The Rise and Falling Out of Saint Leslie of Security

Lachesis Publishing
www.lachesispublishing.com

Copyright ©2008 by Andrew Tisbert

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the publisher, Lachesis Publishing, is an infringement of the copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

The Rise and Falling Out of Saint Leslie of Security:

At once insightful and deranged,
The Rise and Falling Out of Saint Leslie of Security
is a science fiction adventure that reads like Kurt Vonnegut knocking heads with Joanna Russ.

With special thanks to Leslie K. Weinar for her inspiration and, of course, the use of her name.

The Rise and Falling Out of Saint Leslie of Security

"Thanks to my football experience, I know the value of team play."

—Gerald Ford, as quoted in The Grand Rapids Press (December 27, 2006)

"The History of our Revolution will be one continued Lye from one end to the other. The essence of the whole will be that Franklin's electrical rod smote the earth and out sprung General Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his rod—and thence forward these two conducted all the Policy, Negotiations, Legislatures, and War."

—John Adams,
Old Family Letters: Copied from the Originals for Alexander Biddle

There is just the shade of the smell in her sleep, when she sweats. Sweet, warm and sexual, the slightest hint of amniotic fluid; as if coming out of her skin is the reminder of her most basic origins and her most deeply hidden dread. And like that smell, like that hint of remembered smell, are the shadows just beyond her dreams. In her sleep she still gasps thick wet air in the dark, splinters from the door she cannot see needling under her tender fingernails. She still tastes the salt of dried tears, still listens for the return of her father's soft singing. There is still the overpowering convulsion of her cunt, the burst of hot fluid and that sudden sweet, oily smell. And the renewed panic. And the stifling, smothering feeling of being alone. Because in her sleep, the new shape of her mind hangs over her thinking like a soft sheet, less a part of her. Beneath the sheet, her memories lie in a slumber of their own. Still.

Two agents escorted her in to stand on a blood-red carpet before a large oak desk, then stepped out the door behind her. Which left her with her superior, Staff Chief Russell, and she finally had to look at him. He stood behind the desk, staring. He looked less alive to her that moment than the agents, who derived any will they had from the mechanical implants in their heads. Then again, she had to be fair; his vacant stare was a professional mask—he switched it on and off at will. At least that's how
he
explained it. Her own explanations were never so articulate.

He switched it off and smiled. “Hello, Leslie, and congratulations."

"Russell."

He rested the meaty slab of his hand on the desk. “Only three nights ago I was just ‘Tom'."

For what seemed a long time, she tried but couldn't turn away from his gaze. Then once she'd succeeded, she couldn't look at him again.

"I'd be honored,” he said, “to still be ‘Tom’ to a big hero like you."

"What are you talking about?"

"The assassination attempt yesterday afternoon? Single-handedly saving President Washington's life? You couldn't have expected that to go unrewarded. Vision was all over it. You splattered the assassin's brains all over every family vision room across the country."

That was a very Tom Russell way of putting it. He liked to say weird things. Not that she always knew what the Red Hell he was talking about.

If not for all his peculiar words, maybe she wouldn't have let his hairy hand spider under her waistband that first time, a year and a half ago.

I should tell him now: “Oh Tommy, dear. You'll find
this
one funny. There's something living inside me."

"Don't you want to know how you'll be rewarded?"

She nodded. Suddenly, too much sunlight came through the slatted blinds on the window spanning the left wall. She raised her hand and squinted.

"Your name's up for sainthood, sweetheart. Saint Leslie of Security; how's that sound?"

"Don't do this to me."

"I'm serious."

"I did my job. Isn't it my job to keep Father Washington from getting his head—"

"You sound displeased."

Leslie opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. She wasn't sure whether his tone held menace or sarcasm. “I—well of course I'm pleased, but damn it..."

"A lot of people were impressed with the way you painted the street with brains. Vision anchormen are calling it a masterpiece. A true Rockwell. Didn't you watch the reports? Did you see the look on your face when you blew that fucking terrorist away? They keep playing it over and over in slow motion. It's amazing. By the way, pretty young saints—even if they once were professional killers—don't use the word ‘damn’ in polite conversation, okay? There'll be a lot of publicity during and after the promotion, so please try to remember. Don't use ‘shit’ and all those other old-fashioned expletives you learned as a kid in Vermont either. God knows how you could have remembered so many without your head mem."

"Fuck you.” His condescension angered her, even if she couldn't have explained the feeling to herself.

"Fuck you too, honey. The promotion ceremony is tomorrow night, at nine.” Tom stepped around the desk through bars of light and hooked a hand around Leslie's waist. “Will you please not get angry at every little thing I say? Let's celebrate tonight. Dinner. Eight."

Though her teeth were clenched, she nodded.

"Now I've got to take you down to the programming room. They want to put some revised dialogue parameters into you. A new saint hits the social circuit hard, and we don't want you talking like a common security guard, do we?"

She let him lead her down the quiet hall to an elevator and down three levels to Cyber-Organics. To Leslie's knowledge, she was the only security guard who ever came down here. Russell never tried very hard to explain why. “You're a special case,” he would say. “Yeah, you
are
a Guard, not a damn CIA. But you are ... special."

CIA's. That's what agents were called down here: Centralized Intelligence-enhanced agents. This was where they had their artificial head membranes modified or repaired. She hated the CIA's laboring in and out of the programming rooms, their tamed, dull expressions. And she hated the programming room she always used. It was too bright and antiseptic, and there was too much machinery she didn't understand. It was a place that made her feel powerless, and the technicians there, who hardly ever spoke to her as they set themselves the task of reprogramming the surgically implanted membrane in her skull, didn't help. At least this was one of the things Tom understood about her, and he stayed to hold her hand while they strapped her down and attached some machinery to her head and the programming was done, in spite of the looks he received. She was almost grateful.

Programming hadn't always been such a dull and lonely experience. When the project began ten or eleven years ago, even technicians Tom hadn't assigned to her were finding excuses to wander around her during her frequent visits. There was an electric charge of excitement in the programming room, and all the techs asked her constant questions about her thoughts, memories, her comfort, her reactions. They often looked surprised or exhilarated by her answers, and took the time to repeat her words into their collar recorders. Many technicians would try to explain to her the great metamorphosis she had undergone, but for all their attempts they could have been speaking Arabic.

She had been fond of one particular tech in the beginning. An older gentleman, he simplified his speech for her but she never felt as if he was talking down to her. His voice was heavy gravel all covered with a velvet moss. He would frown at her questions with drooping, close-set eyes and rub his thick chin. He would half-smile with his dry, cracked lips, but on him the expression always seemed affectionate, not condescending like the others.

"Why can't I remember much of anything since before the head mem and starting security guard training?” she would ask.

"That's a side effect of the mem. But it's also there for your protection. There are memories back there that would only hurt you. We don't want to hurt you."

"Why do I have these bad dreams? They feel so real—the touch ... the smell and taste."

"Yes. We're hoping those will subside given time, as your brain acclimates to the mem insertion, and we make certain adjustments. We're still learning ourselves, honey."

"No one has still really told me what the head mem is, or how it works, or anything."

He would wave off the impatience of his colleagues. “It's an organic membrane we overlay across a portion of your cerebral cortex. It's like an organic computer we build from what were originally stem cells. With it we can adjust the nature and pattern of your synaptic transmissions. Your thoughts and your personality are comprised of the map of myriad neuronal interconnections. These are the channels through which information moves and is stored."

If Leslie looked at him blankly, he wouldn't give up. He would rub her arm, and continue to talk to her, all through the programming session. “We've never tried anything like this, with this level of subtlety and precision. The agents are another matter. What was done to them is blunt and cruel. They're human only by the nature of their flesh. But what we're doing with you, my dear, this has ramifications in the psychiatric and neurological fields. One day we'll have sound and safe treatments for any number of disorders, and it'll be all because of you."

For all his wrinkles, his desiccated face, his thin, creaking shoulders, Leslie always felt he had some kind of power over her. She relaxed when he was in the programming room. His voice was the embrace of a father's arm to her. His smile softened her.

And when a new Father Washington came into office and reorganized all the teams, he just disappeared.

Leslie squeezed Tom's hand and tried to remember the old technician's name. She could see him so clearly, but it eluded her. She remembered the last time she saw him, when a line of armed CIA's braced themselves around him while he cleared out his locker in the programming lab, slamming service placards and work screens into a cardboard box. Leslie lay strapped into the programming console, straining her neck to see him through the other techs who continued their work as if nothing was happening. The old tech paused, cursed softly then turned to her. He was drenched in sweat and it took him the space of three deliberate, deep breaths to meet her gaze. It took that long again for Leslie to recognize his expression. She had never seen that pattern of line and tension on him. He was afraid.