NICK WOLVEN
Caspar D. Luckinbill, What Are You Going to Do?
I’m on my way to work when the terrorists strike. The first attack nearly kills me. It’s my fault, partly. I’m jaywalking at the time.
There I am, in the middle of Sixth Avenue, an ad truck bearing down in the rightmost lane. I feel a buzz in my pocket and take out my phone. I assume it’s Lisa, calling about the TV. I put it to my ear and hear a scream.
There are screams, and there are screams. This is the real deal. It’s a scream that ripples. It’s a scream that rings. It’s a scream like a mile-high waterfall of glass, like a drill bit in the heart, like a thousand breaking stars.
I stand shaking in the street. The ad truck advances, blowing paint and air, leaving a strip of toothpaste ads in its wake. I have enough presence of mind to step back as the truck chuffs by. I look down and see a smile on my toes: three perfect spray-painted teeth on each new shoe.
When I get to the curb, the screaming has stopped, and a man is speaking from my phone.
“Caspar D. Luckinbill! Attention, Caspar D. Luckinbill! What you just heard were the screams of Ko Nam, recorded as he was tortured and killed by means of vibrational liquefaction. Men like Ko Nam are murdered every day in the FRF. Caspar D. Luckinbill, what are you going to do?”
What am I going to do? What am I supposed to do? I stand on the curb staring at my phone. I have no idea who Ko Nam is. I have no idea what the FRF is. And what in God’s name is vibrational liquefaction?
I give it a second’s thought, trying my best to be a good, conscientious, well-informed citizen of the world. But it’s 9:15 and I have teeth on my shoes, and I’m already late for work.
My employer is the contractor for the external relations department of the financial branch of a marketing subsidiary of a worldwide conglomerate that makes NVC-recognition software. NVC: nonverbal communication. The way you walk. The way you move. Our programs can pick you out of a crowd, from behind, at eighty paces, just by the way you swing your arms. Every move you make, every breath you take. Recognizing faces is so old school.
We claim to be the company that launched ubiquitous computing. Every company claims that, of course. That’s what makes it so ubiquitous.
Recognition software is not a technology. Recognition software is an idea. The idea is this: You are the world. Every teeny-weeny-tiny thing you do ripples out and out in cascades of expanding influence. Existence is personal. Anonymity is a lie. It’s time we started seeing the faces for the crowd.
I believe that’s true because I wrote it. I wrote it for a pamphlet that was sent to investors in the financial branch of the marketing subsidiary by whose ER department I’m employed. I don’t think they used it.
For eight years running I’ve worked in this office, which is probably a record here in the soi-disant capital del mundo. My wife, Lisa, says I’m wasting my time. She says that someone with my smarts ought to be out there changing the world. I tell her I am changing the world. After all, every teeny-weeny-tiny thing I do ripples out and out in cascades of expanding influence. Lisa says it’s obvious I’ve sold my soul.
Really, the corporate culture here is quite friendly. The front door greets me by name when I enter. The lobby fixes me coffee, and it knows just how I like it. Seventy percent pan-equator blend, thirty percent biodome-grown Icelandic, roasted charcoal-dark, with twenty milliliters of lactose-reduced Andean free-range llama milk and just a squirt of Sri Lankan cardamom sweetener, timed to be ready the moment I arrive.
It’s a classy workplace. The bathroom stalls are noise-canceling. The lobby plays light jazz all day long.
Today when I go in, the jazz isn’t playing. Today there is silence. Then a crackle. A hum.
And then the screaming begins.
This time there are words. A woman is sobbing. I can’t make out the language. Some of it sounds like English. All of it sounds very, very sad.
The receptionist listens from behind his desk. It seems to me that his eyes are disapproving.
The sobbing goes on for several seconds. Then a man begins to speak.
“Caspar D. Luckinbill!” the man says. “What you just heard were the cries of Kim Pai as her husband was taken away by government agents. People like Kim Pai’s husband are abducted every day in the FRF. Caspar D. Luckinbill, what are you going to do?”
The voice cuts off. The light jazz resumes.
“Abducted!” says the receptionist, looking at the speakers.
“It’s… something.” I try to explain. “It’s a wrong number. It’s a crossed wire. I don’t know what it is.”
“The FRF!” the receptionist says, looking at me as if I’ve fallen out of the sky.
I hurry to my desk.
My desk chair sees me coming and rolls out to welcome me. My desk is already on. As I sit down, the desk reads me three urgent messages from my supervisor. Then it plays an ad for eye-widening surgery. “Nothing signals respectful attention to an employer, a teacher, or a lover quite like a tastefully widened eye!” Then it plays a video of a man being killed with a table saw.
I jump out of my chair. I avert my face. When I look back, there’s no more man and no more saw, and the screen is vibrant with blood.
“Caspar D. Luckinbill!” blares the computer. “Caspar D. Luckinbill, do you know what you just saw? Steve Miklos came to the FRF to teach math to learning-disabled children. Because of his promotion of contraceptives, he was afflicted with acute segmentation by supporters of the HAP. Caspar D. Luckinbill, how can you possibly allow such atrocities to continue? Will you sit idly by while innocent people are slaughtered? Caspar D. Luckinbill, what are you going to do?”
I know exactly what I’m going to do. I call my friend Armando.
“Armando,” I say, “I have a computer problem.”
Armando is the kind of friend everyone needs to have. Armando is my friend who knows about computers.
I tell Armando about the phone call this morning. I tell him about the sobbing in the lobby. I hold out my phone and show him what my desk is doing.
“You’ve got a problem,” Armando says.
“I can see that,” I say. “I can hear it too, everywhere and all the time. How do I make it go away?”
“You don’t understand,” Armando says. “This isn’t an IT problem. This is a real problem. You’ve been targeted, Caspar. You’ve been chosen.”
“What is it, some kind of spam?”
“Worse,” Armando says. “Much worse. It’s mediaterrorism.”
Mediaterrorism. The term is not familiar.
“You mean like leaking classified information?”
“I mean,” Armando says, “that you’re being terrorized. Don’t you feel terrorized?”
“I feel confused. I feel perplexed. I feel a certain degree of angst.”
“Exactly,” Armando says.
“I feel bad for the people of the FRF. Where exactly is the FRF?”
“I think it’s somewhere in Africa.”
“The names of the victims don’t sound African. The names of the victims sound Asian.”
“There are Asians in Africa,” Armando says. “There are Africans in Asia. Don’t be so racist.”
I look at my desk, where people are dying and children are starving and Wendy’s franchises are exploding in blooms of shocking light.