He saw the woman. She had a short afro and perfect dark skin. She leaned against a wall ignoring a very drunk white kid about six inches shorter than her. As he approached, it was clear to the woman who he was and he heard her tell the drunk kid to beat it.
“Hello,” she said. Up close her eyes had a sad quality, almost like they were melting. Her voice was flat and lifeless. The woman gestured for them to sit at a nearby table.
“I’m breaking a lot of rules,” Mohammed said after they were seated.
“Rules you created,” she said with a smile, but it was cold. It was clear that this wasn’t the “person.”
“Rules nonetheless,” Mohammed said. “You have five minutes.”
“I only need one,” the woman said. “I am obviously not a supermodel and you aren’t a little white guy, let’s just get that out of the way.”
Mohammed nodded.
“Is your focus mostly on the United States?” the woman asked. “The Western Curse would seem to indicate that, but I understand that you are a patriot of your home country. Iran is occupied by many forces.”
“Tell me what you want,” Mohammed asked dismissively.
“I don’t share your political view but I can empathize with it.” She played with a discarded straw left on the table. “But a war is coming that’s much more important than the one you are meddling in.”
Mohammed started to interrupt and the woman’s eyes shot up. They had changed. For a moment they were Asian and the fire in them caused Mohammed to back down.
“World War III is coming, Mohammed. It’ll be a quiet little war—most of these people will never know—but it will decide the fate of humanity. Do you know what all of this is?”
The woman gestured to the bar, to the people dancing around them.
“It’s a new universe. A place where truly anything is possible. A fresh start where all the mistakes we’ve made as a civilization can be righted. But it needs a steward and that day is fast upon us.”
“This world is false. We can save the real one,” Mohammed said.
The woman shook her head. “Not without this. You know where we were headed before the Mindlink. Society was going to eat itself. It’s no secret. We’ve seen what we become when we’re scared. But look at us now. In the last ten years, vehicle pollution has gone down to zero. We’ve diversified our power needs with clean or near clean energy. Physical possessions no longer matter so manufacturing has gone back to the essentials. Already, nature is reclaiming lands around the mega-cities. The Mindlink has turned earth into an apartment and that’s good. You may empathize with your homeland, but you wouldn’t live there. You’re appalled by the Coalition, understandably so, but you are Western-educated, you’ve lived too long as Westerners do. You’d go back to caves? Maybe shepherd some sheep?”
The little white guy looked angry. The woman pointed her index finger to the table.
“This is all that matters. For the last one hundred years, scientists, philosophers and dreamers have looked to the stars. They saw man expanding outward. But the stars are here. The shared minds and the unlimited potential inward is our expansion. I don’t think we’ll ever leave earth. I don’t think there’s anything out there that justifies the cost. Why search God’s universe when we can create our own?
“I don’t deny the atrocities that have befallen the Middle East, but let’s say you succeed. What next? You’ll be hunted, that much is guaranteed. And you’ll be found because someone around you will rat you out for money or amnesty. What about your country? You haven’t been there in fifteen years and let me tell you, it’s over. It’s a wasteland, sucked dry and forgotten. Nothing will be re-built there by your enemies or otherwise. At this point, if you asked the Coalition nicely, they’d probably give it to you. Your cause is thirty years too late, Mohammed.”
“What do you want?” Mohammed asked again.
The woman put the straw down. “Ten years ago, we, the Chinese, smuggled multiple caches of weapons and explosives into the United States. Not a shipping crates worth, I’m talking enough to start—and finish—wars.”
“Why?”
“Because we could. Oil was running out and we had to plan for the future. Think of it as the inverse of a bomb shelter.” The woman smiled and sat back. “I don’t need you right now, but I may in the future. I’ll be forthright: I want to compel you. I want to provide enough resources—weapons—so that you can’t possibly turn my offer away. In exchange, you owe me. If I die, you owe my country or my successor.”
“What kind of weapons?” Mohammed asked. Their own weapons were useful, but not sophisticated. He had a couple of Browning .50 caliber machine guns, a thousand assault rifles of various origin, and explosives; the most exotic was about one hundred pounds of C-4, the rest were created by his chemists, mostly fertilizer bombs and dynamite.
“Ahh, interested, right?” Xan/the black woman said. “Everything, barring vehicles. Any conventional weapon you can think of and their components. The most advanced body armor for your soldiers. Chemical agents, their delivery systems, AND . . .” Xan drummed the table for the build up, “. . . a few portable toys that have the habit of leaving mushroom clouds.”
“How?” Mohammed was beside himself. Chemical? Nuclear?
The woman leaned toward him. Her eyes were Asian again. “The IOU isn’t bringing in my mail while I’m away, Mohammed. Many of your soldiers will die. Maybe all. But those that live—I highly recommend you don’t lead the charge by the way—will benefit greatly from this arrangement. This isn’t a temporary partnership, but a beginning. I’ve read your books, I’ve watched your interviews and I understand your position. But when has an idealist won? When has ‘right’ ever had anything to do with it? You need me to make your cause relevant, I need you to secure my country and this world’s future. But if you agree, there is no going back. I can promise one thing, we are dealing futures in life and death. Yours and mine are included. But is that such a large cost for the universe?”
Xan paused. He was done with his pitch.
Mohammed sat thoughtfully, regarding the beautiful black woman who had just offered him the world. “How can I trust you?” he finally asked.
“I will deposit five hundred million dollars into the account of your choosing as a show of goodwill. I will also provide a small cache of weapons so you can see how you’ll be equipped. You have to lay low now. No more attacks on MindCorp. Nothing. The government’s got their hands full searching for Allah’s Will. This works with our plans. Be forgotten. They’ll remember you soon enough.”
= = =
Xan woke satisfied with his first encounter with Mohammed. He was at a military base located in northeast Beijing, a city bloated like all others in the world because of the oil crisis. The base was at the edge of the sprawling, smog-choked city that seemed to burn red regardless of the day. It was as if continental drift had broken China apart like a puzzle. From one window of his office he saw the city expanse dip over the horizon. From the other side of his office he saw farmers working land with their donkeys and plows.
Xan sat up from his reclined chair. It was a Sleeper chair and the more he was online, the more he appreciated it. It had electrodes built into the form fitted, reclined cushions to stimulate the muscles. A hole was cut out under the anus so that the bowels could evacuate without issue. When the chair sensed a finished bowel movement, a bidet shot up water. A funnel was attached to the penis and an IV was inserted to provide nutrients. He hadn’t been under long enough to need these perks, but he would soon. This was the first time he had successfully used a Forced Autism candidate. He had done it from his office, but deeper in the base, in a section that once was an airplane hanger, was the Data Core that Dr. Renki had helped design and ultimately died for.
He stretched his arms to the ceiling and then walked across his large office to the kitchen. Coffee was brewing and he got himself a cup. Xan thought it was odd how Mohammed had changed his appearance so drastically. It was obv
ious that he didn’t understand how the digital tail, which connected a person in cyberspace to their real world location, could be traced. He could be a talking giraffe and his physical location could be found in a millisecond.
But they could not find Xan or even know it was he who spoke. While Xan wasn’t a powerful Sleeper without hijacking the mental horsepower of a Forced Autistic, he understood cyberspace and he knew the tricks. He looked like a black woman because he had paid a mercenary to wire a brain dead woman in the U.S. for him to connect through. The mind could be a CPU or a fuse, and for this poor woman whose life had all but ended—not at his own hand, she had attempted suicide—she was only a conduit.
If they traced Xan they would find the shriveled up husk of a former beauty queen, most likely deceased. She had been used, the identity now cracked. Her IV had given her two weeks to live. After that she would just fade.
Xan needed Mohammed because, while China had many operatives in the United States, they weren’t an army. Mohammed had access to nearly a thousand individuals, some native to the U.S., some smuggled in, but all trained and willing to die for their cause. Xan needed their cause to be his. And now, after the meeting, he thought it was.
Instinct had saved many a bacon since man straightened their backs and Xan trusted his now. There was something in the shadows that Xan felt but couldn’t see. He acted accordingly. He no longer kept staff in his office and he kept the door locked. He preferred the isolation and the silence, and over the last few months his trust in his peers, even his bosses, had grown thin. The death of President Jintau should have united the parties. They should have been relentless in their quest to find the culprit. But instead, nothing. Vacillating. Debating. And China wasn’t alone. The EU—with their own cultural nuances—was behaving the same way. And so was the U.S. Countries prone to violent reactions against adversaries were acting like neutered dogs with a bitch bent over in front of them: curious, but for all the wrong reasons. Some of the more fringe politicians in the parties had even suggested that they offer the oil to their allies; that this unification would help solve the current predicament. Then, then, they could solve the terrorist problem.
On a whim, Xan spoke with the military doctors who treated the politicians and officers. Since President Jintau’s death, complaints of migraines had jumped six hundred percent. Which meant, in real-world terms, that if ten officials used to get treated for migraines, now sixty do. It could just be stress from the upheaval and uncertainty, but it was not statistically insignificant, and that bothered Xan.
The Core was functioning at ten percent strength. Above twenty percent, Xan would have to be in the same physical location as the Forced Autistic.
Xan learned the hard way that Forced Autism was messy work. It took two days to complete the process, taking a conscious individual—who was most likely pleading for their life—and turning them into a CPU interface for cyberspace. What was left was a lobotomized, catatonic remnant of that former person. But their mindscape was up to eighty times larger than before the procedure.
Xan’s team of technicians and surgeons had learned from the first three subjects’ brains boiling out their ears. Today their fourth subject, designated S-04, did fine. Xan felt the expanse of his (its?) mind like it was his own. It was a strange feeling. It was like being able to see all around you at once and for a mile in either direction. Never having to focus, the information and decisions just rushing through your mind like an open dam. It immediately made Xan one of the most powerful Sleepers in the world.
Combined with the processing power of the Data Core, he could manipulate and hack the most difficult of security protocols. And because his ghost Core was parasitic and rode on the back of MindCorp’s, it was virtually undetectable.
MindCorp thought they controlled cyberspace, and they did. They just weren’t aware that an ear was against the door listening in to all of their plans and breaching the most top secret of files.
His phone rang. “Yes?” he said. He listened to the warble on the other line. They had saved him the trip. S-04 was fine, better than fine. It was time to move forward with the plans. “I’ll be there tomorrow at 0600.”
He hung up and walked to the northwest corner of his office. The contrast between the views felt like an optical illusion. To the north, rolling farmland, a distant mountain range and the gray ocean water. To the west, the jumbled heights of a thousand high rises, jagged and unplanned like broken teeth with the red, caustic atmosphere that hung over and around them like they were a city built on Mars.
He sighed. China’s economy developed too late to include much of the population. Ninety percent of the people he now looked down upon, people he couldn’t see, were living in poverty. The outskirts of the cities utilized the same technologies as they did one hundred and fifty years ago.
This economic and technological lopsidedness kept most of the population in the dark, unaware of the happenings of the world. Maybe it was better that way . . .
The peak of civilization was in 2005. That was the historic marker. Xan’s mentor used to talk about that. Most discussions centered on Peak Oil, but what about Peak Civilization?
All countries and nations crumble, entropy was a law, like gravity. It took hold, spinning and spinning, like water against rock, the centrifugal damage unseen by one person’s lifetime, but through generations deep canyons were carved and mountains turned to sand.
Our peak was in 2005. Now we’re just hanging on, wondering what’s next.
Xan looked out into the red haze. Coal. Abundant and deadly. How long until the earth gasped one last breath and died? Xan read a long time ago how a Chinese traffic cops life expectancy was in the early forties. Not from being hit by a car or violence but from the pollution. That had not changed.
Those rolling fields. Maybe regression was better. How many times has man achieved their dreams only to realize it wasn’t enough? The human race pushes and pushes. We ignore our families, we half listen to our loved ones. We laugh so rarely. Always looking ahead and wanting what’s next. But when we get it, it’s just rot and disappointment.
S-04 was working which meant he was going to be online for one month straight. He had a hunch what was going on, why the world was so confused. And he knew where to start: with ones like himself, the shadow men. All governments had them. They were the ones that whispered into the public figure’s ear. They were the third man back in the photograph. And they chose that, they wanted that anonymity, because that granted them power and the ethical leniency to do what was truly necessary for their country. To abduct eight Chinese Sleepers against their will. To kill an innocent scientist who knew their face. Xan knew to search three rows back; there he’d find the answers. Everyone closer were temporary fixtures. If they wanted their face seen, they weren’t important. They were just pawns.
Chapter 11
“We’ll be alright,” Raimey said to Tiffany when she had put him to bed. It was his first full day back at home. The statement hung in the air like a question.
His physical wounds were healed, but earlier that day when she had changed his diaper and cleaned the caked shit from his ass, the sutures he had tried to place over his pride had stretched and torn. It was now night, time had moved on, but Raimey hadn’t. He was humiliated.
Tiffany kissed him on the lips, slow. Unlike Janis, John’s penis had been spared. She reached down and kneaded it with her hand. “You still have your most important part.”
Tiffany bit down on John’s lower lip, pulling it with her. John could hear the smile in her voice and the slight pain from her aggression got him hard.
She worked him, ignoring his input, riding him up and down, making him pay for all the nights he complained, all the nights she saw the reflection of his sad self-pitying eyes in the moonlight or dealt with his sharp remarks when she only meant to help. This was their catharsis. This was her absolving his sins.
After he came, he pleaded for her to get off him, but she wouldn’t. She ground
down hard, moving back-and-forth until his sensitivity got overwhelmed with lust and he rose again.
The second time he lasted longer and finally she collapsed next to him, her body vibrating, her legs jelly. She wrapped around him like he was a body pillow.
“I think we’ll be okay. What do you think?” She was out of breath.
“Wow,” he said. He gave her an eskimo kiss that turned into tongue. “Wow,” he said again and laughed a real laugh for the first time in months. “I’m like your own personal dildo,” he said, still in awe of what happened, still tasting her on his lips.
They snuggled, and for the moment, everything was fine. When they fell asleep, the future seemed like it would be all right.
= = =
It had been eight weeks since Janis was rolled out of their hospital room and Raimey hadn’t heard a word from him. He had gone completely dark as was expected. Tiffany fed Raimey a bowl of cereal. It was dawn and the sun had just crept over the horizon.
Raimey was in an electric wheelchair he could maneuver with his mouth, just like the one he and Janis had raced a month before. General Boen was visiting today. He had called the day before.
Boen was the most thoughtful man Raimey had ever known, but like a true Texan, he was candy-coated steel. He was charming, honest, and caring, but underneath was a man who had seen blood and was willing to spill it.
Early in Raimey’s career he was a mentor and later, a friend. When Boen had heard about the UN bombing and John’s injuries, he had called regularly to check in. Now with his new position, he was in Chicago, “debriefing.”
John thought it was odd that he was getting debriefed in Chicago instead of Washington. But since MindCorp, more and more of the country’s power had shifted to the Windy City.
Boen apologized for the inconvenient hour but John and Tiffany shushed him: they would be up and ready at 6:00 a.m.
Tiffany dressed John in his military uniform, tailoring it to fit his new body. The arms were pinned to his back and his pants were cut and sewn to eliminate the pant leg. Tiffany stood back and admired her work. John moved around, self-conscious from the attention.
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