Grand Junction (58 page)

I am a Camp Doctor, and these men are the last cops in the Territory, men of the Law of Bronze
.

Who did you think you were, you poor bastards, to believe you could scare us?

A wall of sound, pure electrical density raised to the level of incandescence, fills the hangar in the middle of which the boy sits, holding a black Gibson Les Paul connected to a citadel of amplifiers of all types.

The sound is millions of kilometers wide, as large as worlds, as bright as a sun gone supernova.

Yuri has never heard anything like it.

A low thumping, like the heartbeat of a pulsar, serves as the main rhythmic structure. Sparkling metallic flashes sheathe the beat—cymbals, remastered by a producer at a cosmic console.

The riff. God, this riff. Like an archetypal condensation of every “Blitzkrieg Bop,” every “Interstellar Overdrive,” all “Raw Power,” every “Bullet the Blue Sky,” every huge power source, capable by its very nature of being a supermultiplied metaphor for itself.

It is properly supported by an eighth-note bass line, playing on inverted chords and keynotes, offering the subterranean foundations necessary for its celestial trajectory.

A World, thinks Yuri.

An electroacoustic World.

It isn’t a song that he knows. After the final chord has slowly faded away with a growl like that of an airplane engine, he asks Link the question.

The boy smiles at him, his cheeks flushing scarlet.

“This is the first time it’s happened to me. It came in a dream, as usual.”

“What do you mean? What’s different this time?”

“It didn’t come from anyone, Yuri.”

“From anyone? That’s impossible, Link. …”

Does he mean the Thing? That it is the Thing that …

“I mean—excuse me, but I mean it came from me. I composed it. And I’m going to ask Judith to write the words.”

“Shit, Link; that’s really great, you know? A little like Primal Scream, from the
Screamadelica
era.”

“There’s more, Yuri. Another piece, from two or three days ago. But I have a second one that came together tonight. I’ve just started decoding it. You want to hear it?”

Later, sitting in a corner of the hangar, Yuri watches Link de Nova put away instruments and power down the main controls on his mixing console.

The second piece was even better than the first, with a rhythm based on a sampling of Lou Reed’s
Metal Machine Music
, on top of which Link laid down a riff broken down into arpeggios and remixed voices from Ligeti’s
Atmospheres
, the synthetic bass adding regular punctuation in a funky syncope, a bass-drum “kick” like the echo of a war drum. A digital synthesizer fluttered toward the stars, illuminated with minor chords. It was like something never heard before, and yet full of the quintessence of electronic music. Singularity/generic form.

He’s progressing, thinks Yuri. He’s assimilating everything he has decoded over the past few years. He’s making it his own. He is
individuating
generic rock.

The scope of this realization hits Yuri like a ton of bricks.

“Yuri, there is something else. … Yuri, are you listening to me?” The voice pierces the depressurized air locks of his thoughts with difficulty.

“What? Something else? Again? I’m listening, Link. Of course.”

Of course he is listening. But does Link realize what he is doing?

“I think … listen, Yuri, I think I’m in the process of finding a way to fight the numeric devolution on a wide scale.”

Yuri remains frozen in place, in the liquid helium of the unveiling truth.

Link is individuating the generic form of Machine Language, the Language of Electricity.

The Thing, the Post-Man, the devolutionary mutation, can never individuate except through permanent digital recycling—so it can never individuate.

Yes, but where exactly is the interconnection, the interface, the meeting point?

It seems so obvious that Yuri has to keep himself from laughing. The interface, you idiot, he says to himself. The one right in front of you. This human who is not quite human, but who is not an android, either.

And the human interface in question says: “Before, the problem was that I had to find a single piece, one that already existed, that could resonate with the individual substance of each victim. Now I think it’s different. I have a plan.”

Yuri does not try to hold back his smile. Is Link trying to imitate Chrysler Campbell, the human computer?

“My idea, Yuri, is to fix as many radios as possible, as fast as I can. And to distribute them for free, everywhere we can.”

“Radios?”

“Yes. With Judith’s military station we can broadcast regularly all over the Territory. We will broadcast the music I’m producing.”

Yuri sees the machine come together in his head. Radio Free Territory. The secret Camp Station. Survivors talking to Survivors.

“Radios, fine; the radio transmitter, fine; but how can you be sure that your own music will be more efficient than other people’s?”

Even as he asks the question, Yuri realizes that the answer is there like the prerequisite destroyer.

Link’s music is the music of a man who individuates electricity. Devolving Humanity disindividuates through the organic/numeric network it forms itself.

The Shield of Bronze is a wall of sound bursts, and the one holding it is a boy not quite thirteen years old. The child soldier and his electric guitar.

The Community of Heavy Metal is becoming a reality.

How much of one, he can’t guess.

It is dusk when they leave the hangar. Link has induced Yuri to listen to a recording from his store of covers: “Get It On” by T.Rex; “Initials B.B.”by Serge Gainsbourg; “The Seeker” by The Who; “Stupid Girl” by Garbage; “I Am the Walrus” by The Beatles; “Always Crashing in the Same Car” by David Bowie; “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails and/or Johnny Cash; “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” by Bob Dylan; “Interstellar Overdrive” by Pink Floyd; “Final Solution” by Pere Ubu; “Funtime” by Iggy Pop; “Dancing with Myself” by Billy Idol; “2,000 LightYears from Home” by the Rolling Stones; “She Sells Sanctuary” by The Cult; “Warm Leatherette” by The Normal; “Dazed and Confused” by Led Zeppelin; “Ladytron” by Roxy Music …

What strikes the ear first is the VOICE. Link de Nova’s voice takes on a tonality that has nothing to do with the adolescent he is. It does not imitate
anyone; it is totally singular—but it is not his voice—or, rather, realizes Yuri, it
is
his voice, but twenty years from now. For Link, even in the biophysical sense, time does not follow the same linear process as it does for us.

Yuri smiles at him. “If I could make an album of covers, if the world still existed, I would choose these songs, and I would probably call the record
Discoveries from the Territory.”

Yes, he thinks, Link is the answer to this devolving Post-Humanity, which in the end is only continuing the Metastructure’s work of enslavement, except that it is enslaving itself. Link is the last chance for true humans, because he is neither natural nor artificial; he is beyond either of them. He is the hope for survival of the last true men, because he knows how to cause electricity to be reborn in machines, and in human bodies.

And electronic music—the act of electricity performing as a work of art, as a
printing machine of singularities
—the electronic music of Link de Nova will be for the Thing what daylight is to vampires, and what the light of a star-filled night is to those who don’t know how to see it.

They are walking along Cadillac Avenue when they hear the noise of engines behind them.

It is Campbell’s expedition, returning to the fold.

Yuri can see that the beds and trailers of the two pickups are full to capacity. Oh no, strange, the Silverado’s is missing. And the two vehicles seem to have been in more than one collision—an accident? The fenders are smashed, outside mirrors shattered, bumpers bent and bashed in.

When Campbell gets out of the car, Yuri can see on his face the dark, singular expression of a man who knows too much.

“What happened?” he demands.

“Come back with me to the Travelaire and I’ll explain everything to you in detail. But I brought 90 percent of the cabin back with me.”

Until now, the Ford Travelaire mobile home has been their temporary refuge. Kindly loaned by the community of Humvee, it has been partially opened on one side and joined to the small towable Combi-Cube Yuri brought from Snake Zone with the sheriff’s discreet approval a few days before; they have barely had the time to fit it out. When the parts of Campbell’s newly recovered hybrid cabin are attached to this ensemble, they will have a perfect replica of their place at Aircrash Circle, and even better: an additive synthesis of their two personal shelters. Nothing is created in the Territory, but neither does it really transform. Everything moves. Everything moves faster and faster. Until the inevitable collision.

Everyone in the expedition is back safely, but Yuri can see that the pair of androids seems profoundly disturbed, while the two cops are conversing as calmly as anything.

He can guess why.

“They wanted to see the hidden side of the Territory, and they saw it,” says Campbell, with the cool impassivity so particular to him.

Oh yes, thinks Yuri, without even knowing the details of what happened. Men died in the Territory this afternoon, and not from the numeric mutation.

The dark side of the Earth
. The androids from the Ring wanted to visit
the dark side of the Earth
.

They made a good choice. Chrysler Campbell is in every way the ideal guide for that sort of excursion.

It is not until the next day that Yuri can hear from Campbell’s mouth exactly what happened in Aircrash Circle. The previous night, he asked Yuri to give him a hand parking the Silverado and unloading it first, so the cops could have it back as soon as possible.

“What happened to the trailer?” Yuri had asked, by way of beginning the conversation.

“I’m exhausted, Yuri. Let’s unload their damned Chevy and then I’m going to bed. I’ll tell you everything tomorrow morning when we deal with our pickup.”

Campbell always keeps his promises, even when it comes to killing a man. And even when it comes to relating the circumstances of that killing.

The next morning, they are pulling stacks of metal from the Ford Super Duty’s trailer when Yuri says:

“Did you trap them the usual way?”

“No,” answers Campbell, his cool gaze fixed on the other side of the pile of cement-and-steel plates. “No, we didn’t trap them.”

Yuri makes a surprised noise.

“The Territory itself is a trap, you know, for people who know how to make it work.”

“What did you make work?”

“Do the details really matter? Just know that their bodies—four of them—are sunk deep in Lake Champlain, where they’ll have some company. Their cars, two of them, are at the bottom of a ravine near Neon Park, where they’ll have company, too. There, now; that’s what I’d call a tidy summary.”

Yuri closes his eyes for a moment. Campbell, too, is always learning; Campbell, the human computer. Not only can he beat any man at chess, he has probably surpassed all electronic machines in his ability to kill
Homo sapiens
.

Yuri finds out the details soon enough, without even having to question his friend. They come out in snippets as they work. Toward early afternoon the foundations of the new cabin are in place, and Yuri knows what happened, and when, and where, and why.

“You know Neon Park? We didn’t try to lose them. On the contrary, we played with them; we drove to Row 280 north of the city, and then to Nexus Road and then back, on Row 281, just a block over. The guys followed us from a distance, using binoculars, so we put on some speed to excite them a little, make the chase more plausible.”

And a few pieces of the Airbus later: “You know the big boulder on Row 281, almost on the lakeshore? It’s to the left of the road and there’s a pretty navigable path just behind it, at the top of a long slope that leads to the western shore, and on the other side there’s a very narrow strip, lightly wooded, and then some deep ravines. It was simple.”

And after the transfer of several large slabs of Recyclo-cement: “The slope curves slightly there; it’s a dream spot. We stopped just before the bend and unhitched the trailer from the Silverado as fast as we could, and left it right in the middle of the road. Then we took the small path and got behind the butte.”

With several panels of the Combi-Cube joined to sections of fuselage: “Then, simple. Imagine it—they got out of their Hyundais, engines running, which drowned out our approach, and two of them started looking through the contents of the trailer—I don’t know, to see if it was booby-trapped, maybe. The two others were just standing on the side of the road, by their car, keeping watch—but they didn’t see me or Vernier, even though I can tell you the road is extremely narrow at that point.”

Another piece of fuselage later, with part of the cockpit still attached: “We attacked from behind. Vernier drove completely off the road, right near the boulder—right up against it; I’m telling you, sparks were flying—and mowed the first two right down; smashed into the trailer on his way. He’s a real master, that one. In the meantime I cut through the little wooded area on the right and bashed into the second car’s rear fender; I got the second two guys out my window when they came out of the car.”

Panels of sheetrock, parpens, firebricks—and the sound of destruction in Yuri’s ears.
Metal Machine Music
in the midst of neonature, in the middle of a deserted row, in the middle of nowhere. The shriek of steel scraping on rock, the symphony of tearing sheet metal and Plexiglas exploding on impact and the screaming of tires; the majestic chant of highspeed collisions, the rhythmic percussion of gunfire; powder, steel, sparks. Death, armor-clad.

“Vernier tossed me his .357 Magnum, the one from L’Amiante County. The two guys got hit by a mass of rubble and caught in a Y-crossfire at the same time. Their chances dropped to less than absolute zero. As for the two Vernier smashed with his pickup—neither of them was in one piece after that. There was one semidecapitation and a forearm we couldn’t find. There was nothing they could do against us.”