Next History: The Girl Who Hacked Tomorrow (32 page)

Carson
opens the segment with a solemn introduction. Tonight the AI gear that makes him go is rigged out in the guise of a carnival fortune teller, complete with beard, turban, and credit card slot. Carson Johnny’s avatar.

“As you all know, especially folks in the Northeast, there has been unusual activity in the area near Arlington, Virginia, in particular at the United States Pentagon. The media and the government have told us nothing concrete that explains the evacuation, the sealing off of the Pentagon grounds, or
the fact that remotely piloted Reaper drones are on constant patrol above the area.

“Why the Reapers? Did Pakistan dry up as a source of good drone targets? Did crop circles appear in Georgetown? Tonight we have a special remote guest who has shared with us some photos that
do much to explain the events at the Pentagon. Our guest on the phone goes by the name Casino, to protect her or his identity. Hello Casino, will you join us?”

“Hey
Carson. Hey Chasm, love your ‘fit dude.”

“Hey, TG.”

“Oh,” laughs Casino, “it’s only this fricking voice disguise.”

Casino,
known in her day job as a Pentagon Security IT tech, is in a secure remote location staring at tall stacks of hundred-dollar bills and sipping a cold apple-tini. Friends sit across the room, cautioned to keep their voices down. Casino has profited from her visit to the Pentagon Security Trailer. In exchange for considerable amounts of hard cash, she has delivered genuine security cam vids and photos of Tharcia in her
Goddess Culture
T-shirt with Lian. First on the screen appears Tharcia with Lian as the elegant Greek statue.

“What a beautiful man,”
Poho says, sitting forward in her teensy dress.

“We looked through these before coming on,”
Carson says, “and let me tell you what you’re about to see for yourselves, they are startling. Alright, now look at this.” The image changes to a photo of a tall scaly lizard with wings. A surprised
Ooooh
from the audience.

“What do you think, folks? You can see in our side by side view
, the man and the monster, the backgrounds are the same. We are guessing this is the interior of the Pentagon, is that right, Casino? Notice how small she is next to this thing.”

The altered
telephone voice replies, “Yes. And you need a close up on the girl in the scene. Real shocker, an ordinary person locked up with this monster.”

From the
instant the pic of Lian as a winged lizard hits the computer screens of 80 million online viewers, links to the show are wildly tweeted, emailed and re-tweeted. Live viewers add in by the hundreds of thousands every few seconds. Within five minutes, the viewership exceeds the combined population of China, India, and the Middle East. And it keeps climbing. These images are the clearest truth the public has seen since the government closed the news lid on the Pentagon evacuation.

The audience gives another soft
Ooooh
as a view of Tharcia appears, looking sleek in the
Goddess Culture
T-shirt and her flowing hair of winter white. Always with a need to keep things moving briskly, the AI programming in the head of Carson Johnny rushes the convo forward. The images stay on the screen as the guests talk over.

“What does Mindy
Poho do for you, Chasm, in that dress? Or maybe it’s a dinner napkin.”

Mindy squirms self-admiringly in her chair,
certain of praise.

“Well
Carson, it’s another kick in the nutsack for Mr. Average Joe,” Chasm begins, looking the onetime actress up and down. “Joe will never live up to what she looks like, to the expectations of someone who looks like that. So mostly he’ll just jerk off and drink more brewskis. I think of her as a concept, a free-floating beer commercial.”

“I don’t think that’s…”
Poho gets in.

“Funny, Chasm, and not a bad point. How about her latest movie, that horror flick?”

“Screw the movies. The news these days is more horrifying. Annetka and the Blender Murders, the Malibu Three-Way, the dozen similar ones in recent days. That is, if you like snuff. Your guest’s photos though. If this is what’s going on at the Pentagon, we are in deep guano.”

“Yeah, what do you make of this girl’s shirt? Eh, hold it Chasm. We have a caller on line one. Hello, Shanna, you’re on
Take Your Medicine
.”

“Hi
Carson. They programmed you quite well this evening.”

“Well, they brought us a
live one. And thanks for faking that orgasm with my screener.”

“Think nothing of it. His ego needed buffing.”

“Ego,” Chasm cracks. “Is that the technical term for knob?”

“
Most males keep them in the same place,” Shanna quips. “But seriously, Carson, “I’m a professor of Women’s Studies at a private college in Pennsylvania.”

“Ah, so you’re calling about the Goddess Culture thing, I would guess?”

“Yes Carson I am. I find that girl’s shirt refreshing. It reminds me there’s a new love of the feminine divine in women whose spiritual experience has been focused on male gods and male supremacy by the patriarchy. I wonder if her message is some harbinger of third-wave feminism, an emergence of the long-awaited goddess that can give the whole society, not women alone, a fresh start at accessing spirituality, and social integration.

“Religious symbolism anchors our thinking, and the effect on women of patriarchal godhead as the foundation of the spiritual cosmos produces a distorted message. The subtext to patriarchal religion is worship of the male, not worship of God. It is exclusive, not inclusive, and perpetrates the patriarchal myth.”

“Well,” Chasm throws in, “if it’s a patriarchal conspiracy, why then is the feckless semi-competent father such a fixture of television shows?”

“Good one, Mr. Chasm,” Shanna rejoins. “That shows you that social symbols are
as distorted around the male as the female. Once people generally accept that certain tropes exist, they act like any self-serving human in taking advantage of the system. Goddess Culture is a breath of fresh air for the society.”

“
Tell me where can I get that shirt,” Mindy says.

“Well the size that girl is wearing won’t fit you,”
Carson quips.

Mindy looks down at her ample bosom with a coquettish smile.

“Well that focuses you on the wrong…” Shanna begins.

“Ah,”
Carson says brightly, “our floor director tells me she’s found the website. I’ll put it up on the screen.”

Shanna tries again, “I really think that is a distraction, the important issue here is understanding the message, not acquiring the shirt because…”

Chasm laughs, looking at his phone. “I just got tweeted the link to the T-shirt store. I’ll re-tweet all my fans.” He lifts his phone toward the room to solid applause. The studio cameras pan over the audience, many of whom likewise hold their luminous screens aloft, with images from the T-shirt shopping cart. Far from studio cameras, the gesture is repeated untold numbers of times in bars, workplaces, clubs, homes, workout centers and lonely rooms.

“Religion has a powerful hold on the psyche,” Shanna goes on. “Women must own it equally, not leave it in the hands of father figures. Even agnostics and atheists are affected, because outside of religion, patriarchal religion, the concepts are institutionalized by society. It looks innocent enough, but symbolism of God the Father is pervasive within the psyche. Religion fulfills such deep psychic needs
. A father-figure as godhead is a bait and switch. Rejecting such symbolism on a conscious level is ineffective. Deeper symbolic meaning must replace it.”

“
Of course you mean, replaced by a goddess,” laughs Chasm. “It goes against my nature as a superior male but I agree that God the Father is an unfair advantage in the battle of the sexes.”

“Great point, Chasm, it’s a powerful reason that p
atriarchal societies condition women to accept men as superior.”

“And vice versa. But I always prefer being on top.”

Carson Johnny breaks in, “We’ll be right back after this message from Mother Superior Bondage Warehouse.”

Laughter, applause, station break.

In the hours and days that follow, trash-o-rama blogs and supermarket tabloids have a field day with images of Lian and Tharcia from Pentagon Security. They pose her on their covers in
Goddess Culture
T-shirt with Lian as the winged lizard, the emblazoned headline,
I’m having his baby!

O
thers less subtle offer supposed ultrasound images showing nine small demon fetuses
in utero
. They augment Tharcia’s face with vampire fangs and reddened eyes, Photoshop her with head turned backward on a body with beach-ball breasts. Images of Tharcia sunbathing on the Riviera in a white bikini and distended abdomen,
Devil-Ho Terrorist Romps in Third Trimester.
They have a wonderful time with it, sales go berserk. Articles predicting the birth of thousands of Devil progeny and the coming Rapture attract wide readership, become the topic of radio talk shows across the Midwest. Everyone has a wonderful time being afraid.

Tharcia paces back and forth, speaking to Lian with agitated gestures. “I don’t believe people are evil until proved innocent. People should be saved until they decide otherwise. Religion gives us the devil instead of God. Just for crowd control.”

“Ouch,” Lian says
. “That hurts my feelings.”

“Threats of punishment, promises of salvation. What is that? Carrot and stick. Little kid stuff.”

“You can change that.”

“Change the Church? No way
dude.”

“The future is a field of poss
ibilities. You just have to imagine the right ones.”

Tharcia stops her pacing, sits
beside him with a quizzical expression. “Imagine the right what?”

“What you don’t understand about beings of Spirit is that we are not fixed to any point in time.
Or to any point in space, or any reality for that matter.”

“Lylit said.”

“Did she explain fully what it means?”

“She said she could go watch her own death, or anywhere else in history or the future.”

“True. But did she explain how the universe works, why spiritual beings are different?”

“No.”

“You have no doubt heard of quantum physics, whether you have studied it or not.”

“Heard the name.”

“It is all about probability. Subatomic particles are not hard little dots, they are potentialities. They can exert a force, but they cannot be said to be here or there.”

“Mm.”

“Spiritual beings know how to manipulate those probabilities. In so doing, they determine where and when they will be visible, where they will ‘be.’

“So give me a demo. Let’s see you travel.”

“You’ve seen me as a dragon. That is only one of my full forms.”

“We can
give that a skip.” Lian’s winged lizard guise terrifies her. The mental image reminds her she’s on a hurtling train headed down. Down.

“Alright, try this one. Put your hand on my shoulder.”

Tharcia reaches a hand to his rounded shoulder. It passes right through, she can see a ghostly image of her fingers inside him. She jerks her hand back with an abrupt cry.

“Lian! What
was that?”

“You’ve heard it said no doubt that an atom is mostly empty space. The force that communicates touch is based on the probability that an atom might be in a location.
Fully conscious beings are able to manipulate atoms and reduce that probability to zero.”

For once, Tharcia has nothing to say.

“Look over there.”

She follows his gesture. On cue, another Lian, dressed the same, appears striding along a walk. Three steps behind, another
materializes and strolls along. Though identical, they are not doing the same things. Their heads move differently, their arms. Another appears, another Lian, moon-walking backward.

“These are appearances I am making
, by manipulating the probability that atoms are in certain places or not.”

He turns to her. “Try this,” he says. He extends an arm toward her. She expects he will touch her somewhere in the middle of her
tummy. But his hand passes completely into her abdomen. She feels nothing, but the look of it startles her and she jumps off the bench. Holds both hands over her middle, breathing raggedly.

“Just so you know what you’re dealing with. Why those weapons can’t touch us. They have no idea that time is being manipulated.”

“Don’t do that anymore I get it!” Thinking about it makes her shiver.

“Sure. Sorry. You needed to be shown.”

“Lian help me! I don’t want to do anything stupid. I feel like it’s going bad. Can you help?”

“Alright. I’ll give you a little hint. Start with gratitude.”