by Grady Ward
At first Joex was again so shocked he didn’t know what to do. His own rape was replaying itself in his mind. Then in proof that he was a quick learner from his Games interview, his began to push down with the heel of his hand cycling it into partially lifting her with his fingers. He thought of nothing but the cycle of pressure and release, pressure and release. He repeated the movement until he heard once again the hitch in her breathing and her hand on his forearm as a motion to stop.
“Here is your tea, Angel Rogers. I will be back in a moment.”
She turned to the Scriptorium and walked purposefully toward it and its toilet. Joex lifted the tea to his lips, blew on it to cool as if nothing had happened. He imagined that he should get used to it.
‘What kind of asylum is this place?” Joex thought, his mind a squall of conflict.
Joex put the tea down and looked out over the narthex desk and the empty chair. A printout was sliding out of a slot on the desk, waiting to be clipped to a stack of similar printouts at the desk’s edge. Neglected, The output tray was curling and twisting the printout over the previous content. This printout drew Joex’s attention; there was a photograph of a man on it. A man he knew. Joex looked at it with instant recognition. It was not exactly Joex; it might have been his brother. It was a man Joex’s age, not Joex exactly but cast in some way that Joex recognized.
He pulled the paper out from where it caught and studied it. He realized it was his Mooneye employee photo taken years before, but artificially aged somehow, less hair, more flesh around the cheeks, deeper wrinkles at the edge of the eyes. Once again a quick learner, the next moment Joex crumpled the printout into a pocket and jogged toward the narthex entrance and away, away, away.
Chapter 27
Manager Hu was familiar with being tired; if the shape of the future world was a heavy responsibility, so too were the years that lay heavy upon his heart and kidneys. For his blood pressure, he snacked on a few peanuts still in their brown skin. He considered the coded message recorded off the Internet by a junior wearing a t-shirt with two huge Japanese graphics printed on it. It is time for the world to be renewed, Hu thought.
The prosecutor has news. Hu nimbly typed his own sequence of words on his terminal, then the handful of letters that appeared on his pocket authenticator. Ready to decode, he then typed the phrase that had been brought to him. Hu read the message and put his palms together to warm them. So, Messenger Riu is to be taken by the authorities. And I have no signal from the Crux that the homeless worker, Baroco, is dead. These two facts made Hu’s reasoning inevitable.
Next Wednesday is most auspicious. 1 AM Beijing is 12 noon in Washington, D.C. Event minus four minutes, the Celestial treasury options for mere jiaos the purchase of real estate and the strategic resources with our entire reserve of dollars, along with the dollars we control in Europe and rest of the BRIC countries; minus three minutes Beijing broadcasts the dumping at market of all US Treasuries, which Hu knew was well over two trillion dollars including the amounts controlled by proxy in Japan, Britain, and Brazil; plus two minutes the credit rating’s agencies universally degrade the US into default; plus four minutes our options engage controlling over what was eight trillion dollars in raw physical infrastructure; then at plus five minutes our announcement that the Chinese people are happy to offer a Golden Bridge to the foundering US economy by infusing it with dollars by purchasing its depressed land and materials. And of course at the center, at zero minutes, the event itself.
Manager Hu had met with his team of programmers yesterday and they had assured him that they were ready. They updated auxiliary sites with tuned and re-tuned internetwork packets. Covertly extracted encryption keys from field programmable gate arrays and the shadow configuration bit stream was ready to go live. Programmable logic controllers will signal reverse current throughout every major distribution grid. Fifteen root servers, at thirty-seven physical locations will be silently updated with the desired substitute table entries hidden within their system kernels. Dark silicon will go light. Two hundred data centers in the United States, One hundred fifty in Europe, twenty in Japan, ten in South America, and five in Beijing. These sites will be armed and ready to broadcast without further instruction.
On the other hand, although they had already been hired and payment tendered, the botnets have to be engaged in real-time, which means several seconds of latency at a minimum. Minus 15 seconds should Hu guessed. Not significant. Hu picked up a fly whisk that he kept on his table. His fingers probed the tips of the finger-length whiskers that had been individually sharpened and annealed in a solar furnace over the course of several days. The whisk’s handle was a common turned rosewood handle stained even darker from his hands over the years. The attached brush was not horsehair but was a gathering of sapphire whiskers which made a musical silence when gestured sinuously in the air. The fibers were stiff but delicate and could easily be broken, except if stabbed directly, straight, and without hesitation into the face of the enemy. On the parallel moment, they were stronger than the hardest tool steel forged. Manager Hu delicately fanned himself with it. Along with his cane—a simple titanium tube with a rosewood ball handle, decorated with an inlaid ceramic elliptical conic section—the whisk was a matched gift from his brother-in-law, the Admiral.
From a decrepit building near the harbor of Hangzhou, Manager Hu selected the sequence one-time symbols to reduce the concise message to his brother-in-law into meaninglessness. Then in a final, decisive, irrevocable act of his life, he then injected the encrypted output disguised as words into a friendly public message on the Renren social networking site.
He summoned his junior and directed her to run through the serial pings of the botnets to make sure they were responsive, functional and ready for their new set of instructions. He directed her to set up another simulation for him to test personally. Many calculations must be made in the temple before the war is fought. The root server subversion would be damaging, the botnet attack disabling, but the taking of hardware of the routing switches was the killing stroke. The Internet in the United States as well as much of the world would be dead. Today that meant every aspect of human life that involved the transmission of information, whether telephoned instructions to civil defense or launch codes via satellite link.
But that was just the drawback phase of the gathering tsunami. The subsequent crest and bore of our generous Celestial assistance to maintain the means of production and the failed western democratic institutions will be welcomed with a fatal embrace. The West will be damaged, discredited, and bankrupt.
A few minutes after next Wednesday at 12 p.m. in Washington, D.C., China would become the new owner of the world. The United States might flail randomly as a child in an armory, but it would never recover.
Manager Hu once again reviewed the sequence of initiators and consequences, the synapses and axons of his control. Was it irony that because a homeless man exists thousands of miles away, who has not a particle of knowledge of any of these events, the collapse and rebirth of the world is initiated?
Chapter 28
Joex’s sole goal was to get to an entrance ramp of Interstate 84 east. He could switch to Interstate 80 around Salt Lake City, but he must get out of Portland before the Crux was thoroughly awake. Distance was the key now. Along the coast, his dress and haircut would be eventually recognized, noted, passed along. Within the heartland of the country, not so much. He had never been to Tulsa before.
On the one hand, the wonderful and intoxicating Games Machine and the promise of God-like transcendental intellect; on the other hand the twisted, brutal emotional and physical abuse that was its hand-in-glove. It was like the free inventiveness of a Silicon Valley start-up run by a coprophagic Balkan general. But, then, other than technical start-ups accidentally associated with young liberal independent and benignly progressive sorts, the Crux seemed to be directed by a paranoid and violent—if conceptually alert—sociopath. Then, what really was the difference between the organizat
ional models? Joex reflexively realized that it had been years since he had such a texture of ideas. He deliberately exhaled. He hated that the Games Machine had accelerated his thinking, jolted him out of a torpid consideration of things—if it meant that it supported degrading violence both personal and…what? But along with this hate Joex felt the deep stirrings of an aroused intellect. He pushed it down, away. He could not permit himself to think there was any good in this psychotic Church.
He caught a ride with a young couple in a ancient Scion wagon whose engine had to scream to merge at highway speed. They shared snacks with Joex out of a grocery bag they kept on the floor.
“Hi, my name is Myra. This is Steve. How you doing?” said the young woman with two braids interconnected with a white silken thread.
“Hi, I’m Joe X. Just heading east.”
Joex was unafraid of uttering his real name. Saying it rather than twisting in a personal labyrinth of deception was refreshing. Joex resolved not to disguise his identity again.
“Joe X? Are you in the military? That’s some sweet swag.” said the woman looking curiously at Joex’s buzz cut with its intaglio X. She likely related the X in his name and the X in his hair.
“Not on your life, Myra. Just sports.” Joex didn’t elaborate. “Where are you folks heading?”
“To pick up my sister-in-law at the airport,” Steve said “how far you going?”
“Just going east. Heard that I might get a job.”
After a few more banalities, the group fell into silence under the roar of the engine. The couple let him off half an hour later and wished him good luck. “Thanks, I need it,” Joex replied.
A few long rides and Joex was in Idaho.
Once he was past the border Joex fell into a jostled sleep, his right hand holding his only possession—the crumpled printout in his pocket. He kept it crushed in his palm.
Chapter 29
He passed through Boise in the early evening. His latest ride was in a Toyota Avalon of vintage several years earlier, but kept in mint condition. The man who had picked him up was older than Joe—in his middle 60’s—and tended toward talk, and not a little toward snacks, as his bulk testified. It reminded Joex of the many meals he had missed in the last couple of weeks.
“Nice to hear that you might get work east. Myself, I work as a summer pastor for the church. I organize the camping activities, the youth groups. I make sure all the T’s are dotted and the capital I’s crossed,” he said. He chuckled at his own wit. “I like helping people. It’s just what I do.” “Pastor Ted, will you help me with my homework? Pastor Ted, will you help me put on sunscreen? Pastor Ted, can I talk to you about a problem? Pastor Ted, can I borrow some money?” “Yes, sir. They come to me and I help them.”
He looked at Joex appraisingly in the darkness of the compartment. “Maybe you could use some luggage, a few clothes to put in it, and maybe a shower? Pastor Ted can set you up; get a good night’s sleep, get a good start in the morning with a home-cooked breakfast.”
“Thank you, Pastor. I am hoping to get along before the end of the week to see about the job,” said Joex.
“Joe, a good night’s rest and you’ll look like a million for your interview.” He winked his red right eye. “Ever have a little port and walnuts? It puts you right to sleep. You can sleep in my wife’s bedroom, as she has been traveling for quite some time. I keep it neat as a pin—why I changed the sheets and towels just this morning.”
Joex was monitoring Pastor’s Ted chatter only enough to make the affirmative grunts and “So right!” as responsives to the sermon.
“Here we go!” said Pastor Ted as they turned into the gigantic parking lot of the Multi-mart. “Biggest one around. Let’s get you some property so you have something to change into after your shower.”
Joex didn’t object: he was getting a free ride, so in worst case he could toss whatever he was given the next ride he got. It would feel good to stretch his legs.
“It’s getting ready to close, Joe. Why don’t you pick out a change of clothes; I get you a bag to put it in a meet you at the register.”
“Sure, Pastor Ted.”
Joex went in to and wandered around to the back where the men’s work clothes were racked. He selected denim trousers, a button-down oxford work shirt in two different sizes each. He draped the clothing over his arm and went into the changing room. The store was practically empty. In the changing room he tried on the different combinations until he found the best fit. He decided to see if Pastor Ted liked them and would pay for them as he had promised.
Wearing his new clothes out of the changing room, he stepped up to the front of the store where only one of half a dozen registers was operating. He did not see Pastor Ted; he heard him distantly instead through the doors of the store; he was speaking even faster than usual.
“Who the hell are you boys? Let me go Goddamnit.”
Once again, Joex’s ancient capacity to draw a fast conclusion from scant information was forced upon him.
Outside the store, under the set of working flood lamps lighting the entrance to the store and the near side of the parking lot was Pastor Ted. On each side of him was a young man with the style of work overalls as Joex had just shed in the changing room. Partially restrained and very angry, Pastor Ted was pointing into the store.
Joex’s mind enumerated the possibilities. None of them was favorable. He dumped the clothes he was carrying on the floor, searched for the tags he had left on his trousers and shirt to rip them off. He turned off to the dark gardening area of the store to leave by that exit. He used the exist that warned “Alarmed at night, use Front Exit,” but no alarm went off. Outside in the dark, it was warm and the gusts of wind that had buffeted his rides earlier in the day had died down.
He headed directly away from the parking lot and toward the outbuilding of what appeared to be a tilled farm, preparing for the spring wheat planting. What appeared to be a hundred yards from the Multi-mart was closer to three hundred yards. Virtually collapsing, Joex fell between an outbuilding and the bulk of a detached cultivator and its probing tines.
Chapter 30
First Celestial Michael Voide motioned for the spotter to train on another machine and took his place above Security Throne Adam Kingston.
“Surely you can do another 50 pounds, Adam,” said the First Celestial.
“Yes, Celestial.” Kingston was sweating heavily. He waited for the topmost angel of the Church of the Crux to add the weight to the bar above him, and then did five reps with some difficulty; the bar made a uneven clang on the last as he racked it.
“You know Principality Geedam is no longer with us, Kingston,” the First Celestial moved the chalk bag away as Throne Kingston reached for it.
“Yes, Celestial.” The Throne wiped his sweating hand on his jersey instead and started to get up.
The First Celestial gently put his hand on his Security Throne’s chest and pushed him back to the bench, as if he were seducing him.
“Surely you can do another ten reps, Adam.”
“Yes, Celestial.”
Throne Kingston wiped his hand again doubtfully, unracked the bar and did four quick reps. The fifth and sixth were noticeable slower, the seventh was very slow and a reddish cast fell over the head and shoulders of the Church of the Crux’s chief of security.
“I have my complete faith in you, Throne Kingston,” said the First Celestial as he rested both hand lightly on the top of the weighted bar. “I understand Baroco was in the Portland Church, enlisted, was introduced to the Games Machine, was even interviewed in his first confessional. He has been tracked to Idaho. And now is lost once more.” The First Celestial bent down slightly over the grimacing Throne and whispered in a lover’s tone. “Is that fucking right?”
The Throne pushed against the added resistance of the First Celestial and shouted “eight.”
“That’s enough for now, Adam.” The First Celestial forced the weight back in the rack.
“
Riu Bao was arrested this morning. The news blackout expires this evening. I am angry, Adam. I want you to make me happy. Are you able to do that, Adam?”
“Yes, Celestial.”
“Things have been set into motion. The world is going into a time of crisis. It will need guidance, a plan. This is the opportunity for the Church to help the world. You would like to have that happen during your lifetime, Adam, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, Celestial.” “Very much so,” he added.
“I want to talk to you again tomorrow, Throne, “I want you to report on the penance of Angel Millen under the discipline of Archangel Jack. And then we can discuss your own penance, Throne.”
“Yes, Celestial.”
The First Celestial walked over to the private elevator to his clerestory apartment and punched in a code. He needed the report of Dominion Jones of New York. He considered the matching pair of ivory chopsticks with their intricate engravings that he kept at the head of his command desk. The coolies are mistaken if they believe we are about wealth, Michael thought. Michael Voide’s imagination fluttered among the wealth and power and virtue of kings. He had the ability to simultaneously and utterly believe in the power of the Games Machine, the mission of the Church of the Crux, and that, he, Michael Voide, was the pinnacle of that civilization.
Chapter 31
Joex had walked for a couple of hours after he had left the store in a random direction away from the highway and the last he saw of Pastor Ted. He had slept in the cab of some large piece of farm equipment that offered a glass-walled shelter from the night. He awoke before first light in the morning, chilled, and stiff, walked south, further away from the Multi-mart and the main thoroughfare off Interstate 84. While it began to warm him up, it was slow, messy, and cumbersome walking going over the turned clods of earth. There was nothing before him to the horizon. His new jeans were staining at the ankle. He had to stop every dozen furrows or so to put back the heel of deck shoe that was coming off or to empty out the pebbles and dirt that they had accumulated. To the east, he thought he saw and heard a truck in the distance, but couldn’t tell because the morning sun was low in the sky. The ground smelled good.
