Текст книги "Amped"

Автор книги: Daniel H. Wilson

Соавторы: Daniel H. Wilson
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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

[HISTORICAL DOCUMENT]

Article XIV

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

[HISTORICAL DOCUMENT]

At level five, there is constant movement in stillness. Especially in stillness. There are so many potentials in the quiet moments before action.

I catch up with Vaughn outside his PHCC offices near the University of Pittsburgh. My old neighborhood. The buildings and telephone poles are plastered with signs about Vaughn’s Pure Pride speech later this afternoon. From a cab, I watch the front door of his building until the man himself finally emerges. Four gray suits shuffle him into a generic black SUV.

I dig money out of my backpack and hand it over to the cabbie. When he looks at me, I turn my head on instinct to keep my nub pointed away from him. We lurch into traffic, following Vaughn for a few miles. Finally, his car pulls off the road.

The gray suits let Vaughn out at the front gate of the Allegheny Cemetery. The facade of the place is centuries old, built to look like a castle with battlements of brown sandstone. Beyond the gate, rolling hills sprout tombstones that are linked by shady cement paths under ancient trees.

Senator Vaughn goes in alone.

I pay the rest of my fare and take a walk up the street. A block down, I jump the winding stone fence. Then, I track Vaughn through the woods.

I’ve been thinking. Lyle may be a weapon, but Vaughn is the person who pulled the trigger. Even if Lyle were out of the picture, Vaughn would keep going. He’d find another weapon and use it. There is only one way to stop him.

Three, two, one, zero. Level five consent and I’m in.

Pacing between the trees, a series of attack simulations come to me. I can’t stop them. My Zenith is talking to retinal. The two collude, slicing up my vision with crisp blue lines. The beams crisscross, meander down the stone path along high-probability approach routes. If the target comes this way, do this. If he comes that way, do that.

The choice is mine, sure, but either way, it’s kill, kill, kill.

Shadows play through the chattering leaves overhead, dappling Vaughn’s suit as he crosses a hill about a hundred yards away. Incredible to think this man single-handedly engineered a national crisis. Made a whole country afraid of amps. Capitalized on it to outlaw the technology and imprison everyone who has it.

Some small sound alerts me to the presence of a bodyguard. Without seeing him, I change route to flank. Place my steps one by one, quiet and deliberate.

I close my eyes, but the blue lines are still there—rolling Gaussian hills, superimposed over a faded image of the path as I last saw it. The faux scene plays out on the backs of my eyelids, borrowed from my memory of seeing it, even tilting and moving when I turn my head.

That would be cochlear talking to neural talking to retinal.

Shit, I’m carrying a lot of plastic in my head. A scrapyard of high-tech, all of it communicating and collaborating. Hundreds of subprocesses running alongside each other to figure out what’s happening, already happened, or is going to happen very soon.

My target keeps moving: Senator Joseph Vaughn. Six foot one. Forty-four. Graying at the temples. Snake eyes. Absolutely human through and through, and damn proud of it.

In a few hours, Vaughn will orate to the world. He will stand on an ornate wrought iron balcony jutting from the sheer limestone face of the Cathedral of Learning. On camera with his black wire-rimmed glasses and clean white teeth and a pure gold American flag pin on his lapel.

When he speaks, his words will bury me. If he announces my capture and escape, there will be no refuge. No way of proving my innocence. The crime is too colossal—it blots out all details by its existence.

Vaughn pauses to look at a grave. Leans over it, hands behind his back. The tombstone is white marble.

I crouch next to a tree. Put my fingers against the bark and feel every whorl and crevice in minute detail. Every one of my senses is alive and trained on one goal: killing the unlucky man standing over that tombstone.

A gray suit strolls past in the distance, but the bodyguard doesn’t go near Vaughn, keeps walking instead.

It’s pretty likely that here in about sixty seconds, I’m going to bury my skinned-up knuckles into Vaughn’s soft gut as I work my way up to crushing his windpipe. Mathematically speaking, there are an infinite number of ways to kill him with my bare hands. Combat algorithms rip through my vision, indicating exactly where I should stand. How to pivot. Which vertebrae to shatter and how much force it takes. Pressure points and bone-cracking leverage.

Whole fucking hog.

I want to hurt him for what he’s done. I want to gouge out his natural eyes and break his natural arms and legs. Puncture his natural organs with his natural ribs. Until Vaughn’s definition of a human being came along, me and Lyle and Samantha—we weren’t amps. We were people.

Someday, we’ll be people again.

The phantom movements I’ll make are already itching through my hands, a series of reflexive twitches. Every approach and outcome pair are broken down to physics and equations and meat. The grass swarms with six-inch-tall figures, glowing blue and visible only to me. Implant generated, the dummies grow out of the shadows and engage each other in a variety of high probability mock-combat situations.

Twitch, twitch, snap. Twitch, twitch, snap.

One of the tiny golems silently bends back the virtual fingers of its diminutive enemy, breaking them one by one. I shiver, hoping that scenario doesn’t happen. It looks painful as hell, even virtually.

Is this really you, Owen?

Am I a killer? I don’t know. It occurs to me that my body operates almost entirely without listening to my opinion—balancing, daydreaming, and healing itself, not to mention breathing and digesting food and a million other little things. I’m not sure how much control I really have anymore. How much control did I ever have?

I scan the periphery for gray suits.

Nobody is around. Vaughn is alone, crouched at the tombstone. His back is to me, perfectly vulnerable. I slowly rise, and the grappling dummies fade.

Now, I attack.

Trees and hills accelerate to a gray blur around me as my vision closes in on blue boot prints rising out of the soil. My legs are pumping, palms slicing the air as I gain momentum over the damp grass. My arms pull back, hands collapsing into fists like neutron stars.

As I make my final leap, my eyes register the tombstone. My retinal keys in. It’s carved in the shape of a cherub, lying down, wings folded and sleeping. Three words are inscribed on it that detonate in my mind: Emma Camille Vaughn.

Those first two letters: EM.

My heels dig into the ground and I grunt with the exertion of keeping my fists by my sides. I’m a foot behind Vaughn, catching my balance, and it’s suddenly, deafeningly still and quiet in the cemetery. The sound of my breathing rakes across the chattering chorus of windblown leaves overhead.

Vaughn speaks, on his knees. He doesn’t turn around.

“If you’re here to kill me, go ahead,” he says.

With an effort I stand up. Blood rings in my ears.

There is a new flower next to the tombstone. A simple yellow daffodil. An older flower is in the grass next to it, still yellow.

“She was six,” says Vaughn, still facing the grave. “Six years old. It’s hard, really, to explain how little and sweet she was. My Em.”

Elysium. Em. His baby daughter’s name.

Beneath the child’s name, in small block letters, is the simple message: HUSH MY DEAR, BE STILL AND SLUMBER. ANGELS GUARD YOUR BED.

“Elysium,” I say. “Heaven. Where heroes go when they die.”

“My inner circle. Friends who know why I fight. Who I’m fighting for.”

Vaughn wipes his face and his hand comes away wet. He isn’t acting. Was never acting, I realize.

“We had the implantation done privately. It was all my idea. My wife said wait. Said we should let the technology mature. But the doctors told me Emma was going to learn slow and that didn’t fit into my program. I had the access and the money and I thought I had the answer. And for a few months, I did.

“It was an infection. She started vomiting and we thought she had the flu. We took her to the hospital, but it was too late. She was so little. Such a sweet little baby girl in her hospital bed.”

Vaughn’s head bows.

“That doesn’t give you the right to start a war,” I say.

The man turns, looks up at me for the first time. He wipes away tears and snot with a carefully manicured hand. One of his knees is stained with dirt.

“I’m not starting a war,” he says. “And I don’t intend to.”

“You hired Lyle to kill the other Zeniths.”

Vaughn blinks at me, frowns. “What’s a Zenith?” he asks.

The politician is hunched over, hair mussed and cheeks covered in tears, and he has a look of real confusion on his face. He honestly doesn’t know. Vaughn doesn’t know what’s been happening.

I’m backing away from this kneeling man, finally realizing.

Somebody is building a new world.

The laughing cowboy.

“It’s Lyle,” I say. “It’s always been Lyle.”

Someone shouts from the woods. In my peripheral, I see a gray suit coming, knees flashing as he runs. Gun winking at me.

I’ve got a goddamn ace up my sleeve that’s been waiting there for ten years. Since the birth of Pure Pride. Wait until I show them what I got. Then they’ll know war.

Vaughn is the ace.

“He’s going to kill you to start a real war,” I whisper urgently, backing away. “The safety zones aren’t his goal. He just needed to put the amps against a wall. So they’ll fight. Cancel your speech. You need to hide. You need to run.”

“You’re mistaken,” says Vaughn. “Lyle belongs to me. Not the other way around.”

I can hear footfalls now. The wheezing grunt of a linebacker hurtling through space. Too far away to catch a Zenith, but no time left.

“Please,” I say to Vaughn.

And then I am motion. The trees swallow me up.

BBC News

US & CANADA

Q&A: The US “Amp” Problem

The president of the United States has declared a state of emergency, going so far as to create “safety zones” to protect hundreds of thousands of citizens with neural implants from violent demonstrations.

Implants of this sort are in common use throughout the European Union, medically and electively. So why are they causing such a row in the US?

What is an “amp”?

The derogatory term refers both to a neural implant or to an implanted person.

Why are Americans debating?

An emotional debate has raged between those who say the technology is vital for medical progress and those who say it creates an unlevel playing field for those who do not have the implant. Scientists and people with disabilities have claimed that neural implants can cure disease, but many middle-class voters and religious groups are opposed.

Why has the debate turned violent?

Government funding of brain implantable devices has been blocked and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recalled the most popular type of implant. Discrimination against implanted individuals was legalized. Some implantees responded with a series of violent attacks. American pundits believe these attacks may have provoked an even more violent backlash from regular citizens.

I get inside the Cathedral of Learning by scaling the back side of the building. The front is guarded by police and mobbed by demonstrators. But whole hog, the soot-stained concrete wall is alive and writhing with virtual handholds, friction estimates, and climbing routes. My fingers are steel claws. It takes three minutes to solve the tower wall, thirty more seconds to wriggle in an arched window.

If anyone saw me, it’s too late to matter.

And there are plenty who could have. I can feel the roar of a thousand people outside rumbling through the structural bones of the building. The lawn out front is packed with Pure Pride supporters. A thousand pairs of eyes turned up toward a double wood-plank door perched above a three-story arch. It leads to a wrought iron balcony big enough for one man and a nest of microphones.

Senator Vaughn stands there now, framed in ornate stonework.

I sprint down dim hallways, praying that Lyle hasn’t beaten me here. I’m faintly aware that I’m gasping for breath. My chest heaves as I negotiate cramped corridors, trying to reach the room that leads to that iron balcony.

Finally, I spot the door at the end of a hallway. There’s a piece of white paper taped to it. PRIVATE, it says.

Some minute vibration in the floor causes me to freeze, throw my back against a wall. A gray suit crosses farther down the hallway, patrolling the building. I watch him, holding my breath, letting my eyes taste the shadows.

The guard doesn’t seem upset or panicked. Lyle isn’t here yet. Nobody must have reported me climbing the wall yet, either. There is still time to save Vaughn’s life. Time enough to stop Lyle from triggering a civil war.

In a fuzzy way, I realize that I can see the sound I’m making. Every careful step I take closer to the door sends a ripple racing over the tile, like splashes through a puddle. Each quiet breath I take dissipates quickly to silence. Surgically planting each foot, I manage to creep closer while eliminating the ripples of visible sound.

This is the only door that leads to Vaughn, and it’s under constant surveillance. Well, almost constant.

Gray suit paces a few more feet, turns. The door is unwatched for a split second. Observing the smooth, relaxed muscles in gray suit’s neck, I leap across the hallway. As his muscles contract and his bald head begins to turn, I knife the door open with my fingers and ease my body through. A gaze estimate appears like a spotlight projected from gray suit’s eyes, racing down the hallway. It lands on the door as it closes the last few inches.

A soft snick and I am in the empty room.

I crouch and listen as gray suit approaches. Watch the rippling light from his footsteps swell under the door. He nears, stops. Slowly, the doorknob turns as he checks it. Turns all the way, pauses, then lets it flip back.

He keeps walking.

Now I allow myself to breathe. This room is a stone alcove. The carved ceiling folds into itself over the polished marble floor. The far wall is dominated by arched wooden double doors that lead to the wrought iron balcony and to Vaughn.

I’m too late. He’s already giving his speech.

A line of light runs between the doors. From the other side, I can hear Vaughn speaking. He enunciates each word into the microphones. This is it: Vaughn is outside delivering his master stroke. If he claims to have identified the villain behind Astra, well, there’s nothing I can do about it now.

From the sound of it, I’m only hearing the tail end of the speech.

“I do not stand before you today, I stand with you,” says Vaughn in a measured tone. His magnified voice echoes against the hard buildings outside. “We who are gathered here today, made in the image of the Almighty, stand together in naked defiance of martyrs and terrorists.

“I stand with you, arm in arm at the edge of the abyss. And together, we stand stronger than any man-made steel ever beaten in a foundry. And though vicious extremists may lash out at us, we continue to stand together firmly, without fear, and with the knowledge that we stand for America.

“And that is why, mere blocks away from the medical laboratories where this grave threat to our nation was born, and mere blocks from where it will soon be eliminated, I ask you all once again that you not retaliate. We have the amp problem firmly under control. Violence will not right the wrongs. It will not solve our problems. And it will not best serve the interests of our children, those born and those who have yet to join us.”

The air reverberates with the dull impact of thousands of dutifully clapping hands. The temblor builds slowly, growing until the shadowed room itself hums as if it were on a launchpad. A few angry catcalls pierce the applause as it begins to fade. But judging from the general response, Vaughn’s message seems to have been accepted.

“Thank you,” says Vaughn. “God bless America.”

And the crack of light splits in two.

Joseph Vaughn stands before me, a stark black silhouette against bright gray Pittsburgh skies. A great writhing mass of humanity spreads out behind him like a cloak.

Before I know what’s happening, I’ve got two fistfuls of his shirt and I’m yanking him inside. I kick the double doors shut, muting the clamor outside. Drop my forearm under his chin and ram him up against the wall before he can make a squeak.

“Where’s Lyle?” I ask.

He snarls and I notice he’s bitten his lip. Those white canines peek out at me, dipped in blood. “Don’t know, Mr. Gray,” he says. “He and I are done. Our transaction is complete. He performed his duties and I paid him handsomely.”

“Why didn’t you name me as head of Astra?”

Vaughn eyes me greedily. “Because you had escaped. But now here you are. Lucky me.”

His eyes go to the door and I know he’s waiting for those gray suits. It’s a good bet they’ll show any minute. But the guys with walkie-talkies are the least of my worries. They’re only human, after all.

“You’ve got no idea what’s about to happen,” I whisper.

Vaughn struggles to straighten himself against the wall. He pushes against my forearm with a soft palm. I don’t let it budge. “I would suggest that you get your fucking amp hands off me,” he spits. “You think your little friends in the camps have it bad right now? Do you have any clue what those people out there would do if I were harmed?”

I relax my grip, but keep him pinned. Keep my eyes inches from his face, watching every expression that sweeps over his face.

“That’s exactly why Lyle is going to kill you,” I say.

Vaughn shakes his head.

“Lyle Crosby and I built the Pure Human Citizen’s Council together from nothing,” he says. “Pure Pride was an idea that he and I hashed out in a basement nearly a decade ago. The organization runs on fear, Gray. Fear needs violence. Pure Pride required the intellect of a great man and the bloodlust of a savage. Now let me go or I yell.”

I uncurl my fingers from his shirt. When I speak, my own voice echoes in my ears. “You think that you used Lyle against his own kind,” I say. “But you’ve been used. He won’t stop.”

Vaughn laughs in my face. Hot breath rolling over my cheeks. With a sharp tug, he yanks my arm off his chest and I let him. He steps back and wipes the blood off his mouth with his hand. Looks at it and shakes his head.

“We’ve worked together for a decade. The man hates himself, pure and simple. And there’s no way out of it. The implant changes your brain patterns over the years. A little nudge here, a nudge there. Even if Lyle were able to remove the technology and still function … he would never be a man again. He knows that. It’s why he never wanted it to happen to another person. And that was a guarantee that I could provide.”

Vaughn pulls a white handkerchief out of his breast pocket and dabs at his lip. “We’ve got the research shut down and seized. Control over the doctors. The existing amps are corralled and imprisoned. We won. It’s over. Lyle Crosby got everything he wanted out of our arrangement.”

I hear a familiar acid chuckle behind me. Stepping away from Vaughn, I slowly turn around. My eyes devour the light, analyzing.

Lyle.

Leaning across the open doorway like a butcher knife buried in a kitchen table. He’s wearing black jeans and a wrinkled cowboy shirt with pearl buttons. There is a smear of blood on his chest. A gray-suited body of a guard sprawled at his feet. In his right hand is a dead-black Glock .44 semiautomatic pistol. Index finger inside the trigger guard. He casually reaches up and scratches his temple with the slide of the gun. The fluorescent orange sight dot hovers, mesmerizing.

“I wouldn’t say I got everything I wanted,” he says. Lazily, Lyle extends his arm. Pulls the trigger without the slightest hesitation.

Three, two, one, go.

By the time the bullet leaves the barrel of the gun, I’m moving fast as a reflection in the mirror. I feel the light of the sudden searing muzzle flash blaze across my retinas. Tiny meteorites of gunpowder residue impact my cheeks and forehead as I lunge forward.

The bullet passes by. Not meant for me.

Twisting, my palm closes across the slide of the gun. The brass cartridge arcs past my face, end over end. The bullet itself is ten feet away, vaporizing a hole in Vaughn’s expensive suit, tearing through the meat of his pectoral muscle, shattering a rib and a clavicle, and spraying the wall behind him with pieces of his shoulder blade.

As I tear the gun from his hands, Lyle depresses the magazine release with his thumb. Then he lets go of the gun altogether. The magazine, pregnant with rounds, drops away.

Vaughn staggers with a plume of red mist erupting from his chest. His knees hinge drunkenly and he falls. The side of his face audibly slaps the tile wall. A wet, coughing bark grates out of his mouth as the weight of his body meets the ground. The head of the PHCC and second-term senator from Pennsylvania lies still.

I land and roll with the empty gun in my hand. The ejected magazine is too far away. With a tug from both hands, I disengage the slide and smack the top of the gun against my palm, popping the barrel out. I land in a crouch, pieces of the Glock raining around my feet.

Vaughn screams hoarsely, face buried in the crook of his arm.

“Aw, quit your crying,” says Lyle, a feline smile curled into the corners of his mouth.

“You promised I could turn him in,” gasps Vaughn. “You promised.”

Lyle clucks his tongue. “Listen to yourself. You used to be so put together. When I found you, boy, you had balls. Now you’re just a sad, fat, old reggie.”

I’m on my feet. Circling toward Vaughn. Hands up and ready for when Lyle attacks.

“Help me,” says Vaughn.

“He wants me to help him,” Lyle says to me, rolling his eyes. With one eye on me, he steps over Vaughn and spits words at the sweating, bleeding man.

“You were never in control, genius. After I leaked the existence of Echo Squad and got us disbanded, I did a nationwide search to find a guy just like you. What happened to your daughter was such a sad story. I constructed the bones of the PHCC for you. Told you what you wanted to hear. But, goddamn, how could you not know by now? You never did figure it out. I only built you to destroy you.”

“No,” says Vaughn, and he is crying now. “No, we did it together.”

“I made you more than a man. I made you a symbol. You’re the most human human there is, boy. And here in a minute, when I toss your screaming ass over that balcony and you go splitter splatter in front of the ten million zealots we created? Hoo boy. Then a real war’s gonna start.”

“What about the amps?” I hear myself say.

“We trigger a life-or-death situation and force them to fight. Force them to overcome.”

“They’ll die.”

“Maybe. But you gotta understand, Gray. In this world, I’m a broke-dick dog. A tool to be wielded by another man. But in the new world? Shit, I’m a warlord. A barbarian king. Free to spread my dominion over this nation. Who knows, man, maybe the world.”

“You’re going to get five hundred thousand people slaughtered.”

“Aw, I’m disappointed in you. You’re looking at the little picture, Gray. You think Europe is going to allow a genocide? Rest of the world is already using implants. In China I hear they’re state issued, for Chrissake. This thing is gonna go global quick. And we’ll be heading the charge.”

“Help,” calls Vaughn, who then crawls about six inches toward the door before collapsing. The politician has got his useless arm pulled up tight under his chin, cradling it with his good arm and stretching out his expensive suit jacket. Beads of sweat glisten on a dime-sized bald spot I never noticed. Blood is smeared on the marble.

Lyle watches Vaughn, amused. “Help? Ain’t no help. I got your dead bodyguards stacked like cordwood in the hallway, dipshit,” says Lyle.

He winks at me, then continues: “Remember your little friend Samantha? She and I seen the same thing. She went and got her panties in a knot and jumped off a building. But I took the bull by his damn horns. We live once, buddy. One time. That’s all we get. And I intend to make my mark. I mean, look at us.”

Lyle strides to the balcony. Throws open the doors and gazes out over the thousand murmuring demonstrators. Even from here, I can feel their collective heat shouldering in through the doorway. Lyle turns to me, silhouetted, and his eyes are shining—finally, really alive.

“Who among the world of men may judge us, when we are as angels to them?”

Vaughn stirs from the floor. Looks up at Lyle with scared eyes. He’s pale. His right arm is twitching uncontrollably.

“Autofocus was meant to help people,” I say. “It was meant for good.”

“Well, hell,” says Lyle. He doesn’t seem to notice Vaughn anymore. “I’m beyond good and evil. And it ain’t too late. You should join me. With the shit you got upstairs, boy, we could split the world in half. I know you ain’t a killer, but the best generals never are.”

Lyle puts out his hand for me to shake. But I’m already listening to my Zenith. Dropping levels. On an express elevator to the planet core.

Three, two, one. Three, two, one. Three, two, one.

“Don’t you do that,” says Lyle, smiling. His hand snakes out toward me and I’m not there. “Where you headed, buddy?”

I’m going deeper than I’ve ever been. Sinking through the levels fast and smooth like a stone through water. Lyle backs up onto the balcony. A confused murmuring comes from the crowd as they spot the cowboy. His face is shrouded in black and he is dangerous as electricity, and having him only feet away puts a sickening fear into the pit of my belly.

Lyle speaks, words coming out in a torrent, a hoarse whisper that pulls me in. “Kill him with me, Owen. We can make a new world together. Ad astra cruentus. To the stars, brother, both of us stained in blood.”

I feel the vibration from deep inside me, vocal cords flexing, each minute movement of my tongue as it crafts the word from a gasp of air.

Never.

And in my head, I hear my father’s voice. My sight fades as he speaks to me. The familiar sound of him floods my mind with memories and it puts a stinging blur of tears in my eyes. I gave you something extra, Owen. Level six. Freedom from suffering. Full executive extinguished. A conduit to your soul. Thought to action. I love you, son. I trust you. Do good. Do you consent? Do you consent?

He left this message for me. All this time. My father.

Do you consent?

I consider it for a fragment of a second.

Yes.

The Zenith awakes.

The room explodes into flowing, scintillating paths of murder and battle. Shining gossamer strands that represent the vicious arc of fists and blunt trajectory of knees. Dense probability maps rise out of the floor based on tiny variations in its surface, routes toward cover, light reflections. Every glowing wisp of probability and vector streak of light slashes a path toward Lyle’s darkened face.

Every level before this has been a reflection of this glory.

For a handful of milliseconds, I simply stand in awe of the implant-generated vista. I never knew anything could be this beautiful. Somewhere, my true eyes are going dead and blank in the face of this overwhelming splendor. This must be what a cheetah sees, sprinting seventy miles an hour, fangs out, inches from sinking claws into writhing flesh. Every object humming with life—a flickering corona of data with only a single purpose: to help me survive a fight with Lyle Crosby.

The muscle-priming routines snap into action like a mousetrap. Each movement of my initial feint and stuttering leap toward Lyle pulses through my body as a reflex action. The skinny cowboy charges at me, anticipating my first three feints, but my last change of speed and direction catches him centimeters off guard.

His hardware is running hot but not as hot as mine. We hit like bullets colliding. He stumbles back and I pin him against the balcony railing.

Before an audience of thousands.

“Where are you?” whispers Lyle.

Our arms intertwine, thrashing in short purposeful bursts. Attacks and parries at the speed of the nervous system. Watching it unfold, I see so many arm configuration probabilities radiating from our interlocked limbs that we look like Indian gods. Each brutal exchange digs us into a deeper, more intricate grip. When I snap his ring and middle fingers backward, breaking them both at the first knuckle, he barks a hyena laugh, tendons straining his throat.

But the fight is already over. Gruesome efficiency. An equation solved.

Our arms are locked up like a stuck drawer. Lyle’s side is wedged against the railing. Behind him, the crush of a thousand bodies presses in on us. All the infinite ghostly arm position configurations have collapsed into this single incontrovertible lock. Almost gently, I press my forearm over Lyle’s neck. He struggles, twists his sweaty head back and forth. Trapped between iron and flesh.

We both know he has a near-zero probability of escape.

Lyle’s eyes are shining like oily pavement after a thunderstorm. His tanned face reddens, darkens as the oxygen is cut off. Blinking just to focus, he grunts, “You’re not a killer.”

My forearm remains steady as bedrock as the words dissipate. Lyle looks confused. Sort of hurt, like I just called him a bad name.

These days, a single man can do more than his fair share of evil. The technology makes each of us so much more. This skinny cowboy could kill millions. And all he has going for him is raw grit and anger and the will to dominate—and that white-hot spark of science fueling it all.

I wonder if I am any different. I wonder if it even matters.