Explosions shake the earth beneath me. Dirt around my face trembles. I lie three miles out from the horrors, in a small cluster of hills — the safest high ground I can find. Below me, the battlefield looks like the fist of God has smashed through the front line, sending soldiers, tanks, and trucks flying into a malaise of smoke and fire. The constant barrage of missiles has blown so much dirt and smoke into the air that the mid‑day sky is the color of bruises. They have lost. I knew they would days ago. So did most of them.
A soldier gets out of a burning tank, bleeding heavily from under his helmet. I zoom from horizon to horizon fields of debris down onto his one blood streaked face. His expression is desperate as he very hesitantly waves a piece of his t‑shirt tied to a wrench. He has heard my reports about what comes next, and heard Koch's News sugar‑coated, lying response. This morning at chow that soldier would have told you Koch News was all lies. As he drops to his knees and raises his pathetic flag he is praying otherwise.
The Ellison soldier grabs the kid by the collar, takes out his laser knife, slices through the arteries in his throat and begins carving. The kid struggles at first, as his head is sawed off. He chops the kid into piece, tosses him into a blood soaked, canvas bag. Walks toward a truck half‑filled with such bags.
Tanks aim machine guns at the survivors, giving them zero chance of fighting once they leave shelter. The move itself is asking for mercy where I know all too fucking well there is none. I can barely watch and I am practiced. I want these holo images to drive the same anger into my viewers that this does me... destroy the lies they hear. After 20 years plus reporting, the famous Juan Rivera sure as hell knows better though. I report nightmares so people have more nightmares, not necessarily because anyone was going to do anything about it.
They look so young now, as they crawl out of trucks, tanks, left with no choice except leaving the sanctuary of their burning vehicles. Some waving 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 soldiers have them put on zip ties, hands behind their backs. I know what is happening next and so do a lot of them.
For almost a week I have been filming variations of the slaughter as the battline held, fell back, was won, held . . . I was surprised the first time one surrendered, after living with them, hearing how much they hated Ellison's civil war.
Ruby talks into my ear: my AI half‑track/truck is set as a cranky, elderly, misanthropic, southern woman’s voice; left over from the days when I had an agent and was a budding Celeb and he wanted me to have a sidekick; over the years she turned into a beast who could hit 390 inside six seconds while 'firing missiles in four directions at once and bullets to high heaven itself,' as she liked to tell gullible recruits. “A Union spy has approached. Evidently you are in danger, or he would be. That is all he will tell me.”
“Get him up here.” I pack up my camp. Carefully fold the weather proof tarp I have had wrapped around me and shove it in with a filthy change of clothes, an extra holo and . . . I shake the bag and hear the reassuring rattle of my pills. Plenty. I'm ready to go.
“Elias. Nice to meet you both.” He says as Ruby lets him inside and straps him in.
I turn on a camera in Ruby and check out our spy. He is nervously tapping a finger on his thigh and that is something trained spies do not do -- give away their 'poker face.' Period. I zoom in on his eyes and I know the look from the years on the front. Something happened to this man, something too big to fix the crack that I would have once been curious about---now I did not want to know.. something hard and cold inside of me cracks, just enough for a flash of real, unadulterated fear to flash through the drugs and misanthropic facade. Whatever he was afraid of, I was in the middle of the same shit.
"They need you at Thiel prison. That is where the soldiers are regrouping."
“Why bring me in?”
“We have been waiting until we made his move north. For the last few years, I was with Koch... I have holos...” He speaks so hesitantly, I have to take into account how young he is. Ill‑suited for his job.
“... proving Koch is a pervert, a pedo. He has plans that... you'll see.”
“They said so..”
“They wouldn't listen to the women, of course.”
“Never did, never do.”
“Before their release, we need a Celeb, so they are not buried, or laughed off. Juan Rivera, Celeb.”
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. Home.
My belts snap on and Ruby rumbles down the hill and out toward the open road. “How is Maya?”
“Good, I guess. I've only seen her a few times.” He noticed the tapping before I got in and stopped.
“Ruby, start drafting the video for tonight’s show. Only refer to the tapes, put an adult identifier on the holo, requiring three adults present to view. Cover all the private parts, on all the holos. I want them to fucking 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 sick, where there was any.
“Hide the faces of the children,” Elias adds in a soft voice that says too much. He mostly stares out the window as we talk, or closes his eyes, rubs his temples
“Add that, thanks. I don't know what happened, but...”
“I grew up watching you. Ruby was my grandmother. How did you find her, or build her or...”
“How old are you”
“26.”
“Christ. Ruby, show the man what you can do.”
Outside our window becomes an instant complete blur, the inertia pushes us gently back into the gravity compensating leather; usual the banging and clanking of Ruby's loose parts and all the shit I have tucked under her cameo goes from her usual roar into a beastial scream in the night. I talk to Elias now as a fan, though I notice his finger is tapping again. Whatever is going on in his head wants the moment. I try to take it with the story. “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... to be honest... got me so many claps, she is probably why I became a Celeb. Though it was easier back then, before Koch owned all the media. There was a time I had an agent, and... it was different world, just forty years ago. I had comic relief, thinking people would... it is not appropriate, really, anymore.”
“Koch is planning on taking out Sanctuary 6. There will be no one except a few pirates then, and no one knows who to trust now... even about themselves.”
“Okay. Tell me what I can do?”
“I’ll take you to Thiel Prison, so you 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. “I spent the last five years down getting these holos. You put them out and get them believed."
"Playo..."
“No” Elias and Ruby interrupt me almost simultaneously.
“All right. You gave the holo's to Ruby?”
“I wanted her help dealing with your reaction.. She monitors your thoughts, so...”
Ruby tries. “Vegetarians used to say they only had to go to a slaughterhouse once to quit eating meat. Well, let me be the person who went and says don’t go. As most did not.”
“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 a voice flat and non‑judgmental. “You will, you’re too curious, and after a few seconds, you will regret it,” Elias starts talking faster then, has to stop himself from starting to rock back and forth. He is seriously fucked up and I really wonder what the fuck I am getting into but I have fucking seen it all right?
“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. Get him a puke bag, Ruby." He is furious at me for wanting to turn away, I can sense this and watch as once more his finger starts tapping again.“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 out the window, not disagreeing with me. At first. Then he adds, in that same quiet voice, "Watch the clip and know I filmed that for them, then repeat those words."
As I prepare to turn on the holo, Elias unconsciously closes his eyes and puts his fingers in ears, curls away from the holo like a child. I quit thinking of this guy as a spy. He is a broken kid playing spy
“Play. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, one thous...” I am puking before I realize the acrid taste is pouring out my mouth. Elias is ready with the bag held to my face… At first 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/ perversions as gut wrenching; the voice over a famous middle-aged actor speaking in a wise, whisky smooth voice, selling lives into horrendous slavery as if they were luxury yachts.
