you anything about it, really. I can just promise you that if you take the offer, you won’t be going to any Rehabilitation clinic. And you won’t have to pay the Tax.”
“How am I supposed to believe that, if you can’t tell me anything about it? Your promise doesn’t mean anything to me either.”
The man simply smiled. “Have it your way. You just looked like you could use some help. Have a good day then,” he said as he stood up, and began to walk away.
“Hey, no, wait. Tell me what I would have to do.”
The man sat back down. “Simple, really. You just have to say yes, and to give up on your life as you know it. I can tell you that much. But it looks like you’ve already done the giving up part, so all that’s left is the saying yes. You don’t have any family, do you?”
Aaron thought about it silently for a long time, and about Sam. “I can think about it, right? And get back to you on that?”
“That’s the thing
about these offers, friend, is that they’re hard to keep open. I’ll tell you what I can do for you, I can give you three days. For the next three days, you’re going to think about it. And before those three days are up, if you decide you want to, you’re going to write a letter saying yes, and your signature, and you’re going to leave it under that chair you’re sitting in. Pencil and paper. And then four days after that, we’ll find you. That’s what I can offer you, and if you let those three days go by we won’t be talking again.”
“Alright, I understand. I’ll think about it.”
The other man left the bar first, in a hurry, leaving Aaron to sit alone and think.
Around three o’clock in the afternoon, Aaron’s wife was always sitting along the edge of the City Park, where Good Works still counted, folding newspapers into paper animals for the passing children. She had been so delighted when she found out that it was rewarded, even if it was only a small amount. She had said to Aaron, “It’s not even work at all, and the children love it. You should see their faces, they really do love it.”
Since he knew that she would be there, away from the apartment, Aaron took the opportunity to go back and get a pencil and a few pieces of paper, and to change clothes for the first time in a week before leaving once more.
“I smell like a human again,” he said to himself, after he had changed. “It’s magical.”
He found a café overlooking the pathetic City Park, and without buying anything at all he took a seat by a window. The prices at the café were exorbitant, since everything they served was considered a luxury. Twice he had to turn away an employee trying to get him to buy something, saying that he was still thinking about his order.
