-4-
Atop the highest level of the Ziggurat, Director Oskar Delvaux towered over the streets of a miniature, holographic Baccha Bay City projected on the floor of his cavernous office. He was knee-deep in the Free Economic Zone, like a giant monster stomping the buildings of the city. He was the Director, and in the Ziggurat, as in all of Baccha Bay City, his word was law that trumped all others.
Bonnie watched him walk through the holographic, variable scale model of the FEZ. Delvaux's head was down as he walked, ignoring Bonnie. This was his somewhat passive-aggressive response to her tardiness. He had waited for her, and now she would have to wait, too.
This was the first time Bonnie had ever seen Delvaux in person, and her first impression confirmed what she'd heard – Delvaux was a prick. Her second impression was that his frame was slight, but he moved with such swiftness and clear purpose that there was something undeniably threatening about him.
Without looking up at Bonnie, Delvaux said, with a slight French accent, “Operator 388, Bonnie Levi-Mei.”
“Yes, Sir,” she said.
“Your training is over. You're going into the field today.”
Delvaux detected the numerous questions his new Operator had.
“You are wondering,” Delvaux said, “why you have been chosen for a mission even before your training is officially complete.” Bonnie said nothing, and Delvaux continued, “It is because I need someone new, someone I can trust, someone unknown to the insurgents.” Delvaux paused, then concluded, “That is why you are here, in the Office of the Director, why you have been hand-picked for a mission, and why you are going into the field today. Have I answered all your questions?”
“Yes, Sir, Director Delvaux, Sir.” Bonnie swelled with pride, but she thought it was strange how Delvaux didn't look at her as he spoke. He avoided eye contact. Instead, Delvaux's eyes searched the miniature city beneath him.
To create this second, holographic, miniature Baccha Bay City in Delvaux's office, every piece of available information, the CamNet, surveillance drones, satellites, traffic cameras, mobile computers, video phones, automobile anti-collision systems, bank machines, store cameras, retail registers – any and all data points available were combined in real-time. The people, the machines, and the whole city was represented there, in perfect detail. It was all there, beneath Delvaux's eyes, at 1/300th scale.
Almost all of it.
There were blank areas, places that were, in tech parlance, 'Dark'. These were created through jamming, vandalism, net-cracking and hacking. Privacy was illegally created, bought, sold, and valued highly by many in Baccha Bay City, but the Dark spots in his holographic city irritated Delvaux. He was staring at a large one in the middle of the FEZ District, watching the almost quarter-inch high figures stroll into it and disappear. They reappeared, a foot across the floor, at the far edge of the Dark patch, the data-void.
“Zoom, 1/10.” Delvaux said, thrusting a data wand like a fencer's foil at the disturbingly large patch of Dark in the FEZ District, and the holographic city grew in size until it had focused where Delvaux pointed, at the scale he commanded.
The data wand was an interface tool like its ancestor, the mouse, but it looked like an oversized pen, was loaded with accelerometers, and, unlike the mouse, Delvaux could use it to poke his subordinates in the chest during ass-chewings.
The Dark area filled a ten yard diameter, semi-spherical area of the holographic Baccha Bay City in Delvaux's office, and Delvaux stood in the middle of it frowning with his thin lips. “0415 this morning,” Delvaux stated, “just before this area went Dark.” Time rolled backwards in the holographic model, and the ten-yard diameter, missing section of the FEZ District appeared. In the model city, it was two hours before dawn. Near Delvaux's left foot, was the neo-hippie collective across from Polly's, called Ocho. Bonnie recognized it, but she said nothing. It didn't pay to show off what you knew unless you were asked.
Delvaux walked in a semicircle around the waist-high Ocho collective and its urban garden. Its largest trees were now 1/10th scale holographic shrubs. “Come here, Operator Levi-Mei, I wouldn't want you to miss the show.” Bonnie strode through a block of the garish, animated FEZ District until she stood next to Delvaux, over the backyard garden of the neo-hippie collective. Delvaux pointed with his finger at the building in front of them.
Four stories, Bonnie noted, some later addition to the structure evident, no anomalous antennae or dishes, and no physical security, beyond a wood fence in the rear. She couldn't imagine what she was supposed to see here. These hippies were categorized as subversive, but this view made them look, if anything, less dangerous than their G.S.A. Security file suggested.
Delvaux spoke while pointing at a fourth floor window, “Wait for it... wait for it, and... Now.” As the bottom half of the window flew upwards, disembodied hands were briefly visible along its bottom edge. What came next was more confusing.
Bonnie saw a child fly out the window. It impacted roughly on the plastic roof of the second story addition seventeen feet below, rolled off into a tree, and fell into the garden. The small figure lay on its back in the mud, surrounded by 1/10th scale bonsai. The fall looked painful, and Bonnie wondered if the child would recover or just lay there. Delvaux had seen this recording several times, and he was watching his Operator.
Bonnie could feel his scrutiny, and was displaying even less expression than usual. Delvaux was on her left, so the eye patch helped hide her feelings of pity for the tiny breathless figure in the dirt. As it lay unmoving, Bonnie realized that the figure's proportions were unusual – its limbs, especially its legs, were shorter than she expected. There was a strangeness about the cranium as well. The skull bulged in the front as if something threatened to burst outwards. Bonnie's own forehead creased and involuntarily expressed her realization that the figure below her was not a child. “Yes, you see now, don't you,” Delvaux said.
It wasn't a child at all. It was a dwarf, a little person with dwarfism. “Zoom full scale,” Delvaux commanded. A four-foot figure lay at their feet, and its disproportionately wide chest labored to draw breath. At full-scale, Bonnie could see that the face belonged to a dark-skinned black man in his early forties. It was cut with lines that spoke of pain heaped on pain, and there were touches of gray in his two inch thick afro that glinted reflections of the glowing, lead yellow haze that hovered in the air above the FEZ. The figure picked itself up and appeared disoriented with fear and bodily trauma. Confused, it ran first one way and then another. Delvaux barked, “Pause now,” and froze the little man in mid-stride as he ran. “Do you recognize him, Operator Levi-Mei?”
“Alvin Dock Ellis, better known as the Buddha,” Bonnie recited from memory.
Delvaux smiled at her. “Yes, Operator 388. Your target is the Buddha, and he is on the run.” Delvaux waved his wand and the holographic Buddha became animated once more, ran forward, and kicked at the wood fence with his stubby legs. Bonnie watched him break through the fence and find his way through to the street on the other side of the block. Delvaux said, “Immediately after street cameras spotted him, a hundred yard-wide section of the FEZ went inexplicably dark, and all imagery was lost. It seems he has friends who can disrupt our data-flow.” Delvaux frowned and continued, “This was the last time the Buddha appeared. Someone is hiding him. Your orders are to find the Buddha and bring him to me.”
“Standard protocols?”
“Not this time, Operator. Under no circumstances are you to make any attempt to interrogate the target.” Delvaux paused to let this sink in. “You are to avoid unnecessary interaction of any kind with the target. I want him brought to me directly. He is not to be processed through G.S.A. Security's system, or entered into the Ziggurat's D-base. Avoid eye-contact with the target. Do not speak to the target, and most importantly, do not let him speak to you.” This struck Bonnie as more than simply unusual. She'd never heard of such precautions being taken with an insurgent before.
“Sir?”
“This little man is dangerous, Operator; do not underestimate him. You are not the first to be sent after the Buddha. In the last six encounters, G.S.A. Security has lost a total of seven operators.”
“Did he kill them, Sir?” Bonnie asked.
This question drew an uncharacteristically expressive exhalation from Delvaux. Might as well tell her, he thought. We'll probably have to kill her to keep it all quiet, but we can give her a shiny, posthumous medal. Those are always good for morale.
Delvaux smiled and the word 'prick' ran through Bonnie's head again. He said, “This little Buddha is far more dangerous than that. Each of the Operators we sent after him dropped off radar and never made contact with Control again.”
Bonnie's expression betrayed her confusion to Delvaux.
He explained further, though it clearly pained him to do so. “He turned them, Levi-Mei. Somehow he drove them to betray us. There is no record in the database because we don't like to advertise when some pint-sized prophet turns our own people against us. How can we maintain order if it is known that our own people betray us because this Goddie abomination convinced them that our cause is unjust?”
Bonnie silently recited a poem written by a guerrilla general of the last century :
Pound of food,
Stolen from enemy,
Worth ten pounds.
“As we have seen in the past, the Buddha has a talent for finding benefactors. He is, no doubt, well-hidden, and our analysts consider it highly likely that he will be given a ticket on the Morituri's underground railroad. That is where you are going, Operator. That is where you will find him.”