Page 84 - Tales Apocalyptic and Dystopian

Cannon’s Last Case

history is a reflection of some mystical hogwash about final battles of
good and evil, a triumph which will end all struggle. The facts are
otherwise: whatever goes up comes down. Cycles are everywhere, in
nature and human affairs. The self-fulfilling prophets brought down
the house, a percentage of us survive in reduced and difficult
circumstances, and yet we are ready to take on the same idiocy again.
This time it’s called the Complex, and its founders hoped to prevent
future devastating disasters by imposing a mechanical patriarchy
acceptable on the basis of fairness and the acceptance of naked
power as long as everyone is a nudist. Their generation—your
parents’—imagined that you, brought up knowing nothing else, will
accept what you earlier called the virtue of necessity. It is a false hope
and you know it. You know it because you are fighting it as much as
any Retronome would, but in your own way, from the inside.”
Mary Chase hung her head, closing her eyes against what she
heard. Spike Cannon gathered steam, jabbing his right forefinger in
her direction as he drove home his words.
“You came here to use me as a stalking horse, Miss Chase. I may
have been put out to pasture, but you can’t fool me. I’m a
professional. You presented everything you’ve said about the
Complex and the Me Museum as having been tailored for my
unsophisticated ears. Not a chance. Your body language as well as
your research tells me you’ve been studying the past for a lot longer
than three weeks, and a lot deeper than is required by your job. Your
flimsy fable about a mysterious extortionist able to crack the system’s
security—probably punishable by death, if I know our new
masters—just to get money from a low-wage clerk—yes, that’s what
you are, regardless of your title—is laughable. I’ll tell you what I
think: you sabotaged your own exhibit to see if you could get away
with it. Having succeeded technically in one small act of rebellion,
you needed to find out if the Complex has other ways of sniffing out
dissidents, by means of something like a private detective. Would
your cover story work? You hunted me down and tried it out. It
doesn’t work. You—or the next person who’s tempted to defy the
power of this new Enclavist oligarchy—will have to come up with a
better fairy-tale if you’re caught.”
They had come to the end of the last pallet in the last row of the
last lap.

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