Interface

by Neal Stephenson; J. Frederick George

  The huge ones were former professional football players. The others were Vietnam veterans. They instinctively formed up into two separate groups, on opposite ends of the room. The Vietnam veterans had served with Cozzano in the mid- to late sixties and were, for the most part, older than the football players, and from a wider economic range: this group included corporate presidents, highly paid lawyers, janitors, auto mechanics, and homeless people. But today they were all dressed more or less the same, and they greeted each other wordlessly, with hugs and long, intense, two-handed handshakes.

  A few minutes after the second bus had arrived, one of the veterans, a big, round-headed, round-shouldered black man, walked to the center of the room, whistled through his fingers, and shouted, “Listen up!”

  The conversation rapidly dropped to zero. All of the men moved to the edges of the room, facing inward. “My name is Rufus Bell. For today, you can call me Sarge,” said the man. “I have three people to introduce. First of all, the woman who will be our new Vice President in an hour and a half: Eleanor Richmond.”

  She had been standing by the coffee table. Now she walked into the center of the room. Scattered applause started up and rapidly exploded into an ovation. Rufus Bell whistled again.

  “Shut up!” he yelled. “We don’t want to bother the neighbors.”

  “Thank you all,” Eleanor said.

  Bell continued, “I would also like to introduce Mel Meyer, who will be the acting Attorney General of the United States.”

  Mel acknowledged by removing the cigar from his mouth momentarily.

  “Finally,” Bell said, “the Chief of the District of Columbia Police, who’s going to swear you all in.”

  The Chief was snappy in full dress uniform. He walked to the middle of the room and got no applause at all; his appearance, and his bearing, radiated no-nonsense authority. He turned to face the men around the edges of the room and examined them closely for several moments, making individual eye contact with every man in the room.

  “This is some serious shit,” the Chief said, “not some kind of a fun little field trip. If you’re not willing to lay down your life in the defense of the Constitution of the United States, right now, then stay in this building for the next three hours and you’ll be fine.”

  He stopped for a while to let that sink in, and surveyed the men’s faces again. They all stared back at him, like statues. A couple of them couldn’t hold the eye contact, and glanced away.

  “If you are willing to take that risk,” the Chief said, “then repeat after me.” He held up his right hand, palm facing forward.

  All of the men in the room did the same. Then the Chief swore them all in as deputies of the District of Columbia Police Department.

  In the meantime, Mel had taken Eleanor aside and was talking to her in a corner of the room. “You ever bought a house?” he asked.

  “Once or twice,” she said, surprised and mildly amused.

  “Remember all those fucking documents they pulled out for you to sign?”

  “I remember them well.”

  “That’s nothing compared to what we’re doing today,” he said. He opened up a time-worn leather satchel that was resting on the floor. “I have two sets of documents for you,” he said, “depending on what happens. I have spent the last several months holed up in the middle of nowhere with a word processor, a laser printer, and a whole lot of law books, drawing these things up. Some of them you need to sign. Some of them Willy has already signed. It’s all organized.”

  Mel pulled a white nine-by-fifteen envelope out of the satchel. “This is in case we’re lucky,” he said. “In that case, there’s not that much for you to do—most of your duties will pertain to your role as President of the Senate.”

  Mel reached back into the satchel and pulled out a black envelope. This one was the expanding type, with bellows on the sides. It was two inches thick. “And this,” he said, “is in case we’re not so lucky.”

  “I see,” Eleanor said. “White is good and black is bad.”

  “No,” Mel said. “White is Willy and black is Eleanor.”

  The Chief had finished deputizing the men by now, and Rufus Bell was beginning to stride up and down the room, perusing a list of names, ordering men this way and that, forming them up into several groups of various sizes.

  Eleanor opened up the envelopes, took a black ballpoint pen (SKILCRAFT U.S. GOVERNMENT) out of her purse, and started signing her name to documents. All of the documents in the white envelope said:

  ELEANOR RICHMOND

  VICE PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  All of the documents in the black envelope said:

  ELEANOR RICHMOND

  PRESIDENT

  Rufus Bell and Mel Meyer were dragging cardboard boxes across the floor and shoving them across the concrete in the direction of the various platoons that Bell had organized. The men began to rip the boxes open and pull out T-shirts. They were all black, 100 percent cotton, extra large. On the front was a white star and the words DEPUTY—D.C. POLICE. And on the back of each shirt were the words

  DEPT. OF

  JUSTICE

  sixty

  LINES OF authority were never especially clear in Washington, D.C., where the jurisdictions of a dozen different law-enforcement agencies all overlapped. The presence of so many people with guns and badges made it impossible to figure out who was in charge of what. So when men with guns and badges had gone to several locations in the District of Columbia during the last few days and laid claim to numerous parking spaces—some on the street, some in parking lots of federal buildings—there had been disputes, arguments, even threats. But the issues raised could not have been untangled short of calling a convention of Constitutional scholars and locking them all in a room until they made up their minds. The people who had the parking spaces won the argument. The decision was sealed when those parking spaces were occupied by flatbed semitrailer rigs with big GODS shipping containers on their backs.

  One of them took up a position in front of the headquarters of the Teamsters Union on Louisiana Avenue, only a block north of the Capitol Building. From there, it had a direct line of sight across Taft Park and Constitution Avenue onto the Capitol grounds; a person could climb onto the roof of the truck and get a clear, side-on view of President Cozzano delivering his inaugural address, not much more than a thousand feet away.

  Another GODS truck seized a position along Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House. Others parked on Fourteenth Street, in the shadow of the Commerce Department; on C Street, in front of the State Department; in front of the Treasury Department on Fifteenth Street; and in the parking lot of the Pentagon.

  Once the trucks were in place, they weren’t likely to move. The owners—and the mysterious people who went in and out of the containers on their backs—seemed to have an infinite fund of bewildering paperwork, from various D.C. and federal agencies, justifying their presence. Any authority figure, at any level, who tried to move those GODS trucks, would soon find that each one had a lawyer living in the back, on call twenty-four hours a day, complete with cellular phone and portable fax machine. These were not just plain old lawyers either; they were asshole lawyers, ready and willing to issue threats and talk about their friends in high places at the slightest provocation.

  And if things escalated beyond that level, each truck also had a couple of imposing plainclothes security guards who would emerge, crack their knuckles, flex their muscles, and glare threateningly when anyone tried to get them to move. The only people in the world who had the guts to confront these people were D.C. meter maids, and so the GODS trucks stayed where they were, accumulating stacks of D.C. parking tickets under their windshield wipers but incurring no further retribution.

  At eleven o’clock on the morning of Inauguration Day, Cyrus Rutherford Ogle could be found in the truck that was parked in front of the Teamsters Building, a thousand feet from the inaugural podium. He was seated in the Eye of Cy, keeping t
abs on the PIPER 100, and trying to reestablish radio contact with the chips in Governor Cozzano’s head.

  The radio transmissions were short-range, line-of-sight affairs and so they were used to breaking contact whenever Cozzano strayed more than a couple of thousand feet from the truck. But Cozzano had gone out of his way to be elusive this morning. The listening devices secreted in his clothing and in that of his children were not transmitting any sounds other than the soothing burble of running water. The Secret Service had converged on Rock Creek Park, hindered by a nightmare traffic jam, and found no sign of the Cozzanos other than the abandoned clothes.

  It looked a hell of a lot like a kidnapping. But the outgoing President, and several news outlets, had received brief, untraceable telephone calls from Mary Catherine Cozzano, assuring them that everything was okay. She promised that her father would show up for the inauguration.

  Ogle had been planning to reinstate contact with Cozzano’s biochip from the truck in Lafayette Square when he paid a call at the White House, which was traditionally what an incoming president did on inauguration morning. Then, as the outgoing and incoming presidents made their way down Pennsylvania for the inaugural parade, control would be relayed to the truck at Treasury and then at Commerce. Then there would be a blackout of several minutes as the motorcade proceeded down Pennsylvania.

  But those moments of freedom were useless to Cozzano. He would have to come to the Capitol eventually. As the motorcade emerged from the shadow of the U.S. Courthouse, the truck at Teamsters—Cy Ogle’s truck—would be able to establish contact with the biochip. From that point onward, Cy Ogle would have full control through the inauguration.

  William A., James, and Mary Catherine Cozzano emerged from the Farragut West Metro station at eleven o’clock. They had reached Pennsylvania Avenue before anyone recognized them.

  The person who did was a well-dressed man in a trench coat, with a neatly trimmed beard and very short hair, proceeding west on Pennsylvania. He was standing at a streetcorner waiting for the light to change when he saw the Cozzanos coming toward him. “Good morning, President-elect Cozzano,” he said.

  The light changed and all of them crossed Seventeenth Street together. The Old Executive Office Building was on their right, the White House a stone’s throw away.

  “Good morning. How are you today?” Cozzano said.

  “Just fine, sir, and you?”

  “I’m great, thank you,” Cozzano said.

  “How’s your head?” the man asked, as they reached the east side of Seventeenth Street. They stopped at the corner and waited for the light to change. Across Pennsylvania, in front of the White House gates, was a mob of cops and Secret Service. One of them noticed the Cozzanos. Binoculars swiveled in their direction. A Secret Service detail broke from the gates and ran toward them, plunging directly into traffic.

  Cozzano looked at the man quizzically. “My head’s fine,” he said, “why do you ask?”

  “I need to know if they’re controlling your brain with radio waves,” the man said, as the WALK light came on. “It’s very important for me to know this.”

  Mary Catherine’s and James’s faces fell into expressionless masks. Crossing the street, they got between Cozzano and the man in the trench coat, and stared at the man coldly. But Cozzano laughed indulgently. “You know, there was a movie that I saw, at the Tuscola Main Street Theater, when I was a kid, about mind control. Some mad scientist had taken over people’s brains and turned them into zombies . . .”

  “Don’t tell me another anecdote!” the man said. “I don’t want to hear any of your stupid anecdotes!”

  “I’m just trying to answer your question,” Cozzano said cheerfully.

  “Ever since they started controlling your brain, you can’t think anymore—all you do is tell those heart-warming stories!” the man in the trench coat said.

  They were approaching the south side of Pennsylvania. James pulled up close to the man and stared at him coldly. “You’re out of line,” he said.

  The man in the trench coat stared back at James, not intimidated in the slightest. “I’m out of line, huh?” he said. His total lack of fear unnerved James a little bit. James almost tripped over the curb.

  Suddenly, the Cozzanos were surrounded by men in suits and trench coats. Mary Catherine was startled for a moment before she realized that they were Secret Service men.

  Then she looked back at the strange man. But he was gone. “That was really weird,” she said. “That man didn’t show any of the external symptoms of an active psychotic. But he sure talked like one.”

  The presidential motorcade pulled out of the White House gates onto Pennsylvania Avenue at 11:30 A.M., hung a right, and headed for the Capitol. Inside, distributed among several cars, were the outgoing President, his wife, the outgoing Vice President and his wife, Cozzano, Mary Catherine, James, Eleanor Richmond, and her two children Clarice and Harmon, Jr. Eleanor’s mother was already in her place at the Capitol, attended by a couple of nurses.

  The outgoing and incoming presidents sat across from each other in the back of the presidential limousine and made small talk. The motorcade wound around a couple of corners, getting past the Treasury and Western Plaza, and finally pulled onto the long uninterrupted stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue that ran straight to the Capitol. William A. Cozzano bent down and peered through the window, across the front seat, through the windshield, and down to the Capitol, where the temporary podium was clearly visible. Federal Triangle was on the right; half a block ahead rose the towering spire of the Old Post Office.

  Cozzano reached across his body with his left hand, grabbed the limousine’s door handle and popped the door open.

  “What are you doing?” the outgoing President said.

  “Quite frankly, I have no idea,” Cozzano said. He jumped out of the limousine, which was traveling at a slow jogger’s pace. The driver, seeing what was happening, braked the limousine to a stop.

  “But—”

  Cozzano leaned into the open door. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I think everything’s going to be okay.” Then he slammed the door and strode southward across the intersection.

  By now the entire motorcade had come to a halt. Mary Catherine and James had jumped out of their limousine and run forward to join Cozzano, who plunged directly into the crowd lining the parade route. He was followed by a number of Secret Service agents; but although the crowd opened wide to accept the Cozzanos, it closed ranks behind them, forming a dense wall of bodies.

  Large bodies. It seemed that this entire section of the parade route was lined with men no shorter than six foot six, and no lighter than two hundred and seventy-five pounds. The Secret Service men tried to elbow their way through, but elbows had no effect on these guys.

  Eventually they got through by drawing guns. By that time, the Cozzanos had disappeared. Again.

  The Federal Triangle Metro station was half a block away on Twelfth Street. Like all of the stations in the D.C. Metro system, it included an elevator for wheelchair users. Rufus Bell was standing in that elevator, leaning against the door to keep it from closing, and he had an empty wheelchair with him.

  The Cozzanos arrived at a dead sprint, pursued only by a few autograph seekers. James and Mary Catherine got on first, then Cozzano followed, spinning around as he came through the door and slamming down ass-first into the wheelchair. Bell let the door slide closed and then the elevator began to drop.

  Mary Catherine was standing to the left of the wheelchair, a heavy purse slung over her shoulder. She unclasped it and opened it up.

  “Here goes nothing,” Cozzano said.

  His left hand reached into Mary Catherine’s purse, rummaged around, and pulled out a black box with four metal prongs on the end. He squeezed the trigger once, testing it, and a purple lightning bolt snapped between the prongs.

  “I already tested it, Dad,” Mary Catherine said affectionately, her voice already getting thick with emotion.

  “I know you
did, peanut,” Cozzano said.

  Then he shoved the prongs into the side of his head and pulled the trigger.

  His body convulsed so violently that it threw him half out of the wheelchair. James and Mary Catherine stood well away until the high-voltage current had stopped blasting through Cozzano’s body. His arm snapped out into a stiff-arm position, as though fending off a linebacker from Arcola or Rantoul, and the stun gun flew across the elevator car, bounced off the wall, and clattered to the floor. Rufus Bell picked it up and shoved it back into Mary Catherine’s purse.

  Mary Catherine had gone into an unemotional, doctorly mode. She grabbed one of her father’s arms and got James to take the other one, and they righted his limp body in the wheelchair, then buckled the lap belt.

  The elevator doors opened; they were on the platform of the Metro station. A Blue Line train bound for Addison Road was sitting on the tracks, waiting for them; the doors had been physically blocked open by more members of the Cozzano crew, and the D.C. Chief of Police himself, still resplendent in his full dress uniform, was standing at the head of the train, talking to the conductor.

  Bell wheeled Cozzano out of the elevator, across the platform, and onto the train. The doors closed behind them and the train began to move. They had a whole car to themselves; sheets of newsprint had already been taped up along the insides of the windows so that none of the shocked tourists on the platform could capture an image of the unconscious President-elect on film or video.

  Mary Catherine pulled a stethoscope out of her purse, stuck it in her ears, and held it up to her father’s chest. “He’s got a normal rhythm,” she said. “It sounds good.”

  Cozzano was not unconscious, just dazed. Mary Catherine pulled a small white tube out of her pocket, snapped it in half, and held it up under Cozzano’s nose. Cozzano’s brow furrowed, his eyes rolled around in their sockets, and he snapped his head away from the smell.