by Bloom, A. D.
He listened to Charlie Mingus exhort him through fantastic rhythms and syncopations to Get It In his Soul. “I got it, baby... I got it!” Charlie said to Charlie. His eyes were closed, and he wore the antique, 1970's, quadraphonic headphones his brother had rebuilt and given him, twenty-one years ago, for the last Christmas, since then, officially renamed Giftmas. It came twice a year, but Charlie thought he might not care if it ever came again. He was feeling that good, having the kind of musical experience that he called, “Awesome.” It wasn't just a retro-fashion surfer expression for him. Charlie was in awe because he heard in Mingus an expression of a universe greater than his mind could comprehend. Charlie was in awe because he heard the Infinite, and was at the most marvelous sort of loss for explanation. It was beautiful. It was bigger than he was. It was bigger than Mingus even. It came from somewhere humans didn't go, but in fleeting moments of conductive brilliance, were lucky enough to channel. Charlie Horner didn't know it, but in that recognition of a beauty, humanly inexplicable yet simultaneously undeniable, he was bordering on Faith. It was Awesome. His eyes were closed, and he was alone with It.
There were others in Ocho's second floor common room, but they were rapt in a different experience. They were watching some poor bastard named Casper try to pull a rope-a-dope on his FragNet boxing opponent. It wasn't working, and some guy named Otis was cleaning his clock. The neo-hippies had bet their money on the wrong gamer.
Charlie couldn't hear them or see them. In a way, that was best. These were the last minutes of Charlie Horner's life, and being enraptured in a beauty that defied human explanation was a good way to spend them. Charlie was luckier than his friends.
He held the worn, plastic bag to his mouth, and breathed the dry, sticky mixture of air and vaporized Sativa trichomes in long, savoring breaths while behind him, his friends were dying. The N-Hex gas, pumped under pressure, traveled up the main drainage stack, bubbling through toilet water and elbow pipes. The deadly malair, odorless and undetectable, crept silently through the building, attacking the nervous systems of all who breathed. Everyone, that is, except Charlie. He breathed from a bag.
As the N-Hex blocked nervous systems and came between his friend's brains and their bodies, important messages such as, Heart Now Beat and Lungs Now Breathe failed to reach destination. They fell, one by one, to the floor, twitching and convulsing. Only one of them, who had been holding her breath as the gas reached them, gained a few extra seconds of life.
Selina sometimes forgot to breathe, and in the extra moments of life that nervous habit had bought her she stumbled towards Charlie. Her vision narrowed to a cone of perception that was encircled by fuzzy-edged blackness. When she reached over the back of the armchair that faced away from the gruesome scene, her diminishing field of vision had almost disappeared. Reaching for Charlie, her hand found only the headphones, and she fell to the floor.
As she ripped the headphones off, the music in Charlie's ears disappeared and was replaced by gasping and choking noises. He rose from the chair, pissed as hell at having his perfect moment interrupted and wondering what the weird choking noises were all about. “You guys gotta learn to take smaller bong hits,” he said. When he turned and saw Selina convulsing on the floor, his first instinct was to help her, but then he saw the others in the last stages before death and he knew there was nothing he could do for any of them.
He ran, still breathing from the bag. He didn't run outside. That might have saved him, but Charlie had no plans to save himself.
He sprinted up stairs. The vapor mix in the bag was mostly air, about two-and-a-half cubic feet of it, and he was using it up fast. He ran across the third floor, ignoring the sounds he heard of thrashing arms and legs behind the closed doors he passed. Up, he thought, up. Charlie took the stairs to the fourth floor three at a time. He stumbled once, then fell and jammed his patella into worn hardwood. Ignoring the pain, he raced up the last few stairs.
His body slammed into the door before his hand could turn the knob completely. Charlie bounced off, fell back onto the ancient, industry-scarred wood floor, and tried again. Inside the small, crudely constructed room, a four-foot body sat upright, jolted awake by the sound of panic.
Alvin Dock Ellis had been hunted by the G.S.A.'s Security Services for so long that he always slept on the edge of waking. When Charlie finally burst through the doorway, Alvin was already standing to his full four feet of height. Alvin opened his mouth to ask what the panic was about, and if he could get a hit off that vapor bag, but as he did, Charlie rushed at him, removed the bag from his own mouth, and jammed it into Alvin's. There was a sharp, painful impact as the nozzle hit Alvin's front teeth, and Alvin wanted to check to see if they were broken, but Charlie wouldn't let him remove the nozzle and the bag from his mouth. It looked to Alvin like Charlie was holding his breath as he ran to the window and opened it in one violent, upward motion. Alvin kept watching, kept breathing from the bag. He didn't know what the hell was going on, but he knew it was Bad.
Alvin knew it was Very Bad Indeed, when Charlie picked him up and threw him out the open window.
He fell seventeen feet onto the steeply angled, corrugated, green plastic roof of a second-floor extension. He landed on his side, and the air and vapor mix was knocked from his lungs. Alvin rolled off the edge of the second floor roof, into the garden the collective had built in the middle of the block. He bounced off the yielding limbs of a young, potted magnolia tree, decelerating enough that when his body fell into the soft dirt and vegetables planted in twelve foot-wide, shallow boxes below, he was only bruised and knocked windless.
Alvin lay stunned in the dirt. He had to will himself to breathe. It was damp and cold, and it was like being born all over again.
He picked himself up, ran the wrong way, slipped in a compost pile, fell, picked himself up again, and ran the right way this time, to a hole in the rear fence. It was only forty feet away, but it took forever to get there.
The hole wasn't big enough, so he kicked the adjoining boards repeatedly with all the might that his four-foot-tall body could muster until they fractured and flew into the adjacent empty lot where a building had collapsed in the last earthquake. Alvin followed the flying boards.
He thought about going back and letting the assassins kill him so this would all stop, but his legs had other ideas. Alvin let them have their way.
-4-
Atop the highest level of the Ziggurat, Director Oskar Delvaux towered over the streets of a miniature, holographic Baccha Bay City projected on the floor of his cavernous office. He was knee-deep in the Free Economic Zone, like a giant monster stomping the buildings of the city. He was the Director, and in the Ziggurat, as in all of Baccha Bay City, his word was law that trumped all others.
Bonnie watched him walk through the holographic, variable scale model of the FEZ. Delvaux's head was down as he walked, ignoring Bonnie. This was his somewhat passive-aggressive response to her tardiness. He had waited for her, and now she would have to wait, too.
This was the first time Bonnie had ever seen Delvaux in person, and her first impression confirmed what she'd heard – Delvaux was a prick. Her second impression was that his frame was slight, but he moved with such swiftness and clear purpose that there was something undeniably threatening about him.
Without looking up at Bonnie, Delvaux said, with a slight French accent, “Operator 388, Bonnie Levi-Mei.”
“Yes, Sir,” she said.
“Your training is over. You're going into the field today.”
Delvaux detected the numerous questions his new Operator had.
“You are wondering,” Delvaux said, “why you have been chosen for a mission even before your training is officially complete.” Bonnie said nothing, and Delvaux continued, “It is because I need someone new, someone I can trust, someone unknown to the insurgents.” Delvaux paused, then concluded, “That is why you are here, in the Office of the Director, why you have been hand-picked for a mission, and why you are going
into the field today. Have I answered all your questions?”
“Yes, Sir, Director Delvaux, Sir.” Bonnie swelled with pride, but she thought it was strange how Delvaux didn't look at her as he spoke. He avoided eye contact. Instead, Delvaux's eyes searched the miniature city beneath him.
To create this second, holographic, miniature Baccha Bay City in Delvaux's office, every piece of available information, the CamNet, surveillance drones, satellites, traffic cameras, mobile computers, video phones, automobile anti-collision systems, bank machines, store cameras, retail registers – any and all data points available were combined in real-time. The people, the machines, and the whole city was represented there, in perfect detail. It was all there, beneath Delvaux's eyes, at 1/300th scale.
Almost all of it.
There were blank areas, places that were, in tech parlance, 'Dark'. These were created through jamming, vandalism, net-cracking and hacking. Privacy was illegally created, bought, sold, and valued highly by many in Baccha Bay City, but the Dark spots in his holographic city irritated Delvaux. He was staring at a large one in the middle of the FEZ District, watching the almost quarter-inch high figures stroll into it and disappear. They reappeared, a foot across the floor, at the far edge of the Dark patch, the data-void.
“Zoom, 1/10.” Delvaux said, thrusting a data wand like a fencer's foil at the disturbingly large patch of Dark in the FEZ District, and the holographic city grew in size until it had focused where Delvaux pointed, at the scale he commanded.
The data wand was an interface tool like its ancestor, the mouse, but it looked like an oversized pen, was loaded with accelerometers, and, unlike the mouse, Delvaux could use it to poke his subordinates in the chest during ass-chewings.
The Dark area filled a ten yard diameter, semi-spherical area of the holographic Baccha Bay City in Delvaux's office, and Delvaux stood in the middle of it frowning with his thin lips. “0415 this morning,” Delvaux stated, “just before this area went Dark.” Time rolled backwards in the holographic model, and the ten-yard diameter, missing section of the FEZ District appeared. In the model city, it was two hours before dawn. Near Delvaux's left foot, was the neo-hippie collective across from Polly's, called Ocho. Bonnie recognized it, but she said nothing. It didn't pay to show off what you knew unless you were asked.
Delvaux walked in a semicircle around the waist-high Ocho collective and its urban garden. Its largest trees were now 1/10th scale holographic shrubs. “Come here, Operator Levi-Mei, I wouldn't want you to miss the show.” Bonnie strode through a block of the garish, animated FEZ District until she stood next to Delvaux, over the backyard garden of the neo-hippie collective. Delvaux pointed with his finger at the building in front of them.
Four stories, Bonnie noted, some later addition to the structure evident, no anomalous antennae or dishes, and no physical security, beyond a wood fence in the rear. She couldn't imagine what she was supposed to see here. These hippies were categorized as subversive, but this view made them look, if anything, less dangerous than their G.S.A. Security file suggested.
Delvaux spoke while pointing at a fourth floor window, “Wait for it... wait for it, and... Now.” As the bottom half of the window flew upwards, disembodied hands were briefly visible along its bottom edge. What came next was more confusing.
Bonnie saw a child fly out the window. It impacted roughly on the plastic roof of the second story addition seventeen feet below, rolled off into a tree, and fell into the garden. The small figure lay on its back in the mud, surrounded by 1/10th scale bonsai. The fall looked painful, and Bonnie wondered if the child would recover or just lay there. Delvaux had seen this recording several times, and he was watching his Operator.
Bonnie could feel his scrutiny, and was displaying even less expression than usual. Delvaux was on her left, so the eye patch helped hide her feelings of pity for the tiny breathless figure in the dirt. As it lay unmoving, Bonnie realized that the figure's proportions were unusual – its limbs, especially its legs, were shorter than she expected. There was a strangeness about the cranium as well. The skull bulged in the front as if something threatened to burst outwards. Bonnie's own forehead creased and involuntarily expressed her realization that the figure below her was not a child. “Yes, you see now, don't you,” Delvaux said.
It wasn't a child at all. It was a dwarf, a little person with dwarfism. “Zoom full scale,” Delvaux commanded. A four-foot figure lay at their feet, and its disproportionately wide chest labored to draw breath. At full-scale, Bonnie could see that the face belonged to a dark-skinned black man in his early forties. It was cut with lines that spoke of pain heaped on pain, and there were touches of gray in his two inch thick afro that glinted reflections of the glowing, lead yellow haze that hovered in the air above the FEZ. The figure picked itself up and appeared disoriented with fear and bodily trauma. Confused, it ran first one way and then another. Delvaux barked, “Pause now,” and froze the little man in mid-stride as he ran. “Do you recognize him, Operator Levi-Mei?”
“Alvin Dock Ellis, better known as the Buddha,” Bonnie recited from memory.
Delvaux smiled at her. “Yes, Operator 388. Your target is the Buddha, and he is on the run.” Delvaux waved his wand and the holographic Buddha became animated once more, ran forward, and kicked at the wood fence with his stubby legs. Bonnie watched him break through the fence and find his way through to the street on the other side of the block. Delvaux said, “Immediately after street cameras spotted him, a hundred yard-wide section of the FEZ went inexplicably dark, and all imagery was lost. It seems he has friends who can disrupt our data-flow.” Delvaux frowned and continued, “This was the last time the Buddha appeared. Someone is hiding him. Your orders are to find the Buddha and bring him to me.”
“Standard protocols?”
“Not this time, Operator. Under no circumstances are you to make any attempt to interrogate the target.” Delvaux paused to let this sink in. “You are to avoid unnecessary interaction of any kind with the target. I want him brought to me directly. He is not to be processed through G.S.A. Security's system, or entered into the Ziggurat's D-base. Avoid eye-contact with the target. Do not speak to the target, and most importantly, do not let him speak to you.” This struck Bonnie as more than simply unusual. She'd never heard of such precautions being taken with an insurgent before.
“Sir?”
“This little man is dangerous, Operator; do not underestimate him. You are not the first to be sent after the Buddha. In the last six encounters, G.S.A. Security has lost a total of seven operators.”
“Did he kill them, Sir?” Bonnie asked.
This question drew an uncharacteristically expressive exhalation from Delvaux. Might as well tell her, he thought. We'll probably have to kill her to keep it all quiet, but we can give her a shiny, posthumous medal. Those are always good for morale.
Delvaux smiled and the word 'prick' ran through Bonnie's head again. He said, “This little Buddha is far more dangerous than that. Each of the Operators we sent after him dropped off radar and never made contact with Control again.”
Bonnie's expression betrayed her confusion to Delvaux.
He explained further, though it clearly pained him to do so. “He turned them, Levi-Mei. Somehow he drove them to betray us. There is no record in the database because we don't like to advertise when some pint-sized prophet turns our own people against us. How can we maintain order if it is known that our own people betray us because this Goddie abomination convinced them that our cause is unjust?”
Bonnie silently recited a poem written by a guerrilla general of the last century :
Pound of food,
Stolen from enemy,
Worth ten pounds.
“As we have seen in the past, the Buddha has a talent for finding benefactors. He is, no doubt, well-hidden, and our analysts consider it highly likely that he will be given a ticket on the Morituri's underground railroad. That is where you are going, Operator. That is where you will find him.�
�
-5-
Ten men milled about the block ignoring each other and pretending to do what everyone else did in the FEZ. They looked into store windows. They stared at the PornoPop videos and the advertisements that played over the AniLux coated cityscape. They ate from street vendor's carts and pretended to look for a good time, scanning the crowd for potential sex partners. In reality, they were only looking out for one thing – the G.S.A. Operators that were hunting them.
The ten Morituri never strayed too far from the door of a pawn shop that only existed to house an expertly hidden and shielded elevator in its rear. This was the sole entrance to a hand-carved chamber four stories beneath the Free Economic Zone, and in this spartan, four hundred square-foot, cinderblock room, entirely unlike the Dionysian paradise above, two men sat inside a six-sided, double-walled, copper-screen cage.
The metal of the cage was soft and pliant. Anyone could have broken into it or ripped their way out of it with minimal effort, but it wasn't built to protect goods or lock people inside. This was a skiff, and it was built to block electromagnetic waves.
The transmissions from spore-sized microphones, micro-cameras, or other bugs that an inhabitant of Baccha Bay City might unknowingly carry were all locked inside the copper cage, allowing parties within to speak with the assurance that the conversation would stay secret. It was basic EM security, and the two Morituri inside the skiff liked security.
Friar William looked like an average, mid-sixties consumer of televised sports, erectile derms, and pornography. His round face, his paunch, his button-down shirts, his slacks, and his soft loafers all made him appear to be a man whose primary concerns were pleasure and comfort. Nothing could be further from the truth. Long ago, Friar William called himself a Jesuit. Now he called himself leader of the Baccha Bay City Morituri militants, but only in the safety of a basement skiff, four levels underground, shielded in double-walled copper mesh.
