Chapter Two

President Martha St. Tala:

It is important that you know that we are here to help you. If you should ever experience distress, simply request assistance via the nearest wallscreen. We will do what it takes to help put your mind at ease. We are all friends. Together, we have the power to bring your mind to rest and your life to beauty.

An hour later, Gaylen was struggling to focus on the wording of “Teal Sapphire Magic Sparta Tile” as he entered it into the marketing database when Tommy Hiyashi popped into Gaylen’s cubicle. Gaylen’s boss wore his usual broad grin.

“Gaylen!” Tommy said. “How’s that new data going in? Loving that new line of tile, I bet?”

“Yes, of course,” Gaylen said, and he quickly put away the half-eaten candy bar on his desk. “Great color selection.” He glanced at Tommy nervously as he remembered how he had embarrassed himself at the meeting earlier.

“Got a sec before lunch?” Tommy asked. He gestured down the hall. “I’ve got more information for you on that Sparta Tile set.”

“Sure,” Gaylen said.

Tommy kept up a stream of chatter as they moved through the colorful hallways of the marketing department, but Gaylen soon noticed that Tommy was repeating himself. His boss also glanced frequently at the wallscreens and at the other people in the hallways. Gaylen faltered and fell back a couple of steps.

Tommy grabbed his elbow and continued to propel him forward. “Don’t you want to hear all about it? This line is really outstanding because of the granite content of the tile,” he declared for the third time, with even greater intensity. “That is by far the best value-add of Magic Sparta.”

“Sure,” Gaylen said. His chest was tight now. He had started to sweat. But he maintained a calm expression. If he had learned anything from recent events, it was to maintain a calm expression.

Tommy continued to babble as he watched a handful of boisterous people head toward the elevator, no doubt about to go out to lunch. As their paths crossed, he pulled Gaylen up close behind the group. They kept pace with the others for a few yards, then broke away to step through a doorway into a stairwell. Tommy shut the door.

The employees never used the stairwells. They worked on the forty-eighth floor, and they never had any emergencies that would call for taking the stairs. There were no wallscreens in the stairwell, either, and the silence was disconcerting.

Tommy’s behavior was beyond disconcerting, and Gaylen’s heart hammered.

Tommy leaned in close to Gaylen’s face. He said, his voice low, “You need to take care of yourself. You’re slipping. And I like you, Gaylen. I don’t want you to… go to waste. You need to do something now, before it becomes too obvious.” His eyes glittered unsteadily.

Gaylen stammered, “I—I—”

As if it were an incantation, Tommy said, “Behind the door behind the smaller bar in the Lipstick Lounge. Spider sent you. Repeat that.”

Gaylen took a deep breath and did so.

Tommy made him say it twice more, then said, “Then do this.” He placed his index finger against one side of his neck and drew it all the way across his throat. Gaylen had no idea what the gesture meant. “Do it,” Tommy said.

Gaylen obeyed. His hands shook.

Tommy said, “It means ‘death.’ Don’t forget that. And never tell anyone else about any of this, not ever.”

“OK,” Gaylen said.

A secret area in a bar… a passcode to get in… a warning not to tell: this could only be the underground that Gaylen had heard of before only in rumors and whispers. Gaylen had not even considered it as an option—he had half-believed it to be myth.

Before Gaylen had a chance to absorb this or ask questions, Tommy grasped him by the elbow again and pulled him toward the door. The older man cracked it open, watched for what felt like an eternity, then pulled the door open and dragged Gaylen back into the hallway and into step with another group of people. A pretty redhead looked at Gaylen but only smiled and winked.

Out of habit, Gaylen smiled and winked back.

Tommy already had his usual bounce in his step again, and he picked right back up with his fourth rendition of the merits of Magic Sparta Tile. It took Gaylen a few seconds, but he forced himself to join in. Adrenaline gave their conversation more intensity than made sense, but no one seemed to notice.

Back at his desk a few minutes later, Gaylen forced himself to resume his work. His hands still trembled, and he forced himself not to glance over at the wallscreen next to him, fearful that the ART would notice that something was amiss. But nothing happened.

That night, Gaylen lay sleepless for hours and tried to figure out what to do.

The ART had him under observation all the time, everywhere he went. He had lost control badly enough to slip up in public. Even his boss had noticed. The ART had nothing to offer him but vague threats. He was alone. Tommy had offered him what he thought was probably entrance to the secret underground, and his boss seemed to think that something there would help him—but going there was certainly a violation of good citizenship and he had no idea what would happen to him if he did.

And underneath it all, he missed his wife and child as badly as anything had ever hurt him in his life.

Maybe Tommy’s instructions would give him the way out that he sought. Maybe something there in the underground, behind that special door in the Lipstick Lounge, could fix him. Maybe then he could be like everyone else—happy. Even without Serena and Sierra.

He still hoped every day against all reason that he would come home and they would be there again—Serena fixing something for dinner and Sierra playing with her dolls—as if they had never left.

He took a deep breath and forced himself to abandon the thought. Serena hadn’t wanted him anymore. He’d had to let them go so that they could be happy without him. He had to find a way to make his own peace with that, because he could not go on like this anymore. No matter what it took, and no matter what the consequences were, anything would be better than this.

John Oldman sat at his desk in front of his workscreen, his head in his hands, and waited for his supervisor to come on the line. It was mid-afternoon on Friday, October 6.

John was an agent of the Domestic Awareness Agency, but his job didn’t exist, and neither did the DAA, since there could be no need of either in a perfect society.

He stared into space while he waited. He tried not to look at the agency-only wallscreen in front of him. Every five minutes, the DAA’s vision statement went by: “Protect the People While They Perfect Their Minds.” Next would be the agency’s mission statement: “Conceal All Crime, Reform All Criminals.” After that, the statistics by which the DAA measured its success, or lack of it. Six numbers went by every few minutes: TC 7, IR 36, ASR 28, WC 29, BC 12, PC 135. The numbers represented the count of known crimes so far for October in D.C. and Virginia in each of the agency’s six divisions: Terrorist Control, Interpersonal Relations, Appropriateness & Safety Reviews, Wellness Confirmations, Border Control, and Personal Control.

Monitoring the numbers was mandatory, and watching them tick upwards as the days wore on, month after month, was morale-destroying.

John caught a glimpse of himself reflected in his workscreen, and he grimaced. He didn’t wear his fifty-four years well. His slumped shoulders, baggy eyes, and pensive face spoke of the constant weariness that multiple cups of coffee could not defeat. Sometimes, he was surprised that no one had reported him for his appearance.

John wished he had a stash of alcohol hidden somewhere in his office. He had been dry—or close enough, by his own estimation—for several years, but it was tough to make it through an entire workday without a nip of something. But private possession of alcohol was illegal and not worth the risk—even for DAA agents.

John’s workscreen flickered to life and a doughy-looking man in his fifties appeared. He had thin lips and round cheeks. John pulled himself upright and put on an engaged expression; it was his boss, Russell Wallace, the manager of terrorist control for D.C. and Virginia. Wallace took a sip of his coffee then put it down and smacked his lips. When he spoke, his voice was cheery and patronizing.

“Gau is less than thrilled with the second-quarter reports, John. He points out once again that, since you feelers here in the DAA are the only ones in all of our society who are aware of and disturbed by the crime rate, you must be the ones who are still perpetuating it.”

John made no reply. He was among the minority of agents whom the DAA employed despite the fact that they cared. Most of the DAA positions were filled by sociopaths—socios—like Wallace: those unusual people who lacked any sense of guilt, shame, empathy, or conscience.

It made a certain kind of sense. The government knew that people’s emotional reactions and thinking reinforced reality. That meant they couldn’t put people with compassion in a position where they would be forced into awareness of criminal activity. People would be damaged by such knowledge, dwell on it, and reinforce its reality.

But there weren’t enough socios to staff the entire DAA. So they still had feelers, as the socios called them.

“Accordingly, Gau has increased your mandatory positive visualization time by another twenty minutes per day,” Wallace went on. “Your total is now one hour and forty minutes per day.” He took another sip of coffee and smacked his lips again.

John still said nothing.

Positive visualization was supposed to be the antidote for the DAA agents who did care. Every day, they were required to listen to affirmations and view images of law-abiding, happy people to erase the effects of the misery they witnessed in real life.

John found the repetitive and dull material sheer torture. He usually let his mind wander during the visualization exercises. Even worse, he too often spent the time thinking about how awful things really were in New America. He knew his lax attitude contributed to the ongoing failure of the system—dripping, one drop at a time, thick black sludge into the buoyant culture of New America.

“I trust you have some good news for me on your assignment?” Wallace asked.

As a terrorist control investigator, it was John’s job to infiltrate and destroy domestic terrorist groups. His latest assignment called itself the Lightbringers.

John straightened up. “I’ve got an in.” He was glad to be able to announce this after only two months on this case, given the nightmarish end to his previous assignment. He went on, “One of my leads is ready to deal. Nick Aglaeca. I’ve backed him into a corner he’s not willing to try to duck out of. He likes his little empire and he wants to keep it.”

“Is he in the terrorist organization?”

“No, he’s just a run-of-the-mill boss, but he’s dealt with the Lightbringers before, and he thinks he can bring me the leader of the local cell—Drew.”

“And what’s this man’s history with them?”

“He wouldn’t tell me the details, but it has to do with Drew. He… doesn’t care for her.” John tried not to recall the specific words Nick had used. That man had a talent for old-world profanity and vivid imagery that John didn’t care for. And he obviously hated Drew.

“And what’s your plan?”

“Nick is going to start working his contacts. He’ll put the word out that, whatever Drew needs, he’s the one to supply it. Cast the net. He’ll let me know when he catches her in it. I’ll keep the pressure on, but it may take some time.”

“It sounds like you’re moving more aggressively this time.” Wallace’s tone was approving and cutting at the same time.

John ground his teeth. He had moved too slowly before, and a lot of people had paid for it. He didn’t need the reminder.

“I am. I know someone else will just take her place, but I should get enough intelligence from her to make it worth the risk. She should have information about how she contacts other cells, or whatever central leadership they have.”

There were other people in his department who carried out stings in which they took away or dusted everyone they found—a short-term solution to specific problems—but John was an investigator. He used subtler methods over longer periods of time to try to understand and uproot entire criminal organizations, to bring a permanent end to them. He just hadn’t been effective at it for a long time.

“Good, good. Carry on.”

Wallace cut the connection and John slumped back in his chair and sighed. He pressed his palms to his eyes and chanted the DAA feeler mantra under his breath: “There is only good and right in the world. There is only good and right in the world. There is only good and right in the world.”

It didn’t take away his haunted feeling.

Again, he wished for something to drink, but he took a deep breath and straightened himself up. He had resolved that this assignment would be different. He had to stay on task, stay sharp.

He picked up the one file on his desk, labeled “Lightbringers,” and started to thumb through it.

His eyes soon glazed over, and he decided that he was not going to be able to do this without more coffee. He headed to the break room.

The hallways of the DAA were narrow but colorful, with paintings of tidy rows of flowers and cultivated landscapes interspersed among the wallscreens, which currently showed a sitcom about family life. In the show, the youngest of the family had just locked himself in a closet by accident and now yelled for help. As John shuffled by, the family dog perked up his ears at the child’s yells, and the laugh track kicked in.

John stopped in the claustrophobically small break room, the laugh track seeming to follow him via the wallscreens. He poured the coffee into a styrofoam cup and put in two creamers and five packets of sugar absently as his mind turned over the strange problem of the Lightbringers.

The group usually made strikes against government facilities. Rumors of attacks placed them in at least New York and Chicago as well as D.C. Numerous government workers had been injured or killed and several buildings damaged. Yet, somehow, the Lightbringers had a reputation as being too goody-goody for other denizens to tolerate. While John had not heard any specific anecdotes, he gathered that they drew arbitrary moral lines and then got self-righteous about them. As a result, no one wanted to have anything to do with them. One denizen had told him in a whisper, as if frightened that they were listening, “They do something to your mind. And then you don’t want to do anything fun anymore. And once you’ve joined, you never leave.”

The terrorist control division had so far captured two Lightbringers. According to the notes in the case file, they withstood interrogation well, even with the application of mind-altering drugs. Under duress, they only babbled nonsense about light and darkness. Unfortunately, both had been dusted before John had been put on the case.

He hoped to get a chance to talk to their leader, Drew. So far, he had heard only hushed whispers about her—she sounded almost superhuman.

Plus, anyone Nick hated had to be worthwhile in some way.

The wallscreen flickered and the volume and brightness increased. Brightly colored text, a raucous voice, and background cheers announced, “It’s time for a Happiness Break! Come on, everybody!”

John nearly rolled his eyes, but he managed to catch himself and keep his expression neutral. He did let out a little sigh as he put down his coffee cup and turned to the wallscreen. He knew that, all around the nation, every other person would interrupt whatever they were doing—from making love to sealing a business deal to buying groceries—to do the same thing.

He followed along with a vigorously cheerful clown as they practiced big smiles, shouted along with happy affirmations, and did some light calisthenics to “stay focused and keep up your great energy,” but he felt a sort of grim determination throughout.

He was one of the few people in the nation who knew the truth about the underground and the constant crime that belied the messages of positive thinking that President Martha taught. He found it difficult to get fully engaged.

It wasn’t that the positive thinking stuff was a lie, he reminded himself for the thousandth time as he plodded through the calisthenics and fell further behind with every jumping jack. It just wasn’t complete yet. Eventually, it will work, once everyone is truly on board. It’s just… taking a long time.

It had taken his entire lifetime so far, and still it seemed to him that it wasn’t any better. Metrics such as the ones that went by his wallscreen every few minutes weren’t kept year to year, but he thought that he remembered them being about the same, or maybe even better, twenty or thirty years ago.

He had to abandon his line of thinking to keep up with the new sequence of aerobic moves the clown was demonstrating. This was the thing he hated most about Happiness Breaks, the daily visualizations, the evening Happy News hour, the Beauty Moments and all the rest of the positive thinking package: they were repetitive enough to be annoying but not repetitive enough to be completed on auto-pilot.

He finished the last few bouncy steps and then straightened his suit. At least the break got his blood flowing again. He headed back to his office with a frown and sat down heavily. He needed to get somewhere with this case.

He picked up the Lightbringers file again and paged through the file for the hundredth time.

In his meticulous handwriting, he’d written out dozens of reports of meetings with various denizens—the low-life people who made the underground their permanent home. Usually, denizens could no longer pass for normal, due to tattoos or piercings, or sometimes age, illness, or weight. Tourists, on the other hand, stopped by the underground from time to time for drugs or banned entertainment, but otherwise lived out normal lives in New American society.

He reviewed his notes several times again, his forehead wrinkled in concentration. He traced one finger down the pages as he read until his finger settled beneath one name: Chloe. The entry read, “The criminal who calls himself Demon Dog says that he knew someone named Chloe who went straight as a Lightbringer. Last time he saw her, she had purple dreadlocks & an eyebrow piercing. Says that she had returned to her old favorite, the Karma Café under the First National Bank on 19th NW.”

It was a good place to start. He stood, patted all his pockets until he found his office keys and wallet, locked his door, and trudged out of the building.