Corpus Chrome, Inc.

by S. Craig Zahler

  * * *

  On Sunday, the minister (clad in black) sped his electric moped up the dirt road toward the stone church that he had built with the aid of seven other clergymen and thirty Oromos.

  Clouds spat water globules that were too obese and erratic to be considered rain upon the earth and Leonard’s helmet.

  The moped crested a swell that was shaped and colored like Genet’s child-filled belly. Beyond the rise, he saw the Ecumenical Lightning Church of the Fourteen Rivers. Minister Leonard Durles looked at the parking lot and wondered why there were so many empty spaces.

  Water globules struck the thirsty ground.

  The morning beacon atop the holy edifice crackled and shot lightning into the sky.

  Chapter VI

  The Brokers of Extralegal Acts

  Bald-headed and dressed in a dark gray bodysuit, Alicia Martinez crept inside a copse of oaks and knelt beside a tree. The luminous crescent that was the newly risen moon wove a chiaroscuro through the dark branches around her and lighted the plump and perfect mansion that stood nearby, lording over a finely manicured eastern Connecticut lawn.

  Settled, the woman double-tapped her lily and said, “Locate: Carlo Burgacci.” Micropixels that were the size of individual rods and cones shone within her left contact lens and displayed an aerial vector map of the surrounding thirty kilometers. Upon it, a red dot advanced down an avenue toward her own green mark. A demure female voice said into her right ear, “Estimated convergence: four minutes.” Her quarry then turned a corner.

  Policemen whose careers had been terminated by corrupt adversaries, scientists whose work had been suppressed by faceless entities, victims of crimes where the perpetrators went unpunished, disgusted lawyers (such as herself) and other disenfranchised individuals peopled the vast reticulum laid across the globe by the Brokers of Extralegal Acts. The group had assassinated Derrick W.R. Dulande at Alicia’s behest, and after she completed this assignment and one other mission (of a ‘Peril Level II’ rating or greater), her debt to them would be cleared.

  The red dot was eighteen blocks from her green mark.

  Alicia Martinez looked at the black syringe gun in her right hand and saw that she was shaking. This was the first time that she had been required to enter the field, and she was nervous.

  The red dot was two blocks from her current location.

  She double-tapped her lily and said, “Hide map.” The vector lines disappeared from her left eye.

  Alicia activated the cauldron within the plasticore syringe gun, and in her right hand, the tube warmed.

  The woman pulled a snug hood over her face, uttered the passphrase “Sammy and Alicia Jr.,” paused, and then said, “Sample and match: Environment.” Her bodysuit and covered head mirrored the surrounding oaks.

  The blue lights of Carlo Burgacci’s vehicle spilled upon the lawn, limning fine topiary horses. Alicia went to the edge of the copse and observed.

  The wedge-shaped blue vehicle slowed and turned into the dual-niche driveway, where fissures on the tires were coated with fresh foam. Quietly, the car slid past the camouflaged observer, right to left.

  Alicia double-tapped her lily and said, “Display: Gunview.” Her right contact showed the grass as seen from the telescopic lens embedded in the syringe gun’s barrel.

  The vehicle stopped. Alicia pointed her weapon at the driver’s side window and saw Carlo Burgacci seated behind the steering stick, playing imaginary drums and singing along with music. The plump fellow was alone.

  Soon, the song ended, and the fifty-two-year-old man tapped the dashboard. The car’s blue headlights turned off.

  Alicia glanced at the living wall in front of the mansion and prayed that no person would emerge from the other side. Carlo Burgacci’s wife was supposed to be on holiday, but Alicia would not at all be surprised to see some mistress appear. Despite the hidden widow’s apprehensions, the group of concentric circles that comprised the entrance did not stir, and the windows along the façade remained dark. Mr. Burgacci was alone with the woman who stalked him.

  Beads of sweat ran down Alicia’s bald and covered head onto her neck, and for a brief instant, she recognized her journey from courtroom to copse as something absurd. Recalling the happy detour in between these two places that had been her family, the widow pointed her weapon at the man’s neck.

  The driver’s side door retracted into the floor of the vehicle, revealing her target. Instantly and automatically, the weapon fired a miniature syringe. Carlo Burgacci yelled and slapped his hand to his neck as the projectile wormed beneath his skin.

  Alicia aimed the cylinder at his arm, and when the gun calculated a high-percentage shot, it spat out another round. She double-tapped her lily and said, “Full dose.” The subcutaneous syringes sprayed serum into his arteries.

  Carlo Burgacci fell forward like a bag of potatoes, his forehead smacking the dashboard. The constrictors in the serum caused the man to ball up and clench.

  Far calmer than she had expected herself to be, Alicia Martinez strode across the lawn, rolled the huddled man onto the passenger seat, sat inside the vehicle and tapped the placard, which shut the door. The smells of the fellow and his voided bowels filled the car. Covering her mouth and nose, the widow dialed on a deodorizing vent.

  Carlo Burgacci unconsciously whimpered and clenched, and a dim cracking sound heralded the conclusion of a weak tooth.

  The widow double-tapped her lily, said, “Hide: Gunview,” saw clearly with both eyes, punched in the vehicle’s security-override code, set the windshield to bugview, checked all nine perspectives for witnesses, saw nobody, and backed out of the driveway, the trembling abductee balled up beside her.

  Alicia left the niches and, as quickly as the car’s limiters allowed, drove away from the mansion. (In wealthy residential areas like this one, this speed was slightly faster than jogging.)

  Five kilometers away, she turned into the parking lot of an abandoned church, pushed her captive to the asphalt, rolled him around to the back of the vehicle, opened up the rear hatch and shoved him inside. The balled-up man was still unconscious, and if his heart rate exceeded a certain tempo (as it would if he regained consciousness inside of a trunk), he would automatically be dosed a second time.

  Alicia shut the hatch and sat inside the stolen car, where she put the syringe gun and her sweat-soaked mirror hood into her side-bag, tapped the ice cube icon and said, “Twenty degrees.” The air-conditioner blew cool winds upon her dripping face.

  * * *

  The widow drove toward the compound in eastern Pennsylvania. As she proceeded, she withdrew a self-adhering brunette wig from her side-bag and placed it upon her sticky scalp, where it stuck like a lamprey.

  Chapter VII

  A Slug and the Demolishers of Heaven

  “I would like for the slug to join us.”

  A sixty-six-year-old Israeli-American who had a long white ponytail and a calm face that was dominated by thick black eyebrows reached into a large bowl of nuts, seeds and dried fruit, which sat upon the green metal table that separated him from Carlo Burgacci. With long fingernails, the serene Semite named Elad withdrew an almond that was the exact same hue as his own linen robes.

  The captive’s waist and shoulders were restrained by pseudopodia, and his hands were bound in a sphere of dense foam rubber, which lay in his lap like a bowling ball, and his blue cotton suit was scuffed from its rendezvous with the asphalt. Appraising his interrogator, the window (which was crowded with moonlit trees) and the one-way glass, he appeared more irritated than frightened by his predicament.

  Carlo Burgacci sneezed and said, “Bless me.”

  Alicia Martinez and three other shaved pawns—a man, a woman and a person whose gender was currently unclear—watched the interrogation from an observation room behind the
one-way glass.

  A magnetically buoyed gurney emerged from the living wall behind Carlo Burgacci, pushed by a small man in a white doctor’s smock. The lumpy burden upon the plank was concealed by a blue tarp.

  Two of the pawns in the observation room glanced at Alicia.

  “Have you seen the slug?” the androgyne asked the widow. (The individual’s gender was not clarified by his or her vocal timbre.)

  “I haven’t.”

  “You may want to leave the room.”

  “I’ll watch,” said Alicia.

  The small doctor stopped the gurney alongside the captive and twisted the lift dial counterclockwise. Smoothly, the burden sank so that it floated at eye level with Carlo Burgacci.

  Elad inquired, “You are Catholic, are you not?”

  “Yeah,” replied the captive. “And?”

  “How do you feel about the comments made by Derrick W.R. Dulande and Air Chief Marshal Sir Gerald B. Thiggs regarding the afterlife?”

  “I don’t give a shit what those guys said,” Carlo Burgacci declared into the cilia-covered sphere that floated in front of his mouth. The crystal cylinder nestled in the verispectragram turned red.

  Elad motioned to the truth-descrier. “You care more than you’ve professed.”

  Carlo Burgacci looked at the tarp-covered lump upon the gurney. “What the fuck’s under there?”

  The interrogator ate an almond. “We shall discuss the slug later.”

  Grimacing, the captive turned away from the gurney. “Smells like shit.” The crystal on the verispectragram turned blue.

  Elad inquired, “Do you believe that these resurrected men told the truth?”

  “I think what they said’s crazy.”

  The crystal on the verispectragram turned magenta. (Alicia recalled that she had received the same exact color when she had spoken of her love for her deceased husband.)

  The interrogator plucked a dried apricot from the bowl with his long fingernails. “But some part of you wonders if what they said is true? If, immediately following the death of the body, murderers—whose squid-like souls have acquired permanency through the act of killing another human being—fly from a hollow moon into a solar Hell while all other human souls—unless cryogenically stored—simply evaporate?”

  “Who knows what happens when we die? I sure as fuck don’t and neither do you.”

  “Is it correct to characterize your opinion of the afterlife described by Dulande and the soldiers as very, very, very unlikely…but possible?”

  “Fine.” The verispectragram concurred in blue.

  Elad ate the apricot. “And your feelings about th—”

  “Hey, enough of this,” interrupted Carlo Burgacci. “What do you want? Money?”

  “We don’t want money.”

  “Then what?”

  “We want your help.”

  “I have no say in which cauliflowers get pulled from the vault, okay? Those decisions are made by people much higher up than me, on floors of the building I’ve never even seen.”

  Elad shook his head. “We’re not interested in advocating a specific mind for resurrection.”

  “So why’d you fucking kidnap me? I’m not that rich. Or handsome.”

  The interrogator pointed to the large wooden bowl of nuts, seeds and dried fruit upon the table. “I have eaten an entire basin—piece by piece—during the course of one interview. Your compliance will determine how long this session lasts.”

  Carlo Burgacci contemplated hostile retorts, but instead yielded mono-syllabically. “Shoot.”

  “Were you disheartened by the speeches of Dulande and Sir Thiggs?”

  “Not with Dulande. There couldn’t be a less trustworthy guy than him, and even though I’m an exec at CCI, I hated that they chose him. I mean, how could Lawrence Cord let the company do that? Put our name on a twisted fuck like that? But when that English guy said the same thing as Dulande, and those two other guys….”

  “You were disheartened.”

  “I spoke to my priest about it. He made me feel better.” The crystal turned magenta.

  “But the priest did not fully allay your fears?” suggested Elad.

  “How could he? Those soldiers were dead. For a lot of years. And they didn’t know each other and they all saw the same thing, and nobody else who came back—was resurrected—ever saw anything substantial. That guy Thiggs was a hero and led the attack that ended the war in Nepal. And he seemed competent.”

  “So the priest was unable to allay your fears.”

  “Not all the way.” The crystal shone blue.

  “You work in the health plan bureau of CCI.”

  “It’s a thrilling life. I get abducted regularly.”

  With his long thumb and index fingernails, Elad picked a sunflower seed from the basin. “Have there been any noteworthy changes in revenue streams since Sir Thiggs and his peers corroborated Dulande’s tale?”

  “This’s public information, the stuff I know. You could search reservoirs or lily vaults.”

  “Please inform me.”

  “We’re selling a lot more cryonic capsules,” Carlo Burgacci said, “and more people are paying in to the post-life preservation plan.”

  “At a rate in keeping with typical business tides?”

  “No. There was a sharp spike in the last four days.”

  “Since the day of Sir Thiggs’s speech?”

  “You solved the mystery.”

  Elad’s fingernails sliced the sunflower seed lengthwise, and each half clicked upon the green table. “Do you feel that these occurrences are related?”

  “Sure. Though not necessarily because people believe that crazy story.” The crystal shone blue.

  “If most people don’t believe the story,” Elad inquired, “why has it affected business?”

  “A story like that—coming from the mouths of people who actually died—makes people doubt…makes it harder for them to believe what they believe, ’specially after no other resurrected people saw anything. And just as important, a story like that makes people think about death and maybe how ridiculous their own versions of the afterlife are.”

  “Please elaborate on that comment.”

  Carlo Burgacci’s eyes dropped to his bound hands. In a quieter voice, he said, “I believe what I was taught and what I feel—I still do—but if I stepped back and looked at it all like a scientist would, I couldn’t claim that this story about the squids is any more or less likely than a bunch of halos and wings in Heaven with Jesus, or those forty virgins waiting to service an Arab who did his duty. If you think about it, they all seem like stories that men created to cope with it all.”

  “To cope with what, specifically?”

  “To cope with death.”

  “Does CCI offer a product that helps humanity cope with death?”

  “We do.”

  Elad leaned forward, his eyes hard and focused. “Do you think that CCI either implanted memories in the resurrected men or somehow coerced them into telling these tales in order to denigrate religious beliefs?”

  “No,” responded Carlo Burgacci. The crystal shone blue.

  “Do you think it’s possible that CCI conceived this bleak afterlife?”

  “No,” said the captive. Again, the crystal shone blue.

  “But as a result of Dulande and Sir Thiggs’s tales, cryonics business has increased?”

  “Yeah, but CCI can’t do stuff like that—implant memories.” The crystal shone blue.

  “How can you be certain? The way in which a mannequin interfaces with a human brain is unknown to all but those who designed it, and is a well-guarded secret. All other competing scientific groups have been�
��mysteriously…shut down.”

  “Business has always been good,” defended Carlo Burgacci. “There’s no reason to do that—make up a story like that just to fuck with people’s beliefs. CCI is rich.”

  “Perhaps Corpus Chrome, Incorporated has bigger ambitions than simply good business. Perhaps CCI intends to become a political group that could one day rival, control or overpower the Global Senate itself.”

  The captive laughed, explosively. “You spend a lot of time alone, don’t you?”

  “Do you believe that CCI’s agenda is strictly limited to business?”

  “I don’t know, but I sure don’t think they’re gonna take over the world or anything.”

  “I don’t ‘know’ either—this is all speculation—but my group and I are very concerned that CCI, a private organization run by cloaked and inaccessible men such as Lawrence Cord, might one day have unlimited power over the human race because of the life-giving technology it has monopolized.”

  “This’s fucking stupid,” barked Carlo Burgacci. “CCI did not create this story to scare people or—or to make us doubt our beliefs.” The crystal cylinder turned indigo.

  Elad tapped the point of an almond upon the luminous verdict. “You were more certain about that statement one minute ago.”

  “What’s the point here?”

  “The hoarding of life-giving technology is tantamount to a monopoly on life itself. Corpus Chrome, Incorporated’s privatization of such information and equipment gives them unlimited power and may—in less than a century—lead to both slavery and genocide on a worldwide level.” The Israeli American’s thick black eyebrows drew together in the center of his head like a bat. “We want CCI’s technology made public. This power, this ability to overcome death, is the most important development in the history of the human race. Resurrection is a human achievement that transcends ‘business.’”