Kill Switch (29 page)

“Maybe,” said Prospero. “Okay, context. As a society we call people like Charlie Manson evil. We call serial killers evil, and we call Hitler evil. But at the same time people use that word to describe everything from cancer to a natural disaster.”

“Okay, some of that I get,” said King. “People calling cancer evil is stupid.”

“It's imprecise,” corrected Prospero. “The word loses its meaning when it's applied to anything natural.”

“Okay, sure. So?”

“Go the next step. We use it to describe moral crimes.”

“Like mass murders.”

“Sure, like mass murders, but then you have to step back and look at the nature of morality. Killing a dozen people and cutting out their hearts is wrong because the current set of laws in America says it's wrong, right?”

King blinked in confusion and then got the point. He nodded.

“But go back through history and you'll understand where I'm going with this. Take ancient Egypt,” said Prospero, warming to his topic. “It was a common and accepted practice for the retainers of a pharaoh to be sacrificed in order for wealthy nobles and pharaohs to enjoy the same kind of lifestyle after death that they had during their lifetime.”

“Harsh,” said King. “But I get what you're saying. It was okay back then. Okay for the pharaohs, I mean. I don't think the staff was all that jazzed about it.”

“Probably not,” agreed Prospero, “but the culture did not take their opinions into consideration. What the rulers did was culturally acceptable and therefore not evil. Same thing for the Aztecs.”

“Yeah, those cats loved cutting hearts out. An Aztec? Shit, he'd cut out a heart just for shits and giggles. No big thing to them.”

“Not evil to them,” said Prospero, nodding. “Even though it's exactly the same action as other kinds of ritual killing.”

King took a hit and passed the joint back. “So … you're saying that serial killers aren't evil because they believe that what they're doing is correct as they see things?”

Prospero patted him on the thigh. “Yes. A lot of them are in their own headspace. For some it's damage from their upbringing, for some it's bad brain chemistry. Whatever. The point is that the act of killing is not evil to them.”

His friend was silent for a moment, looking deep into the shadows around them. In a quiet, almost cautious voice he said, “They still hide their crimes, though. They do a lot of stuff not to get caught. They know they're breaking laws.”

“Which only shows that they have cunning, and in some cases intelligence. They know that there are people around them who believe in an entirely different set of laws, or a different moral code, or even a different religious viewpoint. Knowing that, and understanding that these people feel that theirs is the only valid viewpoint and that they are willing to impose those rules and the accompanying punishment on anyone who doesn't share those views is common. That happens all the time. Salem witch trials. The way the Puritans persecuted the Quakers. The way whites treated the blacks—and still do. Persecution and violent enforcement of a self-created set of rules does not make the persecutors ‘good' any more than it accurately defines the rule breakers as evil. If it did, then the Founding Fathers would be considered ‘evil' because they violently rebelled against the rule and laws of England. But nobody here calls their killings ‘murders' and they don't label them as evil.”

“Where are you going with this, man, 'cause you're harshing my buzz.”

“First, I'm trying to establish that evil is not really a religious concept. It's entirely secular.”

“Why? Because religion is for shit? Because the whole ‘God' thing is total bullshit?”

“No,” said Prospero quickly. “I'm not saying that at all. We're not talking about the existence of God. Or gods. Or anything like that. We're talking about evil as a cultural concept. As I see it—and history supports this view—evil exists as a label used by one side in an unequal dispute over behavior.”

King smoked and thought about that. “What about Nazis?”

“If they'd won the war and conquered the world,” said Prospero, “the widely accepted belief—or at least the dominant social policy—would be that their actions—things like the Final Solution—were a means to an end, and that end was the unification of the world. They might even have ended war and future historians might have looked back on them with admiration.”

“They killed all those Jews and Polacks and Gypsies and shit.”

“Sure, but then they lost the war. The winners, the Allies, became the dominant social group, and in their view, the Nazis were evil. This isn't new. Rome was corrupt, but because there is more well-documented Roman history, the historians who wrote the history books talk about the ‘sack of Rome' as if it was an evil act by barbarians. You get where I'm coming from?”

“Sure,” said King. “But so what?”

“So,” said Prospero after a very long toke and an even longer withhold, “so why should we—the two of us—have to accept being the school's bad boys? Why do we have to accept being the black sheep of our families? Why do we have to feel guilty whenever we get caught doing things?” He paused, watching the smoke swirl and tangle like the tentacles of some amorphous sea creature. “And why do we have to feel that we're sick, or mentally imbalanced, or socially fractured just because the school therapists tell us we are?”

“Well, dude,” said King with a laugh, “let's face it—we're not normal. They busted me for setting cats on fire. I had to pretend I was sorry, but you know I'm not. And they don't get it that I like cats. I really do. I wouldn't burn them if I didn't. It felt so right. Hell, it was right. They're just too stupid to get it.”

Prospero turned to him, his face lit by the glowing coal of the joint. “That is exactly my point. It is right for you. It isn't evil for you. It's not even wrong for you. You understand what happens when something that's alive burns. You can see into that fire and you know.”

Leviticus King sat up and looked at him. He wasn't smiling anymore, and even the glaze in his eyes seemed to harden. “Yes.”

“When I tell you about the things I see in my dreams, you don't make fun of me.”

“Nope.”

“Why not?” asked Prospero.

“Because that's your stuff. It's in your head. It belongs to you.”

Prospero nodded. He wanted to hug King, but this wasn't that kind of moment. “You know what those things in my dreams tell me, right? You know what they want me to do. What I must do … right?”

“Yeah, man, I know.”

“If I did them … would you think I was wrong?”

King took a moment with that. Then, very carefully, said, “Not if you did it because it was right. For you, I mean.” Then he stopped, paused as if listening to a thought, and he smiled, too. “Oh. That's what you mean by all this good and evil shit. If you believe it, then it's not evil. Even if someone else thinks it is.”

Prospero gripped his friend's arm with both hands. “Yes!”

“Wait, wait,” said King quickly, “there's something else, isn't there? If you believe this stuff—”

“And I do,” swore Prospero. “You know that I do. I have to.”

“—then what your old man did … that was evil. He took the God Machine away from you. He—what's the word? Sinned? He sinned against your beliefs. And he made it worse by taking something from your, um, church, and selling it to the fucking Department of Defense. Shit. And he keeps you in here so you keep working on new stuff, and he knows that you have to because it's part of what you believe. That you have to keep working on the God Machine project.”

“Yes,” said Prospero.

“So he's exploiting you and pretty much pissing on your religion and waving his dick at your god. And he's doing it to make money. From your perspective that makes him evil as shit.”

“Yes.”

“And we both know he's leaning on Stark to make you keep working in the lab. He's turned you into a slave. That's some evil shit right there.”

“Yes,” said Prospero again.

King nodded. “Same goes for my dad when he beat the shit out of me after I torched my middle school. I was doing something important and he didn't see it. Or couldn't see it. Or whatever. He hurt me because he doesn't share the same perspective. He sinned against me.”

“Yes.”

“So, what we're saying here,” continued King, working through it slowly but definitely getting there, “is that they are sinners and by our personal standards they're evil.”

“Yes,” said Prospero once more. “And history shows that anyone has the right to create a new moral, societal, or religious code as long as they have the power to enforce it.”

“Which we don't have,” sighed King.

Prospero laughed. “That's because we've been in here rotting. It's because even we've half believed that we're the freaks and they're the righteous ones.”

“I'm not sure I ever really believed that.”

“Sure you did. So did I,” said Prospero. “If we truly believed all along that we had been sinned against and that whatever gods we each pray to empowered and sanctified us, and demanded of us that we assert our rights … then nothing would have stopped us from breaking out of here.”

“Dude,” said King, “this place is a military academy. They have armed guards. Soldiers. There's no way we'd ever get out of here without killing someone.”

He laughed as he said it. But the laughter faded when Prospero did not join in. After almost a full minute, Prospero Bell said, “And that is the next thing we have to talk about.”

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

SCRIPPS MEMORIAL HOSPITAL LA JOLLA

9888 GENESEE AVENUE

LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA

SEPTEMBER 6, 9:15
A.M.

I slept and the nightmares came back.

This time I was there in my hospital bed, feeling sick and strange, staring at the darkness on the other side of the room's single window. There were orange sodium vapor lights in the parking lot and they painted the undersides of a row of palm trees in Halloween colors. The palm fronds looked like the talons at the end of black arms.

It was an odd dream because it felt exactly like being awake, and I couldn't figure any way to tell if I actually was awake or if this was truly a dream. Ever since I'd been hit by the blast of air from that machine there seemed to be no way to pin certainty about anything to the wall.

When my door opened and Rudy Sanchez stepped into the room, I felt immediately relieved and reassured. If anyone could help me through this and guide me back to solid ground, it was Rudy. Stable, reliable, practical, wise Rudy.

He came over to the side of my bed and smiled down at me. He wore a summer-weight suit and a Jerry Garcia tie I'd bought him for his last birthday. He leaned on his walking stick, the silver wolf head newly polished and gleaming.

“Joe,” he said.

“Hey, Rude. I had a weird night,” I said. “I keep thinking I'm dreaming. It's freaking me out.”

Rudy raised his cane and laid the heavy silver head over one shoulder as he studied me. “Do you think you're dreaming now?”

“I … I thought I was. I mean, until you came in.”

“But now you believe you're awake?”

“God, I hope so.” I laughed. “I can't tell which way's up.”

He nodded. “That makes sense. It takes at least minimal intelligence to understand what's happening.”

I grinned. Rudy seldom makes jokes at my expense, but he got in a good one every once in a while.

“I am awake, though,” I asked him. “Right?”

He canted his head to one side, appraising me. “Do you know why things went wrong down at Gateway?”

“I—”

“It's because the Deacon sent the wrong man down there,” said Rudy. “He should have sent the best, but instead he sent you.”

“What—?”

“Instead he sent his pet thug.”

I sat up, frowning, not understanding what was happening here. “Hey … Rude … what the hell—?”

And Rudy Sanchez swung his cane at my head.

 

CHAPTER FORTY

SCRIPPS MEMORIAL HOSPITAL LA JOLLA

9888 GENESEE AVENUE

LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA

SEPTEMBER 6, 9:17
A.M.

He swung hard and fast but it was the surprise that nearly got me killed.

“Rudy—
no!
”

I flung a hand up to save my face, but I was slow and the heavy lump of silver punched into my hand and slammed it back against my face. He growled like a dog and whipped the cane back and chopped down again. I bashed it aside and rolled away from him as he tried for a third hit. The cane chunked into the pillow hard enough to make the bed jump, but this time I was out of range, rolling off the far side, dropping down, trying to land on my feet, failing, falling hard. His shoes clacked on the linoleum as he raced around the end of the bed. I grabbed the corner of the wheeled bedside table and shoved it toward him, jolting him so that his next swing missed, too. But it was a near thing. The cane whistled down past my ear and thumped against the edge of the mattress.

“Rudy!” I yelled. “Stop it. What the fuck are you doing?”

Rudy laughed. A brutal, vicious laugh. It was his face, his voice, but that laugh did not belong to my friend. And it occurred to me that his accent was wrong. American without the cultured edge of the Mexico City in which he was raised.

“You're a piece of shit, Ledger,” he said, spitting the words as he fought to push the cart out of the way so he could get to me.

I was so weak, so clumsy, that I couldn't rise to fight him. My knees wouldn't hold me and I collapsed down as I tried to rise, but I used the momentum of that to kick out and ram the table into his thighs. He staggered back and then grabbed at the lip of the table to wrench it out of his way.