The Dead Slam: A Tale of Benevolent Assasination

by Bright,R. F.

  They knew.

  “One night a couple of our guys came back with two girls. Pitt students they found washed up on the river bank. They were half naked and terrified. As best we could make out, they had to swim the river to escape a mob of convicts who took over the university. When the county went bankrupt, the company that owned the jail stopped paying the guards — so they quit. All of a sudden, the streets were filled with monsters.”

  Max knew exactly who he meant. Some of them had made it to Lily.

  “Long story short, the county jail is only a few blocks from the university. They swarmed the girls’ dorm and were keeping them, like sex slaves.

  “We couldn’t live with that. When we heard those girls tell us that, we were never so fuckin’ pissed off. Those bastards were destroying lives. We were destroying the symbols of what had betrayed us. They were evil,” he grinned. “We were philosophical.

  “So word goes out and by morning there’s four hundred men out front of here. That’s when we realized that if we were doing something good for everyone, everyone wanted in. So we all went over to Pitt and we set those girls free, then we beat the criminals to death out on the big lawn between Heinz Chapel and the Cathedral of Learning. Execution style. It was harsh, public, appropriate. Clear message.

  “For the first time since the collapse, it felt like we’d found something more important than our disappointment. During the executions, a group of bow-tie and pocket-protector types approached us. Professors. Scientists. Seeing a man beaten to death with a two-by-four shocked the fuck out of ’em, but that’s what made them throw in with us. A symbiotic relationship, that’s what they offered. They were builders, makers, not ass-kickers. They needed us. We needed them.

  “So one of them, Mendelssohn, said he and his fellow geeks could build systems for us that would provide all the food and energy we needed, if we gave them sanctuary. His term — sanctuary. They needed a safe place to raise their kids. To build . . . an engineered habitat. They were dying to do it.

  “We had nothing to lose. We were only using a tiny fraction of this place, and it was a mess. It was a good deal for everyone. So with our newly discovered purpose, the women, and a handful of geeks, we put this place together.”

  MacIan had missed this phase of the collapse. “How’d it work out?”

  “Better than we guessed. But one thing is obvious. One thing made all the difference. The women. The women civilized this place. Women are civilization. The less they’re involved, the more monkey-balls things will be. Without them we would’ve survived, but we’d never have even one moment of happiness.”

  MacIan said in a misty tone, “‘Women are women — in nature. Men are only men — in society.’”

  Jon cocked his head. “And we never stop trying to prove it.” He raised an imaginary martini glass.

  All three toasted, “Women.”

  Molly pretended to be out of earshot, but clung to every word.

  “Mr. Jon,” said Max. “I have to call my father. They’ll want to know what’s happening with the hospital.”

  Jon yelled over his shoulder, “Molly!”

  Molly came running.

  “Take our new friend over to the hospital.”

  Molly smiled.

  “Make sure nothing happens to him.”

  Molly grabbed Max’s arm and towed him away.

  Jon watched them go with a smile.

  Camille settled at her desk and launched a search > Tuke’s speech. It turned up four billion hits. That seemed high. And it was available in every language. Who paid for that? She clicked on the first listing, Official Nobel Broadcast, and sat back warming her hands on a coffee mug wafting vanilla.

  A hollow feeling swept Camille as the camera dropped into the Ceremonial Hall. So many empty seats. She assumed a certain amount of pomp would accompany this circumstance. An old man, shrunken into a shiny tux, had the podium. “. . . this year’s Nobel Prize in economics, for his work in artificial intelligence and game theory — Dr. Levi Tuke.”

  Tuke joined the podium and took his award, nervously scanning the room, then gave a hurried speech:

  “I am here because of my work in Game Theory. So let me tell you what a game is. It’s the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles in pursuit of a common goal. So life is definitely not a game. We didn’t volunteer for it. And a common goal has never been established.”

  His eyes darted around the room and he sped on even faster.

  “But society . . . society is a game. That’s where the ‘unnecessary obstacles’ come from. Society is a game, and we are all players. Like it or not. We are all gaming each other, all the time. Whether we know it or not. So if we’re going to play, let’s give it a worthy goal. The goal defines the game. So I will, right here, right now, set the goal for the game of human society. For the whole planet.” His fears seemed to vanish and he smiled broadly. “Heaven on Earth. A goal that will take the kind of cooperation only found in games.

  “Unfortunately, the goal of our current society is to — win. It doesn’t matter what. It’s just a mindless competition for competition’s sake. A zero-sum, winner-take-all game that pits us one against the other. It began thousands of years ago, and the brutes who had an advantage then have an even greater advantage now. Advantage accumulates! That’s an indisputable fact.

  “There are two teams. The billions of us who only want to raise our families in peace and sufficient abundance, and those few for whom too much is never enough. Modesty versus arrogance. Need versus want. Universal happiness versus personal ambition.

  “Heaven on Earth? It sounds so naïve. But we know it’s possible. We feel it. We know it. Heaven is possible, right here. On Earth. But we have to build it ourselves. And it has to be for everyone, or it won’t work.”

  The crowd became restive, as did Camille.

  “The power of the purse buys only tyranny, my friends, and representative democracy was an easy sale. Broken things come cheap.” He prepared to bolt. “But we now have the technology to create a direct democracy with truly free enterprise . . . without the interference of big government and big business. Heaven on Earth!”

  He jumped off the stage, ignoring the ushers, and made his way out a side door.

  Camille stared at the blank screen, jaw to the floor. “He’s as good as dead.”

  The sidewalk in front of the Brewery was a collage of half-assed patches running along railroad tracks that cut straight through the neighborhood. The street had originally been paved in cobblestone, but after two hundred years it had become mostly splotches of asphalt, broken concrete, or gravel. A footpath had been pounded into the mix between the tracks and a long row of loading docks. The sun rarely touched this street in winter, but the shadows raking up the sides of these buildings marked time as accurately as Stonehenge.

  Molly jumped down from their stoop and landed a là super-girl with her canvas apron flapping like a cape. “Daa daah! Oh! It’s colder than I thought.”

  Max stood on the stoop checking up and down the unfamiliar street. This would make a perfect location for a detective story; bluesy saxophones were already playing in his head.

  “Come on,” yelled Molly, “it’s cold!”

  “Why didn’t you wear a coat?”

  “Two blocks?” She tucked her arms inside her canvas apron and dashed away. “Let’s go.”

  Max caught up in a few strides.

  Molly groaned, “Yayayaya . . . Ya! It’s cold!”

  A corner filled with armed men stood up and nodded to Molly. She nodded back, politely.

  “Why are all these guys looking at us?”

  “They’re watching us.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re the Watchers.”

  “Who?”

  “The Watchers.”

  “What do they do?”

  “They watch the children. Everything else takes care of itself,” she said with a convulsive shudder.

  Max swept off
his big red parka and draped it around her.

  “Oh, yeah,” she purred, snuggling the huge body-pillow still warm with Max’s heat.

  They reached the intersection where the hospital entrance stood at mid-block. A shoulder-to-shoulder crowd was milling about, waiting for news of their loved ones. The vast majority didn’t notice Molly, but a particular few nodded with a subtle tip of the hat or a knowing look. This was the only hospital in the entire region, thousands of square miles. Most of this crowd was from somewhere else, but the Watchers, the locals, marked themselves out by their deference to Molly.

  “Now I get it,” said Max.

  “Get what?”

  “Who’s who, and who’s looking out for who. I get it.”

  Molly rolled her eyes. “For whom! Uh huh, sure. Yeah you — get it?”

  “Yeah. I get it.”

  “I guarantee you, you do not — get it. You wouldn’t get it if it bit you.” She danced off toward the hospital, yelling over her shoulder, “Remind me to tell you the story about the price tags.”

  “The price tags?”

  “Forget it! You wouldn’t get it.” She ran up the hospital’s steps, gawking at Max with adolescent disdain, then stopped and flung his coat at him. “I can’t be seen in this,” she said in an overly hoity-toity voice, sweeping a self-deprecating hand over her beat-up canvas apron.

  What a delightful little girl, thought Max. But there were now even more men watching them. And he quickly noticed that the Watchers were all dressed appropriately for the weather. They all wore hats with ear muffs, long scarves wrapped like small blankets around their necks, and warm gloves. The rest of the crowd appeared to have been caught out in the weather without proper consideration. Utility is a fashion statement, thought Max, stroking his fabulous red coat. He really was sharpening his powers of deduction — saxophone solo.

  He tucked the coat under his arm; he wouldn’t need it in the hospital, although it was far from warm inside. Molly veered unexpectedly off-course for the front doors and headed toward a thick crowd by the Emergency Entrance. At the crowd’s edge, a group of armed men made room for her. How curious, thought Max. Who is this girl? She waved at him impatiently.

  There was a thick cordon of Watchers, now obvious to Max, surrounding the Peregrine. His friend’s Peregrine.

  “Cool car,” said Molly.

  “I came here in that.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Have it your way.”

  “No wait,” she said, grabbing his arm. “Maybe you’re not so — rural. Just old.”

  “I’m eighteen! In a couple days.”

  “Yeah, and by the time I’m eighteen, you’ll be an antique.”

  Max had never considered aging, until now. This girl was a cluster bomb of unsettling revelations. Molly dragged him across the terrace and through the revolving doors. As they entered the lobby a woman with a clipboard aimed it at Molly, who pretended not to see her.

  “Young Lady?!”

  Molly pulled up and curtsied sarcastically as the clipboard lady blocked their path. “Why we have to play this way? You know better.”

  Molly was not in the least intimidated. “We’re visiting . . . a woman?” she looked to Max for a name.

  “Otis,” he said.

  The clipboard lady zeroed in on Molly. “Never heard of a woman named Otis. What do you want with Otis?”

  “Otis is his friend. Jon asked me to bring him. He’s staying with us. Otis too.”

  Max liked the sound of that, staying with friends in the city.

  The clipboard lady wagged her clipboard at both of them. “Jon is lord almighty out there. In here, he’s a high probability gunshot victim.”

  “Yes ma’am,” mumbled Molly, tactfully conceding with a curled lip.

  “Wait out there,” she said, fanning her clipboard in the general direction of anywhere but here. Apparently, Molly’s status meant nothing to the clipboard lady.

  They pushed through the revolving doors and crossed the terrace to a waist-high brick wall topped with a granite capstone. Molly jumped up and twisted into a seated position on top, gesturing for the coat.

  He slipped the coat around her and leaned against the wall. “OK. Tell me the price tag story.”

  Molly deflated and stared straight through Max.

  A bleary-eyed Camille swung open the refrigerator door. She was starving, but the thought of food was repulsive. So she grabbed a bottle of wine, dumped a half-full water glass into the sink and filled it — just enough for the mood she was in.

  The doorbell rang.

  She grabbed the Uzi lying on the island, tiptoed to the door and looked through the peephole. The ghostly absence was mortifying. She dropped down on all fours and looked under the door. There were no shoes, but there was a blocked-out space. Maybe a box? She reached up to the doorknob, raised the Uzi, then cracked the door just enough to see what was on the floor outside. There sat a brand-new laptop computer just like MacIan's. She poked her head out, panned the hall, grabbed the computer and slammed the door.

  She slid onto a tall stool, sat the laptop squarely on the kitchen island, took a deep breath, and belted down the last of her wine. With two gentle fingers, she flipped open the lid. To her delight, a charming computer-generated woman wearing cartoon-cool sunglasses was waiting for her on screen. “Good evening, Camille. My name is MISH.” Her voice was a little droidish and her words were echoed in subtitles onscreen.

  Camille felt a reckless buzz coming on. “Evening, MISH. Is that short for Michelle? How’d you get in my building?”

  MISH’s response was preprogrammed. “Camille Gager. I am inviting you to join The Tuke Massive. You may open an account by filling out the registration form that appears after this message. A link to our tutorial will be sent to the email address you will set up in your account . . . @ The Tuke Massive.net. It is semi-prime secure. We strongly advise you to keep this laptop with you at all times, and to confine all your communication to this device from now on.”

  The message was over, just like that.

  Camille laughed as the new account form appeared. She didn’t know if she could do this or not. But she was feeling reckless, and MISH was so damned charming. A computer generated woman? MISH? Machine . . . Intelligence . . . System . . . what was the H for? Human? A Quaker woman? Probably.

  She plucked another bottle from the wine rack, unscrewed the top, and raised it to her new laptop computer.

  “The Tuke Massive.”

  27

  Molly arranged herself on the low granite wall surrounding the hospital’s terrace, snuggling into Max’s red coat, deeply regretting having mentioned the price tag story.

  “The price tag story,” said Max. “It was your idea.”

  “Well,” said Molly. “You were scared. I thought a story might keep you from crying. You’re such a knob.”

  Max found Molly’s hard-talking ways hurtful, but expansive. He hoped to learn this lingo. “Back where I live . . .”

  She mowed him down. “Back where everyone has a big house and a herd of dogs?”

  “Yeah. I live in a big house. I got dogs. So?”

  “So! How is it everyone from the,” she made cynical air-quotes, “country, lives in a big house?”

  “Everyone lives is a big house, because there are lots of abandoned big houses. Why would anyone take a small house?”

  “OK,” said Molly, grudgingly. “I’ll give you that.”

  Max couldn’t let it go. “Smaller houses are not as well built as big houses. How stupid would you have to be . . .”

  “OK! OK, OK!” Molly fluttered her hands between them.

  “We live pretty good up in our little village. We’re satisfied. We have everything we need. All our problems come from people in cities. Smartasses, like you.”

  “OK! OK! The stupid price tag story. If that’ll shut you up.” She took a deep breath. “I hate telling these corny Quaker stories.”

  Max flipped her a w
ho-cares sneer. “If you didn’t want to tell it, you shouldn’t’a mentioned it.”

  “Sorry I did.”

  Max rolled his eyes. “Too late.”

  Molly cleared her throat, and began. “When the English Quakers fled to Holland, the Dutch couldn’t figure them out, because they had no doctrine, no dogma, nothing the locals could compare to their own ways. Ways the Quakers could not abide.

  “Dutch merchants relied entirely on cunning and persuasion. The product didn’t matter. Only the deal mattered. The Quakers found this shamelessly unfair to their mostly illiterate customers. The price was not associated with the product’s value. It was all about bargaining. The peasants didn’t stand a chance.”

  Molly’s voice grew hypnotic. “One day, all the Quaker merchants showed up with price tags on their products. This had never been done before. It was shocking. Buyers and sellers haggled for prices. They’d always haggled. A merchant’s worth was measured by how much he could squeeze from each transaction. Not the quality of his merchandise.

  “And if no one knows the value of a thing, no one can say the price is too high. The meek, the elderly, those least able to play this game paid the most. Which seemed perfectly OK to the merchants. In their little bubble, God and all the forces of nature said they were right. The price tag was blasphemy. Whether it was fair or not never crossed their minds. Both the customers and the products were irrelevant — only the deal mattered.

  “Even the helpless buyers were offended by the price tag’s implication that they could not, or worse, should not, bargain. They believed bargaining to be a valuable personal skill that spoke to the character of the buyer. But the Quakers held to their principle, same price for everyone.”

  The story had transfixed Max. The Dutch Village he imagined looked a lot like Lily.

  “So Quaker products had price tags and the Dutch merchants’ didn’t. Same products. Fixed price. Everyone pays the same. No favorites. No suckers. The way the Quakers saw it, without a set price, the best deal went to the best liar.