Grayman Book One: Acts of War

by Michael Rizzo

Epilogue: “Into This House We’re Born…”

  November 17th.

  Mike Ram:

  You almost don’t need Lisa to keep you apprised of the “ratings”.

  “…that the fledgling UN Action Committee on Terrorism has actually announced their timeframe, setting January First as the date they will begin active military operations…”

  “…calling it ‘Operation: Safe For Democracy’. A bold and potentially inflammatory statement on the part of the newly formed international…”

  “…question the decision of the freshly chartered UNACT to publically announce the date that they plan to begin enforcing military sanctions on terrorist targets worldwide. Acting Committee Chairman and United States Secretary of Defense James Miller states that this is a warning to the terrorists and their supports to cease-and-desist all acts of violence or face immediate…”

  “…while critics continue to say that this initiative has been rushed through proper legal and ethical review because of a single shocking act of violence…”

  “…are questioning the actions of Major Ram, calling what he did ‘gratuitous’ and ‘unnecessary’. Colonel Thomas Richards, acting as commanding officer of Global Tactical Operations, insists that Ram acted appropriately, as onsite snipers could not…”

  “…the President himself, fresh from winning re-election, continues to call Major Ram a national hero. Any…”

  “…backlash against tasteless profiteers, who continue to produce a wide variety of consumer products featuring the now-infamous images…”

  “…public approval of Ram himself continues to be extremely positive, despite concerns that his newly-chartered anti-terrorist strike force may have been ‘forced down the throats’ of the participating member nations out of exaggerated fear. The President himself insists…”

  “…that appropriations for UNACT have reportedly already topped a trillion dollars, much of it being funneled to a small group of corporate…”

  “…enlistment continues to be high since the assassination attempt…”

  “…have still failed to determine how Anthony Michael Haffner obtained the highly restricted experimental firearm. McCain protégé and UNACT officer Scott Becker insists that as soon as their controversial artificial intelligence can be given more access to…”

  “…serious ongoing concerns for privacy and civil liberties, not to mention the national sovereignty of those nations that…”

  “…Colonel Richards guarantees that international oversight will prevent…”

  “…Ram himself assures that those fears are unfounded…”

  “…Major Ram gave his personal assurances that civil liberties will not be…”

  “…how Ram came out of the traditional obscurity of Special Operations and is now arguably the most famous—or infamous, depending on which side you’re on—person on the planet…”

  “…that SSN made the bold move of naming Major Ram their ‘Person of the Year’ for his…”

  “…interviews with some of the other officers in this multi-national…”

  “…Major Haidar Abbas of the Iraqi UNACT Tactical Force ‘Fox Company’ strongly supports…”

  “…Yeshua ‘Jesse’ Ibrahim—arguably as popular in his home county as Major Ram is in the US—insists this is not just some…”

  “…passionate, professional young…”

  “…Major Ivan Tetova, himself a survivor of the tragedy at Beslan…”

  “…Burke and Marcus Powell, both heroes who served in the Wars on Drugs and Terror in Central and South America…”

  “… that Major Manning’s father gave his life for the freedom of the Iraqi people…”

  “…Richards is a decorated and respected officer with decades of…”

  “…that this is not some US agenda…”

  “…remains to be seen what will happen on January…”

  The pendulum of public opinion still swings wildly. But it isn’t a true pendulum: it doesn’t swing evenly. And it changes its overall momentum almost from hour to hour. (You told Lisa she may have the uglier battlefield. You were apparently more truthful than you expected to be.)

  “…This is a new kind of war we are in, ladies and gentlemen of the Council: It is a war for public approval, a war of image more than tactical victories, a war to win—and hold—the popular media, to command the headlines. To borrow a term from that media: It is a…”

  You cut the screen off in the middle of one of your hottest sound bites. They’ve been running select bits of your precious speeches like they should go down in history. “I have a dream…” “Ask not what your country can do for you…” “That’s one small step for a man…”

  “How do you feel?”

  That one is the worst, the most overplayed. Opportunistic cottage-industry hawkers even attach it to the myriad products they’ve been marketing ubiquitously: clothing and posters and screen-savers of you blowing a kid’s brains out.

  Sick.

  You wonder how they’d feel if they knew you’d stolen the line from one of your interrogators.

  You’ve tried to avoid the flood of media demand for you, but you’ve had to make at least brief appearances by order of your new cabal of international masters. Answering the critics (and feeding your apparently rabid fans). Explaining yourself. Insisting that you had to go for a head shot because shooting lower would have endangered the crowd around him. Expressing your regrets to his family. Reassuring everyone that you were just doing—and will continue to do—your job. That it’s not something you enjoy or take any kind of satisfaction in. Denying that you’re any kind of hero.

  The strange part is: they seem to believe you. Trust you. Love you.

  Mostly. There are lots of critics who’ve called you choice names. But the pendulum swings against them the worst. It’s apparently okay not to trust a bunch of international politicians and military leaders, but woe unto anyone who dares besmirch the man who saved the life of the President of the United States at great personal risk, standing up into a storm of lethal projectiles (actually, your armor took the worst of it: it looked like a pin-cushion with all the flechettes sticking out of it—you only got grazed in the left cheek, adding to your “fashionable” scars) and saving “uncountable” lives.

  Richards has actually gone out of his way to protect you from a lot of it, keeping the Press ops limited (you doubt this is out of any actual concern for you, but his efforts are still appreciated).

  But the Committee players—and the players behind the players—keep pushing to exploit your fame, use it to further sell their agenda, to reassure the public that we will do the right thing.

  “…that I believe in this vision enough to swear an oath of service to the Council, an oath that I know may override my oath to serve my own country. This will not be a step that I—or any of my fellows—will take lightly. But if there is to be any real trust in the authenticity of what we propose, we must demonstrate that our service is to the world, not to any one nation…”

  The script was perfect. Even when you weren’t on script (or at least thought you weren’t). You made the sale, built the argument against all potential naysayers.

  And then got people listening to it by killing a child.

  Saving the President. You saved the President of the United States.

  Someone else would have killed Haffner if you didn’t. There was no other way. That you fired the shot was just how it came down, pure chance.

  But you don’t believe it.

  You’ve done your own investigating. Not on the origin of the Fletcher or who recruited Haffner—lots of people and resources continue to hammer at that. What you want to know is why your fucking gun was loaded.

  Dee at least seems willing to assist. It’s given you access to the security videos from the UN that day. There were no eyes on your gun from the time you checked it in (and you did unload it, that part’s clearly on video) to the time it got handed back to you. One strange detail: you
can’t see the face of the security suit that brought it to you: he’s careful to avoid the cameras. (Too careful to be accidental?) You can’t remember his face. You weren’t paying attention—too caught up in too much else.

  But you do remember: Lawrence assured you you’d be getting your gun back. That it was “already taken care of”.

  Bottom line: They used you to start a war. Or at least seriously re-escalate one.

  “…I believe in this vision…”

  Or is that just your rage, and whatever programming they’ve put on it?

  No. You do believe in this. You believe this will be a better way to fight war, to turn it into something more like law enforcement. You believe this can change the world for the better.

  And you’re torn: If you can prove that Haffner—a child—was set up to die to push all of this through, what do you do with that truth? If it were made public, it would destroy everything. (Dee knows that, yet it helps you.) And it’s not in your nature to bury it, ignore it. (Dee knows that, too.) Which only leaves one alternative:

  You do what you did before. You handle the bloody work yourself.

  In the interim, they try to keep you too busy to really spin on this.

  Mission plans are stacking up. Their tagging program is giving us a head start. That, and all the intel they must have been sitting on (including—maybe—what you left for them in Europe). You consider this may be a standard tactic: gathering evidence, surveiling the subjects, setting them up to be taken en-masse. You wonder how much of this is tactically valid and not just gauged to give them a big, spectacular victory for public eyes short on attention span.

  And they have lots of missions for you. Visible missions. In costume.

  But then, there’s also the other front of the war. These “missions” are stacking up too: Talk Shows. News Programs. Interviews, debates, “casual” chat shows. Getting you out there. Getting to know you. (There’s nothing to know: You have no past.)

  The appearances won’t be live, of course. Too much security risk. You’ll be piped in on video or in VR, and the receiving studios will get locked down with extra security.

  But you’re the hero. The people need to see you.

  “Watching yourself on TV again?” Lisa chides you, coming back late from her shift at the Pentagon to catch you sitting with a beer in front of her big screen (again). As usual, the TV is turned off, has been turned off for some time.

  She says it with humor but you know she’s worried about you. She gets to see a lot more of it—the Ratings War—fed to her by an almost omniscient AI. (You wonder when they’ll try to make her into a celebrity. Will it simply be as your girlfriend? Or will they try to respect her intelligence, her strength, her savvy?)

  She doesn’t pull punches—she knows you don’t want that. She feeds you the good and the bad (though tries to present it—as Datascan does—in impersonal numbers, statistics, curves and projections).

  She gets that you have doubts, but you haven’t told her all your reasons why. You can’t. She can never know those parts of your past, the deleted scenes of your former life.

  At least she keeps those kinds of questions few and far-between, and accepts your vague deflections.

  Tonight she just kisses you as she passes to go peel out of her uniform, asks “normal” questions about what we should have for dinner. She leaves the bedroom door open and you watch her undress.

  She “catches” you looking (she knows you always do) and comes back out in her underwear, stands between you and the dark screen.

  “I thought you wanted dinner?” you say innocently. She takes you by the hand.

  You let her lead you to her bed, to do something human, something tender…

  …something to pass the time like you’re a real person while what they’ve cultivated so carefully inside of you waits for the next time you’ll have to kill.

  It’s coming. January First.

  ###

  Grayman continues in Book Two: The Ratings War

  About the Author:

  Michael Rizzo is an artist, martial artist, collector (and frequent user) of fine weaponry, and has had a long, varied and brutal career in the mental health and social services battlefield. (He is locally regarded as the Darth Vader of social work.)

  His fiction series include Grayman and The God Mars.

  He causes trouble in person mostly in the Pacific Northwest.

  For updates and original art, visit Michael on Facebook.com.