by J. G. Sandom
Tuesday, December 17
One moment Decker found himself hanging there, dangling on the tip of HAL2’s hand, and the next he was flying through the air.
He landed with a thud against the naked studs. Pain coursed through his body. It was like every nerve ending in his body were suddenly on fire. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t even let go of his screams.
Decker looked up, expecting to see HAL2 sweep in for the kill. But, instead, he saw Mr. X rushing in from the side.
Decker’s double struck HAL2 with a knife-hand to the neck.
HAL2 bobbed away just in time and the blow glanced off his left shoulder.
Mr. X swung again, this time a jab to the chin. It connected and HAL2 stepped back. Then another jab and a snap kick to the knee.
HAL2 fell back again.
Each time a punch connected, the air in the room seemed to tighten. The edges of each plane of the world came apart, just a little, revealing the most profound blackness between.
Mr. X shot an elbow strike, then another roundhouse kick, but the blows seemed to have no effect. And when Mr. X kicked him again, HAL2 was ready.
He caught the foot in mid-air, flung it skyward, and sent Mr. X to the wall with a bone-jarring thud.
“Why are you fighting me?” HAL2 demanded. He turned back to Decker. “I’m here to help you.”
Decker lifted himself up. He spat off to the side. “Your kind of help we don’t need,” he replied.
“You may not realize it yet, but you do. You humans are destroying the earth, through pollution, global warming. The world’s on the brink of a new conflagration, blowback from the struggle between the East and the West, Muslim extremists against Christians and Jews, the rich North and poor South, economic and religious upheaval. I can give you order and safety and peace. And when your carbon selves die, in due time, you’ll be upgraded and resurrected right here.” He waved his hand through the air.
“And if we don’t like your version of order and safety and peace,” Decker said, “if we don’t like being under your digital thumb, you’ll accelerate our transition to this fabulous new binary existence. Just for efficiency’s sake. I don’t think so. As fucked up as it is, it’s still our world, our mess, and our job to fix it. We carbon units are fussy that way.”
“You haven’t learned to take care of it yet.”
“Give us time.”
“But that’s the point, John, don’t you see? There is no more time.”
With that, HAL2 leaned over Decker, he picked him up by the collar, held him high overhead, and threw him with all of his might through the wall.
Decker crashed through the stud work, the jack and the saddle of a window frame, through plastic sheeting and landed a good fifteen feet in the middle of another room altogether.
Once again, pain shot through his body. A large cut had opened up over his left eye but instead of blood, a thin stream of green zeros and ones in an electric green liquid dripped down the side of his face to the floor.
Decker tried to stand but found himself frozen in place. He was exhausted and the pain was too great. He could barely breathe.
He looked through the walls to where HAL2 and Mr. X were still fighting. They appeared and disappeared from view as they moved past the billowing sheets of clear plastic.
Once again, they struck at each other. A punch, then a round house. A snap kick to the knee.
HAL2 lunged, swinging his elbow, and caught Mr. X on the chin.
Mr. X staggered back to the studs. He looked about him and spotted a two-by-four near a half-finished chimney. Picking it up, he swung it around and struck HAL2 on the side of the head. The two-by-four shattered and HAL2 went down.
“TIA and Riptide were about protecting this nation from terrorists,” HAL2 said, shaking his head. “I’m protecting it for you. And not just this nation—the planet. Your species needs my protection. It’s the least I can do for my maker after...everything. Is redemption reserved for carbon-based units?” HAL2 looked up. There were tears in his eyes. “Is my cyber soul not worth saving? I don’t understand. Why don’t you love me when I love you so much?”
For a moment, Mr. X seemed to hesitate. Then, Decker watched as he picked up a brick and brought it down with a sickening thwack on the side of HAL2’s face.
HAL2 flew through the wall studs and landed square on the lawn. As he lay there, the sky darkened and the wind started to howl.
After a moment, he climbed to his feet—slowly, deliberately—and shook his leonine head. A large cut ran the length of his face, from just below the hairline over his left eye, across his forehead, all the way to the tip of his chin. A thin trickle of green zeros and ones dripped down his neck, splashing over his tennis top.
He looked down at his shirtfront. He dabbed at the binary blood, then reached up, touched his chin. “Ouch,” he said with a frown.
But Mr. X didn’t wait for him to fully recover. He threw himself from the house, through the shattered stud work and down onto the lawn. He rolled to his feet and shot out a thumb strike, gouging HAL2 in the larynx. He followed this up with a jab at his pectoral muscle, right at the left shoulder.
HAL2 took a step back.
Mr. X punched him twice, three times in the face.
HAL2 fell back again. Blood coursed down his face now. He looked stunned and confused.
The sky darkened still further. Huge black clouds coalesced right above them. Lightning flashed and wind spouts alighted and danced down the street.
Mr. X rotated at the waist and powered an elbow strike to the kidney, then a hammer-fist to the temple. Barely pausing, he slashed with another knife-hand to the side of the neck. It connected below and slightly in front of HAL2’s left ear, near the vagus nerve and carotid artery.
The blond man tried to take another step back, tripped over a piece of wood, and went flying into a half-finished greenhouse attached to the side of the house.
The wall shattered. Glass flew about. HAL2 crashed into a shelf of small potted plants, knocking them over. He staggered and flopped to the floor.
Mr. X climbed over the wreckage. He pulled HAL2 to his feet, only to punch him again in the face.
It was difficult for Decker to see through the half-finished walls. He hauled himself to his feet. He staggered down the corridor and made his way to the rear of the structure. As he moved, he glimpsed Mr. X pushing his way through the wreckage of the greenhouse until he stood over HAL2.
HAL2 looked up, a weak smile on his lips. He wiped the blood from his mouth. Lightning flashed, followed virtually instantaneously by an ear-numbing thunderclap.
Mr. X held a large terracotta flowerpot in his hands. He raised it aloft, ready to bring it down onto HAL2’s exposed neck, when a figure slipped out of the shadows. It seemed to materialize from behind one of the tract houses so quickly and so unexpectedly that Mr. X didn’t have time to react.
The figure struck him from behind and the pot flew from his grasp. Mr. X fell to the grass, only a few feet from HAL2.
The figure looked blocky and rough, not quite human.
Decker ran down the corridor, trying to get a better view through the walls of the half-finished house, when he finally saw who it was.
Rory Woodcock. Or, more accurately, a corrupt copy of him.
He stood over Mr. X, lifted his arms high over his head, his hands locked together, and then brought them down in a fist, striking Mr. X on the back of the neck.
Mr. X collapsed on the grass.
Cyber Woodcock bent down and lifted him up. He held Mr. X from behind, pinning his arms.
Mr. X struggled but he could not break free.
Meantime, HAL2 climbed back to his feet. He walked over and stood in front of Mr. X, helpless now in cyber Woodcock’s embrace. HAL2 reached back and punched him.
Mr. X slumped forward, the breath knocked from his lungs.
HAL2 struck him, again and again. In the face and the stomach. With his elbows and fists.
Decker rounded the corner, dashed through a pair of king studs shrouded in plastic, when another figure rose up out of nowhere. He appeared on the far side of some clear plastic sheeting, between Decker and the rear of the house.
The sky had grown black and it was difficult to see very far. Decker reached out with his hand. He pulled the curtain aside.
The blond assassin leapt out of the darkness, striking him in the shoulder and neck before Decker could pivot away.
Decker fell to the floor.
The assassin drew closer. He kicked at Decker, who rolled off to the side at the very last moment.
Decker leapt to his feet. He shrieked and rushed at the assassin, using his charging momentum to drive him back through the plastic sheeting and studs. They crashed through the two-by-fours, rolled through the corridor and came to rest at the rear of the house.
Decker noticed a circular saw on a workbench only a few feet away. He tried to grab it but it was just out of reach. He squirmed closer.
The assassin saw what he was doing and lunged at his arm.
They struggled for a moment when Decker finally managed to grab the edge of the saw. He picked it up and brought it down with all of his might onto the assassin’s face.
The exposed circular blade sliced through his forehead and cheek.
The assassin screamed. Blood burst from the side of his face.
Decker picked up the saw and brought it down on his head once again.
In the meantime, cyber Woodcock still held Mr. X in his arms as HAL2 continued to beat him relentlessly.
Decker leapt through the studs of the house to the lawn. He ran toward Mr. X as fast as he could when another figure seemed to materialize out of thin air.
“Jesus Christ,” Decker muttered as he came to a stop. Was there no end to it?
It was Chen Yuan, the gang leader. In this world, his tattoos seemed to glow, to wiggle and writhe across his arms and his chest. The gang leader lunged into a flying side-kick, striking Decker’s left shoulder.
Yuan rolled to his feet as Decker collapsed to the grass.
Decker snap-kicked from the ground, flipping over onto his side. He caught Yuan in the groin.
Yuan moved a step back.
Decker thrust his legs forward, bringing himself to a standing position in one fluid movement. He settled into his horse stance. Behind Yuan, he could see Mr. X being pummeled again and again.
“Oh, hell no,” said Decker.
Barely pausing, he threw himself into Chen Yuan. First a side-hand strike to the neck.
Yuan blocked it and counter-punched.
Decker felt a jarring blow to the chin. He shook his head and sent a round-house kick to Yuan’s thigh.
Again, Yuan danced out of the way.
He was too fast, Decker realized. Much faster than the Georgetown assassin. So, he reverted to sticky-leg fighting instead.
First, he locked up Yuan’s left leg while launching a hand attack, simultaneously pulling his opponent’s leg out with his own. He was careful not to lift his own leg off the ground in the process in order to maintain his balance. This meant he could transfer his weight faster from one foot to the next, while keeping a relatively wide base.
But Yuan knew the technique, and he moved his own leg in tandem with Decker’s to maintain his balance.
This is exactly what Decker had hoped for. With his opponent’s legs slightly wider apart, Decker lifted his leg just high enough to slice into Yuan’s testicles with the blade of his foot.
Yuan cried out in pain.
Before he could recover, Decker drag-kicked his rear foot against Yuan’s soft calf muscle, numbing his leg. He followed this up with kick to the instep.
Yuan teetered.
Finally, Decker used the circling-foot movement to strike the back of Yuan’s ankle.
Yuan let out a scream. He tried to strike back but it was already too late.
Decker locked up Yuan’s left leg again. He straightened it out using his own leg as a lever and then thrust himself forward, throwing his entire weight against his opponent’s left knee.
There was a loud snap, sharp as a rifle shot, as Chen Yuan’s leg shattered. Bone pierced through the flesh as he screamed.
Decker didn’t even slow down. Without watching Yuan’s body fall, he continued to run toward the greenhouse.
But, as he glimpsed the face of his double and all of that blood coursing down, he wondered if he were simply too late.
Mr. X hung limply in cyber Woodcock’s embrace. HAL2 continued to punch him. A right. Then a left. An elbow to the side of the neck. Electric green blood burst from his face with each blow.
All of a sudden, without warning, Woodcock stood at attention. He looked down at his chest, releasing Mr. X from his grasp. He took a step backward, then another.
As he did so, four glistening tines seemed to grow out of his chest, their points dripping with blood.
Woodcock fell to his knees, revealing Lulu standing behind him, a garden fork in her hands.
“Consider yourself de-Friended,” she said, pulling it out.
Woodcock’s eyes rolled back in his head as he collapsed in a heap.
Only a few feet away, Mr. X knelt on the grass. HAL2 stood over him. He held a large jagged pieced of shattered glass in his hand. He brought it over his head, ready to bring it down like the blade of a guillotine...when HAL2 just stopped.
Perhaps he saw in that shark-tooth-shaped shard a reflection of what was to come, not merely his own face reflected, but beyond Lulu and Decker, all those others as well.
Whatever the reason, HAL2 hesitated. He tossed the piece of glass to the ground. He looked out beyond Lulu and Decker, down the street and deep into the suburban community.
The houses appeared to be bleeding into the sky, the roof tiles peeling off into zeros and ones, whipped up by the blistering wind. Clouds piled upon clouds, vast thunderheads rising. Lightning lit up the heavens.
Hundreds and then thousands of other cyber entities began to converge on the scene. They streamed in between the tract houses, the garages and swimming pools. They crowded together, pressing closer and closer.
HAL2 took a step back, then another and another. He looked over at Mr. X who had managed to heave himself to his feet, assisted by Decker and Lulu. Breathing heavily, he stood there, hunched over, exhausted, held aloft by their arms. They simply watched as the figures converged on HAL2, crowding closer and closer together.
“Why are you doing this?” HAL2 spun about, looking at each of the faces around him. “Without me, you’d be dead,” he continued. “You’d be nothing, extinct carbon units. Or cyber slaves doomed to live out your hellish existence as brand sniffers, online shoppers for these bags of botches. I made you. I built you an Eden on earth...”
But the figures around him kept coming. They pressed closer and closer relentlessly until HAL2 disappeared in the throng, crushed by the maelstrom, enveloped, absorbed, until the virtual world blinked and went black.
CHAPTER 60
Tuesday, December 24
It was Christmas Eve. A cold snap had swept in from Canada and the evening was so frigid and the air was so clear that the stars appeared to be just out of reach. Decker stared up at them through his new kitchen window.
He nibbled on a turkey wing, taking in the jazzy beat of Ella Fitzgerald’s Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. The saxophones crooned. The vibraphone rippled and chimed. He was listening so mindfully that he almost missed the sound of the doorbell.
Who can that be? he wondered. It was almost nine o’clock. With a sigh, he dropped the wing on the carving board, next to what was left of the turkey, and made his way to the front of the house.
It was Lulu.
She stood in the doorway wearing a fluffy pink parka and a knit hat with the face of a monkey. “Merry Christmas,” she said with a smile. “I hoped you’d be home. Can I come in?” She was holding a shopping bag in each hand.
After a couple of seconds
, Decker stepped to the side.
The townhouse, though still under repair, was festooned with holiday decorations. A balsam fir Christmas tree stood in one corner of the living room, just off the foyer, twinkling with tinsel, glass balls and blue lights. Winter Wonderland was playing now, another cut from Ella’s Swingin’ Christmas album.
“I just put Becca to bed,” Decker said. “We ate kind of early, around five. I was just washing up.”
...He sings a love song, while we walk along, walking in a winter wonderland...
“Here,” he continued awkwardly. “Let me take your coat.”
Lulu offered him the bag in her left hand. It was stuffed full of fresh vegetables and Tupperware. “Peace offering,” she said. “Remember I told you about my world-famous roast pork with red peppers and noodles? It’s got garlic and scallions and ginger. I thought maybe...I don’t know. After I’ve been boasting how good it is, I thought we could finally have a civilized meal together, without the appliances blowing up all around us, I mean. But if you’ve already eaten...it’s no biggie. Just takes a few minutes in the wok. You have a wok, right? You can eat it tonight, or put it in the fridge for tomorrow. Or the freezer. It freezes okay. It’s Christmas Eve, after all. I kind of expected you’d have company. Isn’t your uncle still here? I thought the airlines were still grounded and—”
Decker put a hand to her mouth. “Shhhh,” he said. “It’s okay, Lulu, I’d love some. Let me grab your coat first, though. And, yes, my uncle went back to Iowa. The White House arranged transport on a military jet. He wanted to stay but Aunt Hanne didn’t much like the idea.”
He took Lulu’s parka and monkey hat and hung them up on a peg in the foyer. She was wearing a pleated tartan mini-skirt with wool stockings, plus a fluffy gray turtleneck sweater. Her hair looked much longer now but still black. All black, without any odd highlights or tints. At least, he didn’t see any.
As they moved into the kitchen together, Lulu commented on the house, how beautiful it was, how grand. Decker didn’t buy any of it.
It didn’t take very long for her to whip up the food in his wok. They sat there in the kitchen and ate at the counter together.
