The Sacrifice Game jd-2 Read online

  Still, the Game can’t truly predict the future, since that can’t be done. That is, you could always just do something that would change whatever you saw. And even if you couldn’t do that, the Game’s not some magic teleidoscope that sees all? random events. That’s impossible. It’s more like a lens that focuses your perception on the strings of events that follow your potential actions, an optimizer that helps create a successful outcome, whatever random events occur. It enables a leap in reasoning power. And as the world becomes more programmable every day-well, let’s say that as of now it’s programmable enough.

  As of December 10-Madison Day-I still hadn’t taken the full leap. But two hundred and sixty-nine days ago, on March 28, I dove in. I played farther into the Game than, I’m sure, anyone-even One Ocelot, whoever he was-ever has. And at the extreme core of the meaning of today, I came to what felt like a sort of mountain with a cave at its peak, and inside that cave-which was bigger than the mountain itself and in fact bigger than all outdoors-I could see, or hear, or sense, the people of the future, all crying in well-informed fear of being born, begging not to be brought into the world. Or at least this is what I saw on a figurative or, you might say, symbolic level. To put it more abstractly, I experienced a massive growth in capability of empathy, which is a mental act that requires insight and imagination. I realized- really realized, for the first time-that no matter how many good or happy experiences a person has, the bad experiences still outweigh them. And this doesn’t just go for the majority. It’s true for everyone. And, more than that, when you’re talking about people who aren’t born yet, the possible good times they might have aren’t benefiting anyone-since they don’t exist yet-but they’re definitely getting a benefit if they miss whatever bad experiences they’re going to have. And I tried, but there wasn’t any way to chip into the crystalline logic of this: For a consciousness, coming into existence was always, everywhere, and for all future times, a net loss.

  Yes, it sounds like I just had an oversoaked tab of C20H25N3O and came out as leary as Timothy Loony. But, even according to buttoned-up-and-down corporate types-even according to the FBI, which has got to be the least imaginative bunch of bureaucrats on the rock-the Game actually works. And nothing I saw was outside the Game’s-but wait a second. I don’t need to defend myself against the charge. I’m not writing this to defend or excuse myself or to ask for forgiveness. I’m just writing it the way that, if you’re the captain, you have a duty to inform the crew members of a battleship about the state of their vessel. And even if not a single one of the ~ 6,900,000,000 of you gets the logic, it still doesn’t matter. If you could follow along and take this leap in understanding, you’d agree. You’d thank me. And if I weren’t around, you’d do it yourself.

  Of course, you wouldn’t want to hurt anybody. Painlessness would be Number One. And Number Two would be the fact that even though you had a lot of money, you still couldn’t afford, say, your own collection of atomic bombs. You’d have to work out a way to do it that would get a big payoff from a small amount of catalyst, something as easy and natural as, well, as Well, let’s put it this way. On 12.19.8.9.19, 4 Thunderhead, 17 Flood, I naturally just gawped at the havoc along with everybody else. And as the initial shock faded, I started to wonder what about it besides the obvious-that it was all those people, that it was an attack on what you’d thought was previously safe ground-was even more disturbing than the sum of those things would imply. Was it that it took me as long as it did to realize it wasn’t just a holographic trailer for some new Jerry Bruckheimer movie? Was it that you could actually feel some kind of presence there, that Luciferian grin in the gray clouds? Or was it, conversely, that there wasn’t any presence, that behind the smoke there was just blankness, blankness, and even more blankness? For a while I thought it was just because it was beautiful, that it was the most spectacular event witnessed in living memory, even more than D-day or the atomic blasts, about the way the jets just disappeared and about those Beardsleyesque ostrich plumes of dust as the sand castles imploded, so that when it was over you found yourself not feeling the deaths but just that cheap after-the-fireworks feeling you get when you wolf down a big gooey dessert and then look ashamed at the empty plate, and that I was disappointed with myself for thinking that way. But at some point I decided that what really chilled everyone was simply how easy it had been, close to effortless, even, as though those Pillars of Dagon had been built expressly to the size of this Samson wannabe and all he had to do was stand between them and give a little push… or I guess one could almost just say how simply inexpensive it was, how all you have to do is hang out at the Halal White Castle or wherever young, underachieving, swollen-testicled hadjis congregate, cut a dozen or so of the most impressionable ones out of the herd, spring for a few thousand dollars’ worth of flight lessons and a round of X-Actos, and suddenly it’s the Decline of the West. For a little while, until their self-delusion apparatus kicked in again, quite a few people-despite all the time and effort people spend on making themselves feel like everything’s okay, despite how denial, in various forms, has always been the world’s biggest industry-folks came close to comprehending how much they lived in a house of cards, how much it was like they’d been keeping a glass bottle of lukewarm liquid trinitrotoluene on the edge of their coffee table and letting their kids and dogs run around, how-well, you get the picture. But on the other hand, if you were an aspiring destroyer-a “doomster,” as we call them down at the Warren Family-it gave you a sense of limitless possibility. It inspired you to go it one better.

  Which, incidentally, is one of the reasons I have to do this. 9/11 inspired a lot people, not just me and Madison. According to the Sacrifice Game Engine that we were now running on LEON, the Lab’s main AI engine, there are at least sixty aspiring doomsters out there who have a good shot at killing ten million or more people. I can practically see them, beavering away in their basements on homebrew viruses, packing the remains of tossed smoke detectors into dirty bombs, refining hundreds of pounds of ricin, and on and on. Madison was unusually talented but not unique. So if I don’t do this well, somebody else will do it, badly, in very short order. Any one of these losers could, and will, unleash his garbage at any moment. And from what I’ve had time to track with the Game, the scenarios aren’t encouraging. The odds are good that the next few decades, and more, are going to be characterized by wars, famines, depressions, government repression, torturous deaths, wasting diseases, parents eating children and vice versa, and on and on. Things are definitely going to get bad, and bad is worse than people realize.

  Like I say, the Game lets you read ahead and work out exactly what to program. By read I mean, in the sense of a great Go player reading a hundred moves ahead. But with the Sacrifice Game I was reading hundreds of thousands of moves ahead, in hundreds of thousands of much more complicated “games” all over the world, tracing a single chain through the latticework of contingency that would lead to-well, let’s just say it leads to what I think is definitely the best available way to do it. Definitive, painless, and, once begun, inexorable. Now, that’s progress. Eleven years, one month, and twenty days later, it took only one tap on a touch screen to trigger an event that, if there were anyone around to witness it, would make the World Trade Center event seem quaint. Now, that’s progress.

  Actually, there will be one near-witness: me. 4.564 hours-from the post time, the release time above, plus, say, four minutes for your reading up to this point-as I count down the quarter-seconds on the atomic clock, there’ll be a moment when, as I’m wondering whether I could have made a mistake in calculation and the whole thing will be a nonevent, for, I think a little less time than one of those quarter-seconds, more like, say, 700,000 microseconds-about two p’ip’ilob- two blinks, as we say in Mayan-I’ll see and feel things change around me, I’ll notice that something huge and strange is happening, and for about another quarter second, just before I cease to be, I’ll know that I hadn’t made a mistake, that I’d gotten it all
exactly right.

  So, that’s my whole story. And there’s nothing left to do but wait for the bigger nothing.

  Probably you still don’t agree. But you would if-hmm, I almost said “if you were honest with yourself.” Well, what with everything else I don’t also want to put you down, but it’s true. Just look around a little, check out the world a bit, and it seems as obvious as a = a. The average person just wants to Huh. Serendipity. Just while I was typing this bit, about the average person, I noticed a headline on my news screen:

  Bridge Demolition Provokes Soul-Searching in Akron

  AKRON, Ohio-Its official name, the one on maps and signs, is the All-America Bridge. But so many people have jumped off since it was built 32 years ago that it sometimes goes by a less-welcome nickname: the Suicide Bridge.

  Now the City of Akron has decided to do something about it, and plans to use more than fifteen million dollars of federal aid to destroy the bridge.

  Since the bridge was built in 1997, 468 people have died leaping from the bridge to their deaths in the Little Cuyahoga River Valley below. Police are called to the bridge to save would-be jumpers roughly twice a week. Neighbors below say bodies have damaged roofs. Four years ago, the city spent over a million dollars to build a safety fence, but this was circumvented by over sixty further jumpers. Mental health officials say the All-America Bridge has become a “magnet bridge”: one with a reputation for suicides, therefore drawing more troubled people to try to jump off it.

  In approving the measure, the city has prompted a sometimes emotional conversation about suicide and mental illness, government spending, and Akron’s image and future as it continues to remake itself and adjust to a new economy without the thousands of tire manufacturing jobs that once led people to call this the Rubber Capital of the World.

  You could Google the rest, but you get the idea. And, really, who could be more representative of the general run than someone, anyone, from Akron, Ohio? Although I admit that four hundred and sixty-eight people is a hard-to-believe statistic. I mean, you’d think they’d have that many every couple of days. You’d think that by now the entire population of Akron, along with a large percentage of citizens from the neighboring communities of Cottage Grove, Barberton, and Cuyahoga Falls, would have taken the opportunity to jump. I mean, just typing the word Akron a few times has depressed me so much that I’m close to hanging myself right now with my mouse cord and not waiting around for the twenty-first. So why pull the thing down? If anything, you’d think the town fathers would just build a designated suicide platform up there, and put up bleachers and concession stands and sell tickets so that at least they could reduce the deficit. Or, if they absolutely insist on keeping their taxpayers alive, why not just work on making Akron less depressing? Although I guess that would probably cost more than a million dollars. A trillion? Infinity? Who knows?

  So anyway, basically, they want it even if they can’t ask for it. And I accepted the responsibility to give it to them. I didn’t want to be the villain (But y’are, Jed. Y’are!), but without villains nothing happens.

  And that’s the whole reason. I’m not doing this because I’m frustrated or enraged at my co-workers or any of those postal things, although I suppose I’m as angry as the next gink. It’s not because people are no damn good, although I’ve always had a deep faith in their awfulness, even before watching that toddler-in-the-microwave clip on Rotten Video. It’s not because I think the real world is just some collective hallucination or alien holographic projection or veil of Maya or whatever. If only. Nope. The reason, the only reason, is that I spoke to the babies. That is, I met the unborn. All of them. I listened. And they don’t want to be here. And I’m the person who’s in a position to do something about it.

  So, I have reason and opportunity. Do I also have the right?

  I don’t know. But I do tend to think that’s a meaningless question. The only point is, like I say, I’m in a position to do it, and so I have the duty to do it. I didn’t want to be the villain. Nobody does. But some are called PING. Ah. My imaginary internal alarm’s telling me it’s time to check in on that second domino.

  Hmm. I’m almost afraid to look.

  Okay. Not almost. I’m terrified.

  Maybe if I don’t look it won’t have happened. Maybe it’s all just a fantasy… maybe it can’t happen, things like that don’t happen, things stay the same, there’ll still be things, there’ll still be coffee and Japan and mornings, another season of Battlestar Galactica, there’ll be parrot fish, crimson sea slugs, Fluffernutter sandwiches, snow Jed. You’re getting maudlin. Stop. Get a grip.

  I called up the price feed and scrolled down… slowing… there it is…

  Chix, chix, chix. Xkimik, xkimik. Ay, dios. Oh God, oh God. It’s not true, it’s not true…

  But it is. It happened. I did it. It’s happening, it’s happening. Todo por mi culpa. All my fault. Oh my God, ohmyGodohmyGodohmyGod, OMG, O, O, O. Ya estuvo. It’s done. There was that numbing swell again, like I’d inhaled a chestful of chilled helium. And there was just garden-variety terror, of course, and even a smudge of-well, I don’t know if I’d call it, exactly… would I call it doubt? Cancel, cancel. It’s done, Jed, it’s done, even if I, even I, can’t believe it’s really happening, it is, it is, it is, it is Breathe.

  Whew. Well, it can’t be helped.

  Okay. It’s getting late, so I’ll take a last question from the house. If the Game works so damn well, why don’t you use it to show you how to avert all these horrible eventualities and make the future great for everybody?

  Answer. I have. This is it.

  Well, that’s about it. And, like I Hang on.

  Okay. I noticed I’d thrown up a little in my mouth and managed to choke the bolus of sour mush back down into the right tube. Okay.

  And, like I say, you want it. Search your feelings and you’ll find you crave release. Just like this mutilated dog I knew one time, you want it even if you can’t ask for it. You’d thank me, if you could, for building us all a bridge out of Akron. And at least now you know. That is, you know all there is that’s worth knowing, that the world won’t end in fire, or in ice, or with a bang, or with a whimper, or even with a shrug. Just a click.

  Very, very sincerely,

  Joachim Carlos Xul Mixoc DeLanda

  (2)

  Marena’d texted me while I was in the middle of writing my Dear Doomed World letter. She said she was back from Belize, and she was in her house, and I should come by. Wow, now what? I thought. And what do I tell her, besides nothing? I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist, though. She still had a hook in me. Well, let’s say a harpoon. And she knew it. Beeyotch. Anyway, I hadn’t even been to her house yet, so I guess it was on my bucket list. Okay. I got the tanks into self-maintenance mode. I had some Fluffernutter and, just for clarity, a shot of tsam lic. It was basically the same proportional combination of the same two molecules as the drugs that Jed 2 had buried in Oaxaca, except that they were now synthetic, of course, and each with a few pairs of hydrogen atoms added for ease of absorption. It rocked.

  I cleaned up and even got out a sort of nice gray summerweight Dormeuil jacket. Wait, is that a moth hole? FUU-oh… it’s not. Just a speck of something. Polonium-210, probably. Whatever. I slipped on the jacket. Ahh. Now I’m an adult. Actually, since the unpleasantness at Disney World, I’d kept the garment all stocked up with my wallet, backup wallet, glasses, Purell wipes, SightSavers wipes, Q-tips, Twist-Em ties, Theraputty, Krazy Glue, grandessa, mandatory medication, optional medication, Adderall, OxyContin, Klonapin, clotting spray, wound dressing pads, blue Pilot Rolling Ball, Post-its, ToothTowels, Go-Between Plaque Stix, red astronomy flashlight, two competing telephones, the Gerber Suspension Butterfly Multi-Tool (which I much recommend), my real passport, my Warren-provided fake passport, nine blank checks from three different banks, about fifteen thousand U.S. dollars in premagnetic twenties, and a little nylon coin folder with twenty-five Krugerrands, which at the moment represente
d another seventy-five thousand, one hundred and two dollars. And a few other things, because, you know, one never knows. I checked the three working tanks again-I’d had Lenny replace everything after the Disney Die-off-and the apps on my phone that link to the tanks and the tank cameras, and then used the other new app to set the alarms and house cameras. I got my feet into a fully charged pair of Sleekers-just to show my support for the Firm, I rationalizedand selected an indoors-almost-appropriate hat. Wallet, keys, backup wallet, backup keys. Check, che Damn. I was feeling a subsonic throb version of the first two bars of “Transfusion.” The alarm on my 1 phone. Time for another shot. Right.

  I rolled up my female-I mean, left-pant leg and found a new virgin target on my inner thigh. Dr. Lisuarte, from Warren, had set me up with a PowderJect system that looked, irresistibly, like a better-tooled version of the 1946 Daisy Buck Rogers U-238 Atomic Disintegrator Pistol, and I gave myself a Ject of recombinant coagulation factor IX. Fweeeeeeeeyup! Ow. Fuck this, I thought. Well, it’s not for much longer. Anyway, these days my clotting was nearly always up to at least seventy percent of normal, so if I wiped out on the Sleekers I’d still live to see the big quarter-second. In fact I barely worried about it consciously anymore, except still, if you’ve ever had any kind of hemophilia the whole world always feels a little different. Like for instance you’re always a little on the lookout for sharp objects. It’s like that feeling you get when you’re sitting shirtless on that butcher’s paper in a doctor’s examination room and you look at the waste container that says SHARPS. If you’re a bleeder, that feeling’s permanent.