The frontline looks like the fist of God has smashed through, sending soldiers, tanks, and trucks flying into black smoke and raging fires. Explosions shake the earth beneath me. Dirt around my face trembles. I’m two miles out from the frontline, tucked into a small cluster of hills — the safest cover I can find. The constant barrage of missiles blows so much dirt and smoke into the smoggy midday that the sky is the color of bruises.
They’ve lost. I knew they would days ago — so did most of them.
I notice as a soldier climbs out of a burning tank, bleeding heavily under his helmet, disoriented as sunlight hits his eyes. I zoom from a horizon‑wide shot of debris down onto one terrified human face. His expression is desperate as he hesitantly waves a scrap of his T‑shirt tied to a wrench. He’s heard my reports about what comes next, and he’s heard Koch’s News sugar‑coated lies. This morning at chow he would’ve told you Koch News was propaganda. Now, as he drops to his knees and raises his pathetic flag, he’s praying otherwise.
Ellison’s soldier grabs the kneeling kid by the collar. The knife comes out — bright, fast, merciless. The strike is practiced. The kid’s body jerks, and the soldier keeps working, efficient as a butcher. A bag waits open beside him. A truck waits behind that. The machine keeps moving.
Tanks aim their guns at the remaining survivors, giving them zero chance of fighting once they leave shelter. The act itself is a plea for mercy, and I know all too well there is none. I can barely watch, and I’m practiced. I want these holo images to drive the same anger in my viewers that this drives into me — to destroy the lies they hear. After twenty‑plus years reporting, the famous Juan Rivera knows better. I report nightmares so people have more nightmares, not because anyone is going to do anything about it.
They look so young now, crawling out of trucks and tanks, left with no choice except leaving the sanctuary of their burning vehicles. Some wave those pathetic white flags — which now seem like baby blankets. All get down on the ground, on their knees. After forcing the last soldiers out, Ellison’s troops zip‑tie their hands behind their backs. I know what’s happening next, and so do a lot of them.
For almost a week I’ve been filming variations of this slaughter as the battleline holds, falls back, is won, is lost, is held again. I was surprised the first time one surrendered, after living with them, hearing how much they hated Ellison’s civil war.
I pack my camp: tarp, filthy clothes, spare holo, pills rattling like teeth in a jar. I’m ready to go.
Ruby waits a few hundred yards off — my camouflaged half‑track, covered in electrified netting and layers of mismatched cameo mesh. She looks like a broken‑down truck someone abandoned decades ago, except for the faint hum beneath her panels and the way her sensors track me as I approach. Loose parts rattle under her nets. The metal is scorched, dented, patched with whatever I could find over the years. She’s ugly, ancient, and her warm, brown Naugahyde seats look like home.
Too young. Skinny. Lost his helmet. His uniform hangs loose on him, he has a few days blonde beard, blue eyes edged now mostly red, his pupils pin pricks from whatever cornucopia of drugs he was running on. His face streaked with soot, his finger tapping against his thigh as he walks — a nervous tic trained spies aren’t supposed to have.
He is standing beside Ruby. He doesn’t speak. I don’t speak. He waits. I nod once. Ruby opens her door.
He climbs inside.
Only then do we talk.
“Elias,” he says. “Nice to meet you both.”
Ruby silently AI's me as I talk to the spy.
Look at his finger. He is out of character. Registering a touch of 'wow' fan and something torn apart. He probably thinks you can fix him. Or worse yet, me. He has been eyeing me like I was an old friend.
I know the look in his eyes from years on the front. There was a crack in his psyche too big to fix. Once I would have been curious about what happened to him? Listening fascinated for hours-- now I hav heard the same story from different faces too many times to listen. Still, this time, sleepless, and not quite drugged enough, something hard and cold inside my gut cracks, just enough for a flash of real fear to electrify my body. Whatever the fuck caused a spy to fall apart, I was smack-dab in the middle of that shit.
"They need you at Thiel prison."
"Where the soldiers are regrouping? Yeah, I can cover that. Why would you come out here to bring me in?”
“We need a Celeb. Pretty much. See . . . last few years, I was with Koch. I have holos. Proving Koch is a pedo. A sick one, like the rumours. Or the testimony of the women he raped. He likes inflicting pain, even death. He has plans that... you'll see.”
“They said so.”
“They wouldn't listen to the women, of course.”
“Never did, never do. Now he's started a civil war, I think partially to hide his crimes. Though Koch Media has been doing a pretty good job.”
“They listen to Maya."
"What?"
"You said they never listen to women."
"She is hard to ignore."
Elias gives me a look of anger before gaining control of himself. "Yeah, she is."
"She recruit you."
"That is classified," he tells me in a cynical voice, making me like him.
"Before the release, we need a Celeb, so they are not buried, or laughed off. Juan Rivera, Celeb. People know you don't sell out, take risks. People watch you almost as much as the Koch Celeb. You're... Obviously not like them."
"I wear a lot less make up."
"You don't wear make up?"
'Not anymore, but when I started out . . . different times."
"I'm glad... you're here. And never became a fucking real Celeb.” He says the word 'Celeb' with a hatred we share, so I take no offense -- in fact I he is really growing on me. If this spy has me under his petri dish, he would know this, act just this way. Still, I take him at face value. I don't have to worry about anything negative coming up on me. Living mostly with a holo going, I am not a man with many secrets. Just one. One which no reporter can ever let anyone know --I've become misanthropic; as all those years ago, Ruby was programmed to be to be a counterweight for my show's serious, emphatic stories of hard times during climate change..
Ruby pulls up out of the fog. Her modified half‑track/truck combo is covered in electrified cameo nets, and various assundries I've gathered over the years. Her open door looks as inviting as all heaven.
My belts snap on and Ruby nestles me into the soft Naugahyde as she rumbles down the hill and out toward the open road. “How is Maya?”
" I've only seen her a few times.”
“Ruby, start drafting the video for tonight’s show. Cover all the private parts, on all the holos. Show the faces of the men. I want them to be afraid of this.”
I look out at the passing trees of a once forest, burnt almost to the ground in 2079, the new growth was a sickly, dry brown, where there was any. The charred trees have black branches that scratch into the smog browned sky.
“Hide the faces of the children,” Elias adds. He turns to look at me, after a trip he spent mostly staring out the window as we talk, or closes his eyes, rubs his temples. “Add that, thanks. I grew up watching you. Like everyone I guess." He reaches out and puts the open palm of his hand on the dashboard, "Ruby was my grandmother when I was growing up, and you... well, you were Juan Rivera. "
“Hold on, how old are you”
“26.”
“Christ. My show has been on since..."
". . . . since my first memories."
Ruby talks out loud. "This is a man with good taste."
”
"You were my favorite. My dad thought your cursing was funny, and my mom was pissed he let you teach me a few." He smiles briefly at a memory of some before. Even in the worst of hells I had seen kids being raised happily by loving, lying parents. I would lie, too, if I had a kid. Instead, I tell their parents lessons they do not listen to.
"She looks like.... well, Ruby, but she sounds... modified. She must be over a hundred years old, at least the frame."
Ruby talks out loud for the first time, using her southern belle voice perfectly balanced with a snide, grumpiness: "Grandma can still hobble a bit, kid. Wanna go for a ride."
He hesitates before speaking, the big fan moment, what does he say?
"Yeah, Ruby, I sure would like that."
We go from around 91.8 MPH to 436 MPH in 2.6 seconds, hardly feel the slightest tug back into the seats-- my gravity compensators are military grade, as is most of the weapons soldiers convinced me I might need over the years. The banging and clanking of Ruby's loose parts -- her cover as a broken down old truck clattering down the road, to a beast screaming in the night. I talk to Elias now as a fan, though I notice his finger is tapping again. He is looking out the window, his face blank, lost in some memory, out of this moment in some hell. I know the look too well from my holos of myself. Whatever is going on in his head wants the moment, a memory. I try to bring him into the now with the story.
“Want to hear how I came up with Ruby?"
"Yeah." He turns and looks at me still blank though his head is tilted slightly to the side, seemingly showing interest.
"Well, a physics professor once told me, 'Only trust what you can measure with a ruler.' So, I had Ruby programmed to act on pure physics, and scoff at anything else. The voice the station made me use, but they let me program it myself. She got so many claps that they made me keep a comic relief. I am kind of beyond that now."
"I don't hear her much."
"She is talkative up here," I say, tapping my AI implant. "She got so many claps, I think she is why I became a star. I did sad, human interest stories, and she made the people laugh at themselves. Worked well. Too well. Then when I moved to PBS they gave me control, so I made her even more cynical, and cursive. She is a good companion, and of course knows everything."
"Don't you forget it for one second, young man."
Elias looks at me, "Can I talk to her?"
"Hello, sweet heart, who do you think is keeping your ass going down this road?"
"Ruby?"
"Among the thousands of cars out here tonight, you found me. Now tell this idiot why a spy is out on a battlefield, risking life and limb, to get some reporter off the field."
“I’ll take you to Thiel Prison, so Juan can counter the propaganda shit show that Koch is pumping out.... You're one of the last stars we have, the only one down here. They only seem to trust fucking lying Celebs, you and especially Ruby, not included, of course.” His voice becomes eerily flat, he turns toward the window and closes his eyes, “I spent the last five years down getting these holos. You put them out and get them believed."
"Okay then I will watch them."
“No” Elias interrupt me.
“All right. You gave the holo's to Ruby?”
“I wanted her help dealing with your reaction.. She monitors your thoughts, so...”
“Fine. Thank you. Now, I am going to play this holo.”
Elias looks away from me, I see his eyes reflected in the doors window, closed as he tells me, in his flat, nervous edged voice, “You're going to want to turn away the second it comes on, listen for five seconds, watch it unredacted, know what the fuck he is... sorry. Go a puke bag? Ruby opens a drawer on her dash and Elias takes out a plastic garbage bag."
What the fuck am I getting into?
"Sorry. I have orders to get you to . . . watch and come work with us at the prison.”
“I want Koch as bad as you do."
He turns and looks directly in my eyes for the first time. "Watch the clip and know I filmed that for them. Try counting out the seconds as it plays, just five seconds is enough.."
As I prepare to turn on the holo, Elias unconsciously closes his eyes and puts his fingers in his ears, ever-so-slightly curls away from the holo like a child. I got to quit thinking of this guy as a spy. He is a broken kid.
"Play. One thousand one... " A gorgeous, middle-aged actor in a sportsman jacket speaking in a wise, whisky smooth voice. "One thousand Two." Talks over a montage of sadistic, child sexual acts.. "One thousand Three." He sells lives into horrendous, sexual slavery as if they were luxury yachts,complete with pictures. "One thous . . . " I am puking before I realize the acrid taste is pouring out my mouth. Elias has the bag held to my face. My hands shake too much to take it from him. ‘ Four seconds. Four Seconds I had to fight to stay trapped in an eternal montage of sadistic child rape."
"Elias, I am sorry."
"Just make them believe. The truth isn't enough anymore."
No comments:
Post a Comment