The Theta Prophecy (20 page)

“How much did you get to read?”

“Enough to know that what I’m being told is true. The Thinkers are set on changing our way of life. The fools believe they’re better off living without our laws, without us overseeing everything that goes on. This isn’t like the other enemies we’ve fought,” the Ruler said, growing loud and energetic. “These people really want to do away with the Tyranny. Can you imagine?”

Neither of them spoke then, both of them trying to imagine a reality in which the Tyranny didn’t exist. How would things be different? What had life actually been like before the Tyranny came about? These things were difficult to remember because every television station, every book, every radio station, kept saying how each new law was critical to ensuring everyone’s safety. It was enough to make even the most open-minded individual question how anyone could have lived before all these laws were created. There must have been bombs going off everywhere, killing thousands of innocent citizens in each of the Tyranny’s cities. There must have been trains and buses being blown up on every corner back when people were allowed to board them without being molested.

“One thing doesn’t make sense to me,” Matheson said, shaking his head. “If Thomas Jefferson had it, wouldn’t he make sure it was only given to someone he could absolutely trust, not someone who could be corrupted?”

The Ruler’s eyes became buried behind cheeks that rose when he burst into laughter. “That’s what you wonder? My god, man. I tell you I’ve read a book from the future and that the Thinkers really will be able to travel back in time, if they can’t already. I tell you that our entire way of life is at risk and you wonder why Jefferson wasn’t a better judge of character?” The Ruler smacked his knee while he howled. “I wish there was a microphone recording some of the things you say.”

“There probably are,” Matheson said.

The two men looked at each other for a moment, then the Ruler went into a fit of laughter so intense that he rocked back and forth on the sofa. Hearty, genuine guffaws that made the man look younger than normal. If anyone was listening, they might think they were hearing a grizzly bear giving birth, but it was the Tyranny’s Ruler enjoying one of his rare moments as a regular person, not having to do what he was told, not having to tell his people that another needless war was going to start or another pointless law was going to be passed.

“That was a good one,” he said. “I need to remember that one.”

Year: 2048

“What do we have so far, Jerry?” Amy said, standing over his desk and the amazing amount of clutter it contained.

The man, whom she had known as long as she had worked in news, shrugged and smiled. He appeared to be particularly old when she stood over him and could look down at his balding head. Then she remembered her hair hadn’t always been grey, knew how old that made her look, and said nothing.

“Debbie’s compiling a list of all the people—or at least the ones we know about—who have been rounded up or killed by the Tyranny in the past month.”

“How many?”

“Just in the capital, and just in the last month, over two hundred.”

Amy whistled and cringed at the same time.

“And Carter’s team,” he said, “is getting the stats on how many people have been accused of being Thinkers in the past month. There’s overlap, of course, with that list and the list of people who were killed or have disappeared.”

“Of course. So, how many?”

“Almost five hundred.”

“In just the capital, and only in the last month?”

He nodded.

“This is insane,” she said. “What are they going to do when there’s no one else to lock up?”

Jerry didn’t say anything, only looked out the office building’s window at an AeroCam hovering just outside, recording every action they made and probably every word they said.

She looked to see what he was staring at and growled. For a moment she seemed to consider picking up his stapler and throwing it through the window at the little flying camera.

Instead, she said, “And the piece about who’s investing in all the attack ads?”

“That one was pretty quick. The intern already found everything we need to know. The same two interest groups are funding both candidates. Turns out the same two groups also ran disparaging ads against anyone else who tried to run against the two main candidates.”

She took a deep breath and sighed. “Are you sure?”

“I know the kid doesn’t look like much,” Jerry said, flipping his eyes over toward the tiny desk they let the intern use when he wasn’t getting them coffee, “but it turns out he’s got a knack for research.”

“Okay, then have him put together some background notes on both candidates.”

“What do you mean?”

“What are their careers?”

He smiled. “That’s easy: they’re politicians.”

“I know, but what did they do before they were politicians?”

“They always were.”

“Always? Weren’t they lawyers or government contractors at least?”

“No. I think they got out of college and became politicians.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

She saw, though, by his silence that he wasn’t kidding at all.

“So, who’s giving them all the money to do these commercials?”

“One group consists of the companies the Tyranny uses to make bombs, planes, and missiles. And the other consists mainly of banks.”

“Have the candidates said what their stance is on all the wars we’ve been fighting?”

“They both support every bomb that’s been dropped.”

“Of course. And let me guess, they both think the banks are misunderstood and are actually the Tyranny’s greatest asset, right?”

Again, Jerry’s silence spoke for him. He turned and looked out the window. The AeroCam was gone. Within a minute, another would replace it.

“Both of them,” he said, leaning closer to her, “back when they were state leaders, before they were running to be a national leader, had reputations for introducing laws they didn’t write. One of them, when asked about his new bill, didn’t even know what it was about. When he was told, he didn’t know what any of it meant. The other guy has a reputation for going on luxurious vacations that businessmen buy for him. He ended up introducing a law that made it legal to poison the drinking water where he lived. A week later, he sold his house and moved into a mansion.”

“Will it never end?” Amy said, suddenly becoming tired. “What happened to the farmers, doctors, and teachers who used to come here to make a difference, then go back and return to their lives when they were done?”

He didn’t attempt a reply. But this time it wasn’t because he was afraid the AeroCam would record whatever it was that he said. He didn’t reply because he knew she already had the answer: the people she was talking about were now getting paid a king’s ransom to sit on the board of directors at the companies they helped while they were leaders.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” he said, “where is all of this going?”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, Amy. You can’t report this stuff. The boss won’t let you. You know that. He’ll lose a fortune when all the advertisers drop our station. And that doesn’t even account for the Tyranny. You’re very close to breaking the law.”

“Which law?”

“You can’t say anything bad about the Tyranny. You know that. I don’t like the law any more than you do, but it’s the law.”

“Is reporting the Tyranny’s actions a criticism of the Tyranny, or just journalism?”

“Come on,” he said, his hand reaching toward hers but pausing inches away. “We aren’t in college, debating the ethics. You can call it journalism if you want, but the Tyranny won’t see it that way. And we both know it.”

And then she did take his stapler and throw it across the room, almost hitting the intern in the face by accident.

“Sorry!” she said, but the intern was already running for the door. Then, to the entire floor of personnel, she yelled, “Does reporting the news make me a radical? Does reporting fact for fact, the Tyranny’s actions, make me a Thinker?”

No one answered in words. Their actions spoke for them. Every single person within earshot of her suddenly felt the urge to use the bathroom or refill their coffee or take a smoke break. Even Jerry got up and began walking, his head down in defeat, toward the elevators and away from her.

Outside, a new AeroCam was watching her from the third story window.

Year: 2048

“What should we do?” the Ruler asked again.

Matheson looked at all the reports scattered around on the table. Like the Ruler, he knew what they contained. The poor country that would be their next target. Ways to keep everyone safe by controlling all the things they did and said. Strategies to fill the prisons with even more people. In a different set of meetings, when it wasn’t just the Ruler and Matheson, men in suits from various departments within the Tyranny would take turns saying why the actions proposed in their respective reports were absolutely critical.

“It’s a tough situation,” Matheson said. “We all know wars have been great in uniting the people or, at least, distracting them. And if we could control every single thing the people do, we would never have anything to worry about. But it seems like…” He trailed off, squinting at the impossibly thick stack of recommendations. Had anyone actually read through each one to see what drastic actions they would require of the Tyranny?

“Out with it,” the Ruler said. “It’s just the two of us. You can say whatever you want.”

“Well,” Matheson said, scratching his eyebrow, “it’s just that it seems like every war we create has unified the people against us instead of rallying them against the enemy.”

“Against us?” The Ruler shook his head as if he couldn’t have heard correctly.

“We get reports that with each additional war, more people agree with the Thinkers. They don’t say it in so many words because they know we’re listening to all of their calls and reading all of their emails, but the language shows sympathetic tendencies for the Thinkers and clear distrust of the Tyranny.”

“Can’t we lock up everyone who doesn’t believe us? Isn’t it illegal to question what we tell them?”

“It is, but they aren’t coming out and directly saying it. It’s more of the hesitation in their words and voices. If we could read people’s thoughts, we could lock up every single person for a thousand miles.”

“It’s that bad?”

“It’s worse than bad. The same thing happens with each law we pass and each new checkpoint we set up. Our own people resist us more each time we find ways to control them.”

“Keep them safe, you mean.”

“Yes, that too.”

“I’m tired of this,” the Ruler said, pounding his fist against the sofa’s cushioned arm. “We need to show them we mean business.”

“I agree with the sentiment, and history shows that people do like strong leaders. But like I said, they aren’t coming out and
saying
they’re against us, it’s more of a general sentiment. The law says it’s illegal for them to speak out against us, but we can’t arrest them for believing in their hearts that we’re evil. And with all the false accusations,” Matheson said, trailing off and grimacing.

The Ruler slapped his knee with an epiphany. “Have you considered that maybe they aren’t false accusations? Maybe all the people being reported really are Thinkers.”

“Then it’s even worse than we could have imagined, because it would mean everyone is against us and no one thinks we have their best interests in mind.”

The Ruler’s eyes became wide and he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “Everyone?”

“Almost.”

The Ruler leapt to his feet in triumph. “We’ll pass a new law! It will be illegal to be against us.”

“It already is,” Matheson said, and the Ruler crumpled back down on the sofa.

“Things would be so much easier if we could just find the Thinkers and get rid of all of them. They’re the ones getting everyone else to second-guess us with their logic. If we got rid of them, no one would think for themselves; they’d do anything we told them.”

“They’re a smart bunch,” Matheson said of the Thinkers, knowing that if he said the same thing anywhere else, and if he weren’t the Ruler’s trusted adviser, an alarm would be signaled by whichever of the Tyranny’s microphones had picked up the comment and it would be a matter of minutes before men in black armor stormed through the door and dragged him away. “We’re trying everything we can, but they always find ways to elude us.”

“How’s that possible? For God’s sake, we monitor every single thing people say and write.”

“They speak in codes that don’t sound like codes. They use things like the names of former Rulers and the names of states to refer to each other without our computers identifying it as anything suspicious.”

“Why don’t we just have our computers track people using those code words?”

“We tried that. The software spotted a group of Thinkers on the west coast. The Security Services raided the homes. They blasted everyone away.”

“And?” the Ruler said, his eyes big with hope.

“And it turned out the phone calls were a bunch of elementary school girls doing a group project for their history class.”

“Oh.”

“Our men blasted all of the kids and their parents and none of them ended up being Thinkers.”

“Oh.”

“That’s how the Thinkers evade us, by speaking in common terms that we have a hard time picking up. By the time we identify one set of code words they’ve moved on and are using another set. We’re always one step behind them.”

“I thought the very reason we listened to everyone’s calls was to keep track of these people.”

“I know,” Matheson said, grinding his teeth together. “It’s not working, though. And things just keep getting worse. I know this is going to sound extreme, but the only thing I can imagine doing to make people trust us is if we postpone having any more wars, stop dragging people off the streets, maybe even punish one of our guys if he kills someone who isn’t a Thinker. Maybe close down some of the checkpoints. They’ve never been effective anyway.”

“We can’t do those things.”

“I know.”

“That’s insane.”

“I know.”

“They would crucify me,” the Ruler said, and Matheson knew he was no longer speaking of the people out on the streets, the people who lived in fear of what the Tyranny would do next, but the leaders, the men and women who wrote the laws and were fond of going on television to scare people into a frenzy. “You know they all just want a chance to be the next Ruler. They’ll say and do anything they can to be Ruler. They would slaughter me if I didn’t keep approving the wars. They’d go on television and say I wanted the Tyranny to be weak. They’d tell everyone I was the Ruler responsible for putting their children’s lives in jeopardy.”

“I know.”

“And we need to drag people off the streets if we expect to have the prisons full. Do you know how much money is made off those prisons?”

“I know.”

“And if I had one of our men punished for killing a kid or some broad? Can you imagine what the leaders would say about me? They’d claim I was against the Tyranny! If we’re going to start reprimanding our guys for killing innocent people, everyone’s going to think we did something wrong. And we can’t have them believing that!”

“I know.”

“And don’t even get me started on the checkpoints. Do you know how many millions of people we keep employed with those inspections? Yes, they’re a waste of time. And yes, they’ve never prevented a single attack. But if we get rid of even a few thousand of them, that’s thousands of people who suddenly won’t have jobs. The leaders will crucify me. They’ll say I’m responsible for the worst jobless rate in decades. And worst of all, that would be thousands of people who no longer have a reason to support us because we wouldn’t be giving them paychecks.”

“I know. Trust me, I know.”

They both stood up and walked back over to the window that overlooked the yard. The security fence, ten feet high, kept everyone two hundred feet away in every direction. Within the perimeter, there were no trees, only open grass so possible threats could be identified and blasted. But outside the fence, littered amongst the monuments and museums were light green trees, almost white, that made the urban prison look like a pretty place to visit during the spring and fall.

“There has to be something we can do,” the Ruler said.

“I wish there was.”