by JL Bryan
He dated Madeline for seven months, and as she pressed him harder and harder for marriage, he had trouble finding any cause to object. Madeline was undeniably beautiful, but she was also far more socially poised than Ruppert, navigating the new strangeness of life like a born native. She was about the same kind of person he would have to eventually marry anyway. The entire culture around him insisted he marry as soon as possible.
Madeline had finally gotten her way when she came to his home one night by herself, without one of the matronly chaperones that usually observed their courtship. This was shocking behavior on its own, but then Madeline had tied his hands to a chair and slowly removed her clothes until she stood naked in front of him. It was not illegal, so long as he wasn’t paying her money to do it, but it was all completely forbidden.
The extreme audacity of the act impressed him even more than the sight of her body. For an unmarried woman to be alone with a man was shameful, but to reveal herself in this way could have gotten her flogged, if she belonged one of the more severe women’s groups, or excommunicated from the church altogether. He admired her for it, and he agreed to marry her.
She had never done anything so bold again. Over drinks on the golf course, Ruppert occasionally heard similar stories from other men, and it eventually occurred to him that this was a technique women taught to each other, perhaps even in their church groups. The women never broke the law by performing actual sex acts, but in a culture where exposed wrists and ankles were points of contention for women, the sight of a woman without her clothes amounted to sensory overload for most men.
It was gradually dawning on Ruppert just how completely forces outside himself had shaped his life. There was no area in his life that was not carefully controlled by church and state.
He felt the strain especially hard at work, where he continued to read the official version of reality to a massive unseen audience. After the strong public-relations effort to boost support for an invasion of Egypt, stories about the radical cleric Muhammad al Taba dwindled away in favor of more palatable news—celebrity gossip, tales of captured spies and terrorist attacks narrowly averted, along with a heavy serving of petty local crime stories artificially inflated into national scandal.
After a couple of months, the temptation to return to his illegal computer with its ability to bypass federal filters became too strong to resist. He drove to the storage facility in Watts, though after the Sully episode he half-expected to find his unit emptied out. Instead, he found it just as he’d left it.
He closed the rattling garage door, then felt relief wash over him as he slipped on the goggles and gloves and booted up the little black cube of a computer. Then he was online, floating among thousands more holographic cubes and spheres than his home and office systems permitted him to see. Each icon was a door to a different realm of information.
He explored down a few of the African channels and connected to the Carthaginian, a news archive in Tunisia. You had to be careful with foreign news services, because any source could be loaded with propaganda. Ruppert tried to stay to the smaller, independent journalists. Generally, the slicker the production values, the less you could trust.
He searched the archive and drew up a chain of texts, images and videolinks focused on al Taba. He picked one of the texts—written words were the most informative, but the easiest to fake—and it swelled to the size of a poster board. The text scrolled automatically as he read.
LUXOR, Egypt—American mercenaries clashed with the cult of Sheik Muhammad al Taba in their home base, the ancient temple at Karnak. In a standoff that continues tonight, the warrior cleric and as many as sixty followers have kept the Atlantic forces at bay with machine gun fire and napalm grenades.
Sources indicate that the mercenaries were sent by Hartwell Services, the private army owned by the American Vice President’s family. According to locals, al Taba may have placed a bomb at a Hartwell installation further down the Nile.
The dateline for the story was two weeks old. Ruppert reordered his search results by date, then selected the most recent item. It was four days old.
After three days of fighting, Atlantic forces captured Sheik al Taba and seventeen of his disciples. As many as two dozen Taba followers are believed dead. Two American casualties were reported.
Hartwell Senior Infantry Coordinator Kurt Brownback, who led the attack, described the fight as a “great victory for the people of Egypt in their quest for democracy.”
Al Taba is the leader of a radical group of heretics who mix Islam with practices of the primitive Egyptians. Local imams denounce his cult as satanic. Al Taba clashed with Egyptian authorities several times to gain control of Karnak, which he calls the “Grand Mosque” of his cult.
The fate of the children who lived in the temple compound is not known. The damage to the 3600-year old temple has not been assessed but is believed extensive.
Ruppert sat back and thought it over. According to the news he’d read to the greater Southern California region, al-Taba was a “terrorist general” commanding an army of (at latest estimate) nearly a million men, with divisions all across Africa. Capturing al Taba had been the entire objective of the invasion of Egypt, according to Ruppert. If it had happened four days ago, it should be all over the nets, even cause for a special parade.
The Atlantic forces had toppled the radical Egyptian regime along the way, naturally, as penalty for harboring al Taba. Ruppert had mentioned this at the tag end of one of his reports about the invasion of Egypt, as if it were a minor and entirely predictable detail, and then it was on to the entertainment news.
The rest of the news had centered on al Taba, the pressing and urgent need to grab al Taba before he seized control of all North Africa. The fact that Hartwell Services had actually seized control of all Egypt did not rate an explicit mention. It was much easier to focus a television audience on capturing a single archvillain, using any means necessary, than to convince them that an invasion of an entire country was necessary. Coverage of the full-scale war could be omitted if you focused the audience on the good-and-evil struggle to capture the one supremely evil individual. At GlobeNet, they sometimes referred to these individuals as the "Devil of the Day."
A metallic squeal drilled into his ears. Ruppert tried to cover his ears with his hands, but the painful noise screamed from the inside of his earphones, not the exterior world.
The digital environment froze around him. He touched the shimmering icons on the control panel floating in the air beside his head, but none of the programs responded.
The environment shattered into a million fragments and Ruppert lost his balance, then fell backwards. He tumbled into an open, dark space. Bright silver skulls snapped at him from the dark, their shining teeth clacking together. The seal of the Department of Terror rose like a monolith before him, ten stories high, then a hundred. The animated, three-dimensional seal depicted a silver bald eagle soaring against a moonlit night sky, breathing fire, shooting lightning from its talons. The eagle’s hooked beak opened, and another painful metallic squeal sounded in Ruppert’s ears.
A cold male voice boomed out at Ruppert: “You are in violation of Department of Terror Code 207-B. Importation of enemy propaganda and unauthorized data. You are under arrest. Now submitting your case to an automated tribunal. The tribunal has ruled you guilty of terrorist activity. Sentencing will be adjudicated by a Department of Terror official.”
Ruppert reached out to bang on his control panel again, but it had disappeared. He tore the video goggles from his head, then peeled the input gloves from his hands.
Every indicator light on the surface of his little computer glowed bright red. He jabbed the power button with his thumb, but Terror had seized the computer and he had lost control.
Ruppert hurled the computer against the concrete wall of the storage cell. It fell and crashed to the floor, but all the little lights still burned. He threw it twice more, than a third time, finally opening a short hairline crac
k along one edge, but the device was tough and he had no real means of destroying it.
Ruppert lifted the latch on the cell’s garage door, then took a deep breath. Terror men, or whatever police or Guardsmen happened to be available, would likely be waiting outside with their guns high. If he moved too quickly, they would cut him down instinctively.
He eased the door up, hearing every individual clank as each panel slid into the overhead track. He looked out to where he’d parked his car.
No one was here. His car had not even been disturbed. He listened carefully to the night around him—there was music and gunfire in the distance, but nothing happening in the storage complex.
Ruppert hurried to his car, loving the sound of the door unlocking for him. As the door opened, he thought that maybe his precautions were good enough, that they didn’t actually know who’d used the computer, and he could get away clean if he was fast enough.
Then he heard the approaching whump-whump-whump of a helicopter, flying low. He looked up, and a searing white glare enveloped him.
Ruppert felt his whole body turn to ice. He wanted nothing more than to jump into his car and drive, but his arms and legs wouldn’t move. He stood trembling in the light like a stupid animal, staring up at it, giving the helicopter’s cameras a clear view of him as the wind from the rotors blasted his hair back from his face.
Then it was over. The light swept on down another alley of the complex as the helicopter pulled away from him.
The immobilizing fear collapsed into wild panic, and he leapt into his car and drove for the exit gate before the car's door had time to close.
As he chugged north through crushing traffic on the 405, he saw several more helicopters, mostly police, but also one very small black craft with no markings. One of the police crafts lingered above Ruppert’s car for what seemed like a very long time. The helicopter did not address him over its loudspeakers or seize control of his car’s systems, and finally it thundered away without incident.
In his mind, Ruppert chastised himself for his carelessness. He’d paid for the unit in cash, but he should have been prepared to destroy the computer at a moment’s notice. A baseball bat. A simple bucket of water to drop it in. Anything.
Terror would be able to track the computer to the storage unit. The manager might be able to describe Ruppert, though he hadn’t seen him since Ruppert rented the unit. Terror could eventually find one of Ruppert’s fingerprints or hairs. They could crosscheck with the videolog of the police helicopter that had studied him, if it had been the police. There were a thousand ways Terror could identify him if they wanted to go to the trouble.
NINE
Ruppert lay awake in bed the rest of the night, twitching at every car horn and barking dog. Madeline had come home from church and regaled him with the intricacies of the power struggle surrounding the selection of a new chairlady for her gardening group. He couldn’t follow exactly what made her so angry, but she was too wrapped up in the subject to notice his extreme nervousness, or that he didn’t even ask his usual question about why she was in a gardening group when she paid a landscaper to keep up their yard.
Then she took her evening pill and drifted off to sleep, leaving him alone and waiting for Terror.
He struggled through a day of attempting to act normal at work, hearing himself talk a bit too fast and laugh a bit too loud. When the on-site Terror agent George Baldwin passed him in the hall, the broad-shouldered man gave him a cheerful greeting, and Ruppert’s heart nearly collapsed of shock. Baldwin was not normally an outgoing man. He always wore the suit of a Terror man—black coat, black shirt, black tie—and rarely had much use for the newsreaders, or anyone below the executive level. Nothing came of it, though. Perhaps Baldwin was just in a rare good mood.
It was Tuesday, so after work he attended his Revelation group, where once again they discussed how the final clash between the armies of good and evil was playing out across the globe. Naturally, everything was following the Biblical prophecies of the End Times, even if it took some jiggling to make the details fit.
The group had become a maudlin comedy to Ruppert as he watched the other men try to fit the Book of Revelation to the latest news reports, while Ruppert knew the reports themselves were mostly false. Tonight’s subject: Is Muhammad al Taba the Antichrist? Ruppert guessed no, partly because he knew al Taba had already been captured, and partly because he knew al Taba would be eventually be forgotten, and there would be a whole new Antichrist in a year or two. There always was.
After the meeting, O’Shea buttonholed Ruppert at the corner of the classroom, his rubbery smile even wider and toothier than usual.
“Looks like this is it, Daniel,” O’Shea said to him. “It finally happened.”
“What’s that?” Ruppert slid his hands in his pockets to conceal their shaking. If even O’Shea could scare him now, Ruppert thought, there was no hope.
“I heard from Pastor John’s office this morning,” O’Shea said.
“Yeah?”
“Yep! And you’ll never guess what they told me.”
Ruppert glanced around the room. He was left alone now with O’Shea, whose pudgy body blocked his path to the door.
“What’s that?” Ruppert asked. “What did you hear?”
“Just take a guess. I bet you can guess if you try. Think about it.”
“I don’t have any idea, Liam.” Ruppert looked out the door into the empty hall to see if any Terror men were approaching, but he saw nobody unusual, just men passing on their way out of various classes and study groups and discussion groups and activity groups.
“You don’t want to try and guess?”
“Liam, I need to go and meet Madeline—”
“They approved my application!” O’Shea brandished a laminated badge featuring his picture, in which O’Shea’s mouth sagged wide open as if he had no idea he was having his picture taken. The logo of the World Dominion Church was stamped above the picture—a golden sword, its upright handle the shape of a cross, skewering the Earth right through the North Pole, its tip protruding somewhere near Tierra del Fuego.
“I am now an official lay pastor here at Golden Tabernacle. I now have the authority to watch for those who show signs of straying from the flock, and to counsel them how best to correct their life’s course.”
As if you ever needed official sanction to do that, Ruppert thought. He felt himself sag with relief—this was about O’Shea, not him.
“Congratulations, Liam,” he said. “That does call for a little celebration. Let me buy you a Fizzer at the Fishes N’ Loaves. You like raspberry?” Ruppert nudged forward and put a hand on O’Shea’s soft upper arm, meaning to steer him around towards the door, but O’Shea didn’t budge. Instead, he cleared his throat.
“I’ve identified my first project, Daniel.”
“That’s great. Let’s go enjoy a nice Fizzer—”
“It’s you, Daniel.”
Ruppert was slipping from paranoid to merely annoyed.
“I don’t think I heard you correctly, O’Shea.”
“I’ve been watching you, Daniel. I’ve been trained to watch, you know, working in Social Services.”
“And what?” Ruppert’s voice was low and hard now, without the friendly office-chatter tone.
“I’ve seen signs of doubt.”
“Listen, Liam—”
“Do you suffer doubts, Daniel?” Liam edged up to him, his face looming to fill Ruppert’s sight. Spittle flew from his lips. “Do you feel your faith might be sliding?”
“No.” Ruppert decided it would be safest to take a hard line with him. “Liam, this is insulting. How dare you question my…my faith. My faith in Our King, Liam.”
“There’s no need to be ashamed, Daniel. The demons of doubt are everywhere. The legions of the devil gather in the largest cities. They offer temptation. They offer lies. They offer doubt and uncertainty. We cannot afford uncertainty, Daniel, in these times. The armies of darkness are rising to
destroy us. The end draws nigh, Daniel. Soon Our King will arrive with a burning sword in his mouth, and he will destroy all unbelievers. If he finds doubt in your heart, he will destroy you, too. He knows how strong your faith is. Or how weak.”
“Liam, you’re a spitter.”
“What?”
“You spit on people when you talk. You’re, what, forty years old? Hasn’t anybody ever mentioned it to you? Have you ever considered the fine distinction between saying it and spraying it?”
Liam’s face turned red. “I have overactive saliva glands. Stop switching the subject. I am here to discuss the eternal fate of your soul. As a lay pastor, it is my sacred duty to bring your faults to your attention.”
“And I know that takes a lot of effort on your part.” Ruppert leaned in towards the pudgy man. If Terror was after him, there was no point in trying to impress people like Liam any longer. He found the realization strangely liberating. “Now get the hell out of my way, Liam.”
Liam’s mouth sagged open as if he were a dying fish taking its last gulp.
“This is for your own good, Daniel. I think you need a lot of prayer. You and I need to spend a long time in the prayer closet together. What are you doing after Men’s Meeting tomorrow?”
“Forget it, O’Shea.” Ruppert pushed one of his shoulders, meaning only to turn him aside and out of the way, but O’Shea didn’t cooperate. He lost his balance, toppled sideways into the wall, and slid to the floor, gaping as Ruppert stepped over him.
