Adjustment Day, Page 9

  As she packed a carton with stacks of red bills, Masie wondered about their purpose. What forward-thinking advertising agency was behind this? Whatever their use, it had to be soon. Within weeks they’d be worthless. They could still be restored using another burst of ultraviolet light, but only the original creators would have the template. Whoever owned the stencil owned the means of producing more.

  The shipping labels showed the boxes were headed to cities throughout the nation. Most likely hers wasn’t the only shop producing them. Whatever the Council of Tribes was, it wouldn’t be a secret for much longer.

  The list had been a joke. A listicle. Click bait. The most easily consumed form of information in the post-information age of churnalism. No one knew who first posted it. Late-night talk-show wags joked that they weren’t hated as much as other talk-show wags. Others saw it as a way to rebrand themselves as villains or victims. For hate is a form of passionate attachment, and to be despised seems better than to be unknown.

  Thus people who felt neglected, they nominated themselves and were hurt not to be seconded. Hate took the place of love as our measurement of popularity. For it takes everything to be loved. To be loved is to serve as a slave. Hate demonstrates a complete freedom from pleasing others. Like wildfire almost everyone alive was nominated, but few received the votes they needed to sustain any rank. Those who remained were public figures who’d betrayed huge groups of followers. The staggering vote totals went to media figures, actors, journalists. By far the most hate went to teachers and professors who’d been exposed for teaching students what to think in place of how to think.

  However the greatest tallies of rage were heaped upon political figures. Those preening public servants who constantly created bigger problems and offered themselves as the only solution.

  Visitors to the site marveled over the skyrocketing scores. They scrolled through the list of America’s Least Wanted and looked for the ones nearest themselves. This pornography of public hatred.

  The names of ordinary people dropped away even as the votes snowballed for the famous. New distractions presented themselves, and most people forgot the list. Dismissed it as they had the Tamagotchi . . . the Beanie Babies . . . pogs.

  But in obscurity the list continued to swell. The remaining names ticked upward into the millions of votes. And no one gave a thought to the list except for the mysterious team that had created it. Visitors downloaded copies of the final version. And just as mysteriously as the list had once appeared, suddenly it was gone.

  The list did not exist.

  Charlie was determined not to look, not at first.

  And then he’d looked, and he wasn’t going to look anymore, but then he looked some more. And what he’d dreaded most had come true. Both their names were on the list.

  He noted the date on which each name had been posted. The first had been posted only a day before the second. Neither of the two had enough votes to stay on the list past the three-week mark. Every day Charlie checked, and every day he prayed both names would just drop off the list for lack of votes.

  Just hours before the threshold, both names had racked up too many votes. They were both targets. Both were going to die.

  The two weren’t in Charlie’s region, but they’d be targets for some lineage. And it was completely unethical, but he drove around all day Sunday until he found a phone booth so isolated no one would overhear his conversation. The booth stood at the edge of a pay parking lot near the train station. Charlie bought latex gloves to prevent leaving his fingerprints on the buttons, and he dumped out the Mason jar where he collected spare change and picked out all the quarters. He wore sunglasses and a baseball cap with the brim pulled low. He parked a ways from the phone booth and walked around block after block, always making sure nobody was following him. And as surreptitiously as sliding into the door of a dirty book store, he side-stepped into the phone booth.

  His pockets loaded with quarters, the weight of these quarters tugging his pants low on his hips, Charlie stuffed his hands in the latex gloves and dialed a long-distance number he knew by heart.

  The phone rang at the opposite end, and Charlie prayed for someone to pick up.

  “Hello?” A man’s voice.

  Charlie said, “Dad?”

  His father asked, “Charlie?” Away from the phone, he shouted, “Honey, pick up the extension. It’s the dropout calling!”

  Charlie scanned the surrounding parking lot. Into the receiver he asked, “How soon can you and Mom get to Canada?”

  A click was followed by his mother’s voice. “You’re in Canada?”

  “No,” Charlie insisted. “You and Dad need to get to Canada, fast!”

  His father chuckled. “With the big war coming, it’s you who needs to do the draft dodging!”

  His mother added, “If you were still in college and hitting the books, Charlie, you wouldn’t be eligible for getting drafted.”

  Charlie didn’t want to argue, but he didn’t want to tip his hand, either. “Mom, that was Vietnam. This is different.” His nervous fingers went back to his pants pocket, from pocket to phone, and continued to drop quarter, quarter, quarter into the slot. Each coin set off a bell. Between and behind their words, the bell kept tolling.

  He couldn’t say as much, but they were both on the list. Even if he told them the full situation they’d run to the police and the police would most likely kill them for knowing. After that, the police or someone would kill Charlie for telling them. Their only hope was to flee the country. Because even if they hid out, stayed at home, whatever, someone, someday would target them.

  Charlie tried to reason with them. He asked, “Dad, if you and I were in a lifeboat with my son, and I could only save you or him, who do you think I should save?”

  His mother gasped, “Charlie! You have a son?” She sounded shocked and delighted.

  “Theoretically, Mom,” he replied. “Should I save you or my kid?”

  To Charlie, the coming slaughter would elevate him and all his descendants to the status of royalty. But it would also kill his parents. A conundrum. They were both professors at a junior college, they dabbled in local city and county politics, there were a dozen reasons for people wanting them rubbed out. But, still, they were his mom and dad. It was difficult to weigh the love he felt for them against the love he’d feel someday for his future sons and grandsons. His love for them was conflicted. His love for his unborn sons was unqualified.

  “So,” he approached the issue from a new direction, “if I get drafted, do you want me to kill people?”

  Without hesitation, his father said, “To save our nation, yes.”

  The bell rang and rang.

  As he fed the phone quarters, Charlie asked, “What if I die?”

  His mother said, “God forbid!”

  Another quarter rang the bell.

  Charlie asked, “And if it meant saving our country, would you want me to kill someone’s parents?”

  His fingers sweating inside the latex glove, his hand went to his pocket and found it empty. He’d run out of quarters. The bells had stopped.

  After a pause, his father said, “Yes, if that’s your mission.”

  To clarify, Charlie asked, “You’d want me to murder someone’s mom and dad?”

  His mother asked, “What’s that sound?” She asked, “Are you crying?”

  Yes, he was crying. Charlie was crying. He sniffed as tears washed down his cheeks.

  His father asked, “Is this about drugs? Charlie boy, are you high?”

  Before they’d be cut off, Charlie choked out the words, “I love you guys.”

  His father said, “Then why the big boo-hooing?”

  And that’s when the connection went dead.

  Gregory Piper watched television, waiting for a final decision on his audition. Television was better than the Internet. If he ran across himself on television it was by accident and it could still send a frisson of chemical euphoria into his bloodstream. Surfing the w
eb it was too easy to search himself and build a lifetime out of watching video of his work and perusing still images of himself. Too Sunset Boulevard. On the Internet, a person could spend a lifetime in egomaniacal self-worship.

  Sitting on the couch, he considered the cash. The ten thousand dollars. Considered whether he ought to mention it to his agent or not. His hand squeezed the remote, bouncing between channels. On one, the actor John Wayne appeared, and he ambled into the center of a white space and fixed the camera with his trademark glower. Clearly this was a sequence digitally lifted from some classic film and inserted into a new context. The Duke whipped off his Stetson and dashed the hat against the dusty leg of his chaps. “Shucks, pilgrim,” he drawled. “I ain’t made it to the toilet this time . . .”

  Piper clicked the remote and the image froze.

  It was a commercial to sell absorbent underpants.

  He watched in shock. Clearly the actor’s estate was willing to license Wayne’s image for anything. This was something few actors foresaw. How their residual celluloid self could be computer manipulated to serve as a slave, a digital zombie beyond death. The actor Robin Williams had been among the first to draft a will forbidding electronic misuse of his image. A star with less foresight, a digitalized Audrey Hepburn continued to work, shilling for Galaxy Chocolates. Fred Astaire sold vacuum cleaners. Marilyn Monroe hawked Snickers candy bars.

  Like ghosts, Piper thought.

  An ear worm, like a song, echoed in his head.

  “Adjustment Day is upon us,” he repeated to himself as he watched the television. He’d been asked to recite that line so often he’d probably never vanquish it from his head.

  The envelope of cash was stashed in his kitchen, in a cabinet, stuffed inside an empty cereal box. He would spend some on a lawyer. Would finally write his own Last Will and Testament. He’d make sure no one could harness his image after his death. That demise being peaceful and painless and in the distant, distant future, he supposed.

  Back in Before Times . . . in the world you want to think is still real . . . Walter had driven west through Illinois. He’d ranted that the greatest proof of love’s power is that it couldn’t be reduced to words. Love isn’t a scientific experiment that could be replicated. No man has to be a rocket surgeon to recognize love. It’s like that poem about ignorant armies that clash by night. That poem. Where there’s no joy or cure for pain.

  While his kidnapped new old man had listened or slept or died in the trunk of the car, Walter had described Shasta. Every detail about Shasta.

  He’d surmised that love is a mission a man goes on every day. A mission a man never completes until death. In that way, true love is a suicide mission.

  Dawson was determined not to look. But then he’d looked, and he wasn’t going to look anymore, but then he looked some more. And what’s when he saw the name on the list.

  The name had already racked up an impressive tally. It wouldn’t be Dawson’s lineage, but some lineage was going to earn big votes on this target. Futile as it seemed, Dawson knew he’d still have to make an effort. Someday Roxanne would ask if he’d made an effort, and he’d have to explain. Tell her how he’d tried.

  Dawson bought a throwaway phone at the 7-Eleven and took it to the center span of the Morrison Bridge, a place where no one would overhear. Not over the sound of traffic. He dialed a number from memory. As it rang on the other end, he looked down on the dark water of the Willamette River and prayed the number was still valid. It had been a long time.

  “Hello?” A boy’s voice.

  Dawson asked, “Quentin?”

  His son asked, “Dad?” Music blared in the background. “Dad, I can barely hear you.”

  Dawson shouted, “Turn down your music!”

  Against the music, his son shouted, “Is Mom okay?”

  Dawson shouted, “Your mother is fine, but you need to get your ass to Canada!” Out here in public, shouting like this was risky. Cars passed, but the bridge’s sidewalk was empty.

  His son shouted, “If you mean the war, I’m joining up. Dr. Steiger-DeSoto says it’s my duty as a pan-gendered individual to show the world that courage knows no gender!”

  Whatever his kid had just announced, Dawson wasn’t certain. In response, he shouted, “There won’t be a war!”

  His son shouted, “Dr. Steiger-DeSoto says the war is necessary to preserve human rights!”

  It was Dawson shouting, “I’m trying to save your life!”

  His son shouted, “Dr. Steiger-DeSoto says I’m not a child anymore!”

  Dawson shouted, “Turn down your stereo!”

  Against the music, his son shouted, “Dr. Steiger-DeSoto says I’m her most promising grad student and that I should start thinking for myself!”

  Dawson risked everything. If he told and Quentin went to the police, they’d both be killed. Roxanne would be alone in the coming new world. No one would benefit. Still, Dawson told. “Your name is on a list to be killed!”

  His son laughed. Laughed and laughed. “Dad,” he said, catching his breath, “I know! Isn’t it great!”

  Dawson didn’t understand.

  “I even voted for myself!” laughed his son. “It’s nothing.” He sighed. “Dad, don’t worry. It’s like . . . it’s like the new Facebook!”

  Dawson tried to explain the truth. A beep interrupted.

  His son said, “Dad?”

  The beep interrupted.

  His son said, “Dad, Dr. Steiger-DeSoto is on the other line.”

  The beep interrupted.

  His son said, “Dad, I love you. See you after the war!” And the connection went dead.

  And Dawson thought of the quote from the Talbott book:

  We must kill those who would have us kill one another.

  And Dawson let the phone slip from his fingers and drop to disappear with hardly a splash into the deepest point in the river’s deep water.

  Jamal called his mom to tell her he wouldn’t make it for dinner on Sunday. He called from a hotel suite in Albany. Eating around him, perched on various chairs and sofas as well as seated on the floor, the group of them eating room service, his fellow teammates awaited their turn on the phone. Not his whole lineage, just a segment of his squad. They were silently drinking wine and beer from the minibar. They were listening as each took the phone and called his family. He wanted to share the secret. To tell his mama about the Declaration of Interdependence and how it promised a homeland where no race would live under another like an occupying army. Each race would call the shots in its own homeland and no minority would be called out by the hostile stares of the majority. Like-minded could dictate their own culture. Children wouldn’t be schooled to serve as human colonies of an alien cultural imperialism.

  On the phone, she demanded, “What do you mean you’re not stopping by?”

  He wanted to tell her about his lineage. For the first time in human history each line of power wasn’t going to be based on blood and marriage alliances. Jamal looked at the man who’d invited him, then at the man he had invited. This cohort was only a small segment of a lineage that crisscrossed the nation, tonight. These men, eating room-service pizza, eating club sandwiches and sliders, and pretending not to eavesdrop, their brotherhood was based on mutual respect and trust and admiration. Here he was one link in this chain of men, none of whom were his enemy. Every one of which expected him to be nothing less than a hero.

  He wanted to read to her from the Talbott book, the passage that went:

  The last thing a black man wants to be is another fake white man.

  The last thing a homosexual wants to be is another imitation heterosexual.

  The last thing a white man wants to be is another phony paragon.

  On the phone, his mama asked, “Jamal?” Not all screechy like before, she asked, “What aren’t you telling me?”

  If he told her anything, she’d rush down and insinuate herself. That was her way.

  Tonight, on the last night of the old regime,
the lines of power were assembling outside statehouses and courthouses. Those invited by the invited by the invited in lineages linked by trust, they met their fellows for the first time and gasped in happy awe at their own numbers. Tribes chosen from the best, not the weakest, they gathered to wait outside of city halls and all the places where elected traitors would return the coming morning.

  If a target’s vote count was astronomical, a team might be dispatched to lie in ambush outside the target’s home. Otherwise they camped in ready groups, no one mentioning their task. The time for practicing and planning had passed. Their coming actions had to be as automatic as putting on their pants before their shoes.

  Most were quiet, saving everything for the next day’s work.

  To his eyes the group in the hotel suite looked like that painting, that church painting showing Christ and his homeboys chowing down. That Last Supper picture. Only with them passing a phone so, man by man, each could call home and make his good-byes. Not to explain himself, but to make his peace.

  They were an army of lone wolves.

  For Jamal the idea of power didn’t translate into sex and drugs. As he saw it, those short-term pleasures were the distractions men sought when they had no real power. To wield power, real power, meant a peace of mind and satisfaction beyond the numbness and dumbness that the bong and the whore could provide.

  Power meant access to anything and everything. Meaning a man wouldn’t need to hustle and hoard. It meant a life unencumbered by back-up plans. Alternate routes. Second choices.

  The Talbott book stated it so well:

  Each group must inhabit a homeland where it constitutes the norm. Otherwise either self-destroying self-hatred or other-attacking self-aggrandizing occurs. Drinking, drugs, and toxic sexual behaviors arise when cultures are compelled to share public space. No culture should be held to the expectations and subjected to the withering gaze of another.

  Young people in their own nation state, they’d be released from the college-prep standards of the alien European culture that sought to standardize every human being regardless of his natural talents and inclinations. The currently imposed one-size-fits-all code of human behavior. Power meant Jamal not having to present himself as an imperfect copy of someone he’d never wanted to be in the first place.