“That’s dirty pool,” I complained, popping the pills into my mouth. They dissolved almost instantly, leaving the bitter taste of codeine behind. I wobbled and let myself fall sideways, eyes still closed. “Dirty pool player.”
“That’s me.” Shaun kissed my forehead. “Rest, George. It’ll be better when you wake up.”
“No, it won’t,” I said, resigning myself to the inevitable. “It’ll just be later. Later isn’t better. Later is just when we have less time.”
“Sleep,” said Shaun.
So I did.
This is the truth: We are a nation accustomed to being afraid. If I’m being honest, not just with you but with myself, it’s not just the nation, and it’s not just something we’ve grown used to. It’s the world, and it’s an addiction. People crave fear. Fear justifies everything. Fear makes it okay to have surrendered freedom after freedom, until our every move is tracked and recorded in a dozen databases the average man will never have access to. Fear creates, defines, and shapes our world, and without it, most of us would have no idea what to do with ourselves.
Our ancestors dreamed of a world without boundaries, while we dream new boundaries to put around our homes, our children, and ourselves. We limit our potential day after day in the name of a safety that we refuse to ever achieve. We took a world that was huge with possibility, and we made it as small as we could.
Feeling safe yet?
—From Images May Disturb You, the blog of Georgia Mason, April 6, 2040
Twenty-one
I awoke to the sound of Rick and Shaun arguing quietly, undercut by the comforting static buzz of servers and computers; true to his word, Shaun had managed to get the network up and running while I slept. I stretched experimentally and was pleased to discover that my head neither hurt nor felt like it was stuffed with medicated cotton wool. I’d live. I’d pay for it later—my headaches come from minor damage to the optical nerves, and the more I use artificial stimulants to ignore it, the more likely it becomes that the damage will be permanent—but I’d live.
“—telling you, we’re letting her sleep until she wakes up. Work on your report.”
“It’s the Daughters of the American Revolution. They haven’t said anything new since the American Revolution.”
“So it should be an easy report.”
“Asshole.”
“Hey, man, I just want you to do your job and let my sister get some sleep. Is that so wrong?”
“Right now? Yes.”
“Pet your cat and finish your report.” Shaun sounded exhausted. I wondered how long I’d been asleep, lost in my dreamless, drug-induced wonderland while he wrangled the servers and waited for Mahir to call.
I must have sighed because I heard footsteps. The mattress bowed as Shaun leaned against the edge, asking, anxiously, “George? Did you want something?”
Another eight hours of sleep, replacement eyes, and Buffy back from the dead. Since I wasn’t likely to get any of the things I really wanted, I sighed and answered, “My sunglasses?” My voice was dry and scratchy. I turned my face toward Shaun, my eyes still closed and eyebrows raised in silent punctuation to the question.
He touched my hand with the tips of his fingers before he pressed my sunglasses against my palm, saying, “You’ve been out for about ten hours. I’ve tried Mahir three times, but there’s been no response. Becks says she spoke to him after we did, when she had to request a delete and re-upload of some of her journal files, but that’s the last time stamp anybody has.”
Becks…? Oh, Rebecca Atherton, the Newsie he stole from me after things went wrong in Eakly. I slipped my sunglasses on and opened my eyes, taking a moment to orient myself before sitting up. Getting my eyes to focus took a little longer. Shaun put a hand on my knee, steadying me, and I covered it with my own, turning my still blurry eyes toward the distant glow of the computers against the far wall. There was a patch of blobby darkness there that looked out of place against the green, and I nodded to it, saying, “Hey, Rick.”
“Hey, Georgia,” the blob replied. “Feeling any better?”
“I’m half-blind, and it feels like a flock of seagulls crapped inside my head, but it doesn’t hurt, so I guess I’ll live.” I squeezed Shaun’s hand. “How was the DAR meeting?”
“Boring.”
“Good. At least something in this world can be counted on to stay dull.” My eyes were starting to work. The blob had a head now. “You planning on sticking around, or do we need to post your job opening, too?”
Rick paused. “Shaun said you’d already discussed it.”
“The two of us, yes. The three of us? Not so much.” I shrugged. “I figured you should get a say. You plan to stick around? We’re not doing so well on the survival figures, I’m afraid. One out of four sort of sucks.”
“I’d rather take my chances with you than anyplace else I can think of, if it’s all the same.”
I raised my eyebrows high enough that they crested above the tops of my sunglasses. “Oh? What’s the logic behind that?”
“I know I haven’t known you or your brother for long, and you don’t have much reason to trust me; what I’m about to say probably won’t help with that. But Buffy was a friend of mine for years. She was a good person, and she never meant to hurt anyone, but if I don’t stay with this team long enough to make sure you remember that, one day the news is going to get out, and she’s going to be remembered not as a great writer and a good friend, but as the cause of the Eakly Massacre and the cat’s paw behind the death of Rebecca Ryman. The best she’ll be able to hope for is ‘traitor.’ And I won’t have that.” I could hear the frown in his voice. “I’m staying because I have to. You can try to make me leave if you want to, but it’s not going to be fun for any of us.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Giving Shaun’s hand a final squeeze, I stood and walked over to sit down at my computer. This close up, my screen was a little fuzzy, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle. “If you feel that strongly about staying, you stay. We’re glad to have you.” My screen blinked at me, prompting for a password. I entered it. Shaun could get me online, but that didn’t mean he could access my files. Starting to type, I asked, “What’s our general status?”
“Buffy’s death hit the newswires five minutes after it happened,” said Shaun, moving back to his own machine. “But that’s not the fun part.” He paused, portentously, until I glared at him. He’s good at detecting glares, even through dark glasses. “You want the fun part?”
“Yes, Shaun,” I said. “I’ve been asleep for ten hours, and I want the fun part.”
“Fine. Here’s the fun part: Our deaths hit the wires at the same time.”
My eyes widened. “What?”
“We were all reported dead,” Shaun said. “Half the news sites had the story before anyone could contradict it, and half of them are still listing you as deceased.”
I looked to Rick, who nodded.
“Whoever called the CDC made sure the call was ‘accidentally’ made on a channel that several local news sites monitor for gossip,” he said. “We all got listed as dead before we even made it to Memphis. They printed a retraction about Shaun when he posted to complain about the CDC coffee, and about half the sites did the same for me when I threw up the DAR blurb.” He quirked a smile. “I’m not interesting enough to spread as quickly as a Mason.”
“And me?” I asked, too annoyed not to.
“Still dead,” said Rick. “They’ve got some great conspiracy theories going, too, about Shaun and me concealing your death until we can prove you weren’t doing something forbidden by your licensing.”
“Thus invalidating my life insurance,” I said, putting a hand over my face. “Is there any more good news?”
“Only Buffy made it to the Wall,” Shaun said. “She’s the only one whose death has actually appeared in the public CDC database.”
I bit back a groan.
“How many people think we faked our own deaths to up ratings?”
“A lot,” Shaun said, voice going grim. “On the plus side, if we’d really been doing that, it would’ve worked. We gained another three points of market share while people waited for the grisly details to pop up.”
“And have they?”
“On us? No. On Buffy? Yeah. It’s all over the place. Somebody broke into our main camera upload and—”
“I get the picture. I’ll get our official report up tonight so we can put these damn hoax rumors to rest and let people know I’m still breathing. Buffy deserves better than to have her death tarred with some publicity stunt we didn’t pull.”
“How official is this official report going to be?” asked Rick.
“You mean, ‘am I going to include the call the CDC got?’ ” I asked. He nodded. So did I. “Yes, I am.”
“Is that—”
“Wise? Safe? A good idea? No, on all three counts, but I’m going to do it anyway.” I pulled up my e-mail and started scanning the list of senders, looking for Mahir’s name. “Somebody who’s depending on secrecy wants us out of the way. So screw ‘em. We’re taking that secrecy away.”
“And when they start shooting?”
“Who says they’ve stopped?” Even with Buffy’s astonishingly well-constructed filters, the amount of spam that had managed to get through was daunting. I began deleting. “That reminds me. We need to hire a new head for the Fictionals.”
Rick shot me a sharp look. “Doesn’t that seem a little abrupt? Buffy just died.”
“Buffy’s death was abrupt; this is necessary. The Fictionals aren’t like the Newsies or the Irwins. They won’t keep working just because they don’t know how to hold still. They need management, or it turns into a million works in progress and nothing that actually progresses. Unless we want to start getting angry letters from people wanting to know where the next installment of some fifty-part serial romance is, we need a new division head.”
Shaun blinked. “Buffy didn’t name anyone?”
“Buffy thought she was immortal. Talk to Magdalene; even if she won’t do it, she can probably suggest somebody who will.” Suddenly tired again, I set my spam purge to run on auto and minimized the window, pulling up the staff LW&T directory. That archive contained a current copy of the last will and testament of every employee currently on the After the End Times payroll, including details on the dispensation of their intellectual property. Properly filed and witnessed wills are legally required for all businesses whose normal routine brings them into contact with federally established hazard zones, the infected, or members of the working press. Journalists: as dangerous as zombies under modern American law. According to the directory time stamps, Buffy’s file hadn’t been updated since we left California.
I entered my password to open the file. Both Shaun and I possess the legal authority to access all files stored on our servers, just in case of situations like this. The document flashed open. It was a read-only copy of the actual document, which was being held, according to the header information, by the Meissonier family lawyer back in Berkeley. For our purposes, it was more than sufficient.
Shaun slid out of his chair and stepped up behind me, resting a hand on my shoulder. Buffy left the bulk of her personal possessions to her family, her written works and literary estate to the site as a whole, and her nonfiction—which is to say, her personal files—to Shaun and me. We had the right to use her data however we saw fit. There was no mention of a successor, but that didn’t matter because that last rider told me everything we needed to know.
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered. “She knew she was going to die over this. And she knew she was doing the wrong thing, even if she didn’t want to admit it to herself. She knew.”
“How can you say that?” asked Rick.
Shaun answered for me, saying, “She left us her personal files. Why would she do that if she didn’t know we’d need something that’s in them? Maybe she felt like she had to do this, but that doesn’t mean she managed to convince herself that it was right. George…”
“Rick, I need you to find a new head for the Fictionals.” I hit Print and closed the file. “That’s your assignment for right now. Well, that and the DAR report. Shaun, I’m going to need to do a news report on what happened, but—”
“But the bulk of it’s an Irwin thing. Got it.” Shaun squeezed my shoulder before returning to his own machine. “What about Buffy’s files? The server she told us to access?”
“I’d really like that camera footage Mahir has; I was hoping to get that out of the way first. But yeah, the files. I’ll head over there now.”
“George—”
“Just be quiet while I deal with this,” I said, almost more curtly than I’d meant to, and began to type.
After the End Times maintains two file servers for employee use. One, the so-called “public” server, is open to uploads and downloads by every blogger we employ, as well as every blogger even remotely affiliated with the site. If you do any work for us at all, we open an account for you on the public server, and those accounts are rarely revoked unless there’s active abuse. There’s just no point, especially since we have a tendency to reuse freelancers. Why burn goodwill on a server purge? More important, why waste time by forcing your IT person to set up the same accounts more than once? When we’re a little bigger—if we live that long—we’ll need to reconsider that policy, but it’s served us well so far.
The private server is a lot more locked down. There are presently seven people whose accounts include access to that server, and one of them is dead. Me, Mahir, and Rick from the Newsies; Buffy and Magdalene from the Fictionals; Shaun and Becks from the Irwins. That’s where we keep the important things, from private financial records to stories about the campaign that still need to have their facts verified. That server is as hack-proof as it can be because one unverified story leaked under my byline would be enough to seriously cripple, if not kill, the news section of our site.
The news is serious business. If you’re not willing to treat it that way, you shouldn’t be anywhere near it.
I opened an FTP window and fed in the address for our secure server. When it prompted me for a user name and password, I typed in soundingsea, followed by the password February-4-29. Shaun and Rick abandoned their workstations and moved to stand behind me, watching as the screen flickered once, twice, and then rolled as a video player seized control of my machine. Tapping the Escape key did nothing to stop the program from opening, and so I settled back in my seat, comforted by the presence of my team. We weren’t much, and we were dwindling by the day, but the three of us were all that we had left.
The screen stopped rolling as the much-beloved face of Buffy Meissonier became clear. She was seated cross-legged on the counter of our van, wearing her patchwork vest and a tattered broomstick skirt. I recognized that outfit; she’d been wearing it the day we left Oklahoma City, when we’d barely been speaking to one another. She’d wanted us to give it up. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, they say. Well, it was a little late now, but at least I understood why she’d wanted so badly to make us all head home. She’d been trying, in her misguided way, to save our lives.
Looking into the camera, Buffy smiled. “Hey,” she said. Her voice and expression combined to paint the picture of a woman tired beyond all reckoning, so worn through that she was no longer sure she could be patched back together again. “I guess you guys are watching this. Schrodinger’s video recording—if you can see it, it’s too late for you to tell me what the picture quality is like. Isn’t that always the way? It’s my masterpiece, and I’ll never see the reactions. I guess that means I won’t have to live with the reviews, either. I should get down to business, though, because if you’re watching this, you probably don’t have much time left to waste.
“My name is Georgette Marie Meissonier, license number delta-bravo-echo-eight-four-one-two-zero-seven
. I am of sound mind and body, and I am making this recording to testify that I have willingly and knowingly participated in a campaign to defraud the American public, beginning with my business partners, Shaun Phillip Mason and Georgia Carolyn Mason. As a part of this campaign, I have fed news reports and private feeds to third parties, with the understanding that they would use this information to undercut the presidential campaign of Senator Peter Ryman, and planted recording devices in private spaces, with the understanding that the material thus collected would be used to further undermine the campaign.”
On the screen, Buffy paused to take a deep breath, looking suddenly very young behind her exhaustion. “I didn’t know. I knew that what I was doing was wrong, and that I’d never work in the news again, but I didn’t know anyone was going to get hurt. I didn’t know until the ranch, and by then, I was in too deep to find a way out again. I’m sorry. That doesn’t bring back the dead, but it’s the truth, because I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought that when this was over, we’d be a stronger nation because of what I’d done.” A tear escaped her left eye, running down her cheek. It would have seemed overly theatrical if I hadn’t known Buffy as well as I did—knowing her, it wasn’t theatrical enough. She was really crying. “I see them when I dream. I close my eyes, and they’re all there. Everyone who died in Eakly. Everyone who died at the ranch. It was my fault, and I’m so afraid we got this job because someone who could manipulate the numbers knew I was for sale, if you offered the right price. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean any of it.
“If I knew who I’d been sold to, I’d tell you, but I don’t. I went out of my way to never know, because if I’d known… I think, if I’d known, I would have realized it was wrong.” Buffy looked away from the camera, wiping her eyes. “I got in too deep. I couldn’t get back out. And you won’t let us go home. Georgia, why can’t we go home?” She turned back toward the lens, both eyes brimming with tears. “I don’t want to die. I don’t want you to see this. Please. Can’t we just go home?”