20

Underground, in tunnels leading toward Eadie’s room

“I don’t understand why you need me for this, sir,” Lawrence said. They had just left the taller main tunnels and turned into one that forced them to stoop.

“You’re an essential part of the leadership here, Lawrence,” Old Fart said. “She’ll listen to you.” He paused. “Or, at least, she should listen. You’re a hero.”

Lawrence scoffed. “A hero.” He resisted the urge to point out why that was absurd. Noticing he was again running his thumb over the double gold rings he had taken from the dead Unnamed back at the hotel, he made himself stop. The rings had been taken, not earned. Earning anything was far beyond Lawrence’s capacity anymore.

They had nearly reached Eadie’s chamber. Old Fart lowered his voice. “You saved her life, Lawrence. You saw the right thing to do and you did it, in a world where almost everyone is too afraid to do that.”

Lawrence stayed quiet.

A few more strides brought them to the opening of Eadie’s small tube. There they stood and waited, still hunched over, for her to acknowledge their presence. She was seated on the floor with Rosa, leaning up against the narrow flat wall at its opposite end, illuminated by dreary grey daylight that filtered down from a drain above her. They were talking with their faces close together, and neither seemed to have noticed the visitors. Old Fart cleared his throat.

Eadie didn’t look up. “What do you two want?” she asked.

“Eadie,” Old Fart said. “We want to talk to you about your plan.”

“I figured.” Rosa cupped Eadie’s ear and whispered. Eadie nodded.

Then there came a long pause, during which none of them moved or spoke. Eadie clearly understood that the other two would have been trained since they were children not to enter a private room without permission.

Lawrence at last willed his foot to cross the threshold. Rosa was up and standing in front of him before he took a second step.

“Eadie, I think this is crazy,” he began, rising again to his full height as he tried to push past Rosa. Rosa pushed back, with surprising strength and determination. He looked over her head at Eadie and continued to speak. “I mean, raiding the Central Business District is so far beyond what these people can accomplish … it just doesn’t make any sense.”

“Let ’em in, Rosa,” Eadie sighed, and the pushing stopped.

Old Fart timidly followed Lawrence into the room. He stopped just inside the entrance, however, his fingers laced tightly together in front of him. “I know you base a lot of your beliefs and your goals on that notebook, Eadie,” Old Fart said, “but from what I’ve seen, it’s nothing but random daydreams from an unhappy office worker. The Subjects are real human beings and they have real problems. You can’t just fling them at the electric fence because of something you read there.”

Eadie stared from one to another. Rosa settled back down next to her. “I am aware that they have real problems,” she said. “To me, the most obvious one is that they aren’t getting enough to eat. What the Prophet has taught them to do with his little fungus farms is amazing, but their population has grown and grown, and there just isn’t enough food to go around anymore. There hasn’t been for a long time—they’re slowly starving to death. They’re going through training exercises every day, but they’re getting weaker, not stronger. Nobody is going to give them any handouts, and they’ll never be better able to take what they need than they are right now.”

“But there have got to be easier ways to deal with the food issue,” Lawrence said. “The CBD is fortified and has a pretty substantial security force. Each of the corporations has its own security, too, not to mention the Unnamed that are always coming and going.”

“And the electric fence,” added Old Fart.

Eadie folded her arms, looking irritated and impatient. “The electric fence keeps people out if they’re walking along the surface. We can come up from underneath.”

“Well, we checked that out, because you wanted us to,” Lawrence said. He tried to meet her stare. “The CBD has a separate underground infrastructure, totally sealed from any of our tunnels.”

“No. There’s a way.” She rolled out the floppy, yellow paper she had in front of her. “I got this map from the Explorers.” She put her finger on the map. “See the train tracks? Some of our tunnels connect to the train tunnels. And according to you—” she pointed at Old Fart—“the train station is right next to the warehouse where all the companies accept deliveries from outside. It’s a single target with enough calories to feed the Subjects for a really long time.”

Old Fart sighed. “But why try something so huge when there are all kinds of other places we could take from? Smaller, less protected targets like restaurants or bars …”

“We’re not doing that,” she said. “Restaurants and little stores aren’t the source of our problems. It’s the hierarchy that has created this situation, where a few obedient drones get to live comfortably while the rest of us starve and freeze and kill each other.” She shook her head. “Those people running little shit businesses? They’re like us, just trying to survive. It’s the giants at the top of the hierarchy who keep us all miserable and trapped.”

“Eadie?” Lawrence said quietly. “Do you see why this sounds insane? You want to ignore the easy places and storm into the one place where we’re guaranteed to fail, all because you read a few scribbles saying that the corporations are the root of the world’s problems.”

“One hit in the CBD, and the Underground Kingdom is set for a few years,” she said. “Maybe more. If we take those easy targets instead, we’ll have to hit again and again. We’ll be the new enemy the Feds teach everyone to fear. But one raid using the train tunnels, and they won’t even connect it to the Underground Kingdom at all.”

“But the CBD security office is also right by the train station,” Old Fart said, pointing at another square on the map. “Even if you overpower the guards on duty there, they might still manage to call for assistance. Corporate, or UE. Maybe Feds.”

“That’s why we’ve got to get them away from that part of the CBD for a little while, and I think there’s a way to do that.” She pointed at another part of the map. “Over by this gate there’s not much coverage at all because it’s on the side closest to the suburbs. If we brought a big group of people up to the fence, we could make the guards nervous enough to draw them over. That’d give us easier access to the area by the train station.”

“You’re just going to have a bunch of Subjects pop out of the ground and stand by the fence there?” Lawrence asked.

“I thought maybe I’d have them protest something, like not being allowed to compete for jobs there,” Eadie said. “It’s a legitimate enough claim, I think. People ought to buy it … at least long enough for us to get what we need from the other side of the CBD. The protesters will come up from pipes in the Zone where there aren’t many cameras. All they’ll see in the CBD are people walking up.”

Lawrence and Old Fart looked at each other. “It still sounds too dangerous,” Lawrence said.

“We fight or we starve. One way we have a chance,” she said.

Dear Mr. Kessler, Sir:

Thank you for the opportunity to serve our war effort and the Lord’s will by returning to work here at Amelix Integrations. It was truly an honor just to be welcomed back to your department, but I never would have dreamed that I would get to sit in your office and chat with you like that, sir. My new Accepted status has made me your proudest and most motivated employee, sir.

You asked me to give you a document outlining my proposal for making our department’s output more effective. I will try to do that, here, sir.

As you know, our calls are already data-mined and sorted by computers. We then read and explain the regulations as they are provided to us by the data-mining computers. But there is always the risk that the callers will misunderstand what we are trying to do, or even simply disagree with the regulations cited to them.

But if we utilize subliminal programs during the call, not only can we ensure better understanding, but we can also convince every caller that all our regulations are the best moral and ethical choices as well. In other words, we will use the standard data mining in the same way the reconditioning techniques use it, giving every employee a small dose of conditioning during every call.

Additionally, if we, the Regulation Technicians, are cross-trained in persuasive language of the type used in advertising or in the reconditioning process, we can ensure nearly perfect compliance from every worker throughout the entire Amelix corporate family who consults our department.

You had also asked me to consider whether this new approach might result in the elimination of a few jobs, sir. I would say that while it is unlikely to have any immediate impact on the number of employees our division needs to function, in the long term it could certainly eliminate the need for a few employees. Once the subliminal and overt manipulation techniques are implemented, more and more workers will become knowledgeable and passionate about corporate regulations, and over time this might result in fewer calls.

I will do my best to answer any questions you may have, sir. This employee believes that a higher degree of specialization, and therefore efficiency, will allow us to better serve Amelix and the Lord’s will. Thank you for considering this humble idea, sir.

Eric Basali

Top Dog’s strategy room, Fiend territory

“You’re a gift, Samurai,” Top Dog said. “A gift of fate. Nobody brings in more than you. Your arrival proves the New Union’s rise to power is natural and right. As I grow my organization and gain strength, I attract better soldiers, and now it’s growing faster than ever. Everything happens for a reason. My power, your position … you can just feel that it’s the way the world’s supposed to be.” He downed the cognac remaining in his snifter. Brian did the same.

“Thank you, Top Dog, sir,” Brian said. He kept a mildly amused expression on his face as he struggled to prevent himself from leaping at the man.

I’ll kill you soon enough, asshole.

Top Dog looked pensively at Brian. “You have that knack for finding street dealers, too, Samurai,” he said.

Samurai, come out and play. If I have to talk to this asshole much longer, I’m going to reach across this table and stick my thumbs in his eyes and squeeze until I feel the back of his skull. He loves you and all your crazy shit. You don’t even have to try at getting along with your little pal, here …

“Yeah,” Top Dog said. “I thought so. I can see it in your eyes. You were a dealer.”

Brian blinked away his silent murderous rant, nodding his head. Top Dog laughed and pushed forward his empty glass. Brian reached for it, lifting the bottle to pour for Top Dog and himself. Top Dog finished off half of his and Brian quickly copied. Top Dog leaned forward and set down his drink. “Me, too.” He laughed once more. Brian forced a tight smile.

Top Dog’s gaze ran along the line where the clean, beige walls of his suite connected to the clean, white ceiling. “Lonely life, dealing.” Brian nodded again. “Worse for me than most, I think. I was manufacturing.”

“Really? What’d you make? Sir?”

Top Dog grinned broadly. “Street speedballs. What’d you handle?”

Brian shrugged. “Mostly straight horse. Woulda loved to’ve known somebody with a speedball strain, though. Could’ve moved a lot more with both halves of the equation like that. Sir.”

“Oh, yeah. It was a great strain. Smack and flake made right in the same flask, by the same bac. When the flask hit carrying capacity and crashed, it left perfect-ratio concentrations. Easy money.” He laughed, shaking his head.

“And if you don’t mind my asking, sir, how did you end up here?”

“That’s where you and I differ, Samurai. I never ended up here. I came here on my own, and I came here a leader.” Top Dog sat back, leaning against the wall and nodding to himself. “The strain mutated. That was my first gift of fate, but I didn’t know it right away. When my meanest, toughest customers came crawling back begging me for more, I started to realize what I had. The new strain’s product was like a speedball, but it gave weird pathway rewards for violence, especially for violence causing death.” His face slackened and his eyes widened in a look of euphoric nostalgia. “You’ve killed on Juice. You know. They all felt that rush, and they needed to feel it again and again and again.”

He finished the rest of the cognac in his glass. Brian offered to pour but Top Dog rose and walked toward his door. “I started with just a few of them. Junkies hooked on the new thrill. They guarded me, and of course my little operation, from the violence of others like themselves. The numbers just kept going up.”

Top Dog turned, his body framed by the doorway as he literally looked down his nose at Brian. “Before long, I found myself with an army. I took that army into this war zone”—he gestured broadly, indicating the territory beyond his walls—“and built what you see today.”

Brian stared up at Top Dog’s smug expression.

“I got you now, too, Samurai. You’re another part of what the fates want for me. Just like all the others.”

Oh you think so you piece of shit I don’t need you or your Juice I just need blood your blood you arrogant pus blister and I might just take you right now—

Top Dog strode to the big table. Penciled on a chunk of clean sheetrock were plans for the next mission. Top Dog caressed it with his fingertips, smearing a few of the pencil marks. “This raid’s gonna be the biggest of all. Hundreds of places, all at once.” Top Dog held his glass toward Brian, who poured again. “I think we’ll have to keep some of them alive to carry all the shit back for us.”

Brian nodded slowly. “Killing so many innocents so fast will draw a great deal of attention. Sir.”

Top Dog put both palms on the table. His eyes flashed. “The innocents you speak of are of no concern to me, and I’m disappointed to see that they’re a concern for you, Frontman.” Top Dog stared a moment longer, and then his gaze shifted in the direction of his bodyguards, who waited outside the door. Brian watched, wondering if perhaps the man might call them in to punish him, thrilled with the possibility he might have an excuse to fight and kill.

“Those people are already dead,” Top Dog said. “They get carted between their shit-sucking jobs and their little rodent cage homes, thinking they’ve got it so much better than the rest of us because they have climate control and synthetic food. They suffer through day after day, defined and controlled by their ridiculous post-Restoration society, wasting resources that the rest of us could make far better use of. Their voluntary enslavement to the giant corporations is what created this system in the first place, Samurai. Your innocents are the bricks from which this shitty society was built. We are the only alternative left.”

“Of course, Top Dog. This Frontman used the term only because the Federal Agents would be certain to use it in their propaganda campaign …”

Top Dog relaxed a little. “Don’t worry about the Feds. We’re striking fast in lots of different places, so they’re unlikely to confront us at all. We’ll deal with the Feds when we’re matched, and when we’re outnumbered, we’ll fade.”

 

MediPirates Bulletin Board

Posted by LilliBoo #wT376e:

 

Regarding the Dok situation, I remember that his last posts before the murders were about some drug that was making people crazy. Then he went and poisoned fourteen patients (that we know of—maybe more) and disappeared. He can’t be much of a threat anymore, I’d think, with no office and the Feds after him, not to mention the mob of furious people that would be sure to kill him if he ever showed his face again.

But he was always so talented and so caring before all of this happened. Does anyone else believe it’s probably this drug that pushed him over the edge?

 …

 

MediPirates Bulletin Board

Posted by Vron #dZ229e:

 

I have never met Dok in person but have seen enough of his work on this forum to know that he was one of the greats. Something must have happened to change him. The drugs today are so potent that they really can alter a person’s nature. I’m sure that Dok would never have poisoned all those people if he had been in his right mind.

—

Dok turned away from the suspended text the computer was projecting above the old coffee table he now used as an exam table. He rubbed a few tears from his eyes and sniffed. An older Subject woman named Alira looked up from where she was polishing instruments on a clean towel. The four glowing lines across her forehead indicated that she had achieved the highest rank available to ordinary Subjects: that of Professional. Though the title would seem to indicate a special skill set, Alira didn’t seem to be especially proficient at anything as far as Dok could see. He had argued vehemently against getting his own mark but found that without one the helplessly hierarchical Subjects were almost completely incapable of interacting with him. Now whenever he caught a glimpse of his own reflection, he saw the glowing “snake” they had made of a living, symbiotic, glowing fungus in the shape of an “S,” which meant it appeared as a backwards “S” to everyone else. The snake indicated his status as physician, and though the mark set him apart from the official hierarchy, it established him, like the rest of Eadie’s group, in a position of great respect and power. In fact, Dok had impressed upon the others the need to ask for nothing beyond what was crucial, because it was clear the Subjects would go to almost any length, no matter how extreme or unreasonable, to obey them or fulfill their wishes.

Because the Subjects had nothing and were living on a starvation diet, there were no goods, no spare calories for which anything could be bartered. Physical servitude was their currency; anyone of higher rank was entitled to demand anything at all from any lower-ranked Subject. Dok could’ve been paid for his contribution to the community with sex from any of them he chose, had not every one of them been his patient. He had tried to train a few of them to assist him in his medical practice, but as yet only Alira had shown any aptitude.

Someone cleared his throat in the connecting tunnel.

“Have I come at a bad time?” Old Fart asked.

Dok laughed sadly to himself. “Well, according to more than a hundred messages on this forum, I’m a murderer and I’m being hunted by the Feds and an angry mob from the Zone. There probably won’t be a better time for me in the near future.”

Old Fart stepped in, gazing enviously at the computer. “You got a machine, eh?”

“Dropped down a sewer yesterday and the Subjects brought it to me. They thought I’d put it to the best use before the battery died.” Dok turned it off to save what little power remained.

“Probably true,” Old Fart said. “How do you get a signal down here?”

“They rigged some antenna with wires. Ernesto helped figure it out, of course. It works like an old-time radio now.” He gently guided Alira to what served as his doorway with a hand behind her back, and she disappeared into the tunnel.

Old Fart cleared his throat again. “I heard you wanted to talk with me. I assume it’s about the big raid Eadie has planned.”

Dok at first nodded silently, but then answered aloud when he remembered how dark the room was. “Yes, of course,” he said. “You can’t possibly think this is a good idea.” The lamp on the table was a clear glass bowl of a bioluminescent fungal suspension that smelled like old synth cheese. It feebly lit the space about a hand’s width all around it but failed to illuminate either man’s face.

“They follow her because they believe in her,” Old Fart said. He leaned back against the curving wall, his back sagging into its shape. “Have you seen what they’ve done in the tunnels? Almost everywhere I look, someone has carved, ‘E-period, D-period.’ I’m even seeing it above ground when I look out from the drains now and again: ‘E.D.’ Maybe some of them are training up there now.”

“I saw those initials etched everywhere before we came here,” Dok said. “The Subjects copied it, thinking it meant Eadie, like Eadie had come to save them. Who knows what they meant originally? Harbingers of some new era, perhaps.”

“They all want what Eadie is offering,” Old Fart continued. “Their own lives are on the line. Who am I to say it’s the wrong choice?”

“But the Subjects can’t pull off a raid like this. I’ve been treating these people, you know. They’re far too weak. Even with all the Prophet’s magic fungal strains I can just barely keep them alive.”

“You know how they grow those strains?” Old Fart asked. “A subject came to me with a minor dispute. Called himself a farmer. He reeked of death. And it turned out that was his job, dissolving the dead bodies of other Subjects in solutions to feed the fungi.” Old Fart paused. “They can’t go on like this forever. They have to do something, Dok.”

Federal Administration Building

“Welcome, Brother Daiss, Brother Jakeel,” Instructor Samuelson said. “Nice to see you back to your original color, Daiss. The other was disconcerting.” He placed his palm against the elevator panel. “Level U-6,” he said. The panel flashed, reading his palm and the magnetic code of his permanent bracelet, and the elevator descended.

“Brother Jakeel has been assigned to assist you in the Ricker case, Brother Daiss,” Samuelson said. The elevator stopped. “We’ll hold our conversation until we reach the room, shall we?” The door slid open and he walked purposefully down the corridor. The two Agents fell into perfect step behind him.

Another palm lock admitted them to a room at the end of the hall. Harsh lights glowed as they entered, revealing a space the size of a small restaurant. In the middle of the room, tables had been pushed together to support several stacks of large polymer crates. Samuelson shut the door. “This room has been screened by our Zeta techs,” he said. “It’s clean—nobody’s listening.” He indicated the crates piled high in front of them. “Go ahead.”

The Agents took one crate from the top and lowered it gently to the tabletop, pulling at the tabs that held it closed.

“The new Tridents,” Samuelson said. “Keyed only to Zeta bracelets. I’ve told you that the task force has friends in very, very high places. Now we’ve got exclusive access to the world’s most powerful tactical firearms.”

They removed one from the crate, a shining stainless steel skeleton framework with black grips. Two rods connected over the central barrel in a “V” that opened toward the user. “Three barrels, sir?” Jakeel asked.

“Rails, Brother Jakeel. This is a rail gun.” Samuelson ran his index fingers down the two outer rods, which Daiss could now see were actually hollow tubes. “Running electric current through a barrel-shaped rail pushes the projectile out at nearly the speed of light,” Samuelson said, taking the weapon from them.

“Forgive my ignorance, sir,” Daiss said. “I had heard that rail guns were not useful for police operations.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Samuelson said. “Too powerful. Fire once at some dirtbag out there and you’d be sure to send him back to the Lord, but the projectile would pass right through him and the seven or eight buildings behind him at an unthinkable speed. Highly impractical … a Federal Agent might be in one of those buildings. They were simply too dangerous.”

“But these are different, sir?” Jakeel asked.

“Quite.” Samuelson flipped a switch and the weapon came to life, spreading the two outer rods far apart so that the weapon formed a letter “T,” with the middle barrel extending a little past the top. “Those are rails, of course,” he said, nodding at the cross bars of the “T.” “The one in the middle that doesn’t move is just an ordinary gun barrel—each movable tube is itself a rail gun. The weapon judges the distance to the target and adjusts the rail tubes accordingly. Everything in this room is too close to use the rails, so in this case they would stay apart and the ordinary gun barrel would fire. If we were on an open street, the rails would be closer together. By having the two rails fire simultaneously from opposing angles, the weapon puts two projectiles on a collision course, impacting with the target and each other at the same time. There’s nothing left to carry through the target and cause collateral damage.”

“What’s the range, sir?” Daiss asked.

“The minimum range for the rails is somewhere between twenty and thirty meters, but the maximum range is practically unlimited. If you can see it, you can kill it with a Trident. In fact, its effective range extends far beyond that of human sight, and there will soon be applications for aiming it through feedback from the civil surveillance system. And remember, these projectiles move at the speed of light. There’s no need to lead your target to allow for a bullet to travel.”

“It’s an amazing development, sir,” Jakeel said.

Samuelson handed it back to Daiss and nodded at Jakeel, who removed another from the case. “We’re fighting an endless army of vagrants and derelicts,” he said. “Each one waiting for his chance to destroy everything God has given us. Policing the society of today requires this level of firepower.” He sighed. “The war will only become more difficult, my Brothers.”

The last functioning Williams Gypsum mine

Chairman Williams grunted as the machine drew some blood. “I guess this contraption knows what it’s doing,” he said, nodding at the synthesizer that had been hung on the limestone wall. This one was designated to meet the medical needs of the Chairman, Ani, and all the ambulatory workers. The one that provided all the various medications and nutrients for the incapacitated family members was with them in a separate chamber. “But I wish it would rid me of this damned cancer once and for all. How many times do I have to waste a whole day hooked up to this machine while it prints me a new pancreas? And it’s every six months or so, anymore.”

“Mother will be hooked up for all time, now, sir,” Ani said.

“I know. It’s a terrible thing. I’m fortunate that the Lord willed me to live. It is a real shame He didn’t see fit to spare your mother the same way.”

“I want to hurt them, Father,” she said. “I want Ricker and his thugs to pay. And I know it’s the right thing to want because I’m getting that thrill again.”

He nodded, smiling. “Me, too. Pathway amplification does have its benefits. The Lord rewards those who are on the right track. I’m so proud of you since your reconditioning, Ani. Our company needs all the dedicated employees it can get.”

“I’m proud too, Father. It’s God’s will.”

Underground, Ceremonial Chamber

“These rain ceremonies are always kind of unsettling,” Eadie whispered to Lawrence.

“Yeah,” he whispered back. “There are a lot of things I’ve never really gotten used to down here, but this is definitely the strangest. I wonder if they came up with all this just to pass the time while they had to be locked in here, waiting for the water to go down.”

“I’ll bet that’s exactly how it started,” she said. “The ritual gives them something to occupy their minds, and the religion keeps them in line. There’s no room for dissent down here. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn it was all the Prophet’s idea, once upon a time.”

They were now inside the Subjects’ most sacred space: a tubular room about as long as a city block and half as wide. Smaller tunnels fed into this central one from all sides, forming a star-shaped labyrinth. Each of the smaller passages was closed off at intervals along its length with a series of watertight doors, sealed with strips of rubber tires. An old flashlight was turned on, casting its meager beam over the half-dozen Subjects who marched in a circle to operate an air pump the size of a dining table. The cool, rhythmic blasts of air it gave off kept everyone in the room from suffocation. Low voices murmured nearby, reciting a droning chant of gratitude to the Great Mother for the Underground Kingdom’s protection. All around, Subjects lay on their backs with their eyes closed, uttering short verses with long pauses in between, in a sort of whispered croak.

“Some of them might not make it out of this room today,” she said. “Or tonight. Whatever it is.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“It’s like I told you before: The Prophet’s magic mildews only go so far. These people are starving. They’re dying, fading faster every day … and we’re fading, too, in case you haven’t noticed. None of us will ever be stronger than we are right now.” She drew a deep breath before continuing.

“It’s time. We’re going ahead with the plan as soon as the rain stops.”