Several hushed and tense conversations ensued between Zoey and Will on the subject of letting Alonzo see “it” and whether or not such an offer should have been extended without Zoey’s permission. Her compromise was that she would show Megaboss Alonzo “it” once she saw that his people had arrived and were in the act of assembling the haunted maze for tomorrow’s possibly posthumous Halloween party.
An hour later, she led Alonzo toward the ballroom and Santa’s Workshop. They entered to find the tarp was still piled into a corner from where Zoey had yanked it off the day before. The machine was still working nonstop on her costume and, at the moment, was in the process of spitting out a curved hunk of white carbon fiber the size of a car fender. Dozens of other such parts were piled in the corner for assembly. As they passed the big monitor on the opposite wall of the ballroom, Alonzo noticed it was displaying a low, wobbly camera feed that was weaving among the feet of the workers in the courtyard.
“Whose Blink is that? Someone have a camera tied to their boot?”
“My cat. He’s hunting for shoelaces.”
“Never had any use for cats myself. Tell you what, when you watch his feed, notice that cats don’t meow when there are no people around, not even to each other. They only do it to us, that’s a sound they make to mimic a human baby’s cry, to get us to pay attention to them. I have enough people like that in my life already.”
“What are you, a dog person?”
“I have a few I keep around.”
“Dogs are too easy, they love anybody. A dog will love a stranger. A dog will love a log that sort of smells like a person. Cats make you earn it, it means something when they finally come around. Did Will tell you to dress up for this?”
Alonzo looked down at his suspiciously pumpkin-like outfit as he walked. “I always suit up. Everything straight from the store; Deedee, too. See anything you like, something similar can be on your frame within the hour.”
“First time I saw you,” said Zoey, “you weren’t even wearing a shirt.”
They had arrived at the machine, which stank of chemicals and fire and other things you probably did not want in your lungs. It ventilated to the outside, but never quite enough.
“See, funny story, the shirt I was wearing got a cranberry juice stain on it, but I thought it looked like blood and I imagined you guys walking in and I’m sitting there with a bloody shirt. Then I’d have to admit it was juice and Will would make fun of me in front of everyone. So I decided to just strip it off. I don’t normally hang around my office shirtless. Funny how those first impressions get frozen in your mind like that. Kind of like how everyone decided ‘Winter Wonderland’ is a Christmas song, even though it never even mentions Christmas. Song could take place in February for all we know.” He looked over Santa’s Workshop. “So this is it, huh?”
Zoey said, “Well, the machine is just a parts fabricator, you can get one off the shelf if you have several million dollars. Andre says the Navy puts one on every aircraft carrier, it can spit out a new circuit board for the ship’s navigation computer or a replacement knob for its stereo, any part from the ship’s bow to the, uh, butt.”
“You steal this one off a Navy ship?”
“Nah, bought it from a tech company that used it to make prototypes. That would have made for a cooler story though, I’ll tell everybody that from now on.”
“So it’s the designs in its memory that make it special.”
“Also, the raw materials have to be sourced from all over the world and they’re not cheap, I’m told. Some of it comes in little barrels with radioactive symbols on them. Sorry about the smell.”
He glanced into the corner, at the large pile of white and pink components the machine had been churning out. “What are you making right now? Or is that classified?”
“My Halloween costume.”
“Classified, then. You know this is the most valuable machine in the world, right?”
“You can get Raiden gadgets elsewhere. You’ve probably run into implanted freaks yourself.”
“No. You can’t. You can get bootleg, janky gear from exactly two locations working off shoddy hardware and glitchy software. Only one place to get the real thing, the stuff that actually works. Right here. Or so they say.”
Zoey shrugged. “If they say so.”
“What’s to stop someone from stealing it? You know this is worth billions, right? But look at this, Will gave me unfettered access, totally confident I’m not going to sneak my crew in to take the thing.”
“Well, it’s really heavy, for one.”
“I’m serious, now. What’s to stop the CIA from sending an actual army to seize it for the government?”
“There are so many layers of security I don’t think even we could undo them all. I can tell you that part of it is tied to GPS, just moving the machine off the premises will cause the hard drives to melt. Like, physically melt. Logging in to it requires a brain scan from two members of the team and no, you can’t just chop off our heads and use them. It not only knows if the brain is alive, but if it detects we’re under duress, it automatically locks itself—we borrowed those parts off the vault downstairs. Also, it’s not connected to any kind of network at all, a hacker would have to be physically in front of the machine to try to get in and Echo says the encryption would take two million years to break. That’s really all you wanted? Just to see it?”
“To be in its presence. You feel that hum? That’s the power to turn a man into a god. I feel like I’m in a holy place.”
“I’m counting down the seconds until you ask for implants. Or at least a fancy gun.”
“Ah, it’s a solid life rule that if Will Blackwater hands you a weapon, it either isn’t loaded or there is a much larger one pointed at your back. I wouldn’t let that man implant anything in my body. You shouldn’t, either. If you take my meaning.”
Zoey fiercely pretended she hadn’t heard that last part. “Then how did he get you to do this, to act as a garrison for the estate? Did he just offer you a bunch of money? Something for your businesses?”
“Will will insist that I’m here because I lost to him in a card game last night and now owe him, but that is not entirely true. He made me an offer and I took it.”
“He didn’t, uh, promise anything he should have consulted with me about first, did he?”
“Don’t think I don’t hear your tone, young lady. Get your head out of the gutter. Or into the gutter, I guess, since this is about politics. You probably heard, it looks like Tabula Rasa isn’t going to be an unincorporated place much longer. It’s getting worked out behind the scenes, with the county and the state. Going to be a real city, by next summer at the latest. Gonna recognize the charter and everything.”
“Yeah, I think I fell asleep at a meeting about that.”
“Oh, you shouldn’t sleep on this. It means the city is going to need a mayor.”
“Okay?”
“Will promised to back my play. He has pull with everyone else who’d even consider it and by pull I mean he has dirt. The way we have it worked out, I’ll be pretty much unopposed.” He gave her a “let’s get serious for a moment” look and said, “I’m sure you know this because you work with him every day, but if you should ever decide to cut ties with Will and make him your enemy, your best strategy will be to find a time machine and transport yourself back to a point where you can undo that decision.”
“So, the fact that you’re on video claiming to eat a human heart, you don’t feel like that will hurt you during the campaign?”
Alonzo seemed genuinely surprised. “Why would it?”
“Also, you run an organized crime operation. Why would you want an actual government here? People like you have made out like bandits. And before you jump on me for that ‘people like you’ phrasing, we’re standing in a mansion built by someone much worse.”
“The fact that you don’t know why I’d run is the reason I need to run. My people are being gunned down in the streets. Beaten and harassed by private security who don’t answer to anyone but the property owners. I want real police, but to do it right this time. No sadists or bullies, no guns, no quotas, no arrests for victimless vices. A system that focuses on the real problems, not just drumming up reasons to keep poor people poor. And no prisons. It’ll be rehabilitation, education, reform. We’ll tax the tourists to death to pay for it all.”
“Trust me, I’m well aware of what the private security is doing to this city.”
“Because of what Chobb’s people tried to do to you last night? Do you have any idea how many of my people the VOP have done that to? My niece, she was stopped by Van of Piss security leaving the Sibal-Biyong Mall, insisted they saw her steal jewelry. Held her down, did a search right there by the door. A deep search. People, cameras all over. Making sure it gets recorded, see. Making an example of her.”
“Chobb’s people did that to send a message to you?”
“Oh, no, they had no idea who she was. That’s my point. They did that because that’s what they do. Because they can. Or at least, they thought they could. The two guards who did that, they didn’t show up to work the next day.”
“If my people ever did that, I’d have them fired and probably beaten.”
“I think you mean what you’re saying. But that’s part of it, too. The rich owners of those businesses, they’ll condemn the abuses but profit from the end result just the same.”
“Why in the hell would they be okay with their own customers getting assaulted? Even if they are racists, money is money, right?”
Alonzo looked at her like she’d just asked why they can’t just find a kind wizard to magic their problems away.
He seemed to be thinking about how to approach it, then said, “My mother and father moved me here from Chicago when I was sixteen. Rent was already sky-high but there were jobs and word was you could get a fresh start. No background checks in Tabula Rasa, they said. My father, he needed one of those fresh starts. See, because they’d set the rules so that if you commit a felony at nineteen, you’re locked out of the good jobs for the rest of your life. So, the plan was to move with friends, a white couple who had the same idea. We were all going to get a place together, in a safe neighborhood. Combined, the four of them could afford that, just barely. So my mother, she spends the whole day here, looking at places to rent. Goes to three different buildings, all three tell her they’re full up, got a waiting list a mile long. But then the very next day, one of the white friends goes to those very same buildings. All three had vacancies.”
“That sucks.”
“All three buildings were owned by your father.”
This time it was Zoey who was genuinely confused. “You’re saying he was so racist he just preferred the units sit empty?”
“It’s not about personal feelings, not from where the owners sit. That’s what you people always get wrong. It was a brand-new city, see. The landlords knew you could only have about twenty percent minority tenants before the upper-class renters decided it was destined to be ghetto and started steering clear. So, those landlords were telling the truth. There were, in fact, no more slots for non-white renters. And if you call them on it, they’ll insist they harbor no animosity, that they’re just doing what the customers want, same as the VOP, same as everyone else. And on and on it goes.”
“I get it.”
“Do you?”
“I get that I don’t get it, how’s that? But either way, you’re here because we both agree that Titus Chobb is worse.”
“That’s true, but also we shouldn’t let him set the bar. All right, I’m bored with the machine now. What time is lunch?”