by Marc Laidlaw
“She has already taken control of the world’s wired militia,” the general had told him. “But the citizens themselves remain largely untouched. With the upcoming broadcast, all that will change.”
It was changing right now.
He felt it around him, all those people breathing, moving, acting in unison, with one mind. Controlled by a child. He wondered where a child could have learned such discipline. What use did she have for rank and file? Playful chaos, a creative frenzy, was more what he had imagined would follow when Kali took control, nothing like this. Nothing so grim. This foreshadowed a shift toward a horrible regime—something beyond tyranny or fascism—unimaginably worse than anything the world had seen before. This must be one of those kinks “Bob” had mentioned.
He was grateful to be watching rather than experiencing her control. She couldn’t touch him, not from within, though there were any number of things she could do or have done to him from without.
After all, what scruples did a child have? Especially a child with such a keen grasp of military tactics?
Never mind my own scruples, he thought.
I’m only coming here to murder my niece, after all, and bringing her mother along to watch me do the job.
And look at that crowd! They’ll tear me apart. There won’t be a piece of me left intact—not a single mitochondrion. Unless Kali’s death rips into them, stuns them all . . . the way I went into shock when she switched me off. Even then, they’ll hardly look at me with pleasure or relief—they won’t exactly thank me for killing their idol. Unless this sensation of being out of control really puts a fright into them. It sure scared the tan out of me. Bleached my bronze to fish-belly white.
It’s all just so damn unpredictable.
He looked sidelong at Poppy, who seemed dazed and disoriented. He shouldn’t have brought her along.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
She shrugged. “She’s so sad, Sandy. Alone in that park. Let’s go in to her.”
There was no putting it off. They walked past studio guard dogs and even more vicious teegees, entering the building. A hush rose up from below. Silence filled the place except for one small sound, a shrill voice speaking in stops and starts.
Kali’s voice.
They descended through levels of catwalks and metal mesh that spanned the spaces above the theater. A motionless sea of bodies lay below, people crowded shoulder to shoulder, none protesting or fidgeting or squirming in the slightest. Thousands of faces were fixed on the center of the vast room, on a tall dais where Kali stood gleaming in her grown-up suit.
“Hold on a minute, Poppy,” Sandy said.
He stepped off the stairs, onto a metal ramp, and tiptoed out over space. Glancing back, he saw his sister clinging to the stair rail, looking down at her daughter as if she didn’t recognize her. Kali didn’t look anything like the baby Poppy had seen for a few frenzied minutes on September 9, he reminded himself. There was little visibly human about her, apart from her tiny head, which was scarcely a speck at this distance. Even her speech seemed like something a robot would say.
Her voice was loud, though unamplified. There was no need for amplifiers when all the spectators listened, via wires, through Kali’s own ears:
“. . . humanity is one,” she was saying. “It is our destiny to join together, to unite completely, to move with one mind, one heart, one body, one brain, one soul, one all-encompassing intent.”
Sandy crouched down, watching her through the catwalk’s metal mesh. He felt as if he were frozen in midair, forever falling. This was as close as he needed to get; he could fire from here and hit her. A cool blue line of fire would pierce that tiny unprotected skull. All he needed to do was sight the target and the gun would do the rest. The self-firing weapon required no marksman, but only someone to carry it. It could take care of the killing by itself.
He reached into his jacket, hands trembling.
Footsteps vibrated on the ramp behind him.
“Sandy,” Poppy whispered. He let go of the gun. He would have to get her away from here somehow. If he found Alfredo, he could leave her with him. But he was afraid to delay what he had come here to do. He might lose his nerve—or his chance.
“Sandy,” she said, “I don’t know what’s happening, but—”
“It’s all right, Poppy,” he said quietly, taking her by the shoulders. “Let’s get you to a good safe place.”
“That’s not my daughter, Sandy. I can still feel her. She’s in a park somewhere. That’s not Calafia, it’s someone else.”
Sandy looked down at the babyish features, the rapt crowd.
It couldn’t be anyone but Kali.
Poor Poppy. She really was confused.
“That’s her all right,” he said. “Maybe the grown-up suit makes her look different. I know you haven’t seen her since she was born, but it is Kali.”
Poppy began to weep. “You don’t understand. She’s here, she’s inside me; I know where she is. I’m tuned to her right now. That thing out there has her flesh, but she’s not in it!”
With growing exasperation, because she was starting to get too loud, he pushed her back toward the stairs.
“You don’t believe me,” she said.
“I think you’re still disoriented.”
“But that’s not her! It’s someone else using her body. She’s been pushed out . . . she’s lost. She needs me, Sandy. She—”
Poppy’s frustration peaked. She let out a cry of rage and rushed away from him, down the stairs, into the crowd.
“Wait!” he cried. And then he was running after her.
It was odd, moving through the crowd. Despite all those faces fixed on the dais, no one actually looked at Kali. Their eyes were carefully and without exception averted. He recalled the tinge of feedback pain he’d experienced while in her control. If only there were some way to make them all look at her directly. The overload might shock them out of slavery—might even finish off Kali herself.
Sandy met no resistance. No one moved out of his way, but neither did they push back when he shoved them. Some tumbled, fell into each other, and lay there blinking.
Poppy, far ahead of him, clambered onto the dais. She grabbed Kali by her metallic shoulders and stared into her face, screaming, “Where is she? What did you do to her?”
Sandy reached the platform seconds later, but he was almost too late. The center of the dais was dropping, retracting into the floor of the studio while a huge protective lid slid into place above it. He hesitated, then threw himself over the edge before the lid closed.
The fall left him stunned. He heard Poppy shrieking, Kali’s startled cries. People were rushing everywhere. Someone pushed him from the platform. They were underground, beneath the studio; technicians fought to separate Poppy from Kali, whose four arms whirred and clattered, beating at the woman. Poppy held on bravely but Kali’s hammering crystalline fists brought blood and instant bruises, gashing her mother deep, reopening the wounds of her suicide attempt.
Alfredo Figueroa ran up to them.
“Stop it!” he cried. “Kali—stop! What are you doing, Poppy? Your own daughter—”
He hauled her away from the augmented baby.
“Where is she?” Poppy cried.
“Open your eyes, girl,” said Alfredo. “Don’t you recognize your own flesh and blood?”
“The body, yes, but not the soul. Where is she?”
Kali stared at her mother with a slight smirk, her arms whirring menacingly. There was blood on the shiny fingers. “Keep her away from me,” she said.
“Now, Kali,” said Alfredo mildly. “She’s distraught, that’s all, but she is your mother.”
“I said keep her away from—”
Poppy tore free and threw herself again at Kali. Everyone in the room moved to stop her, but clumsily.
Perhaps they were numb from Kali’s control; perhaps she hadn’t yet learned to manipulate them all at once, except to keep them quiet and orderly. T
hey moved jerkily and a bit unwillingly, even Alfredo, converging on Poppy and once more hauling her away kicking and screaming.
Sandy crouched back in the shadows, the only one to evade Kali’s summons for aid. As he watched Poppy struggling, he thought of the weapon in his pocket. Could he get a clear shot at her now, while everyone was distracted?
He noticed a movement across the studio, a figure in the shadows like himself. At first he thought it was a teegee, an auggie-doggie or seal who lacked the wires and couldn’t be controlled. You’re the only ones who might evade her, he thought. For a while . . .
But it was no teegee. He saw a flash of tiny lights. Jewelry. Crystals.
Thaxter Halfjest.
Sandy watched the RevGov carefully, suspiciously, noting the way Thaxter studied Poppy as she was gradually—forcibly—quieted.
Why hadn’t Kali seized and enslaved Halfjest? He was California’s biggest sender, thoroughly wired, constantly live. He would have been useful to her.
Sandy wished he had wires, for just this moment. With wires, he could have tuned in to see what Thaxter saw.
He remembered his last conversation with the Reverend Governor. Thax had said something about a special-effects device he’d used to confound President McBeth. A synthesizer. Thax must have found a way to protect himself from Kali by using this device; a way of diverting her into some false scenario.
But what was he doing hiding back there? Why didn’t he help Poppy, if it was in his power?
A synthesizer, Sandy thought. For special effects.
Effects like . . . a death on the moon?
An altered station wagon?
Sandy couldn’t take his eyes off Halfjest. The RevGov stood quietly, not his usual flamboyant self at all. He stared off into space; and then his lips began to move, his hands to twitch.
Sandy saw him mouth a few silent syllables, like a lip-reader, and synchronously Kali spoke: “Take her away. I never want to see her again.”
As Kali fell silent, Thaxter’s mouth stilled. Sandy fought against disbelief, fought to trust his intuition that both had spoken the same words—but that Thaxter had spoken them a split instant earlier.
Poppy wept as they dragged her away.
A green place, he thought.
He could feel the change around him, the coming tidal shift in consciousness, and it prefigured nothing but evil. A vast conformist brain warming up to motivate the world . . . its ugly awareness rising like an immense, fearful wave.
A wave, yes. Thinking in such terms, he knew he could handle this. Remembering the surfboard under his feet, the water rising to carry him. Real as a wirecast, but of his own imagining. It was the thought he needed now to carry him through. Ride this wave, this moment, or miss it forever. . . .
And then he thought nothing at all. A perfect silence filled him.
The gun slipped into his hand; he kept it out of sight behind his back. He walked steadily from the shadows, counting on the effect of surprise.
It was his only advantage.
He walked straight toward Kali. She stood alone, her puppets all preoccupied with Poppy.
She heard him coming and turned suddenly in his direction. For a moment she looked fearful, but then, seeing him, a wide smile spread over her features.
“Hey, Thaxter,” he said casually.
And Kali spread her four arms wide, in a gesture the Reverend Governor had used a million times, used so often it was more than habit. It was a trope, a reflex.
“Sandy, my boy!” Kali said. Not Uncle Sandy.
She faltered, furious, her voice choked off in her throat. She turned to the passageway, where her helpers were busy with Poppy.
“Help me!” she cried, her voice too deep. “Help!”
Thaxter moved in the shadows, starting forward. “Help!” he echoed in a cracking voice. His head swung toward Sandy; Kali mirrored the motion.
Gun out, aiming, firing. All in an instant.
The wave broke around him. He was still up, still riding through the roar of the surf that was really the voice of the crowd above. There was no arguing with the ocean, no coaxing a wave into breaking as you wished it. No chance to argue with Thaxter or toy with sparing his life. No place for situational consultants here. This was pure improvisation.
But he kept his balance.
With a crash of broken crystal, the Reverend Governor fell.
Halfjest twitched on the floor, the golden crown a molten dribble pooling in his eye sockets, hair sizzling, gemstones blackening and cracking from the blast of heat. Sandy had expected a clean hole in the middle of his brow, but Thaxter’s head looked like a marshmallow barely rescued from a bonfire.
Another shape burst from cover, fleeing across the room on thick legs, a red cape fluttering behind him. The Pope of Las Vegas. Sandy leaped on him from behind, knocking the pope to the floor, tangling him in his velvet train.
The pope rolled over, gasping. Kali walked up beside Sandy and stared down at the fat man.
“What were you doing to me?” she said.
Sandy saw her eyes begin to burn. She leaned over the pope and glared into his face.
“Look at me,” she said.
“Bad girl,” the pope stammered. “You can’t touch me.”
“No?” She reached behind his ear and pulled out a small contoured device like the one Sandy had worn in the temple of Kali to jam the baby’s signal.
“Now . . . look in my eyes!”
The pope tried to look away but she must have entered his wires to force the confrontation. His eyes fixed on hers. He began to scream, his florid face darkening, the vessels in his eyes beginning to blacken and burst.
“Kali,” Sandy said, grabbing at her, finding the metal unyielding. “Stop it! Don’t kill him—you’ll only hurt yourself.”
But her own face was white, locked in agony. She couldn’t seem to let go. Sandy flung himself against her hard carapace, sending her clattering to the floor. The pope sobbed loudly, hands clapped over his eyes.
“It was all McBeth’s plan,” the pope whimpered, pleading for his life. “He and Thaxter . . . it was their plan. He’s really fully wired!”
Sandy growled warningly: “Pope . . .”
“No—no, you’re right, you’ve seen through me. It was Dr. McNguyen! He—”
“You’re not blaming it on him.”*
Sandy tightened his fists in wads of red velvet, shaking the pope. “I know about Marjorie, and I’m the only one who’ll ever know. If you say a thing to my father, if you hurt him, I’ll finish what Kali started . . . or let her do it.”
“I won’t tell if you won’t tell.” The pope blinked demurely, his lashes matted with blood. “But please, I—I think I’m blind.”
Sandy staggered to his feet.
From the passageway, after a stunned silence, Sandy heard footsteps. Poppy was at the head of the returning crowd. When she saw Kali, she let out a cry.
“You’re here!” she said. “You’re really here!”
Kali looked around at the cavernous basement, the technicians, her uncle, the dead governor, and the quivering pope.
She threw up all her arms and started to cry, letting out everything at once, hysterical with fear and relief. Poppy knelt and took her in her arms.
“Mommy,” she said. “Mommy, I’m here, I’m here!”
“I know, baby. I know.”
Poppy fumbled at Kali’s hard casing, but her fingers were shaking so much she couldn’t work the locks. Sandy dropped down next to them, remembering how it was done. “Sit,” he told Kali. Then he undid the catches in the suit’s chest, revealing a small child at the heart of the enormous cold contraption.
Poppy brought the baby to her breast, rocking and cradling her. Alfredo knelt beside them.
“Sh, shush, little one,” Poppy said. “It’s all right now.”
Kali quieted, but kept weeping. The technicians, and all those who had tried to pull Poppy away, looked cowed and yet comforted, as if her wor
ds were for them as well. And indeed, Kali’s signals still carried the words out through the studio, bounced them between satellites, blanketing the earth and rising to the moon. Each one of them, every last wired soul, received a mother’s comfort, whether they lived in the dark or in the light, in summer or in winter, at the poles or the equator. And like Kali many of them wept when they heard that everything would be all right. It was over now, she promised.
The very short reign of Kalifornia.
S01E13. Sequelitis
A TEEGEE TRAGEDY:
HUMANIMALS IN HOLLYWOOD
Reviewed by Nigel Wadds-Wright
Last night’s gala opening of McNguyen’s Viet-Celtic Theater was distinguished by the premiere closed-circuit wirecast and screening of the first production ever by a humanimal, “A Teegee Tragedy: Humanimals in Hollywood.” The semiseal Cornelius, better known as “Corny” from the lamented “Figueroa Show,” follows in the footsteps of Ron Howard, Rob Reiner, and Maggie Simpson as the latest in a line of gifted young sitcom actors to step behind the wires and create their own programs.
Written, edited, and produced almost single-handedly by the sealman—who acknowledges an unabashed debt to the late Clarence Starko, controversial wirist of “Poppy on the Run”—this ninety-minute documentary contains more genuine insight, pathos, and emotion than a year’s worth of Magyk-7 weddings, funerals, and bar mitzvahs all condensed into one “Best of” broadcast.
Boldly combining flatscreen and wire technology to great effect, the documentary focuses on the struggles of several prominent transgenics in the entertainment industry: particularly the hot new star Kai Corgi, the cryptic E. K. Shemhamphorasch, and the popular but (as we see here) clearly demented child-violence star, Wayne Clutterbuck, better known as “Rooster Man.”
