The Celestial Instructi0n (21 page)

The PC booted into a version of MS-DOS that apparently predated
Windows. In some ways, Sam preferred the command prompt to a shuffle, point,
aim, and click interface, and just typed “ls.”

From outside the office the driver shouted, “Boy! What is your
name?”

Sam, becoming engrossed in the half-remembered MS-DOS command set,
replied “Sam Lion-McNamara.” Too late, he thought that it might have been
better to make up a name, but he was absorbed in finding the Internet access
application to verify he could get on line. With a few keystrokes, he launched
the terminal application program; with the appropriate whistling and
hand-shaking the computer used the Sierra Tel lines to get a 300 bps
connection. But the connection just echoed a > prompt at him and he couldn’t
enter an Internet address. Searching the application directory, Sam found a
promising application called WebMan and launched it. It launched a rough
graphical user interface that had a box that Sam could enter an address. He
entered the web page for Tor and let the ancient PC slowly redraw the screen to
the Tor home page. He needed to download a Tor client that would work under
DOS.

While Sam was working on these technical problems, the driver and
the manager were talking about the smart phone and Sam Lion-McNamara. The
driver went back to his taxi where the radio was occasionally blurting out a
call from this driver to that, mostly discussing where they could get petrol or
cheap wine. He got on the radio and chatted up the ether while Sam also chatted
up his digital version.

While it time seemed to slow and the night turned closer to dawn,
Sam was eventually able to log on to his Ouest account in Darknet and oh so
slowly read his fresh mail. His world was in computer time now and his mind,
temporarily detached from the muggy danger of this decaying hotel, raced to
consider the possibilities of what he was reading. A person called Xtance sent
him some fresh code and a plea. Sam immediately grasped the significance of the
code and what he was asked to do. His mind raced on how best to accomplish what
was requested.

Sam emerged from his computer ratiocination and simultaneously became
aware of three things. First, that there was some kind of argument among
several people outside the hotel, two, he distinctly heard “Lion-McNamara” and
over the clipping audio of the taxi loudspeaker and, three, he heard another
vehicle, heavy and large by its sound, burst up to the hotel and stop with yawl
of tires. Individually, each of these signaled possible danger to Sam; together
they caused Sam to react without thinking.

Off the chair, knocking the computer mouse to the floor, out of
the office to the surprised face of night-manager Kena and turning away from
brilliant headlights outside to the darkness into the depths of the hotel. The
last thing that Sam did before he escaped into the darkness was to tear the partially
charged mobile smart phone away from its mooring and clutched its warmth in his
palm as he sprinted into the blackness.

“Yes, First Celestial. We are surrounding the building of the
computer lab where we believe Baroco is.” Security Throne Cassandra Jones was
in the back of a rented Lexis with her laptop open on the right and a WiFi to
Internet box on the seat to her left. Her Glock was hard between her thighs.
She could see the fresh Crux shaved into the buzzed back of the head of her
driver who doubled as her security escort while in Boston. Next to the driver
was a liaison from the Boston office of the FBI, Andrew Sahas; Cassandra had
specifically recruited Andrew herself among her New York parichoners to apply
to the academy several years before. The Church had both physically trained him
and, despite Bureau recruitment rules that were laxer than their requirements
from the 60’s, the Church qualified him with a J.D. degree from Santa Clara
University deep in the heart of Silicon Valley, along with a joint public
accounting certificate that he obtained while subsequently in the finance
program at Boston University. He worked in legal at Apple Boston while he
applied to the academy to acquaint him with high technology patents,
copyrights, and trade secrets. He had of course several other Church-based skills
that did not appear on his C.V.

Although he was pushing the upper age limit for an appointment, he
was selected for the academy on his first try. The background check was a
particular lacunae of the Bureau, anything alleged to do with religion was held
to be off-limits with respect to an investigation. Besides all the parichoners
who were interviewed—and there were none but parichoners who knew him as a
child—had only glowing, positive things to say about him. Almost as if
scripted, they were so full of praise for this honest, moral, helpful and
intelligent young man.

He graduated with special mention before assigned as a Special
Agent to the Boston office. But while the Bureau was his sworn employer, the
Church was his absolute master. He would do anything ordered by the Security
Throne. As a child on the Games Machine, he remembered the phrase “To a truly
religious man nothing is tragic.”

“The fix is progressively is being successfully better resolved. “We
have the block; we just need the specific building now.”

Cassandra’s car was parked in a fire zone, a plastic Boston Police
sticker electrostatically attached to the inside of the driver’s window.

She heard Michael Voide’s voice warped from satellite and
encryption phase jitter speak to her as if to a close friend. “The Church needs
Baroco dead now. Anyone around him deserves whatever fate hands to them as
well. But we need this to happen now. The Church is on the verge of greatness,
the very edge.” She imagined him speaking into her ear, warm lips touching,
humid breath condensing on intimate folds. She hated him, he was her rapist.
She did not give consent, but she could not say “no.”

“Yes, First Celestial. Within minutes.”

Cassandra Jones closed her phone, glanced at her laptop, said
“765,” closed the laptop, and addressed Parichoner Special Agent Sahas:
“Andrew, we are getting out now. We know the address of the safe house where
Baroco is hiding. We are going to stop a terrorist from damaging the infrastructure
of the United States and punish an attacker on the Church. Do you understand?”

Andrew looked back at Cassandra. “Yes, Throne. Immediately.” He
felt his excitement responding to her direction as he opened the passenger door
and stood ready to accompany her into the morning foot traffic. Unintelligible
conversations surrounded them in these neighborhoods of mixed warehouse and
store fronts that had seen much better days. He had missed that thing since his
times with the Games Machine and in interview with Crux staff. Not since the
last time he had been ordered by a Church superior had he been so aroused.

Xtance was fanning herself with her faux stole, tugging on one
pigtail, and considering what to do next. She had been alerted by recognition
software and web cams strategically placed on the block that a major police
action was coming down. The software checked every few seconds and counted the
number of Boston police insignia within the view of the wireless web cams
surrounding the block whether the shadow lab was located. It had become the
highest by a factor of three than the software had ever measured. On the
surface, the fact that there was no increase in emergency siren level detected
by the cams seems to contradict the logo count, it was worse to her. It meant
that in some sense, this operation was somewhat stealthy. Although apparently
the need for police units outstripped their need to appear in unmarked
vehicles.

Xtance could make a general announcement, but decided against it.
She interrupted Baroco and Margaret who were in line for a petit breakfast of
coffee, non-gluten toast and some a few sections of grapefruit. “Time to go.
There is going to be action here pretty damn quick. I’ll tell you on the way.”
She motioned toward the curtained second corner opposite of where Joex had come
in. Margaret said, “Get going. I’ll let people know of the Omega.” This was
almost a game to the shadow lab. Over the forty-year course of its existence,
it had had to move more than a score of times. Sometimes it was the fire
marshal, sometimes the police, sometimes the owner or building manager, or sometimes
just that its location was becoming too well known by strangers. The Omega was
the code name for packing it up and waiting for the lab to reconstitute
somewhere else. After a while through personal contact, the word would get out
and interested MIT people and their friends would accrete once more as pebbles
under the weak but persistent gravity of untrammeled knowledge.

The Omega protocol went something like this: you have minutes to
take your personal property out. The prophet who announced the protocol
announced the exact number. After that time expired, everything left was trash.
In fact, anything left was to explicitly become trash, invited to be destroyed—which
in itself was a great deal of fun to the stragglers. The wall that had leaned
against it bolt cutters, sledgehammers, and axes constantly reminded everyone
of the protocol. It was like a Burning Man festival with computer equipment and
random gadgets as the final offering.

Wile Margaret was darting around and personally alerting all that
she could see, Xtance herself began the countdown, “OMEGA. TEN MINUTES.” Immediately,
as if cued from a script, people started purposefully moving on the floor and
shimmying down the wall-ladders. Not surprisingly, most of the bedding and
computers were abandoned, but a several laptops were unplugged and removed and
hard drives and small electronics were slid out of enclosures to be put into a
cargo pocket or backpack. It was presumed that any data storage that survived
Omega would be securely encrypted. And paper documents were not so much
forbidden or discouraged, but—unstylish. The goal of Omega was to quit the
premises in a way that left few clues upon the purpose or identity of the
participants. It wasn’t really a secret that the participants were mainly MIT
students and faculty, it was that the reputation and positive relationship of
the campus and the city were so positive that the police never investigated too
far on who did what to whom despite angry property owners.

It was the dissolution of a rave. After taking whatever personal
property you chose to, you merely left and made you way back separately into
your public life. By walking, bicycle, bus, or car pool; whether to a
dormitory, or to a parents’ home, or to a nameless homeless destination, you
were to evaporate to sublime, to become temporarily invisible to the common
purpose here at the shadow lab.

Then the trashing party would begin, but even so after a few
minutes of wanton destruction—only physical force, personally wielded, was
permitted, never power tools, explosives or fire—the final revelers would
leave. True, a huge mess would be left behind. But more often than not in the
past a neat stack of ten one-thousand dollar United States Postal money orders
would be mailed anonymously to the registered owner in compensation of their
cleanup. After forty years, a lot of MIT graduates owed their best memories and
some portion of their material success to their version of the shadow lab back
in their day. MIT, as many institutions, had their fraternity row, their secret
clubs and organizations—but in the end, it was the shadow lab that was unique
among all the worldwide gatherings of teachers and those who would be taught.
The shadow lab is the best picture of the MIT intellect.

Xtance nodded to Margaret that she should take over the countdown
as Xtance was guiding Joex away from the building. “Into the sewers we go!” She
turned left with Joex outside the corner drapery but before the emergency exit
doors to the outside. “We are going a different way. About twenty feet down the
back hallway there was a square corrugated iron cover bolted to the internal
wall and continuing onto the floor. The floor appeared seamless and the wall
mounting had two large bolts with nuts apparently welded to the bolts. “That’s
just a dummy. Watch!” Xtance pushed hard sideways on an eyehooks attached to a
rectangular painted block that matched the faded wall, the block was hard to
move at first, but then slid right off. “Neodymium” Xtance said. She then
slapped it down on the smooth flow plate, which it attached with a solid clang,
and Xtance used the hook to lift off the cover into a hole that contained a
metal ladder going steadily into darkness. “You first!” she said cheerfully to
Joex. It goes down about eight feet. Just wait for me at the bottom.”

She watched Joex lumber down the ladder somewhat apprehensively, and
then went down several rungs of the ladder herself, sliding the magnetic grip
off the plate and refitting it carefully above her. She and Joex were now in
total darkness, with a foul miasma rising to them. “Just one more second, Mr.
Baroco,” Xtance cheerfully spoke into the darkness.

Standing in the echoing concrete fusty darkness, Joex suddenly
remembered his father again. Joex was about four or five, insignificant
compared to the powerful grip that was hanging him over the edge of a pier in
Old Town. Joex could remember the dark green water lapping at the creosote and
barnacle piers ten or fifteen feet below. Joex could also remember his perfect
helplessness and fear as he shut down everything in order not to provoke what
was going to happen. But what Joex remembered most clearly was not the cold
indwelling of air off the morning sound or the petroleum sheen gilding the
wavelets, but it was the barely perceptible shifted glance over this shoulder of
his dad before the set of furrows in his face weathered over and he reluctantly
brought Joex back to the pier. Later in the day, his father took him down to
Commerce Street to buy a new Rolex Submariner for himself. One with the crown
and the real radium paint on the dial that would flash and flicker no matter
how long it was kept in the dark. Joex thought of his sister. “YOU GODDAMN
COCKSUCKER MOTHERFUCKING CUNT,” Joex shouted into the dark.