Spark: A Novel (2 page)

The Spark is bright and pure and transcendent, but it’s held captive within a Shell of flesh and bone.

The woman in the green shimmery dress and all the other Human Units walking around New York City feel emotions because their Spark is attached to their Shell.

But all my attachments have melted away. Yes, I can breathe and swallow and fire a handgun. In many ways, I resemble a human being. But there is nothing inside me. I’m filled with darkness.

I opened up a second bottle of ComPlete, then turned on my computer and spoke to Edward. Like Laura, Edward is a Shadow—a speech-recognition program connected to a computer with reactive intelligence. After you purchase and download a Shadow, you can pick their sex, age, language, and general personality. There are Shadows that can tell jokes, help you stop smoking, or say that they love you. You can spend the day chatting with a Shadow programmed to be a cute teenage girl or a Shadow who sounds—and acts—like your mother.

“Hello, Edward.”

“Good evening, Mr. Underwood.” Edward had a British accent and was programmed to be polite and formal. “How may I help you?”

“Please show
A Boy for Baxter.
”

“From the beginning, sir?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

A Boy for Baxter
is a documentary film about a boy named Gordon who is given a specially trained service dog named Baxter. Gordon is a Native American child whose brain was damaged in utero when his birth mother drank alcohol and sniffed gasoline. He was adopted as a baby by Don and Pat Miller, a Quaker couple, with two other children. The movie begins when Gordon is eight years old. He throws toys at his sisters, tries to jump out of a car window, and pulls all the paint cans off a shelf at a hardware store. But Gordon’s tantrums are the most spectacular part of the film. He lies on the floor, screaming and pounding his fists. When Pat tries to help him, the boy picks up a lamp and smashes it against the wall.

After several boring scenes where Gordon’s parents talk to psychologists and cry, a service-dog agency agrees to see if the boy can live with a pet. This is when Gordon meets Baxter, a German shepherd, at a dog-training school in Oregon. During the weeks after I left the Ettinger Clinic, I watched one particular scene hundreds of times. Gordon is at the training school with his parents and two sisters, but somehow Baxter knows that he’s supposed to be attached to this Human Unit. The dog’s head tilts to the left, then tilts to the right, and then he jumps up onto a sofa next to the boy.

The rest of the film shows Baxter and Gordon together. When Gordon is worried or distressed the dog pushes him down, gets on top of him, and licks his face. If the boy lies on the floor screaming and curled up in a ball, the dog pushes his muzzle through the locked arms as if he is forcing open a puzzle.

I would like to own a service dog that would be trained to perceive the different emotions displayed by Human Units. The dog would bark or wag its tail or lick my hand to tell me what someone else was feeling. Together, we would be almost a person.

The following morning I took another shower, drank a bottle of ComPlete, and wrote a message in soft language to Miss Holquist, the woman in charge of the Special Services Section. Miss Holquist is my supervisor. She picks my targets and pays me when I’ve completed an assignment.

Later that day, my payment would be transferred to an account with a British-owned bank on the island of Malta. For my day-to-day expenses, I keep a few thousand dollars with an American bank that has ATM machines all over the city. Both banks require that you use an optical fingerprint sensor when you access your account. My real fingerprints would have been tracked back to my previous identity, but Miss Holquist solved that problem. When I changed my name, she gave me three “gummy” fingers made out of soft plastic. Each finger had the loops and whirls of an unregistered print that was probably taken from someone who lived in a jungle. If I pressed one of these plastic fingers against a sensor pad, my bank account appeared on a display screen.

Peter Stetsko’s death was mentioned two days later in a brief article in the
New York Post.
According to the police, Stetsko was an “investment consultant” to the Russian community in Brighton Beach. He had no criminal record, but had once been questioned at Kennedy Airport about the large amount of currency in his carry-on bag.

Now that my job was completed, I resumed my usual activities. I dropped off my laundry, bought a case of ComPlete, and dust-mopped the floor. I like watching sports on my computer—anything with continual activity that makes my eyes follow a ball. That night I spent three hours watching a Gaelic football match even though I didn’t understand the rules.

The next morning, I woke up at 6 a.m. An orange light glowed behind a line of buildings, and then the sun floated upward past
rooftop water tanks. At 8 a.m., my computer beeped and Edward spoke softly into my earphone.

“Good morning, sir.”

“Morning, Edward.”

“I hope you’re feeling well, sir.”

“I’m functional.”

“There’s some new e-mail in your message box.”

Usually, Miss Holquist sends me e-mails with soft language through the public Internet, but this was coded information sent through the Darknet. I accessed the decoding software on my computer, typed in the activation key, and read:

As usual, the message included the name and photograph of the target, his last known address, and the fee I would receive for the job.

I went online and did some quick research. The target was an Englishman named Victor Mallory who was the former CEO of a private equity fund called Endeavor Investments. Endeavor had gone bankrupt a year ago and now Mallory was being sued in several countries. I assumed that I had been hired by an investor who wanted a more direct means of expressing his annoyance.

Normally, I would be given a few weeks of free time before my next assignment. Miss Holquist’s unexpected request made my Spark bounce around inside my Shell, so I decided to calm my agitation by visiting the pedestrian walkway that runs across the Brooklyn Bridge. Two granite and limestone towers hold a pair of massive cables that display catenary curves—a three-dimensional display of a hyperbolic cosine function. Attached to the curves is a web of diagonal and vertical cables that hold up the bridge platforms. When I stand at the center point and look outward, it appears as if
the sky is divided into clearly marked sections. Randomness disappears, and I’m able to sort through my wayward thoughts and place them in different boxes.

I walked down Worth Street to Margaret Chen’s real estate office, gave next month’s rent to her niece, and then headed south. There are sensors throughout the downtown area, so I took my Freedom Card out of the lead-lined sleeve and placed it in my shirt pocket. A sensor on a light pole detected my movements and the EYE computer registered the fact that on this particular day, at this precise time, an object carrying Jacob Underwood’s ID passed through Thomas Paine Park. The park has a huge modern sculpture called
The Triumph of the Human Spirit.
It’s surrounded by surveillance cameras so that antisocial elements don’t throw garbage into the fountain.

About a third of the people in Manhattan have replaced their Freedom Card with a radio-frequency chip about the size of a vitamin pill. The chip is usually inserted beneath the skin on the back of the hand, and the procedure leaves a distinctive scar. Neither the cards nor the chips require an internal power source; they’re read by electromagnetic induction. The chip is detected whenever you take the subway, enter a department store, or walk into a government building. The chips and sensors are always part of the equation whenever I receive an assignment to neutralize someone.

Collecting information from the Freedom IDs is just one aspect of the EYE program—a massive database controlled by the government. EYE gathers information from thousands of sources—web searches and cell phone calls, blog posts and credit card transactions. Every bit of information is stored in quantum computers, and then evaluated by the algorithms of the Norm-All program. Norm-All monitors the opinions of large groups of people, but it also determines each person’s typical behavior. This normalcy perimeter is like an invisible circle that defines you—contains you. If you do
anything significant outside the perimeter, your behavior triggers an Unusual Activity Inquiry that is sent to the police.