The Beam: Season Two

by Sean Platt

Isaac touched his cheek. “That’s not a glitch. I was pissed at Natasha and punched my office door. It rebounded and hit me in the face.”

  Micah knew it wasn’t a glitch, of course. When Isaac had asked to meet him in one of their shared virtual spaces, he’d allowed Isaac to log in first, as he always did when joining a meetup. Once Isaac was in the space he’d nicknamed “the library,” Micah had done the other thing he always did — asked his hot-hacked canvas to tune into the room’s occupant and report back anything anomalous. Usually, the anomalous thing was a rapid heartbeat or abnormal levels of tension, but with Isaac, it was a bruise where repair nanos were working hard in the real world on his brother’s real body. He’d assumed that Natasha had hit Isaac, but this was much funnier.

  “You should adjust your rig’s settings,” Micah suggested. “Seeing as you’re not actually here, it can project you however you’d like. Have it erase bruises and cuts that haven’t healed, things like that. Oh, and you should make your hairline accurate while you’re in there.”

  “This is how my hairline really is.”

  “Oh.” Micah knew that too. In an age of eternal youth and nanobot restructuring for those with endless credits, only someone like Isaac could still somehow manage less than perfection.

  “Anyway, I need your help,” said Isaac.

  Micah chuckled. He knew exactly why Isaac had called, and the fact that he’d requested a full immersion — contrived, transparent, and pathetic — meant that he wanted to discuss something that he considered to be a major emergency. Micah even knew what the emergency was, seeing as he’d given Natasha the idea that had caused it.

  “I’m your little brother,” said Micah. “You’re the one who’s supposed to be giving me help. Protecting me from bullies, perhaps.”

  “Natasha is out of control, Micah.”

  “…or from rebounding office doors.”

  “She’s planning a big concert the day after Shift. I don’t even see how it’s possible to pull something like that together so fast, but this is Natasha, and Natasha always gets her way.”

  Micah smiled internally. It wasn’t only Natasha.

  “It’s so obviously a dig at me rather than anything legitimate. She doesn’t need to humiliate me. She could schedule the concert for later. But do you know what? This concerns you too, Micah. Natasha’s making you look bad.”

  “Me?”

  “Enterprise. She’s making you all look like sore winners.”

  “So we’ve won?”

  Isaac cleared his throat, the immersion rig perfectly re-creating his nervous tic for Micah’s virtual eyes. “You know what I mean. She’s shifting, fine. She wants to hold a big event to raise money once she’s surrendered her Directorate dole, fine. But to play it off as a celebration? To hear her talk, it’s like she’s being released from a Wild East prison. Like she’s clearing her name or something. We let her do this, and we’re sending the NAU a message that Directorate somehow captured Natasha and forced her to live as a trained monkey. But that’s not fair. She chose Directorate, like everyone else chooses their party. To play her departure off as a victory is garish. It has no class.”

  Micah shrugged. “I don’t know what you expect me to do about it.”

  “Stop her. You know how.”

  “I can’t do that, Isaac.”

  “Of course you can. You have sway. I don’t have the same influence. You make a few calls, have a few meetings, and all of this disappears. Natasha won’t be able to get her permits for the venue, or the police detachments she’ll probably insist on to provide security. Or to wax her car.”

  Micah gave Isaac a what do you want from me? face. “The police are a Directorate function,” he said.

  “Like I control the police!”

  Micah watched his brother with concealed amusement. Isaac had framed this as a meeting, but it had never been a meeting. It was a chance for Isaac to beg. It was a chance for Isaac to plead with Micah to put the big machines into motion and choke the parties where they needed choking. It was so obvious, Micah should have asked the environment to add a padded kneeler to Isaac’s side of the room.

  “Maybe you should call Dominic Long,” Micah suggested.

  “You call Dominic!”

  Micah’s eyes hardened. “Get ahold of yourself, Isaac. You might not actually head the Directorate, but the world acts as if you do. Every school kid knows that Presidents Reese and Vale run the parties, but every goddamned gossip sheet talks like the quarreling Ryans are in charge: strong and solid Micah on the Enterprise side and his sad, pathetic brother, Isaac, on Directorate.”

  “Fuck you, Micah. I come to you with a problem, and all you can do is insult me?”

  “Fuck me?” said Micah. “Fuck you! You think it’s an insult? You don’t think it’s simply the truth about the public’s perception? Goddammit, Isaac, I don’t want to lower my game and let you win like I always had to when we played Monopoly as kids, but you don’t seem to be able to keep up if I don’t. Don’t you see how…how sad it is when you have to let your older brother win games because he’ll never win otherwise? I tried looking up to you, but somehow things always ended up the other way around. I’m telling you what you already know, if you’d have the guts to look at things with an honest eye. Do you really think the public doesn’t have a favorite? You always lose, Isaac. Always. I didn’t even try to trump you with that stupid speech you gave after the riots. Yet somehow, thanks to your stunning incompetence, I managed to anyway.”

  “Oh, that’s nice.”

  “You’re too goddamn timid. You want help? Help yourself! I feel like I’m putting this show on alone, playing both of the parts. It’s not Micah fighting with Isaac. It’s Micah versus Micah, with my hand up your ass like a puppet.”

  “Oh, come on…”

  “You don’t think that’s how it is? Then tell me: What happened with the riots, Isaac? Starting with the one at Natasha’s concert?”

  Isaac’s forehead bunched, his dark eyebrows drawing together.

  “I fucking started them!” Micah shouted. “What the hell did you think happened? Did you think a bunch of your pathetic, do-nothing layabouts took it upon themselves to rise up? If they were the type of people who would do that, they’d already be Enterprise!”

  “You started the riots?”

  Micah threw up his hands. “Of course! Noah Fucking West, Isaac! Nothing was happening, and you were oblivious. A month before Shift, and Enterprise versus Directorate was starting to feel like a bucket of water against a smoldering pile of leaves. You miss the most obvious things! It’s fucking Monopoly all over again. You land on Boardwalk, and you pass it up. Who does that, Isaac?”

  He wasn’t being figurative. Isaac had literally done that in a Monopoly game at the age of fifteen. The idiot had already owned Park Place.

  “That only happened one time, and I didn’t have the money,” said Isaac.

  “Mortgage your other properties! Take a loan! Steal from the bank when I wasn’t looking! It’s motherfucking Boardwalk!”

  “So the solution — then and today — is to cheat,” Isaac said. “Steal. Start riots then blame the other side.”

  Micah rolled his eyes and shook his head. His lips firmed as he issued a mental command to the canvas running the simulation. Isaac was blown backward as if shoved hard by an invisible hand. The backs of his legs struck a chair. Isaac looked up in shock, and Micah shoved him again from across the room, this time causing him to totter over the chair and spill to the floor. None of it should have been possible in a legitimate sim, but Micah made a point to always, always hold a hidden ace.

  “Of course the solution is to cheat!” Micah yelled. “If you can’t get what you want, you keep changing things until you can! The fucking wheel was put into your hands whether you like it or not, Isaac. Steer it! They’d fire you if they could, but it’s not your official title as Czar of Internal Satisfaction that matters to the public. All that matters is that you’re my brother, and regre
ttably, you can’t be fired from that. So if you can’t handle your side of the game, I have no choice but to play it for you, just like I always have.”

  Isaac was still looking around as if trying to see what had tripped him. He was beyond aghast. He seemed offended, as if the sun had failed to rise and he was taking the insult to natural order personally.

  “How did you push me down?” he said.

  Micah felt the last of his cool evaporating. He stormed across the room and roared, “I cheated!”

  “You can’t do that.”

  The statement was absurd enough to shatter Micah’s rage. He slipped past angry and into something closer to resignation. He turned away from Isaac, who was still on the floor, and approached the library’s far end. He wanted to put his face in his palms and surrender. But the problem wouldn’t go away as long as Isaac existed, so after a moment he turned back, shook his head, and continued in a lower voice.

  “Isaac,” he said.

  “Noah Fucking West, Micah. You can’t hack inputs like that. It’s…it’s…”

  “Get up. Stop acting so shocked, and get to your fucking feet.”

  Isaac did then stood, waiting for orders.

  Micah sat in one of the overstuffed chairs against the shelves of virtual books. They were all complete and full, packed with information and stories from cover to back. Micah had insisted on it when he’d had the simulation designed. Blank books made him sad and would feel like an insult to his role as head of Capital Protection. For Micah, “Capital Protection” wasn’t a political catchphrase. Humanity’s cache of knowledge and brainpower was, in Micah’s mind, legitimately in jeopardy. His brother was living proof.

  Micah crossed one leg over the other then took a deep breath.

  “Why do the parties exist, Isaac?” he said.

  “To provide two options, to suit two different kinds of people — those who want security first and those who want freedom first, each willing to sacrifice the other attribute in order to get…”

  “That’s the civics class answer.” Micah said, stopping him. “But you know it’s not the real one. The answer is the first part: to provide two options. It doesn’t matter what those options are. And do you know why?”

  Isaac rolled his eyes. He’d heard this lecture plenty. Unfortunately, thought Micah, it never sank in.

  “To provide a sense of choice,” Micah said. “It doesn’t matter if neither option is any good, so long as there’s choice. Something to give people the illusion of control. In reality, our society isn’t divided into Enterprise and Directorate. It’s much more accurately divided into rich and poor. Poor Enterprise, poor Directorate — between those two, the distinctions don’t matter. You and me? We may have different designations, but in actuality we’re in the same group: the wealthy. Almost everyone below us, no matter whether they’re Enterprise or Directorate, is in the poor group. You do see that, don’t you?”

  Isaac sighed then sat in a chair opposite Micah. He wasn’t protesting, despite the repetitiveness of the lesson. Maybe he wasn’t irredeemable after all.

  “Shift isn’t about security versus freedom or socialism versus capitalism,” Micah continued. “It isn’t about you versus me. It’s about giving the people of this union an Us and a Them. Whatever fate they end up with, our system gives them the illusion that they are choosing it. They’ll know who they can bond with and who they should blame for everything that’s wrong. Us and Them. It gives their lives a framework. It gives them an identity and a purpose.”

  “I know,” said Isaac.

  “You used to know better,” said Micah, shaking his head. “It’s easy to forget how hard things were when the parties were formed, but we can’t forget those days or their reasons, Isaac. The NAU is isolated from the rest of the world, and in a way, that makes our economy a house of cards. Sure, we have The Beam. It’s easy to feel like even the poorest people, only able to access through handhelds, old canvases, or even public terminals, have it all, but they don’t — and the worst thing in the world would be for everyone to realize that truth at the same time.”

  Isaac sighed then stood.

  “This thing with Natasha…” he said.

  “She’ll do what she’ll do.”

  “It’ll make Directorate look terrible. The parties are supposed to fight, but it’s lopsided if…” Something seemed to come to him. “It’ll screw up the system if one party has total dominance.”

  Micah laughed. “No matter how good Enterprise looks, and no matter how much more sensible it is, Directorate will never want for members. Being Enterprise requires work, and does nothing to hide it. Directorate, on the other hand, grants its members permission to be lazy. That’s a powerful thing, and it’s why Directorate has so consistently held the Senate.” He smirked. “For now, anyway.”

  “Directorate aren’t lazy. They’re harder, more honest workers than your connivers and criminals.”

  Micah gave another small laugh. “Okay.”

  “You have to stop Natasha, Micah. It’s not just insulting to the party. It’s insulting to me personally.”

  “Exactly. To you personally.”

  “As the perceived head of the Directorate.”

  “Perceived. Personally. What really matters here, Isaac? The good of the union or your precious feelings?”

  “Please, Micah. It’ll ruin me. They’ll oust me.”

  “Who will oust you?”

  “The Directorate Party. I’ll lose my position.”

  Micah’s head turned slowly. He watched his brother, pushing down the urge to comment on his abject weakness.

  “Let me be honest with you, Isaac. If it was possible to lose your position, you’d have been kicked out already. But the quarreling Ryans are too big of a draw to lose. They keep you because you’re my brother, and that means that your job is safe.”

  “Micah…”

  “What, Isaac?”

  Isaac’s pleading eyes bored holes into Micah. He looked like a lost puppy. It made Micah want to kick him.

  “Just…do it as a favor. Okay? A non-political, non-strategic favor I’m asking of you. As a brother.”

  Micah sighed. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Just get her to reframe it. Have them deny her permits for a few days. Suggest that she position it as a career reboot rather than an escape from slavery. She’s not just a high-profile defector, Micah. She’s my wife. The press will eviscerate me. Nobody will ever take me seriously again. She’ll stay with me, too, so every day I’ll have to sit there and take it, and the entire NAU will get to watch as she crushes my nuts in a vice. Isn’t it enough that she’s leaving? Do we really need her to rub it in my face, Shift or no Shift?”

  Micah exhaled, his breath heavy. “Fine.”

  “Thanks, Micah.”

  Micah nodded.

  From across District Zero, Isaac logged out of the simulation. His avatar blipped out of the library, and his little brother was left alone in the big chair against the bookshelf, fingers drumming on high-thread-count upholstery.

  Chapter 4

  Dominic was acutely aware of the armrests under his forearms. He couldn’t get comfortable. Fabric kept sticking to his skin. He was also aware of his sweat, but he didn’t want to speak aloud to the mag train’s canvas to request cooling. He felt as if he were engaged in a silent quarrel with the canvas and didn’t want to be the first to break the silence. Cracking first felt weak even though the canvas wasn’t human and didn’t care…and even though the train’s canvas didn’t touch the dirty one back at the NPS station where he’d made his deal with Agent Austin Smith.

  Fuck technology, thought Dominic. Let that bitch speak first.

  He fidgeted, feeling his arms stick to the armrests. He watched the countryside glide by outside the windows. The trick on a mag train was to never watch anything closer than a half mile away. You had to look into the distance and ignore the flashes that your brain might argue were trees, old utility poles, livestock fences,
and houses. If you stared into the distance, the train’s breakneck pace was visually tolerable. You might be able to dupe yourself into believing you were on a conventional train pulling out of a station, its metaphorical sails set for romantic, far-off destinations. That was better than feeling like human cargo, expediently shuttled off into the Appalachian Mountains. Because after all, weren’t the mountains where Dominic had always disposed of his problems?

  Crumb.

  Chrissy.

  Agent Austin hadn’t cared about either of Dominic’s earlier human transgressions. They’d started as troublesome remainders, and then were simply forgotten. It didn’t matter that Chrissy had never been sent to Respero as she should have, and apparently it didn’t matter that Crumb hadn’t either. The data theft at DZPD two weeks ago must have been Austin snooping for something to use against Dominic. It even made sense that the information thief had touched Dominic’s records of Crumb because it just meant the snoop was accumulating evidence of Dominic’s disobedience, like a squirrel storing nuts for winter. The agent had called him out. Dominic was a cop who questioned rules and followed his gut instead, just as Austin himself had done with the child diddler in his own story.

  The data theft didn’t matter. No one was after him now that NPS had their deal. It made sense, too. Because why would anyone else be snooping for Dominic’s dirty laundry?

  But as Dominic sat in the stuffy train compartment, he found that it didn’t settle. His honed instincts protested the idea like a puzzle piece that didn’t fit. But still, he forced himself to let it go. The bigger issue was the deal, and Leo, and the moondust. And, of course, Organa itself.

  He’d trusted Leo. Worse: Leo, as a mentor, had helped to shape the way Dominic thought and looked at the world. That almost suggested that Leo had taught Dominic to trust him. Leo had gotten to Dominic before he was a cop with a sharpened nose able to smell bullshit. And Leo had lied. For all these years, Leo had lied to him.

  Or had he? Dominic still wasn’t sure.

  Everything that Austin had given him — in person during their session at the station then on a slip drive for Dominic to review later — seemed to suggest that the stories the agent had told Dominic about Leo were true. Leo really had run Gaia’s Hammer prior to Organa. He really was over 120 years old. And despite Dominic always seeing his old friend and mentor as an unenhanced hippie, he really did seem to have once been enhanced right out of his computerized asshole. Perhaps he’d had his nanos flushed so he could age naturally by the time he’d met young Dom Long, but there was an easy way to find out if he’d once been half machine. Specifically, if it were true, he’d still be half machine. If the metal under Leo’s skin didn’t interfere with his life today any more than it had helped him break skulls and smash through Plasteel all those years ago, there would have been no reason to have it removed. He’d still have it today…and that would make him heavy as a motherfucker, his secret on display for anyone who tried to pick him up.