Justin Allen

Victor unplugged his headset and placed it, very carefully, into a plasticene baggy. For the next two hours he’d be out of contact - free from Father’s near-constant stream of instructions and updates. It was a rare treat. One-hundred and twenty-nine scheduled minutes during which his only information would come via his eyes and ears. If he’d been born female, he’d also be able to smell minute variations in his environment. But Victor was male. His nose was ordinary at best.

The cab pulled up to the Eurorocket terminal and Victor stepped out. He checked his pockets one last time, making sure all removable metal was deposited safely in his briefcase, then proceeded to the check-in counter. After being fingerprinted and retinal scanned, he received a boarding pass, placed his bags on the conveyer to security central, and strolled down the long hall to the main terminal. Shops lined the walls to either side. It wasn’t, but Duty Free was already open and doing brisk business. Victor looked at the oversized chocolate bars and cigarillos. Neither interested him. A shopkeeper offered him samples of four different brands of scotch, but Victor declined them all. Alcohol had little effect on him. Once, when he was eight, he’d snuck into Father’s liquor cabinet with his brother Charlie. They wanted to know what it meant to have a ‘buzz,’ and so polished off three bottles of Irish Whiskey and a magnum of champagne. Both boys wet the bed that night but otherwise felt nothing. It was the same for his whole family. Juliet once drank a bottle of rubbing alcohol. She threw up three times and wet her pants. There were no positive effects.

Next to Duty Free was a general drug. Victor watched as a pair of teenage girls sniffed underarm deodorants – no doubt preparing for an upcoming personal security check. The makeup aisle was doing brisk business as well. One whole register was devoted exclusively to the sale of non-permanent appearance enhancements. Over the counter stress reducers were nearly as popular, though chemists had been saying for years that they were wholly ineffective.

Victor hadn’t eaten for better than eleven hours, so he stopped at a coffee shop. He ordered a soy patty and a glass of root beer. The soda wasn’t as sweet as he liked, but he drank it anyway. Since the end of the war, sugar and corn subsidies had been all but eliminated. As a result, sweets had more than tripled in price even as they became increasingly bitter. Soda remained popular because it was still cheaper than either coffee or tea. Relations with the tropics, and the workers unions controlling those countries, had become decidedly more problematic in recent years. Bananas were a treat for the wealthy. Pineapple was virtually unknown.

Victor sat at the counter, on the stool nearest the door. He’d just finished his patty when an older couple sat down beside him. Americans, he guessed. The man was in his late forties - his wife just a year or two behind. Both were overweight, but not obese. Victor further surmised that the man had once served in the military. His haircut was early-millennium marine. The woman wore a helmet of tight curls.

“Think it’ll be as bad as last week?” she asked her husband.

“Worse,” he grumped. His wife shuddered.

“First time in New York?” Victor asked them.

“We’re on vacation. What you people call ‘holiday’.”

“Having a good time?”

“All but the trip coming here,” the wife said. “We aren’t used to so much security. It’s dehumanizing.”

Victor wondered if that were true. Growing up, he’d never shared a room with any fewer than three siblings. Often they’d shared beds. During survival training, his whole family slept together beneath piles of limbs and grass. Personal space. Body privacy. Individual freedom. He understood those ideas, but had never known them personally. “Where are you from?” he asked.

“America,” the man said. “Kansas City.”

“That’s where I’m going.”

“You must be on our rocket,” the wife said. “What a small world.”

“Chiefs have a good team this year,” her husband observed. “Coming to see a game?”

Victor nodded. “I’m a Broncos fan. They’re playing this weekend.” He’d studied American football in preparation for deployment. After watching no fewer than forty hours of plays, and reading extensively about player psychology and football history, Victor had actually come to like the Raiders best. But not for their skill. Football seemed to him a bizarrely simple game. He liked the picture of the pirate on their helmets.

“Strycharz will throw on the Broncos’ corners all day,” the American said.

“We’ll see.”

The woman got up. “I need to use the restroom,” she whispered. “If a waitress comes, order me a carob cookie and a glass of water. Tap.” She smiled at Victor as she slid past him. He couldn’t tell if she wanted to see him naked or tousle his hair like a little boy. Probably some of both.

As soon as she was out of hearing, her husband leaned toward Victor. “I’ve never seen so many beautiful women,” he whispered conspiratorially. “Frankly, I’m a bit concerned about the security check.”

“You’ll do fine,” Victor assured him. “No one will pay any attention.”

“My wife will.”

“Do you live near the stadium?” Victor was being sent to investigate one of the Chiefs’ star players, a running back calling himself Arnell Brown. He was a cinch to win rookie of the year. His numbers were impressive - 5.95 yards per attempt and catching an average of six passes per game. Maybe a bit too impressive. Victor’s job was to determine whether Brown was an AWOL soldier, and if so, to decommission him. It was the job Victor was trained for. It was the task he was designed to do.

“We live in Liberty,” the man said. “Know where that is?”

“Kansas side?” Victor knew exactly where Liberty was. He probably knew more about Kansas City, both geography and history, than most residents.

“We’re on the north-eastern edge. Twenty minutes from the new stadium, if you take the federal highway.”

Victor grinned. Americans were known the whole world over for determining distances based on drive-time. In New York, you might say it was ten blocks to the bank, or give the distance by the number of subway stops. In America, still clinging desperately to its hybrid combustion engines and the remains of a once-proud auto industry, drive-time was everything. “Go to many games?” he asked.

The man shrugged. “A few. It’s affordable, as entertainment goes. In my father’s day, an ordinary man couldn’t. Tickets were massively overpriced. But since the war…”

“I can’t wait to see Arnell Brown. Have you watched him?”

“Fastest kid I ever saw. Strong too.” The man held out his arm. “Biceps like hams. I’m not kidding.” Victor had seen pictures. According to Father, certain Echo boys had been gene-spliced with gorillas. They were strong, but tended toward muscle-bound. “He fumbles too much, but coach thinks he’ll get over that.”

“Is he ever hurt?” Victor asked.

The man shook his head. “But he’s only played fourteen games.”

“That’s right.” With steroids and reconstructive surgery, anyone could have arms like the business end of a cannon. Victor would have to investigate carefully. But he had one last question. “What about his woman?”

“His girlfriend you mean?” Americans went to enormous lengths to avoid objectifying humans. In Boston and New York, women commonly referred to the man they were with as ‘meat.’ Men referred to women as ‘bitches,’ sometimes ‘slots.’ Dehumanization wasn’t much thought about. In America, such terms would be tantamount to calling someone a whore or slave. “I think he’s been seeing one of the local beauty queens,” the American continued. “Miss Barbecue or Miss Corn Missouri. I can’t remember which.” What a peculiar place America was. What strange people.

The man’s wife had just returned from the toilet. She smiled at Victor as she trundled past. “Oh dear, what did you do to your neck?” she asked.

Victor felt where she was looking. It was his jack. Normally, his headset would be plugged into that hole, where it resembled an ordinary pimple. Now it was just an open socket. “Stung by a hornet,” Victor muttered, fingering his hair down over the hole.

“Did you put mud on it?”

The idea was enough to make Victor wince. He imagined a hideous screaming in the middle of his brain, like feedback from an amplifier, only inside his skull. “Excuse me,” he said. “I need to use the toilet before we take off.”

“Hope we see you on the rocket,” the woman called after him. “Or in security.”

The toilet was little more than a long hall, with stalls on one side and sinks on the other. Toward the back was a shower room, designed primarily for long-haul multi-stop passengers. There was no line, but someone must have been using the facility because the window at the center of the door was fogged by steam. Victor stood in line for the stalls. The teenagers he’d seen in the druggist were directly ahead of him.

“Should we shower?” one of the girls asked.

“It’d just wash off the perfume,” her friend replied. Victor sniffed, but could smell nothing over the bleach used to clean the floor. “Besides, they’ll be calling us for security checks in a few minutes.”

Victor had just emerged from the stall when a voice boomed over the loudspeaker, announcing the opening of security for Eurorocket 1796 to Kansas City. He glanced in the mirror, making sure his hair covered the headset jack behind his ear, then hurried to gate nineteen. A line was already forming.

He waited patiently as the people ahead of him filed through the gate. A sign next to the door read: Caution! Eurorocket, in conjunction with the Chinese Aeronautic Administration and the Continental Bureau of Investigations, has determined that airport security in the States of America does not comply with international standards.

Victor handed his boarding pass to the agent on duty and started down the security corridor. Travelers ahead of him were preparing for final checks. Victor took off his tie and stuck it in his jacket pocket, along with the currency he’d brought for purchases in the airport.

“All natural fibers,” the security officer manning the first table called, handing Victor an oblong plasticene bin. “Cotton, wool and linen. Silk and paper. Leather on the bottom.”

Victor slipped off his loafers and set them in the bottom of the bin. As he unbuttoned his pants, the woman ahead of him motioned to the waiting attendant. Her bin had a pair of leather shoes in it. “That’s all,” she said.

“Number fourteen,” the attendant replied. “Remember your number.” Then he slid her bin into the appropriate slot in a wheeled cart.

“Here’s mine,” Victor said.

His suit, both jacket and slacks, was folded atop his shoes. The attendant pressed them down, making sure the bin would fit into the cart. “Number fifteen. Remember your number.”

The line continued down the corridor.

At the next table, security officers were collecting man-made fibers. Victor slipped off his sox and underwear and set them in the bin he was given. Again the attendant told him his number was fifteen, and implored him to remember it.

The woman ahead of him slipped her dress off over her head before she even reached the third table, carefully folding and setting it in the bin for blended cloth. Victor did likewise, folding his shirt carefully so that it would take fewer wrinkles.

At this point, the security check became both slower and more invasive. Passengers had to wait as each person stepped into a scanning chamber and held out his or her arms. A full body scan was performed, beginning at the feet and rising until it reached the top of the head. Most took only a minute or two. A few lasted much longer.

Over the last four decades, security administrations had found it ever more difficult to protect planes and rockets. When he was a boy, Victor remembered going through security removing only his jacket and shoes. That was before the bombings at Mecca. Subsequent investigations by the CBI demonstrated that Christian terrorists had devised methods for turning high explosives into fibers resembling, in nearly every detail, ordinary cloth. Use of nanotechnology had enabled the same terrorists to create advanced circuitry so small that it was detectable only by electron microscope. This was to say nothing of fanatics swallowing explosives, or inserting them into the anus or vagina. One particularly inventive terrorist had replaced the silicone in her breast implants with liquid explosive. It was hideously effective.

The sensor was taking its time going over the body of an elderly man. Victor guessed that he’d had replacement surgery and the machine was pausing to look more closely at a knee or hip.

The woman ahead of him glanced over her shoulder. “They say the usual scan takes forty-five to seventy seconds, but I always get in behind the geezer.” She raised her eyebrows meaningfully.

Victor waited patiently for his turn. Standing naked in public was of little concern to him. His whole family, all twenty-five kids, had used the shower rooms simultaneously for as long as he could remember. Even ordinary children in the European Protectorate were made to use open showers after co-ed physical-education classes. The idea was to desensitize nudity. It must have worked. Citizens went through security checks like this twice a week on average. There was seldom an incident, and most of those were caused by visitors from America, where fully nude checks were almost unknown. Creating a scene did little good, of course. Everyone went through the machine, happy or no. Men were usually the more uncomfortable, fearing uncontrolled sexual responses. Victor was immune to such happenings. Both his training and his physiology guarded against it. Once, when they were thirteen, his sister Foxtrot attempted to incite him against his will. She used every technique she’d learned in sex training – some of them almost unspeakably lewd - and it might have worked if Victor hadn’t been tipped off to her intentions. A few of the other boys weren’t so lucky. Victor teased Charlie for a month after Juliet, Sierra and Fox incited him during a shower. All of the children in their family engaged in sex play - it was encouraged by Father - but at no time were they to lose control. Sex was a tool. A weapon. It might also be relaxing and pleasurable, but never mind-numbing. If a soldier could be incited to passion, he could also be controlled, and possibly turned from his duty. It had happened throughout history. Samson and Delilah. Antony and Cleopatra. Clinton and Lewinsky. Modern soldiers were taught to inspire debilitating passion from members of both sexes, but never to succumb themselves.

The woman ahead of him stepped into the chamber and held her arms out at her sides. Sensors corkscrewed up the clear plasticene walls, pausing only once, at the woman’s abdomen. Maybe she was pregnant, Victor mused.

When it was his turn, Victor calmly stretched out both arms. For him, these checks lasted, on average, about ninety-five seconds. By all rights, he ought to have been left standing there for upwards of a quarter-hour. The scanner should stop at his surgically enhanced knees, the hip he’d broken during combat ops in Iran, and his groin. When it reached his arms, it should have all but ground to a halt. Victor’s wrist bones had been removed and replaced with titanium flexi-joints. His knuckles were titanium as well. In old movies, soldiers described their hands as deadly weapons. In Victor’s case, that was true. But the scanners only paused once as they twisted past him - when they reached his left ankle. Embedded in that joint was a micro emitter. It told the scanner that this body belonged to the European Military, scanning prohibited. A signal was also sent to Father, of course. The only way for a soldier to get off the grid, as the old-timers called it, was to remove the chip from his ankle or cut off his leg. Otherwise, satellites tracked his every movement. Victor found it comforting to know that Father was always with him.

In the room beyond the scanner, naked passengers milled uncomfortably. A few talked, but most stayed to themselves. The American tourists stood in one corner. The man held his hands in front of his crotch. The woman crossed her arms in front of her breasts. Both studied the floor. Victor waved, but only the woman waved back.

They waited the better part of a half-hour before the carts finally started showing up, the clothes bins inside now fully scanned.

“Numbers one and two,” the security attendant called. A boy and his mother went to collect their belongings. “Three, four and five.”

Victor had to wait for the second set of carts before his number came up. The woman he’d stood behind in line was called up with him. As they collected their belongings, she glanced over at Victor, just stepping into his underwear, and grinned. She slipped her frock on over her head. “Men should start wearing these,” she said, stepping into her shoes. “You’d be done by now.”

“No kidding,” Victor muttered.

The last of the carts had only just arrived when security opened the elevator doors and called for all dressed passengers. Victor, neck-tie still in his pocket, stepped forward.

They descended to the docking level, disembarked and filed to the nearest hatch. The Eurorocket symbol, a comet blasting past a crescent moon, was emblazoned over the airlock.

The elevators made two more trips before the rocket was fully loaded. It held twenty-nine passengers and one air-marshal. Seats were set up in three rows, ten to a row, forming a perfect circle around the center of the rocket. A security attendant sealed the hatch.

“Good morning, and welcome to Eurorocket launch 1796, with 11:30 service to Kansas City. I’m your Captain, Phinneas Simmons. For those of you who’ve never flown with us, an information card has been tucked into the pocket beneath your seat, explaining the use of the oxygen mask and shoulder restraints. If anyone feels that they’re likely to experience g-force related illness, please notify the sky-marshal. She’ll gladly switch on your mask’s vomit suction.” A few hands raised and the marshal calmly thumbed the appropriate buttons on her arm console. The sound of a low power vacuum echoed through the cabin.

No sooner had the captain finished talking than the shoulder restraints descended over the passengers, squeezing them into their seats. Shoulder-restraint was a bit of a misnomer. A solid harness actually fit over both the shoulders and chest, and locked into a slot between the passenger’s legs. Next came the masks. Victor took his from the hook on his shoulder harness and fitted it over his nose, mouth and eyes. Cool air blasted at him. Even if he should pass out, which was more than possible, air would be forced into his mouth and nose, filling his lungs.

The next sensation was one of heaviness, as the cylinder they were in began to spin, and then dropped onto its side.

“We’re being moved into the barrel,” the captain announced. “Prepare for liftoff.”

The rocket began to shake. A moment later, Victor’s head snapped down and his arms were pinned in his lap. He lost consciousness momentarily as the rocket blasted out of one of the three LaGuardia cannons.

When he woke, the captain was back on the intercom.

“…now sailing over St. Louis. Our speed has bled off sufficiently to allow use of wings, so we’ll slide those out now.”

Victor felt a jolt as the rocket stopped spinning. Unfortunately, his seat was on the top of the cylinder, so he was left hanging face down for the remainder of the trip. It could be worse. The woman he’d spoken to in security sat directly across from him. Victor saw that she had vomited into her mask. He wondered why she hadn’t asked for suction. Judging by the way she’d talked, rocket flight was nothing knew to her. Maybe she really was pregnant, Victor thought, but didn’t know it yet.

“Five more minutes and we’ll glide to a stop at Kansas City International, where the local time is 10:45,” the captain said. “For those with seats up top, you have our sympathy. Soon as we can, we’ll get the ground crew to lift us upright. ‘Til then, stay as calm as possible and take deep breaths. Thank you for flying Eurorocket. We know you have other choices in ballistic travel, but we hope you’ll allow us to serve you again in the near future. Sky-marshal, prepare for landing.”

After clearing customs, Victor went to the rental car counters. They offered him a late model Ford or old Chevrolet. Victor took the Chevy. It wouldn’t be as reliable, and had very little pick-up, but it was the more common model on the roads. Until he made contact with Arnell Brown, his orders were to blend with the surrounding population.

He drove to a motel in Independence, birthplace of Harry Truman, and checked in. The manager met him with a smile. “Welcome to Missouri,” he said, pronouncing it Mizzoura. “In town for the game?”

Victor nodded. “Broncos fan.” He wasn’t used to so much pleasantness from a stranger. Europeans were more likely to spit than shake hands.

“Where are you from?”

“Boise, Idaho.”

“Gem state.”

“That’s right.”

“Visited when I was a kid. You ski?”

“Some.” Just then, Victor noticed a clock on the wall. If it was accurate, one-hundred and twenty-six minutes had passed since he arrived at the Eurorocket terminal in New York. “Listen, can I have my key? I’m anxious to get settled.”

“Sure.” The motel manager slid an electronic guest register across the counter and pointed to the spot where Victor was to sign. “My name’s Gatliff. If you should need anything, just holler. My wife and I are here pretty much all the time. Say hello to our new guest, honey.”

“Hello out there,” a woman’s voice came through the office door.

Victor jotted down his name and slid the register back.

Jason studied the signature. “Victor. What’s your last name?”

“Bravo.”

Victor pulled his car around to the door marked 17. The room was simple, but clean. It had close access to the highway, plenty of light, and a rear door leading to a swimming pool behind the motel. There was a Bible in one of the dresser drawers.

He set his bags on the foot of the bed and began to unpack. The first thing he took out was his headset. Victor was past due now, and the mere sight of it made him hungry for contact. He took it out of its baggy and spat on the electrodes. They connected better if they were just a little bit wet.

Victor was about to plug the headset in when he noticed something moving through the window. Two little girls splashed their way to the shallow end of the pool. They wore American bathing costumes – leaving all and nothing to the imagination – and were holding hands.

The older girl whispered something in her sister’s ear. It must have been a touch off-color because both girls looked around to see who else heard. Then, they did one of the strangest things Victor had ever seen. They closed their eyes, leaned together and touched tongues. It wasn’t a kiss. Victor would have understood that. They just pressed their tongues together, held them there a moment, and then giggled maniacally.

They were about to do it again when a man - probably their father - grabbed the younger girl by the arm and yanked her from the pool. Both girls cried as the man berated them, gesticulating wildly. Victor had no idea what the man was saying, but he got the meaning loud and clear. Sister weren’t to be touching tongues.

For a moment, Victor considered marching out to that pool, grabbing the man by the neck and smashing him against the closest wall. But he didn’t. Instead, he looked down at his headset, still cupped in his palm, glistening with his spittle. The hunger was enormous now - growing worse with every passing moment - an ache at the very center of his being.

Victor’s fingers trembled as he sunk the headset into his jack, feeling the chips in his brain recalibrate. Moments later he heard the familiar static, and felt himself uplink. Instantly he was full of voices, every one of them familiar. Delta was in Tokyo, attempting to seduce the Emperor of Japan. Zulu was in the Philippines, his finger on the trigger of a fifty-caliber sniper rifle. Charlie’s body was being loaded into an intercontinental ballistic rocket bound for The Hague. Sierra was missing, presumed destroyed.

“Foxtrot Alpha Tango Romeo,” Victor thought, and the minds of his brothers and sisters dimmed to a low hum.

“Go ahead Victor.” He recognized this voice as well. It was the sound he listened for above all others, the voice of his own thoughts.

“Father,” he sighed. “It’s good to be back.”

Copyright: Justin Allen