Hystopia: A Novel by David Means Read Free Book Online

writing into the furrowed carpet around the men’s legs and then cursing because spreading blood pooled over it.
    Get me a fucking towel, he said, and she came and he swabbed the blood, pulling up the carpet and the padding to give him room, and then he smoothed it down quickly and made more designs while she filled the duffel and got the rucksack.
    Go as deep into the strangeness of it and leave clear-cut indicators and be certain that what was left behind each time was a record. That was his modus operandi.
    Anyone passing on the road, looking carefully, would’ve noticed a crime in progress. They would’ve seen the heels of the two dead men on the walkway, in front of the shabby hotel. They would’ve seen Rake doing a little dance, leaving bloody footprints all the way to the office. They might’ve seen—if they passed a moment later—Rake shooting the night clerk. The bright flash.

 
    PSYCH CORPS BUILDING, FLINT
    Singleton and Klein had gone over the map that morning, the long strings and the short strings: red ones marking a murder, blues a possible sighting. The target, Rake, was on a rampage, or had been on a rampage, and he had gone and taken a girl named Meg. One more Grid-breaker going in and taking a girl out of post-treatment, Klein had explained over and over for at least a week.
    Now Klein leaned forward with his hands flat on the desk, arching his neck to look up at Singleton.
    “You know what I did before I joined this outfit?”
    “No, sir.”
    Light coming in from the windows—the smoky morning air taking the sun and diffusing it—or the fluorescent fixture overhead talking to itself. The world buzzed in Singleton’s ear.
    “I fought in the big one and then I became a historian. You can’t fight in that war—I mean really fight, be in the shit, so to speak, and not become some kind of historian. Let me tell you, history misses the point. Take the Somme, for example. The Big Fuck-up. I mean it was called that when it was happening. You had something like sixty thousand lads—and they were lads—die in the first day of battle. That battle cut the world in two. It introduced pure irony into the world, but do historians mention it? Hell no. Are we willing to call Nam the Little Fuck-up? Christ no. The president keeps her rolling and decides to make a repository for irony, and do you know where it is, Singleton? You’re sitting in it. And I feel duty bound to dissipate some of the excess irony. And do you know how I’m going to do it? I’m gonna terminate this Rake character first chance I get. Now, you might think that’s against the Credo, but the way I see it, he’s going around taking perfectly cured individuals and returning them to their traumatized states, and when we tried to enfold him, to treat him, he became one more in a line of failed enfolds, and the only way to make the wider problem—with the treatment, I mean—disappear, the only realistic way is to terminate him. If you’re gonna build a big repository for the remnants of Nam, if you’re gonna go around believing in the structure of your endeavor, you have to be willing to go out and solve the problem so it doesn’t exist anymore—proof of the problem, I mean. So that’s why I’m going to eliminate him.”
    Klein moved back to the map on the wall, touched the pins, plucked the strings gently. “That’s just between the two of us, confidential,” he said. His voice softened and his jaw slackened for a second and then tightened up. He’d be lighting a pipe in a few minutes.
    “I don’t really want to go against the regulations,” Klein said. “Or the mission, for that matter. But the way I see it, a situational reality must be faced. We’ve been tracking down these failed enfolds for two years now, and we have cops up north sending the law enforcement liaison down asking for help. They’re sure we know more than we say we know, of course. I’m here to train you, so I feel an obligation to speak the truth.