“She’s freaking out again,” the agent said, letting his disdain show. There was a sound from inside the penthouse: a glass smashing against a sink.
Silas approached, a wall of man in his long black trenchcoat. He had a skull like a tiger’s skull; teeth like a tiger’s teeth. He felt his heart rate rise to an attack cadence; willed it back into a more acceptable range.
“So I hear,” Silas said, his deep bass voice vibrating in the hallway, even at low volume. “Disgusts you, does it?”
“Sir?”
Silas stared down at the man—a good-sized specimen at six feet, two hundred pounds, give or take. “Don’t editorialize, agent,” Silas rumbled. “Ever. She distresses easily. It’s part of her charm.”
A disembodied voice spoke inside Silas’s earwell: Ben Mainwaring on The Deck keeping watch from geosynchronous low Earth orbit, “You okay, buddy? Your adrenals are spiking.”
Silas ignored Mainwaring for the moment, concentrating his inhuman gaze on the agent. Instead of eyes, Silas sported two bug-black HUD arrays designed in part to make the average person extremely uncomfortable.
The agent swallowed, fear-sweat pungent on his skin.
Silas pushed his way past the trembling man into the thirty-first floor penthouse apartment. Note to self, Silas thought, have that man replaced.
Another agent—a woman—stood by the door, the chemical scents of her hair and deodorant products masking the sweeter musk of her flesh. She glanced at Silas, maintaining her professional calm. “She’s been drinking. Heavily.”
Silas grunted. He could smell the bourbon in the air. “Tell you what: there’s an all-night Starbucks down the block. Why don’t you get us a tray of venti espressos?”
A shrill voice bellowed from the bedroom: “Is that my Gunboat?”
Silas said, “Go.”
The agent left as Circe appeared in the bedroom doorway in all her frazzled glory. Twenty-nine years old. Five-foot-one-inch tall, standing as she was in bare feet. Dishevelled blond hair obscuring her left eye. Bra strap showing; her skirt torn. Even in such a state, Silas could not help but feel humbled by her—by the idea of her: the single most powerful human being since Alexander the Great.
“Where the hell have you been?” she said, voice cracking with emotion. Her clear blue eyes were red from tears.
“Securing the conference centre,” Silas said, keeping his voice at a low, measured growl. “Remember? Your day job as saviour of the state and civilization, all that jazz. You’ve got a meeting with the Federal Open Market Committee in three days.”
She strode toward him in a drunken reel, eyes blazing.
“Fuck you,” she slurred as she approached. She slammed her little hands on his reinforced chest. Again she hit him, nearly losing her balance.
He took her by the arms to keep her from falling, willing his grip to be gentle. I’m handling a bird, he reminded himself. Teary-eyed, she grinned up at him through her bangs.
“Get yourself together,” Silas said. “Have a shower. I’m having coffee brought in. We’ll get some fresh air to sober you up.”
“Where were you?” she mumbled, eyes rolling lazily back, lashes fluttering.
“I had drone coverage on you the whole time, Circe,” Silas said.
“Fuck you,” said Circe, head lolling.
1:30 a.m., not a soul in sight: Circe and Silas stood on Calgary’s ornate Peace Bridge, looking down onto the Bow River. The bridge’s latticework glass covering changed colour, gradually progressing through shades of jade, to indigo, to crimson, then back to green again, the light playing on the benighted water. Circe leaned against the railing as a cool breeze drifted through lozenge-shaped openings in the glass carapace. She held a giant cup of espresso in her right hand—her fingers barely reaching halfway around. The bridge light shifted, washing her in monochrome green.
“Why did he leave?” Circe asked, her voice husky from all the booze-induced bawling. She was stable now—groggy from tears, jacked from the coffee and alcohol-suppressing beta-amphetamine Silas had given her. She hardly ever slept; to keep her from being restless, he often walked the nights with her, whichever city they were in. “Why?” she asked again.
“You feel very, very strongly,” he said as the glowing bridge gently bathed them both in neon blue. “It’s scary for boys, Circe.”
“Doesn’t scare you. Nothing scares you.”
“Not true. There’s always something to be scared of.” Blue to violet, then to a moody merlot red.
Circe sniffed, turned her attention to the water again. “Do you honestly think I don’t know? That I can’t tell?”
“Of course you can tell; that’s your gift.”
“Stop paying for them, then. Stop manufacturing the ‘boyfriend experience’ for me and just let me find somebody on my own.”
“You know we can’t do that,” Silas said, not unkindly.
“You can do whatever the hell you want.”
“Circe, sweetheart. Grow up. What do you think would happen, if evidence of your behaviour tonight got around? Evidence of you most nights? You with your miraculous limbic system, Circe—the girl with the flawless intuition of ‘price,’ setting perfect monetary policy, providing the ‘visible hand’ to guide the economy through all its turbulence—what if markets got wind of your . . . instability? Do you understand that the very concept of ‘government’ is bound up in your credibility these days?”
“So you always tell me.”
“Do you deny it?”
“No.”
“Okay then. Will yourself to believe the fiction provided. Think of the alternative. I wouldn’t want to see you alone all the time.”
Circe crimped her lips, sipped at her coffee, stared at the changing hues of the water below.
Eventually they walked on, Circe taking Silas’s elbow without even thinking about it; Silas slowing his stride to accommodate her. She looked like a child beside him. She still was, in many respects. And she was the only human being aside from doctors who ever willingly touched him.
They came to a bench on the north side of the river, looking back at the grand panorama of the city centre at night. They sat: Circe with her hands ringed round her knees as she brought her feet up; Silas sprawling with his right arm on the armrest, the other arm a protective tree trunk around the girl. The wood and wrought-iron bench groaned under the weight of Silas’s battle-braced skeleton. Overhead, drone coverage assured Silas via his embedded heads-up display that no-one was approaching.
“I love this city,” Circe said wistfully, gazing up at the illuminated glass towers to the south. “Wish we could come more often.”
“It’s changed like you would not believe. When I was a kid, the downtown was just coming into its own, just starting to flex its muscle. Now it’s like something out of The Wizard of Oz—those big green towers. Look at that: like a wall of light across the river.”
“How much of all this could you take out? Right now?”
“Jesus—bloodthirsty much?”
“Come on.”
“In theory? Two or three blocks I suppose, but I’m only operating a three-drone pattern here, not a swarm. It’s Calgary for Christ’s sake, not Jerusalem. In a city, I’d use smart-bullets anyway—you know that. No reason to bring the whole place down.”
“But you could, right? Bring buildings down.”
“What’s gotten into you?”
“Don’t bullshit me. You think about the power all the time.”
“All for you, kiddo, remember that. Without you, I’m nothing.”
“Why do they call you a ‘Gunboat’ anyway?” Circe asked, suddenly seeming so young—twenty-nine going on ten.
“I’ve told you that before, remember?”
“You know I don’t remember. Not exactly, anyway.”
Silas nodded. Details were not Circe’s strong suit. Her brain had been wired for other things. “In the nineteenth century,” he began, “before internet and telephony and such—British sea captains had a lot of discretion on missions. When one of their warships showed up in a foreign port, the captain spoke for the crown; his ship was law. They called it ‘gunboat diplomacy.’ It’s funny because it’s ironic.”
“So that’s what you used to do? Before me, I mean. Gunboat diplomacy?”
“When I showed up, yes. It was time for people to do as they were told.” The Gunboat program had started as a joint US-Canadian initiative but had eventually gone private, along with the SEALs and tactical nukes. He’d killed for governments and markets both; politicians and corporations; citizens and consumers. Yesterday, the terrorists had been anti-globalist radicals; now they were free-market radicals. He couldn’t help thinking of the villages he’d razed. Smelled the smoke. Heard the screams. Felt the heat on his bulletproof skin.
“Oh my God,” Circe said suddenly. “I’m so sorry!”
Silas was confused. “What?” he asked.
“I forgot your frigging birthday.”
He chuckled. When she was little, Circe had wanted to know his birthday, and Silas had teased her by withholding the information. So she’d assigned him one and, invariably, would recall the date only after it had passed.
“It’ll come around again,” he assured her.
“How old are you? Like, really how old?”
Silas smiled. “I’m a hundred and two.”
“Get the fuck out of here.”
“I’m a hundred and two. I was an Air Force fighter pilot in the 1980s. They’ve been swappin’ out parts ever since.”
“Wow,” Circe said. “Explains why you’re so grouchy all the time.”
“Guess it does,” Silas agreed. He wasn’t entirely kidding. He’d been feeling his age of late.
“A hundred and two,” Circe mused. “You had, like, a normal face and everything back then, right?”
“Normal-ish, sure.”
“Were you married?”
“Are you positive you don’t remember any of this?”
“Humour me.”
“Yes, I was married. Hannah was my wife’s name. Two boys, Eric and Lanny”.
“But they’d be super-old now too, wouldn’t they?”
“They would if they were alive, yes.”
“What happened?”
“Well, honey, things got bad before you came along. Nobody watched out for anybody else; everything just kind of ran itself. Lot of people thought that was a good idea and just decided not to see the corpses piling up. Hannah and the kids . . . they just didn’t make it. I’m relieved though, in a way. They missed the worst of it.”
“But you were there for all of it.”
Silas nodded. “That I was.”
Back and forth like that—Circe trying to forget who and what she was, talking to Silas like he was her grandfather and not her bodyguard. He’d played the role many times before, and to be honest he didn’t mind. At first, The Deck hadn’t been sure it was a good idea; thought maybe they should rotate Gunboats on Circe duty. In the end, psychologists felt the continuity and friendship would be good for her. They had never considered whether or not it would be good for Silas.
“You know what the worst thing about being me is?” Circe asked at last, something in her inflection catching Silas’s attention. “Nothing seems real,” she whispered. “I never sleep, but it seems like I’m always dreaming.”
This was new. Silas started paying very close attention indeed.
“I feel like I’m . . . like I’m shredding apart. I feel so thin you could see right through me. Like a ghost.” Her eyes began to shine: tears glistening in the moonlight. Silas felt his artificial aggression matrix kick in at the sight of her distress; he dialed back on the attack instinct, breathing deeply.
“You’re not a ghost,” Silas ventured.
“Sometimes. . . .” Circe whispered, then stopped. Silas was wondering if she’d start again when she said, “Sometimes I wonder what would happen if . . . if I just said something crazy at the FOMC. Like, told them interbank rates should be set at twenty percent. Said it live, on the air. And they’d have to do it.”
Take that back, Silas pleaded in silence. Take that back, Circe.
She didn’t take it back. She continued: “They’d have to set me free, right? If I crashed everything, I wouldn’t be the hero anymore. If I were wrong, even just one time, they couldn’t use me anymore. They wouldn’t need me.”
Was she asking him about her exit strategy?
“Silas,” she said, “I think that would make me real. Then I could live. . . . I could find a real boy. It could be like you and Hannah. I could have that.” She choked back her tears, unable to continue.
Silas tried to sound comforting. “No-one can ever love you the way that you can love, Circe. They just can’t.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Circe shuddered with sudden misery.
“I’m sorry,” Silas continued, recalling Hannah against his will. He’d fallen out of the habit of thinking of her. “Trust me, you don’t want that kind of hurt.”
“Maybe I do,” Circe sniffed. “Maybe that’s exactly the kind of hurt I want.”
“How long have you been feeling this way?” Silas asked.
“A while now. Years.”
Silas nodded. He knew something of the weight she carried. He carried something similar himself. Under government, he’d been a soldier, and a citizen. He’d been Canadian. As a corporate troubleshooter, he was now a stateless employee. After all this while, it seemed as though there might be nothing left in the place where his “self” was supposed to be. He could only imagine the dissolution Circe felt, being connected at the cellular level, in some empathetic way, to every consumer on the planet. She was alone, adrift in a sea of desires not her own.
“You’re tired,” Silas said. “You’re unhappy. It’s late. I think we should get you back to the penthouse, lie you down, and get a couple hours meditation in before morning. I know it’s hard, but your mind, kiddo, when it’s racing like this . . . it’s awfully hard to stop.”
“I know,” she agreed.
“What do you say?”
“Are we the same, Silas?”
Silas would have blinked if he still had eyelids. “What?” was all he could manage.
“Did whatever make you, make me?”
“We’re not the same, Circe. You’re special. I’m just a Gunboat, honey, here to keep you safe.”
“But we are, a little bit, right? Same inside?”
“Maybe a little bit. But you are definitely an upgrade, kiddo. Gunboat 2.0. At least.”
She looked at him again. “I wouldn’t really do what I said before, you know. Crash everything. Not on purpose, anyway.”
He stared at her with his shark’s eyes, her biometrics playing out on his heads-up display as she spoke. She was reading him; he was reading her; both knew.
Don’t bullshit me. You think about the power all the time.
He smiled, felt his plasti-flesh crinkle into lines at the corners of his mouth. He knew streetlight reflecting off his artificial skin would make him look something like a crash-test dummy in the near dark. “Of course not,” he said, and gave her slender shoulders a reassuring squeeze.
After, when he’d seen her to her room, and set her meditation metronome to tick-tocking, Silas took himself back out to the Peace Bridge to stare at the water and let the changing lights wash over him.
She knows, he thought. She knows what I will have to do. Was she saying goodbye tonight? How much control does she have left?
“Hey, buddy, you there?” Ben Mainwaring, checking in. “Gettin’ some weird readings from your. . . .”
“Yeah,” Silas muttered, “I know. You’re reading that I’m still human, or so close as to be nearly indistinguishable.”
“So, what do you figure?”
“You catch it all?”
“Yep.”
“She’s cracking. She’s cracked. She’s going to crash the system. Eighty-seven percent chance she’ll do it at this FOMC, but, if not, one hundred percent it’ll be soon.”
“What do you want to do?”
“You know what we have to do.”
“Want me to task a team?”
“I’ll do it. My call; my responsibility. What’s the status of the new girl—what’s her name?”
“Delphi. She’s eight years old, but she’s wired right. She’s hitting ninety-five percent accuracy on her market tests right now. That’s ahead of where Circe was at that age.”
“Get her camera-ready, stat.”
“How stat?”
“I need her right away, Ben. Better prep media-support as well. Full-spectrum coverage.”
“Will do, Silas. . . . Silas?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry. Really sorry, you know?”
“Thanks. Give me a little dark time will you? Tune out till six.”
“Roger that, Silas. Talk to you soon.”
The sat-comm went silent, leaving Silas alone with his thoughts.
Circe was like a God—an Olympian, and he her Prometheus. He could bring down fire from the heavens to destroy a village, but Circe . . . she could bring down a continent—a world, in these interconnected days. They had brought back Gods to save people from themselves, and the price of that power, for Circe as well as for himself, was well worth paying.
Wasn’t it?
It was just one girl—and a handful of civilians, of course, but they hardly mattered compared to the death of a God.
Gunboats, Silas mused. Should’ve called us Mamluks. The slave soldiers of Egypt who wound up ruling the joint. The hell did they think would happen?
Markets had proven to be insane. Governments corrupt and incompetent. Citizens, soldiers, consumers, employees—it didn’t matter. None of them could be trusted. All of them were rotten. Only heroes could save the world. Like Circe, before she was broken.
It had to be public, messy; there could be no doubts or mystery about it. He’d take out the top few floors of the penthouse apartment from the sky and blame it on freedom activists. Delphi would be activated, and all would be forgotten.
The Bow River glistened green, then red, then indigo, and a cool breeze brushed Silas’s plastic face.
__________
Kevin Cockle resides in Calgary, and the city often serves as both a physical and cultural backdrop for many of his stories. Author of more than twenty published stories, Kevin is currently developing some of the ideas in “Circe and the Gunboat” for a film treatment.