Independence Day Plague

by Carla Lee Suson

  Dressed down in old jeans and t-shirt, he passed for one of the many unemployed littering the walkways and park benches, or local nature zealots, Greenies that came to town to sell their produce. Most urban dwellers considered the Greenies only slightly better than the jobless. The farmer types eschewed all things technological and yet often stood first in line at the many free clinics around the area. The right shirt with the right saying let him fade in as one of a dozen new religious zealots, street missionaries promising a better life or the end of the world. Mitchell moved in and out of society without leaving a mental wake behind, a soulless man lost in a soulless world.

  He felt such lack of identity when he looked in the mirror. His life had been wrapped up in BL-4. The man who looked out wasn’t the same man who graduated with honors from Johns Hopkins. He wasn’t the same man that existed a year ago. Mitchell, the man, had been replaced with Mitchell, the murderer, with over two hundred kills already preying like leeches on his consciousness. He splashed the water on his face, wiped, and then placed the towel over the mirror. No time for memories now. It was time to work on the grand plan. If a murderer he was, then a legendary murderer he would be.

  Mitchell rubbed his eyes and sat down at the large, battered oak desk as the small refrigerator and cabinet top autoclave hummed behind him. The desk was barely big enough as a countertop space and had to be modified with several sheets of folded paper to make it stable enough for delicate work. The bits of machinery and circuits laid in neat rows across the chipped top. The printed designs for an automated aerosol unit and timer were stacked neatly to one side and emblazoned with Internet advertising. Building the units separately was not difficult, and the timer needed only a small modification. The largest portion, the liquid reservoir, contained fifty milliliters of fluid. The prototype was slightly larger than palm-sized without the fluid reservoir and irregularly shaped, but its lack of contours didn’t bother Mitchell. The black gizmo-look would blend into the other machinery in the air duct to the casual observer.

  Mitchell snapped in the large polyethylene test tube of water and carried the prototype outside to hang on the clothesline, a rotting relic of twentieth-century life that was common in the decaying Maryland neighborhood. The machine hung heavy on the hook, making the rope sag in the center. Mitchell peered through the slates of the seven-foot fence, checking neighbor houses for lights and movement. All was silent. He stepped back to the corner of the house, fifteen feet away before activating the small, radio-controlled switch in the pocket of his black jeans.

  A loud pop went off and the jiggling aerator explosively sprayed high-pressure liquid in four directions, blasting against the house and across the faded cedar fence.

  He smiled humorlessly. It worked. Now, nothing would stop him from completing his plans for the Fourth of July celebration. Plenty of time remained for building the many other aerosol systems and the small explosive devices.

  He left the wet gizmo dripping on the line as he stepped into the old house. After shaving and showering, he stood in front of the clothes closet, examining the different personalities represented there. The hangers held denims, cloth-checkered work shirts, stylish suits, button down dress shirts, a military uniform, and some janitor grays. He reached for the personality he was to become today, the blue shirt and pants of the Metro repairman.

  Mike Dorado carried his coffee into the glass cage that constituted his and McAfee’s office. The station was in the heart of DC, a few blocks from the Smithsonian and located as part of the old but prestigious L’Enfant offices. Most of the other detectives had desks scattered across the large common room. At times, the noise would be roaring loud and nothing was ever private. When an elderly lieutenant retired last year, Dorado used his senior time in rank to snatch up the precious office space before the administration could take it away. Now he often wondered if the glass kept the noise out or just imprisoned him in.

  The door swung open as Dorado hung his black coat on a hook next to McAfee’s brown one. Captain Starker walked in. “Where’s McAfee?”

  “Hasn’t shown up yet, but he’ll be here soon.” Dorado lied. His partner probably was jawing it up with some pretty coworker over by the coffee pot.

  “That’s okay. I want to talk to you private for a while.” The captain squished his large frame into McAfee’s rolling chair, which groaned under the weight. Dorado didn’t know much about Starker’s early life but would bet money that the man played football in college. Although large, he moved with an aged grace often found in former athletes. Dorado suspected the captain never had trouble running down a suspect or thumping a guy into a wall when needed.

  Starker tossed a piece of paper across the two end-to-end desks. The first memo was interagency, having been circulated among many of the district’s adjacent police agencies.

  Dorado stared at it and frowned. “What’s this?”

  Starker leaned forward. “I want you to head the Fourth of July task force this year.”

  “Hell no, that’s Benson’s job.”

  “He retired as of thirty minutes ago.”

  That was odd, Dorado thought. Benson liked the limelight of the task forces. “He did it voluntarily?”

  “Let’s just say he was highly encouraged to withdraw.” Starker paused, his brown face passive. “I need a good man this year, a better man than Benson.”

  “Why me? There are a lot of good men out there.”

  “You got a feel for this kind of work, Mike. You got seniority. You won’t be alone. We’ll be working with FBI, the Park Police, the other police agencies, Homeland Security, DEA, and hell even CIA if we feel we need them. You don’t suck up to the Feds. I want someone who guards our jurisdiction without getting into a public pissing contest.”

  “That’s important? I thought we were all about interagency cooperation.”

  Starker shrugged, “We are, but we’re not about sitting back, letting the FBI run the show and then putting the blame on us when it all goes to shit. The freak show’s going to be worse than ever before. We got extra duties in helping escort the damn Chinese delegation around and then the normal holiday crap only magnified about ten times. I need a person less interested in politics and more interested in policing.” Starker handed him a memo. A brief glance told him that it was the interdepartmental announcement of his new position, signed and dated.

  Dorado sighed deeply and rubbed his chin. He hated it when Starker got complimentary. It was only the soft glove around the brick. He wouldn’t be allowed to turn this honor down.

  Interdepartmental task forces, especially ones involving the federals, had a habit of degenerating into finger pointing and ass covering so much that little actual investigation was ever accomplished. The rivalry often stopped communications and territorial snarling skyrocketed.

  Dorado, a street cop for seventeen years, preferred being in the heart of the battle instead of planning strategy. With a psychological profiling background, he had a knack for telling bullshit from reality when it came to potential threats. Captain Starker had hinted about him permanently taking over the terrorist unit before and this acted as one more step in that direction. Problem was, he felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of threats for any given year. Terrorist activities ranged from school bomb threats by pranksters to some alien nut steeped in jingoistic fever, and, the most dangerous, the carefully calculated and well-funded terrorist group. Working though the organized groups took good intel, which was largely the job of Homeland Security. Those men wanted the glory and the police were only called in to mop up other people’s messes. Now terrorism for the police was any disgruntled kid with a gun, any suicidal wirehead intent on not going out alone, or the corp clone out for revenge.

  He balled the paper up and tossed it onto his partner’s desk just as McAfee walked in the door. “Hope that’s not my promotion,” he said as he leaned against the doorframe, stained white coffee mug in hand. Starker greeted him with a nod.

  “You better cancel your
dating schedule for the next few weeks,” Dorado growled.

  “What’s up, Chief?” Brian McAfee branded the nickname on Dorado when they first became partners three years ago. It referred to Dorado’s brown skin and straight black hair, Native American features inherited from his half-Mexican, half-Sioux father. McAfee himself was straight out of European stock: young and lithe with cream skin and brown curly hair tending towards red.

  “We’re on the DCPD task force for the Fourth.”

  “Shit, not the Chinese delegation!”

  Stark turned to face him, “You got something against the Chinese?”

  “Nah, just don’t like getting spit on. We’ll have to keep the damn protesters back from the delegates and they spit on us.” McAfee sipped from his coffee mug.

  “We’re doing terrorist threat assessment with the Feds.” Dorado said.

  “Interagency politics, what fun!” McAfee shrugged, his pale face broke into a wry grin, “Better than crowd control. At least the nut squad lets you sit down once in a while.” He plucked up the paper ball and smoothed it out for reading. “Hey, you’re the DC liaison.” He turned to Starker with a grin. “Doesn’t say a word about me though, amigo.”

  Starker grinned, “If Dorado wants you then you’re in. Mike, let me know who else you want immediately by the end of the day. We’ll talk other personnel and resources, as the day gets closer. Take as many as you need but for hell’s sake, don’t strip the department.”

  “Do we get hazard pay just for putting up with the FBI assholes?” McAfee quipped.

  Starker rose, “The first meeting’s tomorrow. I’ll forward the information to your email.” He left, quietly shutting the glass door behind him.

  McAfee looked thoughtful. “It’s for real then. We’re on threat assessment.” He picked up the original memo and read it through again before speaking. “Says here that you and your immediate members get a temporary raise in pay. Boss man’s being unusually generous.”

  “Not really. Benson always got to pick a small group to help him with investigations. If I’m stuck partner, you are too. I was thinking of getting Olsen, Charro, and Taylor for now. We’ll bring others on as the day gets closer.”

  “Why Olsen?” McAfee leaned back in his chair. “Any of the Comp-Control folks will do and some folks say she’s a real cold bitch, hard to work with.”

  Dorado smiled. He had immediately liked Sherrie Olsen when she started with the DC police's technology department. She didn’t take a lot of crap. True. She was cool to the point of glacial, but she was an expert at gaining tiny bits of critical information from millions of databases on the Internet and the newer hypernet systems. She was also beautiful in the blond-haired, blue-eyed beauty queen sort of way. Dorado watched men come on to her only to get that frozen “fuck-off” glare that made them back away. She never flirted. McAfee, one of the department’s oldest bachelors at age 35, had dated his way through most of the female staff but met the hard wall of ice in Olsen. “Maybe this is your chance to impress her.”

  Dorado got up and looked out of the walls of their small office. For a moment, he glanced at his reflection in the glass. Black hair framed a square brown face out of sync with the gray-blue eyes, a gift from his white mother. His forty-two years showed in the few wrinkles around the mouth and eyes and a mild hunching of the back and shoulders. “God!” he murmured, “another damn nut fest.”

  He turned to face the younger man. “Brian, this is going to be some serious shit this year. Lots of folks are going to be looking to make a statement because of this being America’s 250th birthday. Threats were already coming in three months ago. The FBI will be worried about the Koreans, Chinese, and Arabs because they’re into the big picture. That’s who the President’s pissed off recently with trade embargos. That’s fine because they got the intel for the big picture.

  “I’m worried about the small picture. The Greenie-groups who want to blow technology all back to the Stone Age or the wire-head nihilist whose trying to sarin gas his way out of this world. Did you know that at least six different religious groups have declared this the year of Revelations? At least three of them have headquarters here, and the God’s Path group has declared their leader the new messiah. Remember Jonestown, Guyana?”

  “Before my time, Chief. I was born in 1991, but I’ve read about it; mass suicide, death of hundreds due to a self-proclaimed Messiah.”

  “God knows how we’ll stop some corporate clone that has a nervous breakdown and a gun. Most of the clones and suicidal wireheads will be the patrol’s problem because they won’t telegraph their actions ahead of time. They aren’t making a statement.”

  Dorado sighed heavily. Over the last fifty years, society had fractured. Corporate life came to mean great risks and great riches for those that could endure the eighty-plus hour workweek. Computers meant more multi-tasking and higher production expectations but the human psyche hadn’t evolved that far. The international business world swelled at a rate of about a million suit-and-tie-hopefuls a year, chewing up college graduates right out of school. The unemployment threat was higher the older the clone got and nervous breakdowns and suicides were at thirty percent and climbing. The incidents of office shootings were rising as well. The clones flooded the street, quietly talking into mini-mikes and furiously pegging away at handheld comp-units, oblivious to the people around them. When one went postal, it was often very messy, very public, and not always alone.

  In rebellion, many folks fled the technologically tense world for something milder. Many set up large group farms, some operating under a stated religious philosophy. They came to town, selling their items and leading an undisturbed life. Others stayed in towns opening shops with tags of organic this or handcrafted that, implying that the old way beat new factory processed any day. To the police, the Greenies often played the role as victim more than criminal but there were the occasional incidents. More than one back-to-nature group or zealous religious cult sought to reverse world industrial/political trends through blowing up power plants or releasing chemical or biological contaminants. Their brand of terrorism often came as home grown as their vegetables.

  On the other end of the societal scale were the wire-heads. Cyberbionics had become the new drug. It took the tattoo and body piercing high art form mixed with computer chips on certain nerve centers. The wire-heads took it over and created a semi-illegal microchip technology that made sex ecstatic, life mellower, colors brighter and drug-induced hallucinations orgasmic. Other chips induced mild pain for those so oriented. All this technology was possible due the battery storage issues and the micro battery breakthrough of 2015. Wireheads stood out in the crowds. Their cyborg-style look with wires protruding from the base of the skull leading into various points in the body made them easy to spot.

  Legal jacking units came from legitimate surgery performed in a doctor’s office. However, cheap, illegal hack shops existed all over the city; dirty shops with self-styled surgeons selling cut-rate equivalents of the same type of lifestyle the wealthy paid hundreds of thousands for. Hardwiring into the brain also caused some unexpected results. If a hack shop wire-head walked too close to a high emitting power source, they risked turning into a raging, rabid-style killer in a crowd. The change flicked on like a light switch and putting a bullet in the heart or head was the only way to stop them. Injuring the wire-head didn't even slow him down. No pain in the brain meant no control in the body. Wire-head attacks increased enough over the last few years that some of the police referred to wire-heads as “the walking dead.”

  “So, we are talking what? Homegrown terrorists?” McAfee replied.

  Dorado nodded, “Yeah, maybe. America has its share. It’s just that this year's special. Ending 250 years of American Independence makes a great statement and we expect the crowds to move past the three million mark all over DC. We know Park Police plans on using barricades again around the Mall. There’s talk of shutting down all the streets surrounding the White House, Capitol
Building and Smithsonian area within a ten-block radius. It’ll be a nightmare in traffic, but someone else’s nightmare. We got to stop the statement-makers.” The wooden s chair squeaked in protest as he relaxed back. “We’ve got over a month and we need the best here assessing threats and following leads, not out on foot patrol. We’ll listen to evidence as it comes in, arrest first, and ask questions later. If you have any recommendations, partner, say so because it may get to be a new brand of ugly this year.”

  McAfee nodded. “I hear you. I’ll give it some thought.” He grinned broadly, “Don’t worry, amigo. By July Fifth, the only one that will be playing CYA will be the FBI.”

  Later that afternoon, Dorado met with Charro and Taylor, quietly recruiting each detective. Their assignments mimicked their regular work, investigating events or threats and look for greater patterns. Over the years, Taylor became the department's expert on white-collar crime, fitting well into the stock market crowd. Charro's beat involved the gangs. His knowledge of their changing political scene was unmatched.

  Dorado left Olsen for last, as he knew she might reject the assignment. Jacobs, the head of the Comp-Control department, distributed most special assignments, keeping the career impact ones for himself. Besides himself, he considered any one researcher as good as the other twelve in the office. Dorado knew otherwise.

  That afternoon, he carried a diet soda he had seen her drink before, a bag of chocolate chip cookies, and his usual black coffee mug down to Comp-Control in the basement. The computer room had long tables with ten flat terminal units hardwired into the five-year-old antiquated mainframe. Thick cable wires weaved in and out of the gray walls, the lifeline connection to the monstrous Internet society and smaller, faster networks devoted to education, science, and business databases, the hypernets. Each programmer occupied an assigned area indicated by a two-foot-by-two-foot box against the wall and an imbedded keyboard into the table. Two light beams shone out from the wall unit: one blue light that became the holographic keyboard and the other beam directed to the privacy faceplate of the researcher. The faceplate acted as a monitor but reminded Dorado of a welder’s mask. The screens danced and flickered before he could spy on any one person's project.