Pandemonium

Lew nodded. “I find your ideas intriguing, and I’d like to subscribe to your newsletter. What’s the name of this fine organization?”

“It gets better,” I said. “The Human League.”

“No way.”

“I’m not sure they realized the name was taken.”

“My God,” Lew said. “It’s the perfect cover for an elite fighting force—an eighties New Wave band! This is so Buckaroo Banzai.” He refolded his legs, no easy task in the Audi. “So this Bertram guy must have been thrilled to meet you, one of the pawns of the overlords. Did he explain why the masters of Earth would bother possessing an underemployed graphic artist and not, say, the national security advisor?”

“Oh yeah. He was convinced that my possession—well, all the showy possessions, like the Captain?—were for the entertainment of the other slans, kinda like theater for superhumans. The slans came to power in the forties, and they’re long-lived, and that’s why so many of the demons are so old-fashioned. They like their old radio shows and comic books—the Shadow, Captain America.”

Lew snorted. “Sure, that makes sense. They keep it a secret that they’re running the world, then they blow their cover by playing dressup like Trekkers?”

“Only Trekkies say Trekkers,” I said. “There must be two types of slans—the responsible, world-dominating type, and the role-playing, geek slans.”

“White-boy racist geeks, judging from how my black friends reacted to the O. J. killing.”

I snorted. “Like you have black friends.”

“So did you tell Bert your theory that you’d trapped a demon?”

“We had a lot of time to talk.”

Lou sighed. “Well no wonder.”

“No wonder what? And it’s not a theory.”

“Say the slans are in charge,” he said. “These telepaths can invade any mind they want, bouncing around people’s heads like packets on a network. They go wherever they want, dropping into your personal hardware like a virus. But you, you’re special.”

“I’m antiviral?”

“Not exactly. You didn’t kill the demon, you just quarantined it, like a sandbox that keeps Trojan horse programs from dialing out.”

“You really gotta work on your metaphors,” I said. “How’s a sandbox supposed to stop a Trojan horse?”

“Shut up,” he explained. “The important thing is that you’ve trapped one. It can’t get out and infect other people. If you could teach people how to do that—”

“I don’t want to teach people how to trap one. It’s awful. Even if I knew what the trick was, which I don’t, nobody would want this thing in their head.”

“It can’t be worse than being possessed,” he said.

“You don’t get to have an opinion.”

“Okay, okay. Fine. But say that once you get this thing out of you, you could use the same trick that kept it in to keep it out. You’d own the world’s only demonic firewall.”

I rolled my eyes.

He pointed at me. “You, my friend, may be the ultimate weapon in the war against the slans.”

“Oh my God,” I said, my voice going spooky with awe. “That would make me . . .”

“The Chosen One!” we said simultaneously.

We rode in silence for a while. Then Lew said, “But seriously. Bertram can’t come to the house, not while Amra’s there alone. You gotta call him and tell him to cut that shit out.”

“I told you, I’ll call him.”

“Okay,” Lew said.

“Okay.”

We made great time crossing Ohio and Pennsylvania. My thoughts kept jumping from Dr. Ram to Valis to Mother Mariette. Lew distracted me by reading from some of the more tangential web pages we’d only skimmed the night before when we were looking up the priestess. Then he started streaming music from his laptop to the car radio.

“You got to hear this one,” Lew said. It started with a U2 guitar