The Dead Slam: A Tale of Benevolent Assasination

by Bright,R. F.

  “Let him get away from the tunnel,” said Kolojejchick. “Then blow his ass away.”

  The one remaining transporter in the tunnel flew blindly out the other end, ricocheting off several stout safety bollards. Kolojejchick flew up and over the mountain and found that transporter roaring up 5th Avenue, going the wrong way, through the brain trust.

  “Follow that idiot,” said Admiral Carson. “Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid. They’ll go back to the Wall. There’s isn’t anywhere else for them to go.”

  Turnstyle and Cellophane worked a computer array set up on the garishly painted bandstand of the old Polish Falcons Dance Hall. It sat about a foot above the dance floor, whose varnish had long ago been polkaed to dust. Turnstyle gave Priyanka, who had taken the center of the dance floor, a wink and a nod.

  The clacking keyboards and joyful chatter diminished. A few young women started clearing the room. Tables were pushed aside. The cables eternally crisscrossing the floor were tucked away. Desk chairs were rolled onto the dance floor for The Ladies Who Lunch, who each wore the dignified smile of the confident conspirator, despite their impossible hats. Priyanka stepped onto a chair, then onto the bar, and launched her opening. “I told you this was going to happen,” she proudly announced in a voice nearly as bold as her color-blocked miniskirt sari. “Exactly like this!” She had rehearsed this speech many times, but it was all about the display — girly machismo. She waved and pointed and threw kisses around like confetti. Her joy was infectious. Especially when hurling air-hugs and fluttering heart palpitations across the dance floor at Turnstyle.

  Turnstyle returned them with a faux curtsy; she had rehearsed for this moment, too. Manhatmazon was a social game she’d thrown together on a shoestring and pure optimism. This was her jam.

  Can’t beat fun.

  Priyanka waved her hands over the gathering and stomped her knee-high boots. “First! We have to thank — Turnstyle. She’s just promised Poison Petey a gamified solution he’ll never see, just when he needs it the most. And now we’re all going to be rich!”

  Everyone applauded.

  Turnstyle’s blush warmed the dance hall as the young women unleashed their love for her and contempt for the corporate state, whose nose she’d just rubbed in it.

  Priyanka shouted, “Our next move,” shocking herself with the volume. She paused to fan a hand in front of her mouth, mocking herself coquettishly in an antebellum drawl, “Nearly gave myself the vapors.” The room exploded with sororal laughter. “Oh! And ah, how’s my fucking hair?” They were rolling in the aisles.

  Turnstyle looked out over the dance hall floor with a big smile, well aware that they had only entered the delightful zone of proximal victory. The game was still afoot.

  Priyanka aimed all ten fingers at Turnstyle. “Big brass, baby. Big brass. Big brass.”

  Turnstyle lowered her eyes as the whole house rocked, “Big Brass! Big Brass! Big Brass!”

  Priyanka shouted over their cheers, “Can you believe, only minutes ago, this woman sat right across from Reptile Number One, Petey Hendrix. Puppeteer. Thief! Heretic! Adulterer!”

  Several of the Ladies Who Lunch squirmed knowingly.

  Turnstyle moved to the center of the bandstand as Priyanka cut to the segue. “I could go on and on, as you all know I can, but the clock is ticking. So let me turn it over to Turnstyle! Our history begins with her, and her gift to us, to all women, Manhatmazon!”

  “Big Brass! Big Brass! Big Brass!”

  Turnstyle waved off their cheers. “Manhatmazon? Funny name, huh.” A hush filtered through the dance hall. “I spent months thinking up a name for a girls-only hacker network with the goal of banishing men from our — personal space. Using the Tuke Massive model, disguised as a social game platform, the men . . . our unwitting opponents, were never to know they were being played. Bonus points for deceptions, decoys and diversions. How ya’ like them triple Ds — boys!?”

  Priyanka wiggled two fingers in front of her eyes, Mata Hari style, and yelled, “They love those.” The crowd cheered and danced the Mata Hari, hooting, “Whoooot whooot. Whooohoot.”

  Turnstyle forged on in an even tone. “While the uninformed patriots, the reactionaries, the sniveling sycophants and the worthless well-connected were counting their money, we outflanked them. And! They don’t even know it. That’s the part I like the most!”

  She paused for another explosion and cleared her throat. “We’ve been waiting a hundred centuries to burn down the old boys’ club. But once they know what’s up, they’ll defend. And they play dirty — always will, as long as they control the resources we and our children depend on. As long as the game is tilted to favor those arrogant thugs.

  “Well, we just changed the rules that put us at a disadvantage. Changed the point value of those traits all women, all mothers, all sisters have in common. Female traits that favor us, not in their suicidal competition, but in a social collaboration, where our superior social skills give us the advantage.” She brushed the top of her close-shorn head in big circles, snarling, “Oh, and ah, how’s my fuckin’ hair?”

  She shouted angrily into their thunderous applause, “We will no longer be economic slaves and sex toys. Never again. We will control what goes on with us. No one else. No government! No corporation! No church! No one!” She stepped back and made a cranking movement in front of her belly. “They can all go fishin’.”

  A percussive cheer shook the walls as all the hackers made the fishing reel cranking gesture and stomped their feet. It sounded just right in a dance hall.

  “It all begins with this phone call.” She raised a cell phone. “It is the End Move in the first championship round of Manhatmazon. The coup de grâce. As easy as moving my queen — onto his king.”

  She nodded to Cellophane, who spun towards her monitor.

  “Cellophane will lift the service blackout we’ve deployed over Petey’s castle. It’s really something, you should see it. And I’m sure you will.”

  Priyanka raised both hands to another outburst. “Please, please, everyone be quiet.”

  Turnstyle shouted, “No! No! Don’t be quiet. I’ve seen his face, he’s so panicked! This’ll be more fun if we do it right in his shit-eatin’ grin.”

  A ringing phone played over the public address system. Petey answered in a low, secretive voice, “Turnstyle?”

  “Yes, sir, it’s me, Mr. Hendrix.” She did a mock curtsey. “I have you on speaker.”

  “Why?”

  “You wanted to game the NPF — as fast as it could be done. So we created an emergency for them. Emergencies always happen in fleeting seconds. It took hundreds of people working furiously to pull that off. Many hands and all that. Everyone here is in on it.” She raised two mocking eyebrows and a twisted pucker to the audience. Everyone choked back a howl, but the chuckles that escaped were quite loud.

  “I can hear you all having fun, at my expense.”

  “Speaking of expense. Let’s get that out of the way, right away.”

  “Yeah! OK, I’ll just drop the cash on the nightstand. Who’s fucking who here? There’s no way you could have made it happen so fast.”

  “I knew you were going to be stupid about this. I’ve already explained. Emergency! Emergency! Get it! It happens in a second. That took a hundred people working their asses off to create an illusion for you.”

  She made a ‘watch this’ expression. “We built a semi-nominal, autonomously integrated hive mind using representational logic, solution churn . . .”

  “Stop! Please stop. My head’s gonna explode.”

  “I can only explain what we’ve done for you in the language of games. It’s your ignorance that’s the problem here, not mine. It’s not my fault if you don’t know when the game is on. Why do you care, anyway? They’re going to attack. Just like you wanted. I guarantee it. I know it. I have proof.”

  She pinched the tip of her nose and pulled it to arm’s length, crossed her fingers and raised them to the crowd. A few
suffocating seconds passed as laughs of every dimension were swallowed.

  “OK. All right, all right already. Please, no more game theory. Show me what you got.”

  “Show me the money.”

  “For Christ’s sake.” He poked a few keys and a screen grab of a banking transfer linked to Cellophane’s monitor. She surveyed it quickly and gave the thumbs up.

  Petey’s voice was full of caution. “All I do is push this button, and a hundred and twenty million goes into your account.”

  “Push it. Push it good,” sang Turnstyle, her hips swaying.

  “Well, since we missed the prom, why don’t you go first?”

  “OK. But let me tell you this. We got the NPF to issue an attack by gaming them. By deception. By making them think something is real, that isn’t. If I tell them the truth, they will not attack. So don’t think for a moment you can double-cross me. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  Turnstyle proudly raised her right index finger, presented it to the crowd, then carried it to Cellophane’s computer. The wall of restraint collapsed as the dance hall erupted in cheers.

  “What’s that noise?”

  “They’re cheering. You’re about to cross the goal line. We’re all just wannabe cheerleaders, ya know.”

  “Holy hell,” said Petey.

  She touched the finger to the space bar and a video played.

  General Joe Scaletta, checking on/off switches in a conference room: “We must attack New York before Tuke can have his way. We cannot allow him to take over.”

  Turnstyle let Petey stew on that. “As you can see, an attack is imminent. Sunday. Now, you show me yours.”

  “Anyone could have made that fake video. How do I know it’s real? Joe Scaletta?”

  Turnstyle let loose a patient sigh. “Your tech-weenies are scrambling to verify if it’s fake right this second, aren’t they? Why don’t we just wait for them? And since you don’t seem to know what’s going on, here’s a little sweetener for ya.”

  Petey fell silent.

  “Let’s watch a little more, while we wait. Think you’ll enjoy this.”

  The video lurched into action with crusty old Admiral Bowens Kerins: “I don’t agree with one single thing you have to say, Scaletta. You are totally full of shit. But I believe the country is far too fragile to take a risk on Tuke . . .” Everyone watched in silence until the Admiral raised himself to his feet, and concluded, “Prepare to launch an attack on New York, Sunday morning. Before that awful church show.”

  Everybody held their breath on both sides of the phone.

  Petey seemed gravely uncertain. “I don’t know who that guy is, but by the looks of him, he’s in charge.”

  “Knows how to accessorize,” said Turnstyle.

  “But I don’t know who he is,” whined Petey.

  “Why is it that you don’t know so many, many things? And yet you want to play.”

  The phone crackled with a new voice, a young voice. “Where did this video originate?”

  Turnstyle bristled. “Who’s this?”

  “Seedees.”

  “Seedees, you fucking scumbag.”

  “Love you too, Turnstyle. It’s just a payday. I’ll verify your video’s authenticity, and you’ll be on your way,” he said, but it was obvious to those who knew him he was having a hard time playing along.

  Turnstyle’s eyes grew happy as she pointed to the phone for the audience’s amusement, mouthing, Seedees is one of us. “NPF Barracks, Bedford, Pennsylvania,” she complied dryly.

  “What’s the first three tags under the private static void index?”

  Turnstyle pointed to the corner of the dance hall, where three sparkling pinball machines sat. She carefully pronounced their titles: “Theatre of Magic. Medieval Madness. Cirqus Voltaire.”

  Seedees continued his phony interrogation. “What component of decision theory did you employ to . . .”

  Seedees voice was replaced with a sharp bang. “Please, please, please . . . OK. Enough. Stop!” shouted Petey.

  His frustration lifted Turnstyle’s confidence. “Hit that button, Petey. Get in the game. Right now. Tick tock tick tock.”

  “OK. OK. It’s only money.” The sound of a single keystroke echoed through the dance hall.

  Everyone wanted to cheer, but Turnstyle raised a cautious hand into the air between them. She looked back and forth from Cellophane to her loyal followers. Nothing happened, except a few acid green pixilated screen duffs.

  Cellophane gave her a puzzled stare. “Something’s wrong.”

  Turnstyle put the phone to her lips. “What the fuck, Petey?”

  “It’s not on my end. Check yourself!”

  Cellophane ran a snap-diagnostic and anxiously combed her fingers through her ponytail, then jumped to her feet. “It’s there. It’s there!”

  “I heard that,” said Petey. “We good?”

  Turnstyle raise her head triumphantly. “You’re dismissed! Mutha-fucka!” She hung up before Petey could say another word, and shouted, “Now it’s a party.”

  The bar opened and the music blared. They danced, even the Ladies Who Lunch. They flailed and sauntered and shimmied and tossed their hair into the air, immersed in an uninhibited victory dance.

  Turnstyle watched from the bandstand, still shaking from the tightrope she’d just walked. She’d conned the most influential man in America with a simple time-shift maneuver, as easy as queen takes king — checkmate.

  “Turnstyle. Look here,” whispered Cellophane.

  She leaned over and looked carefully at a user log from Cellophane’s snap-diagnostic. She couldn’t see the anomaly at first. “What is it?”

  “There. See that? That one stupid character. You can barely find it in this one line of cut-and-paste code, unless you search for it manually, right down to its font size. It means this whole transaction has been tracked by someone outside of Petey’s bank.”

  Turnstyle traced the line with the tip of her little finger.

  Cellophane said nervously, “Someone else was in there. Right along with us. They were already in our account — and Petey’s account, too.”

  “Who? I don’t see it. Who?”

  Cellophane moused over a tiny character buried in a snippet of code, and increased its size tenfold.

  “See it now? The upside down martini glass with dangling swizzle stick. You see it? It means — the party’s over.”

  Turnstyle stammered, “Tuke!”

  Max and Lily followed Catrina Enders into the heart of the cavernous mountain. MacIan had been spirited away but they hoped to find him in good hands. Their journey from the Quaker Meeting House had drained them, but their spirits lifted as they entered a new world.

  Max had never seen the slightest hint of life up here. It was inconceivable, but here he was. “Is MacIan going to be all right?”

  “If he can be fixed,” said Catrina, “he will be. Some of the best doctors in the world are here. And we certainly have the very best facility. He was breathing when he came in, so his chances are good.”

  They walked through an area filled with unusual devices that would normally have caught Max’s eye, but he was consumed by MacIan’s potential death. “Is there anything we can do?”

  “Sorry, no. Not right now. All you can do is wait.”

  Max slowed to a halt. “Wait? If that’s the case, there’s something I should do. Can I take the Peregrine?”

  “Of course. It might as well be yours,” said Catrina, regretting the morbid implication. “We have others.”

  “Can I come back here?”

  “Yes. It’s in >Destinations.”

  “Let’s go,” said Max, waving furiously to Lily. “I gotta show you something.”

  He and Lily jumped into the Peregrine. Max tapped >Main Menu >Destinations. The list appeared, and he jabbed his thumb onto >Guttenberg NJ.

  They roared off in a blur.

  53

  Bishop Virginia McWilliams Hendrix stormed through he
r palatial private chambers, eyes dark and resentful. Petey had declared, most vehemently, that he was not to be disturbed while working on his floating greenhouses. But this was different. A lowly neighborhood watch had just crushed the mighty Leprechaun Nation. She stormed off across the sculpture garden and down to the paved dock.

  She was struck by how long the flotilla of barges had become. There were now seven strung along the dock, front to back; she couldn’t tell how many side by side, and huge tugboats were attached to each end. The kind of tugboats that bring oil tankers through the Verrazano Strait and park them in New York Harbor. As she got closer, she could see that not all the barges were greenhouses. Several that must have arrived recently were extremely fancy houseboats with sundecks and hot tubs.

  Along the dock, a swarm of workmen were fortifying the flotilla with hundreds of small stainless steel coolers. They tipped their hats and went about their business as she passed, each puzzled by the look of disbelief on her face. This was certainly excessive, but she was used to Petey’s eccentricities; he could afford them. She spotted him and waved. He waved back and quickly jumped ashore.

  “What is all this?” she said.

  He took her by the shoulders and steered her back toward the sculpture garden. “Oh, ya know . . . just another hobby gone wild.”

  “Well, that’s not the only thing that’s gone wild. The NPF has attacked and destroyed those Leprechauns who were tracking down your friend, Tuke, in Pittsburgh.”

  “Holy Hell. So they are willing to attack,” he said, smiling inwardly. “I knew Murthy would screw this up.”

  “Thomka usually keeps him in line. I don’t know what happened.”

  “Where is Murthy?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Where’s Thomka?”

  “No one’s heard from him since last night.”

  “Call Murthy and tell him to straighten this shit out.” He shooed her away. “I told you there’d be a spark that’d set things off. This Leprechaun thing could be it.”

  Virginia rushed back to her bedroom and dialed Murthy. He answered as he always did. “Hello, my darling. How are you?”