by David Wong
“So they turn me into a cow monster.”
“You understand the origin of the cow thing, right? They’re not calling you fat. Well, they’re not just calling you fat. Among these groups, ‘cow’ is slang for a harassment target. Your reactions are entertainment to them, they milk you for tears, for pain. But they’re humans, so at some point they’ll feel guilt over it. That’s when they need to manufacture some new reason to justify it, a shared fiction that lets the game continue.”
“Okay, so how long can that go on? At some point that hate has to dry up. I mean, it’s been months.”
There was no answer, and she could tell Andre was straining not to say something.
She threw out her hands. “What?”
“I want you to replay what you just said, and think about who you just said it to.”
“Okay. I get it. Racism has been going on for millions of years. I got a whole speech about that this morning, from the heart-eating guy.”
“Yeah, sounds like Alonzo.”
“I’m sick of being lectured to. I’ve done nothing but try to go legit since I got here. I’m surrounded by corporate sharks, people who got their power specifically so they could abuse it. And because I’m out here not doing that, because I’m actually trying to be a good person, they all see it as weakness.”
Andre again suppressed a response.
“You obviously want to say something.”
He hesitated. “Zoey … you don’t deserve the hate you’re getting. Not you, not anybody.”
“But?”
“But … you’ve never abused your power? Never ever?”
“No. Not on purpose.”
“You never pressured a subordinate into having sex with you?”
“What? Are you talking about Armando? That was … he was into it. All I did was suggest we go swimming, because we were hot, and we didn’t have bathing suits. He initiated almost everything after that! As fast as he could! Nobody put a gun to his head.”
“He was a subordinate, somebody you employed, who took orders from you. Same as with that personal trainer.”
“Now the personal trainer, that was absolutely his idea. I don’t even think he was a real trainer. Will found him, and I swear to god he knew what he was doing. I think that was Will trying to relieve my anxiety.”
It actually wasn’t the worst thing she’d tried, but this conversation was not the place to mention that. She bounced the ball. Shot. Missed.
“There’s power in how other people see you,” said Andre, “and I don’t think you get how scary you are to people now. In those parties you go to with all them captains of industry, you can think of it like a spiderweb, all these crisscrossing vectors of power. This one is afraid of that one, who answers to this other guy over here. Sure, nobody’s putting an actual gun to anybody’s head, but it’s because they don’t have to. It’s just understood. If you don’t want to become a monster, if you don’t want to become like Chobb or even your daddy, you’ve got to start paying attention to that stuff. Otherwise, you’ll become one of them and you won’t even notice the change.”
“If all that’s true, if I’m sooo powerful, why do I feel like nothing I do matters? I march right into Alonzo’s lair, I march right into Chobb’s stupid Blimp of Evil, I march right up to a brainwashed hate mob with a gun in my face, and for what? My mom was right, behind every monster there’s just another monster, forever. If I’m so scary to everyone, then why can’t I actually change anything?”
“It’s frustrating, isn’t it? Makes you want to lash out. Find one tangible bad guy and just unleash all that rage on him.”
“Sure does. Go over to the Workshop, tell it to make me a big death ray that will fry everybody.”
Andre said nothing.
Zoey faced him. “What?”
He still said nothing.
“Oh. You’re saying that’s why this group decided to hate me. They feel powerless.”
“I knew you’d get there. Why do you think they’re targeting you, and not any of the giant multinational corporations who screw them over on a daily basis? Or somebody like Chobb? It’s because they think they can get to you, that they’ll see some kind of victory, feel strong again. That’s why half the time they talk like you’re an all-powerful, all-knowing mastermind and half the time act like you’re Trailer Park Barbie. To serve their purposes, they need you to be both.”
“They said they’re ‘storming the walls’ tomorrow night. You think they’re coming here.”
“Doesn’t it sound like it?”
“But if they show up here and we defend ourselves, then I’m the bad guy. I can’t win. Well, I’m not just going to sit here and wait. Will said in any situation like this, it all comes down to a core of ringleaders. These people want to make me think they’re infinite and anonymous, an unstoppable swarm. But they’re just people, a specific number of flesh-and-blood human beings. I want to find out who they are.”
“Will’s already got Budd on that.”
Andre picked up the ball. He spun it around in his hands, assumed a shooting posture, eyeballed the rim. He shot. The ball missed so badly that it hit off the top of the backboard, bouncing up and back, flying into a second-floor balcony where it shattered a potted plant.
Andre squinted at it and said, “Are you sure that hoop’s regulation?”
“I want to talk to these guys,” said Zoey. “Face-to-face. We have to give sanity one more chance.”
“And if that don’t work?”
She didn’t answer.
16
Budd had a list of names by dinnertime.
They were eating their evening meal in the courtyard, in a gazebo surrounded by goofy-looking skeletons and witches and faux stone walls. The whole courtyard would be turned into the haunted maze by Monday, Halloween Day, for kids to be chased around by not-too-scary holographic ghosts, mechanical zombies, and drone gargoyles buzzing overhead. At the moment it was just a mess, displays piled in corners, animatronic vampires leaning drunkenly against trees.
Budd was projecting onto the table a paused video clip from the riot at the Night Inn. Next to it, in another window, was a paused clip from the hostage standoff a month ago, a view of the mooing dudes in the crowd. A series of lines and labels identified the men who had appeared at both. Her trolls lived all over the world, but the concern right now were the ones who were local, who could plausibly show up at her door tomorrow and maybe recruit others to do the same. Lots of the guys were wearing some version of those digital skull masks she kept seeing, but they were still able to put together a handful of names.
Andre said, “Just a bunch of nobodies. Most unemployed, collecting federal PDR checks. The rest work part-time, spend hours a day in the Hub.”
Zoey said, “Hey, you’re talking to a former PDR girl.” The federal basic income payments were derisively called “Please Don’t Riot” checks by those lucky enough to not need them. “So if these are our ringleaders, the ones who’ll ‘storm the walls’ of the estate, what would that even look like?”
Echo said, “If these guys show up at the gates with rocks and bottles, they will be … repelled. The grounds’ automated security would turn that into a sad spectacle. If they show up with firearms, that will go even worse for them. Ask Redd Gunn.”
Echo was eating some kind of kelp noodle ramen dish. Will was having a glass of scotch. Everyone else was having smoked short ribs glazed in hoisin sauce, pulled and stuffed into steamed bao buns with some shredded carrots, cucumber, and green onions on top to make it healthy. Hell, it was practically a salad.
“The true threat,” said Will, “is if their benefactor funds something more serious.”
Zoey said, “Wait, are we talking about Chobb showing up here with his personal army? The VOP?”
“What would he gain by losing half of his staff and equipment invading the home of a local real estate developer? No, if he involves himself, it would be by proxy. Putting up money or … something.”
>
Budd said, “There are no serious bids out to hired guns, muscle, or souped-up vigilantes. Lots of talk, a lot of it in jargon I can’t unravel, but I can’t find where it’s being put into action at all.”
Zoey said, “Right, because as you keep saying, they spend all their time in the Hub. That’s where they’re doing their planning. So who here has gone into the Hub to see what’s what?”
No one answered.
Zoey said, “What, are you all too cool to put on a VR headset? Jesus, hire a teenager to do it. This is where the bad guys are, right? Echo, did you get a price on buying the Hub?”
“It’s a decentralized platform that every VR network and game uses, it’s like trying to buy the internet. I did find an investment opportunity in authenticating the purchases of persistent digital goods. Looks like there’s a massive upside there—”
Will said, “Focus, people. They’re planning something for the actual world, we don’t care what they fantasize about inside their imaginary clubhouse, we care about how they implement it out here.”
“To that end,” said Budd, “all I’ve found is one guy who’s rented a moving truck, another group has put together money to buy a drone. A big one, the kind that can carry some cargo. That’s about it.”
“What could they do with that?” asked Zoey. “The drone could drop a bomb on us, right?”
Budd said, “If they were buying a bomb big enough to matter, I’d know about it.”
“Maybe they’re going to try to use the truck to ram the gates?”
Will made a dismissive gesture. “There are pillars that pop out of the ground that will not only stop it cold, but turn it into a shattered wreck. Those gates don’t look like much because they’re purely decorative. The real defenses are buried, all around. You’ve got to remember, Arthur wasn’t just paranoid about rival mobsters trying to take him out. He was anticipating a SWAT team from the feds or North Korean infiltrators.”
“He was paranoid about the North Koreans coming to Utah? My father sounds a little bit crazier every time you talk about him.”
“Oh, that wasn’t crazy at all,” said Andre. “One tactic that came up in the war, they’d grab body cam footage during raids, run facial recognition of ground troops through social media. Get their names, send squads to go kill their families back home. Both sides did it. There were dozens of murders in the states that the government thinks were retaliation against the spouses and kids of operatives. Kept it quiet, so as not to cause panic.”
“Jesus.”
“The point is,” said Will, “that the only people who’ve ever gotten in here did it because they were let in.”
“But if they’re coming from the sky…”
Echo said, “The defenses actually extend upward several thousand feet. They fire high-velocity projectiles straight up. Even if they stole a military helicopter and tried to land it on the lawn, the defenses would tear the rotors off. I mean, you wouldn’t want to be standing right under it when it happened, but…”
Will said, “Zoey, this place is a fortress.”
“But these people would know that, right? And they’re coming anyway?”
“Exactly,” said Echo. “The fact that nothing is turning up is … alarming.”
Zoey studied the paused video on the table and said, “I want to talk to them, the ringleaders here. Face-to-face, in real life. Where do we find them?”
“The biggest concentration of them lives in the Screw.”
“Let me guess, that’s a brothel?”
Andre said, “You think they all live in a brothel? Wouldn’t be a very profitable one.”
“It’s a sort of spiral-shaped building,” said Echo. “It’s not residential, it was built as storage lockers. The storage operation went belly-up and, like every conceivable structure in the city with a roof and walls, it quickly filled with squatters.”
Andre added, “You can imagine how it smells.”
“Well, I’m going out there,” said Zoey.
“To the Screw?” Echo clearly hated the idea. “Why? To let them know you’re not scared?”
“No. To let them see that I am scared. Let them and everyone on Blink see me as a person, not a monster they’ve constructed in their head. You want to go?”
“Better to be there than stay behind and worry myself to death.”
“So how do I get out there without my vehicle getting swarmed by angry mobs on the way?”
Andre perked up. “Ooh, you want an aircraft?”
“Do we still have a company helicopter?”
“Nah, I’ll get you somethin’ better.”
Will said, “I’m going to urge you not to do this, but I realize that will accomplish nothing so I’m going to proceed to the next part of the conversation where I compromise and say the rest of us will work out an extraction in case things go sour. Set up far enough away that—”
“No,” Zoey said. “You’re staying away from this one. Remember the goal is to not terrify them. It’ll just be me, Echo, and Wu. I’ve got something else for you to work on.”
Choosing his words carefully, Will said, “Zoey, you are underestimating your opponent. I don’t care what their equipment or training is like. This is a bunch of people who have turned hatred of you into their religion and they have nothing to lose. You are dealing with zealots and if they get their hands on you, we have no idea what they’ll do because they don’t know. Regardless of the mindset of any individual in that building, the twentysomething hive mind is a psychopath. I’m telling you—don’t go in there without backup standing by.”
“Here’s what I need you to do while the three of us are at the Screw. All of you. Budd, Andre, you, too. If we had to get to Titus Chobb, like personally get to him, I want you to find out how that could be done.”
Andre said, “The man commands a personal army, Zoey. Problem isn’t getting to Chobb, it’s what happens to you after.”
“That’s part of what you’re figuring out, how to avoid that. If it turns out there’s no way to do it, then come back and say so. Then I’ll hire somebody who can.”
Will fixed her with his gaze and said, “Like I said earlier, there’s always a way. Assuming this plan would allow us to incorporate whatever means are available.”
“Yep, whatever it takes. And then our goal from here on is to make sure we don’t have to actually do it. I know you like using ghost holograms to torment people, maybe have him visited in the night by three spirits to remind him about the true meaning of Christmas. Then tell him it also applies to Halloween, I guess.”
Will, apparently taking this suggestion seriously, said, “I don’t think he would fall for that. Remember how he got his start, this man knows almost as much about psychological warfare as anyone at this table. Still, everyone has a blind spot that they avoid so strongly that they don’t even feel the blade slipping into it. Just have to find it.”
“All right, let’s move before Will says anything else that makes him sound like a Bond villain. Unless there’s dessert.”
“You banned dessert from the menu,” said Carlton, who it turned out was standing behind her. “Out of concern for your weight, I believe.”
“Yes. Right. That was, uh, a test. You passed. Let’s move.”
17
Andre’s friend who had access to high-end, Special Forces–grade gear was apparently happy to do business at seven P.M. on a Saturday night. After a couple of calls, Zoey, Andre, and Wu watched as a surprisingly huge helicopter slowly descended toward the roof. It was quiet for a helicopter, the twin angled rotors making a low, pulsing noise that seemed weirdly ominous to Zoey, like a distant stampede felt through the ground. As it landed, she had to shield her eyes as they were buffeted by wind and debris.
“They use these for night raids,” said Andre, over the noise. “Engines are electric, everything built to minimize sound, even the heat signature is almost impossible to track. Now watch this!”
Andre swiped some things on his pho
ne and the skin of the helicopter turned transparent. It wasn’t invisible, you weren’t going to accidentally bonk your head on it when walking past, but if it was airborne and you were trying to spot it from the ground at night, you’d have no chance. It settled on the roof and the rotors slowed to a stop.
Zoey asked, “So, who flies it?”
“Flies itself. I’ll show Wu and Echo the commands, it has all sorts of emergency evacuation protocols, can create a secure LZ all on its own. All automated.”
“Why are you showing them the controls and not me? You don’t think I could handle it?”
“Do you want me to show you?”
“No.”
Wu said, “If this goes awry, if it turns into a riot, my job is to get you back to the aircraft and to suppress pursuit. If that occurs, it is very important that you follow my instructions.”
“Sure, as always.”
“No, not as always. You seldom do as I say. If we have to evacuate, I will be working in conjunction with the helicopter’s countermeasures; there is a specific extraction protocol. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I do. I also think we’re going to go talk to a bunch of cowards who’ll be shocked that we’re even there. I doubt they’ll even come out to talk to us. But this isn’t for them, we’re not trying to charm their pants off, we’re trying to charm the pants off the audiences watching at home. All of the hangers-on who could maybe be swayed.”
Will had walked up at some point, clearly wanting to make one last argument to call the whole thing off.
“If they agree to meet,” he said, not even glancing at the giant helicopter on the roof, “don’t let them take you to another location.”
“Thank you, Will. And when you use the bathroom, don’t get your head stuck in the toilet.”
“It’s a mistake we’ve made before, they may try to do it by force.”
