Jacob's Trouble 666

by Terry James

  There was a problem. His replacement would be at the door in 10 minutes. How to get the Bible and notebook from beneath the console chair with the Interface Eye constantly on him? He had to get them out before the shift change; the next Coordinator would be no more tolerant of the book nor of his note-taking than would Controller Central.

  Before, it had been a simple matter; he had folded the old volume and the pad into the blanket he always brought with him. Watching for variation from established patterns was a basic technique used in INterface surveillance, from the time they moved him from the remote Coordinator Center to the inner-city. John I. Garver had brought the blanket with him. They searched it for the first dozen or so times and found nothing. He brought the blanket still—he told them, for the rest periods—and, as he had suspected, they had examined the blanket periodically for months. But for the past few months, they had not inspected the blanket at all. So he had decided to take a chance and had begun bringing the Bible and notepad. Later, he taped the explosives to the blanket, and had brought the belt with him to the Sector Controller Room on a daily basis since developing the contingency plan.

  Today's events changed things. The Scanner Eye had watched his movements from the moment he stirred on the sofa following the rest period. There remained a chance, the remote possibility, he thought while again looking out the pollution-soiled window, that he might somehow survive the interrogation at Facility 500. Why, though, would he want to live on in this miserable existence? Perhaps because the will to survive fought on even when less sturdy instincts succumbed to emotion. At any rate, if the Bible and the notepad were discovered, the matter would become academic. INterface would, without hesitation, forget John I. Garver and replace him with a more deserving member from among its ranks. With blazing suddenness only a mind pushed to desperation could generate, inspiration hit. He smiled, his back to the camera, and almost laughed out loud when the thought struck. He would put on a show for the INterface fools. Whether it would work was not important; that was the beauty of it. The reason, perhaps, that the ploy had a chance for success. Yes! It was made more workable by the confidence gotten from his attitude of fearlessness!

  Walking from the window to the sofa, he picked up the blanket and slowly folded it as he always did before leaving his shift. Tucking the blanket under his arm, he walked back across the room, stopping to put the blanket on the table by the right arm of the console chair, then walked to the cabinet. He poured a glass of water from the server and took a sip, turning to face the Scanner, looking over the glass to see that the camera was focused on him. He moved back toward the console chair, drinking from the glass while he walked. The camera, he noticed, turned with his movement, and, like he anticipated, the lens was zoomed out, framing for the Watchers the upper portion of his body. Good! The plan should work.

  In the next instant, the water erupted from Jacob's hand, the glass shattering against the hard floor. The table next to the chair tipped and crashed onto its side when Jacob's body made contact. The heavy metal lamp bounced crazily across the floor, while he managed, with his hand, to brush the blanket toward the front of the console chair. Sitting on the floor, apparently stunned, he glanced quickly at the camera lens, which seemed to go crazy with confusion, sweeping the room, first across then up and down, the Watcher controlling it obviously trying to make out what the commotion was about.

  Jacob cursed loudly for the benefit of the policeman at the other end of the teletransmission. The camera finally stopped its frantic gyrations to point in his direction.

  He sat for a moment, wanting to appear confused, himself, then he slowly regained his feet and stood, wiping water from his clothes and looking around at the mess the faked accident had caused. He cursed again, getting a handful of paper towels from a drawer of the cabinet near the window, then returned to the chair. Kneeling with his back to the Scanner, he picked up the nearest pieces of broken glass, then mopped the water.

  Even INterface allowed for human clumsiness—had no choice but to tolerate physical ineptitude on occasion. The INterface devil, even he must have enjoyed his underling's comical mishap, if for no other reason than that it offered a brief respite from the Watcher's own misery. He hoped so, while he sopped the last of the water from the floor; someone, maybe the Watcher, would pay for the performance with his life.

  With several wet paper towels, he wiped the slivers of glass into a neat pile, picked them up and deposited them in the metal trash receptacle to his left. He carefully calculated, then put into action his move to a position more directly in front of the chair, thus more securely blocking the Scanner's view of the bottom of the chair and his true activity. With the glass removed, he began what the Watcher would think was a straightening up process, first the table, then the blanket. He reached beneath the console chair's right side with his left hand and in one smooth motion pulled the Bible and the notepad across the floor, while at the same time moving the blanket in front of him with his right hand. He spread one corner of the cloth over the book and the yellow pad, then folded the blanket as neatly as it was before, completing the deception.

  The clock read 21:36--9:36 p.m. Completed with four minutes to spare before his shift replacement came, precisely on time as he always did, like he surely would this night.

  He stood and placed the folded blanket on top of the cabinet before returning to put the lamp back on the table and pick up the few scattered pieces of glass he missed earlier. The Scanner camera continued to monitor his movements, but he was certain the staged accident had accomplished its purpose. He fantasized how his next plan would succeed as well, and how it would be even more productive. The terror of tasting their own blood would wipe the smiles from their drug-bloated faces. Although Clarendon Street, like most other streets in the area, was empty except for a staggering man here, a bicyclist there, or an occasional official vehicle of one sort or another, Jacob felt caged, hemmed in by the omnipresence of INterface. The once-familiar streets and alleys at the heart of the great city were now pitted, barely recognizable heaps of concrete and asphalt. Boston, like other megalopolises, was among the first areas ravaged by the terrorist-looters in the chaos that followed the great disappearance, as governments were unable, at first, to deal with the crises.

  Maybe the survivalists had been right all along. Jacob fiddled with the rubber strap that kept the cheese-cloth mask over his nose and adjusted the mask to keep out the pollutants. With the food supplies of the big cities so quickly depleted, the outlying business districts and suburbs then thoroughly plundered, the mass swarm of human vermin moved to the mountainous and forested areas. Many of the wooded regions were burned, making it easier for scavengers to find food and other essentials that the survivalists had horded in case such an eventuality happened when other supplies were contaminated by radiation and disrupted by the after-effects of the brief nuclear exchange and the disappearance phenomenon.

  No. The survivalists had not been right, and Boston was Boston no longer, but Geoquadrant 3 of INterface. It would never be Boston again, just as surely as New York City, vaporized by a nuclear blast, was no more.

  He had to stop, put the blanket on the broken pavement, then remove the mask and rethread the strap through its metal retainers on either side, which meant he had to take the goggles from his eyes—a thing not pleasant to do in the corrosive atmosphere.

  Instantly, his eyes began tearing up in the heavily particled air. The inevitable hacking began, his cough-reflex center fighting to defend against the painful intrusion.

  Finally managing to get the mask strap restrung, and, mercifully, the goggles back over his eyes, he picked up the blanket from the street and glanced at his watch. 9:49—just enough time to make Facility 500 before the commanded time.

  But what of the blanket? The forbidden Bible, the note pad? The questions undulated through his mind while he began a slow jog up Clarendon. What difference did it make? If they made a move to examine the blanket, whoever did so would join him
on a trip into the afterlife...if there were such a thing.

  Across Columbus Avenue and left onto Massachusetts Turnpike, or what had once been Massachusetts Turnpike--it did not matter when the button must be pushed. When the time came, he would be up to pushing the button. The last look at the unsuspecting faces, before their descent into hell, would be reward enough. He wished there to be a hell.

  Right on Exeter—Facility 500 was in sight! His breathing was now labored and his vision darkened, as if he would faint. If so unconcerned about what the controllers might do, why the exertion to get there at the commanded time? Still, there was a chance, a possibility, there might be another purpose for the call to the headquarters. Possibly another reason...

  Was it all bravado? A false sense of his self-destruct capability? Karen's face floated in his mind while he continued the jog toward Facility 500, the huge stone building that once housed the public library. There was no longer a need for such institutions. The great would-be Utopian state provided everything the citizen needed in the way of reading materials. And all the citizen needed was to know the laws of INterface. Six Ways to Law — Six Ways to Order — Six Ways to Peace. Karen's face, floating before his mind's eye.

  Inside the building, dispassionate eyes dissected him, black-uniformed controllers glaring at him and the blanket he held.

  This was it! They would want to examine the blanket! They would find the book, the notes! His heart thumped viciously. Perspiration, the familiar, unhealthy sweat he had known for months, beaded, then rolled over his face and body.

  "Your goggles!"

  "Pardon? I'm sorry... What?" Jacob said.

  "Remove your goggles and step up to the IN,” the fat man behind a half-circle desk said, clearly irritated.

  Jacob complied, taking off the yellow-lensed eye coverings before stepping up the four inches onto the rubber-covered platform.

  "Come on! Come on! You know the procedure! Face the circle and hold your head erect!"

  Jacob held the folded blanket tightly, knowing that any moment the fat controller would demand it from him, discover its secrets. What would death be like? He would probably know... soon!

  He did as he was told, stiffening to a rigid position of attention, his head facing the crimson circle. Behind the desk, the controller watched the INterface Response Unit's screen on the board in front of him.

  Time passed agonizingly slowly for Jacob, whose face the screen in front of the controller displayed; the name "John I. Garver" popped on the screen beneath the image; a bar code symbol materialized on Jacob Zen's forehead.

  Beneath the name, the decoded numbers were generated one at a time:

  "BBB-IN-3- 1 88827 1" and beneath that line, the words "SUBJECT CONFIRMED — " flashed brightly in yellow characters.

  "You are IN, Sector Coordinator five, five, zero," the fat man said from behind the desk. "Follow that officer."

  The controller nodded in the direction of the stocky man who had stood at parade rest a few paces behind Jacob during identification.

  The fluorescently lit hallway floor was of brilliant white tile, the surfaces of the walls and doors covered entirely with mirrors. Once Jacob's eyes adjusted, he was struck by the symbolism: the vast sterility of the walkway contrasting with, defiled by, the black-attired controllers who moved busily through it. The pure good; the unalloyed evil. He had been here before, but not since Boston became Geoquadrant 3. Then, the walls had been paneled and painted, the floors carpeted, and there had been warmth and books and time to dream. There had been freedom...

  The controller walked with military aloofness, stopping at one of the mirror-covered doors near the center of the hallway. "Wait here for further instructions," he said, allowing Jacob to pass by him into the room. "Be seated and do not leave for any reason."

  "What is this about? Can you tell me what...?" But the stern-dispositioned policeman left before the question could be completed.

  Jacob moved his fingertips around the bulge at his waist, not too conspicuously, because INterface Eyes were no doubt watching. The feeling was strangely comforting, touching the ridges and bumps of the belt, knowing enough explosive charge was there to wipe out a room the size of this one. His sanity had slipped; he did have a death-wish. Maybe it was best that his mind had finally begun to fall victim to Trachetrol's brain-eroding effects, and to the Inculcation Sessions that anesthetized one to the fear of death.

  And Karen was gone... there was nothing left to live for. It was fortunate that the Watchers could not read the mind, could not yet probe the thoughts of the finale he planned. But it was just a matter of time until their technologies gave them power to invade that only remaining sanctuary.

  The room was battleship gray, with old, scarred tables and folding chairs. There were no windows. He considered how the library, before it became Facility 500, had been configured, how the basic structure remained the same. This had been an interior room, housing, he thought he remembered, a special section on Spanish history, or French. Maybe Italian. It was a dark, dull, totally depressing room then. It had not changed in that respect, he surmised, pulling a folding chair from beneath one of the tables and sitting.

  "Sector Coordinator five, five, zero!" He stiffened in the chair, turning to look around, trying to pinpoint the deep voice coming from speakers somewhere in the room. "Termination Session will commence in 30 seconds! Face the wall behind you!"

  “Termination Session?” The terminology was new.

  Would even INterface, in all its twisted illogic, give its victim a propaganda speech before erasing him from its data banks? The announcement, he noted calmly, had little effect on him. He was becoming callous to the thought of dying. He did as the voice commanded, shifting the chair to face the wall.

  "Do not move from the room when this session is ended. You will be instructed what to do at that time."

  The room went black; the wall in front of him then became awash with faint light, and the gray paint separated, unveiling a large screen.

  "Termination Session seven, seven, five," the voice announced, while the screen came alive with the translucent pyramid symbol of Interface. An elaborate production to waste on one who was about to be terminated.

  A sudden explosion shook him from his lethargy! The picture on the wall-screen lurched and jerked violently before locking into a stable image of a burning, crumbling building from which 20 or more people staggered, their clothing and skin ablaze. The horror of the second scene was even more starkly presented, so diametrically did its silent tranquility contrast with the ear-shattering violence of the first. Torn bodies of women and children, internal organs exposed, brains spilling from erupted cranial cavities—captured by a slowly panning camera. And, the terrible silence...

  He felt nothing, nothing at all while viewing the grisly scene. That was the thing that bothered him. And, that contradiction of thought itself—the concern that he felt badly only for his own inability to feel—troubled him, made him somehow more a part of the impersonal atrocity. The flesh spattered about the exploded room was simply organic machinery that had ceased to function. He had seen it all too many times.

  "Since Interface time began," the computer voice narrated, while the death scenes continued, "the truly civilized have been victimized by sub-human filth; and, on an increasingly alarming scale. It seems the greater the effort to show mercy, to try to convince through love and understanding, the more heinous the acts by these enemies, who are led by the Jew—murderers, the scourge of mankind. The Jew is at the heart of every evil in our world today, a world that will achieve its perfection only after the Jew is eradicated!"

  The same diatribe, repackaged, with new, updated horror-video. As desensitizing as the Trachetrol in its effect on an INterface-vtorn nervous system. But the next moments were designed to break the monotonous pattern of the Inculcation propaganda; it worked!

  He snapped to alertness in the chair, seeing what were obviously a series of controller raids upon, not the pitiful
Jews or scavenging looters as depicted in all the previous Inculcation tapes, but upon their own kind—upon Product Center Supervisors and Society Watchers. Black-uniformed men and women were dragged from their stations of duty, clubbed, then carted off in the controller vans to one precinct headquarters or another.

  "Now INterface Controller Central has the capacity to cut out the individual and collective malignant cells from among the healthy, productive tissue which comprises the growing, networking organism that will soon become a perfect universal body. Those who have been mistakenly placed in positions of responsibility within INterface are being gathered, as you can see, from everywhere they infect us. They will pay for their treacheries, even a greater price than the Jew-dogs who inspired them!"

  Controllers with rifle butts and shock sticks prodded a van full of prisoners from the big vehicle, forcing them through open heavy-gauge metal gates, whose tops were forged with Gothic spikes and barbed-wire, as were the 10-foot high fences that rimmed the complex of floodlit concrete buildings making up the compound.

  The scene changed to the interior of one of the structures; several of the bloodied and bruised prisoners stood at attention, their eyes glazed and wide.

  "These have been among the elite of INterface. They have tasted the best our magnificent society has to offer our citizens. They betrayed that trust by hiding Jews, by entertaining forbidden activities. These have taken what they wanted for themselves, without permission from the provider of us all, Master Manya, and INterface Universal. They will now, as will all who are our enemies, taste the bitterness of INterface wrath!"