Next History: The Girl Who Hacked Tomorrow (5 page)

His One. So many
misguided pursuers have captured her, punished her cruelly, and killed her. Again and again, and for what? To obey lies of the cultural fathers of antiquity, unquestioned down through all of time. He has killed several of them already.

He is not conscious of waiting. For him, it is enough to be mindful of the moment, take pleasure in the day, colors changing in the sky, aromas on the air, the calls of birds. His constant exercise is to be awake, to hold his mind in gratitude and surrender to his Creator. He is aware that ego is his failing, however vital to survival. At one time long ago, his ego made him f
orget that everything he is and knows was a gift from the Creator. He’s been trying to fix it ever since.

He remains still,
a center of bliss requiring no mind, serenely undisturbed when the explosion sounds from a rooftop eighty yards away.

Dr. Arnold Friedman, M.D., Ph.D., expert in a broad range of psychological diseases including marginal mental states, perceptual disorders, misfirings of the sensory nervous system, advanced studies in acute stress reactions, combat fatigue, and stress disorders, stands in the swing space office of General Ralph Solberg. Aides and civilian employees try not to interrupt as they carry boxes and file cabinets in the door behind Friedman, who listens carefully as Solberg outlines his objectives. Friedman finds Solberg’s grasp of the situation impressive. It’s been an intense Q and A from the general relating to Friedman’s recent book,
Clinical Guidelines for Interpretation of Mass Hallucination in the Field
.

“We’ve had a look at the courtyard intruder,” Solberg says. “We have assembled all staff and personnel who witnessed the arrival or were present in the courtyard. We need your team to debrief them ASAP and find out if there is a norm. Such as first impressions, reactions of others, direct or indirect auditory or visual sensations. Of course
we’re checking for photos, vids, texts that may have been sent in the aftermath. I’m only scratching the surface, Arnie, which is why I asked for you. But I’m sure you get my drift here.”

“Aye, sir.” Friedman, ex-Navy
now civilian, falls into familiar habit of rank address.

“I’m ordering Dr. Shackleford onto your team
. Brilliant man, he’ll have ideas on this from a fresh perspective.”

The
fresh perspective
comment grates. Friedman has been exposed to Shackleford’s fresh perspective, but has never worked with him. The oddball physicist champions the theory that gravitational waves can act as thought carriers. While it’s true that grav waves are predicted by Einstein’s general relativity, because of their weakness they have yet to be detected near the Earth. Measurement of grav wave interaction with the orbits of binary neutron stars merited one Nobel Prize, but Friedman thinks the measurements agree with theory no better than one percent. His polite classification for Shackleford’s theory is
overambitious
. Translation: scientific wild-ass guess.

Friedman has an experimental protocol in mind, wants to pursue it without interference. He intends to seek out a common stressor in the environment and trace the hallucinatory outfall to something resembling PTSD. Friedman has a broader
characterization of the disorder, including responses to environmental stress outside usual human experience. This latter modifier is key, for Friedman spent two years with the Army’s Advanced Weapons Lab studying manifestations of mass hysteria and contagious psychogenic illness.

“General, I have some updates for you that might bear on this.”

“Please, Arnie.”

“I’ve picked up news threads on several items. A laughter epidemic in
Texas. Over four hundred people affected. Authorities shut down a busy shopping mall.” Solberg’s eyebrows climb. Friedman continues.

“There’s a
fainting epidemic at a school in North Carolina, dozens affected. In California, there is a bloom of Tourette outbursts on the street. People are not only speaking Tourette, but are texting Tourette-like messages. That could go viral. I’m happy to get with the courtyard people immediately. But there are mass hallucination effects reported in many places. I’ll need a full tactical team if this trend accelerates.”

“Sure, Arnie, I’m with you. I’ll help you build a team when the time comes. Meanwhile keep the main thing the main thing. My attaché will drive you to the sequester area.”

“General, there is one more item. My staff graphed these unusual events on a map of the country. The Annetka murder, the fainting, laughter epidemics, the Tourette, the swarms of random crimes. On our map they cluster roughly along a few straight lines.”

“
Indeed.”

“
All the lines intersect at the Pentagon.”

Garcia pockets his phone with a sub-vocal curse.
Results not yet available.
On the painful edge of exhaustion, the detective can’t get the Jane Doe out of his head, woman found dead in her expensive car.

San Jose Homicide collected DNA traces in the car’s interior.
Garcia is focused on the passenger side, the seat and door. The folded take-out menu Hermon mentioned could mean something. But where is it? Could mean someone was with her at the time, although the mechanic claimed he saw no one. They are running that now. If there’s a hit, it could lead somewhere. It could lead into vapor.

Every individual who comes into the prison system is DNA-swabbed, their unique pattern stored in the FBI’s combined DNA index system database, CODIS. Every law enforcement agency in the country takes advantage of CODIS, as has Garcia, many times. They are
always faster with improving techniques, but it will still be a couple of days. The recent flood of new requests have CODIS staff working overtime.

And t
he manner of death. Garcia shakes his head. Shocking of itself, the head was cut from the body clean. The lovely face untouched, expression neutral, eyes open. Severed at the neck by something micro-sharp.
Are beheadings back in fashion?

That afternoon, true music fans join the morbidly curious across the nation to look in on the first of several planned two-hour marathon TV specials on Annetka’s life and tragic passing. Although no details have been released by the NYC Homicide Division, they have confirmed that Annetka was one of four people savagely murdered in the singer’s Park Avenue apartment that morning.

“
…when we come back, we’ll hear from Ronny Ronson, syndicated talk show host on many of these same networks, speaking with two of Annetka’s former lovers, stay tuned.”

Although the program is being recorded,
NYC homicide detectives crowd the ready room at headquarters. They will treat the broadcast as an extended crime scene, searching for behavior typical of sociopaths.

When the show comes back from break, studio cameras pan over
a packed crowd chanting, “Ro-ny! Ro-ny! Ro-ny!”

Ronny
Ronson, a petite black woman in her mid-40s whose early career was broadcast journalism, had nine years back found her true calling, milking the last sweet drops of
schadenfreude
from family drama in front of millions of viewers. She dabs her eyes with tissue before bravely continuing.

“
Today's guests are here because they were close to Annetka, shared many important moments in her young life, a life too soon taken from this world. First I’d like to introduce Cheryl Marr, a high school friend of Annetka’s who kept touch with her until very recently. How you doing, Cheryl?”

Cheryl
Marr sits on a matching loveseat, across a tasteful low table from Ronny. She’s younger, olive-skinned, well dressed and attractive. She wears oversize Karan sunglasses and holds a white lace hanky.

“Okay,
Ronnie, considering.” She manages a wan smile behind the $600 shades.

After the usual cooing,
commiseration and verbal petting, Ronny goes straight to the line of questions her watchers hunger for.

“Now
Cheryl, when you agreed to come on the show you told us you were prepared to be candid about your sexual relationship with Annetka, isn’t that right?”

The audience leans forward.
Cheryl nods. Not her first choice of topic. She really cared for Annetka, and the singer’s foster parents. But she’s been down on her luck lately and the network came waving a lot of cash.

“Isn’t that right,
Cheryl? We want to hear your answer.”

“Yes, Ronny, A
vi and I were lovers for two years, before she released her first album and started her nationwide tour.”

“Thank you,
Cheryl. We all remember the blockbuster tour that became an instant legend. We all know how rough this must be on you. She was such a lovely person.”

Cheryl
nods behind the dark glasses. “Avi was such an angel. We had such high times.”

Chuckle
s from the crowd.

“No, no, I mean that metaphorically. Together, the two of us. Well,
we made our own little heaven.”

“Tell us about spending time with her,
Cheryl, the private times you had.”

Cheryl
Marr knows what Ronny wants now, the code words have been spoken, it’s time to play for pay.

“She was so intimate
with me, always said the most beautiful things to me when we were alone. And I to her. But she had her quirks.”

“What kind of quirks,
Cheryl, please tell us,” Ronny prods, glancing at the segment clock.

“Well. She a
lways wanted to tie my hands.”

“Tie your hands! Did you think that a bit unusual?”

“It was just her way. She liked me in wrist cuffs. It was like, I wasn’t allowed to touch her with my hands. Although we touched in every other imaginable way.”

A
n exhaled
Oooooh
from the crowd.

“I mean,” Ronny
urges, “were you completely tied up, while she had her way with you?”

“Not like that, just my hands. I so wanted to hug and hold her. In public we did that, but in private,
my wrists were bound.”

“Did you have to sleep like that?”

“No, no. She would untie me and sleep in her own room.”

“Sounds very strange. Was there anything else unusual?”

“Well, she always wore something in bed, something cute and sexy.”

“Could you describe these articles of clothing? Was it a negligee, for example?”

“Not always. Sometimes. It could be a T-shirt, or a shorty nightgown.”

“So she was always in some way covered, when the two of you made love, and your wrists were always shackled.”

“That’s right, Ronny. I love and miss her so. We were always in touch, even after our breakup we stayed friends.”

“Thank you for sharing with us
Cheryl. I wonder if Annetka was a girl with a secret. After the break, we’ll hear from Annetka’s personal physician.”

Applause.
Fade to commercial.

Known to
only a few, the program is being converted speech to text with facial-recognition data frames, to become part of the growing Annetka database in the underground digital storage facilities of Next History.

Dr. Arnold Friedman drives slowly through the deserted parking spaces near the north-east wedge of the Pentagon. In this vast space, nothing moves. Not a person, not an automobile, not a Metro shuttle. A fretful scrap of paper lifts on a dust devil.

This
vast place, normally a center of unrelenting activity, has in every sense shut down. Tense and wary soldiers, such as the ones who allowed Friedman to pass under Jefferson-Davis highway, control all road access into the complex. While traffic moves normally on the highway behind him to the east, South Washington Boulevard to the west, and I-395 to the south, within these barriers is a literal no-man’s land. The Pentagon is sealed off by its own military forces. Helicopters hover vigilant, miles away. Out of sight at high altitude, two MQ-9 Reaper drones hold station.

Friedman has completed psych evals of thirty-four Pentagon police
, including the snipers who fired on the man in the courtyard. Many are unnerved, in high states of disbelief. The preliminary results of Friedman’s evaluations are clear: every single individual saw a man standing in the Pentagon courtyard whom they could neither approach physically nor touch with rocket-propelled grenades and powerful rifles. Friedman will continue probing the psych eval data, but the reality echoing in his head is simple:
not a hallucination, a real event
. Now, he is here to experience the visitor for himself. He is not far from being scared out of his wits.

Friedman leaves his car near the helipad. Cold wind
knifing off the Potomac tugs at his knee-length wool topcoat. He pulls the black toque down over his ears. As he faces the building, low sun to the west is bright in the sky. Friedman walks toward the sprawling irregular shadow. All day it has been photographed from drones, from satellites, and various vantage points on buildings and bridges, its movements tracked and measured. The shadow points obediently away from the sun.