The Celestial Instructi0n (10 page)

Dominion Cassandra Jones, Esq. stayed to attend to
the chapter-room after the three executives left. It was not the first such
duty in her staff career.

After changing back from their silken vulnerability
into their business attire, Triax Wu left by roof helicopter; Xi left by a
doorman-hailed taxi on the west side of 666, and Qi left on 34th St, walking
east to the heliport. Qi was in shock, his gut in turmoil. “Or taste not the
Pierian spring,” he said to the air.

Sam Lion-McNamara, his bare feet sticking out under
the cardboard he had drawn over himself dreamed about becoming an adult. For
him that meant an almost magical transformation from go-boy to chief. Power to
say what he would do and when he would do it. But, rationally, the men around
him even so had to follows orders whether from bosses on the docks or, if
homebound, their market momma wives assembling the baskets of vegetables and
miscellaneous gleanings and handwork that she would display on Kroo Town Road.

Sam saw the red shadows of the flickering lights of
the router/switch on the ceiling. That was good—just as the sprays of water and
puddles around the town proved that the water was running today, the flickering
proved that both the power was on and that the connection to the telephone
company was sound.

The sun was already throwing sharp shadows on the
curb outside the café. Soon, glum Milton Kono, the skeletal manager would
unlock the plank and corrugated iron door with its ancient warded key lock and
mount himself on his stool inside the metal cashier’s cage at one corner of the
first floor. He would sharpen a pencil stub with his teeth, sucking and
spinning the stub in his mouth until he could make the necessary marks on the
time and receipt sheets stamped on lined notebook paper. He would say “Shoo!
Shoo!” to Sam to get him up and moving among the computers. Later, Anna would
stop by with her giant thermos of groundnut stew and handfuls of groundnuts
that she would twist into paper to sell as snacks to the customers. Anna had once
addressed Sam’s sex during a couple of minutes they had been alone among the
computers with a hot torrential rain outside drumming on the corrugated roof;
Sam enjoyed the fleeting release, but he could not stand the smell of her mouth
or even the short time away from his machines. Anna, too, placed no
significance to the act; it was simply a diversion from twisting the groundnuts
and shepherding the coins that she took back to her elderly mother at night. At
least she didn’t pretend anguish like the rent-girls outside.

Beyond maintaining the generator with oil and
fetching the yellowing jerry can to purchase the gasoline from the waiting boys
with their rubber hoses and rows of 50 liter casks lining the street outside, Sam’s
job included fetching the water for customers while they used the old computers
scattered haphazardly throughout the café. He also had to maintain the router
and switches, telephone using Milton Kono’s ancient mobile to nag the
technicians when the connection to Sierra Tel failed. He stayed well away from
Boss Farid when he would visit the café to take the money and to shout at
whomever he could.

Sam did not blame Cousin Siloi for the demand for Sam’s
money, or Sam’s beatings. It was the structure of survival in Freetown and the
tribe. In a world where there is no government to speak of, maximum untrammeled
free enterprise, private militias and threat of war, in exchange for the right
to survive under the protection of a relative was the obligation to give that
relative everything, even one’s life, if required. The notion that an
individual had personal rights of any kind was a white man’s notion for the
rich countries as France or Britain. Here, the Boss—whether crazy or criminal—was
the Boss. To run away from his cousin’s compound was disloyal not only to his
cousin but to family in the bush and to his entire tribe. Sam hoped that the
rackets that Cousin Robert was engaged in would consume his time, force him to
neglect, and eventually forget to punish Sam, if Sam could be found. But as
long as he stayed in Freetown Sam was at risk. The thousands of idle hands and
eyes that wandered through the city would surely notice him even as they
brushed the thirsty flies away from the corners of their eyes.

However, for Sam to leave Freetown was impossible.
Sierra Leone had been at civil war when the Trans-African optical cable was
laid twenty miles off the coast. Without a government to negotiate the terms,
no undersea cable fibrehead for the country had been agreed upon or built.
Other than the satellite dishes erected by the foreign NGOs to report their
good works to their benefactors at home, the entire country’s internet traffic
was routed through the ancient tiny bandwidth wired telephone system. In
Freetown, Sierra Tel failed several times a day. Often it was dead more than it
was alive. In the city of Bo it was worse. Worse still in Kenema, deep in the
bush. Even if Sam had a passport and money, he had heard that there was active
fighting in Liberia. And he couldn’t afford the Guinea bribes to overcome the
problem of his age.

So the Datatel Internet Café near Fisher Lane was
Sam’s new home. Of course, Sam could give up the Internet and carry a machete
like one of the Boss’ boys. He was wiry and thin and could be a thief who could
scale the walls topped with broken glass and quietly elude the sleepy guards
sharing a glowing cigarette in the warm night, noisy with insects. Machete boys
always got enough to eat and occasionally some loot of property stolen from a
body leaking stickiness for the wild dogs to lap up greedily.

But Sam would not leave the café. On the Internet,
he was a
Boss
. He chose where to go. He could hop over to Singapore,
Beijing, London, or Fort George Meade in Maryland, USA as easily as if he were
the light-footed Eshu, the messenger god that the drunken teacher from Lagos
had told him about. He had had answered questions on Internet Relay Chat from a
MIT student in the USA; he even was a moderator of a forum on setting up
virtual private nets within the Darknet anonymous networks. His co-moderators
had Master’s degrees, they were entrepreneurs, could visit a well-stocked
public library and go to MacDonald’s whenever they wanted to. He had an
anonymous data cache in Finland and Soda Hall in Berkeley, California and could
setup PayPal or Redbud accounts in whatever names for whatever purpose anytime
he wanted. Sam was the shit.

If it could be simulated with computers, he could
find it and use it. Sam had found a bank of Dialogue Simulators, which let him
write programs for Network and Internetwork Operating Systems. While the Aedes
aegypti waited patiently in the dark to give him Dengue fever, he set up an
imaginary continent with its “countries” outfitted with imaginary switches,
routers, server farms, and billions of virtual people randomly taking from or
adding to the flow of data.

Meanwhile in the real world, the coming of the
rainy season would flush the network of Freetown gutters and abate the smell
while it stormed. Online, through a graphical “heat map,” he watched his
virtual world interact. In his virtual world he could add a simulation of a
Cisco 12000 series router loaded with interfaces (Real World US$1000000) easier
than he could get a bag of peanuts (Real World Le 100) from the limping Anna.
He would not bother with reality at all if reality simply would leave him
alone. But it didn’t, as the thick bruises on his cheek reminded him.

So Sam had another dream beyond simply surviving to
mystical adulthood. It was to learn how to apply his Internet skills to the
material world. “Ouest” of the Hatz occasionally getting stolen merchandise
that wasn’t re-stolen in the international mail and finally stolen once more by
Cousin Robert was not enough. To cross over from virtual to real, from account
numbers with positive balances to real food, books and as much security as he
needed to enjoy his flight without wings, that was Sam’s dream. To share ideas
whenever he wanted with a professor in Boston or a cryptographer in Baltimore. Or
just a desk and chair and paper and pencils and quiet. Even if he lived only
the life expectancy of two score and ten years in a land of malaria, sleeping
sickness and sudden violence, that was more than his parents, more than his
brothers and sisters; that would be plenty.

Getting up for the day, Sam did not notice Cousin Siloi’s
two go-boys swinging their machetes in play as they entered Fisher Lane.

Joex ached in the morning. The hard plastic seating
cut off circulation after a few minutes no matter how he turned and twisted all
night. Although he was hungry, he had learned to ignore the hollow feeling in
his gut, and to gulp water when it got so noisy that strangers glanced at him.
But he had a big day today; he went to the toilet and washed his armpits and
thinning hair in the sink with the gritty powdered soap. He used his own shirt
for a towel, rinsed and wrung it out, and put it back on to dry. He stepped out
in the early morning and began the walk back to the Church. He, of course, had
no way of knowing that both Church staff directed by Principality Geedam in frenzied
deadly serious competition with staff under Throne Kingston were reviewing
surveillance internet-enabled footage of all airports, train stations and bus
stops in widening circles around Mad Landing; neither had gotten to the street
footage around Coos Bay, Oregon. Yet. They had no doubt that they would soon
have clear footage of Joex Baroco and exactly what he was doing.

One stop Joex made on the way was not to get some
breakfast with the little money he had left in his pocket; instead, he stopped
at a corner market to buy a small jar of rubber cement. Sitting on a bus stop
bench outside the store, Joex took his shoes off, generously brushed on several
coats of rubber cement on the fingers of his left hand and waited until they
were almost dry. He then pressed each finger and thumb of that hand into the
center of the corresponding toes of the corresponding foot. He inspected the fingertips
and repeated the process for his right hand. He let his fingers thoroughly dry
and carefully replaced his shoes. He continued to walk to the Church, arriving
just after eight in the morning.

Serena was at the desk when he arrived. Two young
men were mopping the long hall, their coveralls marked with a red “X” with the
upper right arm longer than the others; razor cut into the back of their
buzz-cut hair was a similar outline. They did not speak to each other as they
worked, dip, wring, slide. Serena wore a grey pinstripe blazer over a silk
camisole in a luminous blue that amplified her eyes into flickering blue
sparks.

“Jim, after consideration of your performance on
the Introduction, we do have work for you. It even includes room and board.
Most important for you, it includes training at the Church’s expense.” With a
perfect pause for tempo she continued. “There are conditions.” Serena stood and
guided Joex by the elbow into the scriptorium and into a seat by an empty Games
Machine terminal. After entering a few codes with a combination of touching a
screen keyboard and palm presses, she had “Jim” place both hands palm down on
the screen in indicated areas. “You won’t need to carry identification,” she
said, “everything you do on the Games Machine is journaled.” Joex was glad he
had taken the precaution with his fingerprints, although he had no idea if the
Church knew Joex Baroco’s prints. He certainly didn’t know that his DNA had
been collected the day before through the textured application fiche.

Just being within a thousand miles of the Crux was
teasing the animal that was trying to destroy him, but the waves of fear
swelled and receded echoing Joex’s own ambivalent sense of danger. Ten years ago,
he could not have endangered himself through brilliant aggression. It was as if
his gliding arc of self-destruction had also released him from the pinion of
self-preservation.

Joex began reading the text describing his
contract. The contract was between him and his successors and assigns, and if
need be, his estate. The contract was to be in force for 150 years corporeally
and unlimited length of time incorporeally. In exchange for suspending
imposition of the cost for room, board, spiritual succor and training on the Games
Machine, “Jim” had to agree that any Angel of higher rank could direct him in
any task whatsoever. All of “Jim’s” current and future possessions were hereby
irrevocably given and bequeathed to the Church. All work service and subsequent
product belonged to the Church. That if in the sole opinion of the Church “Jim”
required correction or penitential service, the Church could impose any that it
saw fit for any length of time, including excommunication and permanent designation
as a banished Fallen., or worse, Apostate. “Jim” might be assigned and moved to
any of the Church properties that the Church required. That “Jim” gave up all
right to visit, speak to, write, or otherwise communicate with anyone not
approved by the Church, specifically including family members, members of the
press or law enforcement, that the Church had irrevocable power of attorney for
both financial and medical purposes and for any other purpose the Church in its
sole opinion deemed beneficial to “Jim’s” spiritual advancement. “Jim”
understood that he may be monitored personally, by remote video and audio with
no expectation of privacy at any time, that all interaction with the Games Machine
may be permanently logged, and that all monitoring, counseling, investigation, or
communication of any kind between him and the Church was the exclusive property
of the Church to be used for any purpose whatsoever, including advertising,
penance, counseling, or in any case of legal process. All communications with
the Church, whether orally, written, by Games Machine or any other means was
deemed a trade secret and exempt from use in any legal proceeding, whether
sealed or not. Revealing any portion of these communications incurred
liquidated damages of Five Hundred Thousand Dollars in US currency per event
plus acquiescence to a permanent injunction under perpetual threat of contempt
of court.