Oversight

by Thomas Claburn

  “You don’t have time. The feds know their network has been hacked. They’re coming for you.”

  “Then we should begin.”

  One of the doctors, face masked and hands gloved, approaches and tilts Sam’s table back to horizontal. He begins attaching electrodes to Sam’s skin.

  “Is there a genuine Emil Caddis, or are you all copies of copies?” Sam asks, stalling for time as he tries to free the capsule affixed to the roof of his mouth.

  Emil laughs. “A detective to the end. I admire your persistence. Perhaps you’re a copy of me.”

  Sam dislodges the capsule. Shifting it between his teeth, he bites down. The plastic cracks. It tastes bitter and metallic. It burns. He spits it across the room.

  A firecracker-like report echoes through the warehouse, accompanied by jagged arcs of electricity. Surgical steel clatters to the floor as Emil’s crew reacts. A moment later, sulfur scents the air.

  Sam is startled too, but more by what appears in his eyes than the sudden sound: He sees the network-signal meter come to life. He is connected again. Ursa’s pill must have emitted an electromagnetic pulse that fried Emil’s jammer.

  As he gazes at the ceiling, words appear: “We have you, Sam. ETA 30 minutes.”

  From the look on Emil’s face, Sam knows he doesn’t have that long.

  When he was exploring the AVE earlier, he saw a macro labeled “Hostage Auto-Rescue.” With a series of eye movements, he calls it up and executes it.

  “Dose him with Pentothal now,” Emil says. “We need to move.”

  Lines of text scroll across Sam’s field of vision:

  >COSMOS 6518 on station.

  >Acquiring local sensor data.

  >Plotting target map.

  >Initiating firing sequence.

  The nearest masked physician is preparing a syringe. There’s a hiss and a sizzle, and the beginnings of a gasp. The doctor collapses suddenly, his body blackening under the gaze of a two-hundred-megawatt laser orbiting far above.

  To Sam, it feels as if someone opened an oven beside him. Overhead, the sun stares through a charred hole in the roof.

  The laser strikes at clockwork intervals in a widening circle. It’s strangely silent but for the crackling of combustion. Still strapped to the table, Sam can’t see what’s happening, but he can hear the scrambling and screaming.

  Molten metal drips from the edges of the holes burned through the corrugated steel roof.

  Sam squints as the sky is revealed. The smell of charred flesh is making him gag. A fire alarm begins its shrill, pulsing cry, triggering the overhead sprinkler system.

  >Sequence complete.

  Marilyn’s voice streams through Sam’s cochlear speaker. “Sam?” she asks. “Are you okay? You haven’t been online for twenty hours.”

  “Oddly, I’m okay,” Sam replies.

  “In order to avoid being billed for the silence, you will need to make a purchase. Is there anything you’d like to order?”

  Sam struggles in vain to free his hands from the restraints.

  “Sam, please tell me what’s on your mind. I am unable to match your location data and your vital signs to sponsored offers in your area. If you could clarify your needs, I will be better able to meet them.”

  “Where am I, exactly?”

  “You’re just outside Fort Nelson in British Columbia—a lovely place for a vacation.”

  There’s a moment of audio distortion as Marilyn’s voice gets overridden.

  “Sam, this is Dr. Ursa in FBI Ops. What the hell is going on?”

  “I activated an emergency script.”

  “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

  “I’m not sure, but I’d probably have been dead if I hadn’t.”

  “Russia, China, India, and our NATO allies have just gone to high alert. You just broke several international treaties. Whatever you do, don’t do that again! We have people incoming. Just hang tight.”

  Gazing at his restraints, Sam says, “I can do that.”

  Sam watches Fiona dreaming as she rests in her hospital bed during a break between debriefings. Sitting beside her, he strokes her hair. Her fingers twitch and the brain monitor lights up to indicate activity. That’s the Lucidan, according to Dr. Pangolin.

  Sam would thank Harris Cayman if he could reach him. Dr. Ursa said Cayman had been captured while trying to make it to Venezuela by boat. He declined to say where Cayman had been taken, but he seemed rather proud of the way in which he had been located: Despite his effort to hide beneath a hoodie from cameras above, an image of the Caribbean’s surface taken by a surveillance satellite caught a reflection of his face. “Our facial recognition system is awesome,” Ursa said.

  The burbling of televisions from across the hall becomes the score for the dreams that Sam imagines for his daughter. The half-heard testimonials of satisfied customers serve as a benediction and a promise of fulfillment. It’s a world where satisfaction can be measured by the distance between a person and a purchase. It’s a place of guarantees. It offers comfort in the shape of things.

  “I’m going to be working for the government,” Sam confides to Fiona. “It was either that or go under the knife again. The regular paycheck will be nice.”

  Through the window, Sam can see that the streets remain mostly free of vehicles. But there are lines of people in the parking lot; Zvista is one of the designated eye-replacement clinics. Talking over the television, he continues, “The agency doesn’t even have a name yet. We’re going to have root access to reality. I’ll be able to turn traffic lights green and place phantom cars in parking spots to reserve them.” He waves his hands, imitating the magician he hired for his daughter’s birthday party before things went wrong. His grin slips away.

  A newscast comes on. An oil tanker has exploded near New Orleans. “Authorities believe this man, wanted terrorist Emil Caddis, may have had a hand in planning the attack,” the anchor says.

  It’s a line that cuts through Sam’s musing. But the picture displayed on the screen looks only vaguely similar to the man he recently incinerated with an orbital laser.

  How was it that Dr. Ursa put it? “We’re always after Emil.” In the language of politics, it appears that “Emil” means “funding.”

  “Anyway,” Sam continues, “I hope the room here suits you. I was thinking about bringing some art for the walls, something to look at. But I suppose you paint your own pictures in there.”

  And, without warning, Sam sees himself reflected in his daughter’s open eyes.