Andrew Klavan - Empire of Lies

"After my husband died, I was listless," said a cherubic old woman, blown up to the size of a Volkswagen on the wall-sized screen. "I couldn't eat. I'd lie awake worrying all night long. Finally, my best friend said to me, 'This just isn't like you. Why don't you talk to your doctor about Cruxor?'"

And I'll be damned if that woman wasn't transformed right before my wondering eyes into her old happy, gregarious self.

"Man, I gotta get me some of that shit," I said, knocking back another slug of wine.

I settled in, bouncing from channel to channel.

A schoolful of Buddhist teachers murdered by "rebels" in Thailand, facedown in the yellow dust, the backs of their white shirts savaged with red.

A Christian village in Nigeria destroyed by "militia," clay huts gutted, orange flames snickering against the pale blue sky.

Jews blown up by "Palestinians," in Israel. Muslims castrated and beheaded by "insurgents" in Iraq.

I snorted to myself. Who did they think they were fooling? I wondered… a little drunkenly now, I must confess. These highborn Lords of the News, spoon-feeding us their carefully selected diet of euphemisms. Rebels, militia, Palestinians, insurgents, French youths. Did they think we were sitting here, thinking, Hm, I guess those dark-skinned, angry-looking killers named Muhammed all over the world aren't radical Muslims after all. Now I will not be prejudiced against their religion. Didn't they understand that we were bouncing on the sofa, screaming all the louder for our frustration, Hey, News-clowns! Tell the truth for once in your useless lives! Say the word! Say some word. Islamo-fascists! Jihadis! Something. Ya dumb fucks. Ya dumb, useless, lying, elitist fucks.

Ah, well. I suppose that's neither here nor there. I mean, it just makes me angry now, you know, because maybe it would've been a little easier for me to figure out what the truth was if the people who were supposed to be bringing me information hadn't felt duty-bound to guide me instead into right-thinking with their lies, lies, lies. But really-really-it's neither here nor there. The important thing-the jarring, weird, and, yes, ultimately relevant thing-was what happened next.

I changed the channel. And "Hey!" I murmured aloud in my surprise.

Because-what do you think?-there he was again! Patrick Piersall. Weird, no? Well, it seemed weird to me. I mean, I hadn't thought of the guy more than five times since I was twelve years old, and here he was suddenly appearing on my TV twice in one day.

It was a rerun of The Universal. Now he was Augustus Kane in his prime, standing sleek in his silvery unitard in front of one of those papier-mache boulders they seemed to have on other planets back then. Beside him was his archenemy, Smoldar of the Borgons, aka some poor bastard who dreamed of being Brando and wound up wearing a grotesque full-face mask with stringy black hair sprouting all over it.

"You Mindlings command us to. Live in Peace lest we destroy ourselves," said the admiral with his signature delivery, looking up at the painted sky in which his invisible captors hid. "But we would rather be free-free to choose our paths without the interference of a controlling hand no matter how benevolent. For without freedom-without choice-there can be no virtue-even in doing good. Without freedom-without a chance to choose virtue for ourselves-we can never find our destiny."

Now here's the thing. There was some channel-the Sci-Fi Channel-that played these reruns every night. So stumbling on Piersall again like this wasn't really that much of a coincidence at all. But I didn't know that. To me, the synchronicity seemed startling. More than that, it seemed downright scary. It made me start to worry again about the whole family-madness idea, the old amygdala going haywire. That was the last thing I needed on my mind right now.

So I had this brainstorm: I called up the TiVo, the digital-recording system. I programmed it to record anything that Piersall was in. That way, there would be no more coincidences, you see? The next time Patrick Piersall showed up on my television, it would be because I had chosen to record him, not because I was turning into my mother, seeing some secret network of connections governing the unseen world.

What can I say? I'd had too much to drink, all right? It made sense to me at the time.

And, of course, in the end, it made all the difference in the world.

I was in the kitchen making coffee when Serena stumbled in. Gray, small, and uncertain, she stood wavering in the doorway to the garage. Her narrow shoulders were hunched. Her face was screwed up painfully against the morning light. Her party dress hung on her like a wrinkled pink rag.

"You remember where the bathroom is?" I asked her.

She nodded weakly and shuffled across the room and off down the hall.

I set the coffeemaker going. Got some eggs and bread, butter and milk out of the refrigerator. Set them on the counter by the sink. I could see the backyard out of the window as I worked. It was a beautiful blue autumn day, the oaks red, the elm trees yellow, the rolling grass pale green. I had the window cracked open a little, and the cool air came to me. The smell of the dying leaves made my heart ache for the past. I used to play tag with my friends on that stretch of grass beneath the trees. My mother would stand right where I was now, making lunch, washing dishes, watching me.

"I can't find my purse."

Serena was back from the bathroom, even more hunched, even more gray than before. Water glistened on her cheeks, dripping from the curlicues of brown hair around her ears.

"I brought it in from the car," I said. "Your shoes, too. They're over there."

I gestured at the breakfast nook, one corner of the kitchen where a small rectangular table sat surrounded by four white wooden chairs. Her purse was on the table. Her shoes-open-toed straps with pointy little heels-were on the floor.

"Sit down," I said. "I'll make us some breakfast."

"Can't eat," she said. But she plopped down on one of the chairs.

"Eggs'll make you feel better. Also, they're the only things I know how to cook."

"Need some fucking coffee."

"It's almost done."

Still at the counter, I cracked the eggs into a bowl and used a fork to stir them up with milk. Standing there like that, I could see her out of the corner of my eye. She was in the midst of pulling this whole big complicated sneak maneuver, sort of rubbing her face and massaging her forehead with one hand as a way of hiding the fact that at the same time she was opening her little pink purse on her lap with the other hand and sneaking a look down into it.

"I didn't steal anything, Serena," I said with a laugh. "I didn't even open it."

She made that fish-frown teenaged girls make when you catch them at something, chin pulled back, upper lip jutting defiantly. She snapped the purse shut and tossed it onto the chair next to her. She held her head in her hands, rubbed her temples. Then she noticed a sheet of paper lying on the table: it was a draft of a flyer my Realtor was preparing for the house. She picked it up and studied it sullenly.

"Is this where we are? Long Island?"

"Mm-hmm. It's a house I own. It belonged to my mother."

She tossed the page aside without interest. "I need to get back to the city."

"Have some eggs first."

"I don't want any. I don't feel well."

I managed not to say anything snarky.

"Look, you don't have to play out this whole big, like, breakfast scenario," she said. "I said I'd blow you, I'll blow you. Only let's just do it, all right? I have to get back."

I laughed, shaking my head. "Thanks, but no thanks."

"Why not?" she shot back nastily. "What, are you, gay?"