Peripheral Visions: Trouble Clef

Peripheral Visions: They coalesce in the soft blur of darkest shadows and take shape in the corner of your eye. But you won't see them coming... until it's too late.

Trouble Clef

"Is this something?"

Patriot Jensen paused in front of the spray-painted mural. It was a sloppy haze of mauve paint that seemed to turn into ocean waves at the top while an undercurrent of blue stars stretched across the bottom about halfway across, and then swept up into a dramatic curl framing the right-hand side like a parenthesis, with the blue stars scattering off into white flecks. At the top, seemingly riding the mauve waves, was an oblong that vaguely resembled a surfboard. A glowing halo hung above the figure: Orange and yellow, it resembled a sunset. The mural was crude and had been done swiftly, but it was tied together by a series of white, four-pointed stars that marched across the mural about a third of the way up from the bottom.

It looked fresh; more to the point, it smelled fresh. Resistor activity had been noted in this quarter of the city; they might have had time to slap this up before he and his patrol arrived on the scene.

Jensen looked to the synaesthetes under his watch and studied their faces closely. They weren't to be trusted; they were useful freaks, but the State had no use for such as them in any capacity aside from what they were doing right now: Sniffing out the messages that resistors, who also used syns, left for each other on the city's crumbling walls.

Lawson, the unofficial leader of the syns, stepped forward and surveyed the mural. Patriot Murphy, always a little too eager, gripped his long gun and brought it up a few inches in readiness. Jensen rolled his eyes. What did he think the syns were going to do? Suddenly demonstrate super-human fighting skills and overpower a squad of four security enforcers?

Lawson paid Murphy no mind. Scanning the mural from left to right, as though reading it, he nodded his head in time and smiled. "I know this one," he said.

"Confirm it," Jensen said.

Lawson glanced back at the other two syns. "Pete? Sam? What do you think?"

"Yep," Pete said.

"An oldie... but a goodie," Sam said.

"Okay, you fucks," Murphy snarled. "Quit wasting time. What the hell is it, and what does it mean?"

"Shut it, Murphy," Jensen told him.

"You a pop-head lover now?" Murphy retorted.

"One more word and you are punished!" Jensen gritted. If there was anything he hated more than the freaks America was finally ridding itself of, it was undisciplined boys who thought the patches on their black shirts and the guns in their arms made them men.

The resistors were a real danger. They were smart and they were disciplined – not like old-school lefties, who could never seem to agree on what they wanted or how to get there. It was that very lack of focus and unity that sparked such contempt for them in Jensen's soul. He didn't care about gay guys marrying each other or little kids trying to tell their parents they were girls instead of boys or boys instead of girls. None of that shit had anything to do with the essentials of good government: Order, safety, efficiency. A gay or trans guy could do his job just as well as anyone else, as far as Jensen was concerned, and it was the way punks like Murphy had been elevated to positions of authority based less on merit than on a delight in brutal mechanics of imposing order that made Jensen fear for the future.

If the knuckleheads like Murphy don't wise up, the resistors will win. And then we'll have a democracy again, Jensen thought, a shudder passing through him. Like everyone else, Jensen had learned in churchschool about Satan's plan to rule the world through a corrupt system of government in which righteous voices were drowned out by diabolical ones.

Well, that wasn't going to happen. The rezzies used syns? So would Security.

"Lawson," Jensen prodded.

"Okay, you see this row of white pulses here?" Lawson asked, pointing from one four-pointed, quasar-like glyph to the next. "These time the beat. And these..." He pointed to tendrils of pink that wound through the mauve haze.

"Polyrhythm," nodded Pete.

"And also the basis of the melody," Sam added.

Lawson pointed to the swarm of small blue stars. Jensen noticed for the first time that they seemed to dance around an intermittent, jagged blue line.

"I forgot about that part," Sam said.

"Which?" Pete asked.

"That kind of creak that would sound in parts of the song."

"So, you know what it is?" Jensen asked.

Lawson stepped forward and pointed to another detail Jensen had missed at first. The mural was separated into thirds by thin vertical columns: Paired black lines between which snaking lines in white and blue seemed to writhe and descend. "It's unmistakable," he said.

"Stupid girl," Pete said.

Murphy raised his gun with a jerk. "Say that to him again, asshole, and see what happens!"

"Murphy!" Jensen barked.

Murphy kept quiet but didn't lower his long gun.

"That's the title of the song," Lawson said, not quite looking at Jensen and not quite looking at Murphy, either. "It's an old pop song."

"They all are," Jensen snapped. "But what does this particular mural mean?"

"Well," Pete said, "to my mind... though not to yours, not officially... the reference can only be to Madame President."

The daughter of the late Dictator for Life.

"You think they're gonna try to kill her?" Murphy demanded, his voice even more angry and threatening.

"Goddammit, Murphy, stand the fuck down," Petersen told him. "I'm not gonna tell you again."

Murphy glared at him but said nothing. His body remained rigid, his grip on the long gun tight.

"What else do you read here?" Jensen asked. "There's always more than one level of meaning, right?"

The syns looked at each other and shrugged.

"Okay." Lawson pointed to the line of white starbursts again. "There are six of these – that suggests six days from the time the mural was painted."

"It's pretty fresh, probably painted last night, so... five days from now?" Roberts, who had kept quiet, asked. Roberts was smart and level-headed... until any sort of action started. Then he would turn on a dime into the sort of deranged animal that Murphy was just waiting to be.

"Maybe, or maybe six," Lawson said.

"Okay, five or six days," Jensen said. "But where?"

Lawson shrugged. "Where's she going? What's on her agenda? I wouldn't have that information."

"But the blue undertow there, that points to the synth line," Pete said. "It emerges from underneath the other parts in the song's mix and then serves as a kind of sonic transition... that's why it has the shape it does, and why it spits out white foam like that. You hear the ocean in it? Ocean... or a cheering crowd. And the way the curve is shaped..."

"Central Arena," Lawson nodded. He bent forward and eyed the mural more closely. Tiny flecks of red were scattered through the mural as the blue stars sparked into white foam. "Definitely the voices of a crowd. Good eye."

"I mean..." Pete shook his head. "It's right there. Don't you hear it?"

"Now that you mention it," Jensen said.

"It kinda gets lost in the mix," Sam objected. "It's not clear at all."

"But I agree with Pete," Lawson said, turning to Jensen. "I'd say five or six days from now, in Central Arena."

"We need to get back to HQ and see if we can pin down the president's activities for the next week," Jensen said.

As they walked the thirty blocks back to HQ, Murphy and Thompson taking the lead and Jensen taking up the rear with Roberts. The syns walked in a tight group in the middle, having one of their impenetrable debates. Jensen permitted them to talk, since he was curious about how their minds worked. He was also looking for clues about any hidden plans the syns might be hatching on their own.

Syns weren't like other people. Back in the dark days of democracy – what the instructors in churchschool called the demon times – they had had a single class on the various kinds of perversion and devilspawn that had once run roughshod over God's world. There was a whole category called "neurodiverse" – or, as the instructor called it, "brain-warped" – people. Syns were one example. They saw colors and felt textures when they heard music... or, the other way around: They heard music when they saw colors and shapes.

Jensen had been thrilled when his father had signed the permission slip to allow him to attend the class. "The more the boy knows," he had said to Jensen's skeptical mother, "the higher in the ranks he'll rise." Dad had been one of the original Security Patriots, leading attacks on whole leftist strongholds. His most famous accomplishment was the eradication of 244 demons that had holed up in a Universalist church. "That was one big fat nest of groomers and crits," he used to say when telling the tale, which – Jensen had noted – got ever more elaborate and improbable with each retelling.

Jensen had indeed risen through the ranks, making his old man proud. But he'd also taken a lesson from watching how his father had retreated into a dreamland of past glory and sunk to the bottom of a bottle. Dad had been entitled to a certain level of medical care, but event he prayer physicians couldn't help with his drinking. It had killed him in the end.

Jensen didn't drink. He also did his best to avoid the magical thinking he saw others in security indulge in: Lefties couldn't shoot straight; God would vaporize the bullets that the rezzies fired at them during ambushes; the Final Glory was mere weeks, or months, or maybe a couple of years away.

Jensen would believe all of that when he saw it. Meantime, his philosophy was that God protected those that protected themselves, and gathering information was one of the most powerful means he knew for protection.

Jensen listened carefully as the three syns debated on whether or not someone called Bach had been like them.

"Of course Bach was a syn," Pete said. "Any syn who listens to his music can see that. Literally see that. The shapes and colors he uses are too deliberate."

"Aw, you're just theorizing," Sam said. Sam loved to argue; he might not even have meant what he was saying.

"I am not..." Pete was the sort who took things a little too literally, and he had something of a thin skin. If he'd been normal, he might have made for a good Patriot. God knew Security could use a few more smart guys, and while Lawson was the leader thanks to his demeanor and charisma, Pete was the smartest and most perceptive of the bunch.

"You fuckin' fruits wanna knock it off?" Murphy barked back at them. "Jesus Christ, these synaesthetics, they'd be better off dead," he added in a comment to Roberts, who didn't respond.

Jensen saw Pete and Sam glance at each other in exasperation at Murphy's casual blasphemy. If one of them had said such a thing they would have been executed on the spot. But Security Patriots and other armed government officials got free passes to do things no one but Owners were typically allowed, Jensen thought, with disapproval. They could drink, as Dad had done. They could cuss, smoke... do anything they wanted, even commit homosexual rape, as Murphy had been known to do – or so the transfer orders had noted when Murphy arrived, reassigned by the High Command to D.C. from Los Angeles.

Jensen had kept a close eye on Murphy after reading those comments in his service dossier. It had been four months and Murphy had done his share of drinking and beaten more than his share of camp internees, but as far as Jensen knew he's kept his proclivities for sexual assault under wraps. That sort of thing was less tolerated here than it was in other places.

Still, Murphy was a hair trigger, and he might go off at any time and in any direction...

The tedious march back through the city streets had finally brought them back to HQ. "Get these pop-heads back to their pen," Jensen told Thompson. "Murphy, Roberts, you're with me. We have some research to do."

***

It quickly became clear what the rezzies had to be planning. The president was indeed going to speak at Central Arena in five days' time. It would basically be another one of her rallies – in the old days they would have called it a campaign rally, but there were no more campaigns because there were no more elections. There was only the president, and all other officials – congressman, judges, czars – served at her pleasure, and, as the joke went, died at her displeasure.

An analysis team had confirmed what Lawson had said about the timing of whatever the rezzies had in mind and had pinpointed additional details. "These blue spots here that transition into white spots," the head of the analysis team said, pointing to different spots on the photo of the mural that Roberts had taken. "See how they are a bit larger than the others, and a bit brighter? They code the time: Twelve blue and six white. Eighteen o'clock."

"Why didn't they tell us that?" Murphy asked. Then, before anyone could answer: "Because they want to hinder our investigation, that's why! They want our president to die!" Murphy turned to Jensen, his face twisted with rage – and also, Jensen saw, with some demented sort of lust. "Let me kill those freaks."

"Stand down, Murphy," Jensen said. He was getting sick of having to repeat the words.

"They're monsters! They're working against us! Why are you protecting them?"

"If they're trying to derail our work, then why did the analytics team just confirm what they told us?" Jensen demanded.

"Why didn't they tell us the rest?" Roberts spoke up. Roberts didn't like Murphy; he wasn't defending him; but Murphy's hysteria and bloodlust were working in him all the same. Jensen didn't like it.

"They are more keyed into the music than the cryptological elements," the analyst said. "That's probably why. They didn't see it."

"Like fuck they didn't," Murphy muttered.

"Who knows how a freak processes information?" Roberts said. "The thing that matters now is to figure out what they are gonna do. Plant a bomb?"

"Our sweeps would pick it up," Jensen said.

"They've got something up their sleeves though..."

"We won't figure it out until we figure out what they want," Jensen said.

"What they want? What all those Satanists want!" Murphy cried. "To kill us! To enslave us! To steal our children and hand the whole world over to the devil!"

"Okay, Murphy, back to barracks," Jensen said.

Murphy saluted stiffly and marched away. When he had first arrived he would at least pretend to be apologetic or abashed. Now he didn't bother. He was all attitude, all the time.

"I agree with him" Roberts said. "You gonna send me to bed without supper too?"

"No," Jensen told him, "I need you. I need someone who's got as much in the way of brains as balls."

Roberts actually smiled at that.

"So let's think about what they could do at Central Arena," Jensen said. "Not the usual weapons – guns, knives."

"Maybe toxic resin," Roberts suggested. "Maybe nanocapsules containing plague germs or a virus..."

'It's a mass meeting; a superspreader event, if they could smuggle in some bioweapons." Jensen shook his head. "How can we keep the president safe when she insists on these massive gatherings?"

"She's a showboat and a narcissist – like her dad," the analyst said. A look of alarm came over his face as Jensen and Roberts both gave him hard looks.

"Better get back to your computer lab," Jensen told him.

"Yes sir." The analyst gave a quick salute to Jensen and then nodded at Roberts before turning and scuttling off.

"Fucking eggheads," Roberts muttered.

"But he has a point," Jensen said. Ignoring Roberts' glare, he said, "The president like big gatherings. She likes to the be the center of attention. The rezzies know it. She makes herself a target... and it's up to use to make sure no one takes a shot at that target."

"Okay, what they want," Roberts said, refocusing on the task at hand. "They want to sow discord and distrust, They want to create division and discord. They want to incite violence..."

Roberts was simply regurgitating what he'd heard on the newsfeeds. Jensen knew it was state propaganda, lacking insight or intelligence value. "You stay here and review the security arrangements at Central Arena, any weak points, any avenues of attack we might not have anticipated."

"Where are you going?"

Jensen gave Roberts a quick searching glance. Was he smart enough to understand Jensen's line of thought? Yes. But did he value facts? Or was he another intelligent man inculcated into the magical thinking that dominated the president's inner circle, and had even filtered into critical organizations like the military and Domestic Security? Jensen wasn't convinced.

"I'm going to go listen to some Top 40," he said, knowing Roberts wouldn't get the joke.

***

"They're in their room listening to old music," the guard said. He was seated at desk with a bare work surface. Small video screens surrounded the desk on three sides, showing the residents of the secure housing: Trustees, facilitators, syns, and others drawn from the ranks of the very people the State was ramping up efforts to extinguish. Their cooperation was a valued asset; freaks and malcontents had a way of blending, disappearing into the crowd. Constant surveillance by itself wasn't enough to identify and root out potential traitors. The unworthy themselves had to look for other unworthy, and then explain their actions and motives. No sane or moral person could hope to understand them, after all.

"You want armed reinforcement to go in with you?" the guard asked. "Just tell me what kind of interrogation you have in mind."

Jensen paused. "Meaning?"

"You gonna take out your frustrations and coax them to cooperate better?" The guard smiled with a mixture of sadism and salaciousness. "Or did you have other things in mind?" The guard's grin grew more salacious.

"Like...?" Jensen pinned him with a stern glare.

"Like nothing, sir." The grin was gone; the guard was all business now. "But you shouldn't go in there by yourself."

"It'll be fine," Jensen told him. "Let me in."

The guard keyed numbers into a pad. The door from the reception area unlocked with a loud clank. "Go right ahead, sir. Third room on the right, that's Lawson and them."

Walking through the door, Jensen heard the guard mutter behind his back: "Stick in the mud."

Jensen found the right door easily enough. It had the names of the syns on it:

GREG LAWSON – PETER PRESTON – SAMUEL GOLDFARB

Jensen heard the door's bolt retract as the guard at the desk, monitoring on all his little screens, unlocked it. Jensen pushed down on the handle and swung the door open. The three syns on his team were all inside, sated at small alcoves, their eyes closed and bulky-looking headphones covering their ears. They spent hours each day listening to old music; they had to, since the syns working with the rezzies might use any old song to communicate their messages from one cell to another by way or graffiti, leaflets scattered on the street, or even by hacking into the communications system and displaying CGI animations on official State screens throughout the nicer parts of the city.

They would have less time for reviewing old music for the next few days, Jensen thought. A plot was unfolding, and more murals would appear in the city's poorer, less well-maintained areas – the places where the surveillance cameras were always being vandalized and weren't always replaced. The quarters where signal boosters had failed or been wrecked, so that drones couldn't get or send reliable signals. The places were rot and dissent festered... the very places, he thought, that the president should order cleaned up, only she wouldn't because she seemed to like exiling the disenfranchised and the unworthy what she called the city's shithole districts.

"Guys," Jensen said loudly, and the three men sat bolt upright, tore off their earphones, and turned hastily to face him.

"Commander Jensen," Lawson said.

"I need you tell me everything else about that mural," Jensen said without preamble.

"Everything else?" Lawson seemed confused. "There is nothing else."

"We identified the song and interpreted it," Pete added.

"Yeah? Well, analytic found more. Like, the exact time the attack is going to happen?"

"The attack?" Lawson asked. "There's an attack planned?"

"W presume so, otherwise what's the point of specifying a time and a place?" Jensen asked.

The three syns looked at each other. No one seemed to have anything to say. Lawson looked back at Jensen. "That's all we know," he said.

"Okay," Jensen said calmly. He was a methodical person; this was a time for method, rather than for intimidation. "If there's no more information in the mural that you could identify, then tell me about its mood."

"Its mood?" Sam asked.

"I think he means, like, what key it's in," Pete said. "I mean, didn't you notice the color they used? They transposed the key. The song's original key isn't mauve, it's dark orange."

"Yeah, but... so what?" Lawson asked.

"You know the key, right?" Pete asked.

"No. I can't read music. I just see it," Lawson said.

"Really?" Sam asked. "You don't play an instrument?"

"Nope."

"The key's in D minor in the mural," Pete said.

"The recording is in B major," Sam said.

"So?" Jensen asked.

The men looked at him. "You don't play an instrument either?" Sam asked.

"That's for gays, like theater, like art," Jensen said. "I had no interest in any of that, even before it was made illegal under the 'Divisive Concepts' laws."

Sam and Pete sighed. Lawson looked at them expectantly.

"D minor is the key of death," Pete explained.

"They're planning an assassination attempt." Sam added.

Jensen looked at Lawson. "And you didn't tell me t his?"

"I didn't pick up on it," Lawson said.

"You didn't ask," Pete said with a shrug.

Jensen suppressed an urge to step across the room and punch Pete in the face a few times. He didn't have time for luxuries – and also, he had a feeling that would gratify the guard, who was no doubt watching. Jensen had no wish to even seem to endorse the sort of perversions the guard evidently like to perpetrate.

"Let's get back to basics here," Jensen said. "Different resistor cells communicate using imagery that encodes music, and they do with by using synaesthetics like you three to generate the imagery. Then syns in other groups decode the imagery."

"It's not in code," Sam said. "We just listen to it."

"Well actually, they might be using codes. Syns wouldn't necessarily pick up on that, but the people helping the syns interpret the murals could."

"So, what does the mural we saw this morning tell us about how the attack is going to happen?" Jensen asked.

The three men looked at each other, then looked back at Jensen and shook their heads.

"It doesn't," Lawson said.

"But the other two might," Pete said.

"Other two – ?" Jensen yelped in shock.

"Did you see the way the mural was divided in three?" Pete asked, and Jensen flashed back to the two vertical lines dividing the mural into thirds. "The first part contained two of the rhythm markers."

"You mean those four-pointed stars?"

"Yes; and those two were larger than the others," Pete said.

"Is that what that was about? I thought they were just in a hurry," Lawson said.

"It was more bass response on those two beats," Sam argued.

"Sure; that's what gave that first third greater emphasis." Pete looked back at Jensen. "And that means it was the first of three murals."

"Where are the others?" Jensen asked.

"They won't have been painted yet," Pete said. "I mean, I wouldn't expect them to be. They know you have teams like us working with you. They know time is a crucial advantage. They had to explain the day and place... and time, I guess... from the start, but they won't want to share other details yet."

Jensen looked at Sam and then at Lawson.

"If he says so," Lawson shrugged. "I got the song, and the number of days from now. I didn't catch on to the rest."

"Where do we look for the other two murals when they do up?"

"Wherever any of the other resistance cells are looking," Lawson suggested. "All over the place."

"Consider yourselves on standby," Jensen told them. "Be ready to go as soon as we identify another mural. Meantime, we'll stick to our regular patrol schedule. We might find it ourselves before the usual security sweeps do." He turned to leave, then hesitated. Turing back, he asked the three syns, "Why are you helping us?"

"Well," Lawson said, "it sure as hell beats the camps."

"And the ovens," Pete said.

"So you're really just interested in yourselves?"

"Not even that," Sam said. "I just like music. It's not legal to listen to it otherwise."

***

Two days later Jensen, his men, and his syns stood in front of another mural. They looked it over in the early morning light. Like the first one, it had been painted hurriedly, almost sloppily, and the smell of spray paint still emanated from the pockmarked brick wall that served as its canvas. The smell was mostly masked by that of garbage and the stench of a rotting human body. The mural was located deep in an alleyway in one the city's worse quarters.

"The city security sweep wouldn't have found this if we weren't on high alert," Jensen said to Rogers.

"Yeah, those lazy fucks," Roberts – who had a healthy sense of competition – replied.

"And even then, if someone other than Williamson had been in charge of the security team that found this, they might have overlooked it or not come deep enough into this alley. Not with that dead guy stinking up the place."

"That's why they chose this spot," Rogers said. "But they didn't fool us."

"Can we just get this done and get the hell out of here?" Murphy asked angrily.

Jensen turned on him, feeling an uncharacteristic glee. "What'sa matter? The smell of dead guy getting to you? Gonna hurl your cookies?"

Murphy, looking pale and a bit greenish, looked at the ground and didn't say anything.

"Okay," Jensen said, back to business, "let's do our job. Syns?"

The trio of syns stood in front of the mural, handfuls of their shirts pressed against their noses. "Hard to focus," Sam complained.

"But you can hear it all right," Jensen guessed.

"Oh, yes." Lawson's eyes raked the mural a few times.

"I don't know this one," Pete said.

"That's because you got assigned jazz and not gospel for your specialty. But this is..." Lawson tilted his head. "Look at the combo of brown and yellow. Look at the striations of black – you see the chorus there?"

"Yep..." Sam nodded. "And the harmonizing there."

"Key of A," Pete said. "Is that the original?"

"Yes," Sam said.

Pete hummed a tune.

"You're got it," Lawson said.

"You sure you never heard it before?" Sam asked. "You're doing a good job there."

"This is totally new to me," Pete said, "but I'm good at sight reading."

"I don't see how this helps us, though," Lawson said. "The main clue... or instruction... was in the lyrics of the last one. But this..."

"Is communicating that it's going to be a full-scale assault. Maybe a suicide mission," Sam filled in.

"Do you..." Lawson's voice trailed off. "Shit. Of course."

"Okay guys," Jensen said, shooting a warning glance at Murphy, who was visibly trembling with fury. "What is this and what does it tell us?"

"It's a religious song," Lawsons aid. "It's called 'Earthen Vessels.' It talks about how this life is temporary and it's our souls that are permanent... and how our sacrifices on Earth earn us rewards in Heaven."

"In other words," Sam said, "don't be afraid to die. And also..." He nodded at the mural. "You were talking about codes? I don't see a code here, but I do see lots of voices. A whole chorus. This is talking to a group. It's saying a lot of the assailants are probably going to die, so be prepared for that."

"They're planning a mass attack and expecting a high casualty rate," Jensen said.

"Maybe we should start killing first," Murphy said, his voice sharp. "Even things out a little." He stared at the three syns, his look nothing short of hungry.

"Enough of that," Jensen told him. He paused, his attention drawn by a small antenna array higher up on the wall. It was a 12G booster. Were the city's police beefing up surveillance efforts? Jensen looked up, around, up and down the alleyway. He saw where two surveillance cameras had been installed, but both were clearly out of service – smashed, dangling. He looked again at the 12G booster. "Why install a booster unit before replacing the security cameras?" he wondered aloud.

Thompson looked up the alley at one of the smashed cameras. "Guess they upgraded here, but the guys who panted this saw the cameras and took them out before they did their little art project here."

Still thinking about security cameras and security images, Jensen flashed on the need of a set of detailed images to take back to HQ for the analysis team. He looked at Roberts. "Got what you need?"

Roberts had finished taking photos. He replied with a thumbs up.

***

"They encoded a little more in to this one," the analytics chief told them back at HQ, surveying the photos Roberts had taken on a large lumentic screen. As the first mural had been, this one was broken into three portions by two sets of thin black lines. The middle section was a little brighter... or was that simply his imagination, Jensen wondered, a product of his expectations?

The analytics chief enlarged a small area in the upper right. The details stood out, ultra-crisp between the lumentic screen's rich reproduction of color and grain, and quality of Roberts' hi-def source image. "Look at how the – "

"Can we just skip to the conclusions, and leave the observations for the written report?" Jensen asked.

"Certainly," the analytics guy said, though his tone cooled noticeably. He didn't like having his moment dimmed. "To summarize, then: We found a repeat of the date and time, and we also found what seems to be an estimate for the strength of the president's security detail: One thousand, two hundred."

"What?" Jensen couldn't stop himself from sounding like his was laughing. "That's absurd."

"There might be that many cops and security agents at the event," Roberts offered.

"Not hardly," Jensen told him. The president had slashed the budget for both the city and federal security forces, arguing that tax money could be saved by relying more on the drone force than human officers. She also seemed t believe her own rhetoric that America was safer than it had ever been, and there was hardly any need for security forces at all anymore. She had made those comments at the last State of the Union address, and while all the uniformed guys in attendance had applauded, Jensen had seen in their faces and in their posture that they didn't agree and were even angry at the assertions.

" 'Earthen Vessels'," Thompson said. "Guess they are talking about all the rat rezzies that are gonna come out of the shadows and throw themselves in front of our guns."

"Hell yeah!" Murphy said approvingly.

"If they want to throw tier lives away in one last big assault..." Roberts grinned. It looked wrong on his dour face. "Then let them!"

Was that really what the number meant? Jensen glanced at the analytics guy and saw his own doubts reflected in the man's expression.

***

"Anything?" Jensen asked for the fortieth time in half an hour.

"No, sir," the tech at a nearby comm station said.

The president's address was that evening – only a few hours away, in fact.

"There has to be a third mural, a final set of instructions," Jensen said, pacing back and forth like a lion in a cage – which was pretty much how he was feeling.

"Does there?" Roberts asked. "We have a time, a place, a number of attackers planning to show up. Maybe that's all there is."

"The two murals we found indicated a third mural would also be provided," Jensen said.

"They knew we'd find those murals," Roberts argued. "They knew we'd figure them out. This is their way of making us hesitate. The more we dilly dally, the longer they have to prepare."

"Except we're not dilly dallying. We're in here trying to be sure we don't miss something – and the rest of our guys, all of them, are out there checking and double checking everything," Jensen said. "And I'm not sure that number refers to the rezzies who are going to show up. I think we'd spot that many of them..."

"Not if they're deeply embedded enough," Roberts said. "Not if they do a whatsis... a flash mob kind of thing."

Jensen shook his head. He didn't buy it. He started scratching under his hat, scratching at his scalp in nervous agitation. It was an old habit he'd never managed to break. He forced himself to stop.

Jensen was feeling harried and pressed. There were only four hours until the president's address, and they didn't have the last pieces of the puzzle. That meant the president wasn't safe. The event was not secure. Nothing was nailed down for sure. Despite this, the president had categorically refused to change or delay her plans. "If they come for me, my people will rise to my defense," she had told him and his superiors at Security, "just as they did on for my father on that fateful day in January so many years ago."

"Yeah, yeah," Jensen told himself, rolling his eyes at the memory of that morning's brief call to the White House.

"What's that?" Roberts asked.

"No, just..." Jensen suddenly had an idea. "Did you see all the 12G boosters?"

"What?" Roberts asked.

"There was a new one above the second mural. And when we were walking back to HQ after that, I saw more – a bunch more. I thought it as the cops in that part of the city, but maybe Tech has been beefing up the surveillance feeds in the city overall. Can you check with them about it?"

"Sure, but what will that tell us?"

"Well, let's say Tech has installed 1,200 new 12G boosters and replaced camera in the bad parts of town. The rezzies could be planning to take them out in preparation for the assault on the president."

Roberts nodded and crossed to a comm console to place the call to Tech.

Jensen nodded at Thompson, who was guarding the three syns together with Murphy. "Let's go," Thompson said, herding the three across the room towards Jensen."

"Pick up the slack, you fucking prick!" Murphy barked, giving Sam a shove. Murphy was even more tightly wound than usual; not a good sign, Jensen thought. He needed men who were cool, collected, focused, and on task – not belligerent children looking for an excuse to waste people.

"Key it down," Jensen told Murphy, sharply.

Murphy glared at him in open defiance. He was a hair's width from outright insubordination.

"I mean it," Jensen told Murphy. "You put a lid on and ice it up, or I'll relive you of duty and you can cool off in detention."

Murphy blew out an exasperated sigh, "Whatever," he muttered.

Jensen was about to ask the syns something, but the question flew out of his head as the comm tech suddenly announced, "They're found one! A mural being painted by four men and two women... looks like this might be the one you were wondering about, sir."

Jensen waved at Roberts, who was still at a comm station across the room. "Let's go!"

***

The third mural was a wash of different shades of blue. It had been spray painted across the front of a disused warehouse in the shipping district.

The mural was unfinished; it was also unintentionally elaborated by the blood of the six resistors who had been painting it. Their work had been swift and efficient, one of the city cops on the scene told them, but not enough; fast as they worked, they were surrounded and gunned down before they could finish.

"What's this mean?" Jensen demanded of his syns.

Lawson and the other two surveyed the unfinished mural, looking confused.

"They didn't get a chance to complete it," Sam pointed out.

"How did you catch them?" Jensen asked the city cop.

The cop pointed across the street. "Surveillance camera," he said.

Jensen frowned. "New?" he asked.

"I don't know. I don't think so."

Jensen gave the camera a long look. It was hard to tell from this distance, but he didn't think it looked newly installed. Maybe it was a repair job – a fresh camera in an old housing.

"Main thing is, we got 'em," the city cop said proudly.

"Yeah, killed them all without giving us a chance to interrogate them," Jensen said. "Well done."

The cop glared daggers at him before turning his back and marching off. His attitude and body language reminded Jensen of Murphy.

Jensen looked back at the syns. "Well?"

Lawson shook his head. "I... there's something familiar about it, but..."

"They didn't get a chance to establish the rhythm, let along the melody," Sam said.

Pete hummed a few notes. "That's all I get," he said.

"Doesn't ring a bell," Sam said.

"No, but... at the same time, it's familiar... I think I've heard something like it," Lawson said.

"What?" Jensen demanded. "What, exactly?"

Lawson stared at the mural, then shook his head. "I don't know."

"God damn it," Jensen said loudly, angrily. He wasn't worried about appearances at this point. "How long have we got?" he asked Roberts.

"It's 16:21," Roberts told him, "The President's speech starts in less than two hours..."

"We better get to Central Arena," Jensen growled. "And you," he said to Lawson, "keep working on it. Your headphones staying connected to the main database?"

Lawson touched his earphone and smiled. "Good reception so far," he said. "Maybe it's all these new 12G boosters they put in."

"Yeah, well, make them count for something. Get me a match, then get me an interpretation."

***

More than an hour elapsed by the time they got to Central Arena and, after attracting the attention of an overworked guard, got him to clear them for entry into the vast public space.

Central Arena was one of the city's most magnificent structures. Everything of importance happened here: Presidential speeches, yes, but also baseball games; football matches; concerts; gladiatorial championships; demolition derbies; monster truck rallies.

The stands were full of screaming supporters there to see and hear the president. A chant of "Four more years!" was echoing through the stadium as Jensen and his retinue made their way onto the field. "That's a little dated," Roberts noted.

A podium surrounded by panels of bulletproof glass had been set up under bright lights. An array of several cameras pointed at the podium from a distance of about eighteen feet. Microphones hung overhead, and scattered all around were huge portable batteries, a mixing station for the sound engineer, cables, and what looked like a backup generator.

"The president is ready to go," Jensen said. He looked up at the great lumentic screens that hung from the stands and towered above the. The face of a president's chief of media was there; he was singing the president's praises. No mention of any dangers seemed to be part of the message.

"If we can't stop whatever's gonna happen..." Jensen turned back to Lawson, who was walking with the other syns, his finger tapping the headphones to advance from song to song. He'd keyed up the generalities of the song: Its tempo, key, and probably genre – but it was slow going to sort through all possible candidates and zero in on the song the rezzies had been painting when the trigger-happy city cops had taken them out.

"We were in fear for our lives," the surly city cop had told Jensen. "They could have gunned us down!"

"With spray cans?" Jensen had snapped at him.

The city cops, already uncooperative, had had little to share with him after that. Fine; they didn't need the city cops' help.

Except, maybe they did. Time was short and getting shorter...

"And now, ladies and gentlemen," the press chief said, his voice thundering across the expanse of Central Arena, "the President of the United States."

There as a long burst of cheering and applause. Lawson fiddled with his headphones, adjusting their noise cancellation setting and still scrolling through songs.

Jensen looked across to the podium; he'd not realized a fortified trailer was among the other equipment and portable structures scattered nearby. The president had emerged from the trailer and was now standing at the podium. It was unsettling; one moment she hadn't been there and then she was. Jensen chided himself as distracted and inattentive.

"My fellow countryman," the president began, before pausing as the thunderous acclaim continued to boil. "My fellow countrymen..."

There were new, more urgent and energetic screams from the stands now. Here we go, Jensen thought, his eyes flicking to the source of the commotion. People seemed to be fighting.

Then more screams erupted from a different spot int eh stands. Banners waved briefly, then the crowd seemed to take the banner down along with the person waving it. In another section of the stands, a bonfire ignited. Screams rang out; people rushed away. A lone figure thrashed, stumbled one way and then another, and then plummeted to a lower level, where more cries of panic erupted.

This is madness, Jensen thought. And yet... it wasn't. It was much more restrained than he would have expected from more than a thousand disruptors seeded throughout the crowd. The chaos was spreading now, and some of it was due simply to a mob mentality, but much of it must have been incited by infiltrators... but still, only a couple dozen. A couple hundred, at most.

Jensen called out to Roberts to head to where the person in flames had fallen, and then directed Murphy and Thompson to spread out to other hot spots. But Murphy, he saw, was aiming his gun at the syns.

"Put it down!" he screamed at Murphy, just before Thomson took him out with a shot. Murphy's body fell and Thompson looked down at him with a mixture of disgust and horror. No officer – no patriot – wanted to kill another. But Murphy had been about to open fire on the syns, and... and himself, Jensen realized.

Thompson looked at him, and Jensen pointed at another section in the stands where a new human torch was burning, rushing back and forth, scattering screaming people. The burning person abruptly dropped and lay still. "Go check it out!" he screamed. Thompson nodded and ran.

Jensen looked at Lawson, who seemed to have found something. He as listening intently, screening out the chaos, nodding is head.

"What? Have you cracked it? What?" Jensen screamed. Lawson couldn't hear him with the headphones on, so Jensen reached over the plucked them off his head. "What have you got?"

"It's – "

Lawson looked up as a new sound welled up. His eyes filled with terror. Jensen looked back at the new sound, and saw a cloud swarming from the passages onto the field... and more seeming to swoop up over the walls of the stadium and then dip down into the arena's bowl...

"Holy hell!" Jensen exclaimed. "Drones!"

At least a thousand. That must have been the number coded into the second mural. But why? Were they armed? Looking more closely, Jensen saw they were Security drones. Of course they were armed, but...

One of the armed drones, then several, opened fire on the podium where the president stood. She began screaming as bullets raked the glass, barely leaving a mark.

"The song," Lawson was screaming. "The song is 'In the Air Tonight!' It's... well, it talks about something being in the air..."

"Obviously!" Jensen screamed at him.

"But the drones aren't the only thing the mural suggests...." Lawson looked up and his eyes got even wider. "Hold your breath!" he screamed over the noise of the drones.

"What?" Then Jensen got it. It wasn't just that the drones were attacking from the air; many Security drones, he knew, was armed with deadly gas. Even now, he realized, they must be deploying their poisons.

Jensen looked up at the drones, barely saw a white mist gently falling from them – saw the mist drifting his way – and looked at Lawson. "Not quite yet," he said. "Wait until I tell you. And then hold your breath for at least thirty seconds... the gas will become inert at that point." The Security personnel should be able to get through this... if they remember their training, he thought, watching as a throng of men in uniform suddenly dropped to the ground fifty meters away, thrashed on the grass, and then became still.

The gas swept toward them... closer... closer...

"Now!" Jensen cried. "Don't breathe for thirty seconds!"

***

Roles reversed, now Lawson carried the weapon while Jensen walked, hands zip-tied, back toward HQ.

The streets were eerily quiet after the noise of the offensive on Central Arena. And the battle hadn't been contained to the stadium; this had been one of the better parts of the city, but now there was evidence of carnage and destruction all around. Bodies were strewn where people had dropped in their tracks, dead within seconds from gas; self-driving cars had crashed into each other, as well as into store fronts and other infrastructure. Like the drones, the vehicles had been overwhelmed by the signals issued by thousands of newly-installed 12G devices rezzie hackers had used to drown out official signals. That was how they turned the drones against the Security forces in and around the arena, after luring most of the city's Security personnel there by way of the messages contained in the murals.

The chaos sown by a handful of disruptors in the stands had been another distraction and had got the security officers sufficiently worked up that many of them didn't realize the drones were using gas, or didn't have time to respond accordingly once they did realize it.

Neither bullets nor grenades had touched the president. Her body was in perfect condition except for her poisoned lungs and bloodstream. It would make for powerful imagery on the state newsfeeds, which the hackers had also seized under their own control.

It was clever plan, perfectly executed.

"How much did you know?" Jensen asked Lawson as they marched back toward Jensen's detention, eventual trial, and whatever fate awaited him after that.

"Everything," Lawson said. "The plan was gradually explained over the course of the last eight months. All the graffiti we investigated, every mural we interpreted... a few details here and there. And in the end, the trap sprang shut."

Jensen laughed bitterly. "And now what?"

"And now? I'd like to say freedom... freedom for all," Lawson said. "Even you, in time. But I've seen too much during my time with Security. And I've picked up too much about human nature from paying such close attention to almost a century and a half of recorded popular music. Today's resistors have high ideals, but it will come back to each person's selfish desires eventually. Desires for status, for wealth, for... well, for status, mostly." He sighed. "The wheel of history goes round, the same spokes on the same wheel, rising and falling and rising again. We ride high, or we're crushed under their advance."

They were walking past a mural. Lawson spared it a glance and a smile crossed his face.

"A song?" Jensen asked.

"A very famous song, and a very forlorn one," Lawson told him – but he wouldn't say more.

Next week we witness the arrival of Arshnak Petak – the galaxy's most feared collector – as he arrives at Earth to determine what the human heart most truly desires... and then make it his own. Biff and Betsy are the "focus group" who will help uncover the truth about human values, or push back with a cry of: "You're a Greedy Bastard, Arshnoz Petak!"