Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (22 page)

There was a vanity topped with bottles of aftershave and a single comb with a few loose gray hairs woven through. There was a narrow door to a surprisingly small bathroom with an old-fashioned tub and sink with brass fixtures, a lone toothbrush lying on the counter. Zoey had to force herself not to wonder where exactly Arthur's teeth were right now. On the opposite wall from the bathroom was an identical door that Zoey assumed led to a closet, but when she stepped through it she was suddenly in a Brooks Brothers store—the “closet” was an entire separate room, packed with suits. There had to have been five hundred suits on the racks covering the walls. At least. In the corner was a pedestal and mirrors for fitting—altogether, more floor space dedicated to the “closet” than the entire bedroom.

Zoey turned back to the bedroom and it registered with her that the room looked rumpled and harried—drawers partially open, some clothes tossed onto the floor, a box of old letters having been pulled out from under the bed and rifled through. The room had been ransacked, though gently and respectfully. Arthur's own people had surely done this, of course, in the frantic search for the “key” immediately after his death.

Zoey heard footsteps on the stairwell and froze, actually having a ridiculous moment when she frantically looked around for a place to hide. But of course this was her master bedroom now—she could squat and pee on the floor and nobody could say a word.

Armando appeared in the door and said, “There you are. I thought you were in bed, then I heard you laughing at something. Did you know this was up here?”

“No, I just stumbled across it. I couldn't sleep, so I figured I might as well take a look at my house before it winds up getting bequeathed to somebody else after I die tomorrow.”

“So that's how it is? You're going to insult my bodyguard skills right to my face?”

“Sorry. If it makes you feel better I'm sure you'll also die, trying to save me.”

Zoey went and sat on the ridiculous race car bed. On the nightstand next to it was an antique-looking bronze Buddha figurine that looked like it was in the process of blessing an ashtray full of cigar butts. There was a half-empty water glass, sitting on top of a Christmas card from somebody named Gary that had been used as a coaster. She pulled open the top drawer. Aspirin. Antacids. Chapstick. Reading glasses. A revolver.

Zoey asked, “You have any problems with the plan tomorrow? Me acting as bait?”

“Well … you know I can't just shoot Molech on sight, right? Tabula Rasa is lawless but not
that
lawless. But we're going to staff up the event, make sure that if he does make a move, we're there.”

“I thought you'd tell me to stay home.”

“That's actually the one thing I can't ever tell a client. Personal security would be an easy job if we could just make the client stay indoors.”

Zoey pushed the drawer closed and something just happened to catch her eye, in the split second when the shadows fell over the contents inside: a tiny, blue pinprick of light, at the corner of the reading glasses.

Zoey opened the drawer again, studied the glasses, and then put them on.

She expected nothing—maybe an empty inbox floating over her field of vision, figuring the glasses were an unused gift from a younger friend or girlfriend that Arthur had tossed in a drawer and forgotten. Instead, a burst of code flew down the screen, appearing to her eyes to be scrolling down from the ceiling. Then the room disappeared, as Zoey's vision went black. A line of white text appeared in front of her:

“Welcome, Zoey.”

 

TWENTY

Suddenly Zoey was looking down at the city from above, through a filthy window. The camera was recording from inside a helicopter, judging by the thwupping noise that drowned out all other sound. A timestamp at the bottom showed it had been recorded more than fourteen months ago, the night of October 4 of the previous year.

A hand came into view and glanced at a watch that seemed to have been crafted from about six pounds of gold. The view panned around from a side window to the windshield, where Livingston Tower was growing larger on the horizon. On this particular night the tower was a screaming shade of purple, rather than the dour flat black Zoey had seen in person. The color wasn't a paint job—the screens that covered the tower's surface blasted it in every direction, casting a royal shade across the neighboring buildings and the street below.

Zoey heard Armando say, “You all right? What's happening—”

“Quiet. There's video. In the glasses.”

She watched the helicopter shakily descend toward what from the air seemed like a miniscule landing pad atop the glowing purple tower, and Zoey decided then and there she did not want to be a helicopter pilot when she grew up. The aircraft finally jolted to a stop on the rooftop and the wearer of the camera hopped down from the passenger side, then turned and watched the helicopter abandon him there, softly thwupping away into the distance until the only sound was the soft rustle of wind. The view panned around again and found that not far from the helipad was a man sitting in a wheelchair. Crouching calmly next to him was a chimpanzee, wearing a pair of sunglasses. The wearer of the camera advanced on the pair.

The man in the wheelchair—an Indian man in his forties—said, “Glad you could make it, Mr. Livingston.” As Zoey had already guessed, she was seeing the world through the eyes of Arthur, as if she had gone back to inhabit his body, a living person possessing a ghost. “I am Rupert Singh. Please put on these goggles.”

The man held out a pair of black welding googles and Zoey noticed this was actually what she was seeing on the face of the bored-looking chimp sitting next to the wheelchair, rather than sunglasses. She was mildly disappointed. The chimp was picking its nose and looking around, as if trying to figure out why the night was so much darker than usual.

The camera panned around and found that, across from them on the roof stood three department store mannequins, wearing military uniforms for some reason, complete with heavy bulletproof vests. Zoey wondered if the guy in the wheelchair—Singh, he said his name was—had set those up, or if the chimp had done it. It couldn't have been easy either way.

The camera looked back and forth from the mannequins to the chimp and Arthur Livingston's voice said, “I'm not making it off this rooftop alive, am I?”

He wasn't serious. The man in the wheelchair, Singh, laughed. “I am an engineer, Mr. Livingston, and one who is paralyzed from the waist down at that. Besides, murdering you would be somewhat detrimental to my goal of getting you to invest fifty million dollars in my project.”

“You have five minutes, Mr. Singh. I do not enjoy having my time wasted.”

“I watch the news, Mr. Livingston. You love having your time wasted. As long as it is wasted in a way that amuses you.”

“Yeah, that's true.”

“Put on the goggles, please. They are for your own protection.”

Arthur took the goggles and put them on, but they didn't blot out the view from the Blink camera—Zoey deduced that this meant what she was watching had been recorded from a device other than the eyeglasses. One that was, presumably, more easily hidden—she got the sense no one else in the world knew this recording existed.

Singh muttered a command at the chimpanzee in a language Zoey didn't understand, and the primate waddled about halfway up to where the three army mannequins were standing, the chimp stopping about twenty feet away from where Arthur and Singh were watching. Singh pulled out a little control pad about the size of a phone, and tapped the screen. The chimp extended his right arm—or rather, the arm was extended for him, as if Singh was controlling the limb remotely.

Singh tapped the screen again.

There was a flash so bright that it blinded the camera, and a clap of thunder.

The chimp hooted and screeched.

When the camera was able to focus again, it found that the mannequin on the far right was now a handful of smoking chunks of black melted plastic. The chimp looked mildly confused.

Singh said, “Impressed, Mr. Livingston?”

“I … think I need some context for what I just saw there.”

“That, Mr. Livingston, is your tax dollars at work. You're looking at the result of over twenty billion dollars in research and development by your Department of Defense.”

“To make a weaponized monkey? Or just a lightning gun? Because I'm not seeing the practical applications of either, to be frank.”

The chimpanzee had now sat down, and was looking at its right hand curiously, as if impressed by his own talents. Zoey wondered just how heavily the animal had been sedated. Singh tapped his control pad again and began his presentation.

“Let me ask you, Mr. Livingston—what separates a man from a god? What stops you or I from smashing a boulder with our fists, or turning a building to cinders with our eyes?”

Arthur clearly thought this was a rhetorical question, but Singh waited for an answer.

“Um, we're not powerful enough? I guess?”

“Power is an abstract concept. A politician has power. The word you are looking for is ‘energy.' If you can store and release enough energy, all is possible. Limitations in energy storage is the only reason, for instance, that you cannot fly without a bulky aircraft around you, or that we cannot build a ship that can traverse the galaxy. Even if we can build an engine small enough for the task, the fuel—that is, the stored energy—adds too much weight, and bulk. Do you follow me so far, Mr. Livingston?”

Arthur, in a tone that made it clear he was ready for the man in the wheelchair to get to the point, said, “So this is about … batteries or something?”

Singh forced a smile, impatient with the rich douche who wasn't appreciating the marvel that lay before him.

“This is about the next step in human evolution, Mr. Livingston. You see, several years ago, something radical fell into the lap of your government. An eccentric Russian defector named Resnov appeared one day with a prototype device he called an exoquantum hypercapacitor, which you may recognize as a name that is made up of two nonsense words. He claimed the energy density of the device approached infinity. You may recognize infinity as a thing that cannot actually be ‘approached.' He promised it could turn a man into a god. You may recognize that as a claim made almost exclusively by charlatans and the insane. Yet, despite all of this, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency devoted billions in black project money to develop the technology for military applications. I was one of the researchers brought in for what Resnov insisted we call Project Raiden.”

Livingston said, “After the Shinto god of Thunder.”

“After some character in an old video game—note that Resnov was fifteen years old, and mildly autistic. DARPA's directive was to develop the power source and create new weapons systems around it. But Resnov had higher ambitions. He had no interest in building new weapons. He wanted to build new
men
. He steered his designs toward devices that could be grafted onto bone, woven through muscle. Devices that could power a man to do, well,
anything
. All hidden from his superiors at DARPA, of course.”

“Why hide it? Sounds like that's the kind of thing they'd love. Soldiers who can fly and punch tanks in half? That's what we're talking about, right?”

“You have not thought it through, Mr. Livingston. A boy grows up, he enlists in the army, they hand him a gun. He fights the war, or doesn't, and then he gives back the gun and comes home to become a mechanic, or farmer, or criminal. A soldier, in other words, is just a man, doing a job. With Raiden, there is no putting down the gun—the man
becomes
the gun. Think about the relationship between the man—or men—who possess these powers, and those who do not, knowing what they are now capable of. At that point you are no longer talking about a new weapon. You are talking about a new
species
. A dominant one.”

“But either way, you had this stuff working, right? So why are you talking to me, and why doesn't the army have death rays that can do to the Chinese what you just did to that mannequin there?”

“I shall allow Cornelius up there to explain.”

Zoey actually tensed up in anticipation of the chimp turning around and talking to the camera, but that didn't happen. Instead, Singh tapped on his control pad again and told Arthur to put on his goggles.

The chimp raised his right hand once more, the lightning flew from his palm, and once more a mannequin was obliterated—this time it was vaporized, not even chunks remaining in the aftermath. As if he had turned up the power.

Singh tapped his controls again.

The chimp raised his arm a third time—

There was a blast that sent Arthur and his camera reeling. The view whipped around the rooftop, and when it focused again the last mannequin stood unharmed—but Cornelius the chimpanzee was nothing but a smoldering stain on the rooftop.

Zoey heard Arthur say, “
Christ
.”

Singh stuffed his control pad into a shirt pocket and said, “Resnov's design was highly unstable. We spent seven years trying to stabilize it until, finally, there was an incident in which one of the devices exploded, killing eleven people, including Resnov. Much of the research he left behind was utterly incomprehensible. Soon, the Department of Defense got wind of his more …
unconventional
prototypes and quickly pulled funding.”

“And you decided to sneak some designs out the door to see what the highest bidder would pay for god powers.”

Singh shifted in his chair, not liking the way his whole enterprise had been boiled down to such crude terms.

“Mr. Livingston, as a man of science, I am not willing to give up on what I consider to be, not just the most important invention of all time, but the single greatest leap in human evolution since the species gained the capacity for conscious thought. I got out with six hundred gigabytes of schematics and hardware drivers. We could plug them into a nano-capable fabricator and, in minutes, start building working prototypes.”