The Great Forgetting (27 page)

“There,” he said, pointing at the corner screen. The feed was in shades of green and white. It showed a sterile room. In the middle was a dentist's chair surrounded by medical implements. Two men were strapping Sam down with some effort.

“Oh my God,” said Jack. “Where is this?” He looked at the display under the screen. “Identity Mod? What's that mean? Where is this?”

“What the fuck?” asked Nils, pointing to another screen, which showed a cafeteria. Two Hounds were playing Ping-Pong. Their bare chests were strangely shaped and hairy. They did not look entirely human.

Cole did the first thing that came to mind. He nudged Nils. “Look,” he said, pointing to the defaced sign above them.

Before Jack could stop him, it was out of Nils's mouth. He didn't know any better. “Who is the Maestro?”

At the sound of the word all the screens abruptly changed. All nine monitors now showed their group, footage taken from a camera hidden in a corner above. A mechanical alarm sounded, the kind that builds in intensity as if cranked by hand. “Intruders,” a calm female voice announced from hidden speakers. “Section 9-G.”
Wooooop!
“Intruders, section 9-G. Security breach. Grimpen Mire stairwell.”
Wooooop!
“Unauthorized discussion of state secrets. Keyword: Maestro.”
Wooooop!
“This is not a drill.”
Wooooop!

“What did I do?” said Nils.

“Come on,” yelled Cole, darting down the corridor, away from the exit. “This way! Hurry!”

They ran. For at least a mile they ran, Jack supporting the Captain with a tight arm around his waist. At another intersection Cole halted briefly, getting his bearings. Behind them a group of Hounds (would you call them a gang, Jack wondered, or a shrewdness?) bounded after them, pushing off the walls for extra momentum.

“Jesus Christ!” the Captain shouted.

Cole led them to the right and immediately down another hall to the left. It was a dead end.

“Shit, man. We're trapped!” yelled Jack.

“No, we're not,” said Cole. He stepped to a beige panel set into the concrete wall. It was a call box, the kind you might find outside a cheap apartment building. He pushed a button. There was a sharp buzz and then an automated voice, the same pleasant feminine voice that had alerted the Hounds to their presence.

“Password,” she said.

“Open sesame,” Cole replied.

There was a click and another buzz and then the wall slid into a niche in the concrete with a sound like Lazarus's tomb unsealing. They ran inside and Cole touched another button that caused the wall to slide back. There was a
thunk
as it closed, and then the
clankity-clunk
sound of heavy locks falling into place.

They stood there, panting, against the door. And then the occupant of this room addressed them. It was a voice Cole had not heard in a long time.

“Hello, Cole,” said the voice, a man's voice, though slightly effeminate—the voice of a poet. “We knew you'd come back. We just didn't think it would take three years.”

Cole turned, the atomizer he'd stolen from Jack in his right hand. He pointed it at the Maestro. This. This was all he'd ever wanted. Murder. Justice. Revenge.

 

FIVE

TO SERVE MAN

1
    
“Wake up.”

Cole rubbed his eyes and looked at the clock beside his bed. It was 4:00 a.m. His father was a shadow in the dark room, outlined by the light through the open door. “What's going on?” asked Cole.

“Get dressed. Don't wake your mother.”

Cole pulled on a T-shirt and jeans and looked out his window to the void of the Atlantic Ocean. Not even a hint of sunlight on the horizon. They'd gone to see
Wicked
last night, for something like the fifth time—his father was suddenly nuts about it—and had eaten a late dinner at Gaby's.

As they stepped into the early morning, his father ruffled his hair the way he used to when Cole was little. His dad was dressed not in his suit but in khakis and a simple polo. “We've got a long day ahead of us,” he said.

“Where are we going?”

“Back to Big Indian.” His father handed him a coffee, another sign that all was not normal. He didn't like Cole drinking caffeinated beverages or anything with a lot of chemicals in it, really. They took 95 through the Bronx, then across the GWB into Jersey. A schooner sat on the Hudson, sails wrapped in white string lights. It had been forever since they'd sailed.

“Lots of people get lost in their jobs, I think,” his father said. “Things become routine. You do what your boss asks because that's what you get paid to do, right? You don't question it. There were young men who guarded the Jews at Sobibor. When they signed up to work there, it was just another labor camp. By 1942, they were gassing the prisoners with carbon monoxide. Their job didn't change overnight, it changed slowly. It became the new routine. Like every job, it must have even seemed boring to some. See what I mean?”

“What are we doing?” asked Cole.

His father sighed. “I think we made a terrible mistake. I think we were wrong to forget. I'm not helping anybody. Cole, I think I'm the bad guy in this story.”

“You're not a bad guy.”

“You wait and see what happens to the world after another thirty years of this, of all these terrorist attacks and retaliatory wars. If we'd remembered we'd already done it, maybe we wouldn't be so eager to kill each other again.”

“Where are we going?” asked Cole.

“We're going to talk to the only man who knows how to stop it.”

*   *   *

Up the mountain, through the mire, into the Undergound, its catacombs lit with dirty light. Cole followed his father down the corridor and around several turns. They walked for half an hour before they reached the intercom. His father chuckled. “The most important secrets in the world are kept behind this door and they picked the oldest password in history.” He leaned to the panel. “Open sesame,” he said.

The light inside was warm, the harsh world of concrete and fluorescence shut away as the door closed behind them. They were standing in someone's cherrywood den, an expansive room of plank floors and leather couches. Hardback books lined deep shelves on every wall, old tomes, fragile and fragrant with glue. Someone, somewhere, was cooking bread.

“Hello?” his father called.

A head peeked around the corner of a doorway. A man's head, fortyish, skin waxy and grayish, almost sickly, the way a vampire might look after decades of night. “Ah! What a pleasant surprise!” he said.

The Maestro stepped into the den. He wore black pants and a gray sweater. A white apron hung around his waist.
LICENSE TO GRILL
,
it said in black letters. The man's body bent forward slightly, a hunchback's bony knob pushing his sweater into a mound behind one shoulder.

“And who is this?” asked the Maestro.

“This is my son.”

“Well, hello. Won't you come into the kitchen for some cupcakes? We've just made some red velvet. You must try one. This way.” There was something simply magical about this man, like an old wizard. The boy was too thrilled to speak.

They followed the Maestro into a kitchen bathed in pale blue-and-white light. A plate of cupcakes cooled on the island. The Maestro motioned for them to sit on wooden stools, then nodded to the treats. On top of each cupcake was a white marzipan aspen leaf. Cole ate greedily. They were wonderful, soft and moist.

“And what is your name, young prince?”

“Cole,” he said around bites.

“Cole, you can call us the Maestro. It's all right to say it in here. The Hounds can't come in. Not without proper cause.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Our pleasure. We haven't seen a child in fifty years.” They turned their attention to his father then. “A break in protocol. What if the Hounds found out?”

“I'm beyond that now,” his father said.

“Do tell.”

“All the time I've known you, you've never much liked what you do. You hate the Hounds…”

“Animals. Don't get us started.”

“So why are you helping them?”

“We maintain the algorithm. It's what we were made for.”

“But the founders wouldn't have supported these new forgottings. Right? We should stop it. All of it. People need to remember.”

The Maestro smiled. “Consider what would happen if the signal from HAARP suddenly cut off and six billion people woke up to the real world. If they weren't ready for such a thing, it would drive them mad. They might become more afraid than they already are. Then they would truly be dangerous.”

“So then what do we do?”

“They have to want to remember.”

“What does that mean?” his father asked.

“It means we can't simply turn the machine off. The people have to want us to. But … perhaps we can nudge them in the right direction. Allow them the choice of remembering.”

“How?”

“Give them reason to question this version of the world. Show them part of the machine. Hint at the truth. That way, they come to it gradually.”

“Show them part of the machine?”

“Expose a relay,” the Maestro said.

“How?”

“Blow off its shell.”

His father rubbed his chin, considering what the Maestro was suggesting. Cole could tell it was a weighted decision, the kind of decision you can't back down from. Then he patted Cole on the back. “Come on,” he said. “Time to go.”

The Maestro walked them to the door.

“You've come a long way, Stephen,” the Maestro said. He looked down at Cole. “Whatever happens today, you've already inspired others to remember. And that's a real start.”

Back in the corridor, Cole's father zigged right, down a narrow hall where another blast door was located. A sign above this one read
BATTERY
. He spun the wheel and it clicked open on a room filled with rows of metal lockers. The place reeked of oil and grease and the sweat of large beasts. His father went to a locker and pulled it open. Inside were guns placed in gray foam. He took one, considered a moment, and then removed another, which he handed to Cole. It looked like a toy ray gun and felt as light as a television remote.

“Here's the safety. Here's the trigger,” his father said. “Keep the safety on unless you mean to use it. Hold it steady when you fire. It won't kick, so don't flinch. Keep your eyes open when you shoot, okay?”

Cole felt his heart beating in his neck.

“It's just a precaution. You probably won't need it.” His father went to another locker and removed five bricks wrapped in thin, powdery paper.

“What's that?” asked Cole.

“Bombs,” his father said.

*   *   *

Just after noon his father pulled the strange jet car into the public parking decks below the North Tower of the World Trade Center. “It's like this, sometimes,” his father explained. “Everyone wants to live in a time when all they have to do is live, to live their lives and not rock the boat. But sometimes … sometimes you realize you have a responsibility to change things for the better and not just for you but for everybody. And the only way to do that is to risk your own peace. It's a choice like everything else. Do you understand?”

Cole didn't. But he nodded. If his father—and the man he called the Maestro—if they believed this was the right thing to do, then it must be. He'd never known his father to make an impulsive decision.

The Twin Towers, his father explained, disguised relays that blanketed all of New York City with the forgetting broadcasts. If they could blow apart the shell of one of the towers, the relay would be revealed. In the face of such technology, the public would question its purpose and function. The signal itself might weaken all over New York, too. It was a start.

The parking deck was claustrophobic and every sound they made bounced back to them from the walls in a way that made his fillings tingle. Cole felt the gun as a bit of pressure against his thigh. Could he actually point it at someone and squeeze the trigger if he had to? He didn't think so.

They began a circuit of the parking garage. His father paused at a key column of concrete and placed a brick of C-4 against it while Cole watched for cars. They continued around the lot and placed another. They had placed only two when a young man in a sharp suit came out of the elevators and spotted them: “Hallo there!”

His father tucked the explosives into the bag and put an arm around Cole's shoulders. “Greg!” he said.

“Hey, man, where ya been? We missed you at the conference this morning.”

“My son caught a cold,” he said. “I had to pick him up from school.”

The agent looked to Cole. The boy blushed, beads of sweat gathered at his hairline.

“Oh,” said Agent Greg Carr. “This your boy?”

“My one and only.”

Greg waved. “Hey, kiddo. Well. I'll just, you know, head back up.”