Crux

21 REGRESS

Friday October 19th

Martin Holtzmann trembled in his car. Nakamura could have been anyone, an assassin. Whenever they wanted him dead, it would be so easy. He was sweating. His breath came fast. His heart was pounding in his chest.

He couldn’t let Anne see him like this.

“Drive around the block,” he told the car.

He took the time to dial up an opiate surge and a norepinephrine chaser. He shuddered as the bliss hit his body, then stretched out his arms and legs as far as he could inside the car, arching his back and craning his neck, savoring those few perfect moments of pleasure coursing through every nerve fiber of his body.

I should always feel like this. Always.

The car brought him back around the block, parked itself in the garage.

There was something in the back of his head as he walked into the kitchen. Something Nakamura had reminded him of. It was on the tip of recall...

Then Anne greeted him with a kiss, and it was gone.

Anne had the final presidential debate playing live on the screen.

Senator Kim was speaking as Holtzmann entered. “…acknowledge that there are two very different ways Nexus is used, one bad, one good. We shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

The audience applauded. Audience sentiment analysis numbers swerved towards the left along the side of the screen. Kim’s share price rose on the real-time market scrolling below the debate, and with it his projected odds of victory. Eight per cent. Nine per cent. Rising. For a moment Holtzmann felt a tiny bit of hope.

Stockton spoke after a pause. “Senator Kim’s right. Nexus is used in two different ways. First, as an addictive drug that damages the brains of children. And second, as a deadly weapon of terror.” Stockton paused. “Ladies and gentlemen, in my second term we’re going to stop both of those uses.”

This time the applause was thunderous, with hoots of approval. The sentiment line swung back hard to the right. Kim’s share price cratered as Holtzmann watched, his odds of winning dropping into the gutter. In the corner of the screen, the real-time electoral map turned even more red.

Holtzmann’s heart sank.

“Idiot.” Anne clicked the screen off.

“Which one?” Holtzmann asked.

“Both of them.”

His heart was heavy as they crawled into bed. The world seemed leached of possibility. He couldn’t imagine a happy future any more. He could barely imagine getting through this week. He lay there, his skin hot and his body cold and his stomach in knots until Anne’s breathing told him she’d fallen asleep.

And then he gave himself just a little more of that opiate surge. He felt something from it, some little bit of pleasure, but not enough. So he hit the mental button a second time. A wave of euphoria swept through his limbs and his chest and every corner of his mind, and for a little while his universe contracted to the deep sense of bliss he felt inside.

The next week went by in a blur. He worked through the weekend. In the mornings he was cranky, but hid it. During the day he looked over test results from the children, progress on the cure, more encouraging progress on the vaccine.

Every night he’d put himself to bed with a sweet opiate nightcap. Or two. Or three. Some evenings he’d have a little one on the drive home as well.

In his spare moments his mind turned that list of twenty-two suspects over, again and again. But, try as he might, he could see no way to zero in on the thief. On Thursday he switched gears, cleared an afternoon on his schedule, and dug into the ERD’s complete files on the Posthuman Liberation Front.

Over the years ERD had disrupted more than twenty Posthuman Liberation Front operations. Fifty-seven men and women, mostly PLF foot soldiers, had been caught and convicted by an Emerging Threats Tribunal. He flipped through case files, intelligence reports, after-action briefings.

Amazingly, over the eight years prior to the July assassination attempt, there had been only a handful of casualties in all those attempted operations. Even in the few attacks that had succeeded, the damage had been overwhelmingly to property and not people.

Some of that, undoubtedly, was a result of ERD’s competence. Was some of the rest PLF incompetence? Probably.

So how had July happened? How had Chicago happened? Had the PLF suddenly become dramatically more competent? Had ERD Enforcement Division slipped somehow? What had changed?

He was mulling this as he worked backwards through the PLF’s history, when he encountered something that surprised him.

The Spears kidnapping in 2030. The heiress to the media fortune that included the American News Network kidnapped, dosed with DWITY, the do-what-I-tell-you drug. She’d been brainwashed, reprogrammed to siphon off part of her billions in wealth. It had been before ERD had even existed. FBI had broken the case, with Warren Becker as one of the agents.

Holtzmann remembered Becker talking about it, over rounds of drinks one night, at an international Policing Emerging Technological Threats conference, in ’32 or ’33. Mexican cartels, Becker had said, expanding from drugs and prostitution to extortion and brainwashing.

But the files said that the PLF were behind it. Was he remembering wrong?

Holtzmann’s terminal beeped at him. High priority incoming call. He looked up at it. Maximilian Barnes. A sudden dread hit him. Barnes knew what he was doing, and why… Perspiration broke out on his brow.

Get a grip, Martin! Answer him!

He took a breath. It was nothing. A routine call. Nothing more. The terminal beeped again. Another breath, and he reached out to accept the call.

Barnes’ face, always perfectly calm, with those cold dark eyes, filled his screen.

“Martin.”

“Director.” Holtzmann tried to act calm. “What can I do for you?”

“Martin, the President has a conflict with the briefing on the Nexus children next week. A campaign trip.”

Holtzmann almost sighed with relief. They could delay the briefing.

Barnes continued. “So we’re moving it up to tomorrow. 11am.”

Holtzmann blinked. His heart was pounding again. “But… I haven’t prepared anything. There’s no way I can be ready…”

Barnes held up a mollifying hand. “This is just a casual chat, Martin. Just come ready to answer his questions. That’s it. And besides, the President likes you.”

Then Barnes was gone, and moments later Holtzmann was in the men’s room, on his knees, his head over a toilet, retching up the day’s lunch.

He wiped his mouth with a piece of toilet paper, flushed the vomit away. He knew what he needed.

Martin Holtzmann pulled up the interface in his mind, dialed up another opiate surge, and let it take him away.

He cleaned up, later, and let the car drive him home as he thought about the next day.

He knew the content. He knew the facts backwards and forwards. But the President terrified him. The risk of being caught…

What he needed was confidence.

That night, as Anne lay asleep next to him, he wrote a simple script to elevate his serotonin and dopamine levels during the meeting. No sudden surge. Just a long, steady flow that would keep him calm, alert, and confident.

When he was satisfied he gave himself a large luxurious opiate surge as a reward. His cares went away. All was peace and bliss.