“Miss, set down the box! Don’t make me shoot you!”
“I’m not going to make you do anything!” shouted Suzy. “If you decide to shoot me because I’m flipping a switch, that’s on you.”
“I can’t take a chance, Miss. It could be a bomb. Set it down.”
“It could be anything!” Suzy yelled. “You have no idea what it is. Why would you assume it’s a bomb? Have you asked yourself that? Why do you look at a perfectly innocent little metal box and think ‘yep, probably a bomb.’ Maybe if I open this box and flip the switch, hundreds of beautiful butterflies will fly out. Maybe it plays Peter Gabriel’s “Shock the Monkey.” Or maybe, just maybe, this little box is the solution to what’s so fucked up in this country right now.”
She opened the box and flipped the switch.
In the distance, someone screamed.
The cop turned, startled, and in that instant Suzy flipped the box lid closed, gripped the box in both hands, and jumped as high as she could, slamming the cube through the top of the column. Then she landed with one foot halfway off the concrete and fell backwards to the dirt below.
She lay for a few seconds on the ground in intense pain, unable to move. At first she feared that she’d broken her back, but when she was able to move her fingers and toes she concluded she’d merely had the wind knocked out of her. Fortunately she had fallen on the side of the wall opposite the cop, and he hadn’t made it around to her yet. Hopefully he was dealing with whoever had screamed. Whoever was screaming, she corrected herself. It was still going on. Every few seconds the person—or angel, presumably—would pause to take a breath and then resume screaming. The poor bastard got caught just a few blocks from the MEOW device when Suzy had turned it on. Either that, or he was being stabbed repeatedly in the kidney.
She got slowly to her feet. Her back hurt and she was having trouble breathing deeply, but she seemed to have avoided any broken bones. She hobbled away as quickly as she could manage, not stopping to look whether the cop was following. Apparently he wasn’t, because she made it to the next intersection without him threatening to shoot her again. She flagged down a cab and got in. “Arlington… cemetery,” she gasped, and lay back against the seat. Every muscle in her back seemed to be seizing up.
The cab pulled away from the curb and made its way toward Arlington. They were heading west on Constitution, not far from the White House, when Suzy heard another scream and the driver slammed on the brakes. Suzy pitched forward into the seat ahead of her. There was a thump as the cab hit something.
“What the hell?” Suzy snapped.
“No, no, no!” cried the driver, a young Middle Eastern man wearing a turban. He threw open his door and got out of the cab.
Suzy looked around. She’d been zoning out, exhausted from her ordeal, but now she was fully alert. The cab was stopped in the middle of the street. Around them, cars whooshed past, honking.
Suzy got out and walked to the front of the cab. The driver was bent over a small figure lying on its back in the street. “No, no, no!” he cried again, turning desperately to Suzy. “Help!”
Stepping around the driver, Suzy gasped as she got a better look at the body: it was a little African-American girl, no older than fourteen. Suzy couldn’t see any sign of injury, but the girl appeared to be unconscious.
Now what? She couldn’t leave the girl in the street, but if she waited around for an ambulance, the police would figure out who Suzy was. Even if Michelle was no longer in power in Washington, Suzy would still be on the Most Wanted list. She’d probably rot in prison for years before anybody figured out that she’d been set up.
Suzy didn’t want to move the girl in case she had a spinal injury, but when the girl began to stir and try to sit up, she decided to take the matter into her own hands. She picked the girl up, carried her to the cab, and lay her in the backseat. Suzy got in and cradled the girl’s head in her lap. The girl was semi-conscious and kept moaning and shaking her head back and forth as if having a nightmare.
The driver leaned in the door and raised his hands. “What is the matter?” he asked.
Sirens could be heard in the distance.
“I don’t know,” Suzy said. “Head injury, maybe.” But the girl wasn’t bleeding and Suzy didn’t feel any bumps or abrasions on her scalp. “Just get us out of here.”
“OK, OK,” said the driver, closing the door and getting behind the wheel. He slammed his own door and the cab squealed away. The girl continued to moan and squirm. As they crossed over Arlington Memorial Bridge, she seemed to relax a bit. The cab pulled up in front of the cemetery, and there was Mercury, as promised. He was wearing a ridiculous curly black wig and sunglasses with round lenses, which had the unfortunate effect of making him look like Howard Stern.
Mercury walked up to the cab and opened the door. “Took you long enough,” he said. “I was starting to think you… holy shit!” He was looking at the girl resting on Suzy’s lap.
“I know,” said Suzy. “It couldn’t be helped. She just ran out in front of the cab, and I couldn’t leave her there…”
“The hell you couldn’t!” cried Mercury. “Do you know who that is? It’s Michelle!”
Suzy looked from Mercury to the girl and back again, unable to follow what Mercury was saying. “Wait, what? You mean Michelle…”
“The archangel, yes. The one who tried to nuke Grand Rapids. The one who had you thrown in prison.”
Suzy stared aghast at the young girl lying in her lap. She looked perfectly innocent, with soft brown skin and beautiful long chestnut hair.
“You didn’t tell me Michelle was a little black girl,” Suzy said, in a slightly accusatory tone.
“It didn’t seem relevant!” cried Mercury. “Just get her out of here. Drop her off at the cemetery and let’s get the hell out of here before she wakes up!”
“Tiamat,” Michelle murmured. “Running… D.C.”
“What does that mean?” asked Suzy.
“She’s delirious,” answered Mercury. “Having a nightmare about running from Tiamat or something. Just—”
“What… have you done?” Michelle said, her eyes fluttering open and affixing on Mercury.
“What have I done?” asked Mercury. “You’re one to talk. All I did was—”
“Put Tiamat in charge of Washington,” said Michelle, sitting up. She held her hands to her ears as if trying to block out a noise. “Driver,” she barked. “Get us out of here. Head west.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, the driver threw the car in gear and began pulling away from the curb. Suzy didn’t blame him. There was something in Michelle’s voice that communicated that very bad things would happen to those who disobeyed her.
“Wait!” yelled Mercury, who was still standing outside. The driver hit the brakes long enough for him to catch up and jump in the front seat, then peeled away.
“Whatever game you’re playing, Michelle,” said Mercury, “it’s not going to work. The jig is up. We’ve flushed out all your agents in D.C.”
Michelle sighed. “All my agents, yes,” she replied. “But not Tiamat’s. Did you really think she was going to let you activate another MEOW device if she didn’t have a way around it? You’ve just given her the keys to the kingdom.”
Chapter Thirty-six
Washington, D.C.; August 2016
“Thank God you’re here,” said President Danton Prowse as the door to the Oval Office opened. “Something very strange is… oh.”
“Expecting someone else?” asked Tiamat sweetly as she entered the room.
“Who the hell are you?” demanded the president. “How did you get past the—”
“Save the hysterics, Prowse. My name is Tiamat. I’m Michelle’s replacement. The organization is undergoing a bit of a restructuring at present.”
Prowse frowned. “I… see,” he said at last.
“Don’t act so put out,” said Tiamat. “Nothing has changed, as far as you’re concerned. You remain the leader of the fr
ee world. I’m merely filling in for Michelle as your advisor.”
“What happened to her?” asked Prowse. “She ran out of here screaming. It was… disturbing. And my press secretary and several advisors seem to have disappeared as well.”
“St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland,” replied Tiamat. “I drove the weasels out of Washington, D.C. It’s true that we’ve lost some manpower, but I think you’ll find that the D.C. shadow government is now a much more streamlined and efficient organization.”
“Um,” said Prowse. “What do you mean by ‘efficient’?”
“What I mean,” replied Tiamat, “is that there will be no more half-measures. No more of this gradual, halting progress toward fascism. From here on, we’re going all out. Tell me, Mr. President, are you familiar with a company called Mentaldyne?”
“Hmm,” said Prowse. “Sounds familiar.”
“It should,” said Tiamat. “They make the RFID chips that federal prisons have been implanting in convicted felons since 2013.”
“Ah!” said Prowse. “That’s it. The Federal Felon Tracking Program. One of my most popular initiatives. I’ve been meaning to buy stock in that company.”
“It’s privately owned,” said Tiamat. “I should know, since I own it. Mentaldyne is the sole provider of implantable RFID chips for the federal government. Do you know how that happened?”
Prowse shrugged.
“Mentaldyne underbid every other company by at least seventy-five percent. We lose nearly three hundred dollars on every chip we sell.”
Prowse frowned. “That doesn’t, um, sound like very good business.”
“It isn’t. We did it to get a monopoly on the market. And do you know why?”
“I have no idea.”
“The Mentaldyne chips have an undocumented feature. They can receive radio signals and convert them into neural impulses.”
“Neural impulses? You mean, like…?”
“Mind control. I can manipulate the thoughts and actions of anyone with one of those chips implanted, with radio signals. Remote control human beings.”
“What?” cried Danton Prowse. “That’s horrific! And why would you want to have an army of remotely controlled felons anyway?”
“The prisoners were just a trial run, to get used to the idea of implanting chips in people. Nobody complains about the government violating the rights of criminals. Who gives a shit, right? They’re criminals. They should be tracked. It only makes sense. You put a chip in them while they’re in prison and justify it as a security measure, and then you leave it in after they get out as a concession to ‘public safety.’ After all, we already strip felons of the right to vote and the right to own firearms, so why not track them while we’re at it? But I don’t need to tell you this. The tracking program was part of your big ‘tough on crime’ agenda.”
Prowse shrugged again.
“And then, after the criminals,” she continued, “you move on to people accepting food stamps or living in public housing. And again nobody complains, because after all, you have to make sure these people aren’t taking advantage of the system. You don’t want to be subsidizing a bunch of drug dealers. If you’ve got a tracking chip in their heads, you can see exactly where they are at any time of the day, and who they’re associating with.”
“Hey, I fought against those requirements!” protested Prowse.
“Of course you did,” said Tiamat. “You liberals push to get these programs in place, and then the conservatives push for ‘accountability.’ The conservatives don’t have the votes to get rid of the program, and the liberals don’t have the votes to override the demands for these additional restrictions. And just like that, you’ve got several million people who have effectively ceded their rights to the government in return for a little cash or security. It’s beautiful. And once you’ve managed to convince the public that people who are accepting ‘public assistance’ need to be tracked by the government, you’ve got everybody by the balls. After all, isn’t Medicare ‘public assistance’? Or veterans’ benefits? Or Social Security? Or federally subsidized student loans? Or corporate tax breaks? Practically everybody in this country is on some kind of ‘public assistance’ if you define the term broadly enough. Hell, you could argue that federal highways are a form of public assistance. All these damned freeloaders need to be tracked!”
“Hmm,” said Prowse. “I think you’re oversimplifying things a bit. And in any case, I assure you that if I had known about this whole ‘mind control’ program you’ve got going, I’d have fought it every inch of the way.”
“Oh, that’s adorable,” gushed Tiamat. “You’re fine with tracking people everywhere they go, but you draw the line at actually controlling them, because that would be wrong. God, I love you ethical types. Where were your ethics when that nuclear bomb nearly took out Grand Rapids? Were they out sick that day?”
“That was not my fault!” Prowse snapped. “Michelle said she’d remove me from power and find another president willing to go along with it. It would have happened no matter what I did!”
“OK, good,” said Tiamat with a smile. “So you know where you stand.”
Prowse paled as he realized what he’d just told Tiamat: that he’d do anything she asked as long as he remained in power.
“So what’s your end game, Tiamat?” asked Prowse bitterly. “Who else do you want to implant these chips in?”
“Everybody,” said Tiamat.
Prowse frowned. “Now, when you say everybody,” he said, “you mean…”
“Everybody,” Tiamat said again. “Every man, woman and child in America. And then the rest of the world.”
“What, you’re just going to start grabbing people off the street?”
“No, no,” said Tiamat. “It has to be done in an orderly fashion. It’s one thing to force something like this on prisoners and welfare queens, but when you start picking on Joe Middle Class, you’re going to get some pushback. That’s when you ratchet up the threat level, to dramatize the consequences of not tracking everybody. Michelle’s already done a pretty good job of that with her little demonstration in Grand Rapids. Scare the shit out of everybody and then tell them you can keep them safe if they submit to the very minor inconvenience of having a tiny little tracking chip implanted in their skulls. I mean, who could argue against that? Why wouldn’t you want the government to know exactly where you are at all times? If you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to be afraid of.”
Danton Prowse frowned. “But the mind control chips… Is that really necessary? It seems like Michelle and Gabrielle were doing a pretty good job manipulating public opinion without resorting to such extreme tactics.” It was true; between Michelle’s fabricated security threats and Gabrielle’s massaging of the media, mind control was almost redundant. Prowse had been particularly impressed by the way Gabrielle had managed to dredge up “experts” to defend whatever absurd and illegal policy the Prowse administration happened to be pushing at the time. Often these people were major stakeholders in defense or security companies, or they were officials from the Babcock administration who had been thoroughly discredited years earlier. Some were bona fide war criminals. In many cases, they were all three. These supposed “experts” would banter back and forth with some fringe journalist or pointy-headed lawyer from the ACLU, the moderator would intone that it was definitely “a serious issue on which people had some strong opinions,” and then cut to a commercial featuring a lizard selling car insurance.
“The problem,” said Tiamat, “is that public opinion is a capricious and unpredictable beast. It requires a constant effort to keep people worried about inconsequential issues and unconcerned with important matters. And while it’s true that most people are sheep, easily led and controlled, there’s always a fringe element out there, stirring up trouble. Like those guys running that BitterAngels.net site. Since the Grand Rapids incident, the traffic on that site has soared a hundredfold. With the right catalyst, a few dedicated
, independent-thinking individuals can get the sheep to look up. And once that happens, it’s going to take more than a few press conferences and cable news appearances to smooth things over. Of course, you’ve already made great inroads into the fringe element by chipping felons, the poor, and people committed to mental institutions. But there’s always a threat from those people who are right on the edge of sanity. The ones who manage to stay out of any serious trouble, but who don’t quite fit in with the sheep. Those are the people we need to get to. But there’s no simple way of doing that without chipping everybody.”
“So, what now?” Prowse asked.
“It will be done in stages, of course,” said Tiamat. “We start with Grand Rapids. Chip everybody in the city. And then, when that program is a smashing success, we’ll roll it out to some of the other ‘high-threat’ cities.”
“And when you say that it will be a smashing success, you mean…”
“I mean we get a bunch of locals who had been opposed to the chips to go on national television and tell everybody how wrong they were, and how much safer they feel now that everybody in the city is chipped. This is the beauty of a mind-control program. The most vocal opponents suddenly become strident supporters.”
“And you don’t think anyone will see through that?”
“Sure, some people will. But whoever complains the loudest will be next in line for chip implantation. Eventually we’ll have silenced every critic either by directly controlling them through the chip or through the power of sheer intimidation. Either way, dissent is silenced. After we chip the residents of a handful of key cities, the tide of public opinion will have turned. But we’ve got to do it fast, before any organized resistance can form.”
Prowse sighed heavily. “And you’re sure this is going to work? That we’ll be able to get most of the country chipped before people realize what’s going on?”
Mercury Revolts: (Book Four of the Mercury Series) Page 21
