hell’s government?”
I turned and looked at him. “Good question.”
We walked on a little further, both of us turning that over, but it wasn’t such a dilemma for Gordie.
“The guys with the biggest sticks are always in control,” he told us.
I mean, you can dismiss it, you can mount all kinds of arguments based on politics and democracy, but in the end, he wasn’t so far wrong. Which was a helluva worrying thought when you related it to our situation.
We hadn’t been walking more than thirty minutes when the screens cleared of “individual advertising” and all came up with the same thing: Infinity News . Sure enough, the first items up were the looting, the anarchy on the streets and the way the authorities were dealing with it. Over and over they showed the extermination of those in the supermarket, sparing us nothing: looters being lasered and cut down, getting exactly what they deserved. Bleeding corpses sprawled on the ground, close-ups of the most horrific injuries and of the shock and agony of those who suffered them. Mind you, they were careful not to show what kind of store it was, or suggest that people had been trying to take food and not, as one clip led us to believe, luxury items. Not to mention pointing out that some of the dead looters were Detainees, that these people had already committed a Crime Against the State punishable by death. It was pretty fearsome stuff, and if Infinity’s aim was to frighten the hell out of faint-hearted looters, to convince people how uncompromising they intended to be, I imagine it worked.
We must’ve walked a mile or more watching the same images being played over and over ’til it reached a point where I could pretty well tell you what was gonna happen next. Where I knew that that woman was about to be blasted to pieces and her partner would throw himself on top of her a second too late. Where those two people would get melded together with the same shot. And where that young girl died just as she was putting a piece of chocolate into her mouth. It was a bit like being beaten senseless over and over, andeven when I told myself to turn away, within seconds I was looking back again—we all were.
Finally they must’ve felt the point was well and truly made and they moved on to the next item—though it was connected. At first it was such a shock I really couldn’t take it in. Some stretches of street it can be as much as a couple of hundred yards to the next screen, and with the smoke you can’t see anything, but as luck would have it, the next story came up just as we were approaching a profusion of screens, big and small.
I turned to Jimmy, then back to the screens, then back to Jimmy again, hardly believing my eyes.
“What the hell are you doing up there?” I asked.
CHAPTER FOUR
They were images taken from a satellite, looking down on his freckly bald head with his trademark straggle of a ponytail, some with him using his stick, others not, around the Village mostly, though there were a couple out on the tips. It made me wonder if they had photos of us all or if he was picked out later—if they’d been doing a little investigating.
“What’ve I done?” Jimmy protested.
We paused by a screen so we could catch what was being said, though I think we both had a pretty good idea. Sure enough, having shown how they deal with looters—those hell-bent on civil unrest, the “anarchists on our streets”—Infinity were now revealing the person responsible for this situation, the “monster” who destroyed not just the satellites, but Life, Law and Order, and the very fabric of our society. Viewers were advised that “this evil man, this master terrorist with a death sentence on his head” must be apprehended, and that a substantial reward was being offered to anyone who had any information as to his identity—or, even better, could bring about his demise.
I turned to Jimmy. Even in the murky light, I could see all the color draining from
I turned and looked at him. “Good question.”
We walked on a little further, both of us turning that over, but it wasn’t such a dilemma for Gordie.
“The guys with the biggest sticks are always in control,” he told us.
I mean, you can dismiss it, you can mount all kinds of arguments based on politics and democracy, but in the end, he wasn’t so far wrong. Which was a helluva worrying thought when you related it to our situation.
We hadn’t been walking more than thirty minutes when the screens cleared of “individual advertising” and all came up with the same thing: Infinity News . Sure enough, the first items up were the looting, the anarchy on the streets and the way the authorities were dealing with it. Over and over they showed the extermination of those in the supermarket, sparing us nothing: looters being lasered and cut down, getting exactly what they deserved. Bleeding corpses sprawled on the ground, close-ups of the most horrific injuries and of the shock and agony of those who suffered them. Mind you, they were careful not to show what kind of store it was, or suggest that people had been trying to take food and not, as one clip led us to believe, luxury items. Not to mention pointing out that some of the dead looters were Detainees, that these people had already committed a Crime Against the State punishable by death. It was pretty fearsome stuff, and if Infinity’s aim was to frighten the hell out of faint-hearted looters, to convince people how uncompromising they intended to be, I imagine it worked.
We must’ve walked a mile or more watching the same images being played over and over ’til it reached a point where I could pretty well tell you what was gonna happen next. Where I knew that that woman was about to be blasted to pieces and her partner would throw himself on top of her a second too late. Where those two people would get melded together with the same shot. And where that young girl died just as she was putting a piece of chocolate into her mouth. It was a bit like being beaten senseless over and over, andeven when I told myself to turn away, within seconds I was looking back again—we all were.
Finally they must’ve felt the point was well and truly made and they moved on to the next item—though it was connected. At first it was such a shock I really couldn’t take it in. Some stretches of street it can be as much as a couple of hundred yards to the next screen, and with the smoke you can’t see anything, but as luck would have it, the next story came up just as we were approaching a profusion of screens, big and small.
I turned to Jimmy, then back to the screens, then back to Jimmy again, hardly believing my eyes.
“What the hell are you doing up there?” I asked.
CHAPTER FOUR
They were images taken from a satellite, looking down on his freckly bald head with his trademark straggle of a ponytail, some with him using his stick, others not, around the Village mostly, though there were a couple out on the tips. It made me wonder if they had photos of us all or if he was picked out later—if they’d been doing a little investigating.
“What’ve I done?” Jimmy protested.
We paused by a screen so we could catch what was being said, though I think we both had a pretty good idea. Sure enough, having shown how they deal with looters—those hell-bent on civil unrest, the “anarchists on our streets”—Infinity were now revealing the person responsible for this situation, the “monster” who destroyed not just the satellites, but Life, Law and Order, and the very fabric of our society. Viewers were advised that “this evil man, this master terrorist with a death sentence on his head” must be apprehended, and that a substantial reward was being offered to anyone who had any information as to his identity—or, even better, could bring about his demise.
I turned to Jimmy. Even in the murky light, I could see all the color draining from
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