“Come, my son. You have seen, Valerio is preceding us on the path to eternal joy. He is with us forever, although we no longer see his body.”
Tarek took the last two steps and bowed at the feet of Farlimas, who embraced him and patted him gently on the shoulders. Tarek erupted into tears.
“Get your pain out of you, my son. Let it flow through you. You need to build your new awareness…”
Tarek sobbed and tried to say something at the same time, while holding on to Farlimas dress.
He cried out, “Valerio, Valerio, where are you now? Why didn’t you tell me you were so close to leaving me again?”
Farlimas hugged Tarek towards his chest, lulling him like a baby, and whispering in his ear.
“Let it out, let it out. You will understand, over time. All will be clear, my son. Everything happens for a reason.”
Ali was observing the scene, and found himself envious of his grandfather for a fleeting moment. He immediately pushed this feeling back into the darkness from which it came.
Chapter 13
Dorian entered his office after the quick lunch he had in the cafeteria of the Social Welfare Ministry. Before sitting back at his desk, he looked briefly outside the thick, bulletproof windows. A faint sun had replaced the light morning snowfall. There was a chance he could enjoy the pale light for another four hours before sunset, as the days in early February in Stockholm were getting longer.
Since his next meeting would not start for another thirty minutes, he checked emails to pass time. The list in his inbox was unusually long. He quickly skim read through the sender addresses, just to notice that many of those extra emails came from Michael Fahlstrohm, one of his most vocal opponents in Parliament. Then, some frequent correspondents, and…some from his neighbors?
He picked the second email from Michael Fahlstrom, whose subject line read “A few things you should know”.
The email was a long message that explained in detail how, six months before, Michael had orchestrated the media attack against Dorian, alleging he was being bribed by the Telomerax industry. The interesting part was the richness of information on how he had fed journalists with fake news, and how he had managed to extort information from Dorian’s staff, for example, taking advantage of an affair between one of her assistant and a spy at Michael’s service.
“So there was a mole..” Dorian thought, “…and maybe this is why Astrid asked to change jobs, she realized she was being used but did not want to confess that to me and to the team.” He was thinking about running a more thorough investigation, when he then noticed that new messages kept flowing in.
This time, it was his neighbor, Peter Vieh, who was overflowing his mailbox. He double clicked on the last email, just to be redirected to a secret social media page where Peter had posted a video in which he went to unbelievable lengths to insult him and his family. He had taken pictures of Dorian’s kids on the way to school, threatening to kidnap and kill them, and he had edited a porn movie replacing the model face with the one of Dorian’s wife, Camilla. It was just lurid, and Dorian was shocked. The last serious argument he had had with him dated back to the summer of last year, when the barbecue of Dorian had gone briefly out of control and a lot of smoke had blown into Peter’s backyard. But Dorian thought he had resolved it with the excuses and the new mowing machine he had gifted to the Viehs.
“Apparently not,” Dorian told himself, “The episode has triggered the venting of a lot of resentment he had accumulated against me, for some reason.” He made a mental note to talk to the police, after all Camilla and his kids were living just a few yards away from this man.
Dorian was still pondering the best course of action to take, when Helga, her assistant, opened the door of his office. Dorian looked at the clock, expecting her to inform him there were fifteen minutes left until the meeting, then he realized that Helga was struggling to retain tears.
“Dorian…if you allow me…I need to go back home, it is quite urgent…” Helga’s voice broke “The meeting room is ready, and..”
Dorian rushed to her, understanding that something wrong was going on.
“It’s alright, Helga, just tell me one thing, before you leave,” he took her hands into his, making sure he kept a respectful distance. “Have you received some unusual email in the last few hours? Is this the reason why you are asking to go home early?”
“I, um, yes sir,” Helga kept sighing, “I received it a few minutes ago, it is Ingemar, my boyfriend…he is cheating me….I got video footage from the home of his mistress…right now..”
She was trying to finish the sentence when, at the end of the corridor, the door of the office of the public relations slammed open and Stavros Moyssidis, the public relations head, exited screaming, rushing to the parking lot. He was shouting in his Greek mother tongue, which made it difficult to understand the details, yet there was little doubt it was a case like Helga’s.
Dorian picked up his phone, just to get a busy tone. The network was overloaded. He switched to the reserved government line, then saw a message from Camilla pop up in his social app. He dropped the call to open the text.
It was a few lines, Camilla wrote that she had heard what seemed to be gunshots in their neighborhood, and she had not been able to reach Dorian by phone, the network was too congested. She was scared. Dorian read the message with some sense of relief, then typed back a quick answer. “Something strange is happening. Stay at home with the kids, do not let anyone in, especially Peter Vieh, our neighbor. I will be back soon.” He switched to the office emergency line, after a few seconds the chief of the Ministry security answered.
“Olof, Dorian here. What the hell is going on?”
“I think we are under a massive cyberattack. All the people of my team have received a series of electronic messages full of any sort of evidence, fake or real does not really matter at this point. They all involve betrayals in the circle of their closest relatives, friends and colleagues. I guess you saw something similar.”
“Indeed, and what is the scale of the attack? Are they targeting just us, or rather the whole government?” Dorian asked, while tuning his television to the European news channel.
He did not have to wait for the answer of Olof. The news anchor was commenting scenes of shootings in the streets from all major European cities, which quickly moved to the United States as the new day set in.
“Olof?” Dorian realized he had ignored his security guard, while he was watching the news. “Olof, are you still there?”
“Yes, Dorian, I am,” Olof replied. “Though I also received a few emails that deserve, um, my full attention…I think it is better to stay here, and manage that later. However, half of my team is unavailable. Some have left, some have plunged in a state of total apathy. Those who are available, are just like me, they have learned something that is keeping their minds insanely busy. I talked to the head of the city police, they are in a similar situation. Seemingly, the level of tension in society has gone through the roof, and they can barely count on half of their force…”
“Half of their force…” Dorian thought, “…all of this while Camilla is next to a resentful, possibly psychopathic neighbor, and I am here, ten miles away, with traffic starting up in no time.”
“Olof, do me one favor,” Dorian asked assertively. “Issue the highest emergency alert and have all the remaining people meet in the cafeteria. I will try to address the situation shortly.”
“Yes sir, however in the meantime we have to get Ulf Thorvaldson out of trouble.” Olof answered plainly, politely declining to obey, “He is under siege in his office.”
Dorian realized immediately that Olof was right. No one could attract resentment and hate more than the head of the Ministry’s human resources department. Dorian got out of his office and rushed down the corridor, toward the office of Ulf. He was still about thirty yards away when he bumped into the crowd, which was pressing on the office door. People were shouting and blaming each other for the
missed promotion, or what not. From time to time, they would recite slogans in sync against the director, who was locked away in his office.
Then someone of the crowd realized that Dorian had arrived, and the noise quickly reduced to a low hum. The crowd opened itself, leaving a path to the office door. Dorian felt everyone staring at him, he moved quickly to the office of Ulf, making sure he did not make any eye contact with anyone.
Dorian knocked vigorously on the door, shouting at his HR director. “Ulf, it’s Dorian here, please unlock the door. It’s alright. We need to talk.” Dorian’s eyes kept moving between the closed door in front of him and his feet, as he thought, “Shit, Ulf, open this door before it’s too late..”
The lock turned open, and Dorian pushed himself inside, while blocking those behind him, to make sure the crowd would not go into the office.
Ulf Thorvaldsen was as pale as a ghost, and he hid all six-foot five-inches of himself behind Dorian, somehow disappearing from sight. Dorian reached the desk, and asked Ulf to activate the broadcast message system, and then turned towards the crowd.
“We have all learned very unpleasant things today. We have all been victims of all kinds of injustice and unfairness, caused not by some obscure, distant power, but from our closest friends.”
He paused, as the humming started to subside, then continued.
“Much of this is true. Much is either false or exaggerated. And let’s be honest, many of us were also aware of, or suspecting, the bad news we learned, yet we hoped we would never have to confront them.”
He paused again, silence filled the room.
“Now we have a choice. Either start pursuing our own revenge, great or small. Or restrain, and before we take any action, think about the messages in which we are not the objects of the evil, but rather the subjects. Billions of emails have been sent out.”
He let a few seconds pass, then continued.
“This does not mean that all that has been revealed today will be forgotten, as long as the workplace fairness and ethics of my office are concerned. We will setup a special team to investigate any major violation within our organization, and won’t stop at anything or anyone’s wrongdoing in respecting workplace rules and procedures. There won’t be any untouchables, myself included.”
He turned towards Ulf, who immediately nodded in agreement. But it was enough for one of the mobsters, one who stood next to the office door, to break through the crowd and exit the room. People started chatting, shattering the silence, and another few left the room. Little by little, all the rest followed, until Dorian, Ulf and Olof were the only ones left in the office.
Dorian sat on the edge of Ulf’s desk, picked up his smartphone from his pocket and looked at the emails. There were new messages from Camilla, his wife, which he frantically opened one after the other. Peter Vieh had indeed come knocking at the door of their house, when he was called away by the screams of his wife and he had to rush back to his house next to Dorian’s. All that Camilla knew was in a surveillance camera video she had posted, in which Peter was fighting with an unknown man fleeing his house. It looked like Peter had been eventually stabbed by the intruder, who left him agonizing in the cold. A voice message followed. Camilla had managed to call the police, but she would not go outside, to try to help him. Dorian quickly called her back to approve the decision and assure her that he would be back as soon as possible.
He then turned his attention back to Ulf and Olof. Ulf was typing something at his computer, while Olof was still on the phone.
“What’s the situation outside?” Dorian asked, without bothering to interrupt Olof’s conversation.
“Still very confused, Sir,” Olof answered, “Under control at the Ministry of Interior, but it looks like it’s complete havoc nearby the Parliament building. The Royal Palace has been blocked by the guards and seems relatively safe.”
Dorian looked at the email again. This time it was from the office of the Prime Minister. He opened it with some hesitation, then he realized that it was just the agenda of the cabinet emergency conference call that had to start in one hour. He could not hide his relief. He looked up from his phone’s screen, to see Ulf standing in front of him, holding a sheet of paper with both hands. Dorian stood up from the desk and gently took the sheet out of Ulf’s hands.
“Thank you very much for your act of responsibility, Ulf,” Dorian said, “I will make sure you find another decent position.”
Ulf replied immediately, “This is just a very small sacrifice, compared to what we have risked. The resignation is written in such a way that I can continue to serve as long as you decide to announce it. And thank you for saving our lives, Dorian.”
Dorian shook hands with his director and left the room, walking back to his office. The corridors were deserted. All the personnel had left. He closed the office door behind him, and told the automated conference system to prepare for the upcoming cabinet meeting - then he sat back on his chair, exhausted.
The evening shadows were creeping into his office from the windows, punctuated by the Stockholm lights and the small fires that here and there had been set ablaze by protesters. None of them seemed too serious, enough to pose a threat to the city. From time to time, sirens would cut through the night. He realized that the shrieky police sounds were graudally giving way to the softer tones of ambulances and other non-armed emergency services. Dorian thought it was ending, and things would slowly recover. Then, he saw a new email pop up on his computer screen. It was from his father.
Chapter 14
Louis exited the Stockholm Bromma airport doors and was hit by a gust of cold air. He hurried to walk the short distance to the main parking building, where he got his rental car. As soon as he got in, he deactivated the self-driving system, and set the GPS to manual mode. The castle of Drottningholm, the new provisional seat of the Swedish government, was just six miles away.
He drove past the airport area, without being bothered too much by the numerous security checks that had followed the riots of the previous week. He thought that public order in Sweden had been decently restored, at least in comparison to other places in Europe. Snow was covering the landscape in late February, in the midday light the gray sky and the snow tended to blur away the line of the horizon. Louis felt he was driving in some kind of indefinite space, the dark, brown belt of the road suspended in a ghastly luminescent white nothingness.
He eventually reached the palace gate, where police and army vans were patrolling the castle’s perimeter. He stopped the car and waited for the guard to come over, while surveillance microdrones immediately flew over his vehicle. When the policeman reached his car, Louis rolled down the window and asked if he had to get out. To his relief, the guard invited him inside.
“It’s all right, Mr. Picard, no need to catch a cold. You can enter the castle, just make sure you park in the visitors’ lot, on the left side at the end of the main road. I read in my visitors’ log that Mr. Dorian Picard will be waiting for you there.”
Louis slowly waved his left hand to thank the officer, then rolled up the window and drove through the main gate, till he reached the parking lot. As soon as he turned the car off, he saw a figure with in a blue eskimo, ski hat and scarf, leaving one of the palace doorways. Louis wore his snow cap and before leaving the car he looked at the clock: there were still a couple of hours of daylight before sunset.
He walked towards the figure, when he was fifty yards away. He recognized his walk that it was Dorian and hurried along the narrow pathway, cutting across the snow. To his surprise, Dorian kept his pace unchanged. When he reached him, Louis tried to hug him, but Dorian turned abruptely to the left, heading towards the frozen pond at the center of the garden. Louis thought his son was still under too much stress, and just followed from a distance, raising his voice to make sure he got heard.
“Hi Dorian, how long will you have to stay there? And how are Camilla and the kids now? She told me about your neighbor’s attempted attack.”
“I will stay here with the rest of the cabinet until the Prime Minister thinks it’s safe for the government to go back to the city, the tension is still high and moving government away in the cold helped reduce the number and size of protests over the last days…as if the government were the only culprit.”
Louis noticed that Dorian was walking away from the castle, following the pathways into the gardens.
“Well, it was huge.” Louis chimed in. “In Italy, they feared the repetition of the Rome attacks of 2027. The world’s biggest cities are also not yet under full control, just look at what’s going on in Sao Paulo or New York.”
“Yes, not to mention the indirect effects of the general loss of confidence.” Dorian added, emotionless. Louis tried to continue, while struggling to keep up with Dorian’s pace, who kept his distance from Louis.
“Indeed. Lots of people have been fired, following the discovery of all kinds of petty wrongdoings by their employers. Business partners have been suddenly exposed to their mutual betrayals, and this might have more lasting effects than cheating in personal relationships…one thing is suspicion, another is knowing facts.” Louis was growing passionate as he spoke, “Just on the plane, I was reading that some economists are predicting a 5 to 10 percent drop in world GDP following the breaking of contracts, lawsuits and increased unemployment - it’s just unbelievable. All of this with a huge, carefully targeted wave of emails and texts. The most serious terror attack ever.”
“Yes, dad, unbelievable.” Dorian commented, emotionlessly. “From the way you talk about it, it doesn’t seem you’ve been hit hard. Hey, we are about to be at the Kina Slottet. A few hundred yards more and we’ll reach a small cafeteria where we can get a hot drink.”
“The Kina Slottet?” Louis wondered for a second, then he recognized the pagodas of the Chinese pavillion between the snow-covered pines. “Hate messages, you said? No, I didn’t get anything serious. Lots of trivial stuff, some of it quite funny, to some extent. Like the mayor of Salina - I learned he does not like the bush of capers I planted in my garden last year and was plotting to secretly poison it overnight…” Louis hesitated to continue his story, then he realized the reason behind the remark of Dorian and subsided. After a few seconds of walking silently in the snow, he asked Dorian.
The Last Enemy - A history of the present future - 1934-2084 Page 43
