Desi took the absolute minimum of comfort from the fact that she could work the rest of the day and probably the next without having to worry about the implant activating. They always spaced the days out with one or two between to ensure maximal semen saturation during the most fertile period of her cycle. She could take out the sperm worm, then, after a couple days, allowing enough time to flush out any of its already negligible traces before her monthly examination.
They seemed to be increasingly suspicious about her persistent lack of conception. By all professional accounts she was supposed to be rabbit-level fecund — the most amusingly she’d heard it described was by a doctor who’d called her “explosively fertile”. She anticipated it wouldn’t be long before she was caught.
Across the touch screen built into her desk were splayed the manufactured, strikingly realistic-sounding stories that were supposed to pass as news and nearly always succeeded at it. The generally unimportant reports were usually real news; anything that could possibly be construed as polemic or political or having to do with the ongoing war was always fabricated, or at least favorably edited to such an extent that it might as well have been. People usually cared the most about the news that directly pertained to their daily lives and activities. As long as that was verifiably real, the rest would seem so as well.
The newest story was about the apparently contagious insomnia, a growing concern with predictable blame placed on what the government and its subsidiary news organizations liked to call “terrorist insurgents”, who were in actuality mostly just the opposition in the rather frosty but apparently ongoing civil war. With a swift swipe of her hand, she slid it over into a folder icon on the left side of the desk marked “Clear”, and the next story automatically replaced it in the center of the screen.
She was supposed to file any stories that seemed potentially subversive into “Flag”, where they’d be sent to one of the editors’ incoming “Flag” folders. The editor would “correct” the article and send it back, then initiate an investigation into wherever the offender may have intervened in the article’s assembly process. Often, she suspected the editors sent out intentionally “defective” articles themselves, as a test of the target recipient’s loyalty. For this reason, she made sure to read every article carefully for any signs of anything that might question the greatness of America. Unless you were paying close attention, some witty bit of subtle satire — like adding an extra synonym or two for some patriotic words to a phrase that had already been modified in such a ridiculous way, e.g. “Free New Free Freedom York” — might slip through and actually be read on the air. Lack of “patriotic duty” wasn’t nearly as serious a crime as writing the article to begin with, but it was still a punishable offense. And once they began their inquiry into her life, they would uncover everything — the implant, the sperm worm, Nemo’s connections — so it was safest to err on the side of rampant paranoia.
All of the bullshit displayed on her desk screen each day had been shoveled in from somewhere in Richard’s building deeper in D.C. She shuddered a little every time she remembered that some of it may have even been orchestrated directly by him. It made her want to wash her hands, even though the files she was in contact with were all digital.
After combating the psychosomatic sliminess that seemed to accompany even the idea of Richard Packard, she moved on to the next story about an assassination attempt by terrorists, foiled thanks to the unrelenting patriotism of the American people. It was undoubtedly fabricated; she’d developed a knack for identifying all the earmarks of a fake report. The three suspects — likely random bearded men of Arabic descent photographed on a sound stage and paid for their time — were all supposedly being detained on one of the New Liberty Army’s battleships.
There was an accompanying media resource snippet, which she was also required to screen for subversive content. One never knew when someone with, for instance, an unpatriotic t-shirt might wander through the background. The video was a brief interview with the everyday hero who’d provided the information leading to the arrest. Despite an excellent job with makeup and post-processing and the fact that the woman was a spectacular actress, Desi recognized her as a coworker from one of the upstairs floors.
She closed the report’s package and dragged its folder into “Clear”, making way for the next one. As she was enlarging it for easier reading, she yawned and stretched a little. Shit , she thought, hope I’m not catching that contagious insomnia .
”WHEN MEN SEE SHAPES IN THE SHADOWS OF THE MOON, THEY’RE REALLY ONLY SEEING THEMSELVES,” read the next file. She slid it around on her desk with her fingertips, enlarging and shrinking it, turning it, looking for something more, but that was it.
”What?” she asked, aloud. Someone’s personal note must have gotten mixed up and included in the reports. As unusual and nonsensical as it was, it was hard to believe it was some kind of intentional attempt at sneaking a subversive message into the broadcast.
She slid it over to the “Flag” icon, highlighting it, but paused before letting it go. Likely it was an innocent error — perhaps someone wasn’t paying attention to what they were doing and slid this stupid note in by mistake. The subsequent and undoubtedly inevitable investigation might ruin this person’s life, or at least his or her ability to ever urinate comfortably again.
Of course, if this was actually a test of her loyalty, they’d accounted for all of the possible excuses she could give for not reporting the note. They’d likely have to “reeducate” her to ensure her future willingness to sacrifice individual for country.
”Oh goddamn it,” she grunted, nearly inaudibly. She hesitated a moment longer, then withdrew the file from the icon and tossed it up into a corner to deal with it later. She feigned a violent sneeze while doing it, moaning and sniffling afterward, in case they’d planted a bug in the room. If anyone asked, she could claim she sneezed with her hand on the screen, messing up all her files and losing the one in question.
The next story popped up in its place — a saccharine “hero story” from the “front lines”, where troops were flushing out insurgents from disputed territories. She recognized the actor playing the soldier as a man named Jeremy, whose office had been a couple doors down from hers until he’d been promoted a few months ago.
*
Surprisingly exhausted after a completely unproductive day at work, Marty collapsed onto his couch, his eyes reflexively tracking the moving images on the television he’d apparently left on that morning. He was barely even aware of what was on.
At first, the insomnia had proven somewhat beneficial. In his first week of early workdays at his thankless and unimportant office job, he’d managed to catch up with a backlog he’d had for months. It wasn’t as though it actually mattered, but it felt good to get ahead. Over the course of the last month, however, the lack of sleep had worn him into a zombie-like state where he could barely accomplish much more than feeding himself when the need arose. Even then, it was getting to the point where the hunger pains really needed to cramp his belly to get his attention.
The TV provided the only illumination in the room; he’d stopped bothering with any of the other lights in the hope that a darker atmosphere would help contribute to his ability to sleep. This theory continually proved false.
He glanced down at the precooked chicken pot pie he’d taken out of the microwave maybe ten minutes ago and had forgotten about, and his eyelids began to drop a little. As his head rolled back into the padded outcropping of couch behind it, he drew in a powerful yawn. After a moment, when his eyes had nearly completely closed, he shuddered a little and shot upright as though he’d never even been tired.
”Motherfucker,” he yelped. Tears pooled in the corners of his eyes, and he began to sob a little.
He grabbed the pot pie from the table, nearly tossing it into his lap, and bitterly started shoveling it into his mouth. It was the same meal he’d had every night for the last two weeks, but it didn’t really matter since he could barely taste anything anymore anyway.
The news cut to a commercial break, mostly composed of advertisements for mattresses and sleep aids, and he muted the TV wondering how much the ’sleep industry’ would be benefitting from all of this.
He reactivated the sound when the news came back on. Midway through the first story, digital artifacts appeared briefly on the screen, accompanied by a burst of noise similar to the sound of a fax machine. Panic filled him, blossoming from fears that the only source of distraction from the wide-awake nightmare he’d been experiencing might break, or that the signal might be cutting out.
When it didn’t appear again after a few minutes of fiddling with the TV, he shrugged it off and lay down on the couch.
It was over an hour later when he regained consciousness, but he wasn’t sure he’d actually slept. He arose from the couch with as profound a grogginess as any human had ever experienced, and his head felt like a group of kids had borrowed it for a game of kickball.
Nearly reflexively, he grabbed the bottle of aspirin he kept on the table and washed it down with the remainder of his iced tea. Swarms of unfamiliar thoughts flittered through his brain but were moving too quickly for him to catch. It was like waking up from thousands of tiny dreams, only to have all memory of them immediately slip away back into his subconscious.
He turned off the TV, shoved his feet into his boots and headed out the front door, wondering where the hell he was taking himself.
*
A grey utility van bearing the Tettix Robotix insignia rolled to a stop along a strip of Interstate 40, just east of Albuquerque. They’d embarked from the desert a couple hours after the bugs — and all their potential investors, for that matter — had departed, after finding a news report online from a small town called Groom in the Lone Star Republic about a swarm of bugs forming briefly around an enormous cross made of metal sheeting before ascending again into the skies. Eyewitnesses had interpreted the event as a message from God, an indication of the imminence of the end of the world or a sign of some coming plague. Tate had interpreted it as an indication of the flight path of the electronic insects he’d lost several hours earlier.
He sat in the passenger seat, pulling up a map from the internet using one of the satellites mounted to the roof of the van. Despite absolutely abhorring dress clothes, especially in the desert, he was still wearing his suit from the presentation. He hadn’t had time to head back to his hotel room to change.
”Anyone mind if I turn up the air conditioner? This laptop is really baking my crotch.” There was a silence. He reached for the knob. “No one?”
”You should try putting it on a briefcase or something,” said Jenna Xun, the engineer who’d been running the presentation that morning. She was in the back of the van monitoring the tracking equipment.
”Ah, thanks. That suggestion probably would’ve been more helpful before I went completely sterile, but thanks all the same.”
”I’m… sorry? I was just–”
Tate sighed loudly, interrupting her. “No, don’t apologize. I should. I’m just a little stressed about the prospect of hundreds of millions of dollars of prototypes deactivating and dropping into some kid’s yard for him to smash up in fights with his Transformers or whatever.”
”It’s okay,” she replied. It was obvious — to her, at least — that he blamed her for the disappearance of the insects. After all, she’d been the one who’d programmed and run the entire demo. She blamed herself as well, despite being almost positive it wasn’t her fault in a way she hadn’t quite figured out yet.
”You getting anything? On the sensors?” asked Tate, over his shoulder.
Jenna checked the screen she’d been monitoring in case anything new had shown up over the last few seconds. “Nope. Nothing. Just noise.”
”Damn, just remembered to ask, but did everyone bring their passports?” asked Tate. “They’re going to check when we get to the border. And coming back out again will probably be worse.”
The driver, a man named Mitch, pulled back onto the road after one of the other engineers returned through the rear doors of the van from a roadside bathroom break. “I hear they’ve been attaching GPS tracking devices to visitors’ cars, to make sure they’re actually only visiting. If you’re not out when you said you’d be out, it alerts the authorities in the area where the transmitter is located. They scan your InfoCards at the border when you go in, and use them to track you down if you don’t go out.”
”Are they really that fascist about it?” asked Jenna. “I mean, I’m sure those are the official rules and all, but are they that strictly enforced?”
”I think so, actually,” replied Mitch. “They’ve got this huge, creepy volunteer force that guards the borders. I heard they’re starting to build a fence around the entire perimeter, starting down on the Mexico side.”
”Well,” said Tate, “let’s be sure to get the hell out of there as soon as possible then.”
*
Jabberwock
