Phil Elmore's Blog, page 15

Episode 35, “Something to Sign”

 

[image error]He is Ian Peyton. He fears nobody. He finishes every fight he starts. He is not a big man; he doesn’t need to be. He’s tougher and he’s meaner and he’s faster with a gun or a knife. That’s why the Triads used him for his dirty work. When you needed a tough guy, you called Ian Peyton. Everybody knew that.

They all looked at him like they expected him to wet himself.  The guards outside the Promontory looked at each other and at him, snickering and making comments about how popular he’d be inside.  Like that kind of cheap psych-out would work on anyone who wasn’t weak. Peyton had never been weak. He wasn’t going to start now.

They gave him the full treatment in processing: Strip search, delousing, UV and EM, organ screen.  The whole time the screws and the support staff acted like they knew something he didn’t.  He took their attitude and gave it back to them.  He knew he wouldn’t be the big fish he had been on the outside; this was the Promontory, after all. To get sent inside you had to be bad news. Well, he was Ian Peyton.  He was born bad news.

They’d adjust to him and he’d learn to make some concessions to them. He would do his time and get out without running his mouth. Next time around, he’s run a little faster, try a little harder. He didn’t intend to come back.

On his way to his cell, he dealt with the usual catcalls, the typical thrown bedding and body wastes.  Hazing. You couldn’t skip it. Everybody had to deal with it. His cellmate was a lifer debit-kiter who’d been caught one time to many draining bank accounts that weren’t his.  He did Peyton the courtesy of getting stabbed three days into Peyton’s term in the prison. It was nice to have a private cell.  Peyton wondered when they would assign him somebody new.

People left him alone for the first week.  He figured he was doing a good job of putting out the vibe.  Don’t look like food and you won’t get eaten. Prison wasn’t much different than life. It was just a lot more boring.

On the eighth day, they came for him in the yard.

There were four of them. He never learned their names.  They tried to sweet-talk him at first, tried to get him to meet them in his private cell after yard time, tried to tell him that if he cooperated, his time inside would be plenty sweet. He broke the closest jaw with his most vicious uppercut, ready to dive into the others and make them pay for their insult. You had to show these guys who was boss right way. You had to show you weren’t a victim, or it would never stop. The rules were simple. He liked simple.

Except that there weren’t four. There were six.  The two he didn’t see snuck up on him while he was dealing with the other four. They grabbed him, pinned his arms.  He tried to use his legs, but two of the others grabbed these. That left two grown men to beat him bloody, beat him until his spleen was ruptured, beat him until his ribs were cracked and his eyes were so badly swollen that he was practically blind.  He spent three days in the infirmary, one of those in a robot tube getting his liver and spleen mended.

They were waiting for him when he got out.  He had defied them. They were going to break him, now. They were going to show him his place. When they broke him, they would take him, and his personal hell would be complete.

His second visit to the infirmary lasted twice as long. He had to have bones knitted that time. One of his eyes was out, hanging by its optic nerve. His orbital bone was cracked. They put the eye back, lasered the retina in place, and fused the bone closed.

The third time, he was in a coma for three days.  When he woke, he had no idea what had been fixed. He only knew that every part of him hurt. His future stared back at him — an endless succession of beatings and violations, which could only end in his premature death at the hands of his tormenters.

Lying in his hospital bed, Peyton considered taking his own life and thus ending the torture.

That was when Warden Richards came to him. He remembered every word of the conversation.

“Looks like you’ve found yourself some trouble, son,” said the Warden.

“It’s your prison,” Peyton had said through swollen lips. “You should do something.”

“There’s nothing I can do,” said the Warden. “No prison can control its population one hundred percent of the time. It’s all I can do to keep the prison service off my back, keep the place running smoothly, keep our rankings high enough that I don’t lose my job.  Do you realize how valuable it would be to me if you’d all just do your time and not make trouble?  I’d do you some favors, son, if I thought you could give me anything in return.”

“Name it,” said Peyton.

“Well,” said Richards, “as it happens, there is something you can do.  I’m just a messenger.  They don’t tell me much about the program. But the government is running some trials and they’ve asked me if I can provide them with a suitable test subject. You could be that subject.”

“Be a guinea pig? No thank you.”

“You should reconsider,” said the Warden. “If you agree, it looks good on my record. And if my record looks good, I stay in charge around here.”

“And in return you’ll protect me?” asked Peyton.

“No,” said the Warden. “That would set a bad precedent. “But there are other things I might be able to do for you.  A little favor here, a little favor there. And the good news is that you won’t need me to protect you. They tell me if you join this program, you’ll soon be bigger and stronger than you can imagine. Once you join, Peyton, you’ll be so powerful that nobody in here will ever mess with you again.”

“What’ll they do to me?”

“Something about implanting organs that will boost your growth, your strength.  Like legal steroids.”

“I don’t want to be an Oggy.”

“No, no,” said the Warden. “Nothing like that.  I’m not even sure that would be legal.  This is entirely biological. The organs are grown in a laboratory.”

Peyton thought about it. He thought about all the years he had ahead of him in this place. He thought about the damage his enemies had done. The next time they might kill him — or worse, permanently cripple him.

“Show me something to sign,” Peyton said.

Technocracy: The Left’s Ongoing Media Angst

My WND Technocracy column today takes its inspiration from a few sources, among them the persecution of Todd “Honey Badger of American Politics” Kincannon and one feminist harpy’s hatred for “the myth of the cool dad.”

“I hate the myth of the cool dad,” sneers Hayley Krischer, who describes her husband as an overgrown adolescent who feeds dessert to their children for breakfast.

When even something as innocuous as the #howtodad Cheerios commercial has liberals up in arms (one wonders how much the woman’s husband must hate his life), you’re witnessing their ongoing angst over the stranglehold they wish to maintain on popular culture.

Read the full column here in WND news.

Want to know what I think about Writer’s Block?

Like most writers, I had only known those brief periods during which you aren’t sure how to proceed until you work it out.

The problem started out slowly.  I had a novel that was due in a couple of months.  As the weeks ticked by, I made no progress.  Before it was all over, I was fully six months behind in my writing.

Want to know how I solved the problem? Check out my column, “Phil Elmore’s Tough Love,” at Book Design Gods.

Episode 34, “Out with the Garbage”

 

[image error]His fingers dug into the pavement. His hands were cracked and bleeding. He could not feel them. His limbs were numb, his vision blurry. Blood leaked from a dozen half-clotted wounds across his torso. Even past the ringing in his ears, he could hear his own ribs grating together. His legs would not support him.

He had almost no memory of crawling away from the cul de sac. He had no idea how far he had come. His lungs burned with every breath. His skin felt like it was covered with stinging insects. No matter how much he blinked, no matter how he squinted, he could not bring his eyesight into focus.

He was dying.

The alleyway in which he crawled was piled high in fetid garbage. He wormed his way through the refuse, not feeling the multipedes that crawled on him and stung him, not caring when he pulled himself through broken glass or sharp fragments of plastic. He should have died at the factory. He had died at the factory. He had breathed too much poison, taken too much damage, for it to be otherwise.

He needed to get to Montauk’s flat. Annika would be there.  He only wanted to see her. If he could just see her one last time, tell her he loved her, then nothing else that happened would matter. He could die. He could finally rest.

Throw the arm. Dig in. Pull. Throw the arm. Dig in. Pull.  Peyton’s world was reduced to this. Each breath seared his lungs. Each meter he gained left a river of blood on the paving behind him.

Every twenty meters, by his count, he threw up blood.  The vomiting became a rib-cracking dry heave by the fifth or sixth time; he had lost track. Whether this was his body trying to cleanse the poison or evidence of the injuries that were killing him, he didn’t know.

Keep going, he told himself.  Keep going.

There were bullets inside him. Projectiles had lodged in his body. Some might be self-propelled; they might even now be drilling their way slowly to his organs. In so many ways, his time was limited.

He just had to last long enough to see Annika.

He heard it, then: a rumbling, low and subtle, beneath the ringing in his ears. Rolling over, enduring the agony that shot through him as he collided with the wall of the alley, he tried to push himself to a sitting position. It took him a few moments to manage the maneuver. By then, he could see the source of the noise.

There were three of them.  The big one was clearly the alpha. The other two were followers, scarred as the first one was, but hanging back as their leader sized up Peyton.

The feral dogs were mastiffs. Hongkongtown’s wild dog problem ebbed and flowed. Cycles in which the animals were hunted were typically followed by periods of pack expansion. Complacency would yield as the dogs became a threat, which prompted more public hunts.

The garbage. He should have avoided this alley. The dogs had probably claimed this place. They saw him as a threat, which meant they would–

The alpha leapt for his throat.

He could barely lift his arms.  The animal hit him in the chest, bouncing his head off the alley wall, clawing and snarling. Its jaws sought his neck, ready to bite deep.  Instead he shoved his fist down the animal’s throat.

His own blood welled. He was grateful for the numbness in his limbs.  He reached in as deeply as he could, and when his arm would not move farther, he willed his hand to open and close.  He grabbed. He pulled.

The noise the animal made caused the other two to freeze where they stood. Their hair stood up and they whined in confusion.  They had no frame of reference for Peyton; he was bigger than any human prey they had stalked, smelled like death, and was doing something to their leader that they could not fathom.

Peyton wrenched his arm free. The mastiff alpha shuddered, convulsed. Blood poured from its mouth.  Its eyes rolled back into its skull.

With the last of his strength, Peyton threw the dying dog. It took everything he possessed.  He collapsed against the wall of the alley, slumping again. The other two growled, dancing back and forth, unsure.  Their ears were pressed against their heads.

He wasn’t going to reach his daughter.  He was going to end here, killed by dogs.  He tried to lift his arms and could not. He tried to raise his head and failed.

The dogs reacted to something he could not perceive. They turned and ran. The ringing in Peyton’s ears had become a pulsing, skull-shattering tone. Was this what dying sounded like?

No. The noise was not in his head. The noise was coming from the blocky gray vehicle moving up the alley.  Its square face opened, revealing the clockwork chasm of a compactor.  The noise was a warning tone. The vehicle was churning up the debris in the alley, consuming it.

A sweeper.  He was going to be picked up by a trash sweeper. His body would be crushed and carried to a trash recycling facility. He did not have the air in his lungs to laugh.

Garbage, he thought. I go out with the garbage.

A pair of slim, humanoid robots detached themselves from the sides of the compactor.  The helper androids had hooks for arms; it was their job to police up small garbage that the compactor missed, delivering the straggling bits to the chugging machine.  The technology had not changed in decades. Garbage detail was neither complicated nor particularly demanding work; these androids had probably been sweeping the same grid of alleyways for thirty years. They looked old enough.

No one to hear my last words, he thought. No one except a robot that won’t know what they mean.

That was all right. He didn’t have anything to say.

He actually managed a laugh, that time.

One of the androids paused.  It turned to look in his direction. He wouldn’t have believed it, if he hadn’t seen it.  The robot actually cast a glance at its partner, which continued picking up garbage, before it hurried over to look at Peyton.

Peyton stared up at it. Its blank camera eyes were fogged with dust.  As he watched, the robot reached up and thumbed lines of grit out of its lenses.  It leaned in so close that Peyton could see his reflection in its cameras.

“Ian Peyton?” it asked.  “You don’t look well.”

“Mon… Montauk…” Peyton whispered.

The android turned again to its companion. The sound it made next was no language Peyton had ever heard. It was static mixed with tones and beeps.  The garbage robot responded by turning and walking over. It beeped obediently.

The two figures — one a robot, the other something else — reached down, took his arms, and began dragging him toward the Sweeper.  They carried him past the compactor toward the rear of the vehicle, where a large flatbed cargo area waited.

“What…” Peyton said.  “Why…”

“Any friend of Montauk’s,” said the Og disguised as a robot.

Singham

Bajirao Singham’s “style of working” (hang on while I put on my Aviator sunglasses) is not a style, so much, as a mandate, where that mandate is to do whatever the hell you want.  Rohit Shetty’s immensely popular 2011 film, Singham (“Lion”) is a remake of an earlier Tamil film.  It stars Ajay Devgn as the titular character, the only honest cop in a nation so corrupt it would make Kevin Spacey’s Frank Underwood slightly uncomfortable.  The film begin’s with a lion’s roar and, having set that tone, follows Devgn (often in slow motion) as he walks dramatically at things.  Singham is, in fact, introduced with a colorful musical number of which he is, strangely, an active participant — an act of self-aware parody that strides a fine line between awesome and ridiculous.

Eye-copulating the camera from behind his sunglasses as he walks dramatically forward, sideways, and forward again, one is struck by how tightly tailored his uniform is… but only after he emerges from a spiritual bath (in Singham Returns, I believe he might actually be bathing in the Ganges) Making tiger-claw motions at the fourth wall, Singham is daring you to challenge him while warning you not to take him up on this foolish proposition. For Singham fights with all the unabashed recklessness of a cartoon character, tiger-slapping his enemies on the head (complete with video-game coin-noises) and bouncing human bodies about the landscape in an orgy of dramatic, slow-motion walking, clawing, and more walking.  Have I mentioned the slow-motion dramatic walking while staring? Because for the love of Ganesh, there is an awful lot of that.  I mean really a lot.

If you’re initial reaction to being threatened by a group of thugs is anything other than, “Tear out the nearest lamp post and use it as a mace to beat them senseless,” you’re not thinking like Singham.  What would Singham do when menaced by a powerful politician? He’d tell that politician he had planted a bomb in the man’s car, that’s what.  How does Singham cope with a corrupt system? By planting evidence in his enemies cars and then arresting them to show that corruption doesn’t pay, of course. In the first Singham, his soon-to-be-trademarked “Now I’ve lost it” catchphrase seems almost like a throw-away line… but don’t worry, by the time we get to the sequel, they’ll be hammering that bit like a sorority girl on a winery tour.

A movie like Singham has two touchstones. One is its physical confrontations, the centerpiece of which is a vengeful singham tearing a lamp pillar from the ground and using it as a mace to beat multiple enemies. The other is its politics, key to which is a vengeful Singham beating powerful people he probably ought not beat because of the degree of trouble this is bound to cause later in the movie.  Singham isn’t happy if he’s not creating ancillary property damage (he never throws a guy through the air if can can throw a guy through the air and through a windshield or plate glass window) — and he never, ever considers the implications of his actions.  It’s as if his decision tree goes only as far as, “Hey, I could just tiger-slap this a-hole,” and all other branches fall away once this determination has been made.  He’s like a Hindi Jack Bauer with a brain injury, stuck in forward gear and oblivious to the difficulty he’s going to cause himself.

Given this, the fact that the plot revolves around a scheme by a powerful villain to intimidate Singham psychologically (said villain successfully drove a previous police officer to suicide) seems almost dead on arrival. Singham has no psychology to intimidate; he faces every problem by putting on or taking off his sunglasses and slowly walking toward (or away) from it (before or after beating it soundly about the head and neck with his open hands). You can’t bribe him. You can’t scare him. You can’t make him wear a pair of pants that is not a size too small. You can only get out of his way and hope you haven’t offended him when, as he eventually will, he reaches the conclusion that the only solution to his current set of problems is to mass-murder various public officials. Bollywood musical finish!

Technocracy: Is Internet Access an “Entitlement?”

This two-pronged push to get your kids online – commercially, in or out of education, and as a society-wide entitlement – is not coincidental.

My WND Technocracy column this week is about the growing move to force Internet access on society as a right rather than a paid service.

If the Internet is something every student must have, then it is an entitlement and not something one earns.

Read the full column here in WND News.

Singham Returns

“Singham Returns,” which comes on the heels of 2011′s “Singham,” is not a movie.  Rather, it is an experience, in which director Rohit Shetty’s vision of a tight-panted, tight-shirted, bemuscled Indian police officer in mirrored aviator shades is hammered home with all the sublety of an alcoholic uncle at an open-bar wedding reception.  Fully thirty percent of the movie is just Ajay Devgn walking in slow motion toward or away from things as deafeningly dramatic music plays.  Another twenty percent of the movie is musical numbers, including a pre-intermission music-video sequence in which love blossoms between Devgn’s Singham and Kareena Kapoor’s Avni.  There is also, at film’s end, the requisite Bollywood musical finish, featuring Indian hip-hop and an army of children dressed as Singham and chanting his signature “Now I’ve lost it!” catchphrase (complete with fingers-to-the-head-I’ve-gone-crazy sign language).

“Now I’ve lost it” might, as catchphrases go, lose something in the translation from Hindi. Still, it makes sense, in context.  The Singham Formula is typically that Singham, the one good cop in a world full of corruption, must endure a great deal of tribulation before he finally snaps and decides to go outside the system to seek justice — and by “go outside the system to seek justice,” I mean “murder people.”  Singham is, in fact, a terrible cop (if terribly honest), who has a tendency to foment riots by beating the wrong people (following a ten-minute slow-motion walking-toward-people sequence in which the beating is foreshadowed by a choral recitation of his theme song).  After one riot in particular, Singham saves the day by ordering a good, old-fashioned Indian police lahti-beating, a crowd control technique that really is used in India in which police officers with long wooden poles beat the snot out crowds to, you know, make them fall down.  Rarely is a mass lahti-beating played for patriotic fervor, but by all that is elephant-headed and holy, it is here.

“Like a lion walking in the city,” reads the English translation of Singham’s theme song, “that destroys everything in his path… Friends, fighting with him is like challenging the mountain… He is not lesser than anyone; he has great power… and the body starts to shiver when there is news that Singham is coming.”  Buildups like these are, if two movies can constitute a tradition, very much, uh, traditional. In, you know, Singham. Truly, Singham only gives, never takes. And by never takes, I mean never takes bribes. And by gives, I mean gives beatings.  Mostly by slapping people with his patented tiger-claw pimp-hand.

Also part of the Singham tradition is the way in which these movies typically end, which is, “Singham commits murder with the help of most or all of the police force.”  I’m not actually giving anything away by telling you that. The movie also features some fairly gratuitous cartoon physics, in which people can be viciously beaten, even shot, and really just feel kind of mildly chastened by the experience — that is, until Singham starts making tiger-claw motions at them.  And make tiger-claw motions he does, accompanied by tiger’s roar sound effects (which occur whenever he slaps people down, which he does at the slightest provocation).

I can’t encourage you strongly enough to watch “Singham” and “Singham Returns.”  The latter is a slow boil that is badly paced and sometimes confusing (especially given the inaccuracy of the English subtitles).  It is, however, worth the wait, and will have you humming the Singham theme whenever you’re not doing anything with your brain (and whenever you are accused of corruption).  Now I’ve lost it… and you should, too.

Episode 33, “Project Terminated”

 

[image error]He’s dead, thought Agent Bridger. He’s dead. Let him be dead.

The chopper floated above the cul de sac, gliding in methodical cross-hatches from North to South and back again. The pilot, half his face hidden behind a smoked visor, had not said a word. He simply did as he was ordered.

Those orders had included the release of the poison gas canisters filled with a synthetic neurotoxin. This toxin had been specially formulated by VanClef. It was based on Peyton’s body chemistry.  While never tested, several of VanClef’s subordinates had, in the Project’s files, expressed their hope that the poison’s could kill even Ian Peyton. The man’s implanted organs generated counteragents to injected and externally introduced toxins. A synthetic toxin was deemed the only option to overcome his natural defenses.

Equipping the chopper with the Project’s full inventory of the gas had been Bridger’s idea.  He believed in being thorough. He had not asked permission to do so; he had not cleared the act with VanClef. In his opinion, VanClef spent too much time behind a desk or an operating table, preoccupied with his ghoulish experiments, to understand the exigencies a field operative faced.

The problems at the school were evidence of this fact. VanClef had long ago relinquished his grip on the place. How many computer and mechanical problems had to occur before someone realized it must be the test subjects doing it? Vanclef had not wanted to see it, but this much was obvious to Bridger from his first moments attached to the Project. He had tried several times to convince VanClef to terminate the subjects, but the man would hear none of it.

Small wonder it was, then, when the alarm sounded within the converted warehouse, that VanClef was caught flatfooted.  He was in the middle of another drill with his trio of pet monsters when the passive systems at the school signaled a breach.  Given the considerable security in place, a breach could mean only one thing: Peyton himself had come calling. This had always been a possibility, and one for which they were supposed to be prepared.  A breach immediately mobilized a detachment of the Hongkongtown Civil Defense Force, whose commanding officer had orders to defer to Intelligence for the duration of operations around the school site. VanClef had only to take a chopper from the warehouse to the cul de sac and oversee the affair.

The black mist still clung to everything.  That was a function of the toxin’s design. It stuck tenaciously to what it touched, which helped introduce it more throughly in the target. The pilot was careful to keep the helicopter well above the effective range of the poison.  The rotors of the chopper helped disperse the mist as they passed over, allowing Bridger to check the brief window that this opened. As the chopper moved on, the mist rolled back in to fill the gap.

He has to be here, thought Bridger.

No one could survive an onslaught like that.  He had watched the soldiers’ guns chip away at Peyton’s body, had watched Peyton stagger and slow. But it was one thing to watch VanClef’s monsters from a floor above and through a mirrored barrier. It was easy to look at surveillance recordings of Peyton fighting police. It was nothing to review the medical examiners’ reports of the victims Peyton had torn to pieces.  It was quite another to see Peyton from scant meters away, ripping the heads off armed men and wading through gunfire as if he did not feel it.

Bridger could admit to himself that Peyton terrified him. That was why he had released the poison.

They had to find his body. It had to be here somewhere.

The pilot jerked as if surprised.  He put two fingers to his helmet and then looked to Bridger.  “I have a transmission from Intelligence, Agent Bridger,” he said.

Bridger nodded.  He pressed the shunt button above his own seat.  The radio switched on.

“Agent Bridger. We’ve received an automated report that you are on site to address a breach at the Hongkongtown laboratory. Report. Have you apprehended the intruder?”

“I’m afraid it’s much worse than that, sir,” said Bridger.  “Agent VanClef has lost postive control of the facility. The test subjects have escaped or are terminated. Our heat sensors show nothing alive inside the lab.”

“And Patient 4?” The reply from the radio was distorted electronically. This was not an error. Bridger had never seen his superiors in Government Intelligence, nor did he possess any information that would help identify these men and women. Concealment of successive layers of the Intelligence heirarchy was a way of live for the agency.

“I’m surveying the area now,” said Bridger.  He looked to the pilot. The pilot shook his head.  “Ian Peyton… has been killed. To make certain, we used a Termination Agent specifically formulated for him.  We have not yet identified any survivors.”

There was a pause. “Say again, Agent Bridger.”

“I repeat,” said Bridger, “Patient 4 neutralized using a wide-area neurotoxin specifically developed for this subject.  We have yet to identify any survivors among the Hongkongtown military unit.”

There was another pause, longer this time.  Finally, the voice said, “Understood,”

Bridger waited until his nerve gave out.  “Uh, orders, sir?”

“Agent Bridger, we are activating containment protocol. Repeat, containment protocol. Project Violet is terminated.”

“Acknowledged,” said Bridger.  “Sir,” he added. “What about Agent VanClef, sir?”

“We repeat,” said the voice. “Project Violet is terminated. Proceed accordingly. Out.”

Bridger and the pilot exchanged glances once more.

Below the chopper, the black mist continued to roil.  “We’re running out of grid,” said the pilot.  “I don’t think he’s down there.”

“That’s impossible,” said Bridger.

“Is it?” said VanClef, appearing on the small screen in the chopper’s control panel. He was seated behind his desk in his office at the warehouse.

“Agent VanClef,” said Bridger.  “I didn’t expect you–”

“You didn’t expect me to have bugged the chopper?” VanClef asked.  “You didn’t expect me to have heard every word of your exchange with Intelligence?”

Bridger paled.  “Sir,” he began. “I–”

“No,” said VanClef, holding up his hand.  “Don’t insult my intelligence with whatever you’re going to say next.  You’re a deep disappointment, Agent Bridger.”

“Sir, I’m only following protocol.”

“I’m not talking about that,” said VanClef.  “I’m talking about your failure to kill Peyton.  Had you simply let the military do its job, they could have brought him down through sheer firepower.  But you panicked.  You released an unauthorized neural agent in a civilian sector, killing the very men who were supposed to be neutralizing Peyton for you.”

“But sir,” said Bridger.  “You didn’t see him.  In my place you’d have done the same thing.”

“Agent Bridger,” said VanClef, “don’t ever project your insecurities onto a man. Never assume he shares your weaknesses.”

“The poison was designed to kill Peyton.”

“And never tested,” said VanClef.  “Has it occure to you that Ian Peyton can hold his breath for at least six minutes? Are you familiar enough with his charts to tell me his lung capacity, which is ten times that of what you or I would consider ‘normal?’” You didn’t just create a smoke screen to hide Peyton’s movements. You also eliminated his enemies en masse so he could slip away under your nose.”

“He’s here,” said Bridger.  “I’d bet my life on it.”

“You already did,” said VanClef.  “And you lost.  We were just speaking of what you didn’t expect, Vincent. I have one more for you. You didn’t expect me to have my own chopper wired with enough explosives to turn it to ash.”

“Sir–”

On the screen, VanClef pressed a switch on the panel of his desk.

Bridger never heard the explosion that killed him.

Technocracy: Blaming the White Man for Women’s Work Choices

My WND Technocracy column this week takes on the hysteria over sexism in the tech sector.

The “problem” of sexism in the tech sector is wholly one of liberal invention.

The drumbeat that tech jobs are rife with misogyny has reached a fever pitch and, frankly, it’s gotten a little ridiculous.

Read the full column here in WND News.

Episode 32, “An Army”

 

[image error]His joints hurt again. He could feel the fatigue deep in his bones, feel the Sleeper poison and the stimulants Montauk had given him, feel the punishment he had taken breaching the school and smashing its defenses. He paused to lean against the bloody wall of the laboratory. His hand left a broad print on the wall.

He wanted to rest. The lift door faced him. He pressed the button and the doors opened.

He cast one last look at the destruction he had wrought.  His rage had cooled.  The thought of what might have been, how Annika might have died, the abuse she suffered at the hands of those working here, still ached with in him. But his fury was sated. He had made them pay. But he was not finished.

He would find this VanClef. He would find the man responsible for all of this. He would wrap his fingers around the man’s throat and squeeze until the government agent had told him everything about Peyton’s little girl.

And then there would be no more VanClef at all.

He slumped against the wall of the elevator as it traveled, slowly, to the surface.  The girls had rigged the entire complex, interfered with its defenses, fouled its computers. There was very little Annika could not do with access to a computer. How much power could half a dozen Annikas wield?

Making his way through the defenses he had destroyed, Peyton reached the outer exit. Montauk, or those with the Og, had sealed the outer barrier.  He moved this aside and stepped out.

“IAN PEYTON,” said an amplified voice.  “LAY DOWN ON THE GROUND AND PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD.”

A howling wind pushed him back against the facade of the factory. The circle of light that fell on him was blinding.  He looked up, searching for its source, trying to shield his eyes with his hand.

A hundred rifles clacked as their bolts were pulled back. Servomotors groaned as the turret of a multi-tracked battletank trained its mounted gun on him. The men using the tank for cover wore light-scattering camouflage. Their outlines blurred against the asphalt and debris of the cul de sac.

Peyton looked up at the helicopter. A cold rain was falling now.  It danced across his face as he squinted against the beam of the chopper’s spotlight.  He pressed his hands together. He flexed his fingers. He squeezed his fists.

“An army,” said Peyton. “You need an army to stop me.”

“THIS IS AGENT VINCENT BRIDGER OF GOVERNMENT INTELLIGENCE,” announced the public address system in the helicopter.  “IAN PEYTON, YOU ARE UNDER ARREST. COMPLY OR YOU WILL BE KILLED.”

“You made a mistake,” Peyton said to no one.  “Annika isn’t here. She’s with someone who can protect her. She doesn’t need me now.”

Annika. He had almost killed her. To die at his hands would have been better than being torn about by Sleepers. But what kind of father put his daughter in such danger? He had been selfish. It had been selfish to take her from the prison. It had been selfish to believe he could parent her.

“COMPLY OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE!”

He was big. He was strong. He healed quickly. But the battle with the Sleepers, the attack on the school, had taken much of his strength.  As he stared into the guns of the soldiers before him, as he watched the black maw of the tank turret track him, he realized that he had come to the end.  He could not beat them all.

He was going to die.  He was going to die, and that was all right.

His death was just. It was long overdue. Montauk, the Og, was a decent creature. It had adopted Aimee; it would adopt Annika. Peyton’s daughter was a genius, and now she had her fellow students from the school for company. If losing him made her sad, it would only be for a little while. She had lived for twelve years without him. The few weeks they had been together would hardly matter to her.

One last fight.  One last fight to give Annika and Montauk more time.  With each passing minute, they got farther away from the school.  As long as Bridger and his tank and his helicopter and his soldiers were here, murdering Peyton, they were not following Peyton’s daughter.

“Come kill me,” said Peyton, flexing his fists. He took a step forward, then another.  He felt the cords of muscle in his arms tighten as he flexed his shoulders, rolling his forearms out and away from his body. Splaying his fingers, he spread his arms, as if he would gather the government troops up and crush them.  “Come kill me, you cowards!  I’m not a little girl!”

“OPEN FIRE,” said Bridger.

Peyton took another step toward his death.

The gunfire that burned the air filled the cul de sac with thunder. The buildings vibrated under the onslaught, shaking loose fragments of themselves, creating a dust cloud that rolled over the battleground and turned Peyton and his enemies into shadows.

Bullets ripped his flesh. He felt them hammer him, felt them stagger him, felt them drive him to his knees.  It was all right. He did not have to stop it; he could give in to the pain; he could lie down and rest. But he was not ready to rest. Not yet. There was more left in him, and while there was, he would use it to help Annika escape.

He regained his feet, pushing up on one leg, forcing the other to support him. It was like climbing from a manhole into a sandstorm. Projectiles continued to gouge him, rip him, slice him. He took a trembling step. A man with a rifle ran to him, blazing away on full automatic. Peyton slapped the soldier’s gun away and punched him so hard his face caved in.

He took another step.

He was nearly knocked off balance. He could no longer feel his legs. He could see his fingers flex, could see his fists close, but he could not feel them. His hearing was no longer working. The sound of gunfire was now a whining, the ringing of a bell that never stopped.  His vision began to recede, blackening around the edges, turning a strange shade of orange.

He dropped to one knee, then to both.  He fell forward onto his stomach. The ringing in his ears became the roaring of an ocean.

He did not hear the canister that fell from the helicopter, but he saw it. There was another. There was a third. He stared at the green cylinder, feeling his flesh tearing, feeling the blood pour from him.

The canister began to spew gas.

The gas was black and acrid.  It was poison.  It rolled over him, scorching his lungs, making his chest seize.  He did not feel the pavement against his face.  He did not hear the soldiers dying around him. He did not feel the downdraft of the helicopter as it hovered over him.  Dark mist was everywhere.

There is no safe. But for Annika, there was.  He should never have taken her with him. But now she was safe with the Ogs, with the other girls.  He had made a mistake, but he had fixed it, and now he was going to pay for everything.

That was the funny thing about mistakes. Sometimes they got away from you.

“Annika,” he whispered, dying.  “I love you.”