“Hear, hear!” Mort held up his glass in a toast. Santini graced him by kissing his glass up against Mort’s. Mort bumped glasses with Gretchen next. “Thanks for reminding me what a fool I am for feeding into this opiate for the masses, the self-delusion that anything can possibly ever change.”
“I didn’t say that.” Gretchen pulled back like a snail drawing into its shell.
“So how would you solve this problem?” Santini said, trying to coax her out of hiding again.
Gretchen brightened at the sight of soccer on the TV as someone switched the channel. Not exactly Mort’s favorite sport. He attempted to redirect their attention away from the monitor. “Yes, pray tell.”
“With campaign reform for starters,” Santini said, answering for her.
“But you can’t stop there,” Gretchen said. “A handful of media giants control all the media outlets; they’ve got a total lock on the news and what people take for reality. And you can bet, reality is the last thing anyone’s feeding them on the boob-tube. Ever since OJ, haven’t you noticed one similar news blackout story after another?”
She nodded at the TV screen in the background, where they were still carrying on about Michael Jackson’s doctor, months after his death. “If it’s not Michael Jackson’s doctor, then it’s a coach cum pedophile. It’s whoever they can single out to give the public a chance to channel all their frustration regarding how trapped and hopeless they feel about their lives. That way they can direct that rage towards tangible bad guys they can punish in order to feel better about themselves.” She wiped her eyes, mad and frustrated to the point of tears with the injustice of it all, Santini imagined, even if she may not have shed a tear for the targeted figures themselves.
Gretchen lamented, “The scapegoats are not the real problem with what’s wrong with society, but they’re something that people can get their minds around.”
Giving his hand a turn in the bowl of tortilla chips, Santini extrapolated from her reasoning on the fly. “The Wall Street wizards who crashed the economy never have to worry about being thrown in jail so long as they can hang someone out to dry, so long as they can give the public the sacrificial lambs they need.” The pronouncement made, it was his turn to steel his nerves with a swig of beer, his anger rising. He took one from the latest round of refills the waitress left on the table.
Gretchen nodded. “Besides, it’s not like anyone really understands the global economic system, too big, too complex, too abstract, even for the pros.”
“So what’s the real problem?” Santini noticed how perturbed Mort was getting. He was hitting the beer faster and harder like windshield wipers in reverse, hoping to smear this window to the world he was being given.
“Humans are being discontinued,” she said, as if it was the final straw on the back of her fragile self-esteem. “No longer needed,” she said, as if it reminded her of how her parents viewed her growing up. “No longer cheap enough relative to software and robotics,” she said, as if she felt cheap enough already, Santini thought. “No longer as efficient or as dependable,” she said, as if she’d tried her best time and time again to change this impression of herself, never having succeeded. “And increasingly, no longer as high-functioning. Just too much of a pain in the ass to deal with even at the penny an hour they pay them in India.”
The server dropped replacement beer in front of them before disappearing again. Gretchen sipped hers for moral support. “And it’s all about making a profit for stockholders. Humanity be damned. And the only way to beat last year’s performance is by squeezing more efficiencies out of the system. Humans, for the most part, aren’t built for efficiency. Not like ants in an ant farm, or computers in a server farm.”
She was speaking now as if in a trance, no longer making eye contact. “Each year the software and robotics improves, each year more people get laid off. Only the smartest of the smart survive another year. Until no amount of brains, cunning, and connectedness can really protect you.”
Mort coughed, as if refusing to swallow any more dictums. “You’re a seriously disturbing woman. I liked you better when you made me forget my troubles, not made bigger ones for me.” Mort was getting good and drunk, and his mood was taking a nosedive all on its own, a pattern he’d failed to recognize for the last year or more Santini had known him.
“So, what are we going to do about it.” Santini said, refusing to let her linger in this sorry state. “What are we going to do to empower ourselves?”
His strength gave her the boost she needed to act on her convictions. “They’re going to send more men in black to take out the threats to the powers that be.”
Mort swallowed hard.
Gretchen squeezed the handle on her beer mug. “They will do anything, even in a devastated world economy, to keep things from changing. They’re going to send you and Mort, and me too, I guess, now that I’ve graduated the academy, to eliminate the threats. If they can’t get the free thinkers locked away on trumped up charges and falsified evidence, by making use of us to do so, then they’ll off them in the dead of night, away from our prying eyes and petty sense of justice.”
Mort glared at her hang-jawed, as if, having bumped into the Oracle of Delphi entirely by accident, he might stare it down until it desisted with its prophesizing.
“Maybe we should consider falsifying some evidence of our own,” Santini suggested.
“A lot of these guys building the future in their garage don’t even know what they’re really up against,” Gretchen explained. “Just as well, if they did, they mightn’t even try, and then all is lost.”
Santini tightly clasped Gretchen’s hand. “They’re going to need our help.”
“Maybe we can find out what they need and get it for them,” Gretchen suggested. “Most of them are working in isolation. So mostly they’ll need to know who can be of help to them, who they can network with to create their own black market economy supply chains.”
“After the men in black have a go at them, assuming they survive, they’ll need us to keep from bouncing off the walls and needing a padded cell,” Santini said. His voice had grown hard. His nerves turned to steel cables, as if just contemplating the weak needing him was enough to turn him from Clark Kent into Superman.
“Ah, this is all the liquor talking.” Mort set down his mug.
“He’s right about that,” Santini said. “On the other hand…”
“Hell, I’m no hero.” Mort rescued Gretchen’s latest beer from her before it lost its soul warming in her hands.
Santini grunted. “Yeah, but instead of enticing gays and bigots and hotheads to take a swing at you, so you can vent your rage on them, you can pound on people for the betterment of humanity, and feel like a saint for doing so. Obstructing men in black has got to be like swatting flies, only more fulfilling.”
“Sweet-talking me is going to do you no good, especially as I won’t remember a word of this conversation come tomorrow.” Mort was slurring his speech now.
“Maybe we should all drink enough to forget everything we talked about,” Santini said. Gretchen grabbed his hand, and this time she clenched tight, lending her emotional support. “I suppose this’ll mean crossing the line into Berkeley.”
“There’ll be plenty of them crossing the line into our territory,” Gretchen said. “Garage startups aren’t as cheap as they used to be. Those unsavory zip codes start to look attractive pretty fast.”
“You want us to help these eggheads and over-sensitive artistes survive in a world that would do anything to squish them like bugs on the windshield of a car doing ninety miles an hour?” Santini knew he sounded skeptical. “You want us to be the big picture people? Make the connections for them we can’t make for ourselves?”
“I can do it with your help. I know I can,” Gretchen said.
“I can do it with Mort’s help,” Santini said, regarding Mort who picked just this moment to collapse face down on the table.
“He doesn’t sound like someo
ne who’s easy to budge once he’s made up his mind,” Gretchen said.
“What mind? He can’t stand to be more than two feet away from me. Beyond that, he doesn’t have an opinion about anything he isn’t happy to backpedal on. You leave Mort to me.”
***
Thor barked to lend his support. He’d been bouncing his head from speaker to speaker the entire time, avidly following the conversation. He couldn’t wait to help out.
He’d be running his own covert ops against the men in black at night. Back in action again.
He couldn’t wait to summon the rest of the team. His fellow Bullmastiffs, languishing in dog fight kennels, would relish the chance to build a better world.
He sent out his psychic pulse to the pack.
***
Sasha, staring down the three pit bulls thrown in the ring with her, was distracted briefly by Thor’s communiqué. That had given them a chance to sink their teeth into her. It didn’t matter.
She broke the neck of the one on her leg, and sent him flying through the crowd of spectators. The humans gasped and roared and exchanged money. There was some bitching and moaning. “What the hell is this? Is that dog on drugs?” “It’s on PCP, it has to be.”
She bit the second pit bull in half, and just left the pieces where they lay. Several of the humans recoiled.
Sasha took her forepaws and dug her talons into the eyes of the pit bull affixed to her neck. The blinded animal wailed, and released her. She flung him at the owner that had kept her caged these last months.
She then bounded out of the ring and through the crowd, knocking over the humans like bowling pins. The owner reached for his gun, but his bullets caught only confused spectators. And then, he had to flee the scene even more than her.
As the crowd turned on him and he ran, he found an opening that led him straight to her. Shocked to find her staring him down, he aimed the gun at her. But the fool had forgotten to count his bullets. She could see into the chambers of the revolver from where he was standing, and it was empty.
She lunged for his throat, took his head clear off. The crowd stepped back, watched the headless torso collapse moments later. The head on the floor mouthed some obscenity at her before dying.
No one gave her much argument regarding her departure after that.
***
Brutus, locked in his cage, awaiting the next fight on the other end of town, received Thor’s psychic communiqué. Though the cage left him no room to stand and move about, he rose onto his four legs. In doing so, he deformed the metal cage. He maintained the pressure until it collapsed around him like a house of cards.
The owner, busy counting money from the fight Brutus had just won for him, yelled, “You can’t leave.”
Brutus lunged, knocked him to the ground, and continued running. The man shouted at his back, “Could we talk about this?”
***
Hunter and Sable, fighting in rings set side by side, synchronized their attacks on the dogs coming at them, wowing the crowd.
On receiving Thor’s communication, both dogs stopped just as synchronistically and leaped out of their rings which were built deep enough to forestall any such escape, just not deep enough to accommodate the bullmastiff’s altered physiologies.
They cleared the rings with such ease, it earned them a certain gratis with the crowd. No one was much complaining to see them go. Spiffy act or not, there was a clear sense things were getting out of hand, and out of the dog owners’ control.
Hunter heard one of them saying, “To hell with it. Not worth the cost of the replacement dogs.”
***
Mort strolled alongside his two miniature French poodles, dyed neon-pink for the full effect. The Maxwell Park location in East Oakland he had selected had one of the highest crime rates as parks went in this part of the world, making it all the easier for his poodles to elicit the requisite violence. It didn’t take long for the discourteous laughs and ribbing remarks to come pouring in.
“Your pubic hair pink, too, pal?”
“Why don’t you come over here, suck my dick, and find out?” Mort said.
The one white kid in the park must have figured he had the most to prove. He looked over his shoulders to see how closely the others were watching his next move. Smiling, he hoisted his fists. Mort thought his positioning was rather good. His footwork was even better as he bobbed and weaved. “Yeah, all right, I guess you’ll do,” he said.
When the kid came in closer, threw a few admittedly well-placed punches and nearly broke his hands against the stone of Mort’s jaw, Mort grabbed him in a headlock. “Now, here’s the deal. You love a good fight, you need an excuse to get in some practice, these dogs are the ticket, see? Ask yourself, can anyone really pass you by without starting a fight just to prove their own manhood?”
“What are you saying?” the kid said, struggling to get free, but finding himself unable.
“What I’m saying is, I’m leaving on a long journey, and I can’t look out for them like I used to. Only had them for one reason, actually, as an excuse to beat up on little punks like you. Now, I pass the legacy on to you. Get it, or not yet?”
“Yeah,” he said squirming free at last. “Yeah, sure.” He eyed the dogs, thinking it over. Then he smiled. “I like your style, pal.”
Mort handed the reins over to him. “It’s your style now.”
The kid smiled broader as he took control of the dogs. He started whistling.
“Tell me you have a gun for backup,” Mort said. The kid nodded clandestinely, then took a few steps, trying out his new role.
NINE MONTHS EARLIER
SIXTY-ONE
The firemen, who had pulled Piper out of the smoldering site three times thus far, had finally given up.
Though they continued to enjoy hitting him with the fire hose periodically to help “cool him off.” He didn’t think they were concerned with his body temperature. Not from their callous laughter. Piper had to remind himself that love of journalists was an acquired taste.
Finally, the chief arsonist club-footed it over the debris field, and squatted down beside him. Piper didn’t need to ask who he was; they both scrutinized the site with the same mindset, determined to distill answers from the wreckage. “What do you think is going on here?” he asked humbly.
Piper, taking advantage of his journalist’s eye for detail, studied the half-melted contraption in front of him that had stood up to the explosives rather well; better than the house. Might have been the proprietary complex metal-polymers from which it was made. The thing looked suitably futuristic. In fact, it looked a lot like H. G. Well’s time machine, down to the seat smack in the middle of all the doodads for its rider to sit in.
“This guy was a scientist. Whatever his invention was,” Piper said, pointing at the melted contraption in front of him, “it was important enough to destroy along with him. So you have a crusader type, maybe, or a religious fanatic, possibly one and the same, someone convinced they’re serving the greater good. Someone who needs to hide the serial killer in him from himself by directing it towards serving society.”
“You think he’s done this before?”
Piper studied the evidence before him. “He was a little too thorough, a little too professional. Our killer took out this house without so much as disturbing the neighbor’s lawn, or blowing out a window. There’s a handful of people in the world who can drop buildings like that. Might have been his prior job. Maybe he didn’t like facing the impulse in himself to blow up the world, either. Easier to imagine himself in the savior role, while blowing it up piece by piece, killing off the future by closing off access to truly transformative technologies, in order to protect the status quo.”
“You sure you don’t want to consider my line of work?”
Piper extended his hand to him. “Piper Shiftly. Failed journalist. Failed psychologist. Failed arson-and-FBI profiler. Failed generic psycho killer. But a healthy dose of all of them put together. That’s me.”<
br />
Shaking his hand, the other man said, “Cliff Masters. Not being as well-rounded as you, I’ve only managed to pull off failing at arson profiling.”
“Hang in there. You’ll get the knack of failing at most everything if you live long enough.”
“You’ve been talking to my wife,” Cliff joked acidly.
It was Piper’s turn to laugh. Cliff was a tall, handsome guy, a real lady killer, down to the suave, sexy, snake charmer of a voice. Piper was surprised he’d settled down already, married. Showed great maturity for someone who had to be getting hit on by women ten times or more a day. Piper knew, because he was one of those guys, who hadn’t survived his trials by incessant temptation. He was hoping to grow into Cliff someday, just not today. As making positive first impressions went, Cliff was a master at clearing that hurdle in relationships.
Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5) Page 83
