Dominion

EIGHTEEN

They drove for hours, stopping twice at unmanned fuel pumps and paying with Ruppert’s cash. When they were so deep in the desert he couldn’t see even a tinge of city lights either ahead or behind them, Lucia left the paved road to follow a dust-filled, barely visible track. She turned off the headlights, and the world ahead of them turned solid black.

“What are you doing?” Ruppert asked.

“We don’t want any sky patrols to see us.”

“Okay…but how do you know where you’re going?”

“I’m navigating by the stars,” she said.

Ruppert couldn’t tell if she was kidding or not.

After another half-hour, Lucia steered the car along a tall rock formation tall enough to block out the sky on the driver’s side of the car. She slowed, then turned the car and eased it underneath a jutting overhang.

“We’re going to get stuck under here,” he said.

“Stop complaining.” She let the car coast ahead several yards before stopping. They would be out of view of any satellites or helicopters. “We’re here.”

Ruppert opened the passenger door, but the rock wall of the cavern blocked it halfway. He sucked in his breath and managed to squeeze out of the car. Lucia climbed out on her side and closed the door, and the car’s interior light winked out.

Illumination flared from a small flatlight clipped to Lucia’s belt, throwing a harsh white glare that lent a supernatural look to the cavern, turning the craggy stone walls the color of bone while the cracks and recesses in them remained pitch black.

“This way,” Lucia said. They walked to the front of the car and then continued along the sloping cave floor. He followed her down a side passage as cramped as a chimney and nearly as steep, floored with a slippery layer of loose sand.

The passage twisted another hundred feet underground, then opened into a spacious cavern with a soaring ceiling. Off to his left, the rock floor dropped off into a sheer cliff. On the opposite side of the cavern, the partially-gutted body of an old trailer, or maybe an RV, rested against the wall. The rest of the room was cluttered with shelves and boxes filled with bits of machinery, dusty file folders, and hundreds of books and magazines. Some areas were portioned off behind makeshift curtains.

The center of the cavern looked, oddly, like anybody’s living room. There was a threadbare couch, four or five mismatched chairs, an ancient record player, a writing desk that looked like it had barely survived a house fire. The only light source was a lamp mounted into the desk, which shone on an elderly man who was now standing up to meet them.

He wobbled, then steadied himself on a walking cane. The man’s silver hair was balding at the top but long and shaggy at the sides, and he also had an unkempt beard. Ruppert couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a beard on a white man, or at least an employed one.

“Lucia,” the man said. “It is so good to see you.” He hobbled towards them, keeping his head high and spine straight despite his ungainly walk. Lucia ran towards him and hugged him-Ruppert couldn’t tell if she was excited or just trying to spare him a few steps.

“You don’t have to get up,” she said as she embraced him.

“Having a good reason to stand is worth the trouble of doing so,” the old man said. “I swear, Lucia, if I had my former life back, I would marry you today and take you to Paris tomorrow.”

“No,” Lucia said. “You’d just keep me as a mistress on the side. Until I got too old and ugly.”

“Impossible.”

“It happened to you.”

“I stand humiliated. Who is your friend?”

“He’s not my friend. He’s a propagandist for GlobeNet-L.A. His name’s Daniel Ruppert.”

“Is that right?”

Ruppert took the man’s offered left hand. The old man’s rheumy eyes took him in with a long, searching gaze that was uncomfortably reminiscent of Pastor John’s penetrating stare.

“I’m retired now,” Ruppert said, forcing a smile.

“My name is Dr. John Smith.” The old man returned the smile, and it did not look forced at all. “Not actually, but my given surname is a bit well known, not to mention an object of some shame for me personally, and in any case I’ve abandoned its use.”

“I understand,” Ruppert said. “Um, nice to meet you.”

“This is the man Sullivan recommended?” Dr. Smith asked Lucia, but without taking his eyes off Ruppert.

“That’s him,” Lucia said.

“He appears reliable enough to me.”

“You haven’t watched his newscasts.”

“And thank God for that,” Dr. Smith said. He inspected the coarse, heavy coat Ruppert was wearing. “Do you know where they bugged you?”

“I’m not even sure if they did.”

“Best to be safe, though. Lucia, will you help the gentleman into the exam room, please? And give the lights a few turns.”

“Over here,” Lucia said. She led Ruppert to the old RV against the wall, which they entered through a curtain made of the same material as Ruppert’s coat. The interior was completely lightless. Ruppert heard a ratcheting noise off to his side, and then a pair of surgical lights stuttered to life overhead. Lucia was turning a hand crank mounted into a metal box on one wall of the RV, apparently to generate electricity.

A low steel operating table occupied the center of the RV, banked by mirrors, a few clunky, boxy display screens, and an assortment of medical equipment that might have been salvaged from a hospital sometime in the early 1970s. Scalpels and assorted bottles of fluid were arrayed on the RV’s kitchen counter. The ceiling, walls and floor were all shrouded by more of the heavy material that composed Ruppert’s coat; it looked like burlap bags fixed in place with yards and yards of duct tape.

“What is this?” Ruppert asked.

“Don’t worry,” Lucia said. “You might not be bugged.”

Dr. Smith stepped up into the RV with a cardboard box tucked under one arm. He heaved it onto the table in the RV’s breakfast nook and began digging through the tangled nest of wires and cable inside.

“You can remove your coat,” Dr. Smith said. “We’re safe enough in here.” He fished out an object Ruppert couldn’t identify, a plastic yellow box the size of a deck of playing cards, with metal antennae radiating out at one end.

Ruppert shrugged off the coat, glad to be free of its weight, and tossed it onto one of the booth seats in the breakfast nook.

“Remove your shirt as well,” Dr. Smith said. He lifted out one end of a wire from the box and inserted it into a row of plugs on the side of the crankbox. “Lucia, a few more if you don’t mind.”

Lucia worked the crank, and soon the little yellow box sputtered to life with a series of sharp beeps. Dr. Smith lifted the device and rapped his knuckle a few times against the side.

Ruppert was slowly unbuttoning his shirt, distracted by the squawking device.

“There,” Dr. Smith said. He looked up at Ruppert. “Well, don’t be shy.”

“Sorry.” Ruppert hurried to strip himself to the waist.

“Step closer, if you don’t mind.” Dr. Smith held out the device toward Ruppert, and it began to beep more rapidly. “Oh, yes. Someone in this room is definitely being tracked. Would you turn around?”

Ruppert rotated to show the doctor his back, making very brief and awkward eye contact with Lucia as he turned. The device’s beeping accelerated into one long, piercing note.

“Here it is,” Dr. Smith said. “Right scapula. Perfect. Mr. Ruppert, we’re going to need you to lie face down on the table.”

“For what?” Ruppert said. His eyes darted to the rack of chunky, obsolete surgical instruments on the kitchen counter. They looked clean and bright, but terribly sharp.

“I’ll have to perform some very minor surgery,” Dr. Smith said. Ruppert whirled, half-expecting the old man to be wielding a scalpel at his bare back. Smith gave a warm smile. “You’re lucky it isn’t cranial.”

“You’re going to cut me open?”

“We’ll use a local anesthetic,” Smith said. “Don’t worry, I can enter laparoscopically. You can watch on the screen.”

“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Ruppert said.

“It’s a simple procedure,” Smith said.

“You want to wear that coat the rest of your life?” Lucia asked. “There are millions of ex-prisoners who’d cut their own grandmother to get their trackers removed.”

Ruppert looked at the old man. He seemed sane, even kindly. If Terror had implanted a tracking device in his body, Ruppert definitely wanted it out, but he wasn’t sure he was ready to let a bearded old man who lived in a cave perform surgery on his toe, much less an area close to his heart and spine.

“You’re really a doctor?” Ruppert asked.

“I served as a Navy medical officer in two campaigns,” Dr. Smith said. "Iran and Tajikistan. I was once issued an M.D. from the Yale School of Medicine. The Department of Terror has implanted a device in your body which allows them to pinpoint you at any second of any day, and such devices are often fitted with a tiny bubble of lethal toxin that can be broken open by remote control. This bubble, if present inside you, was manufactured by government contractors.

"Now. Do my qualifications meet with your approval, or would you prefer to contact your insurance provider?”

Ruppert looked between them. What choice did he have?

Following directions, Ruppert lay facedown on the cold metal plate of the operating table, which was only about a yard off the RV’s floor. Dr. Smith checked his blood pressure, then worked with the implements on the kitchen counter, while asking mundane questions that made the situation feel almost normal: How recently had Ruppert seen a doctor? Age? Height? Weight? Allergies, previous surgeries?

The old doctor eased into a low chair on Ruppert’s right side. He had sheathed his hands in latex gloves and tucked away his beard and hair behind a green cap and mask.

“I hope you’ll excuse my sitting down for this,” Smith said. “It’s rather difficult to perform while leaning on this ridiculous cane. Lucia, would you swab him here?” Ruppert felt the cool liquid on his bare upper back. “Now activate the screen.”

The thick, boxy old screen in front of Ruppert blinked to life, but only displayed meaningless gray blurs.

“Good,” Dr. Smith said. “Now hand me that syringe of anesthetic-no, the other-no, Lucia, the other end of the rack.”

“Is she qualified for this?” Ruppert asked.

“Not at all,” Lucia said as she passed a glass syringe to Dr. Smith. "Did you mean this pointy thing, doctor?"

“She's only trying to scare you," Dr. Smith said. "Miss Santos has sufficient experience. I require assistance, and here, that’s either Lucia or the nearest coyote. And I don’t believe you’ll find a coyote with a medical license. Though I understand Harvard has lowered their admissions standards considerably.”

Ruppert felt the needle puncture his skin, and his right shoulder fell numb.

“We’ll give that just a minute to settle in,” Dr. Smith said. “Tell me, Daniel, have you been approached by anyone…unusual, in recent days or weeks?”

“Besides you two?” Ruppert asked.

“I was thinking of someone from the opposite side of things.”

Ruppert immediately decided against telling them about his imprisonment by Terror-it might raise their suspicions, because Terror very rarely released anyone. He opted for a partial truth. “I did get called in to see my pastor at church. Someone decided I didn’t look devoted enough to the One King. That’s what they call God. I assume they mean God.”

“Keep still,” Dr. Smith said. “I’m cutting now. Do you feel any pain?”

“Nothing,” Ruppert said. He was numb from his neck to his knees.

“Are you in the habit of speaking to him?” Smith asked.

“No, we never spoke before.”

“Dominionist?” Smith asked. “One of those big stadium churches?”

“Yes. Golden Tabernacle. His name is John Perrish.”

“I don’t know that name. Not that it matters. I assure you the man is a psycho.”

“He didn’t seem crazy to me,” Ruppert said. “Definitely creepy, though.”

“He’s clueless,” Lucia said.

“Remain very still,” Dr. Smith said. “If you look on the screen, you can see the edge of your shoulder blade.”

Ruppert looked up at the image on the screen, but it was still grainy blurs to him. “You’re inside me?”

“I am.”

“I hope you can see that stuff better than I can.” The image on the screen advanced from one blurry area to the next.

“I can see what I need,” Dr. Smith said. “You’re completely unfamiliar with PSYCOM, then?”

“With what?" Ruppert asked.

“Lucia, would you help explain? I’m certain he would prefer I concentrate on the task at hand.”

“Please,” Ruppert said.

Lucia pulled up a chair in front of Ruppert. She’d tied her long hair back from her face.

“You have heard of psy-ops, right?” she asked as she sat down to face him. “Psychological operations run by the military, or intelligence, or politicians?”

“Right,” Ruppert said. “Like dropping leaflets on other countries when we attack them.” He thought of his own job. “Or planting stories in the news.”

“Sure.” Lucia said, rolling her eyes. “If this was World War I, maybe.”

“What else?” Ruppert asked. “The churches, that’s what you’re saying?”

“You must understand that no government rules by violence alone,” Dr. Smith said. “A state must appear legitimate to its population-at least, a substantial portion of its population. We calculated that one-third of the population is sufficient for absolute control, provided that the remaining two thirds remain factioned and quarreling. Ideally, of course, you would prefer to have majority compliance, but this is nearly impossible to effect reliably over the long term."

“I’m not sure I’m following you,” Ruppert said. He watched as the viewpoint onscreen nudged past a swollen blob that might have been muscle tissue.

“Someone explained it to me like this,” Lucia said. “What’s the difference between a king and a warlord?”

“What?” Ruppert asked.

“It’s like a riddle.”

“I don’t know. A king wears a crown?”

“He’s not so far off,” Dr. Smith commented.

“The difference,” Lucia said, “Is that a king has priests who back this crazy claim that he's the king and should be obeyed.”

“And a warlord?” Ruppert asked.

“He just has guys with guns.”

“A question of legitimacy,” Dr. Smith said. “Ordained by the gods, or forced by bloodshed, you see. The priests who cooperate inevitably grow quite wealthy and powerful themselves. They feed upon the system.”

“You’re saying the Dominionist churches are propaganda tools,” Ruppert said. “But that's obvious.”

“You’re skipping over the point,” Dr. Smith said. “In ancient times, a priesthood sufficed to legitimize the king. Ruling the modern world requires a complex information machinery. Priests, as you’ve mentioned, but also public relations professionals, historians, publishers, news reporters, teachers. The absurd rigmarole of voting and elections. Public rituals to make the commoners feel they are a part of things. Hold your breath and refrain from moving.”

Ruppert heard a mechanical clatter somewhere behind him, then a hissing, sucking noise close by his head.

“Stay where you are,” Dr. Smith said. “When fighting a war, a ruler has two goals in the area of public opinion. Generate support among your own population and discord among the enemy’s. We’ve done tremendous research in both areas. Eventually, you come to see all populations, enemy or ally, as the same, because in all circumstances the goal is to generate support for you and hostility toward the enemy.

“We learned to wage information war. We developed methods of infiltrating and subverting key information institutions in a society-the news media, yes, but also the long-term indoctrination structures of education and religion. We learned to exploit a culture’s myths, because myths are easier to manipulate than facts. Let’s have a look at the little beast. You can sit up now.”

Ruppert did, turning to face Dr. Smith, who was lifting a vial from a rattletrap machine connected to a long, thin hose that lay limp on the table, its metal tip wet with Ruppert’s blood. Smith held out the vial towards him.

Inside, at the very bottom of the container, lay a blood-smudged coil of wire no wider than Ruppert’s smallest fingernail.

“It’s still active,” Dr. Smith said. “Lucia, would you mind?”

Lucia set the vial into a holder at the end of the kitchen counter. She lifted an eyedropper and squeezed out a small stream of clear fluid into the vial. The little device smoldered.

“Acid,” she told Ruppert. “You want to make sure you destroy them.” She corked the vial containing the melting tracker.

“How were you involved?” Ruppert asked Dr. Smith, who still occupied the low chair beside him. “You keep saying ‘We.’”

“Yes.” Dr. Smith removed the pointed tip of the laparoscopy hose, opened a low kitchen cabinet, and pitched it into an empty paint bucket. “It’s an old problem, you see. We ran these operations separately. You’d have intelligence serving their purposes, military branches and divisions serving their separate purposes, and of course the official culture with the diplomats. The politicians scrambling things up here and there. The psy-ops would clash against each other in unplanned ways. Originally, they were only a sort of ad hoc tool, you understand? There was very little coordination.”

Ruppert nodded.

“The liquid skin,” Dr. Smith said. “And a bandage.” Lucia brought what he requested. “Turn that way and I’ll patch you up.”

Ruppert turned. His back was still completely numb, and he didn’t feel the doctor working on him.

“Eventually the decision was made to centralize all these different little operations,” Dr. Smith said. “In a global media environment, you need global coordination. That’s why the Psychological Command was created. We received enormous budgets and minimal oversight. Operations and research, each operation a new social experiment. We developed procedures for manipulating societies.

“In our own country, we turned public schools into cultural laboratories. We mapped electrical patterns in the human brain. Our goal was the manufacturing of consent. It was always easy enough to arouse a population to war, for example, but these fevers broke much too early. The question was how to manufacture a long, slow-burning fever, one that might ebb and flow but never die out, one that created a permanent climate of strict obedience, the unending emergency.

“You’re old enough to remember how these institutions arose together-the Department of Terror, the Department of Faith, the Dominionists, the Freedom Brigades.”

“Because of Columbus,” Ruppert said. “That's when the world changed."

“You’re exactly right,” Dr. Smith said. “These were parallel operations, deployed in a synchronized fashion to envelop the citizenry in a permanent illusion. We manipulated the local myths to serve our purposes. And now we will have tea, if Lucia will help me to my feet.”

They moved to the mismatched chairs in the living room area, where they drank strong black tea from a chipped, battery-operated kettle that occupied a worn barstool near Dr. Smith’s desk. They drank from chipped novelty mugs. Ruppert’s featured an image of the video game character Mario.

“So what was the point?” Ruppert asked. “Why change things so drastically?”

“It was necessary to fully implement our strategy," Dr. Smith said. “We wanted a system that granted absolute control over people and resources. The country was slipping, you see. The state was losing its grasp on the population. We needed an opportunity to assert authority, to stave off a potential anarchy. A strong blow, to induce a state of shock, to weaken the resistance of the public mind.

"We grew to understand that the link between god and state, used properly, brought the greatest potential for a long-term system. The Byzantine Empire lasted a thousand years. The Egyptian, much longer. We wished to install such a permanent sytem.

“And so our goal was the ‘pharaohnic’ state, in which the state itself becomes the object of religious adulation, the holy thing ordained by the heavens. Our research told us a god-state must appear omnipotent, omniscient, and above all, terrifying. Modern communication systems made near-omniscience entirely viable. That was the easiest part.

“The key is manufacturing fear. Then offer the frightened people a story that makes you the protector. If you simply accept the official truth as your own, you can believe that the state’s enemies are your enemies, and further that the state’s power is your power. When our new model state crushes another human being, or another nation, the faithful believe it is they who are doing the crushing. Are you following me?”

“Yes,” Ruppert said. “The churches, the news media to soak people in ideology, and then the Department of Terror for those who resist, am I right?”

“And most people are stupid enough to believe whatever they’re told,” Lucia said.

“I’m not sure I agree with you,” Dr. Smith said. “At some level, most of the obedient population know that what they adore is the power that can destroy them. They glorify what they fear, forcing themselves to believe they are somehow special and exempt, that the persecution will always be suffered by others. It’s the only way to avoid confronting the truth, which is that they are powerless.”

“But after a while they really believe it,” Lucia said. “I’ve seen people go into a rage when I try to point these things out to them.”

“Their anger betrays their lack of real belief,” Smith said. “When they lash out, they are externalizing the struggle against truth that goes on deep inside their own minds. We rule two-thirds of the world, directly or through proxies, yet we are not an empire. We pulverize entire cities, but we are bringing them freedom. We slaughter millions, while we proclaim a man who forbade the use of violence as our God.

“This is obvious to everyone, at some level. So we offer an external dramatization of their internal conflict-those who die in public executions, and those we destroy through war, represent the doubts and fears inside the people of our nation, that internal urge towards truth while we force ourselves to believe lies. The slaughter and bloodshed does not really resolve the inner turmoil, because it does not resolve the basic problem of denying reality. This is by design. Can you see why?”

“Because it allows you to do anything,” Ruppert said. “As long as we’re in a state of war, you can claim a state of emergency at home. Right?”

“And they can call it holy war,” Lucia said. “Holy war, holy government…just don't ask any questions, or you're a traitor-heretic-thought criminal.”

“That’s the pharaohnic state,” Ruppert said.

“Precisely,” Smith said.

“But why did you do it?” Ruppert asked. “I mean, who did it, exactly? Who has all this power? Who’s standing above it looking down on us ignorant peasants?”

“There is no single ruler,” Smith said. “There are many who profit. My family, among others. We have something of a tradition in the intelligence and defense industries. That is why I was appointed to the psy-op coordination task force, which grew into a think tank, before ultimately mutating into that most eloquent expression of power, an unsupervised and officially nonexistent bureaucracy. The North Atlantic Psychological Command. PSYCOM. The Department of Terror, for example, is merely one face of our operations. One of our American faces.”

“This is too much,” Ruppert said. He was beginning to feel dizzy, and struggled to keep his balance despite the fact that he was already sitting down. The dim living room lamp grew painfully bright to his eyes.

“I’m very sorry,” Smith said. “It's a great deal to take in after surgery.” He heaved himself to his feet, drawing heavily on the cane. “I’ll show you where to sleep.”

“I’ll take him,” Lucia said.

“Would you mind? I’ll just escort myself to my own apartment. Make yourself at home, Lucia. You’ve had a long drive.”

Lucia led Ruppert to one of the cluttered walls and drew aside a tattered paper screen decorated with fading ink sketches of Chinese woman gathering water at a well. The small room contained a cot wedged in among more of the cardboard boxes, which served as the room’s walls.

“This is a nice spot,” she said. “I think there’s some clothes in these boxes by the door. Water’s pretty scarce. If you have to piss or something, go into the cave behind the blue curtain out there and follow that all the way until it dead ends. Actually, you’ll probably want to stop before you get to the very end. You know.”

“Thanks,” Ruppert said.

She lingered, studying his face.

“What is it?” he asked.

“When did they get to you?” Lucia asked.

“Who?”

“Terror,” she said. “I can tell. How long did they keep you?”

“I don’t…I’m not…” Ruppert was so tired he could barely think. He did not know how to handle the question: Lie? Confess? Somewhere in between?

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “We can talk later.”

“Thanks.”

She stepped away from him, then slid the paper screen back into place.

The cot creaked as Ruppert lay down on it. He doubted he could rest well in such a strange location, but he was asleep before his eyes were fully closed. His dreams were dark, and he sweated in his sleep.