Skinner

  She brings the sliver of wood to his thumb and uses it to scrape the dry blood from underneath his nail. Watching the delicate care with which she works, clever robot-building fingers, he wonders how much Terrence intended.

  Did he see this, plan for it? Did he really need to hide the secret of what he was doing in a tangled configuration that only Jae could discover? Couldn’t he just have told her, Go there, see the future, and help. Would anything less than living inside his bizarre scavenger hunt have brought her to this point? Her identity compromised by the shootout in Cologne, lover to a killer, perched on the verge of the most dangerous place in the world, and compelled to stay there. How far back did it begin? Did he usher Skinner into the world of protection knowing he would use him one day as a guardian to this mad experiment? How many of his choices have been his own since he met Terrence, and how many have been the result of Terrence’s deft manipulation of the conditioning that was already in place when he first spoke to Skinner nearly twenty years ago? And, most of all, this. Did he plan this? Skinner and Jae, the murderer and the digger for the dead.

  When she’s done with both of his hands, cleaning the dry blood, he rises and helps her up. Standing on the step, she can look him in his eyes again, like in the train station at Cologne, but no one is waiting in the darkness with a gun this time.

  “I’m canceling our contract. You have a new asset.”

  Kissing so immodestly, they draw a great deal of attention. Everything about them an alien curiosity in the glowing light. But these are strange times for everyone; kissing cannot be frowned upon overmuch. Skinner’s eyes are closed. So that, though he feels it when Jae stops kissing him, and hears the tap of her cane until it fades into the sounds of the shopkeepers’ lane, he does not see her walk away. He stands there for some time, eyes closed, letting himself be watched by the curious.

  Strange American in a filthy suit, standing in the street with his eyes closed, in the lamp-lit dark.

  horror

  TWO NIGHTS LATER in a gated Maryland estate that showcases some of the finest security systems the free market has to offer, Cross is surprised to find an uninvited guest in his bedroom. All the more so because he has been sitting up in bed reading, with the door closed, for nearly fifteen minutes before he sees Skinner. The initial surprise done with, the shocking spike of adrenaline that literally made him bark beginning to fade, he becomes somewhat sensible, and realizes that he is about to die.

  Skinner uncrosses his legs.

  “It’s a nightmare. Being afraid. Unable to scream.”

  Skinner points at Cross’s neck.

  “I can see your throat moving. But it’s like someone has frozen the muscles. Glued your lips together.”

  Skinner rises from the chair next to Cross’s writing table.

  He’s wearing a suit, charcoal, pressed oxford stripe shirt, dove-gray tie, brown belt, old boots. His hands are empty.

  “When I was twelve, I became afraid.”

  He walks around the bed.

  “I was afraid of the whole world. I was afraid of the sun.”

  He stands by the side of the bed, looking down at Cross.

  “It was a terrible feeling. And it was very difficult to condition myself to feel otherwise.”

  He sits on the edge of the bed, picks up Cross’s iPad, looks at the document he’s been reading.

  “I see here that there has been some discussion about how best to hit Dharavi.”

  He flicks his finger across the screen.

  “I imagine commandos. A pinpoint attack on the reactor structure. An infinitely fast team of commandos who are able to kill everyone inside the reactor shed before any of the Naxalites can blow a hole in the side of the containment vessel. All of the commandos trained as nuclear engineers so that they are prepared to deal with a critical reactor if a breach occurs. All achieved while trained guerrilla fighters swarm the building from outside. Is it an op, or a scenario for a Hollywood pitch? Or both at the same time? Is it true that Kestrel has a new content division? Terrence would have been appalled.”

  He finds what he wants, stops flicking.

  “You have an incoming email. Large. There are several images attached. It will take a few moments.”

  He sets the iPad on the nightstand, puts his hand on Cross’s chest, and is silent for several seconds.

  He lifts his hand.

  “Your heart is very strong. Good.”

  A chime from the iPad.

  “There it is.”

  He hands Cross the iPad, taps the screen for him, flicks to the first of dozens of photographs.

  “I found these in Terrence’s files. It is a comprehensive collection of my work. End results of my maxim.”

  Cross’s hand moves, a spasmodic gesture, dragging each new image onto the screen, something he cannot seem to stop. Reflected in the lenses of his reading glasses, they look abstract, violently hued, chaotic. Shapes and colors not found in nature; not until nature is cut open and exposed to the light.

  Skinner takes the iPad from his hands, sets it aside.

  “I would like you to help me with something.”

  His hand slips inside his jacket.

  “I want to plant an idea.”

  It comes out with a #28 blade X-Acto knife.

  “I’d like for people to remember who I am. What I do. I’d like a simple and vivid thought to spread through your peers and confidants. Like contraction. Brilliant because it is so simple. Terrence was brilliant. And so are you. Quick to grasp the possibilities. Opportunities.”

  He takes Cross’s eyeglasses from his face and rests them on the pillow next to his head.

  “I find emotions difficult. Especially the strongest ones. Terror. Rage. I struggle with them.”

  He places the tip of the curved blade at the inside corner of Cross’s right eye.

  “Love.”

  Cross is not blinking.

  “I am feeling all of those right now. And it is only with very practiced behaviors that I am controlling them. I will need to be very aware for the next little while so that I don’t lose that control.”

  He looks into Cross’s right eye, framed by the curve of razored steel.

  “The idea that I want to plant is that if anything happens to my asset, I will appear. And I will do things to you.”

  It is a startling thing, to have your eye cut from your face, somewhere through the pain to feel it dangling against your cheek, and still, in the midst of this, to be unable to move or to scream. To be engulfed in a horror so deep and absolute that you would gladly die now for it to end.

  With his remaining eye gaping, expecting the blade, Cross watches as Skinner wipes the X-Acto clean on a wad of tissues from the bedside box, before balling them to stanch the flow of blood from the empty eye socket.

  “My asset is a child living in the Independent City-State of Dharavi. You must consider it, therefore, in your own best interests to protect the ICSD. However you want to go about that. Slow them down, Cross. Speak against action. Think about the child. So easy for him to get hurt if there’s a raid. So easy for him to become a victim if the Indian government refuses to allow food aid and medical supplies into Dharavi. Do your best to help. And if nothing else works. Think about me.”

  He leans close to Cross’s ear.

  “It’s a meme. The Skinner Meme. A potent and mutable idea. All you have to do is think it, and your imagination will do the rest.”

  He switches off the lamp.

  “Goodnight.”

  Outside the house, Skinner feels the eyes in the night sky, searching the world, looking for secrets and fears. He turns his face to them then, and smiles, so that anyone peering close will see him and know that monsters still haunt the globe.

  Then the screaming starts, and Skinner disappears.

  EPILOGUES

  SHE SPENDS MUCH of her time in the hut with Raj and the other kids. Minding the screens, searching the information. The ICSD is a constantly trending topic. There
are independent city-states popping up around the world. Independent City-State of Mexico City, ICS Bronx, ICS Georgia, ICS Alabama, ICS Mogadishu, ICS Tiananmen Square, ICS Melbourne, ICS Stockholm. Mostly they are no more than a public park or a city block, and none has a reactor. It is being called the ICS Movement. There have been protests on both sides. Riots. Deaths. T-shirts. Songs. YouTube videos in support and condemnation. Here, they receive thousands of daily requests to emigrate, and as many threats of destruction by bomb, gun, germs, and/or various gods.

  Sometimes she takes her father’s knowledge into #1 Shed and helps with the work there. The work has no end. It is a race. Even if most of the people in the street don’t know it, their days are numbered. But the new foundation has been poured, and they have reason to believe it will be strong enough to handle the torque of the generator when it begins to spin. The cooling tank is more difficult, and the towers. They have the advantage of no regulations or bureaucracy. One imperative, Does it work? Sadly, the Emerson software is another problem. The product itself is fine, but their computers are underpowered and can’t run it properly. One of the electricity goons has found a breach in the army’s perimeter. A captain who is very open to the possibility of bribes. If all goes well, some young men who used to work as IT wallahs in Bandra will go out tonight and buy what is needed and bring it back inside. After that they might go out again and start finding materials she needs to start building her robots, a nest of spiders that she can set crawling along the perimeter.

  Her leg hurts. She takes Tylenol. Or something labeled as Tylenol. That is what is available. It does little to help the pain.

  She talks to Cross. She called him on her cell the first night, after Skinner left, told him that she’d seen the reactor. Told him it was real. Leverage to restrain any sudden preemptive attacks. They established an online contact protocol. Skype calls routed through the encoded Tor network. Anonymous communications like these are the best they can manage without scrambler technology on her end. They used the channel to communicate regularly in the first forty-eight hours. Feeding him disinformation along with just enough fact to give him the appearance of remarkable prescience as the community struggled to explain how they had missed something this big, and what they planned to do about it now. She knows Cross is far too smart to swallow everything she’s told him, but uncertainty is the only real tool at her disposal. She told the lies and did what she could to get the ICSD through the first few days. Then something happened to Cross. She knows it was Skinner, but she doesn’t ask what he did. Now she doesn’t have to lie to get Cross’s help. Now when Cross calls, it is usually at a very late hour in Maryland or DC or wherever his campaign to restrain action against the ICSD has taken him. He asks if he is safe, sometimes whispering; asking her, on one occasion, what he would see if he turned on the light. Am I safe, Jae?

  Yes, she tells him, you’re safe. And then she tells him what to do to remain safe.

  But mostly she is with the kids, in the hut.

  In the ICSD she has found the unpredictable edge of things. What will happen next? No one can say. There is no configuration, not here. Events have no precedent. Here is where the future is being manufactured; right next to tanneries and potting sheds and plastic recycling and open sewers. And there is a peace in it, not trying to find what comes next.

  Until she is in front of the computers.

  There she watches the feeds and the streams and the posts and the bulletins and reports, retweets and blogs and the digital walls. If they decide to come, this is where the signs will first appear. She will be the one to see it. If they discover the secret, that the reactor is not a danger at all, not yet, their relief and pique will show here, if only a moment before the guns come. And even after the reactor is online, if they can last these next few weeks, the guns will be looking for ways to come after them.

  An affront has been offered.

  They will not bear the insult, not if they have a choice.

  Yet there have been some changes. Quantifiable reductions in the use of the term contraction. It seems to be a preparation for something. She suspects that Smith is getting ready to release the trove of Terrence’s documents they sent to him from De Gaulle. They have their own darknet protocol, but Smith refuses almost entirely to use it. She knows that Skinner has been in contact with him as well. Smith did something for Skinner. Signals work, sent information to Cross. But Smith won’t talk details. He just leaks documents from Terrence’s trove. A trickle of incrimination so far; he’s preparing to release the deluge. He remembers the burning body, men killed with the gun he made. Now he fires his own shots from the shadows.

  So she works in the shed and she walks the streets and alleys and feels something easing in her head when she does. Disaster World is not the inevitability she saw at the end of every configuration. Not anymore. This may not last, but for now she can see a future with lives to save instead of bodies to dig from the troubled ground. Then she goes to the communications center in Raj’s home, and she looks for the configuration of threat that means the world is coming to kill them after all.

  And in between she looks at pictures. She waits for the most current Street Views on Google. She presses Cross and Smith for satellite imagery from obscure corners, on thin pretexts. She plunders photo-sharing services. Scanning crowds. Airports, a special interest. Looking for a tiny configuration. Defined by a single face. Looking for a sign of him.

  Half hoping for danger here, to bring him back.

  His father is always in #1 Shed.

  And he is almost always in the media center. Even when he sleeps he is here. The other kids come and go, but he is here. At his computer. On the wall is the bloodstain.

  His mom shot a man in the face there.

  That thought will be his for the rest of his life. New world. Where Mom shoots a man in the face. Where he works all day and into the night, staring at the screens. Where Father never comes home. Where the army will let no one out of the slum.

  David’s family tried to leave. Fear ate them and they tried to leave. David’s father came back alone. The army got David and his mom and his brothers and sisters. David’s father ran. Now he drinks all day. Ashamed. No one knows what the army is doing with the people who try to leave. The TV says they are in a special camp. They have to stay there while the government decides who is a citizen and who is a terrorist. It looks like a refugee camp on the TV, but with big temporary buildings that look like jails; all of them say KESTREL on the roof.

  Chiman has died.

  His sister was alone at home in the morning while the rest of the family worked. Chiman came home for his cricket bat and found a young man from the neighborhood raping his sister. He had been doing it for years, but out of fear she had told no one. Chiman hit him with his cricket bat and the man took it from him and hit him in the head and Chiman died. The sister screamed and neighbors came and the man ran to the edge of the slum and the army got him and probably took him to the camp. Chiman’s sister left the same night and also was taken by the army. She was ashamed that everyone knew what had been happening to her. So not everything has changed in Dharavi; these things are still happening.

  Shitty people.

  Raj does not like these shitty people.

  But he does like Rani. And she likes him. She says she does. And they are tweeting with Kalki! Two days after Independence, she answered their question. I have not come to Dharavi. But I want to see the ICSD. And they talked for a very long time about how to answer and decided to invite her, when it was safer for her to come, and she could have dinner in their homes. And she answered again! Now she tells them to be careful. And asks how they are. Kalki! Jae says it could be someone else. Like when the man pretended to be Skinner and came to their home and his mom had to shoot him. But Raj and Rani don’t believe it. And even if it is someone else, they don’t tell her anything important. And it feels good to believe in this, even if it is a lie.

  His friends are in the room with him,
and his mom is making lunch to take to his father. His sister is on the cot getting ready to cry because she is tired and hungry. The ball is under his table, next to his feet.

  There is no time for the ball now. But soon there will be. Work a little harder for a little longer and there will be time for them all to play soon.

  Soon.

  Maybe soon.

  They didn’t think he could last.

  His pale skin would burn in the sun. His soft hands would be torn by the steel. His body, too big, would not bear the diet. Every mouthful must be wrung out, no energy wasted. His body when he came was an engine of waste. Required too much fuel. No. He couldn’t last.

  What the hell is he doing here anyway?

  They were right. He could not last. He was burned. His hands tore. His body collapsed as he worked in the sun dragging sheets of rusted steel through the clutching wet sand. Then he got up. And dragged until he fell again. And again.

  Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

  After months of it, the breakers can barely tell him from themselves.

  On the polluted beaches of Chittagong, Bangladesh, where they drag the carcasses of dead ships to be riven for scrap, he has turned dark under the sun and his hands have become calluses and his body has stripped itself of all excess until his skin wraps bone and muscle and sinew like a withered hide.

  He sleeps with them in the camp, taking a shift on a cot that he rents with five others. Four hours’ sleep in rotations. There was a fight one night about whose turn it was, and when a drunken man threatened him with a knife he took the knife away from him and then put the drunk into the cot to sleep and threw the knife into the oil-scummed water of the bay.

  Someone says he is a soldier who has renounced the wars.

  Someone says he is a priest who made a woman pregnant.

  Someone says he killed his brother and ran in shame.