“We cannot compete with Bluffdale, sadly,” Promiscuous said over the torrent of noise emanating from the room.
We passed through the corridor to a lab with what inside looked like a DARPA BigDog running on a treadmill. A team of men in lab coats were kicking at its legs to see if it would tumble over. Finally I understood where their robots had been coming from.
“Wouldn’t Rose detect a change in the underlying system and raise a flag?” Promiscuous asked, coming to the real question he wished to ask.
“Not if she could become predictable. If her mutation cycle could be stopped, then we would be dealing with a known quantity. A secret backdoor I wrote could disable her mutations. If it is still any good, it could perhaps switch off certain security mechanisms as well. Perhaps these little tweaks I did might be hard to see if you were looking at the code. But who knows if it is still there? Code changes. Programs change.”
“We have come across certain information that tells us that large parts of the system have remained mostly untouched over the past few years,” Promiscuous said.
“If the mutation sequence could be altered, then Rose would remain static, and new elasticity stretches within the system might not trigger an alarm. But again, all of this depends on how much things have changed. There are no guarantees. And then you would have to be able to access the system in the first place.”
“There is only one port accessible from outside Stellar Wind,” Promiscuous said, “and only two or three men have access to it. All other terminals run internally. As I said, data can come in, but it can’t get out. This will be your mission, to get the data out.”
Chapter 17
“I cannot be grasped in the here and now, for my dwelling place is as much among the dead as the yet unborn, slightly closer to the heart of creation than usual, but still not close enough.”
-Paul Klee
I counted three enormous test labs as we walked through the halls. We strolled by a robotics lab and several cold rooms. Another experimental lab we passed. I had no clue what purpose it served, but there were men in it garbed in lab coats working busily.
A few days later Seee disappeared, leaving Kumo to run the camp. I spent most of my days in The Anthill refreshing my hacking skills, learning new techniques, sitting in the circle with Cetus, Toorcon, Eros, and Vines. One day, I learned how data coming over a fiber wire could be passively sniffed and duplicated. We went over PacketScope and clip-on couplers that let one capture fragments of light. Fed into a photon detector, the light was converted to an electric signal, which then could be plugged into a laptop. We were tapping into the roots of the Underworld, listening, duplicating what the NSA was doing every day.
The Cerberus in me delighted in the comradery with the other hackers. My brain sparked to life the way it had in the Silicon Valley a few years before. Yet I felt untrusted, a foreigner among them. When I asked how the place was funded, Cetus answered vaguely. “We have a large benefactor.” The understatement of the year, I replied, and he replied the year had just begun. I told him I noticed many statements were understatements in The Anthill. He laughed but refused to take the conversation any further.
The facility had to have cost millions. Perhaps a large, nefarious organization owned it. Incapable of capturing its true breadth and scope, I vowed to discover its true intent. But I had crossed one bridge to get here. How many were there left to cross? The only certainty was everyone seemed fiercely loyal to The Cause, and for that, I had grand admiration.
With Promiscuous guiding us, we forged a plan to disable Rose. With Rose inactive, we could hack into the myriad of host machines, supplanting code and injecting our own. We could make every Datalion server a machine in a botnet, cover our tracks, and then turn Rose back on only to have her be controlled by the botnet. “In the cloud, everything becomes fuzzy,” Promiscuous said. “We want to make it so they can’t see in front of themselves.”
We worked long hours, not knowing whether it was night or day if it wasn’t for the time displayed on our screens. Most nights we worked into the morning. We would stop in the canteen only long enough to prepare ourselves a quick meal while chatting about problems and their solutions. We transformed a test lab, creating a mini NSA environment where we could test our cyber-strafing. Sometimes the solution could be solved in the virtual world itself, other times we found it necessary for real-world intervention.
After five straight days of being underground, I climbed the ladder back to the surface. When I finally emerged, I felt like a whale coming up for air. I broke into a warm daybreak, a sea of humidity already a hot sheet over the earth. Pink clouds hovered in the sky in a slow churn over the horizon. Sweat quickly covered my body, but I breathed fresh air. A voice came from behind one of the trees. “Halt, who goes there?” came a mocking authoritative tone. I turned around and saw Uriah in a two-step hobble coming toward me. An M16 was in his hands, swinging like an elephant trunk toward the ground.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I took over Mir’s guard duty.”
“A migraine?”
He nodded while I looked him over. The tumors on his skull had expanded, a new sort of atmospheric pressure from the storm of metastasis. My worried expression must have shown. In anticipation of what I was about to ask, he said, “The bigger ones have grown another centimeter within the last few weeks. I measured them.”
“Are you taking anything?”
“No,” he said. “I must bear my own burdens.” He inched over closer to see me.
“Are you seeing double?”
He smiled a bit. “Two of you would be better than one, right?”
“Two of me would be a nightmare to myself.”
He nodded, and I thought he caught my drift. “I’m not up at nights because of my headaches. It’s more the raging anxiety I feel keeping me up in the middle of the night.”
“What do you mean?”
“If we do not move forward soon, I might miss it.” His eyes started to tear up a bit. I took him by the shoulder. “Hey, man, you don’t want to talk like that.”
“Do you think I am delusional? I know this will kill me if a bullet doesn’t first. I’d rather die by the bullet, but I see no sign of progress toward that.”
I nodded, staring into the glassy obsidian eyes of the deer who wanted to be a hunter. “You’ll have your day,” I said, knowing this most likely a lie. He sensed it, gazed off toward a treetop while his lips twitched. He raised the M16 off into the high branches of a durian tree, the effort itself twisting his back horribly. Maneuvering his weight to balance his many deformities, he stumbled, almost losing his footing. When I stepped toward him, he said, “Don’t help me. I can still raise a gun. You best remember it.”
I stepped back. He had the look of a man who felt like all of his life’s efforts meant nothing. The gun now on his shoulder he said, “Seee is back. Have you heard?”
“No.”
“Maybe he’ll tell us we’re leaving this fucking place.”
“I’m hoping as much as you. I think we’re all a bit tired of The Abattoir.”
He nodded, then brought the gun down and pointed it back at the ground. “Now that you’re one of us, what does it mean to you?”
I shirked at the truth at first, but then it slipped out of my mouth raw and uncensored. “Everyone here knows my history. You know the promise I made to my father. You know my mother is dead. You know I was the cause of it. You tell me, what else does a man like me have left to live for?”
“Fate has not been kind to you. But your life is still your own, Isse. The dead don’t own it.”
I smiled at him. “My friend, death has been searching for me for a long time. It was you who taught me how to not be afraid of it.”
He nodded. “Not everyone believes in you. You need to be careful.”
“I know.”
“We’ve all turned traitor in the eyes of the State, Isse. But you—you came in here to kill our sifu. You came in here as a patri
ot for the State. It is difficult for me or anyone of us to believe your word, or that your heart has truly changed.”
“You shouldn’t, because I don’t deserve it. Now, only my actions can speak for my loyalty.”
“You’re actions will certainly be tested. I wish I could only say the same about mine.”
I stepped up to him, laid my hand on his heart in the sign of Yoncalla respect. “You have to trust that they will, Uriah. At the same time you cannot discount your own actions. You saved my life. For that I am eternally grateful.”
Uriah placed his hand over my chest. A smile crept over his lips. “Even if by some chance you are still a traitor to The Cause, this I’ll never forget.”
Later, Seee called the men to go for a long hike to Second Sight Peak. Uriah insisted on going. Even though every man urged him to stay, Uriah packed a backpack and set out on the trail before the rest were ready. Ten minutes later, we had already caught up to him. He hobbled from tree to tree, using his M16 as a crutch. When Merrill saw him, a look of pity swept over his face, and he waved Des in to aid in helping him. But Seee caught both of them by the arm, not allowing either to pass.
Perhaps then, all of us felt a change in the air, as if a lump caught in our throats as we tried to breathe. The wind picked up, and under the shadow of the trees, we loped along slowly, Uriah in the lead, Seee close behind him, the rest following like disciples.
At last we came to Second Sight Peak, hiking up the stony bluff where before we had come to gaze at the stars. The sky clear of clouds, the breeze blew stronger out in the open. Seee went to the edge and peered over, all of us in expectation a plan hatching, our destiny soon known, but this was not where fate would lead.
Seee turned, his back facing the ledge. “You are all expecting me to say something regarding what will happen. I ask for your patience. For the safety of the operation, this must be kept secret. I did not really have a purpose to come to Second Sight today except to sit amongst you and enjoy the day. But now that we are here, I’d like to share with you the memory of when I first came. Basim Hassani and I were scouting locations for the camp, and we climbed up to where you’re standing now. We looked out over this ridge ten years ago, and he said to me, ‘What we’re about to do is crazy, you know that?’ I said that I knew. He asked me with a smile if I felt like jumping. I told him, no, not at the moment. ‘If we fail, maybe,’ he said. But now, as I’m standing with you in this moment, I’m asking myself if I’m doing the right thing. Who am I to be so bold as to ask The Minutemen to die for me if I am not willing to die myself? All of you should know that if I die, the line of succession goes to Kumo. All of the other cells know this and accept it.”
Seee moved a step backward, and Uriah sprung forward, ready to grab him. “Sifu, this is not your purpose!”
Seee gazed into Uriah’s eyes. “If I told you your true purpose was coming to this place to show your comrades the impossible was possible, that they would glean hope from you and you were the source of their strength to push them over the edge, would you think this a noble death?”
“Sifu, I would.”
“Then step beside me and take my hand.”
Uriah obeyed, hobbling forward, pausing to stare down the ledge once, then turning around to face Seee on the canyon precipice.
“It pains all of us to see you in such a state,” Seee went on. Kumo approached Seee and whispered in his ear, but Seee pushed him away saying, “I’m no longer important. This thing has the legs to walk on its own now.” Merrill stood with his head to the ground, as if he couldn’t bear to watch.
“Sifu, this is not my purpose either,” Uriah said.
“If you see clearly, you will see that for one of us, it is. You are the stink tree, full of knots, growing in a barren desert. Yet, you are still able to blossom. I am a leader who will bear a great burden. These men will die for The Cause, but in the end it will be I who will have to live with that.”
“My purpose is to fight with The Minutemen. To give my life for you and The Cause—”
“This you have done. You have fought for your brothers and provided them shade from their scorching training. You suffered the whip for them. You have been their savior. You recognize that reality isn’t always what we think it is. By one of us taking a leap of faith and proving to all our resolve, we accomplish our goal—that we will be willing to go before them. Do you not see this, my son?”
“I do, Sifu.”
Perhaps no one else saw the moment as I did. Suddenly I understood why Uriah used the word sifu instead of sensei. There was another context to it, one patriarchal none of us were catching. Behind all of the deformities, suddenly I saw the resemblance in the faces of the two men standing before us. An urge came to blurt out the secret, but the words stuck in my throat. Certainly, the Sons must have known, but here, they remained quiet.
Uriah stood hunched over, his ailing body an obvious torment for him. Never in his nature to surrender, this was the essence of what Seee asked of him. The ultimate sacrifice for Uriah was not death, but surrender, and he didn’t know how to yield to it.
Seee faced us holding one of Uriah’s hands, raising it in the air. “To truly believe, we must all take leaps of faith—sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally. These men around you have all grown to love and cherish you because of your fortitude. They are your brothers. They might not love me, but I think I can say they respect me. Above all, they believe as much as I in The Cause. I can think of no more a noble death than for one of us to show them completely what sacrifice really means.”
“What are you saying?” Uriah asked, not able to absorb what was being said.
“Do you believe my time has come?” Seee asked.
“No, I do not.”
“Today is tomorrow. What is in between is relevant for only a blip in time. Perhaps you need a sign of faith from me, and this I will give. I ask no man for his life without first offering mine. You are my sons and our eyes see the same.”
“Sifu, I cannot let you.”
But Seee ignored him, grasped him in his arms, squeezed him, then let him go, retaking the hand. “On the count of three, I will jump, such that if I do, you will not have to. I command none of you to punish him. It is a choice for Uriah, and the choice remains his. As a member of The Minutemen you must accept this.” Seee cupped Uriah’s face into his hands and fixed his gaze into his eyes. “The time is now, son. Can you feel it? It’s as if this moment has been squashed into a grain of sand.”
“Enough!” I yelled out, unable to contain the emotion flowing through me any longer. “This need not be proved. None of us here doubt either of you. This cannot stand between father and son!”
Uriah looked up to me slowly, his eyes watering and his lips full of sympathy. “When you shot your father, Isse, did you not want to switch places with him?”
I stood stunned, incredulous as to what he had just said to me.
Seee called out:
“One…
“Two…”
“In another life, I will be beautiful,” Uriah said.
Seee’s eyes lit up with tears. He squeezed Uriah’s hand. “In this life, you already are, my son.”
Uriah threw himself off the cliff, his body hurling downward, hands outstretched in the air as he fell, eyes staring upward into the glaring sun. Seee crept closer to the edge, inviting the abyss, boots curling over the ledge. “If any of you believe I would not have jumped, speak now.”
No one spoke. To this day, I believe if someone had, he would have jumped as well, his legs eager to push off the ledge in spite of everything at stake. The wind blew heavy in our faces. The whole canyon, empty of any other sound. Finally, Seee took a deep breath. “Do you smell the air?” he asked, crying noticeably. “I smell only the scent of courage within it. In the near future, each man will be asked to stand over the abyss. Each of us will be asked to jump. Will you have the courage to do it? This is what you need to ask yourself as you have given witness to one wh
o has.”
Part II
Detritus
Chapter 18
“If you wish to be a success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing.”
-Napoleon Bonaparte
NSA Director General Titus Montgomery hunkered down to kiss his four-year-old daughter goodbye in the vestibule.
“You smell like smelly juice,” little Elisabeth said, looking up at him.
Montgomery was mesmerized by the power of observation in youngsters, the bluntness, the raw sense of unedited truth that could spurt out of their mouths.
“It’s coffee, honey,” he said.
“It smells different than Mommy’s coffee,” she said.
“That’s because Mommy doesn’t know what a good coffee tastes like.”
He gazed over at his wife Emily, standing in the hallway, a tightened arm akimbo on a protruding hip, an eyebrow perking up in a perfect half-moon. See, the eyes said. See, she can pick it up on you and she’s just a child.
Montgomery brushed back his daughter’s hair, swept some loose bangs under a black metal barrette at the top of her head.
“Mommy says it’s not good for you.”
Montgomery put his hands to her shoulders, a sign to straighten-up, while he thought about the touch of propaganda latent in her last statement. Was she Daddy’s girl? Or had Mommy’s manipulation shaped her into her little pinion to grind Daddy’s gears?
“Lots of things aren’t good for you,” he said. “But coffee’s not one of them.”
“Can I try your coffee?” she asked.
“I’m all done with it now, little girl.”
“Tomorrow?”
“When you get older, honey.”
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