Strings

Strings

  by

  Michael D. Britton

  * * * *

  Copyright 2012 by Michael D. Britton / Intelligent Life Books

  The clock struck twelve.

  If I’d known my destiny, would I have changed it?

  Not for the world.

  Because this was for the world.

  For you, and everyone else on this planet.

  The room was brightly lit – probably to make sure the video cameras captured everything in crisp detail. After all, it was a global audience that would watch my famous face as I died.

  I sat bound to the cold chair, facing the one-way glass. I knew that on the other side sat the family members of the martyrs.

  You call them victims. But that’s because you don’t understand.

  Let me help you understand.

  #

  I didn’t start to see the pattern – the intricate web that was woven in, around, and through my life – until the day I first saw him.

  On later reflection, I didn’t think I was supposed to see him yet. But for some reason, they let me.

  Because nothing happened by accident.

  Not in my life.

  Every detail was carefully planned, controlled, and executed – no room for error.

  For my far-too-short life was over a hundred years in the making.

  From my earliest memories, the one truth that was instilled in me again and again was that if the ends were just, then the ends always had the intrinsic ability to justify the means.

  I’m so thankful that I was provided with that value at such an early age – it’s made everything – including today’s concluding events – worthwhile.

  And it makes all else that has occurred in my life make sense.

  It makes my world sane.

  #

  The day I first saw him – the man I’ve since come to know as Father – I was driving to work on the interstate.

  Father wasn’t really my father – he was just a guardian assigned by the Family. And the Family wasn’t really my family – for I had no such thing.

  Not really.

  Those who had “brought me up” – someone who called herself my Aunt Jolene, and her boyfriend Tom – were no more related to me by blood than you are.

  Anyway, I was cruising down the freeway at about eighty miles an hour. I was late for work at the American Community Action Network. ACAN had pretty lax rules on scheduling, but I had an important meeting that I couldn’t be late for. It was just a college summer job, but I was making important inroads with people who could help my career later on.

  I was weaving in and out of the traffic, which seemed to be in no hurry at all to get to their mundane jobs on that Monday morning.

  Suddenly out of nowhere I saw the flashing lights.

  An unmarked car – a silver Crown Victoria – was pulling me over. The flashing lights were mounted on the inside above the dash, helping to disguise the little fascist.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  I came to a stop on the right shoulder and hung my head for a moment before pulling out my wallet. I took off my sunglasses, so the cop would be able to see my eyes. I knew it would make me look more trustworthy and sincere.

  The officer, in plain clothes, came to my passenger side window, which I rolled down.

  “What’s the hurry?” was his greeting. He wore a beige polo shirt and sunglasses of his own. The rubbery handle of a large black weapon poked out of the holster on his right hip.

  “Uh, I’m late for work.”

  “Well, now you’re that much more late, and lighter in the wallet, too. You were speeding and made an unsafe lane change right in front of me back there.”

  He took my license and walked back to his car to run it on the computer.

  I hung my head again, and hoped I could just get a warning this time – I could not afford to get a ticket, because I had already rolled a stop sign earlier in the year, and taken the driving class to keep it off my record. But that was conditional upon my staying “clean” for a whole year.

  I looked up in my rear view mirror, and another police vehicle – a marked state trooper SUV – had pulled up behind my cop. An old man – he must’ve been near eighty years old – got out and walked up to my cop. He had on a black suit and tie; he buttoned the jacket as he approached my cop.

  I watched as they exchanged words for a few moments.

  Then my cop returned to my window.

  “I’m just going to give you a warning today,” he said. “But you need to slow down and be more careful. We’re out here trying to prevent accidents, okay?”

  “I will,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “You have a good day.”

  And that was that.

  A few words from a strange man in black, and I was on my way, scot free.

  I thought it was so odd. Who was that guy? Why had he talked the cop out of giving me a ticket? Had that really even happened? Or was it all a coincidence of some kind?

  I didn’t think much more about it after that, until about ten months later.

  When I saw him again.

  Father.

  I was at law school, and it was the final examination before actually taking the bar.

  Truth was I was a pretty mediocre student. Not that I was dumb – I understood what was taught, as far as I agreed with it – but I had mixed priorities.

  Aunt Jolene always said I was smart enough to be President of the United States one day. I thought that was a good idea – if not a little unrealistic. See, there was a part of me that just wanted to be a surfer. Which was a statistically much more likely outcome.

  And the draw of the waves, the thought of a carefree life – it pulled at me, sometimes stronger than the draw of the field of law.

  So, sometimes I would sabotage myself.

  But for some reason – it would never work.

  Like the day of the final exam, when I saw Father again.

  That day, the surfer in me – that guy who was maybe a little afraid of success – asserted dominance and tried to throw the exam.

  I didn’t make it obvious or anything. In fact, I knew all the correct answers, so I just missed enough to make me fail respectably.

  Right after I hit SUBMIT and transmitted my exam to the professor at the front of the room, I started to pack up my backpack. I glanced up front, and Father walked in, whispered something to the professor, then stepped out.

  On his way to the door, he looked in my direction, and our eyes met for three long seconds. The eyes were dark and cold, the expression impenetrable. Creeped me out a little, to tell the truth.

  The exam results were posted the next day, and I had miraculously managed to score a ninety-eight, coming in first in my class.

  Of course, I wasn’t going to protest it – even if it did mean having to unpack all the shorts and tank tops from my suitcase. It wasn’t like top lawyers never had time for surfing.

  A few weeks later, after acing the bar (despite not trying very hard) – I got a call from Larsen and McCarthy, Philadelphia’s premier law firm.

  A job offer.

  I flew in for a face-to-face, and who did I see lurking around in the historic law offices?

  Father.

  It was clear something was going on. I just wasn’t sure what it was.

  Since the path of law was clearly shaping up to be my life’s direction – like it or not – I did my best to impress the partners. The next day, they hired me on.

  I was there three years when I finally got up the nerve to ask Mr. Larsen himself about the day of my interview – about the man I saw.

  Larsen said, “I’m not at liberty to discuss that.” He handed me a simple white business card with nothing but a phone number on it. “Be sure you call from yo
ur cell phone,” was all he said.

  So I did.

  Nobody answered. But within ten minutes, I was accosted by four stone-faced guys in suits who bundled me into a limousine. The car took me to the Children’s Hospital. They walked me to a private elevator, took me up to the roof and loaded me on a helicopter.

  There were no windows in the back of the chopper. The four guys accompanied me in silence for the twenty-minute ride.

  I eventually wound up in a mansion that smelled like old money. Very old money.

  I waited in a classically-decorated office – rich mahogany paneling, soft leather furniture, busts of people I didn’t recognize.

  Then, in walked Father.

  I stood up, he waved me back down. “Have a seat, Mr. Schentler.”

  I complied.

  He offered me a cigar – one that came from a box that hinted its value was more than my last year’s salary.

  Of course I took it.

  He sat down behind a huge glossy desk.

  “Do you understand why you are here?” His voice was smooth and steady. There was a slight British accent.

  I puffed the cigar. “Well, I made a call, and was brought here by those four goons.”

  Father closed his eyes as if in pain, and slowly shook his head. “No, Nick. I mean, do you understand why you are here. Why you are where you are in your life?”

  I had to think about that. Then I took a leap. “I’m here because of you.”

  He almost smiled. “That is right.” Then he leaned forward, his wrinkled hands clasped on the desk, resting on his elbows. He said, slowly, “Do you know why?”

  That was a trickier question – harder to improvise an answer. So I was honest. “No.”

  “Good.”

  He reached in his drawer and retrieved a small crystal decanter of deep red liquid. I thought he was going to pour us some expensive liquor.

  Instead, he drew out a gleaming dagger.

  “Come here, Nick.”

  My heart pounded as I approached.

  “Hold out your left hand, palm up.”

  I did so, and he dragged the dagger across my palm, light as a feather. The slice made me wince a little – I tried to hide it.

  He let a drop of my blood dangle over the open decanter, hanging from the dagger’s tip for an eternity before finally dripping into the stored liquid with a tiny splash.

  He handed me a towel and a band-aid, and I sat back down.

  Welcome to the Family.

  #

  For the next few years, I went about my business as usual – though always cognizant that my charmed life was not owed to luck, but to careful oversight.

  Those first few years in the Family, I never took any explicit direction from them – I just did what I thought seemed right, and things always worked out.

  Did I have questions? Sure. Wouldn’t you?

  But I figured if they wanted me to have answers, I would get them.

  Until the summer of my thirty-first year, I always assumed Father was the leader of the Family. But that year, he brought me in for one of our rare meetings.

  “I have received a command from the Leadership Council,” he said.

  I blinked. “You mean – you’re not in charge of all this?”

  His leathery face looked like it might crack when he smiled – an expression nearly as rare as our meetings. “Of course not, Nick. I am a mere servant of Something much greater. But my calling is tremendously important. Shepherding you through all of this is critical to our success. I was entrusted with this task thirty-three years ago.”

  “You’ve been looking out for me since two years before I was born?”

  He nodded. “Conditions had to be perfect. I ensured they were.”

  “Perfect for what, exactly?”

  “That brings me to why you are here today. The Leadership Council has calculated that the next phase must commence. I have assured them you are ready. Are you?”

  Always so mysterious. I’d learned the best thing was just to play along. “I am.”

  “Tomorrow you will announce your candidacy for the United States Senate.”

  “Tom-tomorrow? But I haven’t got anything in place for that – I need money, a team, a support structure – tomorrow?”

  “All of that has been put in place already. You said you were ready. Are you?”

  I gulped. “Yes. What’s my platform?”

  Father smiled once more. Twice in one meeting.

  “In your legal work, you’ve shown yourself to be a very gifted speaker. When you get home tonight, you’ll review the speeches we’ve crafted for you. Tomorrow, you will have a TelePrompTer. You will be fine.”

  My hand was shaking slightly. Father noticed, and offered me some Scotch.

  “No, thank you,” I said. “I need to make sure my mind is clear tonight – I have a lot of reading to do.”

  #

  You know much of the rest of the story.

  First, I was elected senator.

  I served one term, and was made the darling of the Party. They had me speak at the convention. They put me on some of the most influential and consequential senate committees. During those years, I took a lot of direction straight from the Leadership Council.

  Then they said it was time for the next phase.

  The presidential campaign was exhausting. Not the schedule, so much as the effort it took to act the part. Deep inside, I kept hearing the ocean waves gently calling my name, enticing me to run away from it all with nothing but a surfboard and a bong.

  But I maintained the illusion.

  I pretended to love the wife and kids the Family had arranged for me. I tried not to resent the fact that my life was nothing more than a tool for the Family to use as they wished – to achieve their ends.

  Don’t get me wrong – I was a willing participant, and believed strongly in the Family’s philosophies. They were absolutely right, and the non-surfer part of me did feel a certain pride for being the one to put a face to such a noble cause.

  And they made sure I lived well – I had anything and everything I could ever want.

  Except, of course, my free will.

  Small price to pay.

  The election was a dirty, almost painful affair, but in the end, we were victorious. There had never been any question that that would be the case.

  There were some excellent perks to being such a rock star, beloved of millions. There were downsides, too, as there were a great number of ignorant people who refused to see and embrace the beauty of our cause.

  And they hated me.

  Maybe you’re one of them.

  Certainly those people watching me die today are in that camp.

  #

  So why must I die today?

  Simple.

  It’s what I was born to do.

  Father died three years ago, shortly after my second inauguration. His successor was a man with a much different style.

  He didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke cigars, and he didn’t speak in half-truths and riddles.

  And he identified himself by name.

  Edgar Lassen.

  Lassen belonged to the new generation of the Family – a harder, coarser, more driven generation – a generation that felt the urgency of success, as the opposition became more intense.

  He was about my age – maybe even a little younger – and that hurt my ego a little. I didn’t like taking orders from a peer.

  But Lasser wielded every bit as much power and authority as Father had – maybe even more, since he’d earned his rank recently, rather than merely maintaining a tenure by legacy.

  Lasser was cold. Calculating. Incisive as a razor blade.

  “Your final phase starts today,” he said to me about a year ago, as we met in Father’s old office. Lasser had removed all the antiques and replaced them with banks of flat-screen monitors that displayed all the major news networks and the stock exchanges. The wood paneling and leather furniture remained in place.
br />   The nice thing about Lasser’s directness was that I was more willing to ask him direct questions in response.

  “Final phase? What does that entail?” Things were going pretty well – I relished the idea of moving forward toward the ultimate goal.

  “Your death. But that’s last on your to-do list – you have much to accomplish before that.”

  I caught my breath. “Assassination?”

  “No, nothing so mundane. That’s how we handled things back in the sixties. No, we have something planned that will deliver a far greater impact and propel our cause to the end game.”

  Oddly, the prospect of my own impending extinction sunk in quickly and without much resistance. My breathing returned to normal – as smooth and easy as if I were standing at a podium giving one of my mollifying speeches for the adoring media to pass along to the filthy masses as gospel truth.

  I realized it was all part of the deception. My death would be as real as my election.

  “What’s the first step?”

  “We have several new policy initiatives you’ll introduce in the State of the Union address. We’ll get those pushed through Congress as emergency measures.”

  “What’s the emergency?”

  “We’re going to war with Russia.”

  “Really? Huh, I didn’t see that coming.”

  “That’s all right, Nick. Only a few – the most astute – see it coming. You know, the ones we constantly vilify. Now we’re going to reverse the spin, capitalize on their foresight, and boost their public perception.”

  “Who’s going to win the war?” I always wanted to know that early on. War outcome suspense always killed me.

  “Eventually, we will, of course. But not before a lot of brave Americans die. Including a number of political players who are hostile to our plans. We can no longer afford these figures to oppose us – time is running short.”

  “What’s the hurry?”

  “Too many people are starting to see. The extremists on the other side are getting their word out via the new, uncontrollable media and converting people to their twisted cause. There’s a wave – a critical mass – that’s turning against us. We must act now.”

  “So, why do I have to die?”

  “Your death will seal it. We must prove to the masses that we are the only true option, that we are the only trustworthy entity. We must show them, by not only our words, but our deeds, that we are their new god.”