by Grady Ward
For him? Perhaps a wildlife preserve. Yes. That would be perfect. From the wilderness springs life; green, natural; biodiversity is really another name for a bonobo raping and eating its own young. He rose, brushed his top coat lightly and turned from the river to his meeting.
Dominion Jones, Esq. introduced her two foreign visitors she simply referred to singularly as the “Angel” to the members of the Triax. Dominion Jones was tall and was wearing her customary costume: a tailored dark grey suit, almost charcoal. Despite the weather and working within the heart of the Church offices, long black leather gloves, which seemed almost gauntlets, Qu thought. Her black hair was straight and long. It usually hung loose over her shoulders. Her appearance was striking, which probably explained why she didn’t speak more than the minimum she needed to accomplish what she wanted. Although the three men of the Triax—world’s most influential credit rating agencies—knew each other well in the external world of Aaa to D, investment grades, watches, warnings, events, downgrades, and worthless default junk, they persisted in substituting their Triax names when thinking about themselves and each other, as if this were a fairy tale that was walled off from the world, deniable to both authorities and to themselves at, night, fearing the instant penetration of pure reflection just before falling asleep. In the meeting as if a cosplay, they were changed over from their suits: they also wore reflective robes of pure silk over their nakedness. The Church ceremonial robes had adornments of golden thread devices and cartouches and symbols of the crux representing the intersecting dimensions of the mind.
“Angel 1” had travelled a long way from Beijing with his assistant, a quiet man, also with military-length jet black hair. An early middle-aged man not quite finished with youth, Angel 1 spoke with a Chinese-accent in otherwise beautiful English. Its cadence suggested a military background, while its contents suggested a man sentimental in love, or dying: “The five agents are in dance, from a distance it may be a martial exercise, but it may also be a motion of love, or the predicate movements of an impending surgery. They have labored for thousands of years and now are ready to meet their successors. The Wood feeds Fire. Will you be consumed or will you create the Earth?”
Angel 1 paused for a moment and looked at each of the puzzled three as a reflective uncle, kindly, but a moment too long for simple affection.
“I am sorry to wax poetical. A weakness, an affectation. I have many. Let me plainly speak rather as a tradesman. “In a few days, or weeks, the event will happen. I cannot tell you what it is because-as in the self-fulfilling prophecies of your own assessments—its swiftness and secrecy is a crucial source of its power. He glanced at the Dominion, who seemed motionless, watching and listening. “You will know when it happens. It will be a shock, seemingly a devastation that will affect all affairs in the United States and the world.
“But that is only its appearance. The truth is that it will mark the shēng of the new cycle of which you will be a part.”
“Simply, you must trumpet the disaster which will help it to reach the energy needed to reach ignition. The brightness of the match unites the sun and the air in the dry reed. Keeping a bundle of reeds warm, no matter how long, is worthless to build a fire. Let me be even plainer: each of you will rate the United States debt as D, in default, simultaneously to this cataclysm. You will use your personal judgment, you will not hesitate, you will not wait for each other, and you will not await direction or counsel. You will act separately but in unison. You will publish this rating as widely and as quickly as it is possible to do so.” “And your assessment will be accurate; the default event will automatically trigger a cascade of further defaults and credit events from state to county to city, to the smallest district and village.”
Angel paused. He took from the breast pocket of a new cheap suit a handful of chopsticks. His right hand was twisted into a claw, which the three bankers stared at as if a dragon’s mouth. The sticks themselves were intricately carved of a dark wood, six sticks. “These are your yarrow sticks; this is your fortune. Each choose a matching pair and keep them safe.” Angel threw them down on the parquetry of the table.
Parichoner Qu randomly chose two matching sticks and looked at them closely. Parichoner Wu and Xi each took a pair of the remaining, alternating one at a time as if they were playing a game of pick up sticks. They carefully did not move any but their chosen stick.
Between the cosmological emblazons, what appeared to be a long sequence of roman numbers and letters were carved as if twining foliage into the circumference of the dark cherry wood cylinders.
“At the International Bank of Beijing you each have an account. To be specific, each account contains one thousand million United States dollars denominated in Renminbi, or if you choose, redeemable in gold, real estate, or a lifetime position of extreme political influence within the provinces.” They are anonymous. Whoever has the numbers on your chopsticks can access these accounts.” He paused and waited until the three men were staring at him in full attention. “But you may not access your account until the ash begins to form the earth.”
Finished, the Angel visitor began to rise in dismissal. Parichoner Qu began to speak, but was silenced with Angel’s graceful palm forcefully interposed between them.
“I need to be clear as water in a forgotten mountain cistern. But this is not about cisterns,” he smiled. “This is not a revolution, this is not a war, this is not a movement, this is not a coup, this is not a subversion or utopia, and this is not an ideology or culture. This is a new civilization. Your accounts are nothing, they are the silk, the cocoon, but the pupa inside is what is important. The moth discards the silk, but only seeks to fly where the silk can never see. You are welcome to this discarded silk, this wealth. It is trivial.”
Angel 1 finished rising. His assistant remained seated and looked upward at his master as if for direction, from a son to his father. With his twisted right hand, Angel dipped into his hip pocket and with two fingers took out a suppressed Baby Browning .25 ACP with brilliant green grips. He put it on the table and swapped it somewhat clumsily to his good left hand. The Angel then put the pistol under his assistant’s chin and fired a single shot into his head. The three Triax twitched involuntarily but stared without comment at the slumping assistant.
Angel 1 then put the pistol on the table and politely waited for Dominion Jones to undog the chapter-room door and opened it for him quietly to leave. The first leg of his return flight to Beijing was in less than an hour. He did not say anything further nor did he ask for questions.
Dominion Cassandra Jones, Esq. stayed to attend to the chapter-room after the three executives left. It was not the first such duty in her staff career.
After changing back from their silken vulnerability into their business attire, Triax Wu left by roof helicopter; Xi left by a doorman-hailed taxi on the west side of 666, and Qi left on 34th St, walking east to the heliport. Qi was in shock, his gut in turmoil. “Or taste not the Pierian spring,” he said to the air.
Chapter 23
Sam Lion-McNamara, his bare feet sticking out under the cardboard he had drawn over himself dreamed about becoming an adult. For him that meant an almost magical transformation from go-boy to chief. Power to say what he would do and when he would do it. But, rationally, the men around him even so had to follows orders whether from bosses on the docks or, if homebound, their market momma wives assembling the baskets of vegetables and miscellaneous gleanings and handwork that she would display on Kroo Town Road.
Sam saw the red shadows of the flickering lights of the router/switch on the ceiling. That was good—just as the sprays of water and puddles around the town proved that the water was running today, the flickering proved that both the power was on and that the connection to the telephone company was sound.
The sun was already throwing sharp shadows on the curb outside the café. Soon, glum Milton Kono, the skeletal manager would unlock the plank and corrugated iron door with its ancient warded key lock and mount h
imself on his stool inside the metal cashier’s cage at one corner of the first floor. He would sharpen a pencil stub with his teeth, sucking and spinning the stub in his mouth until he could make the necessary marks on the time and receipt sheets stamped on lined notebook paper. He would say “Shoo! Shoo!” to Sam to get him up and moving among the computers. Later, Anna would stop by with her giant thermos of groundnut stew and handfuls of groundnuts that she would twist into paper to sell as snacks to the customers. Anna had once addressed Sam’s sex during a couple of minutes they had been alone among the computers with a hot torrential rain outside drumming on the corrugated roof; Sam enjoyed the fleeting release, but he could not stand the smell of her mouth or even the short time away from his machines. Anna, too, placed no significance to the act; it was simply a diversion from twisting the groundnuts and shepherding the coins that she took back to her elderly mother at night. At least she didn’t pretend anguish like the rent-girls outside.
Beyond maintaining the generator with oil and fetching the yellowing jerry can to purchase the gasoline from the waiting boys with their rubber hoses and rows of 50 liter casks lining the street outside, Sam’s job included fetching the water for customers while they used the old computers scattered haphazardly throughout the café. He also had to maintain the router and switches, telephone using Milton Kono’s ancient mobile to nag the technicians when the connection to Sierra Tel failed. He stayed well away from Boss Farid when he would visit the café to take the money and to shout at whomever he could.
Sam did not blame Cousin Siloi for the demand for Sam’s money, or Sam’s beatings. It was the structure of survival in Freetown and the tribe. In a world where there is no government to speak of, maximum untrammeled free enterprise, private militias and threat of war, in exchange for the right to survive under the protection of a relative was the obligation to give that relative everything, even one’s life, if required. The notion that an individual had personal rights of any kind was a white man’s notion for the rich countries as France or Britain. Here, the Boss—whether crazy or criminal—was the Boss. To run away from his cousin’s compound was disloyal not only to his cousin but to family in the bush and to his entire tribe. Sam hoped that the rackets that Cousin Robert was engaged in would consume his time, force him to neglect, and eventually forget to punish Sam, if Sam could be found. But as long as he stayed in Freetown Sam was at risk. The thousands of idle hands and eyes that wandered through the city would surely notice him even as they brushed the thirsty flies away from the corners of their eyes.
However, for Sam to leave Freetown was impossible. Sierra Leone had been at civil war when the Trans-African optical cable was laid twenty miles off the coast. Without a government to negotiate the terms, no undersea cable fibrehead for the country had been agreed upon or built. Other than the satellite dishes erected by the foreign NGOs to report their good works to their benefactors at home, the entire country’s internet traffic was routed through the ancient tiny bandwidth wired telephone system. In Freetown, Sierra Tel failed several times a day. Often it was dead more than it was alive. In the city of Bo it was worse. Worse still in Kenema, deep in the bush. Even if Sam had a passport and money, he had heard that there was active fighting in Liberia. And he couldn’t afford the Guinea bribes to overcome the problem of his age.
So the Datatel Internet Café near Fisher Lane was Sam’s new home. Of course, Sam could give up the Internet and carry a machete like one of the Boss’ boys. He was wiry and thin and could be a thief who could scale the walls topped with broken glass and quietly elude the sleepy guards sharing a glowing cigarette in the warm night, noisy with insects. Machete boys always got enough to eat and occasionally some loot of property stolen from a body leaking stickiness for the wild dogs to lap up greedily.
But Sam would not leave the café. On the Internet, he was a Boss. He chose where to go. He could hop over to Singapore, Beijing, London, or Fort George Meade in Maryland, USA as easily as if he were the light-footed Eshu, the messenger god that the drunken teacher from Lagos had told him about. He had had answered questions on Internet Relay Chat from a MIT student in the USA; he even was a moderator of a forum on setting up virtual private nets within the Darknet anonymous networks. His co-moderators had Master’s degrees, they were entrepreneurs, could visit a well-stocked public library and go to MacDonald’s whenever they wanted to. He had an anonymous data cache in Finland and Soda Hall in Berkeley, California and could setup PayPal or Redbud accounts in whatever names for whatever purpose anytime he wanted. Sam was the shit.
If it could be simulated with computers, he could find it and use it. Sam had found a bank of Dialogue Simulators, which let him write programs for Network and Internetwork Operating Systems. While the Aedes aegypti waited patiently in the dark to give him Dengue fever, he set up an imaginary continent with its “countries” outfitted with imaginary switches, routers, server farms, and billions of virtual people randomly taking from or adding to the flow of data.
Meanwhile in the real world, the coming of the rainy season would flush the network of Freetown gutters and abate the smell while it stormed. Online, through a graphical “heat map,” he watched his virtual world interact. In his virtual world he could add a simulation of a Cisco 12000 series router loaded with interfaces (Real World US$1000000) easier than he could get a bag of peanuts (Real World Le 100) from the limping Anna. He would not bother with reality at all if reality simply would leave him alone. But it didn’t, as the thick bruises on his cheek reminded him.
So Sam had another dream beyond simply surviving to mystical adulthood. It was to learn how to apply his Internet skills to the material world. “Ouest” of the Hatz occasionally getting stolen merchandise that wasn’t re-stolen in the international mail and finally stolen once more by Cousin Robert was not enough. To cross over from virtual to real, from account numbers with positive balances to real food, books and as much security as he needed to enjoy his flight without wings, that was Sam’s dream. To share ideas whenever he wanted with a professor in Boston or a cryptographer in Baltimore. Or just a desk and chair and paper and pencils and quiet. Even if he lived only the life expectancy of two score and ten years in a land of malaria, sleeping sickness and sudden violence, that was more than his parents, more than his brothers and sisters; that would be plenty.
Getting up for the day, Sam did not notice Cousin Siloi’s two go-boys swinging their machetes in play as they entered Fisher Lane.
Chapter 24
Joex ached in the morning. The hard plastic seating cut off circulation after a few minutes no matter how he turned and twisted all night. Although he was hungry, he had learned to ignore the hollow feeling in his gut, and to gulp water when it got so noisy that strangers glanced at him. But he had a big day today; he went to the toilet and washed his armpits and thinning hair in the sink with the gritty powdered soap. He used his own shirt for a towel, rinsed and wrung it out, and put it back on to dry. He stepped out in the early morning and began the walk back to the Church. He, of course, had no way of knowing that both Church staff directed by Principality Geedam in frenzied deadly serious competition with staff under Throne Kingston were reviewing surveillance internet-enabled footage of all airports, train stations and bus stops in widening circles around Mad Landing; neither had gotten to the street footage around Coos Bay, Oregon. Yet. They had no doubt that they would soon have clear footage of Joex Baroco and exactly what he was doing.
One stop Joex made on the way was not to get some breakfast with the little money he had left in his pocket; instead, he stopped at a corner market to buy a small jar of rubber cement. Sitting on a bus stop bench outside the store, Joex took his shoes off, generously brushed on several coats of rubber cement on the fingers of his left hand and waited until they were almost dry. He then pressed each finger and thumb of that hand into the center of the corresponding toes of the corresponding foot. He inspected the fingertips and repeated the process for his right hand. He let his fingers thoroug
hly dry and carefully replaced his shoes. He continued to walk to the Church, arriving just after eight in the morning.
Serena was at the desk when he arrived. Two young men were mopping the long hall, their coveralls marked with a red “X” with the upper right arm longer than the others; razor cut into the back of their buzz-cut hair was a similar outline. They did not speak to each other as they worked, dip, wring, slide. Serena wore a grey pinstripe blazer over a silk camisole in a luminous blue that amplified her eyes into flickering blue sparks.
“Jim, after consideration of your performance on the Introduction, we do have work for you. It even includes room and board. Most important for you, it includes training at the Church’s expense.” With a perfect pause for tempo she continued. “There are conditions.” Serena stood and guided Joex by the elbow into the scriptorium and into a seat by an empty Games Machine terminal. After entering a few codes with a combination of touching a screen keyboard and palm presses, she had “Jim” place both hands palm down on the screen in indicated areas. “You won’t need to carry identification,” she said, “everything you do on the Games Machine is journaled.” Joex was glad he had taken the precaution with his fingerprints, although he had no idea if the Church knew Joex Baroco’s prints. He certainly didn’t know that his DNA had been collected the day before through the textured application fiche.
