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My mind was ablaze as I glided into my office suite. Magz Malloy’s news blast with that Venice woman had been so inflammatory. It went viral on all the major social channels.
Nuhope’s marketing and publicity department heads were in a state of exhausted emergency, trying to counteract the perception that Nuhope was behind the bombing of Jarat’s home. We were in an audience freefall, thanks to Malloy's news and everything Theseus had done before then to sabotage us.
Rico was behind the Jarat attack; I had no doubt. Stop, stop, stop. I pushed my fury off in a corner to focus on the most immediate problem: drawing the public back to Nuhope’s channels.
I was about to place a call to Stewart Silverman and get his thoughts on that. But stepping into my inner sanctum, my heart nearly stopped. Someone with wild pewter hair was sitting in an air chair near the window.
"Jarat." I glided over and dropped into a chair opposite him. One set of feelings slapped around another, then another. He was causing Nuhope such horrendous problems. (Slap, slap.) But it was lovely that he was completely visible, with those sad, tired eyes. So striking how much he looked like his mother, Bianca, in person. (Slap, slap.) The freaking terrorist! (Slap, slap.) Yet what he'd done to expose Rico's treacheries made me grateful. And having learned about the bombardment of his home, it was hard not to feel compassion. (What the fuck was the right way to think about him?)
He was reading all that on my face. There was no need to get into any of it. I just said, “You’re like a modern-day Houdini, getting past all those infrared beams outside.”
“You have no idea. Just got shot at. One of Rico’s bot goons.”
“What? Just now?”
"Yeah. Across the street. Luckily for me, one of my crew members outfitted me with a DirecWep flak jacket before I came over here. They're really hard to come by, but I work with a resourceful military expert."
“That Venice woman?”
“She’s the one. I managed to get inside the building by trailing Rico so closely the beams couldn’t pick me up.”
"Oh, shite."
“There was another attack in Boston last night. Rico destroyed a family. They meant a lot to me. And there are other things you need to know.”
I girded myself. “Go ahead.”
“It has to do with the female Charismite.”
“Who?”
“Luscious. Charismite is a term for what she and Dove have become.”
The story he related was jarring, to say the least—how Luscious had gone out of her way to befriend Jarat; how Rico had punished Luscious by having his personal bot soldier knock her out. This day was just getting merrier by the second.
“Now something’s going on in Studio G,” Jarat said. “From a few things that Reingold said on the way inside the building, I think it involves Dove and Zinder.”
“I see.” Now that Rico was desperate, he’d do anything to get back into the Vice President’s good graces. “The Riggles gum commercial. Something like that?”
“That’s what I think. There’s a reason why that ad was so powerful. Rico overdosed the girl by giving her too much Juice.”
“Juice?”
“The chemical substance.”
“You are stretching my vocabulary.”
“It’s time for that.”
Fear washed through me, imagining Dove even more charismatic than he already was, brainwashing people to vote for Zinder, or whatever else Rico wanted. And then there was the overdose aspect. What was he doing to Dove?
I rose from my chair. “I’m on my way.”
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
“You need to trust Luscious.”
I curbed a laugh. Trust? “Why would I do that?”
“She could be the biggest ally that you’ve ever had. Yes, she’s sympathetic to Theseus, and there are all sorts of reasons why you hate what we’re doing to Nuhope. But she’s helping me in ways that I think you’ll appreciate.”
“Are you sure she hasn’t twisted your mind?”
Vulnerability shadowed his face. "Sure, I'm highly susceptible. But I know what Luscious is, and that helps me control my reactions."
“That’s true for me too, with Dove,” I mused.
“Can you do this—trust her?” he asked.
“Can you call off your troops and stop sabotaging Nuhope?”
Jarat's face smoothed a bit as if I'd given him all the relief he could hope for. "Deal."
# # #
THE WORLD SHIFTED AS I opened the door to Studio G. I'd come to recognize the more crystalline air whenever Dove was around; that was expected. But now the sensation was so sharp everything was almost vibrating. And an animal was shrieking as if it was in horrific pain.
“What the hell?” I whispered.
“I don’t know,” Jarat whispered back, invisible now. Thank the Lord he had managed to tail me so closely the guards didn’t pick up on him as we’d made our way to the studio.
As we went past a series of black curtains and scene partitions, the piercing cries grew louder. A coyote. Had to be. When I was a little girl in southern California, I’d always been frightened of the beasts, and it certainly was jarring to hear one now. Why was it here? And what were they doing to it?
An empty stage area was brilliantly lit and surrounded by gigantic, insect-like cameras, blinking away in sleep mode. Off to one side, a small group of people was clustered around the animal. I drew closer and had to clutch the wall for support. It wasn’t a coyote; it was Dove. My insides clenched up.
It was hard to believe that the man I'd been so wildly attracted to was this same person. He had aged 20 years in one day, or so it seemed. His skin was worm-gray and wrinkled. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and he was hyperventilating in between the awful high-pitched wails. The Vice President stood over him, speechless and terrified. Yet, he couldn't mask his extreme excitement at what was about to happen. Jameson seemed beside himself, like he didn't know what to do.
Rico was burning with a driven intensity as he said, “C’mon, bud. Just one more hit. Do you want me to help?”
“No. I can.” Dove panted hard. His crippled fingers fumbled for an injector and barely kept it steady above his arm. The chemicals knifed through the air, into withered skin. He let out another piercing, high cry.
“Dear God!” I said. The injector vial fell out of Dove’s claw-like hand and landed on the floor beside four empty ones.
“Stop this! Stop this!” Luscious cried. She was in the corner, tied to a cot, looking right at me.
“Cut her loose! Now,” I ordered.
As a bot nurse loosened the straps, the young beauty gave me a look of intense gratitude. Her eyes flicked to the space beside me where Jarat was standing, then away. She wasn’t about to give him away. Her expression hardly changed, but relief was there now.
I directed a cold fury at Jameson. "Why on earth did you give them so many vials?" He brought me up to speed in a few anxious sentences that did little to dispel my murderous mood. I turned on Rico. "You're unhinged. You are fucking unhinged. Five?”
Rico's eyes were impenetrable, with a cold black spot in the center, that awful sign. He glanced at Zinder as he said, "Fact of the matter is, I'm the only one that can get this man elected President."
“That’s nonsense.”
“Leave Rico alone,” Zinder ordered me. “He knows what he’s doing.”
What? Like he knew what he was doing when he made me his insane guinea pig? All I said out loud was, “If this man dies, it’s on your head, Ralph.”
"That's not going to happen," Zinder said like he could will the thought into being.
Rico crouched over Dove. "Now, take this." He spooned a pale red substance between the poor man's parched lips. "This is the antidote that will make all the difference." Dove's head lolled sideways after a few drops trickled down his throat.
Five minutes passed, during which none of us seemed to breathe, waiting for Dove to somehow change. I was preparing a sharp-tongued rebuke when Dove jolted with such sudden energy, we all jumped. His wizened old-man look was gone, and all his facial features were smoothed and plumped.
He staggered to his feet like a string puppet, rocketing into euphoria. “Okay, sugar pops! Let’s blow this up!” He leaped on the lighted stage with superhuman energy.
The cameras sprang to life, circling around him. A holo of Dove's face appeared on a large air screen monitor to the left of the stage just as his green retinas transformed into gold-flecked lapis lazuli. He moved fluidly, like a graceful puma.
I was transfixed. The sense of control I’d gained over my reactions to him vanished. The sheer quantity of chemicals in him seemed to be overriding all my mental stamina. It should have felt alarming, but that wasn’t possible. Looking over at Zinder, I could see him fighting the same sensation.
"Hot damn, I feel gooood!" Dove's voice was more bourbon-sweet than ever as he tried out some dance moves. I had to laugh. It was corny and thrilling all at the same time.
Rico’s voice came out of a speaker. “Can you see the script okay?” He was in the control room now, visible in its lighted window high above the stage. A wan-looking production manager stood beside him, confused and very emotional.
“Perfectly,” Dove said, with a nod at an air screen teleprompter.
“Think you can do it live? The segment’s a full five minutes.”
“Oh yeah, baby. Nothing says excitement like live news. What do you say, Ralph? I bet we can nail it.”
The Vice President was ecstatic. “That’s a smashing idea!”
The production manager waved his hands, and the cameras began to record. Rico’s fingers counted down: five, four, three ... Dove’s smile broadened, more delicious than anything in existence. I tried to force away the fantasy of him walking toward me naked, cock swinging. Stop it! He’s nothing but a – a —
"Helllooo United America!" Dove sang out. "Good golly, it's nice to be here with my friend and the greatest American in the worl', Ralph Zinder."
Zinder stepped into the spotlight, teeth flashing directly into a camera. Wow. He seemed so much more likable, embraced by Dove's glow.
"We're only a few short months away from the election," Dove continued. "And it's clear we need to vote in Ralph as the next President of United America. There are all sorts of good reasons for that, but here’s one biggie: this nation is about to face the fight of the century, an epic war, and there’s only one man that can lead us through that to victory.”
Surprise washed over Dove. This wasn't what he'd rehearsed, this announcement of war. That seemed so clear. Either Rico or Zinder had slipped in a revised script. Then Dove hardened like he couldn't allow himself to care anymore. "We know now that the Commonwealth of Asia's Korean state was the rogue agent that infiltrated all those sperm banks. It killed hundreds of thousands of babies before they were conceived."
Was there new intelligence that concluded Korea was to blame? Surely, I would have known if Ginseng's news team had reported that. Zinder would never have held back that news. The thought rose up dimly, but I was too caught up in a dazzling euphoria to raise any alarms. Dove's mouth was so gorgeously erotic.
Zinder chimed in: "Now I'll be the first to tell you that President Lyoncliff and our amazing Secretary of State have done all in their power to right this. They tried to get the Commonwealth of Asia to punish the Korean leaders and replace them. But now the CIA has unearthed new evidence that Korea took its actions at the request of the Asian Prime Minister in Beijing."
That was a lie. I knew it in my gut. But it was as if I were submerged in a vat of jelly, mentally and physically incapable of the least little objection.
Dove took over again. “We’re calling on every able-bodied adult to get ready to fight! Fight for freedom! For our children, born and unborn! Because who knows what Asia will do tomorrow!”
I had enough presence of mind to flip my air screen to Nuhope's most popular news channel feed. Elgo Hunter, he of the red hair and jutting chin, was all over the story. "I'd say we're on the brink of World War IV," he intoned. "The UA against the entire Asian Commonwealth!"
A mosaic of other channels sprang up on my screen: 50, 80, 100 of them, all streaming Dove and Zinder—all giving rapturous accounts. A series of stats showed that Nuhope’s audience was spiking upward by tens of millions, higher than it had ever been.
“We need strong leadership at the helm of United America,” Zinder said, beaming at Dove. “And that’s why I’m calling on this man, Dove Brown, to be the next Vice President of United America.”
Dove looked dazed. “Why yes, Mr. Vice President. Yes!”
The mosaic of channels on my air screen showed a flash mob swarming the streets around Nuhope’s building, people raising their fists, shouting, “Zinder! Brown! Zinder! Brown!” The channels showed other massive crowds gathering in Treasure Zones all over United America: Chicago, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Ottawa, everywhere. All of them were watching gigantic wallscapes on buildings that showed Dove and Zinder’s telecast.
The faces were electrified at the certainty of Zinder taking over the Presidency with Dove Brown at his side. “Zinder! Brown! Zinder! Brown!”
The Veep was beyond elation. "We're going to make certain the Commonwealth of Asia pays for this if we have to kill every last one of them to do it!"
It was a ludicrous idea. But I could barely curb myself chanting with everyone outside, people all over the U.A., no doubt. “Kill them! Kill them!” The shouts grew more frenzied as Dove and the Vice President did a victory wave.
Fights broke out within the crowds. Anyone with even a hint of Asian features was attacked. At first, I couldn't understand why the cops and their robots weren't out there protecting them. But the police visible on the channels looked like they were struck dumb, watching Dove. And whoever was controlling the bots didn't have the presence of mind to activate them either.
Consumer stats popped up on my screen. Only five minutes had passed since Zinder and Dove had started talking about war. But already, people were flooding into stores that sold guns, all across the UA. Anybody involved in the weapons business was about to make a killing in sales—and help incite some killings. Or so data from the Kogeny system was telling me. Social channels were ablaze with hate messages directed at Asians. I should have been outraged by all this. Do something! I told myself. But it wasn’t possible.
Zinder and Dove continued their champion poses, arms extended over their heads. But then, very abruptly, Dove wilted. He left the stage, out of the cameras' view. Rico yelled, "Cut!"
Dove collapsed to the floor so quickly it was as if someone had kicked him in the back of his knees. He was ash-gray and terribly aged again. His breath shot out in knife-like gasps.
"Oh, my God. Oh, my God!" I cried, horrified by the thick slime-like sweat running down his face.
“Call the emergency squad!” the production manager cried.
“No! Nobody from outside!” Rico roared. “Blood transfer! Now!”
A robo nurse appeared out of the shadows with a canister strapped to her back. It attached two tentacles to Dove, one sucked the chemical-laden blood out of him as the other forced fresh blood in. Rico must have known this might happen all along.
I sobbed uncontrollably, heart-wrung with terror.
Luscious looked down on Dove with teary eyes. “Stay. Stay,” she begged him.
Rico crouched beside him too. “C’mon, buddy. We got so much to do. Vice President Dove Brown! How you like them apples? And I’ll be there to guide you every step of the way.”
I picked up a mobile message from Ginseng: “What the fuck is going on with Dove?”
I couldn't answer that. Not yet. A cold trickle of sanity revived me as I texted back: "Please confirm: No definitive word about Korea's actions, right?"
“Correct. What they said is all bullocks. But what’s happening?”
“Later.”
People pounded on the studio door. I switched to a security camera view. There was pandemonium out there in the hallway. People had defied all the guards and were trying to get in, including Ginseng and a news crew, a whole mishmash of Nuhope humanity. But the security team held them back. Alfonce Santiago looked like he was about to burst an artery, roaring at everyone to go away.
The street mobs on my screen churned with fear and confusion, growing even more violent.
Dove’s head turned ever so slightly, and I realized he was silently beseeching me. It didn’t seem possible. Forgiveness? Was he really asking me for that? Rico blocked Dove’s view of me, grabbing him by the shoulders. “Don’t you go! Don’t!” he ordered desperately.
But then ...
Dove did.
Dead!
Rico was rocked with disbelief. I grabbed his shirt and shook him. “Monster! You monster!” I screamed. He was like a mannequin, completely unresponsive.
How could Dove be gone? A ridiculous little hope I’d buried from my conscious mind surfaced: that Dove might love me someday. Now it was crushed forever.
I forced myself into a state of chilling logic. A new world war—that's what we were about to face. Every able-bodied Chav who wasn't already a soldier would enlist, entranced by the recording of Dove's last appearance. It would be played ad infinitum on the BaseNet and OuterNet. He had hyper-boosted everyone's enthusiasm for everything Zinder wanted, and Rico.
There was the feeling of a hand my arm, soft as a flower petal. Luscious. The warmth from those liquid gold eyes sent deep vibrations through my system. A state of calmness bathed me. Everyone else was intent on Dove's dead body as she led me off to another area of the studio.
“I’m going to turn this around,” she said quietly.
“How?”
“I’ll transmit a message of my own that will blow a hole in everything Dove and Zinder just said.”
“But –”
“I’m stronger than Dove was. Just four injections. That’s all I need. I did three before; I know I can do one more.”
The girl must be nuts. “You saw what just happened!”
“I was watching Dove after each hit. He–” She bit her lip, forcing back pain. “He might have lived with four.”
“How can you be sure this won’t kill you?”
“It doesn’t matter if I’m sure. It just matters if I try like hell to stop this.”
“I can work the control booth.” It was Jarat’s voice, just to the right of me. I’d forgotten he was there. Luscious beamed out a gap-toothed grin.
# # #
ZINDER AND HIS SECURITY team had left abruptly when I was speaking with Luscious. The Veep didn’t want to have anything to do with Dove’s death, no doubt. The production manager, who looked like he was spooked out of his wits, left in a rush as well. The makeup artist had taken off too, at some point.
Jameson oversaw an ambulance squad as they put Dove’s body on a stretcher. I whispered a secret command in his ear. He looked horrified. “Can you make that happen?” I asked.
“Yes, but –”
“Please.”
As Jameson and the crew left, Rico came up to me, about to deliver some surly remark, no doubt. But before he could say anything, an indented line appeared on his windpipe; an invisible cord was strangling him. Then he completely disappeared from view.
It was stunning, how someone who had tormented and infuriated me for so long could vanish from my life so quickly—literally and figurately. No one else had witnessed it. “Thank you,” I whispered to Jarat, wherever he might be, wherever he was taking that body.
Off in a corner, Luscious was applying some colored creams around her eyes. What a wasted effort. How could she be more arresting? But she looked haunted like she needed something to do to steady her mind.
I went to my office to retrieve more injector vials, warning myself to be on guard around the girl. It seemed logical to wait a day before allowing her to do anything, so there'd be time to think everything through more clearly. You don’t really know what will come out of her mouth, I told myself.
Then again, how much more damage would Dove’s message do if we waited? I took the injectors out of the safe, glided back to the studio and handed four to Luscious.
Jarat had returned from wherever he'd taken Rico's corpse, probably someplace temporary. He was up in the control booth, not bothering to hide now that we were alone with Luscious. The windows on my air screen showed the crowds were still in turmoil, people looking up at the wallscapes where Dove had been seen, hoping for some news that he was still alive.
Luscious injected two rounds of charismatic chemicals, growing weak after each one. She recovered as she sipped the strange rose-colored antidote substance. I marveled at the spell she was casting over me. It wasn't like Dove's. There was no unstoppable sexual arousal. Instead, there was a serene, calm state and then waves of adulation and happiness as each chemical hit caught hold.
"Angel" wasn't a word I'd ever used seriously. To me, angels were like harmless spiritual fairy tales—not that I'd ever challenge anyone who felt differently. Each to their own and all that. But "angel" was what sprang to mind as the chemicals heightened the girl's power, transporting me with an otherworldly sensation.
“What are you doing?” I asked her.
“It’s kind of—well, kind of like reaching out. Like I’m reaching out my soul when I look at you,” she said.
If only the sensation could have lasted forever, until my dying breath. I followed Luscious to the center of the stage. “What exactly are you going to say?” I managed. “We should go over it.”
“I would if I could, but the words just need to trickle out of me.”
Trickle? This wasn’t improv. Too much was at stake. But my mental powers of resistance were shot to hell. Up in the control room, Jarat watched Luscious with heat in his eyes. He lit up monitors, placed all around the room, that hadn’t been active before, showing millions of people, from as far away as San Francisco, Tokyo, Paris.
The girl's eyes widened. "Holy moly!"
“We’re going live across every Nuhope channel,” Jarat told her. She took a series of deep breaths as he said: “Three, two, one.”
She beamed into the cameras. “Hey, everybody. Luscious Melada. You may know me from that Riggles commercial.” Her voice was full of music, so genuine, as if she were speaking to each person out there. “Dove Brown was my great friend. He was my teacher, my brother. And he passed, just a little while ago.”
A wounded groan rose up from the crowds. Women shrieked, insanely bereft. "Oh, I know. I know how that hurts. I loved him so much. But what he was doing—what the Vice President was doing—wasn't right. It just wasn't."
The crowds rippled with displeasure. Luscious held up one of the injectors. "You see this? Dove was shooting up chems that swayed your minds. I was too. That's why you all went out and bought that gum, even if you didn't like it, even if you had to spend the last Americo in your pocket. I never should have done that to you. That was flat-out wrong."
The people didn’t want to believe her, didn’t want to hear. “It’s true. See? Watch what happens to me.” One of the bot cameras focused on her arm, colored with chartreuse and purple bruises. Liquid shot out of the injector tube and sank through her skin. A shudder ran through her, like she was twisting a knife through her muscle. And the people on the screens gasped.
She grew withered and gray, but quickly sipped the antidote and recovered. After a few long minutes, a gilded outline appeared around her. But the aw-shucks grin on her face seemed to counteract our sense of worship; everyone had to laugh. She was just a country girl from a tiny town now.
“Okay, put your hands on your heads,” she said. Every last person, on every single monitor, did just that, no matter how old or how wealthy. “Stand on one foot.” Some of them lost balance; some even fell to the ground. But they all did exactly what she said. It was like a gigantic game of Simon Says. A giddiness ran through the crowds in waves.
Luscious turned grave. “This is what Dove was doing to you. This is what I’m doing to you now. I can make you do anything. The more I take this – this Juice, the more you’ll do anything I say. Just watch.” She shot herself up again. The world saw her morph, from the angel to the grizzled hag, and then into a new, impossibly higher state as she took more of the antidote. It seemed as if she held the radiance of not just of an angel, but an even higher being, an archangel.
"This stuff kills if you take too much. That's what happened to Dove. And it just might happen to me. But even though I don't want you to forget that I can make you do anything, or think anything, there's something else you got to understand. We can't let anyone be the leader of this country who throws us into another war that doesn't make one iota of sense. I mean, criminy! We've got too many problems to solve already!"
“That’s right!” the crowds shouted back, again and again.
"Let me tell you somethin': I'm a Chav, pure and simple. I know what it's like to be so goddamned poor you'd eat cardboard just to eat something at all. Think what would happen if the really rich peeps around us reached out and shared more of what they had. Or if they didn't get scared by the whole idea of helping people that just need some food on the table, or a medic when they get sick, or a job, or a little respect. What if there were leaders that don't turn the Chav into cannon fodder whenever they get in some global pissing match?
“Here’s all I want you to do: open your soul to kindness, wider than it’s ever been, wider than you ever thought it could possibly be. Love everyone you can, every place and animal on Earth and whatever’s out there on all the other planets. And if you can’t love some of them, just pray for them. Pray for the rest.”
Her face went white-gray, and Jarat managed to shut down the transmission ...
as I ran across the room ... as Jarat raced down from the control room ... as Luscious crumbled.
I grabbed her wrist and searched for a pulse.