There's Only One Quantum (11 page)

Ten.

(A letter to the editor of
The Intelligencer
)

This is in response to Bryan Gilliam’s recent op-ed piece on gender equality and sexism in our culture (“We All Need to Know Our Roles” Apr. 16) and Joanne Loomis’s rather puzzling response (“Frustrated in the Clerical Pool” Apr. 19). Ms. Loomis needs to understand that not every woman should—nor needs to—aim for the boardroom. Most women are perfectly content with the role in which culture has assigned us, whether that be typist, baker, masseuse, advertisement model, stay-at-home-life-giver to future generations (my moniker and one which I proudly embrace), sandwich maker, laundress, housekeeper, boo-boo healer, errand-runner, organizer, soother, pleasure vessel, etc. And what is so wrong with that? What business do we have to play with the boys, anyway? No more than our husbands and mates have meddling in our laundry, cooking, cleaning, organizing, or housekeeping duties. My role is an integral part of our family unit. I manage the home front while my husband goes off to war (corporate variety, obviously), and I take my duties very seriously. It is my responsibility that my man has a clean house to come home to, a warm meal to sustain him, and clean clothes for the following day’s work. I take particular issue with Ms. Loomis’s call to action that we women withhold physical intimacy from the men until we, as a gender, are taken more seriously. Well, Ms. Loomis, some of us proudly offer up our bodies to our men, without shame, and we don’t feel used. I can’t speak for Ms. Loomis’s personal relations with her husband (though one doubts with her attitude she even has a man), but lovemaking with my man is a mutually beneficial and pleasurable experience and it’s something I will never refuse my husband, no matter how little sleep I have had the past three nights because our 10 month-old twins are colicky. It’s an expression of our love and mutual respect for one another, and it helps him get to sleep when he has an upcoming hectic day at the office awaiting him. If Ms. Loomis thinks it’s so bad here in America, The Alliance of Western Nations, and on planet Earth, perhaps she needs to relocate to Mars where there are whole communities governed by women.

Name Withheld by Request

“What are you doing here?” Ms. Hunter asked.

“What do you mean?” Coe had just sat down at his desk.

He was tired from a sleepless night of mostly staring at the attache case which contained the rifle—the rifle he was to use later in the day to assassinate the majority shareholder of Steele.

“Security was just here looking for you,” she said. The nervousness in her voice was apparent.

“Security?”

“You have to go,” she said. “You must leave now.”

“I didn’t do anything—”

“They know,” she said.

“They know? About wha—?”

“They’re coming!” she said, looking out into the aisle. “Mitchell, Lyme...Ms. Davenport—they’re leading them.”

“Where will I go?”

“Go!” she cried.

Coe dashed from the cubicle. He caught a fleeting glimpse of Mitchell, of Lyme—of Davenport—walking ahead of Quantum security officers dressed as stormtroopers.

“Mr. Coe,” Mitchell cried. “Wait!”

He didn’t. He heard a scuffle behind him, heard Ms. Hunter scream, “Run, Scotty!”

He headed for the bank of elevators, his Florscheims clicking across the marble floors. Just then, an elevator opened. It was Carmen, the elevator operator.

“In here,” she said. “Quickly!”

Coe ran for the elevator, the battalion of security officers nearly upon him. He dove in, fell onto the floor, his shoulder striking the wall. She quickly closed the doors as the first officer reached the elevator.

“Where to, Mr. Coe?” she asked.

“Ground floor,” he said, standing up. “Out of the building. As fast as you can.”

“Have you been to forty-five yet?” she asked.

“No,” he said, “I just need to get out of here.”

“I think you need to go to forty-five,” she said.

“Just get me out of the fucking building, please.”

She sat down on her stool and crossed her legs. “Well,” she said. “They’ll have security waiting for you on ground level. You won’t make it out of the lobby. I’ve got something better.”

She pushed two. She did that thing where she left her shoe dangle from her toes.

“How did you know I’d be there?” he asked.

“There’s been a buzz,” she said. “Frankly, I’m surprised they let you make it to your desk. I suppose they wanted to apprehend you with familiar faces.”

“Mitchell?”

She grinned. “You’ve played the game quite well,” she said. “Certainly better than Mr. Revis.”

“Game?”

They were at two. The doors opened. She grasped Coe by his hand and hesitantly peered out into the hall. “Come on.”

She paused to put an “Out of Order” sign on the elevator, then she led him down a dimly-lit corridor that showed signs of renovation. Plastic covers lay on the floor; ceiling tiles were missing revealing a network of pipes, of wiring.

“Where are we going?”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Coe...I like you.” She squeezed his hand for assurance. “I’m on your side. We’re all pulling for you.”

There were bare bulbs and bare floors—in some places stripped to reveal even more wires and conduits. “This way,” she said, opening a door to a stairwell.

They raced down the steps. Coe counted two more levels. Carmen pushed open a door to what appeared to be a boiler room. There was the hum of machinery, of vibrating mechanisms. The floor was cement; there were no windows. Save for the exit light glowing red above the door, there was no light at all.

“Mr. Orton?” she called.

“Is that you, Carmen?” a clearly digitized voice responded from somewhere in the shadows.

“I’ve got Mr. Coe,” she said.

Coe tensed. The statement made him feel for a moment as if he had been apprehended by her.

“Shoo him in, dear,” the voice said. “Shoo him in.”

Still holding his hand, she led Coe carefully through the darkness, past a vibrating contraption throwing off heat. She found a door that was not marked by an illuminated exit sign. The electronic voice said, “Open your eyes as wide as you can. Try not to blink.” It was very close, as if it were coming from a speaker in the wall.

“Stand still, sweetheart,” Carmen whispered.

Coe stiffened. He opened his eyes very wide and he did not blink. After a moment passed in which nothing happened and Coe had begun to think he had not opened his eyes wide enough, a green beam of light appeared and scanned over his eyes.

“Retinal scan,” Carmen said, softly. “It will only work with you, I’m afraid. For the sake of maintaining the identity of an elevator operator, I’m not permitted that kind of access.”

“Don’t worry,” The electronic voice of Mr. Orton said. “We’ve fixed it so it won’t register at the security desk.”

The door opened. Coe was momentarily blinded by a wash of white light.

“Come in,” the voice of Mr. Orton said, no longer digitized. “Hurry. You, too, my dear. You obviously can’t go back to your post now.”

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Orton was a prematurely graying man with a black mustache and dark eyebrows. He wore a white lab coat, baggy, gray corduroy trousers, and sneakers. He was surrounded by a team of similarly dressed men in lab coats.

Orton kissed Carmen lightly on the cheek and then brazenly squeezed her ass. She didn’t seem to fully enjoy, but she wasn’t necessarily repulsed by it, either.

“So,” Orton said, still grinning as if he’d just gotten away with something. “This Locksley and...”

“Shackleton,” Coe said.

“Right. Quantum’s house counsel, you say?” To Carmen, he said, “Can you check on that?”

“They’re on the directory,” she said, perched atop a table, legs crossed—one shoe off—massaging the sole of the bare foot. “Neither one has used my elevator, but nevertheless, it seems as though they’ve told him the truth.”

Orton said, “And they’ve provided you with an assassination kit of some sort and charged you with the termination of the Steele chief?”

“Or I’ll be implicated in the murder of Janeiro,” Coe said.

Orton laughed. “I like their style. Oh, yes. This Quantum company is a sticky place.”

“Who are you?” Coe asked.

“I’m Mr. Orton. These are my colleagues,” he said with a wave, addressing the other lab coats. “And you’ve already met the lovely Carmen...”

“Who do you work for? What is this down here?”

“Officially? We’re Quantum employees...same as you. But we represent ‘other’ interests, as well.”

Carmen slipped on her shoe. “We’re part of a rebellion,” she said.

Orton said, “A rebellion? Oh, I like that. I like that very much!”

“Rebellion? Against what?” Coe asked.

Carmen stood. “Against all of this.”

“All of what?”

“Corporatization. Companies. Genetics. Synthetics. Flying cars—”

“Flying cars?”

Orton said, “We want to give the power back to the world governments, re-arm the military, reintroduce bacterias and viruses—”

“What? Why? That’s mad!”

“It’s time to cull the herd, Mr. Coe,” Carmen said.

“This is the part where Carmen is cruelly honest,” Orton said, excitedly.

“Surely, you have noticed the transient population endlessly moving through our streets? What causes a a planet to become so miserably overpopulated with—let’s face it—undesirables?”

“Excellent description!” Orton said.

“That’s right, Mr. Coe,” Carmen said. “A lack of war and pestilence, and illness. We want to bring it all back, make this planet livable again.”
“That’s anarchy...chaos.”

She smiled.

Orton said, “And that’s what we represent, Mr. Coe: chaos. We are agents of Chaos.”

“What does this have to do with me?”

“Everything,” Carmen said, smiling.

“What do you want from me?” Coe asked.

Orton said, “We want you to do just as Quantum’s counsel has asked. We want you to assassinate Arturio Golden.”

“For starters,” Carmen said, and then she and Orton kissed.

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Carmen suddenly had a gun. It appeared to be the same style and caliber as the Quantum lawyers. “Just in case,” she said, as she led him from the secure room.

“Who were those guys?” he asked.

“Mr. Orton and his colleagues? They’re R&D.”

“What the hell’s that?”

“Research and Development. They’re engineers.”

They walked back down the same hallway. She held the gun out in front of her.

“Your rebellion is being led by engineers?” he asked.

She shushed him. “They’re quite capable men,” she said, and they turned a corner.

They caught a brief glimpse of a squad of Quantum stormtroopers entering a stairwell.

“They’re all Freemasons, you know,” she said.

“The security squad?”

She turned back at him and made a face. “The engineers, silly.”

One of the guards glimpsed over his shoulder and spied them.

“Shit,” she said. She fired at the guard and struck him on his armored breast plate. Another guard returned fire, hitting the wall near Coe’s head. Carmen grabbed Coe by his shirt and pulled him back behind her.

Coe bent forward to retrieve his gun from his ankle holster, but Carmen stopped him. “There’s no time.” She reached into her pocket and removed a whistle as more gunfire erupted.

It was evident more guards were firing on them.

“Here,” she said, giving him the whistle. “Go back to my elevator and blow this.”

“And go where?”

“Forty-six.”

“Okay. Forty—six? But there’s only forty-five floors.”

She peeked around the corner and squeezed off a shot. Coe heard a cry followed by a flurry of rapid gunfire. She leaned in and kissed him hard on the mouth. Then she pushed him away and cried, “Go!”

He ran toward the elevator amidst an all out explosion of gunshots. He glimpsed back to see Carmen down, her limbs flailing.

He put the whistle in his mouth and blew. No sound came out; however, the doors slid open, anyway. To his astonishment, inside sat Carmen perched atop her stool, her shoe dangling from her toes.

“What floor, Mr. Coe?” She was dressed in a black raincoat and wearing a black fedora.

Behind him, the guards were advancing.

I-I...” He was dumbfounded. She appeared to be the exact same woman he just watched die.

“Get in!” she cried.

He did, as a bullet whizzed into the car, narrowly missing them both. Carmen quickly closed the doors.

“What floor?”

“Forty-six,” he said, not believing what he was seeing.

She grinned. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost, Mr. Coe.”

“But I just saw you—”

“Saw me what, Mr. Coe?”