“Tonight is Second Sight,” he said. “My leap of faith. I die either way. The only question is will you help me?”
I paused to think. He kept silent, running his flashlight against the walls of graffiti. My mind tried to penetrate his, discover how time moved for martyrs, men lingering in the womb about to be birthed to another world. His facial features became more oblong as he yawned in the artificial light, as if casting a shadow upon himself. But I realized he wasn’t stretching his jaw out of fatigue. My procrastination caused him anxiety, so finally I agreed, submitting to his final wish.
He explained how things would proceed, pouring it out in a stream of sentences. He told me my alibi, where I was and at what times, how it would be conclusive evidence of my patriotism. He gave me a phone and a key, told me what they were for. When he was about finished, I stopped him. Out of my backpack I dug out my photo of the Earth. I tilted my head and held it up so he could see it. Our headlamps illuminated it, brought it out of the darkness. There it was—the aqua-planet, suspended in space, a sky full of clouds whirling over a cerulean ocean. He remarked he had never seen anything so beautiful. I gave him the photo. He fingered it, felt the frayed white edges, the folds, the deep furrows within the glossy surface. As he took it, he said, “Sometimes it isn’t easy being brave.”
I squeezed his shoulder, and then we moved out of the double-barreled tunnel and into the starry night, the air weightless and misty. A strong breeze blew over my face, a Mojave wind torched with the desert heat. My feet seemed to be moving in slow motion, not really believing what was happening. A golf course on the right, we paused gazing out behind the concrete wall of a runoff drain for any groundskeeper in the area. On the other side of the fence, Las Vegas Boulevard bustled, two lanes of traffic to thread through to get to the other side.
He told me to give him a two-second head start, then he ran forward. The rattle of the chain-link fence rung in my ears as he scaled it. He was almost over when I sprinted forward. My heart thumped in my chest, a hammering force, a giant’s footsteps. My fingers slipped into the parallelograms of the fence and I was climbing. Looking up at the sky, the world felt alien, the neon glow of Vegas clouding up Orion in a gas of carnival colors. At the top of the fence, I glassed the tunnel, the darkness inside deep and massive. Gravity pulled me back to it, but my feet hit the pavement, and I bolted across Las Vegas Boulevard afraid I would lose him. The Mandalay Bay towered to my left. Over the street the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign sparkled, the star atop of it blinking in raucous colors of orange and red. Yellow lights outlined the heart-shaped sign, an artery of bulbs racing around it and flowing into a ventricle. I heard the sound of jazz coming from across the street. A throng of tourists was out there for a free twenty-dollar giveaway, pulling on one-armed bandits, relics with the lever on the side.
Seee hurdled a small green fence, taking it in stride as I gained on him. A ribbon of dust whirled in the air, a tiny maelstrom of dry desert hardpan gobbled by the wind. I saw him pull his gun out of his pants—slowly, deliberately, as if he wanted to make every instant count. I hurdled the fence, yanked my Glock out of my jeans and fired two shots well clear of his shoulders.
Screams from the crowd.
Panic.
The future is Turbulence.
The smell of tar in the air, blowing all the way from the north Salt Lake City salt flats. The idling highwaymen in orange jumpers smoking cigarettes. Steel-toed boots hot on the asphalt, the highway bouncing up and down in my vision, the blinking lights of the Vegas sign bursting in my eyes.
Man. Machine. The real world. The Underworld.
All of them crashing down. The squeal of a horn passed behind me. The word asshole coming from the car, dragging in the wind in a rippled Doppler effect. Panting breath—hot, hot, hot under the beaming moon. Shadowy craters, scoops of rock and moon dust cut out of the crust, a face pocked by meteors over eons.
The crowd still scampering away, except for a man near the Vegas sign post. Planted there like a root. His phone out recording the incident. Behind one of the old slots, another head popped up recording the scene. Two eye-witnesses.
And then Seee was there, in the special spot we agreed upon, in the middle of the sign ten yards out. I stopped and leveled the Glock, closed an eye and peered down the sight, a palm under my shooting hand to keep the gun steady. He whirled around and fired a shot. I pulled the trigger, my finger still squeezing as the bullet yanked Seee backward. I shot twice more before he hit the ground.
Yelling. Stopped traffic. Blaring horns.
I kept the gun lowered to the ground and walked forward. People out of their cars. The wail of a siren.
I moved above him to see if he was still alive, if my shots had failed to hit their mark. But he was dead, a wide stare in his eyes, one not of shock, but of expectation, a plutonic expression of stoicism that said he welcomed the other world, that he had done everything he could in this one. Crumpled in his open palm was the photo of the Earth. A strong urge came to pick it up and pocket it. I stood there biting my lip as the breeze took it. It rolled around the dust for a few feet before it stopped. I let my gun fall out of my hand, and it thudded to the ground. I dropped to my knees as the sirens got louder. My hands went up in the air as the breeze picked up the picture once more. I watched it dance its way back over Las Vegas Boulevard. I had done my duty for him, a patriot in his eyes, yet a traitor in my own. I was Cerberus, the three-headed hound from Hell—patriot, traitor, and the gray in between.
Acknowledgements
A heartfelt thanks has to go to Robert Barclay who has supported me throughout, giving me sage advice and suffering through the beginning years. Thanks to Charlie Boodman, who got me started in this game and helped me become a better writer. Martin Fletcher, for his developmental edit, another big thanks to my main editor, Elizabeth White, and finally a warm thanks to my copy editor, Dominic James who was very patient with me. Sarah Reckefuss encouraged me, became my number one fan, and broke out her limited rolodex to help. Then there was Margaret Harmer at ShiftingWaves.com, the dream maker helping out with my vision for a book trailer. Thanks to my other beta readers: Amanda Callendrier, Massimo Marino, Fraser Grant. There are numerous people to thank in the Geneva Writers Group. A special thanks to Susan Tiberghien who runs it. Thanks to the Geneva International Book Club (Andy, Mehran, Helen) and Goodreads friends Stacey, Linda, Jenny, Amber, Chris, among others.
About the Author
Roderick Vincent is the author of the Minutemen series about a dystopian America. He has lived in the United States, England, Switzerland, and the Marshall Islands. His reviews and short stories have been published in Ploughshares blog, Straylight (University of Wisconsin, Parkside) and Offshoots (a Geneva publication).
For more information, to sign up for the email list (email not shared, has “unsubscribe” feature), or to connect with him, check out roderickvincent.com or find him on Goodreads in his Fiction Threads Goodreads Group (formerly Trauma Novels). Other places to find him are:
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Facebook (www.facebook.com/roderick.d.vincent)
Neo World View (non-fiction blog) (www.neoworldview.com)
Writing blog: (www.roderickvincent.wordpress.com)
Author Interviews and book trailer at:
www.youtube.com/results?search_query=roderick+vincent
If you feel inclined, please do an Amazon or Goodreads review. Reviews are increasingly more important as the publishing industry undergoes a wave of change. The author would truly appreciate it.
Truth in The Cause
The CIA regularly subcontracts to consultants. For example, they contracted SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) instructor Air Force Capt. Michael Kearns and Dr. John Bruce Jessen (whose handwritten notes described torture techniques). The two later formed Mitchell, Jessen & Associates which taught SERE courses (SV-91). According to truth-out.org, Jessen and Kearns worked on “a new course for special m
ission units (SMUs), which had as its goal individual resistance to terrorist exploitation.” These special mission units fall under DoD clandestine Joint Special Operations Command. The Abattoir is not so different with its advertised mission, although quite different with its intended one. It is not a CIA black site, but rather one owned and operated by the contractors, and its location is kept secret even from its CIA employers. While the character Seee was not based on Kearns, there is the similarity that people graduating from Kearns’ courses were sent around the world on secret, covert missions much like the type of agents bred at The Abattoir. Unlike Kearns and Jessen, who appear to have fallen out, the characters Hassani and Seee worked together intimately from the beginning for The Cause.
The term “battle lab” (used by Seee in the chapter with Tongueless Downs) was used by Guantanamo officials Maj. Gen. Mike Dunleavy and Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller. http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/205:exclusive-cia-psychologists-notes-reveal-true-purpose-behind-bushs-torture-program
NSA Terms—Stellar Wind has been associated with the NSA’s Utah Data Center in Bluffdale, Utah (http://www.wired.com/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/). From Wikipedia, the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations is “a cyber-warfare intelligence-gathering unit of the NSA” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailored_Access_Operations). Turbulence is a cyber-warfare program within the NSA started in 2005 and might or might not be ongoing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence_%28NSA%29). StormBrew is another Internet surveillance NSA program (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STORMBREW). Its usage in The Cause by Montgomery is fictional, but one can imagine there are certain ways to “control” the Internet.
611 Folsom Street in San Francisco is the true location of the AT&T Building where fiber lines converge. According to “The Shadow Factory” by James Bamford, this is where the NSA has a little room off to the side called the SG3 Secure Room. For more information, see (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A).
The DARPA BigDog is made by Boston Dynamics, which has subsequently been bought by Google. Google plans to honor the remainder of its DARPA contracts (whatever that means). One can find information on the BigDog here: (http://www.bostondy-namics.com/robot_bigdog.html)
Author’s Note
It is my hope that this book stirs the fingers of controversy until they become the fist of ideas. Only with sober ideas can we hope for the flint to spark a long overdue debate. That debate is that all other debates have been but hairs on the head of the true problem. That problem is the wheels of America have begun to grind to a halt requiring ideas bigger than those our feeble politicians are willing to stomach. The danger of doing nothing exceeds the boldness of doing something. America has grown drunk on the fumes of debt and now the price of the hangover must be paid.
The rot within America does not take a keen eye to see. With government largess at epic levels, it begs the question, how long can it last? The United States government has increased spending by 67% per median household in thirteen years. What one must ask is why they had to do that? And more importantly can it be sustained?
Now, the government depends on artificial interest rates from the banking cartel of the Federal Reserve (not part of the government) for its spending. The economy sputters along at stagnating growth rates. Unfunded future liabilities should be seen as criminal and will be paid only by broken promises or a diminished dollar. All of this will work for some time, until it doesn’t. This novel has explored a world where an inflection point begins, a world where government overreaches for power and begins to make enemies with its own people. The characters in The Cause are unforgiving of the perpetual looting of the middleclass by an increasingly power-grabbing government and Federal Reserve who distort their livelihoods. We are quickly approaching a time when the vote will no longer matter.
I hope this novel has raised questions while at the same time has been entertaining. I certainly believe the NSA, CIA, and FBI must be vigilant in their duties to protect America from asymmetric threats, but where is the line drawn between having one-hundred percent safety and a full and over-reactive police state? Is it when the NSA lies to Congress? Is it when the NSA breaks the law? What is the government’s penalty when caught? As with banks, moral hazard disappears when there are no repercussions for one’s actions, when losses can be socialized.
Events of yet another whistleblower in the NSA have caused quite a storm amongst pro-government zealots. One must ask the question: What did Edward Snowden give up that was so pertinent to U.S. security? Since his revelations uncovered a corporate/government conspiracy against its people (PRISM), and the information exposed the totalitarian creep of where America is heading, shouldn’t the citizen be made aware of this, especially since he/she funds the budget where money is then turned against liberty and breaks Constitutional rights? Recently, NBC did an interview with Edward Snowden. At the end of the interview, Brian Williams said, “A good number of Americans of course feel because of what they see as an act of treason, they sleep less soundly at night fearing this massive leak of secrets has endangered the country.” Is it possible to pack a statement indoctrinating paranoia more than that one? Perhaps NBC and Brian Williams need to read Benjamin Franklin’s quote from Chapter 27.
Many whistleblowers of the past have revealed similar embarrassments to the NSA (Echelon, for example). Why such a large reaction to this one? I hope The Cause explores the question: What is a traitor, and what is a patriot? The line to me is certainly blurred, as I hope it is in this book. I leave you with some quotes of Snowden’s naysayers and ask—what are they so afraid of?
“America is now a less safe place. The world is a less safe place because of what Mr. Snowden unilaterally did. He deserves to be prosecuted. I hope they find him in the hole that he’s hiding in in Hong Kong and bring him home and try him.” –Karl Rove
“I hope we follow Mr. Snowden to the ends of the earth to bring him to justice.” – Lindsey Graham
“What he did was an act of treason.” – Diane Feinstein
“He’s a traitor.” – John Boehner
“We do not see a tradeoff between security and liberty.” – Keith Alexander – NSA Director
“The national security of the United States has been damaged as a result of those leaks. The safety of the American people and the safety of people who reside in allied nations have been put at risk as a result of these leaks.” –Eric Holder
“And I hope that he is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” – Mitch McConnell
“Now you’ve got this 29-year-old high-school dropout whistle-blower making foreign policy for our country, our security policy. It’s sad, Brian. We’ve made treason cool. Betraying your country is kind of a fashion statement. He wants to be the national security Kim Kardashian. He cites Bradley Manning as a hero. I mean, we need to get very, very serious about treason. And oh by the way, for treason—as in the case of Bradley Manning or Edwards Snowden—you bring back the death penalty.” – Fox and Friends
“I think on three scores—that is leaking the Patriot Act section 215, @#1@FISA 702, and the President’s classified cyber operations’ directive—on the strength of leaking that, yes, that would be a prosecutable offense. I think that he should be prosecuted.” – Nancy Pelosi
At Roundfire we publish great stories. We lean towards the spiritual and thought-provoking. But whether it’s literary or popular, a gentle tale or a pulsating thriller, the connecting theme in all Roundfire fiction titles is that once you pick them up you won’t want to put them down.
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