Rhys-Michael Silverlocke
6400 Words
The Legacy of Amos Trask

It's six in the morning. I get up and shower. I wake my tap,
and listen to his groggy complaints. He goes to get dressed. I
turn on the dispenser and select the morning meal. My tap will
bring it in when he's finished cleaning up.
Like every morning I head into the screen-room. It's quiet
outside; we're sealed and sound-proofed in this building. The
external monitors pipe in the noises in the immediate environs
around this building-- when there are any-- which is nearly
never.
I sit at my chair in front of the main board and with a flick
of some switches all the monitors spring to life. I miss the
birds. Birds in the morning-- such a simple and forgettable
distraction-- how I long for such simplicities.
I hear my tap come in. He holds my tray with one hand, and has
his nose buried in his own tray sucking cereal. I remind myself
he is only eight years old and that manners are not what I have
been selected to teach here. I take the tray without a word and
he sits down at his own chair.
Now that he has been here for a few months he is getting the
routine down fairly well. I shunt the live monitors to his side
of the station and put on the tapes which have been recording
since shift ended at midnight last night. One at a time I run
them back at high speed to acquaint myself with anything which
might have occurred while I slept.
My tap interrupts my scan of the hospital zone to point out
something he finds interesting. But I have seen young couples
knotting and jangering in the early morning hours before and
chide his adolescence and unprofessional approach. I remind him
there are over four hundred other monitors relaying the collected
information of many thousands of cameras which he could be
watching to more useful purpose.
Sullen, he returns to scanning the grid one screen at a time.
The light as they flick between the main wall and his monitor is
a distraction in the corner of my eye as I continue to review the
tapes of the last eve.
I am startled by something I see. I run it again. My tap
hasn't noticed. He is doing his job properly and keeping tabs on
the live action I might miss during these review sessions each
morning. So I save the clip. I complete the review. Then I hit
some switches.
My tap wants to know why his screens just went dead, and why we
are back in "record mode" when both of us are sitting right here.
He says, "I thought you wanted me to watch!"
I explain that there is something he needs to see, something
which he has not seen before. He looks interested. I tell him
that someone has died. I tell him how it happens, and who it was
who died. In youthful fashion he replies, "Good!" A sentiment
which I can understand, but one which I cannot share or emulate.
I tell him to maintain his detachment and not to take pleasure
in such events or he will fail in his training here. His head
sinks. Before his morale can drop any lower I ask him if he can
contain himself long enough to watch the events on the clip.
Instantly he becomes as I have taught him to be: watchful,
determined, removed and analytical. It seems an odd expression
and carriage on one so young, but then it is necessary that he
cultivate these things if he is to succeed me here.
Without the taps we would all of us be lost.
I run the clip. He watches, fascinated. It does not surprise
me that he desires to see it again. I had the same impulse
myself. So we watch it together.
Finally he returns to his seat and I return the live monitors
to his station. I review the small segment of time which has
elapsed at high-speed and when I am done I hit the split. We are
up and live again. The City-- here in what was once Virginia--
is again in view. I have half the screens, and my tap has the
rest.
He asks me, "What are we going to do about this?"
I asks him what he thinks I intend to do.
"Nothing, as usual."
I nod.
"But why?"
Rarely do I answer this question. I prefer he use his own mind
to work out my reasoning. But in this case I am disposed to tell
him.
I explain that this event will be a "Wake-up call" to those we
watch and protect. I explain that it is necessary and long
overdue. I also add with a small laugh that it will make a good
test for The Police. He smiles at me and nods.
We return to our work.
In four hours, motion triggers the micro-camera in front of the
house of the dead man. It is The Grocer, a nosy little old man
with a sharp mind and an irritating habit of involving himself in
other people's business. I do not know why he has called to see
the dead man. If I played back the morning's audio on The Grocer
I could discover it for myself.
But there is no need. Someone had to find the body and it
matters little who.
The camera follows The Grocer to the front door. The handle is
unlocked-- as nearly all doors are in The City these days, save
for ours here of course. He steps inside. At once he appears to
notice something is amiss.
Audio comes on abruptly and I notice my tap has shifted the
interior of the house to the main monitor and put his monitors
back into "record mode". I look over at him, consider a moment,
and do the same. In our sleepy little watch, this will surely be
the biggest event of this or any other recent day. It merits
closer scrutiny.
"Hello? Amos??? It's Aaron Shea... are you up there?"
We both watch him ascend the stairs. We see a look register on
the old wrinkled face of The Grocer, as if he smells something
foul or detects it with some other sense.
He walks into the room where the body sits in a chair, the
second-floor study. The body sits in a leather chair behind a
large oak desk and faces the window as if looking out into the
nearby trees on the property for signs of life. I wonder if the
dead man missed the birds too.
There is blood all over the chair and the floor around it.
Below the dangling hand of the corpse, laying in the pooled
blood on the floor is a small-caliber pistol with nacre grip.
The Grocer seems surprisingly dispassionate and he says aloud
to the corpse, "Well, maybe you were right after all, then."
He goes to the phone on the nightstand and dials The Police.
"Tom? It's Aaron. I'm over at Amos Trask's place. Better come
up here; it looks like he might have been murdered."
Before I can even react my tap has toggled the split-screen on
the main viewer and the office of The Police comes up next to the
other image. I smile.
When he speaks the audio triggers, "Shit. I'll be right there.
You haven't told anyone else, have you?"
On the other side of the screen the older man replies, "Are you
nuts? What do you think??? Just grab your kit and get over here
before someone else comes looking. Like The Newspaper..."
"Damn. He's already been in here this morning looking for
something to sensationalize. Don't let anyone else disturb the
scene. Wait for me; I'll be there in ten minutes."
It is actually seventeen minutes by our clock. We watch The
Police pack up some investigative articles and go to his car.
Each corner he turns activates the next camera in line and we
follow his progress through the deserted streets. Many people
are still in bed, the rest are at their assignments with their
taps beside them.
It never bothers me that I have only one tap assigned to me.
More would be overburdensome. Unlike The Teacher or The Farmer
or The Technician, we will not have need of an entire class of
people in my profession. Too many minds like mine working on the
same problems would soon lead to chaos. Besides, to tell the
absolute truth I have never cared much for either children or
apprentices.
The Police works his way quietly down the back streets to the
house of the dead man. He does not run his siren. He is met by
The Grocer at the front door and the split-screen which has
tracked both the men's activities consolidates into the single
image of the two men entering the house.
"So The Grouse is dead."
"That was never his assignment," The Grocer says, "but it's
appropriate certainly. It's pretty bad up there."
"Let's go take a look." The two men head upstairs together. I
shunt the image back to a subordinate monitor and begin the
review of the last half-hour we have missed all over The City.
Before he can complain I tell my tap that it will be several
hours of tedious observation in the dead man's room, and that all
their deductions will point in the wrong direction in any case.
He can watch it out of the corner of his eye-- along with the
rest of his screens-- as I will, and if it gets interesting again
we can return to the progress of the case.
We observe The City. In front of a cheery house on Third
Street, The Newspaper is talking with one of the housewives
about the strange weather patterns lately. The Chef is preparing
to open his restaurant for lunch in another few hours; his eight
taps circle around the immense kitchen performing errands like
ants at a picnic.
Of course the ants and roaches are still with us. The dogs and
cats went first, and the birds afterwards with most of humanity,
but nothing kills bugs. The six-legged majority on this planet
will survive us all. I bet they don't miss the birds in the
morning.
Across from The Post Office a car skids abruptly to avoid a
small monkey running loose. The driver seems shaken but is
uninjured. She swears aloud and complains that the leash-law is
not being obeyed. No one is around to hear her and the monkey
has already disappeared towards a row of houses.
All over The City people are rising, shining, going about their
work. And all over The City our cameras capture every move and
every word. Hours pass. I set up the recorders and take my tap
into the cafeteria and select lunch from the dispenser.
When we return, I scan the review and find that The Newspaper
has gotten around to checking the absences which have been called
into his office. With only two hundred and fifty of us left, any
single absence is important and noteworthy. Plus, there is
always a concern about health-issues; if someone has gotten sick
it is in everyone's interest to know it.
Someone noticed that the dead man was not in the park as
always, up on his soap-box preaching the evils of complacency.
My tap and I are somewhat amazed and amused that anyone even
missed him that morning; The Newspaper seems intrigued by the
report. He grabs his notepad and his satchel and heads out of
his office.
In the midst of the other action going on all over The City, we
see The Newspaper pull up to that familiar house. He notices
right away that The Police is here. He tries to gain entry, but
we see The Grocer block his way. I switch the scene to main and
turn up the audio.
"I have been deputized. I cannot allow you in here."
The Newspaper tells him, "Freedom of the Press is still in
working order, even if most other things have fallen. You have
no right to stop me. What has happened here?"
Just then, The Police comes down from upstairs. "Stop
pestering Aaron. He doesn't know anything. He's just here to
help me keep people out. I'm going to give you some of the
details right now, Joe. But I can't tell you everything."
The Newspaper opens his pad and takes out a pen from behind his
ear, "What can you tell me?"
"Okay, here it is. Amos Trask is dead. He was shot once in
the head at close range with what looks like a forty-four caliber
revolver..."
"Murder? Suicide??? I doubt the old bastard would be helpful
enough to put himself out of the way. What happened?"
The Police sighs heavily. "At this moment I don't know. Aaron
came by to see about a special order; Amos had him send The Scout
to New Orleans for some items. Amos didn't come pick them up
this morning.
"The body is upstairs, in the study. We found a gun on the
floor. He's been dead about eight hours."
"And the gun is a forty-four, right? So it was a suicide???"
The Police takes a moment and then responds cautiously, "The
gun we found is a twenty-two. It has been fired only once, and
from the powder marks on his hand I would say it was fired by
Trask himself."
The Newspaper digests this. "Then it was murder," he
concludes.
The Grocer interrupts, "We don't actually know that yet."
"What else could it be? No trace of the forty-four, Tom?"
"We can't find it," The Police admits.
"Then Trask was right. We were fools to think all the worst
remnants of humanity had died out. They are clearly still among
us. We should have listened..." The Newspaper tells him, putting
away his notepad.
Other action in The City continues along. We watch and wait
and track all the important activities. The Pusher is in his
fields today killing off the male marijuana plants; those will go
to The Designer and be spun into fibers to be used for hemp
garments and other necessities. The females plants will be
allowed to interbreed and create "sensimillia" marijuana, which
is much more potent than any other kind. The purposes for this
material are less wide-ranging, but just as important.
There is a certain malaise which settles over people these
days, what with so many old friends absent, and The Pusher is
occasionally as vital as The Doctor around here. The Shrink died
during the first winter after the fall of humanity, before we had
electricity up and running in The City. But we make do without
his services as best we can.
The Police spends his afternoon and well into the evening
talking to his taps and trying to use the abandoned devices in
the old criminalist's lab to glean additional information.
He tells his taps, "Right now it looks like this. Amos Trask
was in his study sometime after three in the morning. He hears a
noise, goes for his gun. He is facing the window so it is
possible the sound came from outside. There is a mark where a
ladder has been situated and taken away below the window of that
study-- since there hasn't been any rain lately, the impression
could be weeks old.
"Perhaps someone climbed up and tried to take him by surprise
in the middle of the night. Amos turns around and fires. Either
at the same moment or just afterwards, a single shot is fired at
close range into his brain-- probably by this second hypothetical
person on the ladder."
One of the taps asks, "I thought you said he was shot at close
range. How did the other person get close enough to do that
without Amos firing again?"
The Police smiles broadly, "Well, at least one of you is
thinking today! Yes, that bugs the shit out of me too. Let's
get to work on it..."
They stage the possible scene well into the night. My interest
is clinical only. I know what happened and I know where they
took their collective wrong turn here. I wait to see if anyone
will be able to put it all together for themselves.
My tap watches intently the progress of the case from a number
of quarters. He only scans most of his monitors and focuses his
main attention on The Police, The Newspaper, and The Grocer.
When midnight comes I put him to bed and tell him I am going to
do the same. But when he is asleep I take a stim-tab and then
disconnect the recorders. I settle in and watch The City until
the sun comes up on the perimeter monitors.
Nothing new during the night, but I could not have slept in any
case. And I did see a few signs of the awakening among those who
knew of the death.
I wake my tap precisely on time and don't bother with
breakfast. When he comes in later he brings a tray for me which
I have him set aside since I am not hungry in the least.
In a few hours, people all over The City have risen and read
their copy of The Paper. Conversations begin like wildfire. I
allow my tap to select anything he cares to view for most of the
morning. Over lunch I asked him to discuss what he has
discovered.
"Interesting day, today..." he begins.
I disdain my tray and pop another stim-tab, telling my tap that
he should never take stims and attempting to relate all the
dangers involved in denying the body proper nutrition-- while all
the time knowing the true lesson he was learning from my actions.
I tell him to continue his analysis.
"It's like getting a look at the disease which wiped out the
world. It spreads slowly, from one person to another like it's
contagious.
"I have been watching people all day doing things they never
do. All over, folks are suddenly locking their doors. I have
seen about fifty people checking their firearms or loading them.
The Newspaper is actually carrying a gun in his pocket right now.
"It's got to be like watching The Fall all over again."
I nod. I ask him what he thinks about it.
"Amos would have loved this..."
I tell him that an anticipation of these results was probably
the reason Amos was shot in the first place. He seems startled
at first but then agrees with me quickly that I had hit upon the
correct answer.
He wants to know how I had come to it. I tell him that if he
had taken the time to think a little harder he would have seen it
for himself. He takes another moment and then agrees to that as
well.
"Think The Police will figure it out?" he asks me.
I reply that if I were a betting man, then my money would be on
the man who found the body.
"The Grocer?" he asks dubiously.
I tell my tap to watch the man a while, that he is more than he
appears at first glance.
The events of the day bleed into the events of the night and
most of The City is now in an uproar. The first death in ten
years which was not by natural causes is bound to create a stir,
but the added dimension of deliberate murder has worked many
people into a frenzy.
I watch through the night, kept awake by stim-tabs. The next
morning, before I can even awaken him, my tap comes in with a
glass of my favorite brandy on a tray and a sleeper. He doesn't
say anything; he seems afraid to voice his concerns. But I know
he is quite correct.
I swallow the sleeper with a healthy mouthful of the brandy and
tell him I am going to get some rest. I add that he damned well
better wake me if anything comes up. He promises to and I am
confident I can rely upon his judgement. He proved apt enough at
diagonosing my needs accurately.
Occasionally I am amazed at how adult and how concise and
insightful my tap manages to be despite his youth. I can feel
the weakness sublimating my will as I head to my bed and sleep.
It is nearly full darkness when my tap awakens me with coffee
and croissant. I eat the flaky pastry gratefully and swill
coffee to wake myself. He says there is a "Town Meeting" to
discuss events tonight and that the people would soon be
arriving. I let him know he was quite correct to wake me.
Neglecting to shower a second straight day I proceed into the
screen-room and prepare to do a review. My tap may have watched
today, but that does not satisfy my innate curiosity about
certain events. He looks over my shoulder as I did the review,
but does not seem wounded by my checking up on him. I have
managed to drum it into his mind finally that often another
perspective on a problem can be helpful-- just not too many
perspectives all at once, please.
He says, "I think you were right. The Grocer has put it
together."
As I get to the relevant portion of the tape, I notice from the
time signature that this clip is only half an hour old. I watch
the old man send one of his taps up a tree near the window of the
dead man's study. In a few moments I can see The Grocer has
solved the puzzle. I can tell this instantly from the look of
total disgust which washes over him and makes him shudder at the
implications of what has occurred.
"He's got it now," my tap tells me.
I remind him that The Grocer doesn't seem very happy to have
achieved the solution to the riddle. He counters with the
assertion that I am. I agree that I have had some concerns, and
I am glad to see some mobilization in terms of security from the
rest of The City for a change.
He looks at me curiously and then acknowledges the truth I have
spoken. He says, "We can't do all of it, can we?"
I tell him we would be wrong to even try. People must learn to
care for themselves and cannot expect to be cared for from afar.
I can see he is discovering more of the reasoning behind my non-
interventionist approach to this job.
People start leaving their homes all over town. On hundreds of
monitors we see them going to the bathroom, or putting away their
leftovers, and dressing for the meeting. In the Town Hall, The
Police is already standing on the stage before the podium. With
him is The Politician, The Newspaper, The Doctor, and The
Technician. These five-- constituting the main body of The City
Council-- await nervously the throng of citizens who are filing
in even now.
They talk amongst themselves. I watch on the main monitor. As
people leave their houses, the cameras there turn off. Human
presences are needed to activate the cameras, and many of the
monitor screens turn themselves off in response to the dearth of
input.
The taps are all at the Training And Progress Center for the
night, save for mine. No taps allowed at this meeting; this one
is adults only. My tap is following the action in the Town Hall
as it fills up to capacity. I also notice that his attention
wanders consistently to one corner monitor, where The Grocer is
dressing in his home and composing himself for the meeting. I
study that monitor a moment and note that he looks like a man
with something to say.
We wait patiently as the crowd fills the room and The Police
begins to speak.
"We all know why we're here tonight. I see almost all the
chairs are filled so we might as well begin.
"For the first time since the months after The Fall, we have a
serious crime on our hands. As a community we have to address
this issue and deal with it before paranoia sets in..."
The Politician interrupts from behind him, "It's too late for
that. It's already spreading. How many of you locked your doors
when you came out tonight? How many of you have been watching
your neighbors, trying to find out who did this awful deed?"
Some hands raise. Some guilty voices admit they have been
spying on their neighbors.
"Nevertheless," The Police continues, "the fact remains that
Amos Trask is dead, and someone in this room killed him. We have
to determine as a community who that person was, and what we are
going to do about it."
There are calls for the death of the murderer. There are
shouts of anger about this tragedy. And as the room descends
into a chaos of cross-conversations and disarray, The Grocer
comes into the room from behind the stage and makes his way to
the podium.
The strangeness of this stops most of the conversation. Since
the founding of The City, only the members of The Council have
taken to the stage to address the population. The angst in the
room is slowly replaced by curiosity. There is also some small
muttered jealousy over The Grocer and his apparent elevation to,
or presumption of power.
"Forgive me, Tom, Joe, Mayor Johnstone and everyone else. I
have something to say, and it won't wait. I know who committed
this crime, and what the motive behind it was. If you will give
me a moment I will explain it all to you."
More confusion. Shouts of "How?" and "What do you know?" fill
the room. The Police calls for order, and finally silence is
restored.
"Thank you, Tom. Now you all know me, you know I don't make
speeches. I do my job; I run the grocery; I help train the next
generation to be able to continue on the same as you all do.
"To understand what I am going to tell you, I want you to think
back to the origins of our little enclave here.
"We are stragglers all, survivors all. Most of us came from
far to reach here and had no expectation of hope once we arrived.
One of the last announcements ever to come across on the day of
The Fall was that people were working on a cure in Virginia.
"So those of us who could, tried to make it here. We arrived
to find the same thing as we found everywhere else. The dead and
the dying, and no one with any explanations. But we were all
here together.
"So we made a go of it. We cleaned up this place, made it our
own. We burned the bodies, cleared the wreckage, put out the
fires and began to rebuild.
"But not all of us remained sane after that day. Many of the
remaining survivors went mad with despair and culture shock. We
had killings in the streets the first few months. We had an
attack from outsiders who made there way here after most of us
had arrived-- the last scattered remnants of humanity who finally
managed to find this sanctuary.
"After a few months more, those psychopaths and madmen managed
to die or kill themselves off, and until they did we all of us
had to be vigilant and wary.
But for the last decade or more we have had it too easy. We
have forgotten about the evil darkness which remains inside each
of us. We have bred children in an attempt to repopulate, we
have fixed and reactivated all the technical devices and services
which were left to rot. We have a life here, much like it was in
the old days... but we have done nothing to protect ourselves
from our own base desires.
"Here we are, all of known humanity, and we fill one single
room. How fragile that is. One single madman among us could go
find one of the many abandoned military sites across the nation
and annihilate us all with a single nuclear weapon. We have done
little to secure against that possibility.
"Up until recently, if I had to point to a madman who might be
the cause of our destruction I would have said it was Amos Trask.
I know many of you would have agreed. He was the malcontent, the
visible focus of negativity among us.
"There are some here who probably heard of Amos dying and
reacted with joy or relieved thanks. He was a bother, a burden;
he did not accept our blissful society for what it is. He wore
all of our ears out railing against our inadequacies, and our
foolishness. He spoke of the failings within us all-- those that
led to The Fall-- which are still with us even now."
Around the room, silence is thick and tense. No one dares
speak.
"But Amos is not here any more, and we are left in paranoia and
suspicion to point fingers at each other and demand to know who
did this thing. Well, I know. I know who killed Amos Trask, and
how it was done, and why. And I know who is responsible..."
Chorused shouts demand to know the answers. The Police and The
Politician look worried.
"It was us!!!" The Grocer shouts above the rising din. "We did
it. We are guilty... all of us, for what happened to Amos Trask.
We didn't listen to him; we didn't acknowledge the wisdom in his
words. We wrote him off as the last holdover from a dead
society, and paid him no attention. And now he's dead."
The Grocer steps back from the mike as if finished, though he
has not revealed anything at all. The Police comes up to his
side and puts a hand on his shoulder. The mike is sensitive
enough to relay him softly whisper, "Tell us Aaron. We have to
know."
"I am sick, my friends. Sick at heart.
"From the first I suspected there was something amiss with the
facts as presented. We found a dead man with a gun in his hand.
His hand was literally covered with powder burns, yet he had only
fired one shot. He was shot at close range, yet he was armed.
"It looked like some vicious killer had deliberately targeted
Amos, gained access to his house and even while being shot at
point-blank had the presence of mind to avoid being injured and
to kill Amos in his study.
"I say 'looked' because that is how it was set up to appear.
It was a horrible murder, bloody and gruesome-- displayed for us
all like a diorama or an illustration of the evil which remains
in man, the blighted spot which Amos has tried to force us to see
for so many years.
"But in whose interests was this? Who hated Amos enough to
kill him? Who was so tired of hearing his voice that they would
do such a thing just to silence his complaints? Who would do
such a thing and to what end?
"Why, it was Amos himself!"
The room is extremely confused now. Half the people seem to be
wondering why he would kill himself, the other half seem more
interested in why it is their collective fault. Only a few seem
curious as to how the deed was performed and how The Grocer knows
what he claims to know.
The Police leans closer and asks The Grocer if he is feeling
well.
"I'm not crazy, Tom. I haven't gone senile either." He
reaches into his side pocket and pulls out something in a plastic
bag. "Listen to me, all of you. Here is the gun, the missing
forty-four which shot Amos Trask.
"One of my taps retrieved it from where Amos hid it after he
killed himself..."
"Umm, Aaron? How is that possible?" The Police asked with
concern in his aspect and tone.
"Because he was a clever old son-of-a-bitch and he had a point
to prove... a point he couldn't get any of us to hear while he
was still alive.
"You all know the old oak tree in front of Trask's home. He
chose that house of all on the block for that tree. When he
wasn't busy condemning us for our ignorance and blitheness he
would talk about his childhood, and climbing a big tree in front
of his house. He had his sentimental moments too, as we all do
when we think of absent friends and other times.
"Well, I had one of my taps climb that tree, once I figured out
how this was all done, and he found the gun right where I told
him it would be. Here, Tom, run your prints and ballistics if
you want, but i can tell you that it's the murder weapon and that
Amos pulled the trigger himself."
"How did the gun get into the tree?" The Politician asks.
"Trask was a clever son-of-a-bitch," The Grocer repeats. "He
must have climbed that tree himself a few days ago-- surprised
the old bugger could make it up there... I certainly couldn't.
And when he came down he was trailing a forty-foot clothesline
from the automatic winder he attached to the middle of the tree
where the leaves are thickest.
"He must have tied it off somehow, thrown a loop of rope from
the study window, and then come down and tied the rope from the
study to the line on the winder leading to the tree.
"Reeling in the rope from his study and disconnecting it, he
now had a forty-foot clothesline running directly from his study
window, to the winder secured to the tree. Now the scene was
set.
"Determined to prove the validity of his claims of murder and
evil stalking us unseen-- and not at all bothered that he would
have to die to prove this fact-- he secured this gun to the line
and held it in his right hand.
"He sat back in his chair and took the small gun, the twenty-
two, from his desk. He fired the gun out the window randomly.
Most of his block is deserted as no one wanted to live too near
him with a choice of houses all over The City from which to
choose. No one would be expected to hear the shot.
"Now, holding both guns in his right hand, Amos placed the
forty-four against his temple and fired. As he died, his grip
relaxed and the pearl-handled twenty-two fell to the floor. But
the other gun didn't fall. Released suddenly with his death, the
other gun was a slave to the tension on the rewinder and was
pulled right out of the window to nestle in the oak tree in front
of Amos Trask's house.
"And that is how he died. We did it. We drove him to this
act. He could not make us face the truth or ourselves, the truth
of our world. We would not listen. And now he is dead."
The Grocer fell silent and began to leave the stage.
"You're sure, Aaron?"
"I have all the evidence you could ever need, Tom."
"I wondered about all the graphite on his hand. And I couldn't
figure how the killer got passed an armed man to fire point-
blank. Guess he didn't have to get by anyone..."
"No. Just us. Just all of us, who are too happy to be alive
to consider that our luck might be transient."
The Politician, seeing his opportunity, steps to center stage.
"We should go home, all of us. We should think about this, and
what it all means. And how we can ennoble this tragic event, and
use it to stir us all towards the changes Amos wanted for us.
"We have a responsibility to survive, or there will be no
future generations on this planet. It will hang forever dead in
space.
"I want you to all go to your homes, and to start thinking
about how we can keep this sort of hideous tragedy from happening
again.
"Next time there is a body it may in fact be murder. We must
learn again to be vigilant to the worst which waits within
ourselves to be released. We must be on guard against the demons
of our mind, the kind of demons which drove Amos to his fate."
"Yes." The Grocer agrees.
I turn to my tap and tell him that this is what I have been
hoping for. Not paranoia, but a kind of watchfulness and caution
to take root in the citizenry. All of them have been so grateful
to survive The Fall that they tend to think they are somehow
immortal or immune to the very same things they had to watch
against all their lives before society came apart.
"A wake-up call..." he replies, using my own words.
I tell him that is true, and that it is a necessary one. There
are still dangers on this planet. There may be other crazies out
there just waiting to stumble onto us here. I remind him we must
be on our guard at all times.
People begin to file uncomfortably out of the meeting. They
have their answers and their murderer, but nothing is settled.
One man walking out the front door says aloud, "The C.I.A
probably knew about it all the time and just sat back and watched
us all running around like headless chickens in a barnyard..."
My tap and I laugh at that. We know how thankless is our job,
and also how crucial it is. We make a mental note to keep a
closer eye on The Grocer from now on, as he seem to have a fine
mind and good conceptualization skills. He may be of use to the
community in some other capacity-- once his taps are properly
trained to continue running the market.
Here in the C.I.A. building, Langley, my tap and I continue our
daily vigils. We wait, and we watch. And where there is life,
there is always hope... a curse of the human condition. We
cannot will ourselves to stop hoping.
We work all day and through the night at times, just like most
of humanity. Now, though, we will not be alone in our vigilance,
as the others have wakened to the truth. The death of Amos Trask
has forever changed the spirit and shaken the self-satisfied
smugness of our community.
I wish I could hear a bird singing again... just for a moment.