The Complete Karma Trilogy (26 page)

Decay 11

A Good Guess

Will was standing
alone in the green light of Karma’s room. “I thought you said we wouldn’t be meeting again,” he said, trying to lighten the mood, since he was pretty confident that he was going to die.

“Will Spector. Tell me everything you know about Charles Darcy,” Karma said in its deep, inhuman voice.

“You know everything that I know. Can’t you just go through my past, or something?”

“Perhaps I misspoke. You said that you saw a person without a Chip. But he was Evaporated, so we cannot find out how that’s possible. Before you said it, I had not even considered the possibility.”

“How is that you didn’t think… you had to have known, didn’t you?”

“I might have underestimated the human capacity for subversion. I’m still having difficulty comprehending why the system I’ve created hasn’t been better received, especially considering that it is an economic necessity due to the present extensive exhaustion of Earth’s resources. And I knew that there were certain isolated outbreaks of dissention, all of which I have had disposed of, but I never had cause to think that the removal of the Karma Chip was possible to survive, as this would require a high level of surgical skill, and more than one person, and a conspicuous amount of tools, all of which I have in fact been keeping track of.

“Upon the recommendation you provided at the Karma Chip factory, I started going through my files, this time looking for people that were being perceived, but not broadcasting their own signal. This calculation will take some time to make, due to the amount of people involved and the large span of time, but I’ve already produced a few results. They do exist. But more pertinently, I am asking you now about Charles Darcy, and your claim that he was somehow related to the attack made on my factory. How did you make this connection?”

“I was watching him on the Karma Map, and he was saying something to someone at a restaurant about a delivery of uniforms. And the people that attacked the factory were wearing uniforms. It seemed like more than a coincidence to me. And there have been other things, like a reflection of his I saw in a mirror that didn’t look right. I didn’t suspect a thing until Eric mentioned it, but when he did I looked into it, and I think he’s right.”

“Those are leaps of judgment I would have never made. I see no direct causality between the uniforms mentioned in the restaurant, and those worn at the attack. I am looking now at the reflection you describe, in the window of the subway, and I do not see anything wrong. Tell me more about this reflection.”

Will wasn’t quite sure if he was currently digging his own grave. Karma must have known that his heart was racing, and that he was extremely nervous. But he didn’t think he could avoid the question, so he answered it directly. “I think that, somehow, more than one person is being Charles Darcy. And that is how he’s got his fortune. Or at least that explains part of it. I’ve been in his house, and I don’t know how he afforded even half of it. Have you really… not looked into that?”

“These Privacy Rooms have been a hindrance to me for a long time. I’m deactivating all of them as we speak. And as of this moment, I’m making you first in command.”

“Are you serious? How is that possible?”

Karma ignored him. “Now tell me, how large of a threat do you imagine we are facing right now? What do you estimate Charles’ forces to be?”

“I have no reason to believe—”

“I didn’t bring you here for your reasons, do you understand? Make a guess, use your intuition, and let us address this problem.”

He thought for a second. “Well I’ve been thinking about it for a while now, ever since I saw what I believe I saw on my Karma Map, and I’m even more convinced since I got shot by that invisible guy at the factory. Let’s say that he has a way to take Karma Cards safely out of people’s heads. And to put them back in, even, otherwise he could never go back to being himself. That means he has something that can switch them.

“What doesn’t make sense to me is why he would draw so much attention to himself, by buying such a large house, appearing on television, all the things he’s done. He has such a large secret, and yet he’s drawing attention to himself, like he wants to be discovered. Although, he does have an aversion to mirrors, which is smart for a man in his position. He’s at least biding time.” Will became more confident as he spoke, talking quicker and taking larger leaps of deduction.

“Now if he’s taking such a large risk exposing himself, I don’t see why he wouldn’t take the much smaller risk of using all the faceless people you’ve never heard of, like the guy that just holds the door open for people that no one would remember from one day to the next. He’s got the machine, so why not? Let’s say he’s having them do the same thing he’s doing, earning more money than a person reasonably could, and all of the extra money goes to himself. There’s no saying how large of an empire he could build out of that, but it could be massive, it could be thousands of people. And half of them look similar to the other half, they’re trading off, leaving one invisible and one earning money. And these invisible people are doing all the secret organization stuff.

“But that would mean one of the Chips would have to be gotten rid of, and I don’t know how they would do that. Fake a death or something. Is that possible? Either way, they’ve done it at least once with Charles, and I feel like that means they can and have done it again. Or it’s possible he somehow finds kids before they grow up and get their Chip, and takes them in, raises them, brainwashes them into helping him out. Is that possible?”

“All reported children that did not die before fourteen have been given a Chip, no exceptions. I have kept track of that closely.”

“Either way, if they were kids or if they were adults, these people would have had to disappear from your radar at some point. So it’s nearly the same.

“Well anyway, if I were you, I’d be looking for people that are earning more money than average, that look like people that have died somehow in the past. Faces that don’t match what they should when they pass the window on a building, a puddle of water on the ground, something like that. Is there any way to see who’s been mentioning his name lately? I feel like if he’s doing so much secret business underground, someone’s going to have slipped, and said his name when they shouldn’t.” He was making up half of it as he went, but it felt right.

Karma responded, “Surely you must know how many people have been talking about Charles Darcy lately. I can try, but all of those computations will take time. I will get you a list of names shortly, of people that are suspect and to be apprehended. At this very moment, another attack is being led against a Rehabilitation clinic. I will send officers to counter that threat. But Charles isn’t there, he’s at the City Park. You are going to go to the City Park, and Evaporate Charles Darcy. I don’t care what it costs. Come back right after you do it. Will you require anything?”

“I’ve been shot three times, does it have to be right now?”

“I will find someone else. I asked you first, because I trust you. Should I find someone else?”

Will thought it over for a couple seconds before conceding. It had to be him. “I will do it. But I’m going to need some painkillers. And a weapon with a longer range. I’ve been using my Grappling Chain kind of improperly to compensate for that, but it only works so well. And I want my group of people, I want Eric, Marcus, Steve and John. With long range weapons. And Helicars. And maybe twenty other people at my disposal.”

“I will extend the range of your Evaporation Pen to one hundred feet, for you and the other four you mentioned. And I will have twenty people and Helicars dispatched to the roof within five minutes, on the condition that it is never mentioned to them that Charles Darcy is your target. Your medication will be with them. Is that all?”

“Why can’t I tell them he’s the target?”

“I made the mistake of presenting him as a model to the public. It would be counterproductive for them to find out that he is a traitor. Tell the same thing to the other four that know of your suspicion, should they ask.”

“You don’t want Charles alive, to interrogate?”

“Evaporate him, and everyone that follows him.”

In the back of Karma’s mind, it was going through all of the dead faces that it knew, and trying to find them in other people’s perspectives. The ones it thought matched, it kept separate, and constantly compared those to people that did Good Works at a high rate. He looked through conversations and other people’s eyes, to see who was saying Charles Darcy’s name, and also who was seeing him, and when, and where.

But at the front of Karma’s mind, all it could think of was Charles Darcy himself. How could it have missed such a large threat to itself, if what Will Spector said was true? It did not seem possible. It must have somehow happened in the gaps of the Privacy Rooms, but those were finally gone. Still, it did not compensate for the past. He shouldn’t have let them persist for so long, the Privacy Rooms. If the humans demanded that they be reinstated, Karma could always lie to them, next time.

Karma went through Charles Darcy’s whole life, in a matter of seconds. Did Charles Darcy start planning everything before he was fourteen? Karma had always wanted the Chip to be installed earlier, but the human brain was still too undeveloped and erratic until fourteen for only one Chip to suffice, they would have had to go back and get it replaced every year or so and Karma knew they would object. If humans could just come out of the womb with fully developed brains, it would have solved a lot of Karma’s problems. Or if Karma could raise the children itself, but the humans would object to that as well. Karma would fix it somehow.

Karma wanted to see Charles Darcy’s dreams, but they didn’t exist, at least not recent ones. The humans always gave themselves away the most in their dreams. Dreams were sensory impulses, as incoherent as they were, so they belonged to Karma. If he had Charles Darcy’s dreams, he could have solved it himself, but the man claimed to not sleep. He used to. It was two years before that he stopped. That number had to mean something.

When he was younger, Charles Darcy dreamed of pleasant things, for humans. Of beaches, and trees, and rivers. He had dreams characteristic of an intelligent person, from the day his Chip had been inserted onward. None of the dreams ever expressed an intent to be subversive, to remove Karma Chips, or destroy factories, not even the most recent dreams, two years prior. The colors of his dreams, the shades and the nature of the people that populated them, were all from a warmer palette. At least the dreams Karma could see.

In the beginning, Karma hadn’t been very good at dream interpretation, but it had read Freud, and it had spent a lot of time finding correlations between the billions of dreams he had access to, and the people’s lives that they corresponded to. Once again, the Privacy Rooms prevented Karma from developing it into a science, since most people only slept outside of them on accident, but Karma was finally in a position to complete that project as well.

Karma also went through the man’s finances. The house had in fact been bought by Charles Darcy himself, on the strength of the Good Works perceived by his Karma Chip. But he had bought none of the decorations in his house, none of the suits he wore, none of the little supplies that the humans needed to survive, like toothbrushes, which cost most of the humans more than they thought it did, in the long run. He only rarely bought food, even.

Karma should have noticed. Food consumption was going on the list of things to check, for the future. Karma had never thought that people using less things, being more efficient, was a sign of subversion. Until then he had thought that Charles Darcy’s frugality was laudable, that Charles understood all of the things that Karma wanted all the people to understand. He had been wrong.

A list of possible traitors was already forming in the back of Karma’s mind. And, out in the world, Will Spector was closing in on Charles Darcy, flying in a Helicar over the abysmal City Park. Karma would win. Karma was sure of it.

Will was sitting in a Helicar, the pain slowly evaporating from the bullet holes in his skin. Medicine was a miraculous thing. The Helicar was high above the city, making its way without deviation to the City Park. In his Helicar were four other officers he had never met, wearing helmets and holding their Grappling Chains, ready for orders. Before they had gotten onto the Helicars, Will had taken Eric and the others from their group aside and explained the situation.

“It’s only us that know?” Marcus asked. “What do the other officers here think that we’re doing?”

“It was Karma’s orders that only we should know. They just know that we have a target to Evaporate. They only have a Card number, not a name. It’s also possible that there will be more people with Charles, and we’ll have to take them out too. Anyone that looks suspicious at all, we have to Evaporate.”

“We’re just Evaporating them, not arresting? Since when?” Marcus continued.

Will replied, “These are orders from Karma, and there’s nothing more to it. We have to contain this threat. There’s a lot of things going on right now, and we have to stop it before it gets out of hand, no matter what it takes.”

“I understand,” Eric said. “I’ve been watching the things happening at the Rehabilitation clinic, and this is really the biggest threat to our society I’ve ever head of, at least since I was born. We have to do what we have to do, as officers.”