Crux

31 STUCK IN A MOMENT

Friday October 26th

Holtzmann limped out of the White House proper, supporting himself heavily with his cane, feeling years older than he had when he’d entered. Barnes walked next to him. Neither man said anything. Only after they were past the security guards and T-rays and Nexus scanners and metal detectors, waiting for their cars, did Barnes turn to him and lean in close. Holtzmann took an involuntary half step back, and Barnes took another forward. He’d never realized how tall Barnes was, but now, looking up into that cold face with its dead black eyes, he was acutely aware that the man was younger, taller, stronger, more powerful in every way.

Barnes put a hand on Holtzmann’s shoulder and squeezed, just enough to hurt. Holtzmann froze in fear.

Barnes leaned in until his mouth was inches from Holtzmann’s ear. He spoke slowly, his voice just above a hoarse whisper.

“If you ever do that to me again, I will fucking destroy you.”

Then Barnes’ car was there, and the man was all smiles. “Great job today, Martin. See you back at the office. I’m looking forward to new results in those things the President asked about.”

Holtzmann collapsed into his own car, exhausted and shaking. His fingers clenched around his cane of their own accord. Even through his boosted dopamine and serotonin levels all he could feel was the bitter disappointment of defeat, the yawning crevice of hypocrisy.

He’d tried. Somehow, boosted as he was, he’d found the courage to do something quite unlike himself. He’d spoken his mind to the President, to tell him what he truly thought. And he’d been casually rebuffed, rebuffed in a way so basic, so primitive, so tribal, so very human, that it left no doubt in his mind as to the course that humanity would take.

The Titans ate their young, he thought. No one wants to be usurped.

There was no safe ground underneath him anymore. There was just a chasm opening wider and wider. There were only two ways forward for him. He could do the moral thing, the right thing, and quit the ERD, face the audit and the discovery of the Nexus he’d stolen, face the imprisonment, in all likelihood for the rest of his life. Leave his wife and sons alone, and ashamed. Or he could do the weak thing, the expedient thing, and do his job, be party to the forced abortion of this new breed of humanity, and maybe, just maybe, stay free.

Both paths led straight into the abyss. He could feel himself falling now. The world was spinning around him.

“Phone,” he managed to say. “Clear my calendar and turn on my autoresponder. I’m sick.”

The phone beeped in the affirmative.

“Car,” he choked out the words. “Drive to the park.”

“Which park would you like as your destination?” the car asked in its silky feminine voice.

“Any,” he said. “Any of them will do.”

“I have twenty-seven parks within…” the car began.

“Aaah!” Holtzmann slammed his cane against the car’s dash in frustration and the car went silent.

His breath was coming fast. He was panting in anger.

Stupid man, he told himself. Yelling at a car.

He let his breath calm. A memory came to him. A happy day, with Anne. Fine.

“Montrose Park,” he told the car. “Montrose Park.”

“Yes, sir,” the car answered, more deferentially, some affective computing algorithm now modulating its interactions with him.

Holtzmann barely noticed. He leaned his seat back, brought up the neuromodulation interface app in his mind, the panel of dials and switches with neat labels and dry academic names. Then he dialed up a large opiate release, hit the button, and felt it course through his brain. It was sickly sweet, not glorious and ecstatic as it had been once, but even so the opiates pushed the fear and unmooring back away from him, pushed the anxiety and panic into the background, until he just didn’t care about the President or his predicament or anything else.

The car drove him to Montrose Park in a languid dream. Trees and buildings moved by in a blurring, surreal molasses. His pulse thrummed slow and low through his veins. Haltingly he told the car to park and to darken the windows. Somewhere in the Caribbean, the radio told him, a tropical storm called Zoe had thrashed Cuba, leaving buildings destroyed, fields flooded, and hundreds dead. Here, in the park beyond his car windows, it was a gorgeous hot sunny day. Thought and memory returned as the opiate surge faded. He and Anne had come here, when they were younger. They’d brought the boys here to splash around in the pool. He had hazy, happy memories of it. Heat and crowds of parents and children. Cool water on a hot day. Hot dogs bought from the snack bar.

From the parking lot he could see that pool, where he and Anne had brought the boys. Mothers and toddlers and a few young people splashed about there now. Inside his car, Holtzmann was in his own private cocoon.

He stayed there for hours. Every so often the opiates would start to wear off and the chasm would yawn wide open beneath his feet again and he’d start to panic, his breath coming fast and his heart pounding and his stomach feeling sick, and he’d dose himself once more to push it away. The doses he was giving himself were large, now, but there was no bliss in them. His tolerance was growing. At best the doses made him care less, care less that his life was reduced to this, a choice between imprisonment and something akin to genocide.

There’s another way, he thought. I could end my own life.

He pushed that idea away with another opiate surge, larger than the last.

His phone buzzed, again and again, calls from the office, video messages, text messages. He refused to answer, refused to check his messages on phone or slate.

Dusk came. Teenagers – released from the prisons that masqueraded as schools – joined the mothers and small children at the pool. He was hungry. He had to piss. He should be home soon. He was tempted to stay here forever, to just lay in his car taking dose after dose after dose of opiates until his neurons were squeezed dry of them or until he accidentally killed himself.

But something else prevailed. Habit, perhaps. Some shred of dignity. He forced a jolt of norepinephrine through his system, pushed himself up, and shambled on his cane to the restroom by the pool. Children and parents stared at him. A mother pulled her toddler aside, protectively. He had some vague notion that he was a mess, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

He pissed in a room that smelled of chlorine, and struggled back to his car, limping on his cane. He ordered the car to take him home, and did the best he could to clear his head with more norepinephrine, with acetylcholine, with more dopamine. His brain was a neurochemical witch’s brew. Some part of him whispered that he couldn’t go on like this, that he’d push himself too hard soon, push himself into another opiate overdose or serotonin syndrome or a deadly seizure or some other cataclysmic neurochemical collapse.

Despite that, his brain tinkering worked. He reached his own home in some semblance of order. He could pass his state off as fatigue from a long day, perhaps. Maybe. Above all else, he wouldn’t tell Anne where he’d been, or why.

He came in through the door. Anne was home already, files in her lap. She looked up. “Martin!”

Holtzmann smiled, and then shots rang out from the screen. He looked over in time to see a video of his nightmare – two Secret Service agents clobbering Steve Travers. He caught his breath, reflexively waiting for the moment when the screen exploded with chaos, when the explosion hurled him through the air, took the life of Joe Duran standing just inches from him.

The screen went blank instead, as Anne clicked it off.

“I’m sorry, Martin,” she said. “Didn’t mean to make you watch that again.” She was up and had her arms around him, was kissing him on the side of his face.

Holtzmann was frozen stiff, his whole body suddenly racing with adrenaline.

Anne frowned.

“You know what frustrates me?” she asked.

Holtzmann shook his head, mutely, his mind trapped in that endless moment six months past.

The Secret Service man’s gun came out out out, and fired, and fired. Human missiles leveled the shooter, and Holtzmann turned, looking for the President. Joe Duran screaming in his ear, “How did you know, Martin? How did you know?”

Anne was speaking, saying something. “Stockton was losing until the PLF tried to kill him,” she said. “He’s going to win because of the assassination attempt, and now Chicago.” She shook her head. “They could’ve at least been better shots.”

He grabbed hold of her, suddenly panicked. “Don’t say that, Anne! Don’t ever say that!” They were watching him. A stranger in the car. Nakamura raising his hand for the killing blow…

She looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “It was a joke, Martin! It’s still OK to make jokes in this country!”

“Just please,” he pleaded. “Please don’t ever say that.”

They slept on opposite sides of the bed. Anne seemed annoyed, put off by his behavior. She drifted off to sleep without their customary “I love you.”

Holtzmann lay there on his back. He was close to something. Some realization was working its way through his mind. He’d been close to it that night after Nakamura had surprised him, and then he’d been distracted, had dropped it. Bits of memories and conversations went through his head.

The Secret Service man’s gun came out out out, and fired, and fired. Human missiles leveled the shooter. The gun flew from his hand.

Anne talking to him. “They could’ve at least been better shots.”

Wait. Wait. That made no sense. Travers had missed because the other Secret Service agents had hit him before he could fire. They’d thrown off his aim. Or he’d flinched as they approached. That was why.

But in his nightmares Travers fired first, and then the other agents hit him. In his nightmares, the man never flinched.

He was wide awake, suddenly. His head felt free of opiate buzz, free of the awful feeling of anxiety and craving. His stomach was knotted but his head was clear.

He brought up a window in his mind, navigated his file system. He’d saved the memories of that morning. He’d archived them. There. That was the folder. There were the files.

He pulled the memory up. Sensations engulfed him. He was back in that sweltering July day. Sweat beaded on his brow. Daydreaming as the President droned on. He wanted to yell at his old self, scream at his younger self to get up, to cry out about what was going to happen, but there was no going back, no way to stop it. The past was read-only.

He moved the slider along, fast-forwarded through his own memory, and there. The encrypted radio traffic. He’d craned his head. Spotted Travers, just another nameless Secret Service man to him then, and the awful intuition had come to him. In the memory he was up on his feet now. His heart was pounding, in the memory and in the present.

His past self was shouting now that that man had a gun. Holtzmann cranked down the play speed, and as he watched, Travers pulled the huge pistol out of his jacket in a long, slow motion, no expression on his face. It arced around at a quarter speed and snapped into place, perfectly steadily, and hung there as still as the man’s face for a fraction of a second. Then its muzzle flared and a huge boom filled Holtzmann’s ears. The muzzle of the gun jerked up, came down again in slow motion, and then its muzzle flared again and a second boom exploded in his ears. And only then did a twin blur slam into Travers and take him away. Throughout it all, the man’s expression never changed.

Holtzmann’s heart was pounding. Travers had fired calmly and coolly. He’d fired before he was hit. And his expression never betrayed a single flinch, a single hesitation. And why should it? The man had been turned into a Nexus robot, after all. His arm was controlled by software, not human instinct. His aim was controlled by software.

So why had he missed?

Nakamura’s voice answered him. “To find the cause of an event… who had the most to gain?”

There was a hand on Holtzmann’s chest. Anne was shaking him. “Martin. Martin. You were screaming. Are you OK? Another nightmare?”

Holtzmann opened his eyes, looked over at his wife. And now he was terribly afraid, not just for himself, but for her as well.

“A nightmare,” he said. “A nightmare.”

Anne Holtzmann rolled back over in the bed she shared with her husband, troubled. What was wrong with Martin? Why was he acting so strangely?

She lay there, thinking, finding no answers, until she heard his breath change as he fell back into sleep. Then sleep took her as well.