Pavel Kravchenko - Project Antichrist

“Now, by ‘the world,’ I don’t mean the sky and sunshine and the trees and your backyard and your pet and your children and everything you love and live for. That’s not the world. That’s you. ‘The world’ is what’s being fed to your from the screen. That’s what the new chemical in the pill makes you accept. It helps suppress the moodiness, the nausea, the outbursts, the general feeling of something just being wrong, your head feeling wrong, the desire to spit or to laugh or to cry, in short, all of those things you felt when you watched your TV before the pill came. It allows you to function in a society where three quarters of the population don’t need the pill, but it doesn’t make the world a better place. It doesn’t eliminate the cause, only the symptoms. There’s no happiness. It fills you with the indifference of a machine, but under it you are still pissed, and you’re scared, and you’re lonely. You still know deep down inside that something is wrong. But those who feed you the pill and those who feed you the world make you believe that something is wrong with you. They make you believe the pill is the only reason you are not making things worse.”

“It worked well for a while, but now it looks like either the pill or the TV is failing. It looks like some people are beginning to reject both. My case is famous, but it’s probably happening a lot. That’s why the prescription police was created. To add a little bit of fear to the equation. To give the pillmakers the time they need to improve the medicine. To give the mass therapy people time to fix up the signal. I’ll let you decide if you want to give them that time. You know enough, even though you don’t feel like you do. Just be sure you understand: stopping the pill will definitely not make the world a better place. But maybe it will be a truer place.”

He paused.

“Now, my third and last point. Don’t support the troops. Ooh, I can feel that shudder running right down your spine. So I’ll say it again. Do not support the troops. Don’t enlist. Dodge the draft if you have to. Stop the war. Stop pretending that killing people while following orders of a man you elected is noble. You want to protect your country? Protect it here. At home. Don’t help them make it worse. Even if you’re told those people hate you and want to attack you. Give them the benefit of a doubt. Remember the footage from earlier? Take a hint. Don’t believe everything the analysts say on TV. Question what you’re told, and if the answer doesn’t make sense or they call you un-American or your question is treated as though it doesn’t exist, ask it again, louder.”

“On that cheerful note I, Luke Whales, am done. Thank you for your time. Perhaps you’ll see me again, although it’s unlikely. My show is now officially over. Good day.”

He bowed and got up from the chair. No music followed. The cameras simply turned off.

No one clapped. I took it as a good sign, because they always used to clap when the shows ended. At the same time, the feeling of a couple dozen stares, averted as soon as you turned to look, was unsettling. It was as though questions “What just happened?” and “What now?” hung in the middle of the set like twin piñatas, and none of those present at the party wanted to take a bat to them. Even I, the host, the birthday boy, wasn’t overly eager to raise that bat.

Sure, I’d jumped in the seat eagerly enough, caught up in the excitement of successful rescue and forthcoming revenge, but the question of what to say had never truly entered my mind. I would make sure everybody understood I was alive, I’d known that. The rest of it, though, simply poured and kept pouring until it was done. And although I believed all I’d said to be true, I could not recall a time or place when those ideas could have been coherently formed. In short, I didn’t blame the crowd for feeling weird.

The atmosphere reminded me of my awakening in the helicopter. I couldn’t dwell on it, though, just like I couldn’t dwell on the soreness in my shoulder. There remained a matter of eluding the cops, who would have by then already surrounded the building.

Of course, escaping from the studio wasn’t the only problem left. There was also a small quandary of what to do after that for the rest of my life, but at least I still had a life. Thinking about what to do with it could wait.

“So what now?” Paul, who had returned with Jimbo in tow, asked in a hushed voice. I grinned and clapped his healthy shoulder. Good old Paul. You could count on him to swing the bat. Behind him Jimbo’s face was the color of his once-starched shirt.

I didn’t immediately answer, because the immediate answer “Now we have to get out somehow” wasn’t what Paul wanted to hear. He knew we needed to get out, thank you very much. His question was about how we were going to do it, and I presently had no idea.

But then my wandering gaze stumbled on Tiffany’s cherubic face, and one idea occurred to me. Hell, I thought, it worked once.

“Mr. Cornwell! Jim! Let me borrow your phone for a second, old sport!” Everyone jumped and stiffened at the sound of my voice. Jim pulled out his cell and hesitantly handed it over.

“Thanks,” I said. “It’ll be brief.” He nodded. I dialed 911.

It took a little while to get through the human robot operator, but finally there was a click and a vaguely familiar voice reverberated in my ear.

“This is Special Agent Brighton, FBI. What do we have, Mr. Whales?”

“How are you, Special Agent Brighton. What we have is a little over two dozen hostages held by an unknown number of gunmen on the seventy-seventh floor of the CBN building. What we need is to resolve this without anyone getting hurt.”

“That seems easy. Since you obviously had nothing to do with the act of terror at the Freedom Corp. facility, the only crime you are presently known to have committed is illegal broadcasting. Something that someone with your means should be able to if not shake off, then receive light sentence for. Now, taking hostages is a lot more serious. Frankly, I don’t understand the point. Surrender immediately and no one will get hurt.”

“I wish it were that easy, Special Agent Brighton.”

“It is.”

“I am not going to argue with you. Here are my terms. Hear them without interrupting, if you will. I will surrender, but not to the police or the FBI. Don’t ask me why. I have my reasons. I want a Secret Service helicopter on the roof of this building in thirty minutes. When they—”

“Secret Service? Why in the name of—”

“Shut up and listen, Brighton. When they arrive, I want a camera up there, which will broadcast them displaying proper identification to this studio here. When I confirm it, I will send the people down in elevators immediately, excluding only my friend James Cornwell. He will accompany us to the roof, where we will surrender him and ourselves to the Secret Service custody. Now, questions?”

“Why Secret Service?”

“I don’t trust the local authorities, Agent Brighton. Some strange things have been happening to me; let’s leave it at that for now. Secret Service protects the president. I think it’s adequate for them to protect me.”

“We can’t get them here in thirty minutes. Secret Service is stationed in D.C.”

“I’m sure there’s a safe house of some sort in Chicago. You have thirty minutes. My gunmen and I are tired, nervous and scared. I don’t know if we could keep ourselves under control for longer than that.”

“Fine. Let me talk to Brome.”

“Don’t waste your time, Agent. Find my president’s men.” I hung up and handed the phone back to Jimbo. He took it absently, staring at me.