“The thing that makes me great as an artist, the thing that sets me apart from every other chump who foists their shit up under some limelight somewhere, is that I have the ability to switch narrative styles convincingly,” he puffed his sativa vape and looked at me with shining dark eyes. “My STS journals got on two million screens, more probably by now, because they were funny and acerbic, but my documentary on neo-slavery got millions of downloads because it was deadly serious. Don’t forget for a second that I’m the voice that drives both of those projects. Me, as myself, not hiding behind some pretense of objectivity. I come masquerading only as myself, and the people believe the disguise. Eduard Jason Acquitan is an utterly convincing character, and how many of those does the world get?”
“And here I thought it was your humility that made you great.” I said.
“That too!” He said, laughing and blowing mind altering vapor particles from his nose. “You seem like a very busy woman, so let’s get to it, do you come through with the financing or not?”
“I have all the time in the world and as you know it’s not me,” I said. “I’m just an advisor. I represent the Conglominatrix Financial Group in this deal, but what we want from you is not a stake in your next project, we want a stake in you. We want you to partner with Lamont Alvano, to start a new media corporation.”
“Lamont Alvano the music producer?”
“That’s right, he also produces television.”
“I just want to talk about financing my film. Your people have read the script right? And the marketing strategy? It’s a sure winner.”
“Once the company is up and running you can finance that and any number of other films.”
“What would I do in this company?” He asked.
“Anything you like. We envisioned you handling features, written word, and marketing, and Lamont helming music, television, and commercials, but that was really just the initial idea. What we really want is your name.”
“I’m an artist,” he said, straightening the fork on his napkin. “I don’t know anything about running a company.”
“You don’t have to.” I said. “Our guy will handle everything you and Lamont don’t want to be bothered with.”
“Who’s your guy?”
“That’s an open question at the moment.” I said.
“Ahh, see? Now your motivations are clear.” He took another hit off his sativa stick and set it down with a finality that said he was done with it. “All the work that I’ve done has its roots in the written word. I started out writing autobiographical sketches and silly erotic novels, and the first thing you learn writing that stuff is to make your character’s motivations clear. You want a position in this new company, but what remains unclear is what they want. It’s no secret that I was fleeing the party when I came to Chile. The company you work for is practically a division of the party. What could they possibly get from associating with the likes of me?”
“You are a voice, a unique voice, you said so yourself. You create content that people want to consume. That makes you a valuable engine in the economy of ideas.”
“The economy of ideas,” he said, enjoying the sound of it. “So they want control of the ideas I’m generating?”
“Certainly not.” I said.
“Because I’m against the war.”
“They know that.” I said. “They don’t need you to make pro-war movies, in fact they expect your company to be the dominant voice in the anti-war movement.”
“So the financing of this company will be less than open?”
“That’s right.” I said. “There are many different facets of the Conglominatrix Group. Their involvement will be strictly need-to-know.”
“And who needs-to-know?”
“You, me, Lamont Alvano, and some high level people in the communications department,” I said, “that’s it.”
“It would seem that you’re already in then, aren’t you?” He sipped his water. “If you know about the secret financing, that should put you in the perfect position to jump in at partner level.”
“You mean blackmail my way in?” I laughed. “I wouldn’t do that the same way I wouldn’t shoot myself in the head or jump in front of a moving train.”
“So you want me to work with a company that you think would kill you?”
“They wouldn’t kill me because I would never try to use what I know against them.” I said. “I know where the bodies are buried, and I have no intention of becoming one of them.”
“Well I know they’re looking to start a media company with Lamont Alvano. What if I said no? Would they kill me?”
“Don’t be silly.” I said. “Even if you hollered to holy-hell it wouldn’t rate above a minor inconvenience. Anyway, you wouldn’t holler and if you did people wouldn’t care. It’s not that big a deal. Even if you knew something that was a big deal they wouldn’t have to kill you. You artistic types are easily discredited.”
“Suppose I won’t do it unless you tell me something they would kill me for. I’m really curious now, it’s so rare to meet someone whose paranoia is well-earned. Tell me some deep dark secret of the Conglominatrix Group. Think of it as a show of trust between potential partners.”
I shook my head. “You think you want to know, but you don’t. Most of the things I know aren’t exciting, they’re depressing, and anyway why would you want to put your life at risk?”
“Would it be at risk though? You’d be the only one who knew I knew, and like you said, us artistic types are flighty and prone to wild invention. Give me something good. If I’m going to make a deal with the devil, I want to taste some sin.” He waved the waiter over. “Oscar, last month I was in here for my birthday and we were drinking that truly stellar mescal, do you remember? Do you have any more of that?”
He smiled and nodded. “Iluminación, yes, we have it. Very expensive. Only for celebration.”
“Right, well Oscar, this woman here? She has promised to tell me a very scary and depressing secret. It’s not every day that you hear one of those, is it?”
“Scary and depressing?” He looked at me and frowned. “No not every day.”
“A secret is a story, always, and here I am, a storyteller, about to hear a secret that would scare the flies off a Peruvian. I think that’s worth celebrating.”
“Iluminación, coming up.” He said. “On one condition.”
“Anything Oscar.”
“Don’t tell me the secret.”
Eduard Jason Acquitan held up his right hand to swear the oath. “You will never hear a word.” Oscar nodded and went away. “There, now you have to tell me, we’re officially celebrating.”
“Okay,” I said. I took a deep breath. “You got your shots as a kid, right? Everyone in America did. Well between the years 1997 and 2023 there were three companies that provided these shots, and they were all blind subsidiaries of the Conglominatrix Group. These shots protected against all manner of illness and infirmary, and they worked in that regard, but they also contained a package of a lab-engineered bacteria that attached to the recipient at the genetic level. For the first generation that got these shots the effects were negligible, they did nothing, but their offspring, the second generation, they were born with the alteration embedded in their DNA. It specifically targets the part of the sequence that affects procreation, understand?” Oscar came back with two small glasses and a blue, unmarked bottle.
“Iluminación.” He said. He made a curt bow and walked away.
Acquitan poured two shots and lifted his glass. “To genetically engineered bacteria.” He said. I lifted my glass and we drank it down. It was as tasteless as air, but brought a sudden warmth up into my sinuses and down to my stomach. “So what? They want to produce a generation that copulate incorrectly?”
“No,” I said as he poured another shot for me, “they don’t care how people copulate. This second generation is the product of all the work that the Group has done. They’ve invested billions of dollars and at least sixty years o
f work and research into them. Something along the lines of ninety eight percent of the population of North America has been genetically modified, and it will be a hundred percent by the time they get to the third generation. Right now the gene is doing nothing, but if you know your biology you know that a gene can be triggered by environmental factors. The Group owns water filtration, fast food, and supermarket suppliers, they control the environmental factors. There isn’t a person in the western hemisphere whose environment isn’t touched by the Conglominatrix Group.” I drank my shot and found this one even more pleasant than the first.
Eduard Jason Acquitan drank his shot too. “So what happens when they pull the trigger? Will all the kids be born with gills?” He poured a third shot for both of us.
“You know what really drives the economy?” I asked him.
“Pussy?”
“Yes, in a way you’re right. It’s the population numbers. Growth in the population means growth in the economy, but only up to a certain point. Beyond that point things get a little crowded and shaky and the economy suffers which means the population needs to drop again. What the Group has done is to create a point of potential restriction in the reproductive abilities of humans. The environmental trigger is something that would never appear accidentally or naturally, it’s a bioengineered molecule that they have patented. They own it, so they control the birthrate. They can turn it up or down like a faucet. They could bring the birthrate down to a trickle or they could stop it completely if they wanted to. They plan to reduce the population by half over the next fifty years, and then ride the wave of growth when they reopen the floodgates.”
Acquitan shook his head. “I just pictured massive amounts of cum.” He said. “Thanks for that mental image.” He lifted his glass and drank, and I did the same. “So the growth starts in fifty years, wont all the people who worked on the project all be dead by then?”
I dabbed the corner of my mouth with a square napkin. “The Group is young.” I said. “They laid foundations for it to live for a thousand years or more.”
“So our media company? It’s just a tiny piece of a grand invisible structure spanning centuries?”
“That’s right.”
“You said that you wanted our company to be the dominant voice in the anti-war movement,” he said, “but the Conglominatrix Group is heavily invested in the war isn’t it? Why would you want me to espouse politics that go against the Group? Do you want me to spy on the peaceniks or something?”
“Certainly not.” I said.
“So why promote anti-war ideas if they are pro-war?”
I was feeling a pleasant sort of detachment from the scene and my words came easily. “They know that there will be anti-war messages being disseminated, they just want to exert a subtle influence over which anti-war message is loudest and which is heard first. Values and attitudes and ideas are all passed around just like a germ or disease. Even colloquial expressions, slang, little jokes or sayings, you can track their spread just like a disease. And almost all of that stuff comes from celebrities like you. If you wore a fur hat to a movie premiere, the sale of fur hats would spike. It’s the same thing with political ideas…”
“Still doesn’t explain why you want me to make anti-war movies, you guys want the war to keep going right?”
“Let me finish. I’m not saying political ideas are like diseases, I’m saying that for all practical purposes they are diseases. So how do you fight a disease? Some bug being passed around the body politic?” I smiled at him. “Inoculation. As I’m sure you know, inoculation exposes the patient to the disease, but in a weakened, crippled form, and then when the immune system encounters it again, it knows how to fight it off.”
He nodded slowly.
“These ideas were all developed toward the end of the twentieth century. The powers that be didn’t want to have to deal with another Gandhi or Martin Luther King Junior, so they started getting out ahead of mass movements with their own people. So it could be anything, dismantling the war machine, or getting corporations out of politics. A leader emerges, but not one chosen by the movement, it’s a leader chosen by the media. There’s a whole science behind it, but basically you either find someone who makes a lame version of the argument, or is the wrong person to make the argument.
“Mostly these people didn’t even know they were being used, but the ones who did were very skilled at subtly undermining the positions they appeared to be advocating. One tactic was using negative and positive polarities, a basic sort of mental jujitsu. If it was an anti-war movement for example and an interviewer framed a question in a positive way: ‘Do you really think that humans can live in peace?’ The answer would be on the negative side, something like: ‘The alternative is keep on murdering children.’ If the question was negative, like: ‘What do you say to the families of those killed by the enemy?’ The answer would be positive: ‘We must learn to live in peace and brotherhood.’ They are always either contemptible or foolish. If someone like that isn’t handy they just get the wrong person to make the argument. Celebrities that people secretly hate, hippies, anarchists, devout communists, any message can be easily ruined by the having the wrong messenger.”
“So which am I?” He asked. “A bad message or a bad messenger?”
“A bad messenger.” I said. “You’re an artist who is completely out of touch with the struggle of everyday people. You said your documentary was about the new slavery? No it wasn’t. It was about you, about your reaction to injustice. You looked down on it from above and invited the viewer up to your high perch. You probably think it was popular because people were outraged by the issue, but we did research. People enjoyed it because for three hours they were with you, savoring the luxury of being outraged from a distance. We couldn’t find one example of someone who watched your documentary and actually did something to help the slaves. Pour me another glass of that luminous mescal would you?”
He poured and we drank. “You should be careful, it goes down easy but it’ll really kick you in the head.” He smiled at me. It was the smile that made him a star, it was almost as warm as the liquor. “So I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to, and I get unlimited financing for this and any future projects? They aren’t going to try to exert any control over the content of my films?”
“None.” I said. “I suppose if you wanted to make a pro-war movie they would be annoyed, but even that wouldn’t be a deal-breaker.”
“You’re really confident that I couldn’t make a film that would kick-start a mass movement?”
“If that’s your goal you will always fail.” I said. “I am very confident of that.”
“That sounds like a challenge.” He said. “I think I can make an anti-war film that your bosses will object to distributing. You people haven’t seen agitprop the way I can do it.”
“Impossible.” I said. “If it’s coming from you it will serve their purpose. The stronger you make your arguments, the better from their perspective.”
“I can create a cinematic experience that your bosses will have no choice but to censor.” He said.
“I would love to see that film.” I said. “What if we draw up the contracts so that if you’re unhappy in any way you can walk with everything. You would own any film that the Group refused to put out. You could have an unlimited budget for your agitprop film and own it outright if you wanted. I’ll take your word that you wouldn’t do that unless the Group in some way tried to censor you.”
He looked at me for a moment. “I don’t see how I could pass that up.” He said. “I make a deal with the devil and get to keep my soul. At least in theory.”
“Are you with us?” I asked him.
“I am.” He said. “This all but assures you a partnership in the new company doesn’t it?”
I nodded.
“Then we both have reason to celebrate.” He said. He poured us each another shot.
-back to table of contents-
The Marionettes
“You fascist piece of shit,” Michael said to me. “You assume you’re so above us, like you have all the power, but lemme tell you, if we’re down in the mud? You’re even further down, you’re down in the shit. You think no one’s ever gonna find out what you’re doing? Bullshit. It’ll all come out and when it does all you motherfuckers who thought everything you were doing was so secret, you’re going to be exposed for what you are, perverted little paranoid weirdos. You think the war shields you? Well the war can’t last forever, but what you did to my friend’s brain is gonna last him the rest of his life. You represent everything that’s wrong and evil in the human race. You’re cruel and uncaring and you’re a coward.” He sat back and smiled. “Now you do me.” He said.
I leaned in close to his face. “How the hell do you sleep at night? Someday you’ll have to pay for your crimes, in this world or the next. Who gave you the right to do what you do to a person? The Party? The government? Who gave them the right? I’m a person just like you. Michael’s a person, just like you. We have dreams and feelings, just like you, and yet you sit in a room somewhere, giving yourself the authority to steal all our privacy. To take our perceptions and filter through them in search of anything that would further your cause. Have you even thought about what it is that you do all day? Have you examined it? Because it’s fucked. Don’t you have a mother?” I shook my head. “Listen, I’m not like Michael, he’s given up on you. Me? I think there’s still hope. Repent! Make what you’ve done right before it’s too late!”
“That was a good one.” Michael said. “Thanks.”
“You guys been in solitary too long?” She was a big lady, sitting down on the other side of the table from us in the mess tent.
“You liberated?” I asked her.
“Nah, I’m training to join a guerrilla unit, I’m a communications specialist.” She said. “I write code for axes. I’m Rebecca.”
“I’m Sam and this is Michael.” I said. “We were liberated two days ago from a prison camp down near the border. This is our last meal with you guys. They don’t take former prisoners into the Asym units anymore, so we’re on our own.”
“Subcomandante Miller got you guys out?”
I nodded.
“I met some guys from your camp.” She said. “From what I heard you had it pretty rough down there.”
“Plenty had it worse.” Michael said.
“What’s with you two cursing each other out like that?”
Michael looked at me.
“We do it just in case.” I said. “We were in a Xianco prison in west Texas together and they did all kinds of surgical experiments on the population there. They bugged people’s brains somehow.”
“Nah, they can’t do that.” She said. “And even if they could, how would you know about it?”
“Well back at Xianco word got around that one surgery was a ticket out. Anyone that wound up in recovery with a one inch scar on their neck and bandaged up eyes would get transferred, some said released. When Xianco prison shut down me and Michael were transferred to a Sony prison in New Mexico and some of those guys were in there. If those guys were involved in any shit that was going on it would get busted. Thing was, they weren’t snitches. One day one of these guys stood up in the dining hall and told everyone that his brain was being monitored and that anything anyone said to him went straight to the hacks.”
“That sounds like a paranoid delusion, my older brother was schizophrenic and he said stuff like that.” Rebecca said.
“Yeah, but right after this guy said all that he dropped dead.” I said. “Guy was bleeding from his eyeballs. Next day they announced that he died of some new type of super G. That’s when everyone knew he’d been telling the truth.”
“People used to die all the time,” Michael said, “they never told us what had killed them before.”
“After that anyone who’d been in Xianco was suspect.” I said. “We were there, so it’s possible we have the implants too. At least once a day we take turns, I curse his monitor and he curses mine.”
“I don’t get it.” She said. “Wouldn’t you guys know if you’d had that surgery?”
“Right before Xianco was shut down there was supposedly a typhus outbreak. We were all put in isolation where you lose big chunks of time. You never knew if it was day or night and the hacks would come in and give you shots and you’d go under. It could’ve been two hours or two months you were out, there was no way to tell.”
“So there could be buttons listening to this conversation right now?”
“It’s possible.” I said.
She held up two middle fingers in front of both of our faces. “You told all this to the Comandante?” She asked.
“Yeah but they couldn’t detect any biotech implants in us and there was no signal coming off us, so they told us it was just jailhouse rumors.” I said.
“So what are you two gonna do now?” She asked. “Did you get a good payout when they liquidated the prison?”
“Nah, it was a work camp.” Michael said. “Buncha shovels and a coupla backhoes. We got twenty PAC each.”
“That sucks.” She said. “When they liquidated the Microsoft prison each prisoner wound up with 150.”
“Yeah I heard about that.” Michael said.
“It’s our own fault for being locked up in the wrong place.” I said.
“So what are you two gonna do with your big twenty PAC?”
“We’re gonna buy a cheap small-screen and try to get to Cali.” I said.
“You’re going to pay forty bucks for a new small-screen? That’s dumb, listen don’t do it. I refurbish small-screens, I can get you each one that is good as new for twenty each. These are screens that usually go for 70-75 PAC new, and maybe something goes wrong, water gets in it or the case cracks. I buy up these broken screens and take the good parts out of ’em and put them back together. I’ll give you guys a good deal.”
We went with our new friend to her bunk and she pulled out a bag of small-screens she had repaired. she pulled two out and showed us our pick axe IDs and assured us that the screens were totally untraceable. We left smiling at our luck. “Are we free?” I asked Michael.
“Yes we are.” He said. “Now how are we going to get ourselves into Pacifica?”
“We walk to Mexico, do some menial labor for a few days until we have enough money to take the train west to Baja and we steal a boat.” I said. “Doesn’t have to be a nice boat, shit a catamaran will do.”
He laughed. “A catamaran, really?”
“Yeah, or jet skis. We could come into Cali hot as hell, doing little jumps off the waves and wearing reflective sunglasses.”
“But with respect to the imagery of your idea, I don’t believe jet skis are made to travel long distances.”
“I’m open to suggestions.”
“Motorcycles.” He said. “Specifically dirt bikes. We just run straight west and take our chances. What are you looking at?”
“I got a pick axe.” I said.
“But nobody has your number except me.”
“It must be meant for the small-screen’s previous owner.” I said.
“But Rebecca said we had brand new IDs.” He shook his head. “What’s it say?”
I read. “Breaking regulation I-27 by sending this -breaking rules is fun.”
“Well that’s enigmatic.” Michael said.
“Enigmatic as hell.” I said. We started walking to the supply tent where the truck was scheduled to take us into town in an hour. “Now how are we supposed to get our hands on some motorcycles? Do we look for some crummy jobs?”
“Let’s go back in history, way back to when a human was little more than an upright ape…”
“Is this a historical tangent?” I raised my eyebrows.
He nodded. “A brief historical tangent. Not even a tangent, a flash of insight, so simple a child could understand it.”
“Go on.” I said.
“If the economy we now live in could be tr
aced all the way back to that murky pre-historical period, it might find a beginning. A start. Back then nobody owned anything, it was all just there. But at some point a caveman came along who had something, a necklace, a religious tchotchke, a wife. Now I ask you, did he pay for it?”
“He might’ve traded his labor for it.” I said.
“Trading your labor for goods is an economy. I’m further back than that, at the very beginning.”
“If it’s a necklace or something he might’ve made it himself.” I said.
“Right, but that’s not an economy. The economy starts when he looks at something someone else made and says ‘I want that.’”
“So he stole it.”
“He must’ve.” Michael said. “There was nothing to buy it with. The entire economy was built up off that first theft, it’s a branching out, an elaboration of it.”
“All property is theft.” I said. “A French guy said that.”
“God bless the French. Now I ask you my friend, is it right that we should deny ourselves the means by which the entire system began?”
“Well when you put it like that…”
“It’s like going to an orgy and only fucking your sister.” He said. “Are we free?”
“We are.”
“Are we in a tight spot?”
“We are.”
“Were years of our lives stolen from us?”
“They were.”
“If we had some motorcycles and those fuckers needed them, would they hesitate?”
“They wouldn’t.”
“So you’re in?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But not until we get into town, I’d hate to steal from the people who liberated us.”
The bikes shut down and stopped after we’d gone less than a mile. We were trying to figure out how to override the security system when a truck pulled up. Two teenage boys got out of the back and approached us. “You guys must be fresh outta prison.” One of them said.
“What gave us away?” I asked.
“You can’t steal a vehicle anymore dipshit. The pick system is in everything. What’d you guys do, rip the nav-strips? Boy you guys are dumb.”
“These are your bikes?”
“What do you think?”
I was running at top speed with Michael behind me. I jumped a low brick wall and went down an embankment to a drainage ditch and scurried up into a park. We crossed a bike path and ducked behind a big rock formation. “Are they following?” I asked.
“I don’t think so.” Michael said.
“You think they called the buttons?”
“If they had it would’ve been buttons who came, not those hicks.”
“Yeah you’re right.” I said. I looked around the rock, but no one was there. I pulled out my small-screen, “I got another pick axe while we were running.”
“What the hell?”
“Listen,” I said. “Two HSR International passes in your names. Travel to El Paso. Cross border on foot. Juarez train to Ensenada. Await instructions.” I pulled up two high speed rail passes with our names and bioscans. I sent Michael his. “This would certainly seem to validate the theory that one or both of us is a bug head.” I said.
“Right,” Michael said, “and if we got rail passes that means that whoever is monitoring us wants us to make it to California.”
“Makes sense.” I said. “Once we’re there they probably assume we’ll join the guard and then they’ll have a couple of valuable spies.”
Michael leaned in and looked directly at me. “It won’t work you fascist puke. We’ll take those rail passes, but when we get to Cali? We’ll be sitting on a beach, drinking Yoniums and watching the asses go by.”
“Why do you assume it’s my monitor?”
“Cause the passes were sent to your small-screen.” Michael said.
“You think your monitor doesn’t know my pick axe ID?”
He frowned. “Mine would’ve probably sent it to my small-screen.” He said.
“Well it doesn’t make a difference, the question is do we use the rail passes or what?”
“Of course.” He said.
The passes were general seating and neither of us had ever ridden on anything but restricted passes before. We sat in cushioned, high backed seats and drank Coca-colas all the way to El Paso. Michael and I were both distracted, thinking about being monitored, and about the fact that we were doing what our monitor wanted us to do. “But think about that first message,” I said. “It was about breaking regulations. Obviously whoever sent that wasn’t supposed to. They’re not supposed to cross that line, but they did it twice. Whoever it was wouldn’t have done that if we were both bugged, because then whoever was monitoring the other would know about it.”
“That’s what they want you to think.” Michael said. “No way is there just one person monitoring each implanted brain. Even if only one of us was bugged, it would be more than one person watching, and they would say ‘hey, how the fuck did they get rail passes?’ No, I don’t believe in the rogue monitor hypothesis, sorry.”
“Is that what it’s called, the rogue monitor hypothesis?”
“A thoroughly discredited hypothesis.” He said. “I wish it weren’t.”
“It seems I have another pick axe.” I said. I read it and handed the small-screen to Michael. It read: RMH correct -only one agent per implant these days, personnel issues. I want to help you both, what we did to you wasn’t fair.
Michael looked me in the eyes again. “You’re damned right it wasn’t fair. When the war’s over you’ll all be put to death for war crimes. If you’re a rogue monitor I suppose that means that only one of us is bugged right?” He raised his eyebrows and looked at me and then back at the person he was sure was watching him through my eyes. “Care to tell us which one?”
He was holding my small-screen and after almost a minute had passed he looked at it and handed it back to me. A pick axe had come in that just said: You.
“At least they’ve got a sense of humor.” I said.
“What do you mean?” Michael asked.
“We’re no closer to knowing which one of us is the spy.” I said.
“She sent it to your small-screen.” He said. “It was obviously meant for you.”
“You were the one who asked the question,” I pointed out. “If her answer had been ‘him’ you would’ve thought it was me too, and since when did we decide that it was a woman?”
“Have you ever met a guy in intel?”
“I don’t like it,” I said. “If someone’s going to be looking through my eyes I prefer it be another man. Good lord the woman has seen me masturbate.”
He laughed, but neither one of us was in a good mood. We got off the train in El Paso and walked through the waves of thick heat toward the border crossing. It was a foot bridge loaded with spatial time scanners and people. We were jammed ass to gut with a thousand reeking human beings, all trying to get over the border at the same time. I looked at Michael. “Are we free?” I asked.
“We are.” He answered.
We got into Juarez and began inquiring about the local rail station. A nice crossing guard pointed us in the right direction. The Mexican rail was an old-fashioned high-speed, so we knew we wouldn’t get to Ensenada until the next day. General seating is a little more rugged in Mexico, and we were jammed into a tight row of seats. There wasn’t any room for a private conversation, so we mostly kept quiet. After a couple of hours of bumpy, sweaty travel, Michael got up to go to the bathroom. He’d only been gone a moment when I got another pick axe. It read: Michael is implanted -you are not. Act accordingly.
In prison everyone is an adversary, even people who are supposed to be in your crew. Michael got to Xianco with an influx of prisoners, mostly employment violators from the northeast. We were political in those days, our crew wanted to blow up the jail, then the party, then the country. Other prisoners started calling us the Californians.
I didn’t like Michael back then. He seemed too proud
of his own intelligence, and he would frame mundane observations as deep insights. He was useful to us because he had a job in the infirmary, which meant he could get messages to R-block, which would otherwise be impossible. Any coordinated action would have to include R-block. He needed some protection from the Lord’s Army, who were pushing him to steal dope from the infirmary’s supply. We helped, and after a year or two Michael and I were friends. After Xianco closed we were lucky to wind up in the same work camp. We’d helped each other through tough, hopeless times, so after we were liberated we stuck together. Neither one of us had anyone else.
We acted like we were both implanted, but we didn’t really believe it. We were relieved when the guerrillas who liberated us couldn’t find the signal or an implant signature, but there was still the nagging thought that maybe the implants were too sophisticated to be detected in a field camp. I guess if you pretend to believe something long enough, it becomes as good as true.
Michael came down the aisle, looking a little sick. “I’m going to the observation deck, I need some fresh air.” He said. “You want to come with me?”
“Sure,” I said. I got up and pushed my way to the aisle and followed Michael to the end of the car. We went through two sets of doors and through another car, and another. We came to the last set of doors and it opened to a view of the dark Mexican desert. There was a small ledge with a railing, and the track speeding by underneath and stretching back to an invisible point on the horizon. “It’s nice out here,” I said, “that car is hot.”
Michael put his hands on the railing and leaned out. “Would you want to live?” He asked.
“If I was an implant?”
“Yeah.” He said.
“I don’t know,” I said. I looked off the back of the train at the rail and desert speeding by. We might’ve been going 100, 110 miles per hour. “But I do know this wouldn’t be a good place to commit suicide. A person might live another day or two with every bone in their body broken, laid out in some ditch with their spilled blood baking all around them. Bad way to go.”
“But there’s two of us.” He said. “As far as dying goes being choked to death isn’t bad. After death the body could be thrown over so at least one of us could continue the fight.”
“Is that what you want?” I asked.
He swallowed hard. “I don’t see any other way.” He said. We looked at the stars for a while.
“I guess this is goodbye then.” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, “I’ll never forget you.”
It seemed like a strange thing to say to someone who was about to choke you to death, but the whole situation was strange so I let it pass. I was trying to figure out when I should start when he put his hands around my throat and started to squeeze. I tried to jerk away but he had a strong grip. There were tears streaming down his cheeks. I kneed him hard in the balls and slapped his face, stinging my hand. He let go. I coughed an spat and looked at him. He was confused.
I stuck my hand out. “Lemme see it.” I said. “Your small-screen, give it over.”
He wiped his tears away and handed his small-screen to me. There was a pick axe identical to the one I’d gotten, except it said that I was the implant. I took out mine and handed it to him. “They’re just fucking with us.” He said.
“Yeah, quite successfully.” I said.
“They wanted one of us to kill the other.”
“Then whoever was left would be certain they weren’t bugged, and they’d go to Cali and join up.”
“Evil motherfuckers.” Michael said. “Do me.”
I leaned in. “I know you’re listening you piece of shit. Your whole lame vision of America is a fantasy, a bullshit Disneyland built on blood and lies. You think we’re stupid? Your tricks prove how powerless you really are. I’m not afraid of you and neither is Michael. When we get to Cali we’re marching straight into the first intel office we can find and telling them everything, and this time we’ve got proof.” A sharp pain hit my temple and throbbed through my skull. “Aw, I’ve got a headache.” I said.
“I got one too.” Michael said. “It’s been a stressful couple of days.”
“I didn’t finish.” I said.
“It’s okay, here let me have a turn.” He looked right at me. “You dumb fascist…” He stopped and put his hand up to his head. There was blood coming from his eyes.
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About the Author
Benjamin Broke is the pseudonym of an author who wishes to remain anonymous. He currently lives in Pittsburgh and works a regular job. Please download and read more of his books, it would make him happy. He can be reached by email at:
[email protected] Twitter: @Benny_Broke
You can call or text Benny at: (412) 512-7732
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Also by Benjamin Broke
Please go to Benjamin Broke’s author page at your preferred ebook retailer and check out some of his other work.
SPACECRAFT
This is not a book -it’s a scam.
It’s the story of Nick, a seventeen year old weed-smoking, acid-eating, suburban nihilist dropout who accidentally stumbles across an idea that is truly revolutionary. In this text you will find arguments against art, money, sobriety, religion, education, and the rule of law.
This is Benjamin Broke’s first novel and it is deeply flawed and wrong on many levels. You should begin downloading it immediately.
INSURGENTS
How far would you go to help a friend in trouble?
Ben Perkins might go so far as to risk his job, but with a friend like David Telano, in the kind of trouble he's in, he'll wind up risking his life. With the encouragement of his girlfriend Jessie, a 24 hour a day weed smoker, Ben is soon mixed up in a war that's going on just beneath the surface of his quiet Ohio town. On one side is a lesbian newspaper editor, radicalized by the murder of her girlfriend, and on the other is a wealthy businessman running a drug-smuggling operation from a private airfield. In between them is Ben, who starts out trying to help a friend but ends up just trying to stay out of jail and continue breathing.
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