Chapter 20 – The Trinity
The pain pulled Vincent from his sleep. It was in his head, throbbing, beating against the inside of his skull. It sat behind his Lenses like an infection when he opened his eyes, but he could see the room’s wood panel floor and pale crimson paint just the same. Even the square video feeds on the rightmost wall were sharp and in focus.
“Welcome back, Vincent.”
The deep voice. The slight rasp. The echo that lingered longer than normal.
Goodwin leaned forward in the chair of the ornate desk and interlocked his fingers. “You’ve been here before,” he said. He may have posed it as a question, but he didn’t. “It was quite out of order when I returned,” he continued. “You seemed to take quite an interest in my books.”
Vincent looked up at the bookshelf, at the colorful spectrum of titles there. He thought of Jessica.
“She’s safe,” said Goodwin. The craters in the man’s head seemed to move when he spoke, flexing muscles to move eyes that weren’t there. “Much more so than you,” he said. “You have presented a problem, but not one that lacks a solution.”
For a moment, Vincent expected the man with the iron voice to come bursting through the door. To apprehend him, to take him away. But the room was still. The hallway beyond, too, was silent. There was nothing keeping him in the room. It was indubitable he could outrun the blind man at the desk. What was in much higher doubt, however, was the location of his running, and the purpose.
“Wise of you,” said Goodwin. “You’ve nowhere to go.”
Vincent got to his feet. Goodwin remained where he was.
“The developer has complicated things,” he continued. “He has always had an appetite for knowledge that does not belong to him, and for sharing that knowledge with others.”
Vincent was looking at the feeds. They no longer pictured different rooms of the dome; they showed the Seclusion, not from steady, tripod-like views, but from bouncing, uneven ones, running ones, blinking ones. Goodwin seemed to notice his gaze.
“Even the Order needs monitoring,” he said. “For their own protection.”
Vincent watched through the eyes of the Order as the domes around them were razed by the bombs of fighter planes above. There was no volume, but if there were, Vincent was certain he would be able to hear the screams.
“Do you know why you’re here, Vincent?” asked Goodwin.
Vincent turned from the feeds. “To be taken away?” he said.
“If that were the case,” said Goodwin, “I would never have requested you be brought to my home.”
“Your home?” said Vincent. Goodwin grinned. Vincent felt an urge to be sick, not so much from repulsion as from realization. The loyalties of Brian and John and Lynn no longer seemed so certain. The bedrock on which Vincent had built his faith was turning to sand.
“Why are you here, Vincent?”
Vincent looked again at the feeds, then at the books. “I don’t know,” he said.
Goodwin breathed out, disappointed. “You brought us THE SIM, did you not?” Vincent nodded. “And you watched it in its entirety, correct?” He nodded again. “Then you know the nature of Newsight,” said Goodwin. “Control. And how is someone of your type controlled, Vincent? Someone of the minority. How do we control you?”
We. Goodwin had said it himself. We: the Order. We: Newsight. We: one and the same.
“Vincent?” prompted Goodwin.
“With fear,” he said.
“Very good. Your type prioritizes freedom over happiness. Is that your choice?”
“Yes.” Vincent didn’t have to think.
“And do you feel you can ever be free?”
Vincent said nothing. There was something at war in him. The answer he wanted to give was being smothered by the one he knew to be true.
“Allow me to remind you,” said Goodwin. He turned in his seat toward the feeds, and they morphed into just one, larger image. It was of a girl, one Vincent recognized: Annie. She was in a hallway, staring directly at whatever was capturing the video.
“Have you thought anymore about my invitation?” she said.
The feed went black for a fraction of a second as it fast forwarded.
“Ok,” said a second voice. It took Vincent a moment to recognize it as his own. “I’ll share with you.”
Goodwin paused the feed. “Did you want to share a simulation with this girl?” he asked.
Vincent thought of Jessica. The answer was obvious. “No,” he said.
“Would you have, anyway?”
He hesitated, then thought of the restless feeling in his legs, the prickling heat under his skin. “Yes,” he said. He hated the taste of the word as it left his lips.
“And here,” said Goodwin. The feed had changed. They were in the Hole, looking out of Vincent’s eyes. John was standing just ahead. Bodies of the stayers littered the garage floor. “Did you intend to inform Newsight of the resistance in Washing?”
“No,” said Vincent.
“Did you regardless?”
Vincent forced himself to look at the image, at the bodies. John had known it in holding, and Vincent knew it now.
“Yes,” he said.
The feed changed again. They were in the tunnels, in the cavernous room with the crowd, with Goodwin speaking in its center. This time, they weren’t looking through Vincent’s Lenses but at them, from across the cavern. Next to Jessica and John, Vincent was in frame. His face was red, his eyes bloodshot. He was screaming with the rest of the crowd, his lips forming obscene words, his hands the same gestures.
“Did you mean to be moved to anger?” asked Goodwin.
“No,” said Vincent.
“Were you so moved regardless?”
“Yes.
Again, the feed changed. They were in the factory.Vincent was running with the crowd of ragged-clothed Order members. Men and women in gray were fleeing from them, faces pulled into looks of terror.
“Did you intend to harm these people?” asked Goodwin.
“No,” said Vincent.
“Did you beat and claw their skin?”
Vincent hesitated. He thought of Jim’s wife, of Tina. He hadn’t touched her. He was sure of it.
“You didn’t harm her,” said Goodwin. “But you were powerless to stop harm from befalling her. Correct?”
“Yes,” said Vincent.
The feed changed yet again, but it remained in the factory. The same men and women that, before, had been wearing gray, were now dressed in a blinding white. They stood as dead tree stumps along the conveyor belt down the center of the room, twisting a bolt onto a part here, rinsing the threads of a screw there. Vincent could see their fragile frames, their sallow, sunken skin. Around them walked dozens of officers, lean and brawny, eyes cold, and above them all, over the main entrance, the inscription that had been painted over was now clearly visible: THERE IS NO FEAR WITHOUT HOPE.
“Were you aware the dome we attacked was not a Newsight factory?” asked Goodwin.
“No,” said Vincent.
“Do you see now it was a labor Seclusion?”
Vincent scrutinized the feed, willing its projection to change, to shift back to the gray-clad men and women of before, to show them beating real officers, not the frail, white-suited captives.
“Do you see?” repeated Goodwin
“Yes,” said Vincent.
The feed went dark.
“And do you wish me to know your thoughts at this moment?” asked Goodwin.
“No,” said Vincent.
“And are you certain that I do?”
“Yes.”
Goodwin breathed a sigh of relief. “You see now that our power is absolute. So tell me again, Vincent,” he said, “do you feel you can ever be free?”
Vincent attempted to hesitate, to doubt, but it was impossible. “No,” he said.
“You are correct in this belief,” said Goodwin. “Do you see why this poses a problem to us?”
“No.??
?
“The developer has already told you.” Goodwin’s tone was paternal: prompting and patient, oddly warm. “There is no fear without hope. You have no hope of freedom. Therefore you have no fear of your captors. You have nothing to lose.”
“I have Jessica,” he said. It was his last rock. “And Simon and John.”
“Simon has transitioned into the few,” said Goodwin. “He will be taken away. And John has already spared us the trouble. The realization of his true allegiance proved too disturbing for him. He was taken away by his own hand. As for Jessica…” Goodwin’s lips twitched upward, “she will remain in the Order.”
“So she’ll live?” said Vincent. “You won’t hurt her?”
“I will not,” said Goodwin. “Whether or not she lives, however, is a separate question.” He paused at this, seeming, somehow, to inspect Vincent. “Do you believe there is any chance Jessica will ever be free?” he asked.
Vincent started to speak, then stopped again. He turned to the wall where the feeds had just disappeared. He thought of Simon being dragged away, limp and unresisting.
“No,” he said.
“And as the minority type,” said Goodwin, “do you feel there is any true life without freedom?”
“No,” said Vincent.
“So if you still care for Jessica,” pressed Goodwin, “and her life is without meaning because she will never have freedom, is it true you have no reason to fear her loss?”
Vincent felt as if a knot were being tied with his intestines and pulled tighter with every question. He had sealed his only way out. “Yes,” he said.
“You have nothing,” said Goodwin. “You will never fear us. This is important, Vincent, you must understand this. Understand everything.”
“I understand,” said Vincent.
“You understand the Order never existed,” said Goodwin, “never will exist, and was, itself, created by Newsight?”
“Yes.”
“You understand Alduss Fatrem is whomever I declare?” said Goodwin. “That he will forever exist and forever rule?”
“Yes.”
“You understand that every fraction of every second of every thought, sight, and sound is monitored by the software and developers of Newsight, and that every member of the Order has been allowed to be so only because Newsight allowed it?”
“Yes,” said Vincent.
“You further understand that every attack of the Order was orchestrated by Newsight management for the advancement of our own ends?”
“Yes.”
“And you lastly understand,” said Goodwin, “that the new Lenses are incapable of being removed, impaired, or otherwise harmed without the resultant death of their owner?”
He looked into Goodwin’s deep black craters, the never-ending Lenseless pits. Goodwin grinned.
“I have never worn Lenses,” he said. “I am the only one.”
A wild, fanciful hope surged through Vincent. “You could leave,” he said. “You could escape.”
Goodwin grinned wider still. “From my own kingdom?”
The hope left Vincent like the flame of a candle snuffed by an ocean.
“You understand,” said Goodwin. “You have broken the mold of control we have so carefully crafted for you, for all the minority. And now we are left with only one option. Can you think what that is, Vincent?”
Vincent ventured a guess, knowing, in advance, he would be wrong. “To take me away?”
“No!” thundered Goodwin. “You will not be taken away. Only the few are taken away, only those completely indifferent to our rule. They are not worth controlling. There is nothing in them to control. They are puppets without strings, hollow, useless.” Goodwin’s face had grown animated. His black-scarred sockets were fixing Vincent with an unbreakable stare. “You have far more to give than they do, and we will not waste a drop of it by taking you away.” He paused, gaining his breath, returning to himself. “Answer this first, Vincent,” he said, “and you will be able to answer the other. Why should we want control? Why should we want power?”
The man’s mouth – cracked and white at the lips – was parted, an answer to his own question already perched on his tongue. Vincent knew what it would be. For the majority: a protector from evil and a source of senseless pleasure. For the minority: a fuel to be burned by the churning engines of freedom, a fight, a passion. And for the few: a swift kiss of the guillotine, an angel of death in the face of a complacent life not worth living. For the benefit of all, for the greater good of–
“Incorrect,” snapped Goodwin. “Vastly incorrect. We are no one’s messiah. No more than the farmer is to the pig he butchers. Power is its own end. It is taken because it is desired and clung to because it satisfies. But satisfaction is not constant. Rule over a million of the few, those who care not either way whether or not they are ruled, and power is pointless. But rule over just one of the minority or the majority, and you are a god. Power is had only over those who would rather be free. Who feel. If you feel nothing, we take you away. We desire to preside over only those whose full spectrum of existence we can satisfy at once. He who would be free, we oppress him only so we can provide him an escape. He who would be happy and secure, we terrorize only so we can provide protection. We are fear and hope, love and hatred, all at once. To have power is to be everything, to be real. We cling to power for this reason and this reason alone. Do you see now why your situation is problematic?”
Vincent was beginning to understand, as much as one could understand the man without eyes. He frowned as he spoke. “Your purpose of power is to be two opposites at once,” he said. “If you achieve that, you have done the impossible. You are god.”
Goodwin nodded to him, encouragingly, prompting, like a father.
“As my type in the minority,” continued Vincent, “my fear of Newsight is motivated by my hope of escape.” Goodwin nodded again. “But I have no such hope,” said Vincent. “And so I cannot have the fear to accompany it. I am not worth having power over.”
“Close, Vincent,” said Goodwin, “very close. It is true you have broken the mold of your type, but that you are not worth having power over is entirely false. You are not hollow, like the few. You contain the capacity to feel and to be driven. Though no longer does this capacity support fear and hope, it does support love and hatred.” He paused, considering something. “You remember well your time in Hux, Vincent?”
“Well enough,” he said.
“Then you will understand our method of maintaining power there,” said Goodwin. “You saw in THE SIM that upon sorting, the few are taken away, the minority are sent to the Seclusions, and the majority are sent to the cities. Once in the cities, the majority wish only to be happy. They wish to be entertained, to be safe, to love. The Order threatens them, ravages their families and colleagues, and for the Order, they are filled with hatred. Newsight protects them, entertains them, and offers them joy, and for Newsight, they are filled with love. We are two opposites of the same whole. Power in the cities is just as valuable as it is in the Seclusions, only of a different taste.” He stopped here. His eyes – Vincent had begun to see the craters as giant pupils – were fixed on Vincent. “This is the power we wish to hold over you.”
Vincent leaned back, stunned. “That’s impossible,” he said. “I hate Newsight.”
Goodwin began to laugh, deep and hoarse. His sunken and unseeing pupils writhed inside their hollow cavities, mocking Vincent, taunting him.
“I hate Newsight,” repeated Vincent. This was one thing, one of the last, of which he felt absolutely certain. “I hate Newsight.” The prickling heat began to rise up under the skin of his face, the same as it had in the cavern and in the factory, only this time, there was no maintenance to stir it in him, no serums.
“I believe you, Vincent,” said Goodwin. “I do.”
Vincent said nothing back. He let the heat continue to rise under his skin.
“But your hatred of Newsight,” continued Goodwin, “onl
y increases your capacity to love. It will only provide us more satisfaction from having power over you.” He smiled – too broadly now to be just a grin – and leaned back in his chair, confident. Vincent was but a trifle. “Cling to your hatred, Vincent,” he said. “We need it.”