Kingdom (22 page)

Lurching upright from the dilapidated motel bed and onto his knees, Campbell reached into the middle of the symbol and tore away the envelope, leaving the bare nail firmly ensconced in the cracked plaster. Inside the singed envelope was a stack of paper an inch thick: It was the research Morrison had given him. There was also a makeshift cover page, informing Campbell not to leave the room unless absolutely necessary.

Campbell collapsed back onto the broken bed, wondering about the strange silver cell phone resting on the nightstand next to him, the collection
of papers tumbling to the floor next to the bed as the alcohol and pills washed over him in a great neurological tidal wave while outside his window the chopper continued to hunt its prey, the entire city laid out before it, endless and terrible.

Project Exodus Memorandum # 99-081-3382-x

Re: Mneme Group Status Report

Summary:

Ten years ago, the Mneme Group was formed to address one of Project Exodus’ greatest challenges: human memory. Early on in the Exodus process, it was decided that adult males, not infants, would be the most efficient means of meeting the Project’s primary goal
—
genetically engineering a new breed of American leader. As has been noted in various Exodus-related studies, even the strongest gene pool can be undermined by socio-environmental factors. Many negative adult tendencies are the result of negative childhood experiences and are capable of undermining even the most powerful of genetic codes
.

In order to maximize the likelihood that the Project will succeed, the Exodus team must be capable of not only producing a genetically optimized human being, but a fully developed adult male with 18 to 20 years of artificial memory. These memories, however, must be the product of rigorous study and evaluation: Simply simulating a childhood, although necessarily part of the Project, is insufficient. Therefore the Mneme Group has worked to develop not only the method of simulating and then implanting human memory, but to also devise a series of artificial experiences that, when pieced together to form the product’s “memory,” will provide a psychological profile that will not undermine, but actually enhance, the product’s genetic perfection
.

In order to meet these objectives, Mneme worked along with the Project’s human genome team to isolate the areas of the brain where “memories” are stored. It is important to note that, unlike a computer, the brain does not store all memories in a single location. Rather, the several components of the brain all contribute to the creation of long-term memory. Mneme was able to break the concept of “long-term memory” down into several subsections and, in turn, isolate the sections of the brain responsible for each section, a process aided by Exodus’ groundbreaking work on the human genome
.

By determining which sections of the brain were responsible for storing and accessing long-term memories, Mneme was able to produce a series of memories, which were then uploaded directly into the Exodus subjects. By relying on focus-group feedback, as well as input (presented as hypothetical scenarios) from leading psychologists and childhood development researchers, the Mneme Group was able to create a series of memories that would allow the Exodus subjects psychological and emotional profiles to match their tremendous physical capabilities
.

Due to computational and logistical limitations, however, the subjects were unable to be fitted with concrete memories. Rather, the memories uploaded were vague and impressionistic; the subject is left with a series of images and associations that, when considered as a whole, seem (to the subject) to form a cohesive, extremely positive narration
—
one that, with the aid of modern media such as television and cinema, will come to resemble an American childhood. The images the subject draws upon will bear enough similarity to modern media archetypes that the subject will subconsciously begin to associate these popular culture images with those already uploaded into his memory banks, each reinforcing the other until Mneme’s inability to create a complete narrative is neutralized. Furthermore, this process will be aided by the subject’s own need to have some sort of “growing up” narrative; this need, combined with the sheer implausibility that an individual might not have such a narrative, will spark the Exodus subject to fill in any remaining gaps with an internally constructed narrative substitution
.

Conclusion

There has been a great deal of internal debate regarding the childhood/family background narrative being created for Exodus product Robert Fitzgerald. For obvious reasons, Fitzgerald’s family must be both unknown and transient
—
creating a “Kennedy-esque” family history is unnecessarily complex. Therefore, it is proposed that Fitzgerald be presented to the public as the ultimate rags-to-riches story; a self-made man whose parents died when he was young, and who has no extended family. Specific physical reminders, ranging from personal mementos to public records, will be in place to support the narratives created and implanted by the Mneme Group
.

Tiber City
Sept. 4, 2015
11:12 a.m.

T
he languid sky hung heavy overhead, pressing down on the mourners gathered for Elizabeth Fitzgerald’s funeral. Dylan, dressed in a dark suit, sat in a chair a few feet from the newly dug grave, staring into the earth. It had been drizzling all morning and despite the crowd, the cemetery felt enormous and empty: Everything was washed out and fucked up—no colors, just variations of gray and black. Every now and again, the harsh cry of a crow would echo across the cemetery, its tidings of hunger, remorse, regret reverberating through Dylan’s skull. He shut his eyes tight, trying to focus on the priest’s eulogy for his mother, on Meghan’s hand pressed into his.

Four days ago, after overdosing at an End of the World party, he had woken up in Meghan’s apartment. Details were vague and the Internet was roiling with rumors, forcing his spotty, hazy recollection to compete with blogger bravado. This much was clear: The coke had been cut—maybe with a methamphetamine but there were also whispers of new strains of coke turning up on the streets, powerful designer models black market chemists came up with to counter the stream of stepped on baby-powder laxative shit
coming in from Mexico. Maybe the whole situation was some enterprising dealer’s decision to circulate a new strain at a party filled with Tiber City’s wealthiest reprobates—a misguided attempt at product placement.

But whatever the cause, Dylan had managed to leave Meghan enough voice mails that she arrived at the party just as Chase and Mikey were dragging him, bleeding and unconscious, through an alleyway and into a cab. It remained unclear whether his friends were planning on accompanying him to the hospital or just tossing a wad of cash at the driver: Dylan’s breathing had grown shallow and concerns over liability, potential police involvement, and drama over who would appear on which cable news show loomed large. So Meghan had intervened, taking Dylan back to her place where she forced several benzodiazepines down his throat, reducing the strain on his cardiovascular system. He passed out and slept for two days, his dreams formless and terrifying. When he finally woke up, Meghan told him the news: His mother was dead.

As his mother’s casket was lowered into the raw earth, the steel chains that held it creaked and groaned against the strange warm air washing down from the hills, suffocating the city. The priest’s words were hollow and empty, swept away by the wind as soon as they left his mouth. He made all the proper incantations, all the prescribed gestures and facial expressions and yet there was nothing. The eulogy was sheer self-indulgence, polished and pretty, and most of all, sound-bite ready. A pang of disgust shot up Dylan’s spine, eluding the numbing effect of the two tranquilizers he had choked down immediately upon waking that morning and realizing that before he was 25 he would have buried both his mother and his father.

The priest was saying “ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” and then his mother was in the earth and everyone was throwing flowers on the casket, filing past him, hugging him, touching him, telling him, “I’m so sorry.”

Suicide: That was the official explanation.

His final visit: That was the insinuated motivation.

Bullshit, Dylan pronounced. He didn’t buy suicide. Accidental OD? Maybe. Hospital fuck-up? Likely. But it didn’t matter; she was dead and all other details were irrelevant. Lawyers and accountants were circling and the process would take on a life of its own: immortality through litigation.

“Let’s go for a walk,” he whispered to Meghan. She nodded and they began moving away from the plot, away from the crowd, weaving their way through the headstones together, his shoes and her heels—designed for
boardrooms and ballrooms, not burial grounds—leaving imprints in the dead grass.

Dylan blinked and there were only sunspots and the distant, artificial supernovas of flash photography. Scanning the headstones, the gaudy mausoleums, he wondered about the plot’s occupants, trying to reconstruct an entire life from the few sentences and dates that marked the graves. Dead grass. Dead men. Raw. Rotting. Lifeless. He stared at a marker for a child who never made it to his second birthday and the desperation in the raven’s cry was immediate and unbearable and Dylan felt as though he could not go one step further, that he literally could not lift his left foot and place it in front of his right foot. He stopped.

He and Meghan were in the middle of the cemetery now, surrounded by massive stone testaments to the dead. The trees grew hunched, as though the weight of the sky was too great, and even through the low-hanging branches and pale, limp foliage, the city was visible: No matter which direction Dylan turned, the Tiber City skyline tattooed the horizon. Claustrophobia washed over him in a terrible wave and he staggered back against a moss-covered statute of an angel with its hands folded in prayer. The rain continued, maddening in its languid yet relentless consistency and somewhere in the distance he could hear sirens—that grating shriek of emergency vehicles that seemed always to accompany rain. Even though her face was a mask of cool and control, he could feel Meghan starting to tense up next to him. She sighed softly, shivering even through the air was warm, damp, dead.

He needed to get out of the city. They needed to get out of the city.

“I need to show you something,” he said, turning toward Meghan, “something my mother gave to me the last time I visited her.”

Meghan was looking at him, waiting, expectant, her face wet from the rain, strands of her dark hair pressed flat against her forehead.

“No, not here,” he said. “We need to go back to my place.”

“What about all these people?” Meghan asked, gesturing across the cemetery, toward the gates.

Dylan glanced back at the play actors gathered below, all rehearsed in the language of grief—at the cluster of men and women gathered around the 3-by-7 trench where his mother would spend the rest of eternity, at the paparazzi waiting patiently by the gates, as though remaining
quiet
while snapping photographs of, and setting up live video feeds from, a funeral somehow demonstrated an appropriate level of respect and decorum.

“The last time I went to visit my mother,” he began, the back of his suit jacket flapping as another gust of wind whipped out of the north, not content to sneak under pant legs or collars but determined to penetrate all layers of fabric. “That last time, she wrote an address and a number on the back of a ‘Heffernan for President’ flyer. She also stuffed a key in my pocket, just before the guards placed her in restraints.”

“Where’s the address?”

“Near my family’s house on the shore. It’s probably just more crazy shit. But I dunno…I feel like I need to check it out. I could never help her in any other way, never reach her. And who knows—maybe it is meaningful after all…”

“And the number,” Meghan asked, shoving her hands into the pocket of her black lightweight blazer. “Was it like a phone number?”

“No: Just a bunch of random numbers. Normally I’d just forget it but, Meg, she seemed so certain. I mean, it’s almost like she knew that that night was her only chance to give this to me; like she had been waiting for the right moment and that was it.”

Standing in the middle of the cemetery that now held the bodies of both his mother and his father, Dylan looked up toward the heavens, remembering the times when his mother used to ask him what kind of shapes he saw in the clouds and he could remember shrieking with laughter as dinosaurs and dump trucks paraded past—absolute proof that the world was a place of wonder and possibility. But now, staring into the palette pressing down on the living and the dead alike, Dylan could only make out amorphous colorless clumps drifting through the smog without purpose or identity.

Most of the mourners had begun to leave, shaking their heads and whispering about Dylan’s troubles—some sympathetic, most with a wicked, hard-edged glee—departing in a line of expensive foreign luxury cars now snaking along the single road leading between the hills adorned with markers and monuments to the dead, variations in size and grandeur that belied the simple fact that under the well-manicured lawn the worms made no distinction when it was time to feed.

It was raining a little harder now and the priest, after casting one last look toward Dylan and Meghan shook his head before gesturing to the cemetery workers standing in the distance—there were schedules to keep, deadlines to meet—and then an engine was sputtering to life, the sound of back-hoes
and other earth-moving machinery stirring, echoing across the empty, sad afternoon—stage hands ready to clear the set.