by Bright,R. F.
“This is not our fault!” shouted another. “We’ve been telling him for months.”
Thomka braced himself on his desk, glum as oatmeal.
“Look, Al,” said another, brushing past Murthy. “You gotta get a handle on this. These are raids. It’s those fuckin' hacktivists. They sweep in and overpower the guards. In every case they bind them with green duct tape and leave them unharmed.”
“They steal mobiles and network servers, nothing else,” said another. “Why’s that!? Why’s that? Al.”
The woman in charge had been calm, but suddenly puffed herself up. “They always have the exact number of trucks needed. That’s no coincidence. They’re being directed by some group or person who knows everything about us,” she said. “I’m sure of it. And these wrong deliveries! Thousands of them! All sent to dummy businesses, hotels and places where the recipients can’t be tracked. That takes big data. It’s the hacktivists. We know it! Gotta be!”
Thomka raised his palms in submission. “All right, all right. I hear you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I promise. I will take care of it. I promise.”
The women glared at him skeptically and filed out in a huff.
Once the door slammed behind them, Thomka collapsed into his huge desk chair and propped his head up with both hands, elbows on his desk.
“Whoa,” said Murthy. “All that over a couple of mobiles?”
“It’s not a couple of mobiles. It’s a lot of mobiles. Every kind. They,” he said, nodding toward the door, “only know about the ones they know about. There’ve been many, many more, over a couple years. Thousands of shipping containers.”
Murthy avoided all administrative drudgery. “Hmmm.”
“That’s not all,” Thomka continued in a worn-out voice. “We didn’t even order what’s being stolen. Products just show up from factories in China and Vietnam then disappear, no explanation. Then, to top it all off, they’re paid for from our bank accounts. Again . . . no explanation.”
“Think it’s Tuke?”
“I’m sure it is. And I don’t care. It’s all so mind-numbingly meaningless.”
Murthy laughed out loud. “There is no meaning to life, Uncle Al. Just think how depressing it would be if there were.”
Thomka’s gloom pervaded his every word. “The ridiculous way we live. What the fuck are we doing?”
Murthy had heard this all before. “Hmmm.”
“There’s something else,” said Thomka. “We’re not really selling anything and the downward trend is accelerating. No one has money. Except for the people in the walled cities, and they aren’t spending. Everyone’s bracing for a catastrophe.”
Murthy tried to share his friend’s apprehension, but his aversion to the mundane prevented him. “Hmmm.”
“We’ve hit the tipping point. It’s always a fast ride on the down-side.”
"Hmmm."
“Everyone’s broke, but us. Everybody.”
“Hmmm.”
“Mahesh, I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t care about any of this. The money. The power. The stuff. I just want some peace. One good night’s sleep. One night.”
“I’ve got just the thing for you,” said Murthy. He whipped out a script he had folded under his arm. “Have a look at the thirty-second trailer for A Uniting Force. A Trooper Brian Stahl Special Presentation.” He was extremely pleased with himself. “The writers got Petey’s shoot to kill and privatizing the NPF thing just right. Starring the incomparable — Brian Stahl.”
Star-factory tradition and the current penchant for consolidation had turned Brian Stahl into the one and only movie star in the land. Al Thomka was not a fan. Murthy hated people who didn’t love Brian Stahl — ultraviolent Robin Hood. And A Uniting Force was bound to be the best episode ever. “Just read it for yourself.” He tossed the script onto Thomka’s desk.
Thomka opened the script and read.
THY WILL BE DONE
Episode 840
A UNITING FORCE
(special presentation)
FADE IN: WALL OF FLAMES
EXT. DYSTOPIC CITY STREET – DAY
The soot-smudged face of TROOPER BRIAN STAHL emerges from flames. He dives into a rolling somersault and comes up pistols blazing.
Bad Guys with wild hair, dressed in ANIMAL SKINS fall or run away.
KIDNAPPER Bad Guy drags a screaming girl away by her hair.
CLOSE ON GIRL
She screams.
CLOSE ON STAHL
Stahl clasps his shoulder as bullets ricochet off. He keeps shooting as he slowly tumbles to the ground, in agony.
The bad guys cover their getaway with a crescendo of GUNFIRE.
Kidnapped Girl begs for help.
Stahl struggles to one knee as MULLET HEAD BAD GUY charges straight at him. He chokes back his pain, struggles to his feet, raises his gun and shoots at the last second.
Mullet Head Bad Guy’s head explodes.
SLOW MOTION
Stahl falls, possibly dying, but gets off one last shot.
Kidnapper Bad Guy is hit right between the eyes.
Kidnapped Girl breaks loose and runs free.
CLOSE ON TROOPER STAHL
He crumples.
CLOSER (slow motion)
His beautiful face slams into the pavement.
EXTREME CLOSE UP
His baby blue eyes drift slowly shut.
DISSOLVE TO
INT. COURTROOM – DAY
Courtroom filled with spectators.
Trooper Stahl sits at the defendant’s table. His bandages testify to his sacrifice and suffering.
A MEAN LAWYER wheels from the bench.
P.O.V. Over JUDGE’S shoulder.
MEAN LAWYER
This shooting was totally unjustified.
It was an extra-judicial execution.
(points at Stahl and shouts)
Murderer, plan and simple.
Stahl’s beautifully sad face, steeped in injustice, cringes through his pain.
Montage of ugly faces
Ugly Woman One – we read her lips, Murderer
Ugly Man two – Murderer
Ugly Woman three – Murderer
QUICK DISSOLVE TO
Two Prison Guards drag Trooper Stahl from the court.
CLOSE ON STAHL
STAHL
(w/pathos)
Will this . . .
(nearly faints)
be the content of my . . . cup?
FLAMES ENGULF THE SCREEN
Music Up
FADE TO BLACK
Thomka dumped the script on his desk, every movement a chore. “Is this crap supposed to make me feel better?”
Murthy was crestfallen. “Yes, it is. What's wrong with you?”
“It’s pure bullshit. This is what we offer? This shit.”
Murthy shook his head furiously. “Everyone knows it’s shit, but they watch just the same. It’s entertainment. Nobody cares.”
“Oh really? I think they do care, Mahesh. It’s you who don’t care. No one looks like the bad guys, or lives like savages. This is the post-post- apocalyptic era.They’re living better than we are outside these walls. They have useful lives, while we . . .”
Murthy could take no more. “Really? That’s what you think? This is only the beginning of our campaign to get shoot-to-kill status for the NPF. Like Petey wants. It’s the seed. The rest is a diversion.”
“That’s insane,” scoffed Thomka. “The NPF is the most deadly force in the nation. What makes you think they’re going to let us con them into this stupidity? Petey cannot be serious. He’s diverting us. Us! A stupid soap-opera? This whole ‘privatize’ thing stinks. It’s a Petey scam.”
“Look, Al. This is like everything we’ve ever done. You set up for a certain result, then go for it. Whatever gets in the way, you bowl it down as you go. Adapt and assimilate. You know how it works. Nothing is certain. But we can afford to leg this out.”
“And you think this never-gonna-happen,
shoot-to-kill thing will give us control over the problems we have?”
“It can’t hurt.”
“You know, Mahesh,” Thomka laughed sadly. “This is all about protecting our advantage, not solving our problem. Because our advantage is the problem. It’s an unmerited accumulation of all our little privileges, over years and years, generation after generation, into a lopsided contest. A game no one wants to play anymore. That’s what Tuke’s speech was telling us. We’re about to tilt, game over, no bonus.”
“And yet . . . we soldier on,” chided Murthy. “As long as it solves my problems, I don’t give a rat’s ass.”
“That’s why I’m so worried.”
“Hmmm?”
“Tuke is giving people solutions. We’re giving them this crap. Soap opera schmaltz dipped in perfumed manure.” He fell back into his seat. “What, for the love of God, do we have to offer?”
“Diversions. And time to cook up more diversions until they forget whatever we promised in the first place. What else is there?”
“Oh, that’s great. We divert them from their miserable lives . . .”
“No. We divert them from finding out we don’t have any solutions, so they don’t murder us in our sleep.”
Thomka was completely exhausted. “We better hope there is no God.”
Murthy scrunched the two-page script in one hand and headed for the door. “Always exit on the upbeat.”
Thomka heard the door close, put his head down on his desk, and fell into a troubled sleep.
MacIan watched two nurses wheel the glass-faced tugboat pilot away, leaving him to deal with an awestruck Max, man-pimp Priyanka, and a burly character who reached to shake his hand. The hand was a batik of red blotches ringed with chalky white scales. MacIan gripped it anyway.
“I’m Jon Replogle,” he said apologetically, now that MacIan had passed the grip test. “It’s not contagious. Just looks like hell. Psoriasis. No cure for this version.”
MacIan studied the blotches crawling up Jon’s neck. “Looks painful?”
“Just a little itchy now and then. That your Peregrine outside?”
“Yes. We came down here . . .” He was distracted by Priyanka slinking away.
Jon caught MacIan’s glance, then turned and yelled, “Get the fuck outta here, you two-bit whore.”
Priyanka back-pedaled up to the double doors, shouting, “That’s two bits more than you have, Chalk Man. You’ll see! You’re gonna regret how you treat me. I am the voice of . . . Manhattmazon!” She thumbed her nose and trotted off like a painted pony.
Max deflated.
MacIan laughed, “Manhattmazon?”
Jon rolled his eyes. “That’s what she always says. If human trafficking was the only thing she was into . . . but she’s far more ambitious than that.”
“We have another man inside,” MacIan said.
They pushed through the blood-bank doors to find Otis perched on a table, a gaggle of nurses hovering. “Sorry I can’t go back with you guys,” he said. “My word is my word. Got to tough it out here for the next month or so.”
MacIan assumed, by the look on Max’s face, that Otis was the most amusing man the boy had ever met.
Radio squelch sounded. Jon Replogle yanked a walkie-talkie from a clip on his belt. “Go.”
“Jon, there’s been some kind of blast down at the Lady Name. Tenant, Klevens, blown to pieces, bullets as big as your thumb.”
“Who did it?”
“Leprechauns.”
“Motive?”
“None.”
“Were they upstanding citizens?”
“Computer engineer, something like that?” In the background someone shouted, “Game programmer. Husband owns a bicycle shop.”
“See what you can find out.”
“Wait, wait,” said the man on the walkie-talkie. “There was an explosion off the Mon Wharf before that, ’bout an hour or so.”
“OK. Get back to me.” Jon clicked off. “I’m the head of the Watch. No local police here.”
“I’m sorry to say this,” said MacIan, “but I’m your local police.”
They found the tugboat pilot sitting on a bench in another hallway with a nurse plucking splinters from his face with a pair of eyebrow tweezers. “Did you say you knew that kid, what’s his name?” asked Jon.
The pilot was shivering in pain, but that didn’t diminish his sense of outrage. “Yeah. I knew the whole family. The Tessyiers. I thought I was doing him a favor.”
“Odd name,” said MacIan.
The pilot flinched with each pluck. “Yeah. Pennsylvania Dutch, or some kinda Belgian cousins.”
MacIan glanced at Max, who nodded discreetly.
“Quakers?” asked Max.
The Pilot looked annoyed. “Of course.”
Everyone turned to Jon Replogle.
“Not me. My name just sounds like it. What’d the kid do?”
“He worked with computers. Some kinda weird games, but I don’t know what he did. He tried to explain it, but . . . he just went on and on.”
“These killings,” said Jon. “They’re elaborate and very public. When this sort of thing happens, it’s on orders from the reptiles, in New York.”
The pilot shook loose from his nurse, shouting, “Damn right. Was them fuckin’ Black Hearts. The head guy, Efryn Boyne. Himself! He blew that kid up.”
The nurse tried to calm the pilot by plucking five in rapid succession. He stopped ranting to gasp for air.
"Efryn Boyne?" mused Replogle. "Black Heart number one. This’ll be some high priority shit."
MacIan nodded toward the door. “Can we check outside?”
The men standing around the Peregrine backed away as they approached, and MacIan saw immediately that it was Jon Replogle they feared. He was big and rugged, and his bearing was that of the man in command. Whatever deference was shown to MacIan came via his new friend — Jon Replogle.
MacIan opened the Peregrine’s wind dome, reached under the seat, pulled out his new mobile, flipped it open and immediately saw Levi Tuke, in conversation with someone off-camera.
“Trooper MacIan,” said Tuke, making a few peculiar hand gestures that caused the screen to widen out. “You’re in Pittsburgh, so I assume you know what’s happening.”
“I am in Pittsburgh, but I don’t have a clue.”
“They’re trying to flush me out.”
“So that’s it,” said Jon.
“Is that you, Replogle?”
“Yes sir, it’s me.” Jon poked his head into frame.
“We’re contacting everyone,” said Tuke. “I’ve made a list. You might want to go to the Quaker Meeting, in East Liberty. Everyone on the list be there.”
“Meeting?” said MacIan.
“Yes,” said Tuke. “The Quaker Meeting House. Replogle can arrange it.” A list of names scrolled up the screen.
Jon read over MacIan’s shoulder, and said, “My place is only a block away. In the old Duquesne Brewery. You can stay with us.”
“I know that place,” said MacIan. “I grew up in this neighborhood.”
Jon Replogle guaranteed MacIan the Peregrine would be safe under the watchful eye of his men at the hospital. “Once the adrenaline wears off, you two are going to crash,” he said. “You can stay with us as long as you need.”
They were too tired to argue.
“We turned the old brewery into an — engineered habitat.”
“Big place,” said MacIan, as an alarm went off on his mobile. He flipped it open and saw Camille’s excited face.
“I found him, Mac. I know where he is.”
“Tuke?”
“Yeah, and you won’t believe it. He’s up on Max’s mountain. The mountain with the spires. He owns it. A gift from your pal, Billy Penn.”
MacIan looked to Max.
“No one can live on that mountain, Miss Camille,” said Max. “It’s straight up and down, nothing but rock. It would take a lifetime to build,” he opened his face to Jon Re
plogle, “an engineered habitat.”
Replogle gave him a twinkling nod.
“A lifetime!” howled Camille. “Only one? The Tukes have owned that mountain for three hundred and fifty years!”
Max was very glad to see her. Her immediacy snapped him out of the starry-eyed spell Priyanka had put on him.
“These Tukes,” said Camille. “They’re not latter-day hippies or spiritualists. Just the opposite. They came here with an agenda, hundreds of years ago, and that agenda stands.”
“Agenda?” asked MacIan.
“I don’t know what it is, but it’s not compatible with the corporate state — how bad could it be?”
As she rambled on, MacIan whispered to his friends, “I really like this woman.”
Max’s wide-eyed grin concurred. “Me too. She yells a lot, though.”
“That’s OK,” said MacIan, turning the screen to Replogle.
“Cute. Feisty.”
“Yeah,” said MacIan with a fraternal smile. “Guess when you’re that small, you have to have a big bark.”
Camille paused to take a distracted breath. “I have to watch that speech he made at the Nobel thing.”
“Good idea.” The look in his eyes stopped her mid-rant.
She sat up and smoothed her hair. “Ah, everyone says that speech was just a crazy tirade. But, well, who knows? Maybe that’s where he actually told these fools what he was up to. Even he might crack out of turn.”
MacIan was just looking at her; she could feel it. He wasn’t judging anything, he was just looking.
“OK then,” she said, in a soft voice MacIan hadn’t heard before. An impulsive happy face announced her exit. She reached to poke the off key, stubbed her finger, yelped and made a loopy smile at the screen a split-second before it went black.
