Maglio made a cutting motion across his throat and the pulldown screen went dark. “It’s in the bloody pudding. Get out your phones. You heard correctly—out of your pockets and purses. Power up.”

  Down the row, and all the rows, phone screens lit up. Maglio too had his phone out. The phones erupted with tones as dissimilar as the voices of Babel.

  “Take the call,” Maglio ordered.

  “Jesus,” said Matt, “it’s Carson Fullers.”

  On Matt’s phone, Carson Fullers beamed. Raphael’s pulse quickened. Act II had already begun.

  Digits surfaced on Maglio’s left eye, then sunk. “Say hello, Carson.”

  “Hello,” rang out from every phone.

  “How do you feel?” asked Maglio.

  “Like a million bucks.”

  Maglio laughed. “Me too, multiplied by a thousand. What have you been doing, Carson?”

  “Checking my email and messages. Blogging on Thursdays,” replied Carson from hundreds of phones.

  “Never thought you’d do those again, did you?” asked Maglio.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  Would Maglio now tell the truth?

  “Well, let me tell you, Carson. Your inbox will soon overflow with congratulatory messages.”

  “Oh?”

  “After drowning at sea and having aquatic life consume your body, you, Carson Fullers, are the first of the Resurrected.”

  “Oh.”

  No.

  “You were dead.” Maglio pressed his hands down. “Now”—Geo turned up his palms and raised his hands—“you’ve risen.”

  Matt leaned into Raphael. “What’s Maglio talking about? The dude didn’t drown at sea. He was a possum who got his throat—”

  Raphael pressed his forefinger to Matt’s lips, butter soft.

  “Now, Carson, please tell the audience what you will do after you check your messages.”

  “Do?”

  “Yes. Will you tweet? Will you make a new friend online?”

  “Umm, friend, yes. Make a new friend. I am favored.”

  “Yes, you are,” agreed Maglio.

  “I am favored. I am liked,” said Carson. “I am liked, and I am favored. I am thumbs up. I am—”

  Maglio put his hand over his phone and beamed. “We will let Mr. Fullers go now. I think he’s feeling fatigued, which you might well imagine. Everyone say a cheery goodbye to Carson.”

  As the audience said their goodbyes, Maglio made a cutting motion across his own throat. Carson Fullers vanished from every phone.

  Maglio raised his hand, surveyed the room and nodded. “Despite all this exciting news, all is not well in Mudville.”

  Matt whispered, “Where’s Mudville?”

  Maglio continued, “There’s a movement afoot threatening our brave new world. We’ve dealt with a form of these deviants in the past, and our company thwarted many of their schemes to corrupt our database. Though you may not work in the Necrology Department, you’re familiar with possums, I’m sure. Members of our staff have developed procedures and methods to root them out. These techniques will now apply to the recent threat: the Intentional Blanks.”

  The audience echoed the words.

  “The Intentional Blanks, or Digital Luddites, have vowed to resist digitization. By any means possible, they are trying to escape the accumulation of data on themselves. You’ve seen these fools tossing away their phones and smashing their laptops. You’ve seen them hiding their faces from cameras, gait-shifting, parading around with handwritten pickets, my God. Disgusting—and frightening. Even as I speak, the news is they’ve blown up servers in five states. And it’s rumored the heartrending Toobyville Dam disaster was no accident. If it smells Blank, it is Blank. We will crush the Blanks, mine the goddamn data with our heels if need be. We will form a new Anti-Blanking Division at Norval. I’m delighted to announce that heading up the division will be the top possum tracker in Norval history. Let’s hear it for Raphael Lennon!”

  Ignoring the applause and congratulatory shouts, he slipped his hand into his pants pocket and felt the container of his mother’s pills. He was no druggie, but he still wondered how many it would take to get through this day.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The sounds, sights, and smells of the NDMN workday had begun. Keyboards clicked beneath nimble fingers. A few ancient hard drives hummed. The overhead screens displayed their listless videos: coffee and exotic teas, pastries in the microwave.

  Raphael sat at his old desk. The oversized corner cubicle accompanying his promotion to head of the Anti-Blanking Division remained under construction, his duties not solidified, nor his title documented. As if he gave a shit. It was just Maglio playing head games at his expense, a promotion to keep his mouth shut, minor bullshit compared to the menaces that seemed to be closing in on him. He snapped open an energy drink and slugged half. He should be frantic and panicked, and desperate to find a way out of the mess before his days ran out. In truth, he was numb and had to remind himself that he had any such goal. He was a beaten dog with no desire to whimper lest he attract the attention of his cruel master.

  Shuffling in were the last of the End Men, the stragglers’ faces adjusted to the interminable day before them. The compilation of death would be in full swing. One floor up, the AI possums in training, getting their buggy code repaired. Forerunners of the Personality Plus world.

  The world changes, but it does not change. The fucking apocalypse could blow in, but when it blew out, you’d be at your same old desk in your same old cubicle, sucking on an energy drink.

  At 3 a.m. he had awoken from a dream in which two men were squeezing him into a tiny suitcase. He pleaded with one, then the other, although both faces were the same: Maglio and Klaes simultaneously. He whimpered and flailed his arms, but they tucked his feeble limbs into the suitcase and closed the top. The zipper was as loud as a buzzsaw as the light disappeared. He screamed, but nothing left his lips. His center-of-gravity changed. They were carrying away the suitcase, which now seemed roomier and cushioned. He felt heat. Saw red and yellow flames, a man with his hand on a lever. He tore himself from the terrifying dream, covered in perspiration, heart racing.

  In the sleepless hours that followed, he saw the dream’s truth. Maglio and Klaes were interchangeable. Maglio had murdered, and Klaes had murdered, both through their stooges and for nearly identical reasons. Research subjects. Terrible crimes. He should go to the police and spill it all out. And they would immediately label him a lunatic.

  All right then, Raphael, for the sake of justice, choose option B. There is no fucking option B.

  He had called Lily and divulged the contents of the crate. If she had given him credence at the museum, she offered him no such comfort during this conversation. From her tone, cold and dismissive, she made it clear that Klaes was not capable of such an act. She agreed to look into it and get back to him. However, she assured him, Angie would not be in the box. Well, maybe she wasn’t.

  “Hey, how’s the head of Anti-Blanking?” asked Matt, filling the cubicle’s entrance.

  “Catch this, Matt.” Raphael held up his middle finger.

  “Seriously, man. I heard they caught some Ludds with ricin in Milpitas.”

  “I’ll check it out.”

  “So, how much are they paying you for this anti-blanking gig? A zillion times more than me, right?” asked Matt.

  He shot Matt a withering look. Couldn’t even his best friend see his foul fatalistic mood?

  His phone rang. He nodded Matt off and took the call. A familiar face appeared on the screen, though she wasn’t holding a dead animal this time.

  “Hello, Miranda.”

  “Raphael, help me.”

  An electrical storm broke out in his head. “Help you?”

  “I want to do something bad. Terrible.”

  “Count backwards from ten million,” said Raphael.

  “Did it. Now what?”

  “Now, don’t do the terrible thing,”

  “Why?”

  Because it’s fucking terrible. He may as well plead with a stone not to fall on someone’s head.

  “Do you want to know what I’m going to do?” asked simulated Miranda.

  “Please, don’t do it,” he said with gut-felt urgency.

  “I’m going to influence people to take selfies while eating their pets. Everyone will hate them and threaten them and make their lives miserable.”

  “Miranda, that’s not you,” said Raphael, yet he wasn’t so sure of the declaration. Even if the Personality Plus AIs replicated online character data, the process might alter the data and produce mutations. Complexes and neuroses—bugs— might emerge within the altered code, especially given Miranda’s flesh-and-blood tendencies. Norval’s possum training was no doubt working out those problems too, before kicking in wholesale Resurrection. “Miranda, think of how you might feel if you did it. Why did you call me? You said you wanted my help.”

  Miranda’s face expanded on the screen until she was all lips. “Don’t tell me about stupid feelings. I’m a god, you know? Miranda, God of Selfies, and I’ve changed my goddamn mind. I don’t want your help.” The screen went black.

  “Miranda, please don’t!”

  She was gone.

  Everything was out of whack. If Norval had so far produced only shells and shadows of the living, Klaes had left monstrosities everywhere. Even playing God, you could create devils enough.

  And his daughter, if not in the box, spirited off to—where?

  Surely not in Raphael’s square mile. Why did he himself want to find Angie? She was dead, frozen. The most he could do would be to return her to the facility—and put her image in his painting.

  He gazed at the photo of his mother on the wall of his cubicle, and a glimmer of hope rose within the dark sea beneath him. She said, “Promise me, Raphael.”

  “I will, Mom. I’ll paint it all.”

  The last brushstroke would set him free. He could get out of the square mile, get beyond Norval’s reach, maybe even search for the stolen girl, and all he needed was one more bit of data. His father. He had to cling to that promise.

  He typed in L-E-N-N-O-N, comma. J-A-Y-N-E. Now only the middle name remained. He would have access to his mother’s most intimate documents. We all have secrets was the gateway to a potent adage: Secrets we hide from the outside world, secrets we keep from our most trusted friends and loved ones, and secrets we keep from ourselves. Even the last, we might give away in unguarded moments. Was his freedom worth the invasion of his mother’s private life? But she wanted him to finish the painting, to be free.

  He spoke the letters aloud: “R-O-S-E.”

  He typed in the name, pressed enter.

  On the screen appeared, You are entering the Norval Portal of Jayne Rose Lennon.

  In a tree diagram, the symbols and names of several hundred sites appeared as Raphael scrolled. Some were common to half of humanity, others were obscure, none were unknown to an End Man. His mother had three email accounts: AOL, G-mail and LACMA. Her earliest emails were on AOL, whose email service dated to the mid-1990s. Many believed data from that era was obliterated. They were mistaken. Data scavengers had plundered the great hardware dumps of China where the world’s outmoded servers and personal computers ended up. Harvesters rejuvenated and sold the data to companies such as Norval. Whatever his mother had deleted in the dawn of cyberspace, Norval’s Dead Letter Program could recover; if something was in the data, everything was in the data, and the data was in everything.

  He clicked and opened his mother’s Facebook page. It was nothing out of the ordinary. A photo of the museum’s exterior. Her title and responsibilities at the museum. Her academic history. A dozen friends and colleagues. Messages. Shared Links. Artwork. Other photos. He clicked through photos until he came to the twin of the one on the decorated wall of his cubicle. Raphael and his mother in front of Three Quintains.

  He would open up her AOL account and go through each email for clues to his father. Was there a romance? A lover who had … And after everything, perhaps nothing. He slid the cursor over AOL. This is my inner life, Raphy.

  What’s the difference? What do the dead care? His heart thudded. A little man rowing a boat on an open sea in the fog. A weight fell on his shoulder.

  He jerked around, expecting Dreemont, but it was a smiling Matt, a Starbucks bag in hand. “Sorry I yanked your chain about the Blanks.” He set the bag on Raphael’s desk, dug out two doughnuts and handed one to Raphael. “Friends?”

  Raphael studied Matt’s fingertips pressed into the glaze. “Do you mind if I pick out my own?”

  “Oh, sure. Got croissants and Danish, too.”

  Raphael spread open the bag and plucked out a croissant. “Thanks. I’ve been tense.”

  “Understood.”

  Raphael lifted the pastry as if in toast. “May the Blanks prosper.”

  “Uh oh.” Matt glanced back. “Another Norval rebel.” He chomped on his doughnut and through the bites said, “Hey, there’s a terrific concert in Redlands this weekend.”

  “Matt, listen,” said Raphael, his heart in his throat, “I should have told you this long ago.”

  “Yeah?”

  Raphael shook his head.

  “Your square mile,” said Matt.

  “You know? What the fuck?”

  Matt shrugged and bit off a large chunk of the doughnut he’d offered Raphael. He chewed, swallowed, and said, “If I wasn’t absolutely sure, my mission to the Hotel Harvey confirmed my suspicions. Fairfax, Wilshire, La Brea, and Beverly.”

  “How the hell did you figure it out?”

  “Hey, am I not a possum hunter too?”

  Raphael watched his colleague polish off the doughnut, and then open the bag to review the remainders. “Come to me, cream filled,” said Matt, dipping in his hand and extracting one. “Your prison. You can’t go anywhere.”

  “On what site did you get that information?”

  “No site. Followed you. All your dumbass excuses got me curious.”

  “I should rip out your ear loop,” said Raphael.

  Matt clapped his hand over his ear.

  He’d tortured himself over the secret, and Matt knew; it was a release, an exhalation after holding his breath a long time. Matt dropped his hand.

  “Why didn’t you say anything before?” asked Raphael.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “You knew I was stuck.”

  “Yeah, but not that stuck.”

  “And those invitations to music festivals two counties over?”

  “Bait.”

  Raphael nodded. “You think I’m crazy?”

  Matt shrugged. “Yeah, so what?” Matt turned away but pivoted. “Hey, you know anyone down at the coroner’s office by the name of Gilly Stull?”

  “Yeah, I do. What’s up with Gilly?”

  “He’s dead. Fell out of a canoe on the Amazon River. Consumed by piranha.”

  Raphael stood up, a string of firecrackers going off in his head. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “The sorter program marked him undeclared. Trace data.”

  Perhaps I’ll see you down the road, and you’ll remember my kindness. Twenty-five thousand dollars on a Starbucks card. Addy had called it singular. A singular word for a singular card.

  Raphael swallowed. “I’ll take over on the case.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’ll handle Stull. Transfer the files to me.”

  “The head of anti-Blanking?”

  “It’s personal.”

  Matt shrugged, took another bite of his doughnut, and strolled back to his cubicle.

  Envisioning Stull, Raphael didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The messenger of death had taken a runner, and left Raphael a twenty-five thousand dollars Starbuck’s card, the glaze on his kindness. Wish I was there, Gilly. He turned to his computer, clicked on AOL Mail. He glanced down the links: New Mail, Old Mail, Drafts, Sent …

  The phone rang. Please, no Miranda, no Troy-Boy. To his relief, it was Addy. The earthly weight of his body left him. He set his knees under the desk to hold himself down.

  “Addy?”

  “Are you okay?” she replied.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  The phone went silent for a few seconds. “Pink’s in the hospital, Cedars-Sinai. She wandered out on the streets again, and someone attacked her.”

  “Damn, I’m so sorry.”

  “She said it was Geo’s man.”

  Raphael pressed the phone to his chest. It took him a moment to find his voice. Lifting the phone, he asked, “Geo Maglio?”

  “She didn’t say Maglio, just Geo, like she knew him.”

  “Did she mention Toobyville?”

  “Oh, yes, she got all excited and screamed, ‘Stress at the six-hundred and thirty-eighth quadrant. Relief valve closed. Data shows—oh, the terrible water and then the black tide. They saw it coming!’”

  They saw it coming. Pink knew they knew. He should not have been surprised. In fact, he was not surprised.

  “She also said you told me the truth. Someone wants to kill you. You want to run, but you can’t.”

  “I’m in a cage, Addy.”

  “The cage of the four elements.”

  “What?”

  “Wind, fire, earth, and water. The four elements.”

  “Water? I didn’t say water?”

  “Ice is hard water.”

  “Yeah, maybe …” Had it occurred to him before? Were his walls what people believed the world to be made of long before molecules and atoms and quantum particles? What you see and feel.

  “It could be a Greek myth or a fairytale you heard.”

  Despite his doubt, he roamed the corridors of memory, but they were empty of such myths or fairytales. And yet this vague shape, a shadow on the wall …What would it mean anyway? His streets may well have been the forcefields of a thousand science fiction stories, impenetrable. For an instant, he had thought Addy was guiding him toward some great breakthrough, but his heart slowed and retook its measured pace. “Wherever it came from, whatever it is, it’s there.”