Three Days in April (10 page)

“What can I getcha, hon?”

“Gin and tonic,” he says. “Not too much ice.”

She turns away to make his drink. Anders is eyeballing Mr. Chinos. How many beers has he downed by now? Four? Five? His sandwich is only half eaten. A drunken Anders is a punchy Anders, and a punchy Anders is an Anders that I have to take to the emergency room because he broke his own fibula.

“Hey,” I say. “You about ready to head home?”

Anders turns to me, one eyebrow raised.

“What? No. I haven't finished my sandwich yet.”

Charity brings Mr. Chinos his drink. He takes a sip, makes a sour face, and pushes it back across the bar.

“This is vodka,” he says. “I asked for gin.”

She shakes her head. “Sorry, hon. I'm pretty sure you asked for vodka.”

“No,” he says, a little louder. “I asked for gin.”

“Hey,” says Anders. “Do you want to think about maybe being less of a dick?”

Crap.

Mr. Chinos gets to his feet. The guys at the back table have turned to watch us.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “Is my drink order getting in the way of your blow job?”

Charity's jaw drops open. She picks up the drink, and splashes it all over Mr. Chinos' chinos. He leaps backward, bellowing something unintelligible.

“You know,” I say, “I think he did order a G and T.”

Nobody even glances at me. Anders is laughing as Mr. Chinos swipes at his pants.

“Stupid Pretty bitch,” he says, then looks up at Anders. “And fuck you too, jackass.”

I put a hand on Anders' shoulder, but he shrugs me off and stands.

“You need to go,” he says.

Neckbeard is back behind the bar now.

“Truth,” he says. “You need to go, sir. No charge for the drink.”

Mr. Chinos looks at Anders, then Neckbeard, then back at Anders. He's obviously trying to use psychic powers to make their heads explode, but it's not working for him. I imagine I can hear his teeth grinding together. After a few seconds that feel more like an hour, he kicks over a barstool and storms out the door.

“Well,” I say after a long, awkward silence. “That was super fun, but I'm pretty tired now. Anders, you ready to head out?”

Anders sits back down and picks up his sandwich. He takes a bite, chews, and swallows. He's about to take another when the door bangs open.

It's Mr. Chinos.

He's carrying a pistol.

He looks much less ridiculous with a gun in his hand. Neckbeard ducks behind the bar. Mr. Chinos takes three steps forward, raises his arm and takes aim at Charity, who's standing with her mouth hanging open and her arms at her sides.

Anders throws his sandwich.

It sort of comes apart in the air, but the ham and the bottom bun hit Mr. Chinos square in the face. He flinches as he pulls the trigger, and his shot goes into the ceiling over the bar.

It's at that point that I realize I've never actually seen Anders move at full speed. Mr. Chinos never gets off a second shot. Anders is on his feet with a beer glass in his hand before the report from the first one dies away. He takes two steps and throws, and the heavy glass explodes against Mr. Chinos' forehead like a bomb. Mr. Chinos goes over backward, and his head hits a table on the way down. The gun skitters across the floor.

“Holy shit,” says Charity.

I think for a minute that Mr. Chinos might be dead. Anders takes a cautious step toward him, and Neckbeard comes out from behind the bar. Mr. Chinos is not dead, though. He rolls onto his side, then scrambles to his feet, one hand holding the back of his head, the other groping for the gun that's no longer there. His face looks like it got shoved into a garbage disposal.

“Easy,” Anders says, but Mr. Chinos is not interested in easy. He backs two steps away, bumps into a table, and then turns and bolts for the door.

“Let him go,” says Neckbeard.

Anders turns on him.

“Are you kidding? He might be going to get his other gun.”

“He's not,” says Neckbeard. “He's going home to put a gallon of Bactine on his fucked-­up face. Let him go.”

Anders hesitates, then shakes his head and starts for the door. I look at Neckbeard, then at Charity. She raises one eyebrow. I scowl, and take off after Anders at a run. I come through the door just behind him, then smack into his back as he skids to a stop.

“Hey!” I say, but he's not paying attention to me. He's staring at something going on across the street. I lean around him, trying to get a look while keeping my important parts behind him. Mr. Chinos is over there, leaning back against a long, low red car. Someone is with him, a heavily built man dressed entirely in black. They're close together, almost as if they're talking—­but no, Mr. Chinos isn't talking. He's twitching. He's twitching, and the other man is holding something against the side of his neck.

As I watch, Mr. Chinos goes limp. His head lolls back, and he slides down until he's sitting on the pavement. The other man crouches beside him, leans in close. He puts whatever he'd been pressing to Mr. Chinos' throat into a pouch at his waist.

He looks quickly around.

He meets my eyes.

They're thirty feet away, but my ocular zooms in until I can see the pores on his face. He puts one finger to his lips, and slowly shakes his head. I nod. He stands, ignoring Anders, never taking his eyes from me. Mr. Chinos slumps to the side, then sprawls facedown in the street. The other man glances around once more, then turns and walks away.

I step out from behind Anders. He looks down, as if he's just noticing that I'm here.

“What the fuck just happened?” Anders whispers.

“Pretty sure Mr. Chinos just got terminated,” I say.

“Holy shit,” Anders says, a little louder. “Holy shit. That guy . . .”

“Yeah,” I say. “That was the guy who was looking for you on Sunday morning. That was Dimitri.”

Fenrir:

Sir Munchalot:

Fenrir:

Sir Munchalot:

Fenrir:

Fenrir links an audio file. I blink to stream. It's a man's voice, deep and gravelly, speaking over the sort of low, ominous musical background that you usually only hear in negative political ads:

“Fellow Americans, and fellow humans: the time that we have awaited with both dread and anticipation is upon us. Yesterday, an unknown hero struck the first blow in the holy war against those who would steal from us the one thing that is most precious: our humanity, and the humanity of our children.”

“For more than thirty years, the monsters in Bethesda have been turning humans into something less than human. For what is it that defines us as humans, if not our genome? We have been told that our genes differ from those of the chimpanzees by less than two percent. How much do they differ from those of a Pretty? Or one of the manufactured creatures that the wealthy now call their children? To call these things human is an insult to our species, and to the God who made us.

“Of course, this is not the first time that there have been two species of humanlike creatures on this world. In ages past we shared the Earth with
Homo erectus
, with the Denisovans, with the true Neanderthals. And how does it end when one species of human encounters another? History is clear. One species thrives. The other species dies.

“Friends, this same dynamic is playing out today. These pseudo-­humans have been growing in numbers, year over year. Today, they make up perhaps a tenth of our population. In another twenty years, they may be half of all Americans. Already they refer to true humans as ‘
Homo saps
.' How long until they decide that ‘
Homo sap
' is an obsolete species, no more deserving of a place in this world than
Homo erectus
?

“My friends, we, the UnAltered, will not stand by and watch as our species is driven from this world. Our ancestors earned our place on this planet. They paid the price for it in sweat and in blood, and we will not relinquish it without a fight. Rise up, friends, and fight the Altered wherever you find them. God willing, there will be more Hagerstowns. And when there are, the UnAltered will rise up with you, and we will prevent NatSec from striking down the true humans who emerge from them unscathed.

“These are terrible times, my friends, and in times like these, terrible things must sometimes be done. But make no mistake. This is our best chance—­our last chance—­to save our species from extinction. May God grant you courage, and may God grant you strength.”

Argyle Dragon:

Fenrir:

Argyle Dragon:

Sir Munchalot:

Hayley 9000:

Drew P. Wiener:

Argyle Dragon:

Sir Munchalot:

Argyle Dragon:

Fenrir:

Hayley 9000:

Argyle Dragon:

Hayley 9000:

Argyle Dragon:

Drew P. Wiener:

Sir Munchalot:

I
blink the text window closed. My chronometer reads 02:45:05. I sit up on the couch. My neck cracks as I arch my back and stretch.

“Hey,” Charity says. “You finally done with the porn?”

“Why does everybody say that?” I ask. ­“People do lots of things with their oculars that have nothing to do with porn, you know.”

She laughs.

“Do they? I thought the only reason ­people got those things implanted was so that they could indulge their perversions in private.”

“That may be true for some ­people,” I say, “but I use mine strictly for professional purposes.”

She laughs again. I think I like her laugh.

“Sorry about Anders,” I say. “I have no idea why he's being so unsociable.”

She shrugs.

“Whatever. I was planning on thanking him for saving my life and all, but . . .”

“Yeah,” I say. “Don't be offended. It's not about you.”

“What?” she says. “He's got a girlfriend?”

“Not exactly.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Closer. It's complicated.”

We sit in silence for a while. I'm just starting to drift when she says, “It's pretty late. Okay if I crash here?”

I sigh.

“You're not an outbreak monkey, are you?”

She smiles.

“Uh . . . no. I don't think so, anyway.”

“Then you're a big step up from my last set of boarders. Checkout is at eleven. Enjoy your stay.”

 

9. INTERLUDE

Greetings to my fellow UnAltered. My name is Denise Magliano. You have known me up until now as
Princess Blue.
If you are reading this message, it is because I failed to upload the code at either 09:00 or 21:00 that would have prevented it from being posted to all of my public and private feeds. The only reason that I would have failed to do that (and the only reason that I would tell you my real name) is that I am now dead.

I am (I was?) a healthy seventeen-­year-­old girl, with no known genetic defects, no dangerous or unhealthy habits, and no inclination toward violent or dangerous sports or other activities. The current death rate for someone with my demographic, social, and genetic profile is less than two per one hundred thousand per year. If I am dead, there is a very good chance that it is because someone decided to make me that way.

So, what have I done to make someone want to kill me? Something, obviously, or I wouldn't have gone to the trouble of setting up this message with a dead-­man switch. I've only ever done one thing that might have brought a killer to my door, and that is to exercise my God-­given right to free speech. I had the gall to pass on information to all of you that contradicted the official NatSec version of what happened to the good ­people of Hagerstown. And for that, someone at NatSec decided that I had to die.

If you search for my name now in the Baltimore newsfeeds, I'm sure that you will find a story about a poor young girl who was killed in a car accident, or shot during a mugging, or drowned in the bathtub after passing out drunk. Do not believe whatever slander NatSec has put out about me. I am not a crime victim, or a self-­destructive loser, or a poor girl who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I am a casualty of war.

Hobo Joe
>

Okay, I've seen a half dozen or so of these farewell notes from our UnAltered pals this morning, and they're starting to get on my nerves. They all claim to have been whacked by NatSec, supposedly because their subversive feeds were deemed to be a Threat to the Republic. You know what? I've read some of their feeds. They're not subversive. They're sub-­literate. All these guys are the same, whining about how the Engineered and the Augmented have lost sight of what it means to be human and blah, blah, blah. Guess what, assholes? Humans in a state of nature have a twenty-­five percent infant mortality rate, and a median lifespan of twenty-­eight years. They live in the jungle, and eat shit that they pick up off the ground. If that doesn't describe your life experience, you're one of the Altered whether you like it or not. My implants are no different than vaccines or blood pressure pills or artificial hips.

So, if there's not a vast conspiracy to kill every two-­digit-­IQ UnAltered with access to the networks, what is tripping these idiots' dead-­man switches? Here's a guess: Maybe they spent last night out looking for Engineered to whale on—­like that Pretty who got mauled in Rock Creek Park the other day. A Pretty's mods are all superficial, but many of ours are not. I'm pretty confident that I personally could take down a dozen UnAltered if I had to, and after the way things have gone the last ­couple of days, I don't think I'd be gentle.

<
Posted today, 10:18:08 by
Shark Sandwich
>

I'm not generally one to respond to stupidity, but I do feel like I need to say something to
Hobo Joe
. First, while I'm sure that he's a super tough guy and that he has Engineered muscles just popping out all over his body, that kind of thing hasn't been the deciding factor in human conflict for at least the past fifty thousand years. Gorillas and elephants and lions are super strong too, and have claws and trunks and whatnot to boot. How's that been working out for them? If one of our UnAltered brothers decides to take him down, it won't be by challenging him to fisticuffs. It would more likely be by putting a .50 caliber slug between his eyes from a kilometer away.

Second, while I could basically agree that someone with an ocular or even an exoskeleton is still pretty much human, that simply cannot be said for any of the Engineered. A species is defined by its genome. Anyone with germ-­line modifications is by definition no longer human. To say that splicing ape genes or Neanderthal genes or cougar genes into the human genome is no different than vaccination is just stupid. You can argue that these sorts of changes are inevitable, or even that they're a good thing, but you cannot argue that they do not represent the creation of a multitude of new species. This kind of rapid speciation is not something that has ever happened on this planet before, and we have no idea what consequences it will ultimately bring.

Agent of Change
>

Hey
NatSec
—­you might want to consider putting
Shark Sandwich
on your kill list. I'm pretty sure he just threatened to shoot
Hobo Joe
in the face.

Thomas Pain
>

Really,
Agent of Change
? You think this is funny? Elements of the government murdered thousands of American citizens on Sunday afternoon. Elements of the government are currently executing American citizens in the streets and in their beds without trial or appeal. Those who would surrender essential liberties in exchange for a little temporary security are deserving of neither, and the most essential right that we have is the right to life. The America we live in today would be absolutely unrecognizable to the founders of this once-­great nation. We have tolerated the gradual growth of the panopticon, because it made law enforcement more effective. We have tolerated the tapping of virtually every communications channel available to us by the government, because it has made things marginally more difficult for terrorist organizations. Now we tolerate mass extrajudicial executions because NatSec tells us that they are necessary to stave off a repeat of the horrors of Hagerstown. How much lower can we possibly sink, and still call ourselves Americans?

Lord Fizzlebottom
>

Thomas Pain
is absolutely correct to say that the America we live in today would be utterly unrecognizable to the founders. For example, in their America, Thomas Paine had to crank out his screeds on a printing press and distribute them to his fellow citizens by hand, whereas in our America,
Thomas Pain
can say whatever he wants to a huge number of his fellow citizens with a click or a poke or whatever you idiots who haven't got oculars yet do. Of course, most would say that this change is a good one, enhancing our right to free speech by making widely distributed speech truly free—­not every ignorant eighteenth-­century peasant had access to a printing press, after all.

However, there are a few other changes in today's America that may be less benign. For example, in Thomas Paine's day, if one of our good citizens took it into his head to do harm to his fellow men, his power to do so was fairly limited. Hard to go on a rampage with a musket, and you can't even make a really effective bomb with black powder. Today, however, anyone with the inclination to do so can get hold of a high-­capacity automatic rifle. If he's ambitious and has a bit of money, it's conceivable that he could cobble together an engineered virus that could take down half the North American population in a matter of weeks.

The question, then, is this: Even if we concede that we would not be willing to trade our essential liberties in order to gain a little temporary security, might we be willing to compromise at least a few of them in order to allow our continued survival as a nation?

We still do not know what, exactly, happened in Hagerstown.
NatSec
says every living person within the secured perimeter died within a matter of minutes. The UnAltered say that no, only ninety percent of them did. Even if they're right, this was a shot across our bow. Speaking for myself, I'm willing to concede a hell of a lot to
NatSec
if they can keep it from happening again.

Thomas Pain
>

Sorry to contradict you,
Lord Fizzlebottom
, but there is nothing unique about our age. Fear has always been the best friend of the tyrant. You can fret about the possibility that some lunatic in a basement might cook up a virus that will wipe out half the population. I'm sure our ancestors would be very sympathetic. Ever heard of smallpox? How about the bubonic plague? Those two entirely naturally occurring diseases wiped out 90 percent of the North American population and 60 percent of the European population. You worry that a terrorist might blow up a building—­or hey, maybe an entire city? The Mongols wiped out cities by the dozen, and piled their citizens' skulls outside the gates like cantaloupes.

It's easy to look at what feels like an existential threat, and to wish for a big strong someone to step in and save you. That's not unique to our age either. ­People have been falling in line behind kings and emperors and dictators in the face of external threats at least since Gilgamesh ruled Uruk. But the fact that this urge to self-­infantilization seems to be a part of human nature doesn't make it right, and if we wish to remain—­or to become again—­a free ­people, it is something we must resist to our last drop of blood.

You seem to believe that submitting meekly to
NatSec
's intrusion into every aspect of our lives is the only way for us to survive. I disagree. But even if you're right, there's a difference between surviving and living. It's worth taking the risk of doing neither, in order to try to do both.

Agent of Change
>

Hear hear,
Thomas Pain
. Let's dismantle the security apparatus that
NatSec
and other government agencies have built up over the last forty years. You know—­the one that has averted three known attempted nuclear strikes against American cities, that cut al Qaeda in North America down to the last man, and that has helped America to the lowest rate of violent crime in the world. True, there is no evidence that this apparatus has ever been used to subvert our political freedoms or to so much as harass a single innocent American citizen, but who knows? Maybe someday it might be. Surely a few million deaths here or there is a small price to pay to avert that possibility.

Captain Obvious
>

This is boring. Any UnAltered out there? Give us one of your “Genetic Modifications are the Devil's Tilt-­A-­Whirl” sermons. Those are always fun to read.

Laugh it up, fuckers. There are more of us than there are of you, and we don't have kill switches built into us. The hammer's gonna fall soon, and when it does,
Homo sapiens
is gonna be the only human species on this planet again.

Homo saps
may still be a majority, but
NatSec
and the military are both forty-­plus percent Engineered and one hundred percent Augmented. If and when the hammer falls, I promise you that it's not gonna fall on us. You can ask your UnAltered friends in Hagerstown about that.

Captain Obvious
>

I stand corrected. That wasn't fun at all.