The Complete Karma Trilogy (41 page)

“We’re both practical people,” Karma said. “Don’t think that I’m unreasonable. We’ve made good progress, in these past few hours. And these humans can’t hide forever—at some point, they will have to go into the world, to eat, to sleep, to live. And when they do, we will see them, and we will take care of them then.”

“That’s a deal,” Will said.

Decay 16

No Privacy

Charles woke up
in the City Park, morning light around him, surprised to be alive. As uncomfortable as it had been, he had slept under a bush, hoping that no one would spot him and that he didn’t snore too loud. He had started the night out on one of the park benches, but realized that if anyone at all were to see him, then that would be enough to give him away. Other than being slightly colder than he would have preferred, his health was entirely robust.

“I just have to make it to the station in time,” he thought to himself. It almost didn’t even matter if he was seen anymore, just as long as he made it to his destination. Silently he let the time pass by, the adrenaline in his veins making his empty stomach feel sick. People walked past, he could hear their idle conversation, but no one noticed him.

As soon as he resolved to leave as discreetly as he could, a young couple sat down on a bench ten feet away from where he was, facing him. He didn’t think there was any danger of being spotted if he stayed still, but it committed him to an indefinite amount of time waiting under a bush, since he couldn’t leave without making a scene. So he lay there and listened.

The young man was saying, “I don’t see what the problem is. I don’t care if anyone else sees. I don’t care if everyone sees, everyone we know. They’re all in the same situation, and they know that we do it. If you let this affect you, then how are we ever going to get past this? What if it never changes back?”

They were both mad. The man carried all of his frustration in his eyes, the girl pouted cutely, childishly. She wouldn’t look him directly in the eyes as he spoke to her, as much as he kept trying to visually position himself in front of her as they sat next to each other on the bench.

She said, “We can wait. We can at least wait longer than we have. If they were going to take down the Privacy Rooms forever, they would have said so in the newspaper. They’re just having technical difficulties. When they fix them, they’ll tell us all it was just a glitch in the system, and that everything’s good again. We’ll wait until then.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said. “They didn’t ‘accidentally’ turn off every Privacy Room in the entire world. They’re intentionally invading our privacy. Now we have two options, we either stop doing anything private and embarrassing ever, or we redefine privacy and move on, me and you. I think it’s obvious that it should be the second. You’re not going to stop going to the bathroom, just because there aren’t any Privacy Rooms, are you?”

“I haven’t, ever since I found out that they’re gone.”

“Are you serious? What if this lasts even just as long as a week? You’re going to hold it that long?”

“If I don’t, then any one of those police, or Government officials, can pull up my file, if they feel like it, and watch me go to the bathroom. I don’t think it’s unreasonable that it bothers me, and I just need you to agree with me.”

“But us. That does not mean that we have to stop. We can turn all the lights off, put on some music, put bags over our head, and they’ll never know what’s going on. For all they know, we’re having a strange party. And we will be. Work with me on this. And if they figure it out, who cares.”

“My parents don’t know we’re doing it yet,” she said.

“And which one of your parents is a Government official, again? Because I forgot.”

“Adam…”

Charles took pity on their situation, since it was partially his fault anyway, but he was really in a hurry, and they didn’t seem like they intended to move anytime soon. So he dug out an Evaporation Pen from his breast pocket, set the range to ten feet, and Evaporated them both in one shot. Then he awkwardly climbed out of the bush, and walked quickly towards the subway station, looking to his left and right to make sure that he hadn’t drawn any attention to himself.

Sixty kilometers away from where Charles was, the group of monks that had spent the night in an abandoned subway station was on the move. Vincent waited for the 11:20 train to go by, and when it did he had everyone pick up all of the supplies and run along behind it, as fast as they could manage with the burden they carried. They had twenty minutes to run about five kilometers, if they didn’t want to be struck from behind, and the conditions weren’t in their favor.

“I don’t know which part of this plan I’ve always hated most,” Vincent said to no one in particular as he ran. “The potential for the Monastery to be destroyed—and surely, it’s destroyed by now—the fact that we’re all going to die by the end of it, or the five kilometer run we’ve got to do right now. But of course it’s all got to happen anyway. Charles wouldn’t have it any other way.”

A man running next to him, panting heavily and awkwardly nesting a box on top of his head, corrected Vincent. “Brother Charles. Brother Charles wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Do you even know what the plan is, dude? Because I’m pretty sure that I’m the only one that does, and I’m telling you that it sucks.”

“Brother Charles knows what’s best,” the monk said. “I don’t need to know the details.”

The simple faith of the man bothered Vincent. He had always felt the same way, that Charles probably did know best, and that it was best if he just quietly obeyed, but he had always been ashamed of that relationship, and for some reason it bothered him to hear the same logic from someone else.

“Is he really that charismatic?” Vincent thought to himself. They had met in a bar, Vincent and Charles, before the Order ever existed, and Vincent had listened to the man for hours, going on and on in an eccentric way about his ideals, and his plans for improving the human race. That was how Charles had described it—the entire human race. That was the smallest concern that the man was capable of. He didn’t want to just help his family, his friends, his neighbor, not even himself. He had always talked about everyone or no one at all, and still did.

“If I spend my whole life on one Good Work, improving the life of everybody all at once, I’ll never be rewarded for it. That’s a fault in the system,” Charles had said. “For some reason it was assumed by the people that made Karma that every worthwhile, valuable Good Work could be accomplished in less than five minutes. It literally does not consider anything that takes longer than that—I’ve looked at the code, and I’ve got a reasonable understanding of computer science to back me up.

“Five minutes. I want to do something far greater than five minutes can contain, but I’m not going to expect anything in return. Does that interest you? Do you know what I’m saying? Vincent?”

And for whatever reason, Vincent had agreed, had been entranced by the ideal. But, after running for a little over two kilometers, his thoughts were stagnating in his oxygen deprived brain, ideals meant nothing to him, and he wondered with what wonder he had left what he had ever been thinking.

He kept running anyway. He realized at four kilometers, with a train audibly catching up to them from behind, that he still had yet to explain the next portion of the plan to anyone. He hated everything. “Everyone!” he yelled, and coughed mucus. “We get to station. We get out of way of hit. We get on train.”

There were some people lagging behind the main group, but for the most part it looked like they would make it, to Vincent. He was glad to see that everyone was still carrying their boxes. Unknown to everyone but him, they had brought five copies of everything they needed, just in case eighty percent of them were killed or gave up.

The station opened up in front of them. Some people dropped their boxes and fell to the ground panting, still on the tracks. “You idiot!” Vincent yelled. “Did you hear me? Do you hear that? Get the hell up.”

Bystanders waiting for the approaching subway looked down at them in confusion. Vincent pulled himself up onto the platform, then helped both people and boxes to be transferred up. When he was confident that he had established a system they would follow, he turned to address the crowd of people around him that were not monks.

He was still out of breath, but managed to say, so that everyone could hear, “You will not be getting on this subway, any of you. We’re taking it. I suggest you all leave right now.”

A burly man carrying a suitcase disagreed with Vincent. He said, “I need to get on that subway.”

“You don’t need to do anything, except get out of here if you want to live.”

That upset the man, who didn’t appreciate the threat, and he started approaching Vincent, intending to hit him. Before he made it very far, Vincent Evaporated him. “Anyone else?” Vincent yelled. The station cleared of people just as the subway arrived. He made the same threats to all of the passengers onboard, and loaded everyone and everything they had onto it, in the forty-five seconds before the doors closed and the subway continued along its route.

“What happens next?” One of the monks asked him, as they all sat down and caught their breath.

“We still have two transfers to make,” Vincent said. “This subway doesn’t go where we’re going.”

“That’s not going to be easy,” the monk said.

“I know. Everyone get their Evaporation Pens out, right now. Expect company.”

Charles waited with a group of people for the subway to show up. The closer it came to arriving, the less cautious he was about hiding his identity from the people around him. If his monks were not on their way, then it was meaningless whether he was discovered or not.

Two minutes before the arrival of the subway, which was always prompt, a large group of police officers joined the crowd that was forming near the platform. After looking at their Karma Maps and Cards for a brief moment, they began telling everyone to leave, while they started to set up explosives that they had brought with them. Because Charles knew that he had no other option, with a minute to spare he began Evaporating every police officer that he could see.

It wasn’t terribly hard for him to take care of all of them. Their range was five feet, his was limited only by physics. He backed himself against a wall, to make sure he wasn’t caught from behind, and shot anything that moved. The few bystanders that were slow to follow orders finally left, screaming.

And finally the subway arrived, which he was pleased to find full of monks. He waved at them as the doors opened, and Vincent yelled at a few of the monks that were aiming their Pens at him in anticipation. “That’s one of ours. Let him on.”

On the train, Charles sat next to Vincent. Across the aisle from both of them was sitting Jackson.

“Good to see you alive, Brother Jackson,” Charles said.

“The same to you, Brother Charles. It was crazy there, back at the Park. If I didn’t bring an Evaporation Pen with me, I wouldn’t have made it.”

Charles hadn’t given any of his monks an Evaporation Pen, even his ghosts, because he didn’t trust them enough. He had made a cost-benefit analysis, and decided it was better for a monk to die in an unpleasant, potentially avoidable situation than to give away their martial capabilities. At least until the very last stage of the plan, when it didn’t matter anymore. So he didn’t know where Jackson got a Pen, but he recognized that there was no point in chastising his ghost. “I know it was crazy, and I’m sorry. Brother Vincent, do we have everything?”

“In triplicate,” Vincent said. “More than triplicate. And we really haven’t run into too many problems. All of the police must be out there taking care of the Rehabilitation clinic rebellions, like you planned. I haven’t seen any.”

“They’re still around. I don’t know if you could tell at that last stop, but I Evaporated a whole group of them. Don’t let your guard down. What’s up with that guy down there? He’s bleeding out of his ear.” Charles indicated Damon, who was sitting with a Pen in his hand, staring blankly in front of him.

“Oh, he’s new, Brother Charles,” a monk sitting next to Damon said.

“Of course,” Charles said, not quite understanding.

Since they only had one more stop before Karma Tower, Charles decided it was a good time to tell his plan in full to his Order, as they sped along ahead. “You’ve all been carrying a few things I would like to explain,” Charles said. “Some of those boxes are explosives, but the more important boxes are a really large Privacy Room that we’ve been working on for a while. My ghosts—which I see at least some of you made it,” he said, acknowledging Jackson in particular, “they’re going to take four of the corners, up to the top of Karma Tower. The rest of you are going to take the four bottom corners, and some of you are going to guard them while the rest of you join me in the Tower.

“Brother Vincent will divide the duties out here in the next few minutes, I just wanted to give you an overview. It’s very important that the Privacy Room is set up, and protected. Police officers may come to try to break them, if they’re on to our plan. Police officers will probably try to come and kill you, whether they’re on to our plan or not.

“I want to thank you for coming this far. This is nearly it. In less than thirty minutes, we’ll either be complete failures or champions of justice, but either way I’m glad that we tried. It’s more than most have done. And it’s been an honor, being a brother to you all. It’s more than just a word we use—I hope you’ve all found that to be true.

“Forget about probability, actually. Forget about failure. We’re going to destroy Karma.”