The Eye of Moloch

Chapter 32

Arthur Gardner had never been one to take much pleasure in simple things.

Food and drink were occasional necessities, friends a seductive risk with only superficial benefits. And sleep—sleep was a thief of precious time and the persistent bringer of unwanted dreams.

As he sat, long past midnight at the head of the empty table in his private conference room, he reflected on these and other things, and in the quiet, he wondered. These halls were filled with a visual record of his accomplishments. Doyle & Merchant, the company he’d helped build from modest beginnings, would live on and speak its own memorial, carved as it was into the very skyline of Manhattan. Yes, with it all nearly over he found he knew very clearly what he had done with his life. It was all the things he’d missed along the way that now consumed him.

The media wall before him flashed its ever-changing torrent of images and messages. From where he sat, he could shift its content as he chose, just by gesturing, and he did so.

A solid wall of marketing communications was the first category to come up on the display. Advertising was a dark art somewhat related to his own. From what he saw, the primary challenge these days seemed to be how best to portray young people—supposedly living exciting and enviable lives—while they did nothing but stare nonstop into the little glowing screens in their hands. Ads for reality shows, ads for helpful chronic pharmaceuticals, ads for luxury vehicles, ads for bankruptcy advisors, ads for credit cards: in every stage of decline there were still desires to be stoked and needs to be created, and a last bit of money in the public’s pocket to be fought over and won.

His own business model was not centered in luring the gullible into wanting things they didn’t need. Instead, he made them know things, and love and hate things, and fear things, and thereby he made them do things, and the profit in that had proven nearly limitless. Despite the exorbitant fees he charged, the process was actually pretty simple: make the people learn and remember lies while burying the very truths that could save them.

And if those frightening, liberating truths should ever come to light, what then? Would it make any difference? Now, with mankind facing the final precipice, could any revelation be powerful enough to open their eyes and turn the tide?

We would see. He’d done what he could, as his wife had asked. He’d set a last, far-fetched opportunity into motion, put the intrepid players in position, and then stood aside. It was out of his hands now; the rest was destiny.

“Sir?”

Warren Landers stood at the open door.

“Yes?”

“I know it’s late but I’m glad I found you here. There’s a problem in the London office and I’m afraid they need your thoughts.”

Arthur Gardner sighed, and nodded. “We can do a conference call from here, I believe.”

“No, our links are down and we don’t have any techs on the night shift to make it happen. I’ve arranged for a video call at a vendor on Sixth Avenue. Come on, I’ll drive you there.”

Gardner met the gaze of the other man and waited, let a grim understanding pass between them, then he nodded once again, closed his book, and stood. Everything was in order, after all; he’d seen to that. There was no need for fighting it, then. He already knew his end was near, and he supposed this was as good a time as any to let it come.

“Let’s get going, then,” he said. “We mustn’t keep our colleagues waiting.”

They went together in silence to his corner office. Once there, he took a last long look around at all his treasured things, then walked to his private elevator and pushed the button, going down.

“It’s been a real experience working with you, Warren,” he said.

There was no response from the man waiting just behind him.

A pleasant ding issued forth from the elevator. The doors opened to a deep black emptiness.

Arthur Gardner’s thoughts were already far away as he felt a firm shove at his back. And save for the grim prospect of a possible coming judgment from on high, there was almost no fear in him at all as he fell forward into the yawning darkness.