The next story also featured the president. Yesterday, Carroway had actually given Nenshi a call, the gist of which the president discussed in a news conference. The angle and lighting were more flattering in this footage, and this podium bore the Presidential Seal.
“Mr. President,” called out a female journalist, “I understand rioting continues in cities and towns across Canada, as well as now in many places in Europe.”
“Yes, that’s right, I’m afraid,” said Carroway. “Obviously, civil unrest anywhere in the world is a concern, but when it’s occurring in our own backyard, we have to take special notice.”
Another reporter, this one male: “Have you spoken directly to Prime Minister Nenshi about it?”
“Yes, indeed. We spoke early this morning. The United States has offered every possible assistance, but the prime minister assured me that his small army and his local and national police—you know, the Mounties—were more than capable of containing the situation.”
A different male reporter: “This was your first official call to Canada’s Muslim prime minister since he was sworn in, wasn’t it?”
“That’s correct.”
“Did you speak to him about the issue of Libyan terrorists entering the US via Canada?”
“That topic didn’t come up, but I’m sure Mr. Nenshi knows it’s always at the top of my mind.”
Another woman: “Well, what other issues did you raise with the Canadian leader?”
Carroway frowned briefly. “Prime Minister Nenshi and I had a frank exchange of views. I emphasized the historic ties between our two great nations, but I also expressed to him our deep, heartfelt concern that his country’s record on the rights of the unborn is profoundly disturbing to us. Having finally gotten our own house in order, we can no longer turn a blind eye to the slaughtering of innocents elsewhere. Here in North America, Canada stands alone, a rogue state, on this issue. Our great neighbor to the south, Mexico, only allows abortion on very narrow grounds. Indeed, in all the New World—North, Central, and South America—only Canada, Communist Cuba, and the tiny nations of Guyana, French Guiana, and Uruguay offer unrestricted access to abortion.”
A male journalist: “Given the overturning of Roe v. Wade by our Supreme Court, are you concerned that American women will travel north to procure procedures that they can’t obtain here?”
Carroway nodded. “We’re certainly monitoring the situation—monitoring it very, very closely.”
Ryan had been watching me as much as she was watching the TV, and I guess she could tell by my body language that what was being said had disturbed me. “What does ‘monitoring the situation’ mean?” she asked.
I went to fetch the toast; it had apparently popped up a while ago but I’d been too preoccupied to notice. “I wish I knew, Ginger Ale.”
I changed channels—and Fox News, which I had my own TV set to skip over, came on. As soon as I saw what they were talking about, I muted the sound and silently read the closed captioning rather than exposing Ryan to it.
The Correction.
That’s what Fox kept referring to it as. Innocuous. A minor course change; just setting things right. A remedy, for God’s sake.
Sure, the other news channels had more accurate names for it, but Fox’s audience was the largest, and even those who wrote the network’s name as “Faux News,” an Internet meme for more than a decade now, had heard it called “The Correction” in clips on The Daily Show or on Facebook.
No one would ever know the exact death toll, but the extermination started by the McCharles Act—the law of the land in Texas, and it seemed the de facto law across most of the Southern states now—was rising rapidly. One estimate put it already at more than five thousand, with no end in sight, and many thought it was much, much higher; after all, those family members of victims—or of “correctees,” as Fox called them—who’d escaped being culled themselves weren’t likely to come forward to report a missing sibling or child.
The image switched to an elderly Latina woman, tears on sun-creased cheeks, looking out over the site of another mass killing, bodies strewn across parchment-colored dirt. I quickly turned off the set before Ryan looked up from her breakfast.
41
When Kayla joined us, dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt, and with a towel wrapped around her head, I filled her in on what was happening, starting with the call between the president and the prime minister.
“Carroway,” she said, as if naming a bacillus. “The guy’s got to be a psychopath.”
“I imagine so,” I agreed.
“And, for that matter,” said Kayla, “Governor McCharles, too. I’d love to get those guys down on the beamline, prove the truth about them to the world.” An idea blossomed on her face. “Say, what about your microsaccades technique? Can’t you do it on them?”
“I doubt they’re going to volunteer to put on my goggles.”
“No, no, but you said you could do it with film, right?”
At some point, I’d told Kayla the same story I’d told my sister Heather about analyzing Anthony Hopkins playing Hannibal Lecter. “Yeah,” I said, “but The Silence of the Lambs was a special case—a sustained close-up shot of the character staring directly into the camera, and I could get it at 4K resolution.” I shook my head. “It’s the same problem with the videos Menno made of me in 2001. I’d love to try my test on that VHS tape, confirm that I was a Q1 even during the final interview—prove it was paralimbic damage not quantum psychopathy—but the footage isn’t nearly high-enough resolution, and, besides, they’re kind of side views; no way to visually check for microsaccades.”
“Hell,” said Kayla, “the president of the United States has to be one of the most-photographed people in the world. There must be existing footage of him that’s sufficiently high-resolution.”
“Sure. The Sunday-morning political shows—Stephanopoulos, Meet the Press—are all done in 4K now, but they keep cutting away. One, two, three, cut; one, two, three, cut. Even when he’s talking, they keep going to a reaction shot.”
“Don’t those programs have the footage they didn’t broadcast?”
I’d made a few dozen TV appearances over the years. “Not normally; those sorts of interviews are done live-to-air or live-to-tape: the director switches between cameras as the interview is being conducted, and only the image from the selected camera is actually broadcast or recorded.”
“What about press conferences, like that one you just saw?”
“They’d be good, but, again, he has to keep looking at the same thing, and I doubt he does.”
“How much footage do you need?”
“Well, if he’s not a psychopath, it should be obvious after three or four seconds—but to prove that he is? I’d really like ten uninterrupted seconds.”
“Ten seconds with no blinking?”
“Blinks are fine, but he needs to be looking at the same thing for all ten seconds, and without his cooperation, that’s going to be hard to get.”
“Maybe,” said Kayla. “Maybe not. He makes tons of public appearances. And lots of people have great cameras these days. Find the next rally he’s at and ask online for someone to get high-res video, focusing on his eyes.”