Goldman [out of breath, slightly hysterical]: I’m scared, Control, I have to admit it. I’m damn scared.
Control [in a neutral tone]: What about, G8? The thing we talked about three days ago?
Goldman: Yeah. The same. Only three days is a long time with the ALE.
Controclass="underline" He’s threatened you?
Goldman [sighing heavily]: I told you, he doesn’t need to threaten.
Controclass="underline" Oh, yeah. You know him so well, you can read his mind. And what you read there is an intention to harm you?
Goldman: Are you being sarcastic?
Controller: No, just summing up so we can understand each other. [Pause] So, tell me about it.
Goldman: I’ve been with him so long I can smell when he’s about to kill. Do you understand me? The air around him starts to die, it’s like when there’s too much ozone.
Controclass="underline" Ozone?
Goldman: I’m trying to give you the feel of it. Fuck you.
Control [sighing again]: Well, you trained him to kill, didn’t you?
Goldman: Yeah, I trained him to kill. With approval and assistance from-
Controclass="underline" Don’t say it.
Goldman: I didn’t say it. But it’s true.
Controclass="underline" I wasn’t on the case at the time, G8. I was about seven years old when you started this phase of the project.
Goldman: So, what are you saying, you’re not qualified?
Controclass="underline" I’m saying this has been going on one hell of a long while and from what I’ve seen of the file you’ve had full operational control all that time. Forty years, G8. Forty fucking years on Ultra II. Actually, more.
Goldman: That’s right, forty years I’ve been serving my country, mostly in the jungle. Now I want some help.
Controclass="underline" You want help. I want to know what’s suddenly gone so wrong. You’re holding out here. Let me put the possibilities as I see them: you’re having a nervous breakdown because you’re way too old, too clumsy, and too out of date for your own program, which you are losing control of just like any old guy. [Silence. The Control continues] The other is that this Asset is no better than all the others, all of whom died at your hands. That’s what I think, by the way. And you can’t admit it because this Asset is all you’ve got right now. The deal with China goes wrong, you are out, discredited. I hope you put some money away for what’s left of your life. Now, there’s just one thing you can tell me that might, just might, get me on your side. What I want is an explanation as to why the Asset is, in your opinion, going wrong now instead of later or earlier?
Goldman [in an okay, I’ll come clean tone of total despair, as if he is coughing up his own guts]: Bride double-crossed us.
[Silence]
Control [in a tone expressing disgust and disbelief]: Bride? The wizard himself? Do you have any idea how many wonderful, laudatory, praise-my-man memoranda and minutes you-you personally, G8-have placed on record throughout four decades precisely in order to keep that jungle shaman on the case when others were in favor of eliminating him, in the old-fashioned sense of the word?
Goldman: I know. I know that. I also told you he is a genius. And a Brit. The combination produces eccentricity like you wouldn’t believe. He made his Asset an expert on Italian cuisine, classical arts, and the French Revolution-and just about every goddamn religion under the sun. An Asset designed for essentially military operations, yet. And who can tell in advance what direction a man will take thirty, forty, fifty years down the track? Nobody, nobody on this earth thought the thing would take this long.
Controclass="underline" I’m with you there. Looked at objectively, you could say this program is even older than you. About eighty years since those maniacs Dulles and Gottlieb started on this Frankensteinian extravaganza. [Wearily] So, tell me about your problem with the Brit nut job.
Goldman: I don’t think he has any intention of selling to China. He’s letting the Asset kill the deal.
[Long pause]
Controclass="underline" How’s that?
Goldman: A truckload of small things, hints.
Controclass="underline" For Christ’s sake, man.
Goldman: Okay, I can’t prove it and I don’t have the evidence, but I think the Old Man programmed his Asset, as in deep, deep psychic penetration, long before he handed him over to us.
Controclass="underline" Well, now at least I understand why you’ve been quiet about your doubts up to now. You mean you’ve connived knowingly or unknowingly with a total con, a half-century long, during which time the Company spends untold millions on a project which is preprogrammed to revert to the use of a private person who is not even a U.S. citizen? Is this call a request to take out the Brit?
Goldman: Not specifically. What I need you to think about is this. Like you say, this thing has been going on too long. The Brit is already a billionaire and he’s damned old. He discovered a lot of stuff in the jungle, not just hallucinogenics. I think he can keep himself alive for at least another decade, maybe more. He’s like a Celtic magus-weird but successful.
Controclass="underline" So?
Goldman: So, why would he content himself with being the midwife to a revolution that will change the way governments govern and control population worldwide?
Controclass="underline" Why not? Doesn’t sound like a humble role to me.
Goldman: Because his intention is to rule that world himself. I tell you he’s deep and European-he doesn’t think utilitarian or democratic. And he doesn’t need money. Like you said, he’s a billionaire already thanks to the private chemical programs he sold to China.
Controclass="underline" You’re going vague on me again, G8.
Goldman: He thinks the greatest motivating factor today, and certainly for tomorrow, for the whole of humanity, is a search for meaning.
Controclass="underline" Search for meaning? What, he’s reverting to his hippie days?
Goldman: You could say he never stopped thinking that way. He was brought up religious. His main point is that what people want is a new god. Culturally and psychologically the global situation is almost identical to that of Palestine and the eastern Mediterranean two thousand years ago under the Romans.
Control [bemused]: Yeah?
Goldman: Apparently it was total chaos, with new cults sprouting up all over the place. The search for meaning was universal and a powerful political force in itself. Apparently even a lot of Roman soldiers became Christians, even while he was alive.
Controclass="underline" Who was alive?
Goldman: Jesus fucking Christ.
Control [sounding interested]: So what if that is true today as it was two thousand years ago, which it might be. What does it have to do with the price of false tits? What does the Brit magus intend to do?
Goldman: Send his only begotten son to take over. The only one left, anyway. Same as last time.