Jon Evans - Swarm

At that my joy began to wither into ashes. It still didn’t seem possible that the world no longer had Jesse in it. It still felt like at any moment my cell door might slide open and he would be there, cracking jokes and plotting our escape, with his usual all is right with the world, I’m Jesse Ruby and you’re not grin stitched across his face.

I closed my eyes and tried to sleep but couldn’t, I was too wired, my heart was still hammering in my chest, the day had been too crazy. My memories of it were already fragmenting into particularly surreal images. The atrium of the Burj al-Arab. The shattered ruins of the Rolls-Royce. The cloud of emergency vehicles outside the factory. When I thought of Jesse sprinting across the roof I groaned involuntarily.

I supposed I would spend the rest of my life in jail, both for things I had done and things that I hadn’t. Just then such a fate seemed not entirely unfair, and not entirely undesirable. I felt empty of all ambition. Camus had written in The Stranger that a man needed the memory of only one day outside prison to be able to live a whole lifetime inside. I thought I knew what he meant. I thought of what Lisa had taught me about enjoying every instant, treating every moment as a gift, even the awful ones, especially the awful ones.

Jesse had never needed to learn that lesson. He had always known it in his bones.

I took long deep breaths, concentrated on the sensation of my lungs filling and emptying, my muscles slowly relaxing, my heart beating slower in my chest, the tears slipping languidly down my cheeks. Slowly the jangle of noise and sharp edges that was my mind began to smooth and grow quiet, and somewhere in its darkness I found sleep.

I spent the first day of my life in jail waiting for something to happen. I assumed I would at some point be taken away for further processing, for interrogation, for something; but aside from meals delivered through the slot in my door, the outside world made no contact at all.

It took me all of five minutes to explore everything that my new existence had to offer. My cell was tiny, eight feet by six, furnished with a metal bunk, chair, sink, and toilet, all gleaming in the single bright light guarded by steel mesh. The door too was solid steel. A single small window, barred by an iron cross set in foot-deep concrete, revealed three horizontal stripes, golden sand and blue sky separated by a featureless concrete wall. My new jail clothes were ill-fitting and uncomfortably starchy, but I didn’t care. The meals were rice with tasteless sauces. I forced myself to eat, and waited for an interruption that did not come.

I spent the second day of my life in jail trying to prepare for the years to follow. The haunting atonal Islamic call to prayer woke me at dawn. By noon I had accepted that nobody wanted to talk to me. Maybe they were trying to soften me up with a period of solitary confinement. Maybe they had just forgotten about me, distracted by all the bigger fish – Sophie, Lisa, LoTek, Danielle – who had jumped into their net. It didn’t really matter. I managed to while away a good long time just trying to itemize all the charges that might be brought against me by the various nations in which I was wanted. I supposed I would have to grow adept at such mental games, if I was going to spend several decades trapped inside four claustrophobic walls.

Even such a life was precious beyond all reckoning, I told myself. I could have died so often over the last few weeks. I could have singlehandedly condemned the world’s greatest nation to anarchy. After that, treating every remaining moment as a gift, even they were all spent imprisoned for trying to destroy civilization rather than lauded for saving it, seemed like the easiest thing in the world. They could imprison me in a nutshell for fifty years and I would still count myself a king of infinite space.

I did push-ups and sit-ups, telling myself I was commencing a gruelling physical regimen that whatever else happened, I had to stay in shape, a strong mind required a strong body. I lay on the cot and meditated, took deep breaths. I thought about the past. I forced myself not to think about Jesse, or about the future. I had no future. The future didn’t exist. There was only the everlasting present.

On the third morning of my life in jail I woke completely resigned to a life of eternal imprisonment. About an hour later I was released.

Two Arabic men in dark suits who seemed to scare the daylights out of all the ordinary guards took me to a room where the clothes in which I had been arrested lay in a neat pile, freshly washed and folded. The rest of my possessions, the Android phone and fake passport, were nowhere to be seen.

They wouldn’t tell me what was happening. I got the impression they didn’t know. As I changed, my mind whirled with terrible fates. The death penalty. Extradition to Russia. The last thing I expected was to be marched out of the jail’s front door and simply abandoned there, atop marble steps leading down to a busy street. A street Sophie and Lisa waited in front of a big black limousine.

“What are you,” I said, “what, what… ” My voice trailed off. My stupefaction was beyond words.

“Full pardons for all,” Sophie explained calmly as I descended. “From everyone, for everything. You are no longer wanted by the FBI, or the government of Dubai, or any other authority.”

My mouth worked for a moment before I managed to speak: “I don’t mean to look a gift horse in the mouth, but why not?”

“Because the Americans have armtwisted everyone into letting us go.”

“Because they found out what we did?”

“They’re still picking through exactly what happened,” she said, “but they’ve wised up enough to realize that going forward they really have no choice but to have me on their side, and pardons were the first part of the price I named. Call it realpolitik.”

I wasn’t sure I liked her regal self-satisfaction. “What were the other parts?”

She smiled. “You’ll see.”

I looked around, dazed by this sudden second chance. Passersby looked at us curiously, as did the police loitering and smoking cigarettes on the steps that led up to the station.

“LoTek and Danielle?” I asked.

“Gone. For now.” She hesitated. “But not before making it clear that they wanted me to share the master control signal with the world. Lest we face inevitable totalitarian dystopia and all that.”

“Are you going to?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I decided maybe I’m not qualified to decide.”

I stared at her. I had never heard Sophie utter a more un-Sophie-like statement.

“Remember when we talked about that two-thirds majority?” she asked. “And if you and Lisa agreed on what we should do, we should do it? I’ve decided that’s fair. That’s why I asked you to stay,” she said to Lisa. “I wanted to hear from you in person before we left.”

I realized by we she meant herself and me.

“So?” she asked. “Should I unleash the drones, give LoTek and everyone else the master control signal, let them find ways to disable it? If you both think I should, I will.”

Lisa and I stared at each other for a second, stunned. My mind was still reeling from this sudden change of circumstances, this unlooked-for second chance at life. Sophie’s pop quiz to determine the future of the planet was too much to process.

“Sure,” Lisa managed, “just drop the fate of the world in our laps like that.”

“It’s a moral decision, not a practical one. You shouldn’t have to ponder it. Just tell me what you think. Should I give up the leash?”

Lisa chewed her lip. I considered.