THE BIG GUY

Yes, whither the religion in the Recovery? Pretty evenly split between believers and unbelievers, I’d say. Atheists tended to point to the sheer unmitigated horror of the plague and argue that no reasonable deity would ever let it happen to his creations. Theists simply pointed to their holy texts. If you’re (1) religious and (2) your faith just happens to involve anything resembling a Day of Judgment, it’s a challenge and a half not to think of Black Ep as playing a crucial role in it. Because the obliteration of very nearly everyone — honestly, if that’s not an event of biblical proportion, what is?

Christian eschatology traditionally has the Rapture — righteous whisked up to Heaven — followed by Tribulation. Let’s say that Black Ep was in fact the Tribulation (as certain New Cambridge Christians claim) — next on the list comes the thousand-year reign of Jesus Christ. While I’d yet to meet anyone in our city who went by that name, the prophesied Millennial Golden Age involved rebuilding society into a utopian paradise and resurrecting the dead, which I had to admit — blasphemously enough — wasn’t far off from what we were doing.

In Jewish eschatology, we might have reached the Olam Haba, the World to Come, where after the rights and wrongs of their lives are weighed, every man and woman is purified and knows God directly. Or had we reached Yaum Al-Qiyamah, Islam’s Day of Resurrection, on which the dead rise from their graves to be judged? Sometimes I wondered if that was why we kept thawing people from cryonic sleep: so they could face judgment. And would we be called as character witnesses?

Even the non-Abrahamic religions had found traction in recent events. Hindus could hail the Recovery as the death knell of the Kali Yuga, the Age of Darkness. Now the laws of karma could at long last be restored, with good deeds actually rewarded and wicked deeds punished, instead of the other way around. And cryonic Buddhists greeted the new day with an eye out for Maitreya, the bodhisattva destined to reach total enlightenment and go on to inspire a sustainable civilization of justice, fairness and loving-kindness.

A civilization we aspired to be.

Now I don’t begrudge anyone’s faith. Believe what you want. Don’t believe what you don’t want. It’s cool. Just leave me out of it.

When I say that, I don’t just mean, “Don’t push your religion on me!” I mean leave me out of it. Completely.

I mean whoever you think is up above, I don’t fucking work for him. Yes, I played a small part in keeping humankind alive. Yes, I’m not purely human from tip to toe. It doesn’t make me an angel, saint, holy spirit, genie, prophet or point of light. Don’t make me part of your belief system.

We’d say that, and only rarely would they listen. Like children who couldn’t help themselves. To make their creeds fit with the time, too many of New Cambridge’s devout had insisted on canonizing all the PH

and the Gedaechtnis scientists who brought us into being. It pissed me off. There’s nothing holy about me. Not a thing. So thanks, but no thanks — if ever I want followers singing my praises, I’ll go back into IVR and raise Lovecraftian monsters again.

Most of my kind felt the same, though Isaac would shrug it off and say, “Let them believe what they want to believe,” and Vashti would flash her razor-thin smile before adding, “Honestly, I don’t mind being worshiped, but I’d like it to be for the right reasons.”

• • •

“Kill the Dog,” Champagne said, brushing back the strands of golden-blond hair the wind had whipped into her face. A cold snap had brought a fresh dusting of snow to the ground, and the drop in temperature had done little for people’s moods.

“Kill it?”

“Put it down,” she said through pursed lips.

I gave Brigit a gesture to go ahead without me. We’d come to the dairy (run by the Smartin company

— they’d invested heavily in our creation) to inspect the implementation of new tamper-proof seals for our milk, cream, ice cream and yogurt containers. But Brigit’s mother had tracked me down with a request. A funny thing about Champagne’s requests: they all sounded exactly like demands. I said, “What did the Dog do this time?”

“Hal, they’re trying to bring us down!”

They say culture is a living thing — Champagne had taken the reins from the word go, not only driving New Cambridge toward an appreciation of fine art and music, but also spearheading all the minutia societies depend upon — Apple Festival this, Book Fair that. As Minister of Something to Do, she filled the days, and she did it almost single-handedly. Her primary distribution system and social opiate: Channel One. We’d restored our network to the old standards, letting anyone who wanted to broadcast through the links — while most were lone wolves putting out off-again on-again journals, poetry, social commentary and the like, some collaborated to create twenty-four-hour-a-day programming. And Channel One had the richest programming of all, established as the official state channel, Champagne’s voice and the voice of the Assembly. It existed to inform, educate, entertain and inspire. It was also ripe for parody — which was where the Dog walked in.

Unlike Seconds from Disaster, Freezerburn, and the other major humor channels, the Dog’s programming consisted of entirely new comedy material with not a single pre-Recovery show plugged into the feed. Only the music was recycled — a medley of rebellious, angst-ridden rock anthems, which needled the adults and helped make the Dog number one with the city’s young’uns. The founder and resident pied piper had been a ruthlessly successful hotel magnate. We’d tapped him to help rebuild the Harvard Square Hotel, but he’d had his fill of the business and wanted only to recapture his youth. Black Ep had changed him, snapped him, arguably for the better, but here he existed as a thorn in the Assembly’s side. So much so that I’d nicknamed him the same.

“You really think ol’ Thorn has it in for us?”

“Have you seen what he’s doing over there?” she asked.

“Jokes?”

“I’m fine with jokes, but there’s a certain point where you cross the line.”

“You don’t like being made fun of, so—”

“No, do you?”

I shrugged. “If you want to censor him, you don’t need me. Just pull Dog off the air.”

“That wouldn’t look good, would it?” she asked, snippy as ever.

“Then why hide behind the pretense of free speech? Confront him honestly. Tell him everything has a limit.”

“How about you do it? He’s your kind of people, not mine.”

“How about no? Everyone needs a release valve, Cham. And we can’t all be fascinated by papier-mâché and pottery wheels.”

Honestly, there was a lot worse than the Dog. Take the Echo. The Echo was a news channel, not a humor channel, but without a doubt more subversive, because Richard Ning’s cronies had infected it. It had become his mouthpiece. The Echo wanted to wipe out the Doctrine; the Dog just wanted to tweak noses and make people laugh.

“Your release valve is spreading poison.”

“Such as?”

She glanced around to double-check that no one was watching us — doing so with a measure of distaste, I noticed. We didn’t have to look over our shoulders nearly as much back when we totaled in the dozens, and I felt a small fizz of satisfaction that the vast number of people in the world had begun to wear on her the way they had on me.

“He’s making jokes about the food,” she whispered.

I blinked. “Too bland?”

“He’s insinuating that we’re spiking it,” she hissed, crossing her arms about her chest. “With drugs. To control the populace.”

“Well, we’re not,” I said. “Or are we?”

“No, but we obviously don’t want that getting around.”

“Because it hits a little too close to home?”

She cut me dead with a look.

“That’s it, isn’t it? You and Vashti overmedicating your girls?”

Years ago, they secretly drugged their daughters with a mélange of chemicals, designed to keep them agreeable and focused on their work. When the secret got out, all hell broke loose. The healing process was slow and painful, with Champagne and Vashti struggling to regain the girls’ trust. But they’d done so

— for the most part — and had wrangled promises from each of us not to speak of it to the thawed. It would erode humanity’s confidence in us, they argued, and would make everyone’s job that much more difficult.

“Want some help off that high horse?” she spat. “We overmedicated our kids. You undermedicated yours. At least we were paying attention!”

I gave her a grimace of touché.

“Sorry,” she said, looking down. “I’m sorry, Hal, I am. That was… Well, let’s just say none of us is going to make parent of the year.”

“If I press him, there’s a chance it’ll make it worse instead of better.”

“So be nice.”

A visit to Thorn — always an adventure. Before you could even get to him, you had to snake through a gauntlet of kids running up to you, asking you stupid questions with their live links. If you said something mockable, you could expect to see it again and again in a loop. Thorn would sit back, directing the chaos, monitoring each feed, cutting between them for his channel. When you finally reached him, he’d talk, but he’d broadcast every word. He had almost no “off camera” life — it was all sent out to the world.

The live episode was a mess, but he recut it and rebroadcast it later in a way that tickled me, filming my approach with old horror flick music, cutting to kids screaming, scattering, running for their lives. My name is Halloween, after all.

He goofed on the actual conversation by pretending that at any moment I was going to murder him —

or at the minimum beat the shit out of him. I went with the flow — conversational wu wei — and let him do most of the talking. Bringing up the whole drugs-in-the-food-and-water conspiracy theory would have been the worst thing I could have done, so I didn’t. By the end of it, I’d made things slightly better. Then I went to go find Katrina, the youngest of my nieces. Of all possible assignments, she’d drawn arguably the best or the worst: activity planner for the city’s children. I found her in the library with a few dozen younger kids, all sitting on the floor in a semicircle, story time in full effect. Upon an antique cherrywood chair sat the Storyteller, an older woman with short auburn hair streaked with silver. Book in her lap, always, and usually one of her own. She was a much-beloved best-selling children’s author who, with a secret white-hot passion, hated kids. Despised them. You could hear it in her tone or see it in her eyes when the polite mask would slip — for long, excruciating seconds she’d stare at the chubby-cheeked five-year-old who’d just asked her what the dragon’s middle name happened to be, and it was the look of a life-imprisoned inmate contemplating her warden. Longing for the sweet release of death. But she’d agreed to help entertain the children, and she took her responsibilities seriously. She spent as much free time as possible in Oasis, drinking heavily and trying to get picked up. “I can write adult novels, too,” she could often be heard to say.

By contrast, Katrina possessed genuine affection for kids. She was still a teenager herself. And I knew that she and Thorn were friendly — she’d won the privilege of being one of the very few people he’d turn the camera off for — so I played a hunch that she’d been intimating her mothers’ secrets to him.

“Guilty,” she said, when I took her aside.

She hadn’t planned to let any skeletons out but “it just sort of happened,” and then she’d played it off as a joke. Which was how Thorn took it. Fortunately. Looking back, she was glad it had come out. It felt good to say it. What her mothers had done was wrong and they’d gotten a relatively free pass on it over the years. All her sisters harbored resentments, but Katrina’s kept bubbling to the surface. Maybe from constantly having to settle disputes between her young charges, she’d become intensely focused on what was and wasn’t fair. And this wasn’t.

“You’re right,” I told her. “But there’s something that trumps it.” Not sabotaging our present efforts, I argued, was more important than venting about the unfairness of the past.

“You’re saying safety trumps truth?”

“That’s right,” I said. And I wondered who the holy fuck I had become. And then I thought of Pandora, and her hope for the future. And my promises to her. I’d sworn to try to make this work no matter what. That trumped everything.

Katrina frowned in confusion, turned it over in her mind a bit, and then agreed. She’d watch what she said from now on.

That was well and good, but the next night someone did to Thorn what they’d done to Vegas. Beat him, stomped him, left him just this side of petrified. Before cutting out, the footage showed a darkened bedroom after hours and poorly lit intruders breaking in — two or three, it was impossible to say for sure

— and with mounting realization that our problems were just beginning, my security team and I watched a black-gloved hand close around Thorn’s mouth and another yank the link.

• • •

Two working theories about Vegas and Thorn.

Numero uno: Someone was trying to make us look bad. Me, specifically. Like I’d orchestrated the assaults, which wasn’t true. Or to prove I couldn’t protect the populace. Which was partly true — my team consisted of Slow Bridge and scattered spies, with an outer ring of neighborhood watch groups. We couldn’t be everywhere at once. Either motivation suited Ning’s purposes, and from reexamining the feed, I could just make out the shape of one of the intruders — a heavily built man who might have been the Cigar Club’s doorman, Fitch.

Numero dos: Mr. President wanted more power. Or at least, his SSPPD did. (That’s Secret Service Presidential Protection Detail.) With New Cambridge painted as a dangerous place, the POTUS’s special agents could make a case for bringing more of them out of cryonic stasis (thus far, we’d freed only two) and/or supplying them with firearms (inside the city, we’d refused to let any of our citizens carry guns). The moment the news about Thorn got out, they insisted we do more to help them protect the President — it made me wonder if they hadn’t zapped Vegas and Thorn themselves. Upon seeing her friend put in traction, Katrina hunted me down to offer a third hypothesis. Numero tres: Vashti and Champagne had it done. With beatings and home invasions spreading fear, they could convince New Cambridge of the need for greater surveillance. Let’s put cameras everywhere, not just in the links. Let’s give our citizens subdermal transmitters that never dissolve, so we can track them forever and ever. Up to this point, the city’s civil libertarians had stood in unwavering opposition —

privacy was too important, a human right, and no government could be trusted with that much power. But now, maybe they’d bend a little.

“Or maybe it’s not about surveillance,” she glowered. “Maybe it’s manpower.”

Numero tres and a half: I did it to justify a larger security force. Off the mark, I told her. Way off with me. Less so with her mothers, but off just the same. Still, she had company — my conjectures would prove as wrong as hers.

I fed Thorn’s footage to the other man in Pandora’s life, the one nearly always in her ear: Malachi, her Seeing Eye AI. They worked so well together, most of our populace had no idea Pan was blind. Rather, they saw her as frequently distracted, chatting away with someone they couldn’t see — but whether she was linking someone or just talking to herself, they couldn’t say for sure.

“It isn’t much footage to go on, but did you notice the glove?” Malachi asked, linking me an optimized image. My eyes scanned it for an unusual brand or style — pretty generic, as far as I could tell — but with the light enhancement, I could see a telltale bulge beneath the leather.

“He’s wearing a ring,”

“Most people take their rings off before putting on gloves.”

“Most do,” I agreed.

“So who never takes off his ring? A happily married man?”

“That’s a big ring, Mal, a big stone!”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but these aren’t poor people we’re taking care of,” he said, but I barely heard him because that was when it clicked.

I caught up with my ring-bearing suspect in between deliveries. He’d volunteered to bring food and medicine to housebound individuals — not just the elderly, but also those who’d been disabled by Black Ep and whose injuries were beyond our power to repair. He was, needless to say, a good apple. And so I showed up alone, leaving Slow Bridge on double-shift patrol.

“Halloween,” said he.

“God’s RB,” said I.

God’s Running Back was Hawaiian, an older man, broad shouldered and sturdy. In his prime he’d been a powerhouse — one of the best rushers in the history of football. (That’s American football, not the soccer Pandora used to coach.) Though age had slowed him a bit, he could still boast the physique of an athlete, a trophy to go along with his Super Bowl ring, single-season touchdown record and trip to the Hall of Fame. Always one to credit the Lord for his success, he’d gotten himself ordained and parceled his money into a booming ministry. By the time Black Ep hit, he’d cemented his place as the king of celebrity evangelists.

“Good to see you,” he said. “Are you hungry? Buttered noodles are the specialty of the day, and Mrs. Yamamura didn’t want hers!”

“Not right now, thanks.”

“We can break bread another time, then,” he smiled, loading a tower of trays back into his van.

“What’s on your mind?”

“Let’s walk and talk,” I said.

We took a stroll to the fence. He told me he’d been hearing howling at night — a pack of wolves or wild dogs (hardly a difference between the two these days) nosing the perimeter. I promised I’d look into it. Then I intimated what he’d done and he nodded, relieved, unwilling to deny it.

“I’m glad you found me,” he said.

“Yeah, me too. It’s nice when these things work out for everybody.”

“No argument here.”

“So why’d you try to make chopped meat out of Vegas and Thorn? I have to say, it doesn’t seem very Christian of you.”

“You may be right about that,” he acknowledged. “I’ve been praying about it. He’s yet to give me an answer.”

“You’ve yet to give me an answer,” I said. “Tell me why.”

With an earnest expression, he told me he was looking at the reason why. I was his inspiration.

“Gabriel,” he began, palms outstretched, but I cut him off right there.

“I don’t go by that name anymore,” I said. “And even if I did, it’s just a name. I’m no angel, believe me.”

He chuckled. “Even Jesus had his moment of doubt in the desert. But I’m happy to call you Halloween if you like. Some of us haven’t forgotten its real name: All Saints’ Eve. A night not of darkness but light.”

“You’re killing me,” I said.

“Halloween, I’m contending for the faith. All right? I’m contending for the faith by opposing evil men.”

“Vegas and Thorn? Obnoxious, maybe, but evil men?”

“Have you read the book of Jude?” he asked. “Woe unto them who despise dominion and speak evil of dignities.”

“And you gave ’em woe, huh?”

“I delivered a message.”

“Let me get this straight. You think you’re helping me?”

“Yes!”

Misguided son of a bitch, I fumed. “You really think this makes my job easier instead of harder?”

“I think it shouldn’t be your job at all. In fact, I know it shouldn’t.”

The serenity in his eyes, the certainty in his baritone voice… something gave me pause. Probably a combination of the two.

“Sinful men,” he continued. “Plenty of them. I see them prowling around like those wolves out there. And I see you fighting the good fight against them. And sometimes a fight takes more than words. I see that. But you shouldn’t have to do it. God has made unto you wisdom. God has made unto you righteousness. God has sent you to us, and there’s no reason for you to sully yourself with this. You can stay as pure as his thoughts, and that’s how you will stay if I see to the problem instead.”

The religious convictions baffled me, but we agreed on one thing: the Doctrine couldn’t sustain itself without help. Someone had to play the heavy. And as far as he was concerned, better him than me. He was desperate to protect me — or whatever he thought was me — and he wasn’t alone. Just as New Cambridge had cabals aligned against the PH, here was one aligned in our favor. Supposedly. But with friends like these…?

I arrested him and he was perfectly agreeable, except when it came to telling me who else was involved. Or how many. That he wouldn’t do. He implied there were others in the movement, men and women of faith, though not all belonged to the Christian faith.

So the city had been seeded with an unguessable number of loose-cannon vigilantes. It was the last thing we needed.

“No, we’re exactly what you need,” God’s RB insisted. “We do what has to be done, and because we’re not associated with you, what do you have?”

“Plausible deniability” said I.

“And clean hands,” said he, and smiled.

Quite a scandal when the story broke. For a hero to so many to fall — some felt it threw gasoline on a smoldering fire, but others saw it as a breath of fresh air. Some praised us for taking a dangerous man off the street; others blamed us for creating the conditions that allowed it to happen in the first place. It sent ripples through the Christian community. While most didn’t care much for Vegas or Thorn, they loudly condemned the assaults. “We’re Christian,” they said. “We don’t wish that on anyone.” But I sensed a definite sympathy for God’s RB bubbling underneath.

Of course, the Assembly made an example of him. Came down strong to reassure the community that the law was the law; no one was above it; no one had to live in fear. And of course, that didn’t sit well with everyone. Angry notes were scribbled. “Only God can judge a human soul. What authority dare you claim over the righteous?” When the anonymous threats started rolling in, I wondered if the loose cannons had reconsidered deifying us and had instead thought to put us in their sights. One of them sent an excerpt from the Old Testament, the Book of Zephaniah. Instead of sending it to the Assembly, he sent it directly to me.

Ah, soiled, defiled, oppressing city!

It has listened to no voice; it has accepted no correction. It has not trusted in the Lord; it has not drawn near to its God. The officials within it are roaring lions; its judges are evening wolves that leave nothing until the morning.

Its prophets are reckless, faithless persons; its priests have profaned what is sacred, they have done violence to the law.

On stupid impulse, I crumpled it up. But I couldn’t throw it away. I smoothed it out, folded it and kept it in my pocket. I didn’t wholly agree with it, but God, there were times I hated the city, too.

Excerpt, New Cambridge Assembly Transcript, Session 606

THE CHAIRMAN. The meeting will please come to order. This morning the Assembly will take up the issue of expanding the city’s constabulary. I would like to start by recognizing our Chief of Law Enforcement, Mr. Hall, for any opening remarks he’d like to make.

MR. HALL. No remarks.

THE CHAIRMAN. Then next up is Assemblyman Ning, who has a prepared statement, I understand.

MR. NING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Security is the backbone of any democracy, and our community is no exception. The citizens of New Cambridge cannot be expected to live their lives in a constant state of fear. Given the recent string of violence, it is imperative that we add more capable, able-bodied men and women to the ranks of those who have dedicated themselves to upholding the law. This is not the first time this call has been sounded, but one can only hope that this time it will be heeded. If Mr. Hall is unwilling to increase his personal security force, I propose we establish a supplementary agency that can round out his efforts to effectively police the streets. I call not for another half-measure, not for yet one more neighborhood watch, but rather a highly trained, well-armed MS. POMEROY. Is this an end run?

MR. NING. Excuse me?

MS. POMEROY. Are we back to firearms again?

MR. NING. I was under the impression that I had the floor. THE CHAIRMAN. You do, Mr. Ning, but Ms. Pomeroy has a point. Whether or not private citizens should be allowed to carry firearms within the city is a separate issue, and one of your favorites. I trust this proposal—

MR. NING. No, I’ve conceded that vote. This has nothing to do with private citizens owning guns, as members of any officially sanctioned police body would by definition no longer be private citizens. Let’s not become ensnarled in this. Alarming though it may be, trying to enforce the law with insufficient firepower is a less dangerous experiment than trying to enforce it with insufficient manpower, particularly when coupled with insufficient confidence from the people of this city. May I put a question to Mr. Hall?

THE CHAIRMAN. Go ahead.

MR. NING. When New Cambridge was first established, you assembled a force of three, yourself included. Tell me, how many are in that force today?

MR. HALL. Three.

MR. NING. Three? Protecting a thousand plus. And how would you explain this egregious lack of recruiting?

MR. HALL. There’s no reason to recruit when I can do more with less. MR. GETTY. If I may interject? Mr. Ning, until recently the crime rate has been minuscule. There’s been no reason to expand the force.

MR. NING. That may be, sir, but now we have good reason, and this Assembly needs to know if he intends to do something about it.

MR. HALL. I’ll consider recruiting.

MR. NING. With all due respect, your consideration is not enough. New Cambridge deserves better security, and if you won’t make the hires—

MR. HALL. You’re saying I should surround myself with people I don’t trust or you’ll petition the Assembly to train and arm them instead.

MR. NING. If you have a problem with trust, you really ought to seek psychological counseling. Dr. Chaikin?

DR. CHAIKIN. Hey, my door’s always open.

MR. HALL. Enough. You’re not interested in security. It’s power. You’ve opposed the Doctrine the whole time you’ve been here. You want a coup, and this is an attempt at positioning. MR. NING. Really, that’s outrageous. Patently ridiculous. Just because I disagree with certain points of policy, that doesn’t make me an insurgent trying to bring our society down. Do you deem every critic of your job performance as untrustworthy and dangerous? Dr. Chaikin, is this not an exhibition of paranoid thinking?

DR. CHAIKIN. Well—

THE CHAIRMAN. Let’s come to order—

MR. HALL. Let’s not.

THE CHAIRMAN. Hal?

MR. HALL. I’ve got work to do, Isaac. Let me know what you decide.

• • •

It used to be easier.

When we had only a few thawed to worry about, or a few dozen, they pretty much did what we told them. Once we hit fifty, the questions starting coming. “Why do we have to live in community housing when there are better accommodations all over town?” So we let them spread out. When they got into the hundreds they wanted mansions. So we tried to accommodate them there. Then they asked, “Why are you rationing the things I want?” Now they wanted to come and go as they pleased, taking advantage of the benefits of the city without contributing their share of the work. “Why should I do this dirty job when we can just thaw other people to do it?”

I often felt like I was herding cats. If they’d no interest in playing by the rules, I wished they’d just leave. Go to Zurich. Or the French Riviera. Or Timbuktu. Some of them wanted to leave as well, but they were bound to the city, unable to stay away for long. Leave all their friends behind? Leave a sense of normalcy? Leave their creature comforts? They’d been bound by golden handcuffs and no one could find the key.

• • •

The Dog went back on the air, but after the attack, Thorn was so jittery he forgot how to be funny. Francisco Fierro had a full-blown nervous breakdown — or just a tantrum, depending on whose diagnosis you accepted — trashing Harvest’s kitchen after hurling a saucepan of beurre blanc at an impertinent sous chef’s head.

Superman’s powers came back, or so he thought. He tried to fly off the Harvard Square Hotel. Just another week in Victory City.

One bright spot: we found Mrs. Lucky (“I thought I was Mrs. Lucky,” Pandora had taken to teasing me.) Mr. Lucky’s lottery-winning wife had apparently gotten her freeze on in Amarillo, which fittingly enough happened to be the coldest part of Texas. The Amarillo cryofacility kept a head count just shy of two hundred — it originally housed twice that number, but some time in the last few decades a meteorite had punched a large hole through the southern part of the building and “melted half the Popsicles.” In spite of the explosion, Mrs. Lucky’s cryostat had — according to our records — survived the blast, safely tucked away in the northern wing.

Citizens of New Cambridge could go wherever they wanted, but without help from the Assembly they typically found the wilderness to be wilder and woolier than they would have hoped. Most of them weren’t accustomed to roughing it and held only a passing interest in trying. To enlist help, a person could go to his fellow private citizens (the Yacht Club, for instance — some of the more nautically inclined thawed had formed a water taxi service, specializing in retreats to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket), or he could petition the Assembly. Bureaucracy kept petitioning far from a swift process, but upon approval, Isaac would fly a team to the selected destination to scavenge all they could for the community.

“Shopping,” they called it, the term “looting” having been deemed vulgar and impolite. Slow as the bureaucracy was, we had a rule about reuniting families as quickly as possible whenever possible, so an Amarillo shopping trip immediately shot up on the schedule — Mrs. Lucky being the first item on the list. Carefully, Isaac would transport her back to New Cambridge, and just as carefully Vashti and Pandora would try to thaw her out.

Another bright spot: the kick.

Cloning is all about following a formula. It’s like a marathon of cake baking, except you don’t lick the batter and you use an artificial birthing chamber instead of an oven. It’s controllable, whereas natural pregnancy takes place inside another living being — so it’s less controllable, with more room for error. But less controllable has an upside: it makes the experience magical. To put your hand on the woman you love and feel your baby quicken — that’s magic.

Especially to someone like me, who’d grown up amidst so much artifice. In a strange way, I’d spent my entire life looking for something magical and real — some spark of light to entrance my inner moth —

and with Pandora I’d found it at last.

Her hope, her need, her dedication — it drove me. It deferred my slip back into the shadows. I didn’t like the thawed, didn’t care about the thawed, but for her I would. For her, I’d do everything in my power. My three-part plan:

1. Help build the world she wanted.

2. Give her a child.

3. See to their safety.

And then I could die.

Or at very least, sleep. Sleep might be better. I’d been drawn to self-destruction for such a long time, I’d little skill separating the sleep of the just from the sleep of the dead. I’d cross that bridge when I got there. I’d cross it on my own terms.

In the meantime, I had a war to win, an ongoing counterinsurgency against all our splinter groups. With the Cigar Club (exploit the frozen) and the Strangelove patriots (ensure American hegemony) overlapping on one side and all the loose cannons (frighten anyone from crossing the PH) stirring things up on the other, I’d come to think of everyone having their fingers somewhere they shouldn’t. They didn’t. Most didn’t. Most were actually pretty okay. I found that out later, when it was too late to do me any good. But in the thick of it, my well-honed cynicism and mistrust had me overestimating our enemies’ numbers, though not their threat. Looking back, it was a justifiable mistake. There’s no way to count all the crocodiles until you drain the swamp.

“Because now, more than ever, we’re all in this together.”

-PRESIDENT JOHN HENRY COLEMAN’S PUBLICITY SLOGAN, 1AR

The President got kicked in the groin.

Metaphorically, I mean.

He’d established himself as a positive force in the community — outwardly, at least — by repeatedly calling for unity. “Ich bin ein New Cambridgian,” and the whole shebang. In a short time, he’d gotten on familiar terms with every one of our citizens, and not once had he called any Tim “Ted” or any Bill

“Bob.” Excellent recall for an older man, especially one glazed out of his mind when we first thawed him out.

“He’s campaigning,” Pandora observed. And, unofficially, he was. He’d set his sights on leading a united world government after we’d finished our work. I’d noticed him paying special attention to the non-Americans in town — the Europeans and Asians, most of all. To sway potential constituents to his side, he’d taken to serving as an ombudsman, listening to what they wanted, nodding from time to time and making all the noises that signify empathy. Then he’d voice their interests in the Assembly. (We’d made him an honorary member.)

Because he’d been behaving himself, Vashti had thawed both the First Lady and the press secretary rumored to be his mistress. They made an interesting trio. And though the opportunity for a good, solid groin kick popped up on more than one occasion, the one I’m talking about was delivered not by the women in his life, but by the Green Mountain Boys.

Named after the wild cards of the American 1770s — Vermont based guerrillas who’d fought both the British and the Province of New York — our Green Mountain Boys had left New Cambridge to found their own state, a libertarian paradise where freedom and guns were as plentiful as the government was slight. The GMB were a loose confederation of hunting enthusiasts, free spirits and pioneers, several dozen scattered around the Connecticut River in southern Vermont, roughly a hundred miles to our west. They had the distinction of being our first (and only) successful colony, a realistic alternative for thawed who didn’t want to deal with the Assembly. Their numbers rose and fell with regularity — those who pissed and moaned about life in New Cambridge would often join up to find that life with the Boys involved more work than they’d expected. Heaps more work. They’d typically tough it out and stay, or return a little wiser and more accommodating. Win-win, as far as I was concerned. Which was why I’d had a hand in the group’s creation.

The exodus to Vermont began with the thawing of Charles “the Ax” Axakowsky, whom Vashti hadn’t wanted to bring out at all. Too unpredictable, too gung-ho about the issues, he’d only foment and agitate our community. Not so, I’d argued. He’d go off and blaze his own path. With the media base, I’d researched his many careers — decorated war hero, motivational speaker, bestselling author, state representative, pundit — and I’d pegged him as the sort who’d light a candle instead of cursing the darkness. No reason to bring our society down when he could start one more to his liking. And so he had.

“Too much government,” he’d complained of New Cambridge, peering at Vashti, Isaac and me from behind the auto-focusing emerald green mirror sunglasses he’d made synonymous with his person. “And what’s with the gun control? ‘A free people should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.’ That’s what George Washington had to say on the subject, and you’d do well to listen to it.”

Though a thorough critic of the society we’d propped up, he appreciated the work we were doing and seemed to like us personally, me most of all, as I’d fought for his escape from the freezer. Beyond that, he’d picked up on the fact that the city I protected wasn’t my particular slice of heaven. “What are you still doing here?” he’d ask me whenever he came to town, on perennial visits to recruit new Green Mountain Boys and return those who couldn’t cut the mustard. “You’d be much happier with us.”

Maybe.

They’d roll up in a convoy of black SUVs, twenty-five of them, a suitably tradable deer harvested and tied to each hood, each antenna flying a green, white and blue flag. And we’d meet them at the gates, Slow Bridge and I, running the Boys through the scanners and confiscating all their guns and contraband. But this time, the Ax had something special in his inventory. “A gift for the President,” he said, with the puckish grin of a delinquent child displaying his newest, ill-gotten toy.

“Is that authentic?”

“The one and only,” he replied.

Everyone had a gift for the President. Every social club and society wanted to name him Person of the Year, having selected Vashti for the year before. Champagne coordinated all the congratulatory presentations, an endless parade of syrupy speeches, which I would only half listen to, scanning the crowd (as usual) for signs of trouble.

By most accounts, the President and the Ax were — politically speaking — on the same page (or at least reading the same chapter). The former had even given the latter a medal back in the happier times before the plague. Here in the city, they met privately and rehearsed the presentation before it happened. Everyone seemed comfortable with it — and unfortunately for the President, the Ax just sandbagged him.

“You’re not carrying any matches on you, are you, Mr. President?” the Ax joked, and everyone laughed. “I wouldn’t want you to burn it now.”

He held the venerable, many-times-refurbished parchment aloft, scavenged from an undisclosed location on a recent trip to Washington.

“That belongs to every American,” the President acknowledged. “I’d sooner burn everything I own.”

More laughter and scattered applause. That’s where it should have ended. Instead, with a smirking

“It’s funny you say that,” the Ax deviated from the script, launching into a scathing critique of the man’s time in office, lambasting him as nothing less than a traitor to every American who believed in that document.

For years, libertarians had to endure being pigeonholed as simply “Republicans who liked to smoke pot.” Here, the Ax sliced the last strand holding him to either major political party. When I look back on the incident, I see him playing keep-away, raising the Bill of Rights high with his right hand, and using his left to keep a shorter man at arm’s length, pie-facing the President, stopping him from making a grab at it. That isn’t what happened, though. What happened was the President stood there with a sour expression while his supporters booed and Champagne cut the Ax’s microphone. By the time I’d secured the Bill of Rights, Green Mountain Boys and Strangelove patriots had started shoving each other, bumping hard at the base of the stage, to make what I could only term as a decent mosh pit. Punches were thrown but few landed; Isaac got on the mike to plead for sanity; Slow Bridge helped me break up the spectacle of so many captains of industry, senators and ambassadors making fools of themselves, yelling and flailing and falling ass over teakettle.

It reminded me of watching chimps fight — not the ones in the jungle, who’d learned how to tear each other’s throats out, but rather chimps raised in Hollywood with cigars and funny hats and years of doing what humans wanted, now trying to reclaim their wild heritage and failing miserably. Sad to say, the Green Mountain Boys were as close as we got to the kind of rough-and-tumble post-apocalyptic bandit gangs you used to see in the flicks. Yes, they were survivalists, but only in the way a men’s encounter group can be considered such. They’d find their inner warriors in the woods with the enthusiastic self-deception of lifelong non-athletes cracking weak softballs at fantasy baseball camp

— “How gifted I am!” — and then they’d retire to their luxury riverside condos to wash their venison down with Chablis. Surprisingly, not a single mohawk among the thawed. And the only spiked wristbands, studded collars or black leather chaps I’d seen anyone wear had emerged from our city’s resident clothing designer throwing a tongue-in-cheek “post-apocalyptic fashion show” with a double helping of kitsch.

Still, with this attempt to publicly embarrass the President, the Ax might as well have been wearing anti-social regalia — overnight, the Green Mountain Boys had become a bad element, personae non gratae. They’d proven themselves dangerous, erratic at the very least. So said the community.

“How many guns do those lunatics have out in Vermont?” they asked me. “How do you intend to deal with the situation?”

I don’t, I thought, for there was no situation to deal with. Ax and his Boys weren’t about to storm the city, guns blazing — it wasn’t in them. I was sure of it. But by following his heart and insulting the President, the silly ass had cursed New Cambridge with yet another poisonous distraction, exploitable by every bad apple who wanted to ratchet up the fear and bring the system down.

• • •

Hold on. That’s the mantra now.

We’re down to the homestretch. Nine out of ten thawables already thawed. Maybe another month. Maybe two. Then it’s a new city.

Just keep the empire from sliding into barbarism for a little longer. Not much more. Just hold on to the reins.

Hold.

If happiness is a warm gun, hundreds wanted to share the joy.

In the wake of the Green Mountain Boys debacle, a groundswell of Second Amendment activism surged to the fore. Protests aplenty. A vote to repeal the firearms prohibition rushed through the Assembly, failing to pass by a whisper of a margin. Some claimed the vote was fixed.

“Calm things down,” Vashti directed. “Placate and mollify.” Or, at least, sidetrack. Enter the mechanical men.

On a trip to MIT, Isaac’s team recovered a few dozen brickbots. Four-foot-high robotic butlers, lightweight Lego-like plastic brick shells encasing a hodgepodge of electronics, silicon and steel. They were the most advanced of their kind, which is to say they were junk. Not that they weren’t capable of a good many things, and not that they weren’t entertaining — they were. They could even boast rudiments of artificial intelligence, like the driver technology in many cars. But countless bugs had made brickbots more trouble than they were worth. Time and again they went kaput, shutting down with such frequency they’d come to be known as “breakbots.” And after decades of disrepair, these sad salvage jobs were sure to bite the dust with even greater regularity. Still, they could serve a useful purpose. They could have the semblance of an underclass.

If there existed a basic human need to subjugate and exploit, as the Richard Nings of the world exemplified, robots could serve as a substitute for the poor. For decades, they’d been heralded as the saviors of leisure. If only everything could be automated, some cried, human beings might never have to toil again — why, a person could incessantly relax; he could be artistic, witty and erudite; he could philosophize; he could play games. He could sit around, thumb up his ass, and enjoy the life of the mind. Though not without its wars, its famine and its poverty, civilization was surely heading in that direction when Black Ep popped up to ruin things — and, in retrospect, if only that goal could have been reached, our city would be plagued with fewer problems today. It’s hard to argue for the exploitation of other humans when everyone has his own multipurpose automaton.

“Give the breakbots to the Cigar Club,” Pandora suggested, on the grounds that they would make them feel important and distract them from dreams of conquest. But they didn’t go to Ning and his cronies — everyone wanted to be the first on his block with a junky new toy, and Isaac couldn’t justify

“rewarding” the bad apples with special treatment — it would only encourage more of the populace to make trouble for us.

We had the same predicament with IVR. The hard reality we’d inherited had disconcerted many of the thawed, and some longed to escape into a gentler, happier simulation of life. Why not plug into a virtual universe, one that could fool you into thinking its computer-generated wizardry was real — trust me, I know — to while away a few hours? Or days? While its designers had envisioned it as an instrument of education and entertainment, in Victory City it had most value as a painkiller. To prevent overindulgence, we’d regulated IVR time — gave everyone an allowance, and those who didn’t want theirs often traded it away for something more tangible. (Besides, there were unrationed entertainment alternatives —

thousands of hours of live and recorded programming via the links.) Ironically, the citizens who received the most time in IVR were our criminals: Parker and God’s RB. Locked in artificial dreams for long stretches of time, they didn’t have to be guarded as closely. The Assembly considered it a more humane prison than any alternative the city had to offer — on the other hand, didn’t the promise of long stretches of fantasy encourage discontent citizens to become criminals?

Ultimately, the breakbots got distributed via a lottery system. One had glitched beyond repair, so I dragged it out to the shooting range. The range served a dual purpose; it kept the shooters sharp (officially, me and my security team, but I insisted all the PH practice from time to time), and it let the bad apples know who not to mess with. I’m a good shot. IVR shooting games for the first part of my life, regular target practice since. It relaxes me. I like competing against myself, and the two times I’ve had to take aim against others, it didn’t fail me.

Executioner and avenger get tossed around from time to time, yet killer is the word I can’t get away from. It keeps me up nights. So I hit the shooting range with a passion to show off — and thereby frighten away potential threats. Please don’t be on the wrong side of my gun. For my sake, if not yours. Six shots to paint a smiley face on the breakbot’s chest: two for the eyes, four for the mouth. Plastic shrapnel with each impact.

It was a face in honor of my old friend — the brash, fickle, mentally ill Fantasia, “that poor girl,” as my fellow PH used to call her. She had a thing for smileys, the vapidly amused expression plastered on all the soldiers in her virtual army. That was a long time ago, back in the war games we used to play. Since parting ways at eighteen, I’d seen her exactly once.

A year to the day before I sent a breakbot to Valhalla, a white-haired Fantasia appeared at the city gates. She looked like she’d seen a ghost, which is what she said of me while I stared in mute astonishment. She’d isolated herself for years, and so had I — neither of us would ever be mistaken for people persons. I’d heard she’d contacted Vashti once before, around the time I’d buried my son, but since then we’d seen neither hide nor hair of her.

More surprisingly, she sounded normal. Almost. Saner than I’d ever heard her. Some of the delusions remained, but the rocking and lip smacking had stopped, and her speech had organized. In the old days, we had to wade through malaprops and word salad. When she’d wanted to say, “too many cooks in the kitchen,” it would come out as, “too many cookies in the cookie jar,” and there was no correcting her. I asked her how she’d become so lucid, and she told me she’d slipped on a mountain trail and bumped her head. Upon waking, for the first moment in her life, absolute clarity had ensued.

“Really? A whack on the head? I’d heard that could—”

“No, idiot, I’m on the right medication now.”

After decades of looting pharmacies, she’d hit the right pill combination. Vision quest complete. Beyond that, she wouldn’t say what she’d been doing all this time, except that it involved “fixing things”

somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

I brought her into New Cambridge and reintroduced her to all her old friends. An emotional homecoming — there might have been hugs, but she still didn’t like to be touched. She stayed for a week, got to know all her nieces, complained of wanderlust, promised she wouldn’t be a stranger and vanished once again. But before she left, she took me aside and said she had two words for me.

“Won’t work.”

“What won’t?”

“This,” she said, waving at the city.

“Why not?”

“You know why,” she said.

She haunted my thoughts while I peppered the breakbot, the smile I gave it more lopsided than I’d planned. Brigit joined me for target practice, and when Sloane took her place the aim was way off and I knew something had gone wrong. After the third wide shot I took the pistol from her and saw it wasn’t hers.

“Where’s your Glock?”

She cleared her throat and said she’d gone to the armory for a lighter piece. I repeated the question. In a voice I had to strain to hear, she said she didn’t have it handy.

“Handy?”

She’d “temporarily misplaced” it.

“You lost your gun?”

Biting her lip and looking away, she told me she’d been looking for it. She hadn’t told me because she didn’t want me to worry. “Sloane,” I said, “where did you see it last?”

She told me of her carelessness, a fuckup par excellence.

“I know,” she said, fighting tears. But she didn’t. She thought this was about my being disappointed with her. I had no time for that. If we were lucky, I would. I put a bullet between the breakbot’s eyes and turned about.

“Where are you going?” she called.

“To clean up your mess.”

• • •

Decades back, self-cleaning clothes were hailed as the invention that would force a death rattle from laundries everywhere: “Nano-particles react with natural light to break down dirt!” But not everyone felt comfortable wearing so many chemicals (much less bacteria — “self-cleaning bacterial underwear” had been a marketer’s nightmare), so the Crimson Cleaners on Massachusetts Avenue existed as a diversified business: one section dedicated to traditional liquid carbon dioxide cleaning, the other to reimpregnating fabrics with nanoparticles.

I found Mars by the second section. He’d drawn work detail here, and though a chocolate factory it wasn’t, he seemed to be getting on okay. We kept our voices low, just loud enough to hear each other over the din of the machines.

“Down the laundry chute?” he asked.

“Our best guess.”

“A pistol?”

“Thrown out with her clothes.”

He nodded. “I haven’t seen anything, but I can ask around.”

“Subtly, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course.”

“You feel comfortable doing this?”

“No problems pitching in, Hal, and if it passed through here, I bet I can find out what happened to it.”

He smiled. “I’ve got a face people trust.”

“I can see that.”

“And if I catch word of it, I imagine there’s a reward?”

“Naturally.”

“Can I name my own price?”

“Within reason.”

His smile broadened — the easy grin of an opportunist.

• • •

Vaginal bleeding is not what you want in a pregnancy.

“Your baby’s all right, and Pandora’s all right,” Vashti reassured me. “It’s placenta previa — that’s where the cervix is blocked, but partial, not complete. Treatable, eminently treatable. Aside from that complication, we’re looking good. Better than good, actually — best yet. Her immune system’s accepting the pregnancy. If we can stay the course for another eight to ten weeks, I’d like to take a shot at a C-section. I don’t want to give you false hope, but I really think this might just work.”

I nodded so she knew I understood what she was telling me. Without the nod, there’d have been no sign. The good news could only get so far before it hit a protective wall of deadness. We had tried too many times and lost too many children.

“Sleep,” I told Pandora an hour before. Beseeched her, practically.

“Look who’s talking,” she said.

“You’re the one who’s in the family way. You need rest.”

She laughed. Brushed hair from her face. “I’ll rest when I’m dead.”

“You keep up this pace and that might be sooner than you’d like.”

She waved that off, telling me she needed to start her rounds. Then the cramps and the bleeding and the mad rush to obstetrics.

“She won’t like it, but I’m stopping her from working — suspending her indefinitely,” Vashti promised.

“Like you suspended Sloane.”

“That had to be done.”

“You did warn me about my wayward girls.”

I shrugged. “It was a calculated risk.”

When we’d first set up shop in New Cambridge, I recruited Brigit and Sloane not for their limitless potential as security personnel, but rather to reform them (at best) and/or keep an eye on them (at least). Though they’d spent their youth largely as bullies and troublemakers, Vashti had hoped I’d be able to turn them around. In some ways I had, instilling a sense of duty and honor — they took their jobs seriously, and I took pride in the fact that they were completely incorruptible. Unfortunately, Sloane was proving to be cursed, a magnet for spectacular mistakes.

How much would this one cost?

“The older girls always were more trouble,” said Vashti. “I imagine Cham and I got better at parenting as we went along. What’s the old saying? Children are like pancakes — you have to throw the first ones out.”

First one, actually. Whatever. I don’t think she ever made pancakes in her life. I followed her down to the hospital basement, where artificial birthing chambers clicked and hummed to bring a new generation of posthumans into being. Ten heartbeats from ten amniotic sacs, each not many months from birth. Boys, these. Her first turn at bat, she’d only gengineered girls, but this time —

chromosomally speaking — the Ys had it.

Call it an attempt at further integration. Her adult PH daughters would bond (she hoped) with garden-variety humans, and these families would adopt a new generation of infant PH boys. Integration to make our kind less “other.” As much as she enjoyed being exceptional, Vashti struggled for the future where we could not be painted as threatening and strange.

I watched her cross to a desk and — in a smooth, graceful motion — pull a hidden water pistol that had been strapped to its underside. Extending her arms, she whipped about to aim it at the door we came in. Strong stance, good grip, left index finger on the trigger, right thumb toggling the tiny microwave attachment — a blast of superheated liquid a squeeze away from eradicating the imaginary threat.

“Decent,” I said, “but twist farther so you’re a smaller target.”

“I’m already a small target,” she muttered, Napoleon complex bare. She made the adjustment. “And aside from that?”

“Aside from that, you’re good.”

“So I haven’t forgotten everything you taught me,” she crowed, relaxing her stance and lowering her weapon. “I can defend myself in a pinch.”

“Hopefully, I’ll recover Sloane’s gun and that pinch won’t come.”

• • •

“An open ticket to Fantasyland,” said Mars. “No time limits. Whenever I want.”

“You want to run away?”

“The option,” he nodded. “That’s what I want.”

“And fuck all of us in the real world?”

“God no, I have friends here. I like what we’re building here. But I want the option. Do you understand?”

You want to be a little kid again, carefree, entertained, shamelessly indulged, with no need to contribute to society until you decide you’re a grown-up again. Check.

“I hear you, Mars.”

He’d named his price: the bottomless illusions of IVR. He kept going on about the things he couldn’t have otherwise. Kobe beefsteak. Fresh Beluga caviar. Orbital skydiving. Sex with every James Bond girl. Riding killer whales around the Hawaiian Islands.

“So do we have a deal?”

“If you can help us.”

He could. I made a note to introduce him to my niece, Olivia, who maintained the IVR — a job Pandora used to do back when New Cambridge was just a fever dream. Then I linked Kody, the best jigsaw piece to connect me to the man who had the gun.

A backroom at Oasis served as neutral ground, banging dance music partly muffled by the soundproof door, the rumbling bass line still loud enough to make cocktail glasses vibrate.

“I don’t know who told you what,” said the doorman of Ning’s Cigar Club, “but I don’t have what you’re looking for. Even if I did, why should I help you?”

“Don’t help me,” I said. “Don’t help anyone. Keep trying to put a boot on the future.”

“How can I? Yours is already there.”

“Let’s not make this about ideology,” Kody suggested, arms outstretched to keep us apart. “We’re here to talk business. Fitch, listen to Thursday. Thursday, give Fitch a good reason to do what you want.”

I won’t have to shoot him down like a mad dog, how’s that for a reason? I did not like Fitch. A lifetime ago he’d been a public relations wunderkind, running a firm that boasted among its clients nearly every dictatorship on the planet. Scandal-plagued, he’d retreated from the public eye for a while, only to return here in the Recovery as Richard Ning’s friend and consigliore. A tough customer, notoriously so, and I knew he’d be trouble from the day we brought him out.

“Helping earns you my goodwill.”

“And what’s that worth, kiddo? Are you so terribly important?” he sneered, lighting a black and oily cigar. “Funny, when I went to sleep, I didn’t think I’d wake up to take orders from some sawed-off, sarcastic little goth mutt.”

“That is funny,” I agreed.

“You should never have unthawed us, pal.”

No argument here.

“How long do you think you can keep this farce of a government running? You grow the city with the speed of a glacier, you sacrifice all common sense for politically correct egalitarian propaganda and you cap it off by standing in the way of freedom. Textbook stupidity. If this were a business, you’d all be fired.”

Predictable complaints, only half of them true. I didn’t bother arguing with him. Instead I said, “Then fire me. Hell, let’s discuss severance packages!”

“The moment you spill your trade secret. Right when you teach us how to wipe out Black Ep and bust your monopoly on thawing.”

I shrugged. The timing on that was Vashti’s to make.

“They’re management and we’re workers,” Fitch ranted at Kody.

“Does that sound fair? We could all be management — Amarillo’s just a short plane ride away and full of worker bees!”

As Kody tried to steer the conversation back to common ground, I heard myself paraphrasing the antistratification portion of the Doctrine, part of the repeated call to oppose the “us vs. them” hardwiring in the primate brain: “Does there have to be management and workers? Why make that division at all?”

“Because we’re not all assholes,” Fitch spat. From the school of thought that life is a zero-sum game in which there are winners and losers — and the losers are assholes. With everyone equal, no one’s a winner and hence everyone’s an asshole. You could use the same logic to say that with everyone equal, no one’s a loser and therefore no one’s an asshole — an “is the glass half-empty or half-full” matter of perspective.

“Ideology,” Kody reminded us, but the big man railed on, shaking his cigar at me: “Do you even believe your own bullshit? Aren’t you the big nonconformist here? I’m sure there’s a special place in hell where they throw hypocrites on the fire.”

Actually, no burning, but a whole lot of tromping around in lead-lined cloaks, according to Dante, I didn’t say, because I was too busy saying, “You know, it’s not every day my morality gets questioned by a child molester.”

“Ho, Thursday, way over the line,” said Kody.

“Those were baseless allegations by scumbags with an agenda to bring me down,” Fitch raged. “And they were fifty years ago.”

“If you two are just going to trade insults—” Kody began.

“No, fuck this,” Fitch said, already up to leave.

Something banged against the door. Everyone reacted but no one reached, which meant if Fitch had the gun, he probably didn’t have it on him. We gave ground as the knob turned and the door swung wide. A gin-soaked couple lurched in, trying to keep their balance in mid-kiss and already fumbling with each other’s clothes — tired of dancing, the lovebirds were searching for a romantic hideaway.

“Oh!” said the Storyteller, upon seeing us there.

“Uh-oh, it’s the fun police,” Dr. Danny Chaikin joked, clutching her tighter as she giggled. “We’re sorry, we didn’t realize anyone was in here.”

“That’s okay, I was just leaving,” said Fitch, but Kody stepped up to cut off his path and shut the door on the lovers.

His back to the door, Kody raised an index finger and said, “Experience is the comb Nature gives to Man after he goes bald. Understand? You walk off, or you drive him off, you’re both going to gain a pantload of experience. You’re going to regret not making the deal you could have made.”

“Pantload of experience?” I said.

“Look, you two are never going to give each other a kidney, but you don’t have to be friends to do business. Thursday, make Fitch a serious offer.”

I took a lungful of air and offered the deal I’d given Mars.

“You want to put me in a box? Now I thought you might be keen to put me in a box, but I didn’t think that box. I prefer reality to that virtual bullshit, so if that’s your big offer, you know what you can do with it.”

“Fine, name your price.”

“You can’t afford me.”

“Try me.”

He asked me for things I couldn’t give, concessions that would have compromised our security far more than any firearm.

“Then what do we have left to talk about?” he said. “There’s nothing you can give me.”

Maybe so, I thought. Maybe this comes down to me searching the Cigar Club and Fitch’s apartment, trying not to get shot. Nevertheless, I turned it over in my mind and said, “Am I negotiating with you or your group?”

“What are you talking about?”

“What do you want — personally? Not what you think is best politically. What would make you happy?”

“What would make me happy?” he scoffed. And in a sardonic tone, he threw out what he considered a ridiculous request. But one I could accommodate.

• • •

“You can’t be serious,” Champagne scowled. “Hal, that’d be insane.”

“We do have it,” I said.

“It’s not a bargaining chip; it’s priceless.”

“Priceless,” I acknowledged. “But how valuable is Sloane’s missing gun? You want me to recover it but you don’t want me to crack any heads — well, here’s a way to get it sem tumulto, as Pandora would say.”

She gnawed her lip and shook her head. “Fitch? Of all people?”

“Pearls before swine, Cham, I know”

We walked in silence to the Fogg, crossing its Italian Renaissance — style courtyard, navigating past the security I’d installed and dropping down to a subterranean vault. Aboveground, Harvard’s oldest art museum housed treasures, but they were positively meager compared to what lay beneath. In the bowels of the Fogg, a temperature-controlled, light-sensitive, dust-free chamber housed an irreplaceable collection of paintings, sculpture and drawings: Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Picasso, Goya, Bacon, Blake, Bosch, Rembrandt, Kahlo, Magritte, Monet, Mondrian and on and on.

Over the past twenty-five years, we posthumans had looted. Habitually. The best finds were the time capsules. Most had been built with time-release locks, protecting cultural/historical artifacts from thieves and vandals during the plague, but set to — over the duration it took us to wake up and find them —

pop open like flowers in bloom. Some of the designers had prepared for the possibility their capsules wouldn’t be found by humans or posthumans; instead, these were a gift for far distant future anthropologists to discover — extraterrestrial explorers, presumably — because pains had been taken to explain the intricacies of human existence to those who might have no grasp of them. And one had actually been booby-trapped — a “fuck you” to any who dared live after the capsule makers had succumbed — but Isaac and I had worn our biohazard suits, the liberal misting of nerve gas not affecting us at all.

“It’s kind of funny,” I told Champagne.

“What is?”

“Fitch and the rest of Ning’s cronies like to call us fascists, and stepping into this room, it’s hard not to think about what Goering hid around Berchtesgaden, or the bunkers beneath Kaiserburg castle — all the art the Nazis stole.”

She didn’t find it funny.

“We’re protecting, not stealing. And don’t tell me that’s what the Nazis said. Once society’s stable again — and I mean truly stable, Hal, not this ‘drunk elephant on a high wire’ act — we’ll give them back to the people. Except, apparently, the Mona Lisa.”

“The ‘fucking Mona Lisa,’ to use his exact words,” I said. “Is he such a big art fan?”

“It’s an ego thing.”

“What, to be the man who owns the most famous painting in the world?”

“Sure, everyone measures himself against everyone else — maybe this is a way for him to feel less ordinary, more valued, special — special enough for him to cough up the gun. Or maybe it’s just something he said, never expecting we actually had it.”

She stared at the hoard of precious objects, feet unwilling to move. “Can’t we just reason with him?”

“Either we trade him for the gun or I go in and take it. Words won’t cut it.”

“What if we don’t go along? How dangerous is a single gun?”

“You tell me, Cham. You’re the one who said we had to remove all civilian-owned firearms from mainstream society. Keep the deadly weapons out of the city and we won’t need a repressive security force, remember? That’s how everyone was supposed to get along.”

She narrowed her gaze at me. “I don’t remember you loudly disagreeing.”

“Not my job. You, Vashti, Isaac — you make the rules, I enforce them — that’s the beginning and the end of it,” I said. “So what do you want to do about Fitch?”

“Do you think he can tell the real thing from a fake?”

“If it’s a good forgery, then no, I don’t think he’s the sort who could tell the difference. But I can’t guarantee you, and I can’t rule out the possibility that one of his friends might sniff it out.”

She sighed. “All right, let me think what I want to do,” she said. Outside, Kody let out an appreciative whistle. “Sweeter than candy, Thursday,” he said, running a hand through his thinning hair. “Is it real?”

We stared at the painting. It smiled.

“Yes,” I lied. I didn’t know.

“It seems a shame to give it to such a rotting fish.”

“Bad apple,” I said.

“Same difference,” he shrugged. “One bad apple spoils the bunch; one rotten fish makes the whole basket stink.”

“Do you think he’ll take it?”

“No doubt.”

“How do you know?”

“Ah, I know his type. He’ll make the deal reluctantly and suggest he’s only making it because of me,”

Kody said. “You watch. He wants you to trust me completely, and then use me against you. Typical Tzuperman.”

“A typical Superman? How?”

“Tzuperman — a Sun Tzuperman. A big admirer of Sun Tzu’s Art of War,” he explained. “Make as many business deals as I have and you can’t help running into them. Spies are vital to Sun Tzu — he calls it ‘divine manipulation of the threads.’ So in Fitch’s book, information is the best weapon of all, something he can use to disrupt your plans and prey upon your fears.”

“So he’s talking to you?”

“He’s recruiting me, he thinks.”

“Should I worry?”

“What,” he laughed, “you think I’m a rotten fish? Mai pen rai, Thursday, relax. I’ve got him completely snowed.”

• • •

When he found out we had the Mona Lisa available, Fitch held out for two additional masterwork paintings, but did in fact relinquish Sloane’s gun. Reluctantly, as Kody said. After the swap, the man tried to ingratiate himself with me, hailing the exchange as a positive step in our dealings. Maybe our two points of view weren’t so far apart, he said. And while saying so, he went to work on Kody. Three days later, I stopped trusting Kody. Not Fitch’s fault, though. It had nothing to do with him.

“He’s your friend, so I came to you first,” said Tomi. The quietest of my nieces, Tomi worked cryonics with Vashti and Pandora. With long black hair, fine features and the soul of a warrior-poet, the appellation suited her well — she’d been named after Tomoe Gozen, the most celebrated female samurai.

“You say he said it as a joke?”

“No, he played it off as a joke afterward. He looked serious at the time.”

“I don’t see why he’d ask you.”

“He knew where I worked; I had excellent access.”

“No, I mean his motive,” I said. “Why would Kody want you to kill someone?”

“Kill isn’t a word he used.”

“Then are you sure it’s what he meant?”

She gave me a single, decisive nod. Sure as shooting.

Into Grendel’s Den I ventured, interrupting the 9-ball game Kody was winning, and thus reluctant to leave. I spoiled his shot, grabbing him by the forearm and pulling him up from the pool table. He stepped back and rubbed his arm ruefully.

“Sorry,” I apologized. My anger had snuck up on me and tightened my grip. It seemed I was always inflicting limb damage in the Den. Channeling Beowulf; I supposed — the Old English hero had defeated his Grendel by tearing the monster’s arm right out of its socket.

“What’s so important?” he asked, and so I told him. “Oh, that.” He flashed a grin worthy of his native Thailand, the Land of Smiles. Not quite reassuring me. Behind the cheerful, dismissive guise I saw the strain of guilt, the kind a man carries for years hoping and not hoping for a chance to unload.

“Sort this out for me, Kody,” I said. “Come on, put me at ease.”

We walked and talked. The more we talked, the more the smile faltered, and the more hangdog his expression became.

Now on schedule to be thawed: the more difficult cryonic extractions, the plague sufferers who’d been so damaged by Black Ep they were unlikely to come back to life. We’d already thawed all the easy breezies. Among the remaining stragglers was a captain of industry named Van Caneghem — no relation to the escape artist. Tomi had estimated his chance of recovery at twenty percent; Kody had asked her what it would take to drop that down to zero.

“Who is he to you?” I asked.

Kody shrugged. “No one really!”

“Then why?”

“He knows me!”

I studied him. He sighed.

“Let me tell you how I got frozen.”

In the wrong place at the wrong time, Kody breathed his last. Got himself killed. The limo ran afoul of a riot and lost, have-nots shattering the windows and ripping the hapless captain of industry out, stomping him to death on the pavement. Ugly, not peaceful, not “dying with the eyes closed” as the Thai say. R.I.P. the real Kody — not the one who’d befriended me.

My Kody? In the driver’s seat, bloodied from broken glass, fortunate to survive the violence, speeding off into the night.

“I was his chauffeur,” he explained. “My boss didn’t like to drive and didn’t trust a computer to do it. And I was also his bodyguard — body double, technically — he’d hired me because we looked enough alike to fool people who didn’t know him personally. Not that it helped him in the end, sitting in the backseat while I was up front with a chauffeur’s cap. Thursday, I was never so happy to wear that cap. They were hitting me, pulling at me. Trying to do to me what they’d done to him. ‘I’m just a driver,’ I yelled. ‘I’m a workingman, leave me alone!’ They listened. I made them listen. I got away and didn’t know what to do. I remember wanting to call my family — but what family? I didn’t have anyone. I started talking to myself. Said I’d rather live as someone I’m not than die as who I am. So I came here pretending to be him.”

“And no one caught you!”

“No one,” he said. “I had his ID. I had his passwords. I’d learned all his mannerisms. No one knew him here — he was a very private person — I kept thinking someone would expose me but I had his voice in my ear, his ghost’s voice telling me how white people thought all Thai looked alike. He’d said it before, and this time I guess he was right.”

Kody had every intention of continuing the impersonation indefinitely. But Van Caneghem had made several deals with the genuine Kody — he knew who the man was and who he wasn’t — and if successfully revived, could expose the charade.

“And so you wanted Tomi to pull his plug?”

“Just joking,” he said. “I knew he was coming up on the list and I wanted to know what his chances were. To see if I had to come clean or not!”

I wanted to believe him, but couldn’t give him the benefit of the doubt.

“Honestly, Thursday, I haven’t been truthful about this, but that’s it. I’m not out to murder anyone. Seriously. Hiding who I am doesn’t mean so much to me that I’d want to take anyone’s life!”

“But it does mean a lot to you,” I said.

“Sure it does.”

“Or you would have come clean from the day we thawed you.” He said nothing.

“Did you think we’d prosecute you?”

“At first.”

“And when you saw we had bigger problems to worry about?”

“It’s complicated!”

“Maybe I’ll understand. Stranger things have happened, right?”

He shook his head and I thought he might stay silent, but in a rush of breath he said, “I’m trying to do some good here. I’m working with you because I know what’s right and what’s wrong. And I know what you’re doing is right. So I’m trying to make a difference — but I’m doing it as Suchart Shinawatra,”

he explained, invoking his boss’s real name, the latter half of which translated as “does good routinely.”

“Do you understand? I’m only here because of him. I want him to get credit for whatever good I do. So, yes, it’s important to me, but if I have to be myself again, I will. No foul play required.” I didn’t care about the lie itself. Pretend you’re whomever you want. Pretend you’re the king of Siam. But had Kody been willing to kill to protect his secret? I couldn’t prove it. I couldn’t rule it out. Betray or disappoint. That’s what the people closest to me tended to do.

So I stopped trusting him. I kept him as an informant, but stopped telling him anything that could pose a threat or come back to haunt me.

In a shark tank of prosperous, privileged, self-centered big fish, I thought I’d found a half-shark — or mershark — someone who could speak their language and mine. And no. No, he was just faking it. That’s what bothered me most.

Maybe I should have suspected him. Since starting this, I’d had an inkling that the facilities had made mistakes, and not everyone who’d been cryopreserved was who they were advertised to be. Take Amarillo.

Isaac returned from that expedition without his objective. He’d led Mr. Lucky to Mrs. Lucky’s cryostat — and the sleeping beauty there was a stranger. Mislabeled. They scoured the building, but the real Mrs. Lucky was nowhere to be found. A heartbreaking mistake, if in fact it was a mistake. It wasn’t hard to imagine crooked proprietors running out of space and double-booking their cryostats, tossing clients out for family and friends. Dumping the old for the new.

Better to try and save the people you love than strangers. And if by some miracle, on some hypothetical day, Black Ep could be beat, stand trial then.

On the other hand, with no sign the plague could be stopped, what did it matter?

Everyone was done for, anyway. Who’d ever know?

• • •

I’m outside the gate, serving venison. Feeding the wolves. There’s a good-sized pack now, brown and gray with keen yellow eyes. Apex predators at the top of their food chain, nothing eats them but curiosity, watching me with measured caution as I offer to supplement their diets with strips of deer, and digging in only when I retreat and the alpha gives the signal. I’m halfway to domesticating them. I don’t want them domesticated; I just want to keep them around. I want them howling at night so everyone in the city can hear. Let the thawed know something’s out there. Let them unite against a common fear. The light is strange. Judging by radiance alone, it could be an overcast day. It could be twilight. Or it could be a moonlit night. I’ve forgotten what time it is and I don’t think to look up. I’m utterly in the moment — the universe is just wolves and meat, with me as the middleman — and then there’s the hat. I see it out of the corner of my eye. A navy blue snow hat, crumpled, discarded like rubbish. My heart starts beating. If that’s what I think it is. Oh, if it is.

Before the wolves can get to it, I’m there. I clutch it. My hand shakes. When I reverse the hat and hold it up, there’s the telltale 2 in white at the top. This is the 2 hat, special to me because it was my son’s. Deuce and I shared the same DNA, so he wore it as if it were necessary to tell us apart. But over time, the hat became less of a joke, evolving into a staple of his identity. One of his favorite things. It’s supposed to be safe at home. Locked up. Someone broke into my personal things, took my son’s hat and threw it away where I was sure to find it.

To fuck with me.

I’m sick with fury. I feel like I’ve swallowed razor wire. I tuck the hat into my inside pocket and I get up. I hate the city. I turn around with every intent of—

No, it’s already happening. Huge plumes of smoke are rising up, and even this far away, I can feel the heat. Flames consume, windows break. The city is burning.

Good. That’s how this should feel. But I can’t take pleasure in it. Can’t let it happen. I’m already in full sprint, off to save lives and catch the arsonist.

Inside the gate, I spy something familiar. Amidst all the screaming and running, a flash of orange hair. My son, Deuce, hatless, walks through the chaos like it’s nothing, stainless steel lighter in hand. I call his name and he doesn’t hear me. Or doesn’t want to. He flicks the lighter’s case open and thumbs the wheel, looking for something new to burn.

I chase but don’t catch. Keep losing him in the smoke. When I do see him, I race to close the distance, but his arms and legs warp and stretch in ways that defy all logic. I am chasing a ghost.

“Where’s the fire?” calls a voice to my left. I recognize the voice. Only now do I realize that I’m dreaming.

From the eighteen years of behavior and mannerism my generation logged in IVR, artificially intelligent programs were built — so anytime I felt nostalgic and morbid, I could plug in and hang out with fairly sophisticated phantoms of my dead peers. Except for one. Upon making the decision to betray and murder us, my oldest friend scorched the earth behind him, wiping himself from the logs. So no personality composite can be made — and the only time I get to talk to him is in dreams. Where the Statue of Three Lies should be, Mercutio dangles upside down from a gallows tree. The rope’s about his right ankle and his left leg is bent to form an inverted four. It’s the pose of the Hanged Man, a tarot card of introspection and sacrifice. With each hand he gives me the finger.

“Fuck you, too,” I reply. That earns a smile.

“Hey, where you running off so quick? Where’s the fire?”

“All around us,” I yell. “Can’t you feel it?”

“No, but don’t go by me. I don’t feel much these days.”

“You want me to say I’m sorry?”

“Hell no,” he laughed. “What happened happened. Shot is shot.”

“And not is not.”

“That’s right, we’re both just victims of circumstance.”

“No, you did what you had to do. So did I. We took actions; actions have consequences. So none of this ‘victims of circumstance’ — you don’t get off the hook so easy. Neither do I. Now I don’t have time for—”

A flash of color through the smoke — streaking two directions at once — I’m tracking forked lightning, and his name is Deuce. “Why are you burning the city?” Mercutio’s asking me.

“I’m not. That’s my kid.”

“No, your kid’s still nestled in Pandy’s girl parts. Bang-up job, by the way — good luck with that.”

“Thanks.”

“I still say you’re the one making the city extra crispy,” he says, stretching down to scratch something in the dirt. “You hate Harvard or something? Go Yale?”

I glance down and see he’s written BOOLA BOOLA.

When I look up, he’s gone. Escaped. I’m staring at an empty tree.

“Dreaming,” I remind myself.

I can’t decipher the full extent of my brain’s backwash, but I know I’m dealing with fear and guilt. Haunted by people I couldn’t save — that’s the guilt. Unable to save the city. Having it burn on my watch. That’s the fear.

I drop my head back down and what Mercutio’s written now reads BREATHE. I can barely see it through all the smoke. Breathe, why not, I’m oxygen-addicted — don’t mind if I do. In this case, it’s bad advice. I’m conscious of the acrid stink of chemicals — whatever’s burning here is unsafe to inhale, but it’s filling my lungs and—

The bottom’s dropping out.

I’m coughing up poison. I’ve been contaminated. It’s not smoke — not a chemical cloud. It’s a biological cloud, a swirling miasma of microorganisms besieging me, seeping into my skin, and I’m breathing in more and more of them. And it’s getting easier. Like they’re terraforming the architecture of my internal organs. With the kind of certainty that comes only in dreams, I know something within me is changing.

Now I can hear voices bubbling and overlapping, shooting up like grass bursting through concrete. Every speck in my blood wants to tell me what it thinks.

But whatever language they’re speaking, I don’t understand.

I drop to my knees. I’m not well. The babble of voices keeps getting louder, and I’m in touch with a wellspring of emotion: fear and fascination, but mostly a jaw-clenching, teeth-grinding, unreasoning anger. Theirs or mine? Mine, I realize — the anger’s mine.

“Get out!” I yell.

I could yell myself hoarse.

Enough of this, I decide, working to assert my mind over the litany. Out with the last gasp: I exhale as much of the toxic vapor as I can, forcing a cone of it back into the atmosphere, where it scars the air itself. I’m seeing my breath on a cold day, hanging there before me, but it snakes into a pattern before it dissipates.

The pattern spells FREE.

At last I can see the city again — or what’s left of it — the ashes of New Cambridge whipping around like inky snow. This is the nuclear blast site, the dead city, the smoldering afterbirth of combustion and ill will.

Off in the distance I catch sight of the fire starter. He strides toward me, closing to a gunslinger’s range, pausing when I call him Deuce, then drawing near enough for us to box. He’s not Deuce. Mercutio’s right about that.

I’m opposite a corpse-faced version of myself, black lipstick, black fingernails, black eyeliner, the self-indulgent depths-of-despair, nothing-to-live-for, think-twice-before-you-dare-talk-to-me wardrobe of my youth. There’s a silver medallion around his neck in the likeness of a tarot card; I don’t have to look to know it’s Death.

With a satisfied smirk he lights a clove cigarette, and in the lighter’s glow I can see he is crawling with microbes. As am I. He takes a drag and my eyes are open to the hidden life that covers everything. His eyes mirror mine, identical but for distortions of each iris reflecting twin ankhs alight.

“Have we met?” I ask, and when he exhales the puff of sickly-sweet smoke, it hits like a shotgun shell, and I am flung back like a moth introduced to a hurricane. The wind screeches past me as I twist, but it’s an electronic-sounding screech, one that sounds increasingly like my alarm clock. And the clove smoke expels me from the universe; I’m waking now; I can feel the dream slipping away, stretching off into the distance, leaving only blackness behind.

• • •

I’d sworn off dreaming years ago. Gave it up for Lent. My unconscious mind hadn’t listened, disobediently serving up phantasmagoria like that far too often.

Traitor.

Dreams are supposed to be a way for the brain to work through unresolved issues, but the prospect of tugging at the loose threads of my life struck my conscious mind as painful and pointless — why struggle with knots you can’t possibly untie? Better to leave them be. Or reach for scissors and be done with everything.

The dream melted and flitted away — parts of it would come back to me at odd times, but upon waking, I only remembered two things.

I remembered the word free.

That word alone. Which summoned up a conversation I’d had with Kody a month prior. I’d asked him about the Thai word for freedom — not thai as I’d originally thought, but itsara. A linguistic kissing cousin, perhaps, of a word Isaac once taught me, istiqara, a request for spiritual guidance in the form of a dream.

“Yeah, itsara. Means ‘liberty,’ ‘freedom,’” he’d said, as we watched the heads of two Fortune 500

companies shout at each other over ownership of a breakbot. “That’s what it means in Thai, but the word originally comes from another language, Pali. Meant something completely different there.”

“What’s that?” I’d asked, as the younger and louder of the two CEOs forced the other to retreat.

“It meant ‘the power to control other people.’ ”

“That’s not so different,” I’d cynically said.

The other thing I remembered:

I remembered the city burning down.

And the very next day it did.

• • •

Not by fire. By treachery, it burned.

I’d discovered one of the President’s Secret Service men teaching two of Harvest’s busboys how to fashion homemade explosives from common cleansing products. Ammonia and nitric acid make ammonium nitrate. Nitric acid and sulfuric acid make nitroglycerine. Plant nails in the bombs to up the lethality. Dip the nails in rat poison to up it some more.

I have a nihilist’s temperament. I know from bombs. This wasn’t unexpected. Surveillance led me to one of the old fraternity houses. They’d set up a lab in the basement behind a door that blended into the wall — I found it mostly by nose, following the concentration of cloying floral-scented deodorizer and the ghost of chemical smell buried underneath. I called my hounds in; we came down hard. Three arrests, and no one resisted. But it took time. It put me across town.

Miles away, at the community park, the boys and girls of New Cambridge chased a softball game with an ice cream social. Typical Saturday afternoon, clear skies, sunny weather, perfectly innocuous until the sickness. Stomachs turned; faces went green; half-digested ice cream and stomach acid shot up to paint the grass.

A parade of nauseous children funneled into the hospital, carried there by worried parents and obliging Good Samaritans. The health emergency pushed Vashti’s staff to the limits, and in the rush to treat everyone, amidst all the shrieking, crying and vomiting, security procedures went unfollowed. A disaster because the Good Samaritans weren’t. By the time Malachi linked me, they’d overpowered the staff and barricaded the entrance. It was a well-orchestrated attack. They immediately took Vashti and Tomi as hostages, catching each by surprise before either could find a weapon. To her credit, Tomi performed not one but two makeshift rhinoplasties before being subdued, the first assailant’s nose fracturing to a looping uppercut, the second to a high back elbow. But Vash went quietly, calm and cool, trying to reason with the unreasonable.

Pandora—

“Safe at home,” Malachi assured me. Which helped. I was already taking it personally. Too much of that can cloud your thinking and get in the way of your zanshin. You want to stay aware. Combat ready. But really there was nothing personal about the siege. In the mind of the man who architected it, at least, business was business.

Everyone had told me I’d overestimated the threat he comprised. They’d said he was just espousing the minority view, the old guard’s elitist concerns, and his Manifesto was a useful dissent, one that could help the community burn off steam. They’d said when it came to actually taking the system down, Richard Ning was all show, no go. And they’d said I carried a grudge against him, an unreasonable grudge, fixated upon him, because one of his companies made my son’s favorite lighter. So? Deuce didn’t meet his end in fire. He just liked to burn things, that’s all. He couldn’t help how he was wired. Being the father of a pyromaniac didn’t embarrass me, though many felt that it should. Screw them. My paternal failings had nothing to do with fire. I just didn’t give him what he needed. That wasn’t anyone’s fault but mine. The lighter coincidence meant nothing. My misgivings about Ning came purely from the coldness that always lurked behind his smile.

“We’ll see what happens,” I told Ning’s defenders, time and time again. He never entered the hospital himself, but this was his baby, a Cigar Club venture all the way. Right-hand man Fitch ran the operations from the inside, the Mona Lisa buying me Sloane’s gun only and his loyalty not at all.

It doesn’t take a lot of people to effect change. It just takes a willingness to do whatever it takes. Step one: Poison children.

To repeat, they poisoned children. Wait, it gets better: Some of the hostage takers were parents. In a perverse twist on the already perverse Münchausen by proxy, they’d made their own kids sick just to get into the hospital to gain the upper hand.

Step two: Secure the hospital.

Step three: Don’t let anyone treat the kids until Vashti gives up the secret of life. I’m sure Ning phrased it in more heroic terms. The Resistance making painful sacrifices to outwit Nazis. Prometheus stealing fire from the gods.

Trouble was, they’d picked the wrong nut to crack. Vashti could be stubborn as Catholic guilt — if need be, she’d call their bluff and let the kids wither and rot. She could be cold. Which meant they might blink first, necessitating a step four.

Step four: Panic, do something criminally stupid and let someone die. That’s what I worried about most.

All attempts to link Fitch failed; he only wanted to negotiate with Vashti. On my order, the hounds brought Ning into custody, while I hit the arsenal.

“Ready to go in?” I asked Malachi once I’d loaded up for war.

“Whatever you need,” he replied.

He’d already tapped into the infrastructure. He could provide invaluable tactical support, turning cameras, locks, alarms, lights, links and ventilation on and off as needed. And if worse came to worse, he could do something more.

“Ready for applesauce?”

“You don’t really want to do that,” he said of that particular contingency plan.

“No,” I agreed.

“I’ll be ready,” he promised.

Past Isaac and Champagne and the rest of the gathering crowd, I moved invisibly toward my goal. Stealth in, negotiations or firepower out — their choice — I’d made a point to bring whatever I needed to get the job done. Except…

Except it was over before I got there. Vashti caved in almost immediately. Not what I’d anticipated.

“I just kept thinking of Penny” she told me after the fact. Her late daughter, Penny, my son’s partner in crime, haunted Vashti much the way Deuce haunted me. “I kept thinking of Penny and I didn’t want to lose another daughter,” she said, looking down at her hands.

Among those felled by the tainted ice cream: the activity planner for the city’s children, Katrina —

Vashti and Champagne’s youngest child.

“They wouldn’t let me examine her,” she said. “I didn’t know how sick she was.”

Not very, as it turned out. The hostage takers had slipped the kids a powerful emetic to force vomiting. The effects were nasty and startling, good enough to produce a serious scare of food poisoning, but in no way life threatening.

But Vashti hadn’t known that. And now she was alone, sitting on the waiting-room floor, refusing both to leave the hospital and to talk to anyone but me. “I’ve saved so many, Hal, but in my head it was just Penny, Isaac’s kids, your kid, all the senseless tragedies. To see and hear that suffering and not be able to do something about it,” she said, trailing off to bite her lip hard enough to draw blood. “They wouldn’t even give them water to fight dehydration, not unless I told them what they wanted. They made those kids suffer on my watch.”

She made a derisive, self-deprecating sound, something between a snort and a sigh. “I thought I was stronger,” she said. “Nobody blames you,” I told her.

“Then that makes me nobody”

“Vashti,” I said, “you can’t live life in a state of complete immunity. What happens affects you — one way or another. And what happened to Penny didn’t leave you untouched. That’s probably a good thing.”

“But to not have control over it? I mean, hell, I cured Black Ep — I should be able to do anything. Yet I couldn’t go numb when I needed it. Not like you can.”

I didn’t correct her.

“Is it chaos out there?” she asked.

“Lots of angry people. The kids are scared but okay; the President’s out pleading for calm; the Assembly is meeting right now to figure out what to do.”

“But the secret’s out.”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s going to change things.”

“I imagine so.”

“We tried running it our way. Maybe they’ll do a better job.” The desperately hopeful expression —

the atypical vulnerability — stopped my don’t bet on it in its tracks.

“You never know,” I said.

“That’s right, you never know”

We sat together until I could coax her back to the outside world. We walked through Victory City at dusk with the moon already high in the sky, and we could feel everything she’d built quietly collapsing. The peace she’d worked for was over. We knew. We walked and we knew.

• • •

In the days that followed, we enjoyed the moral high ground. What happened at the hospital was plainly unconscionable. No one dared defend it. Buoyed by an outpouring of popular support, we caught most of the culprits. But some disappeared. And none of it stuck to the architect of the crime. Knowing that someone had to pay for this, Ning made certain that person wasn’t him. He sold out Fitch. He told us exactly where we could find him. I gathered a team of twenty — loyal citizens, Slow Bridge, a couple of Green Mountain Boys — my posse, some called it — and tracked Fitch to a heretofore-unknown Popsicle stand just a stone’s throw from the Metro Toronto Convention Center. We pierced the security of the lab to find it choked by corporate branding, a kaleidoscope of red and white. Here we discovered a private security force — small army, really — waiting to be thawed out. As expected. And attempting the thawing: Fitch and two coconspirators, the top execs of a major soft-drink corporation.

We stopped them at gunpoint. Then put them under the lights. Caught, and recognizing how they were caught, they proved only too eager to turn against the man who tipped us off. Which fit neatly into my plans.

Unfortunately, by the time we returned to New Cambridge, I’d been outmaneuvered. Ning had spent the moment well, sharpening the findings made in the aftermath of the hospital siege into dangerous political weapons. He’d taken his message to the streets and roused the city’s rabble, upper-class rabble though they were. With a slick combination of fearmongering and legitimate complaint, he’d put a stutter of doubt in the Assembly’s leadership. And, worse, he’d annihilated Vashti’s credibility. Why, after the most horrifying health crisis in human history, had she deprioritized the thawing of doctors? Look how many highly skilled medical talents she’d left on ice, downplaying their value to the city. All for fear of her secret getting out. All because she’d wanted to protect her monopoly. Wasn’t that selfish?

The lesson to be drawn from children getting sick, he’d argued, was not just that some citizens were ruthless. Virulent microorganisms lay in wait, immediate and close. What if the plague made a return?

How safe were we? Medical genius though she was, by neglecting to thaw enough doctors, Vashti had put everyone at risk. And the Assembly had let her. It was irresponsible to the point of criminality. Plague culture did us in; the terror of Black Ep trumped all. After bumping shoulders with extinction, how could it be any other way? Richard Ning tapped into the city’s nightmares and worked those emotions into white-hot indignation. Whispers of an ouster cranked up to a shout; Vashti stepped down; the Assembly imploded. I’ll give the man his props — it didn’t take him long to unravel everything we’d built.

PART TWO

applesauce

•

(to rein in hell)

fantasia

Long day. Very. Everyone screaming. Being pests. Pushing my buttons. Mommy’s tired.

Chose this. My choice, no one else’s. Knew the work it would take, must tough it out, lie in bed I chose to make.

Vacation when this is done. Where? Somewhere warm?

Tried green this morning. Green top, black jeans. Liked it. Brought out the color of my eyes. Couldn’t do it. Held on for fourteen minutes, then changed into red cammies. Feel safer in red. Residual sludge of my mental illness.

Was obsessed with violet, now red. Color substitution hardly a cure. Find new medication for OCD? Probably not worth risking negative interaction with anti-psychotics. Mild OCD small price to pay for clear mind and delusional thinking almost gone. Whole zoo calls me Red now. George’s idea to first use the sign for “red” instead of “caretaker,” and now that’s spread to everyone. George, trendsetting abstract thinker. Smart girl. No dummy. Do they associate all reds with me now? If red means me and this is a red toy, is it a me toy? How to parse that question so they understand?

George as trendsetter encouraging for experiment. Fears of subject group exhibiting passivity slightly allayed. Intellectual passivity dragon maybe slain, physical passivity dragon maybe still breathing fire. Foul up years of research.

Have I wasted the past eight years?

Subject group too passive = failure. Subject group too hierarchical = failure. Signs of both today helped throw me in tailspin. Signs, but not clear signs. Control group played keep-away with George’s favorite cup and she didn’t chase. Rising above it or intimidated? Ringo beat up Paul pretty good in a wrestling match. Dominance or rough play? Much harder to read signs now that puberty’s come calling. Control group’s easy. Behavior dynamics could be read in the dark, or in Braille through freaking oven mitts. Mick’s king of the mountain. He’s proven it over the past year. Balls have dropped. When he takes your treat or toy, the teeth are out, and if you challenge you’re getting hit or bit. Keith’s the beta behind Mick. He robs the females, they scream, Mick chases after to remedy the theft. Enforcing the pecking order.

I’m sick of stitching up wounds, but my job’s observing behavior, not encouraging or discouraging it. Sorry, kid, Mommy’s here to fix you up, not tell you how to live.

Not just sick and tired. Nervous lately. Growing tickle that one of the two primal forces is coming for me. Kept checking the surveillance cameras for an agent of N or D.

Won’t believe it. Won’t relapse. Just acknowledging it so I can quiet the thoughts and move on. Want to be warm, safe, healthy, wholesome, sane. Can’t be. Not completely. Never be perfect. But sometimes weakness can be an even greater power than strength.

It takes a special kind of crazy to think you can change the world.

isaac

Regimes never last. Never. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that no empire is infinite. Power can be held but never kept. Looking back, I believe we made the best of our short reign. We saved lives. We inspired. There is no reason to be discouraged.

Had we elected not to govern and merely presented ourselves as practitioners of medicine, the situation would be different. Better or worse, who can say? I refuse to claim victory for a path not taken. Lazarus, old friend, how I wish you could have been there. You had a way of keeping everything in balance. How many contributions would you have made, had you not been murdered those many years ago? More than ever, we are poorer for your absence.

A pang of apprehension tells me it’s a mistake to remember you in times of trouble. It seems I only turn your way when the situation looks grim. But I find your influence calming, even though you can never answer me.

Have I told you about the AI simulacrum Malachi fashioned of you? It does you no justice. It boasts your personality but not your wisdom. Digital or no, I will not speak to a foolish ghost. No, it’s much better like this. Like brothers, you and I.

Let me say this much about New Cambridge, counterintuitive though it may seem: Sometimes, it’s best to give up power. You knew that, didn’t you? There are those who have accused me of being broken by the mistakes I’ve made in my life, crippled to the point where I would rather cede power than wield it. Nonsense. From the very beginning, I have wanted to cede power.

For who among us is wiser than the Gedaechtnis corporation? Why should the men and women who outmaneuvered Black Ep be left sleeping while we take control? They designed us. They are the architects of our continued existence, surely more fit to make monumental decisions than we. When our friends deemed Gedaechtnis too great a risk, I sought the United Nations instead. Alas, that cryonic facility had been compromised, a casualty of the riots, so I suggested we cede to the United States, but once again I was outvoted, our friends unwilling to trust President Coleman with the reins. Vividly, I remember warning Vashti about the rise and fall of Akhenaten. Akhenaten, pharaoh of Egypt, in all probability the father of King Tut. Akhenaten, who rebelled against his family and against all common mores by outlawing the worship of traditional gods in favor of praying to the sun, by constructing a new capital and by making his name and the capital’s name synonymous. We’re not forbidding anyone’s religion, she said.

We are imposing the Doctrine.

Presenting, not imposing. You’re afraid of a backlash, Isaac, but these people can’t go back to their old lives. Look at the state of the world. They need something new. Admittedly, but you expect too much of them. You’re intent on making Cambridge the new cradle of civilization, instead of letting it be what it is: a temporary shelter. And you call it Victory City, after Jaipur, India, where you spent your youth, and after your very surname, Jai, meaning victory. It’s just a nickname. And I did stop Black Ep. Permit me some indulgence, won’t you?

Vashti, I said, when have I denied you anything?

With retrospect, we can add those to the list of words that sting my conscience. Champagne and I stole two hours together today. Two blessed, breathless hours, churning feelings long sleeping but never dead. Vashti must know. We haven’t told her yet, but she must.

As I say, regimes never last. America is our concern no longer. Europe is next. The British royals, the German magnates, and the Vatican all crave freedom. That is why we have returned to “the world city with a heart,” Munich, where my children are entombed. Then China, and the task will be at end. We’re within walking distance, Lazarus. We’re already thawing out Gedaechtnis. To think how many years I have waited for this opportunity, and how tantalizingly close it has crept. How often does a chance like this come? To look behind the curtain? To meet your makers? And make sense of the world?

sloane

That’s Sloane with an e, not just an n, and not fucking Slow. Christ, how I hate that. I’m not slow. Unlucky as a whore at a eunuch convention, but not slow. My name is Sloane with a capital S. I’m the last PH in Vic City. Last, like I could set up a big-ass sign that flashes Posthuman Pop: 1 here, and everyone could gawp all slack-jawed to wonder who that one could be. Well, you’re looking right the fuck at her, geniuses — it’s me, baby, it’s me. I’m the one still here in the trenches. All the others hightailed it back to Europe. Who can blame them? I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be. And I do have to be. Absolutely have to. No one understands that. They all think I’m crazy for sticking around. Especially my mothers. Even my twin. Never mind that I can do some good here, they want me over there. That’s where my instincts tell me I should be, too. Sorry. Not this time. My existence is shit. I am a colossal fuckup. Period. No, make that an exclamation point. Everything I try fails, everything I touch collapses, everything I want gets away from me. That’s not woe is me. That’s not poor Sloane has it so hard, little baby wants some sympathy. Fuck sympathy. This is the way it is for me. My whole life I’ve been cursed. Someone cursed me with — take your pick — the worst luck ever, or a combination of terrible choices, appalling instincts and deep-seated character flaws. Maybe they all go hand in hand. I don’t know. But as you might imagine, I’m sick of it. So sick I’m willing to do something drastic.

There I was when it all went down. Out of position. Showing up to the rescue too late to do anyone any good. Mother and sisters taken hostage. Information extracted. I’m thinking how typical this is. How representative of my shitty life. And I’m talking to myself the way I do when things go wrong. Not just about the siege. About every mistake I’ve made. If you take a job in law enforcement, can you do much worse than lose your gun? Can you really? I’m a fucking punch line and I know it. And it occurs to me that my worst enemy is in my gut. All my impulses and feelings. Every instinct. That’s what I have to get rid of. That’s what I’m doing.

Whatever my intuition tells me to do, I’m taking my best shot at the opposite. It’s an experiment. It’s how I’m going to break the curse.

And it’s the number-one reason why Sloane-o is flying solo. After the sheep lost faith in our shepherding, with the majority grumbling and making the city a hostile work environment, I gave my ear to the vocal minority who wanted us to stay. Wait, that’s not entirely right — I didn’t listen to the well-meaning shmoes, or the ones who were frightened to see us go. I listened to Richard Ning, who invited my sisters and me to be a part of the city’s future. His city’s future. I didn’t trust him, so I said yes.

It’s a business deal. He gets a splash of legitimacy, a wedge against my family, eye candy and a potential hostage. I get a chance to beat this curse and earn some redemption, plus a much-needed vacation from my family, a break from being a twin (hey, Bridge, don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out) and the whole double-agent Mata Hari thing. If my new benefactor needs to be taken down, maybe I’ll be the one to do it. I believe in takedowns. I subscribe to the philosophy that some people are better off drowned at birth. My dearly departed sister, Penny, was a prime example. Ning might be another. I’ll have to get to know him better to make sure.

Strangers are starting to creep into town. They’re not on any of our lists — I checked. Dollars to doughnuts someone had them defrosted from another freezer, one of those hidden vaults everyone’s so worried about. I’ve seen about a dozen now. By age and physique and most of all attitude I’m guessing they’re soldiers. Ning’s new security team. Normally, I’d try to hang with them, so I’m keeping my distance, mixing with fashion-conscious trophy wives and spoiled débutantes instead. For now. They want to take me to Aspen and I’ll let them. I love to ski. Meanwhile, the President’s skipped town. Back to Washington, or Virginia, or wherever Presidents go.

I’m biding my time.

You watch. I’m going to do something valuable here.

halloween

Phase B — B as in banished, bounced, booted from Boston back to Bavaria — overtook Phase A so quickly, you’d have thought it was A all along. “This has always been the strategy,” Vashti reminded anyone who would listen. “We’re simply accelerating the timetable to meet the situation at hand.”

I said, “Don’t rationalize this to me. You know how I feel.”

She couldn’t help it. She’d been put on edge and had a need to justify every path taken. And to be fair, those choices were under attack. Many of our supporters felt we should have stayed. Or at least left more of our number behind in a symbolic or supervisory capacity. By pulling out of the government so completely, we risked leaving a power vacuum in our wake — which in turn risked violent instability. But trying to hold on to a bucking bronco wouldn’t have been safe, and our continued presence might have only inflamed the outrage, what with our enemies becoming increasingly successful at painting us as villains. Perception is reality; well meaning or no, we were unreceptive to the needs of the community. Particularly the medical needs. So said Ning, and so said the voice of the people, which meant it must be true. That’s how popular opinion helped drive Vashti, Isaac and Champagne’s group think toward a policy of retreat. Better to go and help the rest of the world and return later, perhaps, once things settle down. Let the thawed govern the thawed; there were human members of the Assembly who still supported the Doctrine, and who could pick up right where we left off. I said, “That’s not how it’s going to shake out.” Coming events would prove me right. Further Monday-morning quarterbacking among the faithful: Had putting all our eggs in one basket really been the best choice? In retrospect, might it have been wiser to split into groups — one in the United States, one in Europe, one in China? We could have had three weaker cultures, but that had struck the group as inefficient and dangerous. Better to leverage all our assets in the U.S., in the hopes of creating a single, strong society, one that could be started off on the right track — hence the Doctrine. I said, “Looking back won’t solve anything.”

For as long as I’d known them, Vashti, Isaac and Champagne had belonged to a conspiracy of optimism. Everything will work out. Expect the best, not the worst. With persistence and passion, any goal can be reached. In times of trouble, they’d relied on one another to reinforce the shared conviction that the universe and those who inhabit it are essentially benign. That someday humanity will achieve a destiny that eradicates all war, poverty and crime. That order can always be imposed over chaos. Over the years, I’d noticed something preying on that seemingly unshakable enthusiasm — beaten down by one betrayal after another, my friends were gradually starting to understand. Quae nocent, docent. Things that injure, teach. Like enormous animals with sluggish nervous systems, the pain took longer to reach their brains, but here it was, reaching them at last. Watching them on the flight back to Munich, I could see they were becoming more cynical. More disillusioned. More like me. I didn’t like it. I didn’t wish that on them. I didn’t wish it on myself.

Of the three, Isaac worried me most, the fearful, desperate glint in his eyes betraying an otherwise placid mask as he spoke about perspective, the importance of taking a longer view. “This is a flash,” he told me. “Just a flash of white light, bright enough to blind us, and too quick to offer us anything more than a glimpse. It’s impossible to accurately gauge what’s happening now without the prism of history. Good decisions, poor decisions, give us some years to look back and we’ll know.” And then, as he would increasingly do, he steered conversation back to Gedaechtnis, how they might be the best evaluators of what we’d done, a hero worship I could barely stomach. So the company gave us life, granted, and they’d pulled a choke chain on human extinction. They’d also lied to us, made us guinea pigs and set us on unfortunate paths. To a good end, I suppose, so pay no attention to the means.

“Do you doubt they can justify the choices they made?” asked Isaac. As if they were infallible. With a perfect plan. As if they were a substitute for God.

Under no circumstances would the holy trinity of Gedaechtnis answer any of our questions. The three project heads — Ellison, Hyoguchi, Koppel — were simply beyond saving, having worked obsessively on our creation even as Black Ep did its heaviest damage. That kind of determination carried a price —

Koppel had already been laid to rest at a local cemetery, and though Ellison and Hyoguchi had chosen cryonic preservation, the disease had ravaged them terribly, and they were too far gone for us to do much good.

“We can’t try it,” Vashti decided. Too much risk of ruining what was left of them with a failed resuscitation attempt. So they’d sit on ice indefinitely, like Isaac’s children, waiting for the hypothetical technological advance that might restore them, someday, to the land of the living. Even though God was dead, the angels were still kicking. (Isaac’s metaphor. To me, it felt more like breaking the titans out of Tartarus.) One by one, we brought out an assortment of Gedaechtnis geneticists, epidemiologists, IVR programmers, sociologists, administrators and engineers, each overjoyed to see us — or anyone, truly — but especially us, their creations, the living proof that their experiment succeeded, and all their hard work was not in vain. Welcome back. Yes, you’re safe now. Disease free.

That’s right, it worked.

Right, you saved the human race. Well done. Gold star for you. How long has it been? How long do you think? No, longer than that. But we look so young, yes. Must be the good genes you gave us. Good immune systems. Good metabolisms. Vampiric good looks. Would you consider us your greatest creation? Or Black Ep?

You say you didn’t midwife Black Ep? It isn’t one of your bioweapons? It didn’t spring from one of your labs?

Vigorous denial on unleashing the plague. Yes, they’d engineered biological WMDs for their clients, but never anything that couldn’t be contained. For them, the real money had been in biosecurity, because no politician ever wanted to admit to his constituents that he’d put too low a price on their health. By introducing the occasional new germ warfare agent, they’d played on fears and increased profits, but —

so they claimed — they’d always approached their work from a position of safety first, and had been far too careful to ever create as robust and ferocious a microbe as Black Ep. There was no profit in Armageddon. Other companies had been less careful and less scrupulous, and some had carried political agendas beyond the desire to make a buck, the Gedaechtnis employees were quick to argue — maybe I should investigate one of them.

When the bodies had started piling up, “Who’s to blame?” had been the number-two question on everyone’s lips, second only to “How do we stop it?” Millions had sought the answer in vain. Was it a naturally existing organism? Was it manmade? Did it come from outer space? God? The Devil? If anyone had known the truth, he’d stayed silent about it — and while I’d always had a hunch it was manmade, how could I prove it? Short of a smoking gun or a confession, I’d no hope of doing so, and without solid evidence of a natural origin, I’d no hope of proving the opposite.

Any other questions?

Here’s one: Why’d you lie to us? Why didn’t you tell us what we were up against from the beginning? When you spent all this time and effort building a virtual world to give us our “normal upbringing,” didn’t you realize how much more painful learning the truth would be? Did you give any thought to the kind of damage it does to suddenly find out you’re alone?

They’d debated it, they assured me. If they’d told us what we were and what was ripping its way through the human race — if they’d taught us that back when we were kids, the pressure would have wreaked havoc on our childhood development. What if we had cracked from it? The whole project would have been compromised. So which was the lesser evil? Which choice was more responsible?

“Honesty,” I said. “Always better.”

Ah, the look on Isaac’s face when he asked these thawed about their plan. “Which plan is that?” they frowned. If they’d plotted a course for us, they’d plotted one for society. Hadn’t they? The answer always came sheepishly: “Hell, kid, we just did the best we could to get this far. And you guys really came through. Hopefully, we didn’t screw you up too bad along the way, huh?”

Society had been a complete afterthought. They’d left post-Black Ep thinking to the governments and think tanks, distant hypotheticals for strategists with little faith in Gedaechtnis’s ability to pull off such a grand experiment.

One odd thing. When they were throwing us questions, using all the old names — calling me Gabriel, Champagne Charlotte, Pandora Naomi, and so on — and we had to explain how half our number were either missing (Fantasia) or dead (Mercutio, Tyler, Lazarus and Simone), one of the geneticists quietly asked, “What about the others?”

“What others?”

“The Hong Kong program,” she said. “The other children!”

isaac

Tinted glasses have never suited me, be they rose-colored or dark as the very center of an eye. Unreasonable optimism serves no one, nor does a jaundiced view of humankind. I have always believed we must see things as they are and then act from that awareness. Nonetheless, my vision has been shaded for years. I can admit it only now that I can see it, and I can see it only now that the lenses have been shattered.

It’s as if I’ve been wearing Beholder Spex. Do you remember that fad, Lazarus? Lenses that distort light into a famous painter’s style, and make the world a work of art. Fantasia favored them. One flip of a switch and objective reality slips behind a filter.

The old heart-to-hearts have been coming back to me today. Everything you said about a collective calling. How within each psyche lives the potential for abject purity of motive — the pursuit of the most good for the most people. And how some of us, some tiny fraction, will become the embodiment of this pristine thought, word and deed — and they would be the best of us, the transcendent pinnacle of human achievement. How deeply I believed this was Gedaechtnis, the architects of your destiny, mine and so many others.

Everything for a reason. Arab-African bloodline for genetic and cultural diversity. Male to even out the ratio of boys to girls. Raised Muslim to represent the populous Islamic faith. Raised Sufi to mitigate the perceived rigidity of Islam. Raised in IVR New York to furnish an appreciation of Western values, yet familiarize a wide range of cultures. Mother a UN Humanitarian Affairs Officer to teach negotiation, cooperation and compassion. Father a cultural anthropologist and a curator at the Met to teach the importance of studying ancient civilizations. Pushed to study those civilizations to be a link in the chain of living history. Pushed to study medicine to fight Black Ep. Sent to Idlewild to bond with my counterparts. Every major event in my childhood made for a specific reason. And so I asked why. Why the accident. Verisimilitude, came the hesitant reply.

Explain.

We wanted healthy, well-balanced children, so it made sense for most of you to hail from stable, two-parent homes. However, had all ten of you grown up in such a fashion, that approach would have been not only unrepresentative of society but also disrespectful to the large number of single parents who have raised successful children. Thus, after careful deliberation, the decision was made for two of the marriages to end in amicable divorces and one to end in a head-on crash. Drunk driver killed my mother.

Yes, we considered a disease. We even considered Black Ep. But we feared it might create undue pressure for someone we needed to combat microorganisms. To increase your personal stake like that could have been motivating, but might have been overwhelming. We couldn’t chance it. A traffic accident seemed more humane: tragic but sudden, scripted without gratuitous suffering. Without what?

Suffering. Her suffering. You never saw any. Just your father breaking the bad news. Closed-casket funeral. All by design. That’s not to say you didn’t suffer. I’m sure you did. But we all lose parents, and it’s always sad. In a sense, you were all bound to lose your parents the moment you discovered the extent of the IVR simulation. We hoped you’d be able to help the others, having lived through the experiences you had.

And why my mother?

Haven’t I just explained that?

No, you haven’t. Of the ten subjects, why was I chosen?

Oh, that. That was an impossible decision. None of us wanted to cause any of you pain, so we let an RNG make the call.

A random number generator. A roll of the dice. It shatters everything, Lazarus. I am unable to view it rationally. Except to say, of course it was random — how can bereaving a twelve-year-old child of his mother be anything but arbitrary?

Inconsolable, unaccompanied on the flight back to New York, how I wept. But I laughed and danced at her funeral as my father commanded. We lived the words of the Sufi poet Jalal Al-Din. “When the human spirit, after years of imprisonment in the cage and dungeon of the body, is at length set free, and wings its flight to the Source whence it came, is not this an occasion for rejoicings, and thanks, and dancing?”

Absolutely, it is — if one believes such a Source exists. I do not. I am a fallen Sufi, an apostate Muslim, and well on the path to becoming an ex-humanist as well. Belief in God spun me in circles for the first eighteen years of my life, but faith in Gedaechtnis has spun me in circles ever since. Now the vertigo has caught up with me at last. No wonder I had to excuse myself from the quiet heart of Nymphenburg to find a place in which to be sick. I lost the contents of my stomach at the thought of all my folly, and at my creators’ surrender to pure chance, and at what I almost did to my children in their name. They’re just men. Men and women with a certain talent, wisdom, passion and purpose, all born from desperate circumstance. Ethically and spiritually, they are the embodiment of nothing more enlightened than a survival instinct.

Never have I felt more in touch with the random cruelties of the universe. Life isn’t fair, they told me. We tried to prepare you. Your parents, your teachers, they all warned you. We made a special point of it.

So this is disbelief. To be isolated from that connection I once valued more than anything. To be disconnected from any presence greater than one’s self feels spiritually crippling, mystifying and fearsome. The devil’s name has roots in the word for despair, but without the devil, the despair remains, and without God or heroes, it only deepens. Belatedly, I have empathy with Halloween and Fantasia. I can understand the loneliness and desolation, the desire to push everyone else away. But I will not. There’s too much work yet to be done, and if I have no betters, the task is mine. The new call is Hong Kong, Lazarus. We are not alone. Or were not. There once were others like us there and I must know what happened to them. Evidently, the Chinese launched a parallel program, hoping to gengineer immuno-optimized descendants. In defiance of company policy and government embargoes, a fraction of the Gedaechtnis team clandestinely shared technology with Chinese geneticists to help them along. It was the right thing to do, though out of favor at the time. The Trade War might have been the only geopolitical conflict not to be put aside in the dark days of the plague. Too much damage had been done to China and the West, and though politicians said much to the contrary, neither side was willing to put the bad blood behind them, Apocalypse or no Apocalypse. As you have so often told me, far beyond power, the most corruptive element to the human spirit is offended pride.

I promise to keep that in mind as I seek my paradise anew — a search that leads to neither God nor Gedaechtnis, but to my heart and conscience. The first step is Hong Kong, though whether I go as a diplomat or an archaeologist, I have no idea.

fantasia

Fireball low on the horizon. What some call a blood sunrise. Wrongly. Blood is much darker, redder. Womb color. No womb on the horizon. Have yet to see a bloodball sun or the bloodmoon of Rev. 6:12. No rush. Inspired, this dawn, blue light submissively scattered to let great streaks of red stain the sky. So. Born Gina Rojas. Means Red Queen. Through the Looking Glass homage, someone at the company had love for Lewis Carroll. Always liked the name Rojas. Wore red all the time. Stopped when I realized I wasn’t like the other kids. Thought differently. Not just quirk, something mad wrong with my mind. Burgeoning delusions, paranoia, thought disorder. Sick. Bad sick. Couldn’t be Red. Had to be Purple. Purple was sick. Learned that studying American history. Roaring Twenties. Purple Gang crime syndicate got its name because they were rotten. Mobsters deemed “purple, like the color of bad meat.”

Me, too. Bad meat left out in the sun. Putrefying. Knew it. So. Embraced my illness. Became Violet Queen.

Friends started calling me Fantasia. Can’t remember why. Let them call me anything. Called myself Mystery. Whispered it in the night so no one could hear. Convinced I was the Whore of Babylon. “And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color.” Rev. 17:4. Terrified I was she. Horrified I would traffic the Antichrist. Unleash the Beast. Annihilate the Universe. Laugh was on me, of course. By the time I was two, Black Ep already had made its slaughter.

Crazy vs. sane, a primer. Sane person wants a cookie. Knows she shouldn’t eat it but wants it anyway. She eats it or doesn’t. That’s it. Crazy person has same conflict but can’t keep it inside her. Has to bring in outside forces. The Devil wants her to eat the cookie. Jesus doesn’t want her to have it. Or maybe the government wants her to go on birth control. Or terrorists. Or aliens. Someone impossibly grandiose. Someone who makes her feel important. Less lonely. How I wanted to feel. Over the years, what did I do? Herded every single thing into my delusions, every power I’d ever heard of, moral, immoral, mortal, immortal, hell-bent or heaven-sent. Put them all to work. As pawns. Of the two primal forces: N & D. Two secret societies at war since the beginning of time. Each deadly enemy with inescapable reach. Not to be trusted, not to be crossed. All major historical events caused by their invisible parries and thrusts.

Really just an inner conflict externalized. N: Nutritious. What’s good for me. Versus D: Delicious. What I want.

Nothing more than that. Nothing at all.

There. Owned it. Spoke it aloud. Wrote it all down.

Taking medicine now. Won’t relapse. Can’t. Work far too important. Chimps need me. Plus, prognosis excellent. Mental illness all but contained. Neurotic, first to admit, but no more psychotic episodes. In this moment, as clear as I’ve ever been. So. Why do I feel like I’m being watched?

halloween

The soul secure in her existence smiles at the drawn dagger and defies its point. The stars shall fade away, the sun himself grow dim with age and nature sink in years, but thou shall flourish in immortal youth, unhurt amid the war of elements, the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds. That’s an excerpt from Cato, George Washington’s favorite play. It’s about standing up to tyrants. And about not taking power when that power will corrupt you. You can see how Washington, who shot down the proposal that he be made King of America with the line “You could not have found a person to whom your schemes are more disagreeable,” might have appreciated a story like that. I haven’t read the whole play; Gedaechtnis never put it on any of my reading lists, and since coming of age I’ve yet to take the time. I discovered it through an unlikely intersection — my lifelong interest in cryptography mixed with a fondness for the macabre stories of Edgar Allan Poe. (Second only to H.P. Lovecraft in my formative youth.)

Poe enjoyed crafting ciphers; employing a pseudonym, he encrypted the Cato passage above; it took over 150 years for anyone to crack it. As homage to the man, I’d made a habit of using that same passage as dummy text to test my protocols.

Smile at the drawn dagger and defy its point. Words to live by, no?

Though based in New Cambridge no longer, I retained a few eyes and ears about town — Slow, Kody, Mars, a few others — who would send private (and often coded) messages to apprise me of the evolving situation. I put complete faith in none of these, fearing manipulation from Ning. To minimize the potential for misdirection, I refused to take anyone’s word without corroboration — fortunately, the initial reports diverged only slightly, and so from a choir of spies, details began to emerge. No end to the fear, I learned, Ning playing hard to the phobes. Steadily jacking up that worst-case scenario of a new strain of plague finishing what was started. How safe is safe? Only a doctor-centric society, an iatrarchy, could hope to keep everyone from death’s door. Hence the “reorganization,” Ning pushing to prioritize healthcare above all else — which I imagine wouldn’t have been particularly offensive if he hadn’t been doing it so dishonestly.

With no solid evidence of a health crisis, this was simply an opportunity to seize control. Even prior to the poisoning incident, Ning had been putting doctors in his pocket one by one. To me, it seemed nothing more than a pretext to institute the same morally questionable policies he’d wanted all along. Fear makes a fertile soil.

So the few New Cambridgians we’d failed to thaw were woken up and introduced to the underside of a new class system — hello and welcome back; sign here, please; though committed to your civil liberties, we remain in a state of emergency; for successful cryonic retrieval one must remunerate the city, and according to this policy, you have been temporarily conscripted to a period of service.

Unfair? Possibly. Yet, it could be argued, a vital and a well-meaning policy, if the indentured servitude went to the purpose of preserving all our lives.

Not quite as persuasive as the Doctrine, but then Ning had leverage. What we’d done once with the President, he’d instituted as a matter of course. Thawing a husband and holding off on the wife. Or not bringing out the kids. Leverage to ensure compliance. All policies enforced with new muscle — a cadre of soldiers trickling into town, their numbers growing with each passing day. None of my operatives could pinpoint the origin, but “unknown cryonic facility” and “private corporate army” seemed the consensus.

To all appearances, the Assembly kept jurisdiction over the city, but behind the scenes Ning and his cronies had been wrangling not just influence but dominion. A smoother transition that way — no reason to tear down old institutions when they can simply be perverted to new ends. And disturbingly, Ning had gotten himself engaged. Disturbing, because by all accounts the prospective missus was a widely respected, lovely and beautiful woman who was sure to soften his image. She’d allow him greater flexibility — callous acts could be explained away with warm-sounding aphorisms and homespun reassurances.

Threat exaggerated to justify subjugation, check. Bullshit washed down with political lubricant, check. I had a sense where the man was going. Some truth in that old saw about positively identifying waterfowl from their visual, auditory and behavioral characteristics. If it looks like a duck…

My first thought: Who cares? Let him do his worst. It’s not like I owe these people anything. Followed by: I can take the son of a bitch out now, before he can consolidate his power. If I want him dead, he’s dead. It won’t be difficult. Far from it, it’ll be the easiest thing in the world. And I couldn’t. Not because I didn’t believe in killing. Not because I felt it was none of my business. Not because I owed him a chance to reform.

I’d done it twice before, each time with the discharge of a gun. The decision to squeeze the trigger comes at the speed of thought, but then you have to live with everything that follows. You feel the weight of death. No matter how justified you were, you feel it. You feel it the rest of your life. Shame on me for doubling that number; two more lives to hang on my conscience, both suicides. Four people. Hardly enough loss of life to justify my Grim Reaper rep, but more than enough to convince me I didn’t want any more blood on my hands. Not if I could help it. Not with my baby almost born. And speaking of blood on one’s hands…

“You’ve got to hear this.” A gallows-humor twinkle in Vashti’s kajal-accented eyes. “One of our creators wants to make a confession.”

“What, to a priest?”

“No, to us. He wants to confess a crime. Homicide,” she added when I didn’t answer right away. We fell into step together. Toward the lake, colonized by the swans that fascinated my son, Deuce. Dozens of them now, their long necks bent to make question marks in the water. And slumped on a bench: one of the Gedaechtnis employees, a picture of misery, eyes downcast, chin to his chest, neck bent like the swans.

“Glenn Watkins.” About whom I felt next to nothing. “This a recent crime? Since he was thawed?”

“No.”

“Are we now prosecuting crimes from before the Recovery?”

“Not as a rule, no.”

“So what gives?”

“He says he killed our friends, Hal.”

I almost laughed, but something in the way she carried herself — hands balled into fists, tension creasing the bridge of her proud, straight nose — reassured me that this was not some elaborate joke.

“You have got to hear this,” she repeated.

Had I misunderstood what she’d meant by our friends? “Which friends?”

“Lazarus, Simone, Tyler and Mercutio.”

“So he’s crazy, then. He wasn’t there. He’d been locked away in cryonic storage for years and years before any of that went down.”

“I don’t think he’s crazy,” Vashti said.

sloane

My new best friend is Claire. How I fucking loathe her.

She’s a bubble-headed bleach blonde from Beverly Hills. Nature’s cruelest mistake: a goddamn waste-of-space trust-fund-baby fashion-zombie wannabe pop star. She can’t sing. Or dance. Or do anything but make people look at her. Claire isn’t her real name; it’s her stage name. Claire Isabel. Like clear as a bell. She isn’t clear yet, though; she says she still has thetan energies trapped within her. Yeah, she says she’s only Grade III, but that gives her freedom from the upsets of the past and ability to face the future. Neat. Would I like to learn more about Scientology? Not on her life, hell, not even on any of her past lives. Only I said yes. Yes to that cult, yes to laughing at her jokes, yes to hanging out with all her stupid friends in Aspen. I have to break the curse, so I have to say yes. Brigit and I had a thing where we’d pretend to be nice to our sisters only to cut them down later. This is like that but without the cutting down. Feels like bad sex with no payoff. Worth putting up with Claire, though, because she’s about to be Ning’s stepdaughter. Which makes me a friend of the family, which gives me primo access. That’s worth the damage I’m doing to my face with this forced fucking smile. Because I’m her friend and maybe her bodyguard/mascot, Claire gave me these fat rainbow pills to flip on the slopes, an ecstasy-and-synthetic-serotonin cocktail called Wretched XS. Expensive shit, the caviar of polydrugs. Well, happy’s somewhere I love to be, so I took a bunch and spat them out in the snow when no one was looking. No room at the inn, happy. I don’t do the things I want. Break the patterns, break the curse.

Crying shame, because blitzed I might even enjoy Claire’s company. Want to hear a joke? Here goes. Big tycoon wanted to divorce his wife, but he also wanted to stay friends, so he told his lawyer to meet with her lawyer and agree to anything she wanted. Anything? Yes, anything. So the two lawyers meet, and apparently she doesn’t want much from the tycoon because they both had money before getting into the marriage. All she wants is child support for their two kids. Sounds reasonable. How much?

Three hundred thousand dollars per day.

His lawyer hems and haws but has to agree to it. The client said anything. But for curiosity’s sake he has to ask how she came up with that figure.

“Simple,” her lawyer says, “the children like to go skiing.”

“So?”

“So they’re shy. They don’t like a lot of people watching them when they ski.”

“But three hundred grand?”

“That’s what it takes to shut down the slopes. They rent every room in every hotel on the mountain and no one bothers them.”

Shut up. I didn’t say it was a funny joke. True story, though, and they were twentieth-century dollars, so it’s even more ridiculous when adjusted for inflation. That’s commensurate with the kind of lifestyle Claire and her friends used to enjoy, so today’s big bad world doesn’t suit them so well. Aspen without creature comforts is hardly Aspen. And unlike the kids in the joke, these witless wonders aren’t even outdoorsy. So with no restaurants, clubs or arts festivals in which to be seen, what was the point? Just to ski? Please.

If they’d realized this before piling into the plane, we could have saved some valuable time, but everyone was flying high and deaf to reason. I’d have had a much better time shredding virtual snow, which for me is saying something. Outside owns Inside any day of the week. Here in the city, the weather’s bad and the links are fritzing. Everyone’s pissing and moaning, the smart ones about the new watch lists but everyone else just because they’re inconvenienced by sputtering connections.

Watch lists tell us who’s in the news, so if I’ve got Claire on mine and she’s featured on someone’s channel, an alert lets me know. Watch lists are also a measure of popularity, so the more watched you are, the better. Slick way to get citizens to enjoy being watched. “How do I get more people to like me?

How do I move up in the rankings?” Total crap, and it’s catching on because Ning’s making it work. Most of these jokers are desperate for distinction now that their money can’t buy or sell anyone. If someone’s using a link anywhere in the city, I can find out where he is and what he’s linking —

another person, an information site, entertainment, you name it. Blows my mind how many citizens are willing to give up their privacy. Total transparency may be the selling point, but the goal is control. Anyway, since the watch lists have been installed, the links have gotten fritzy. They’ve put the engineer on it, what’s his name, the one they call Mr. Lucky. He doesn’t look happy to be working for Ning, but then I don’t think I’ve seen him smile since the day Pandora pulled him from the freezer. He looks how I feel.

Tomorrow, I’m having breakfast with Claire, her mother and Ning, whom I’ve started calling

“Emperor Ning” or “Ning the Nerciless,” though no one gets that joke but me. Halloween might, but he’s not here, and it does no good to spend any time on that. I was thinking about him too much when he was here, bad idea with his being my boss and already spoken for. I could handle one or the other but not both.

Dumb fucking daydreams. Like he’d take a second look at me.

Instead, I’m getting attention from the Popsicle army. Ning’s jackbooted private security organization. It’s not unwanted attention, because they’re badasses and I have no problem with badasses. Especially the lieutenant who’s been flirting with me. Lodune. Pronounced “low done” with a useless e at the end of his name, just like mine. It infuriates me I think he’s hot. The main attraction is his combat experience. He’s killed in battle and he’s completely cool with it. Not bragging, not tormented, just cool. You can see it in his eyes. We could have a fling, and it could mean something to both of us, and then if he had to shoot me for going after Ning, he’d be cool with that, too. Every instinct tells me that hooking up with him would be a mistake.

Which sucks, because it means I have to do it.

halloween

“The guilt’s killing me,” said the geneticist, two fingers to his carotid artery. “Palpitations, I swear. Feel like I’m having a panic attack.” Sweat-soaked and miserable, he met my eyes, Vashti’s and the unseeing eyes of Pandora (who, with Malachi’s assistance, had come to join us), searching us for sympathy, before dropping his head again and taking a sidelong glance at the lake. Without shifting his gaze from the swans, he took a bottomless breath and said, “I just want you to understand. It wasn’t from bad motives. I didn’t do it intentionally. It backfired. I tried to do something positive.”

The story of that alleged positive came haltingly, nugget by nugget, like black pearl tea sucked through a narrow straw. Ultimately, the choice he’d made had come down to ideology. The last century had been hamstrung by what he called a “catastrophic failure of leadership” with no one for the world to rally behind. Democratic globalization had been a grand goal, but what had it achieved? Endless litigation?

Governments sitting around with their thumbs up their asses, mooing about feelings? Governments controlled by corporations? Who would make the hard choices?

“I didn’t want that to happen to you,” he explained. “You were our last hope. You had to make choices, and the thought of you paralyzed with the same indecision terrified me. Don’t you understand?

We made you strong, but for this to work, one of you had to be stronger”

Back when my friends and I were embryos, this sad and inconspicuous Gedaechtnis employee had gone rogue, clandestinely tweaking one of our genomes in an attempt at producing a natural leader. Someone with the drive and aggression to lead the others in a quest to defeat the plague, so Man could walk the Earth again. “I thought this would give you a better chance,” he said, hugging his arms to his chest.

“You lit the fuse.” Pandora’s face darkened as the implications played themselves out in her mind.

“Adam,” he nodded, using the old name for Mercutio. The briefest of glances at her swollen belly and again he looked away. “When you told me he’d gone mad, the sabotage he did, the murd—” He shook his head, unable to free the word murders from his lips. “I couldn’t believe it. And yet I knew I was responsible. My fault. But you have to realize it wasn’t my intention. I wanted the best of you, not the worst.”

Heredity and environment. We’d spent years dissecting the environmental factors for why Merc did what he did. Now we had the other side. Put them together and…

No, I didn’t want to put them together. What good would it do me to know what had made him a ticking time bomb? What good after he’d already exploded? Long ago, I’d rejected the concept of healing because if I couldn’t be healed, I couldn’t be further hurt. So there was no solace for me to take in this confession, and no outrage. The loss I felt couldn’t be touched. Sharply, Vashti interrogated our man about how he’d pulled it off, both from a technical standpoint, and how he’d evaded detection. The former he was more comfortable explaining, but his tone grew more hesitant about the latter, the shame stifling him, disgrace in perverting the efforts of his co-workers, and accomplishing his goal only after his boss had committed suicide.

“Dr. Koppel,” he sighed, remembering. “We called her Blue because of her eyes, but it was also her moods. She ran the show, but after she died, there was a period when the lab was in total chaos. No one knew who was in charge anymore. I saw my opportunity and took it.”