Zeitgeist

by Bruce Sterling

  Their flesh creeping, Starlitz and Viktor silently exited the building. There was nothing to say. This was a crisis beyond description. No mere words, in either Russian or English, could alter the fatal, unnatural tang of the enormity they had just witnessed.

  Birds twittered in the trees. Zeta, who had been patiently keeping watch, looked at Starlitz and went pale at the sight. “Dad,” she said plaintively, “Dad, what happened in there?”

  Starlitz struggled to speak. There was nothing. He had no words. He would never have words again.

  Starlitz heard his satellite phone ring. Starlitz found that he was able to move his hand. He was able to push the answer button. He was able to emit one ritual utterance.

  “Hello?”

  “Deus ex machina.” The voice on the phone had a distant, flattened tang. The sonic highs and lows had been clipped off through compression.

  “What’s that?” Starlitz asked.

  “Try to say it. Speak aloud. Say ‘deus ex machina.’ ”

  “Why?” Starlitz asked warily.

  “Because that is my story line, man. ‘Deus ex machina,’ the spook in the machine. You’re stuck in the thematics, Starlitz. You’re in a crisis of the master narrative. You can’t go forward, can’t go backward, no way out. That is your situation on the ground there. So then, the god comes down out of the divine sky-car and saves your bacon. And that’s me. That’s where I have to come in. You with the story yet?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “So here I am, man.”

  Starlitz scratched his dazed and sweating head. “This is Tim from ECHELON, right?”

  “Yep! I’m here in the flesh!”

  Starlitz looked around himself. Viktor was staring at him with puzzlement, existential horror, and vague dawning hope. Zeta was looking fixedly into the trees with her jaw slack and her shoulders hunched.

  “I don’t see any ‘flesh’ here, Tim.”

  “Look up,” Tim suggested.

  Starlitz examined the blue sky. Satellite surveillance? Could that be it?

  “Look down.”

  Starlitz looked at the earth. Motion detectors? Seismographs?

  “Look all around.” Vidcams?

  “Your pants are falling down,” said Tim triumphantly. “Left caret grin right caret. Semicolon hyphen right parenthesis.”

  “Hey, Dad,” said Zeta. She pointed hesitantly into the empty air. “Who is this guy? What does he want?”

  “What does he look like?” Starlitz parried.

  “He looks like Bill Gates, sort of. If Bill Gates had thicker glasses and a shitty government job.”

  “Ha ha ha,” said Tim through the phone. “What a sense of humor. Let me shake your hand, little girl. You can call me Uncle Tim.”

  “He says he wants to shake your hand,” Starlitz said. “He says his name is Tim.”

  “Well, okay, I can hear him,” said Zeta. She clasped the empty air and shook it vigorously. Then she winced in disgust as invisible fingers tousled the top of her head.

  “Moments like this make it all worse while,” Tim recited mechanically into the phone. “Protecting America’s vulnerable youth from the threat of international terrorism. That’s what I’m all about.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Viktor demanded suddenly. “What is that ugly black shadow out of the depths of the forest?”

  “He says he’s come to help us,” Starlitz said.

  Viktor jumped a foot, clutching his backside with a shriek. Suddenly Viktor’s wallet hung in midair, yawning open and disgorging business cards and various forms of currency into the tall grass.

  “Hey!” Viktor demanded, clenching his fists. “Tell it to stop!”

  “Tim,” Starlitz said into the phone, “my associate’s kind of upset that you’re going through his private business affairs there.”

  “Fuck him,” Tim said cheerfully, in the same flat voice. “What’s he gonna do about it? This Russian punk’s got no fucking options.” Tim tossed the wallet aside. “He’s broke. And he’s small time. He’s not of major surveillant interest.”

  A look of frantic desperation entered Viktor’s eyes. He wasn’t taking this at all well.

  “Viktor, chill out,” Starlitz said. “Let me pass you the word, man. This is ECHELON.”

  “Did you say ECHELON?” said Viktor.

  “Ever heard of it? Shall I spell it for you?”

  “Of course I’ve heard of ECHELON!” Viktor protested. “ECHELON is the legendary capitalist global surveillance system. It’s the worldwide signals intelligence directorate! ECHELON is the crown jewel of the antiprogressive Dark Forces!”

  “Uh, yeah. That would be the alleged phenomenon.”

  “ECHELON is run by the UK, USA, Australia, and New Zealand. It uses undersea-cable taps, and surveillance satellites like ‘Aquacade,’ ‘Rhyolite,’ and ‘Magnum.’ It taps the Internet through its major routing centers and does comprehensive word searches on e-mail traffic.”

  “Hey, shut up,” Tim protested over the satellite phone. “That’s all totally classified.”

  Starlitz put the phone on his shoulder and squinted in the sunlight. “Can you actually see Tim, Viktor? I can hear him over this satellite phone, but I can’t see a damn thing. It’s like the guy’s installed at hardware level and totally user transparent.”

  “I can see a kind of black, hideous, paranoid shape,” Viktor reported. “It’s like some faceless, oozing nightmare that covers the whole earth.”

  “What do you see, Zeta?”

  “I can see him fine. I can hear him too. I can even smell him. He doesn’t change his clothes very much.”

  “I’m a busy guy,” Tim complained.

  “He looks just like my geeky math teacher. You know, that math guy who used to go out during recess and look up our skirts.”

  “Girls don’t like math,” Tim grumbled. “Colon hyphen left parenthesis.”

  “I like math fine, Tim. I just don’t like you.”

  “Look, I don’t have much time to waste here,” said Tim, obviously irritated. “I got eighteen acres of vintage Crays under a hill in Fort Meade, and we’re way behind on our comprehensive Y2K upgrades.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Starlitz nodded. “I mighta known.”

  “Why did you bring a little girl to a Level Three national-security incident? That’s not professional. You clowns are lucky that I even showed up.”

  “You’re not supposed to show up, Tim. I never called you. I don’t know why you’re here.” Starlitz shrugged.

  “Well, then let me get you up to speed, newbie,” said Tim briskly. “I mean, you can’t even see me, because in most circumstances I am, like, light-years beyond your shabby, street-level, hard-boiled little discourse. Because ECHELON is, like, the Olympus of networked globalization. We’re so far beyond your mental grasp that we’re literally unspeakable. Mere mundane user dorks like you can’t even raise the topic of ECHELON in any discussion of contemporary reality. Because at ECHELON we’re huge, omniscient, omnipresent, and totally technically capable. We’ve been secretly saving the bacon of the Anglo-American empire since Alan Turing was blowing guys in bus stations. We’re always taping everything, but we Never Say Anything. You get me so far?”

  “Yeah, no, maybe.”

  “So that means that a guy like me has no conventional path into the narrative. None at all. I’m always the deus ex machina. I mean, the twentieth-century master narrative just doesn’t work, unless I remain way behind the curtain, and always super secret. If ECHELON’s abilities and activities become common knowledge and a public issue, the whole world is transformed. Outing ECHELON disrupts all the basic political and social assumptions. It throws the whole twentieth-century story straight off the rails. It’s like you’re filming some kind of BBC British teatime drama, and a giant wrathing kraken comes up out of the Thames.”

  “Cut to the chase, Tim. So, why do we have the honor?”

  “Oh, Betsy called me. We had a nice talk.”

&n
bsp; “Aha.” Starlitz thought this over. It was falling into place after all. Maybe it wasn’t that bad. “What exactly can we do for you, Tim?”

  “Well,” said Tim, “being a deus ex machina by trade and nature, I’m sure I can resolve your nasty little incident here. I’ve been hitting my databases, and I think I’ve got a handle on the basic parameters of the problem. We got this Turkish superspy running loose who thinks the twenty-first century actually looks Turkish. He’s turning himself into some kind of paradigmatic culture hero. You with my diagnosis so far?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, we can’t have that, man. It’s way too disruptive to the totalizing, globalizing trend of the master narrative. It’s like an errant subroutine taking up valuable processing cycles. NATO’s busy demonizing Milosevic now, we can’t waste time and attention on any Turkish spooky domestic weirdness. If this sideshow leaks out and hits CNN, then NATO’s finest hour gets upstaged.”

  “What is the hideous dark force saying to you?” Viktor demanded nervously.

  “I think he’s recruiting us as a cover-up squad,” Starlitz reported.

  “That’s right,” said Tim. “You should never have become involved in such delicate affairs of state. But now that you’re stuck in this situation, the narrative allows you only one legitimate role. ‘Consequence management.’ ”

  “We’re lousy scum, so we have to be Ozbey’s garbage-men,” Starlitz reported.

  Viktor’s face fell. One could see right away that he had been somehow expecting this.

  “You’ll have to remove all traces of objective evidence,” said Tim firmly. “I see from satellite photos that the local villagers have some tractors and backhoes. Tell the locals that Ozbey sent you. Borrow their equipment and bury everything and everyone. Then set fire to the building.”

  “What about the chopper?”

  “Tell the locals to pull the rotors and ailerons off it. They can turn the fuselage into a shish-kebab parlor.”

  “That sure is a lot of work,” Starlitz grumbled. “Why should I do all that?”

  There was an ominous silence on the line. Then Tim spoke up. “Starlitz, I understand that you don’t much care for videocams.”

  “Why do you say that?” Starlitz hedged.

  “How would you like to have a globally networked, forty-eight-million-dollar, telescopic orbiting videocam trained on your head, personally?”

  “Don’t do that,” Starlitz said.

  “You would turn into a puff of fucking soot, pal. You would blow away on the breeze like an Industrial Light and Magic particle animation.”

  “I get the message, Tim. I’ll look after the problem, okay?”

  “That’s better,” said Tim.

  “Is he paying us?” Viktor asked hopefully.

  “Nyet.”

  “Shit. I knew it.”

  The uncanny strain of Tim’s presence was beginning to tell on Starlitz’s nerves. Starlitz was eager to get over the thematic disruption and back to something predictable and much lower key. “Is there anything else we can do for you, Tim?”

  “Yeah,” said Tim, lowering his timbre and removing some treble from his signal. “Let me ooze a little closer, so this little kid can’t overhear me. Okay. Now. Tell me all about Betsy Ross, okay? Because Betsy is hot. She is so hot. Does she give head?”

  “Ask her yourself.”

  “But you know, right? I’m putting her in alt dot nude dot celebrity. I’m jpegging Betsy into alt dot binaries dot erotica dot voyeur. I got rid of my Monica Lewinsky screensaver. I installed a new Betsy.” Tim sighed from the depths of his flattened soul. “Someday, I might even touch Betsy.”

  “Why is that a problem for you, Tim? Betsy Ross wants to be everybody’s darling. She wants to cover the whole earth. You can’t do that and be real fastidious.”

  “It’s because I’m in government, bubba! I never got an initial public offering! I got no Internet boom stocks in my portfolio. I’m not one of these glamorous zillionaire geeks, I’m a strictly noncommercial spook geek. What do I have that a hot babe like Betsy would want?”

  “Power.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Tim, all cheered up. “That. Okay. Right. Great. I get it. Be seeing you.” He clicked off.

  THE ELDERLY CYPRIOTS STILL DWELLING IN THE VILLAGE were not too surprised to meet Viktor and Starlitz. They were even less surprised when Starlitz announced their errand. The locals were very cooperative and asked very few questions. The vest-wearing granddad greased up the elderly backhoe, and silently indicated a nearby lemon grove.

  While Zeta enjoyed a tall lemonade from kerchief-headed Grandmom, Viktor and Starlitz drove the creaking machine to the orchard. There they discovered a long series of man-sized weedgrown lumps, in various ages and sizes.

  These were the disappeared. The people under the lumps had wandered a little too far out of Ozbey’s Turkish narrative consensus. Into the Communist party. Or the drowned and nonexistent nation of Kurdistan. Maybe into some glittery-eyed Shi’ite martyrdom cult. So they just weren’t around anymore. No ID. No obit. No headstone. No mourners. No nothing.

  “Ever work a backhoe?” said Starlitz to Viktor.

  “No.”

  “Want to learn?”

  “Do I look like a peasant?”

  “Okay, hotshot; then I guess you’ll be hauling the bodies out.”

  Viktor and Starlitz toiled well into the evening. Starlitz, who was quite a whiz at backhoes, deftly scooped an entire lane of holes in the next row of the orchard.

  With the growing darkness the character of Ozbey’s scene was transforming. The stiffening dead soldiers did not come back to their youth and strength and health and life, for that would have been far, far too much to ask. But they lost their uncanny glossiness. They took on the reassuring appearance of victims of an actual shoot-out. Instead of neat round bullet holes precisely placed in their vital organs, the corpses exhibited the standard results of actual bullets smashing actual human flesh. Floppy hunks of meat torn through exit wounds. Nasty interior ricochets and nasty bone-tunneling effects. Enormous, hideous, hydrostatic bruises. It was hard to be reassured by this, but it meant that their labor was working. The anomaly was draining away. The quotidian was finally reasserting itself. The system was once again functional.

  Toward sunset toothless Granny thoughtfully brought them some mutton, milk, and falafels. The locals were kindly people. There was certainly no faulting them for hospitality.

  “How can you eat?” Viktor demanded, his dirt-smeared hands shaking in agitation.

  “This is hard work, man. I’m hungry.”

  The naked job had taken a terrible toll on Viktor. Viktor had the flaky, denuded look of a young junkie. His elegant shirt was cheaper. His handsome shoes had burst at the seams. His skin was dotted with acne and septic fleabites. He seemed to have lost a tooth without noticing it.

  “I should not be here doing this, Starlitz. I wasn’t meant to do this. This is not my role in life.”

  Starlitz squatted on his haunches. He was by no means happy, but he was far more at ease with himself than he had been earlier. “It’s a mass grave. Get used to it. Twentieth century’s full of ’em. They’re common as dirt.”

  “But that’s you, not me. You look like a gravedigger. You feel like one. You’ve become some kind of troll. Look at yourself. You’re like some ugly creature that lives under bridges to kill the innocent. You disgust me.”

  “I kind of like it here at rock bottom, kid. It’s good to know the system still has one. Even in 1999.”

  “Why are we burying dead men for that monster Ozbey? I never got a chance to bury my own beloved uncle! Why am I doing this filthy work on some stupid Turkish island? Where is my nobility of spirit? In Yugoslavia the heroic Slavic people are standing on their bridges, singing in unison, and bravely defying the NATO oppressor!”

  “Kid, you’re living in total denial. Yugoslavia is this scene in spades.”

  “Yugoslavia is a brave, outnumbered
people, asserting their own identity against an evil oppressor.”

  “Asserting identity by burning IDs and stealing license plates? Yeah, sure.”

  “Starlitz, listen. You must see the truth. We’ve been reduced to something vile and ugly. Ozbey and Tim are somehow acting together, against all sense, tradition, and reason. We can’t let ourselves be historically humiliated! We must rally, unite, and fight against this cruel unilateral globalist dictatorship!”

  Starlitz yawned indifferently. “You’re just sick of honest work.”

  “It’s for the sake of the living soul of the next century! We can’t let the great Orthodox culture, the heir of lost Byzantium, be crushed between Moslems and NATO. The Slavic world is the only real world in the world!”

  Starlitz stood up and leaned wearily on his shovel. “So what are you proposing, exactly? Give me the pitch.”

  “Well—it’s not safe for me here in Cyprus. I must leave this island before Ozbey comes back to kill me. That’s for certain. I don’t want to go to Belgrade under the bombing but … well … I’ve been thinking seriously about Budapest.”

  “You don’t want to miss the fun part tonight, Viktor. After we shovel under the last stiff, I’m gonna torch Ozbey’s dojo there. You’ve probably never seen a major act of arson, but there’s a real art to it. You should get hip to this. It’s a useful skill.”

  “Starlitz, stop talking like a dirty beast. I have a glorious vision of the future—it came to me in a rush suddenly, as we were bulldozing that Ukrainian. There are five million Serbian women. Serbian women are even more desperate than Russian women. They need money worse. They have fewer scruples. And Serbian women are very pretty. That means amazing commercial opportunity, for the first entrepreneur to get in on the ground floor.”

  “You’re spoiling a great moment here,” Starlitz complained. “Sure, we’re filthy, we stink, my hair’s falling out and you’re losing your teeth, but there’s a lot of narrative elbow room when you’re right at the edge of genocidal chaos. If we get a little careless with the kerosene, we could set fire to half this fucking village. That sorry fucker Tim would see the flames crackling, straight out of orbit. Serve him right too.”