Project Itoh - Genocidal Organ

We see what we want to see.

We believe what we want to believe.

What good was hard statistical evidence in the face of belief? The government, industry, the people—none were interested in looking at graphs, not when mere facts contradicted their core beliefs.

“Reality is such a pathetic and weak thing,” Lucius continued, shaking his head sadly. “There are so many horrific things in the world that go unreported. Do you know, for example, how artificial flesh is created? Genetically modified dolphins. Aquatic mammals engineered to be able to live in freshwater. They’re raised—or maybe ‘cultured’ is a better word, given the circumstances—in Lake Victoria, before being dissected alive so that their muscle can be put to industrial use. The rest of them becomes animal feed. Children on starvation wages work round the clock in giant sweatshop factories off the shores of Lake Victoria, forcing the red blubbery flesh into giant cans using biostaplers.”

“Live dolphin muscle …” I trailed off.

The Intruder Pods that we used to penetrate enemy lines. The short-range jets that hopped us from continent to continent. All covered in raw flesh. How many people knew that sex lotion was made out of seaweed?

“No one. No one knows. Just as no one will try and stop you from selling dyed lumpfish roe as caviar,” Lucius said.

“But how can that—”

“Anyone remotely interested in doing so can work all this out for themselves. Just use your AR contact lenses to track the provenance of whatever is in front of you. Where and when an object is made. The space and the time is there for all to see. We live in what the science fiction author Bruce Sterling might have called a spime society. People want to know whether their Budweiser is brewed under sanitary conditions and which ranch a burger can be traced back to. You can even find out which forest provided the trees for your house. The metahistory of everything in the universe is bare, raw, there for the taking. And yet no one is interested in anything other than their own little personal narratives. No one wants to know about the tragedy of the origins of artificial flesh, they just want to know that it will continue to provide the airplanes and machines that will prop up their comfortable lifestyle.”

At this point, Lucius’s warped smile surfaced again. “And you, Mr. Bishop. You know all too well about the massacres that happen all over the globe. How many of those is the world interested in? As you know all too well, only a fraction are ever reported. People are designed to see only what they want to see.”

He had a point. Outside my work, all I knew of the world came from clips on CNN. I lived in a Domino’s Pizza world. I lived in a world of fifteen-minute chunks of free movie previews.

“Basically, the issue we have is that the idea that submitting ourselves to permanent surveillance somehow makes us safer is one great lie. An unfair trade. The reason we choose to live anonymously is because we don’t want to live in a society that forces this trade upon us.”

Lucius stepped away from the abyss surrounding us. He sighed, then continued. “John noticed that the CIA were staking out Lucia’s apartment. He warned us of this fact—he’s a good customer. We figured that you might be using Lucia to get to us. You’d already roughed up one of us, after all.”

One of the men took out a mobile terminal and tapped the keypad.

The tips of my body were flooded with that searing pain again, and I yelled and collapsed.

“Stop it, please! You’re killing him! Please!” Lucia screamed.

Lucius glanced at the man who was frying me. The man was, of course, the youth that I had worked over in the alleyway. His face was still covered with bruises. He slowly put away the Mob in his back pocket.

“A Paingiver,” Lucius explained. “Nanomachines designed to deliver an unbearable shock to your nerve endings. I slipped some into your Budweiser earlier. I hope you don’t mind. A useful little present we received from John—military issue, apparently. The machines lodge inside your capillary vessels, which means that when they’re activated they cause incredible pain in your extremities—fingers, toes, the like.”

The pain had miraculously disappeared, although my body was still reeling from shock. Gasping for breath, I looked over at Lucia’s face. Her tears made her black eyeliner run all the way down her cheeks.

The face of a woman crying for a man who had betrayed her. Crushed by conflicting, overwhelming emotions.

“Unfortunately, Lucia brought you right into our club. That raised the stakes. Now, if it had just been a matter of my own personal liberty, well, that might have been one thing. I could have coped with being arrested. But there was the danger of having our entire library seized. If that happened, all our friends, colleagues, and customers, all our compatriots fighting for personal liberties in Europe and America—they’d all be outed. We had to preempt that at all costs. That was why I needed to stake out Lucia’s place.”

“So you’ve been watching me all this time?” Lucia asked.

“Forgive me. As I explained, it was for the greater good.”

“I thought you were the anonymous heroes who went underground to avoid the constant surveillance of government and industry. And yet you’re happy to put other people under surveillance yourselves?” Lucia asked.

“It’s a truly troubling dilemma,” Lucius replied.

I thought of Orwell’s Animal Farm . Where all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. And those who were already free watched over others so that all could be “equally” free.

“I seem to remember Stalin and Pol Pot also being ‘troubled’ by similar dilemmas,” I said, sneeering, and immediately received another payload of pain for my efforts.

“Tuvi, could you hold off for a moment, please?” Lucius calmly asked the youth. Luckily for me, the kid complied.

“You’ll have to forgive Tuvi—it seems you roughed him up good and proper, so you’ll have to think of this as your just deserts,” Lucius said.

“Ha, so this is Crime and Punishment now, is it? Well, I wonder when you’re going to get your punishment for what you’ve done in the name of freedom.”

“Don’t worry about us. And besides, people in glass houses … you were observing Lucia just as much as we were, no?”

“What?” Lucia looked at me, stunned.

I knew it. I had always known it. Sooner or later we would end up here. It had been inevitable from the start. Really, why had I ever expected anything else?

Yes, I know all about you, Ms. Lucia Sukrova.

I know that you were mistress to a married man.

I know the restaurants where you and John Paul dined together.

I know at which branches of Starbucks you drank your morning cappuccinos.

I know how many condoms John Paul bought.

I wanted to scream out loud. For the youth to press the button on his Mob and never let go. For my fingers and toes and all my body to explode and blast my consciousness into tiny fragments. I wanted and deserved any and all pain that the world could throw at me.

“You see, Lucia,” Lucius said, “this man has been watching you in order to try and capture John Paul. He’s an American secret agent. A somewhat cultured American agent, perhaps, but a secret agent nonetheless. Cultured enough to capture your heart, at least.”

I looked at the young man, Tuvi. Press the button, I willed. Make me squirm in agony. Show me in my wretched agony to Lucia. But Tuvi saw through me. He looked down on me. I was a deer in the headlights, not worthy of another thought.

Hell is here. Inside your mind. Job done. No need for any more pain.