Getting Real

He waited for the cops to hammer away at him some more. But they just got up and walked out of the infirmary. A little later, two blank-faced guards marched him to a cell of his own. No bunkmate. No getting Real, not unless an avatar showed up out of nowhere. He was stuck with the world as it actually was. In nothing flat, he was bored out of his skull.

* * * *

Hu Zhiaoxing arranged a video hookup with the American dignitaries. When you were at war, you didn’t meet face to face unless one side was giving up. Hu thought that was a stupid rule, but it was the one the Americans played by.

“By now,” he said, “you will have seen that your attacks cannot harm us. They have cost you casualties and damage, but here I stay in Avalon, as safe and comfortable as if you had never started your foolish war.”

“You can’t talk to us that way!” the American Secretary of Defense raged. “You have no right!” The glowers from Secretary Jackson and Secretary Kojima said they agreed with Berkowitz.

Agreeing didn’t make them right. Minister Hu gave back a sweet, sad smile. “Centuries ago, my ancestors said the same thing to Western envoys. And Western gunboats and cannons and rifles, weapons we could not match, taught my ancestors that might makes right.”

“Just what they deserved, too!” Jackson exclaimed. This time, Berkowitz and Kojima nodded like bobbleheads. They might be the USA’s top officials, but they showed no understanding of history. Well, that had been an American failing for a long time.

One of many—and the Americans also showed no understanding that failings had a price. Hu Zhiaoxing’s voice hardened: “If you settle now—if you concede that we may distribute Real squares and other such artifacts within your borders as we see fit, if you agree that Chinese citizens arrested in the USA will be tried in Chinese courts to ensure fairness, and if you pay a moderate indemnity for disturbing the peace—we will end the unfortunate hostilities on these mild and gentle terms.”

“We’ll see you in hell first!” Kojima shouted. “You have to keep that poison out of our country, and we’ll keep fighting till you do!” By their savage expressions, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense supported the Secretary of the DEA.

That was too bad—for them, and for their country. “Are you sure this is your last word?” Hu asked, genuine concern in his voice. He liked Americans. He admired what America had been. That its own people refused to realize it no longer was what it had been saddened him. One more failing that had a price. “Please reconsider,” he urged. “If things go on, a time will come when I have to speak of terms once more. At that time, my government won’t let me be so generous. We will have had to do more, and so we will require more from you.”

“The President’s told the American people we’re going to win,” Jackson said. “We won’t back down. We can’t back down. It won’t be long before you’re singing a different tune.”

Ironically, what first occurred to Third Minister Hu was a passage from the Christian Bible: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Well, if they didn’t know, they would have to find out. “I am afraid I see no point to carrying this conversation any further at the moment,” he said sadly, breaking the connection.

He had to fight the impulse to go into the next room and wash his hands.

* * * *

Lieutenant Razmara was dictating a report into the transcriber in the middle of the afternoon when the cop shop lost power again. This time, no fighter jet had crashed across the street. Quietly and without any fuss, things just stopped working. “Crap,” he said—he hadn’t saved for a while, so he was out a couple of pages’ worth of work.

Other officers offered their detailed opinions of the situation. Most of them sounded as thrilled as he was. Some seemed even more delighted.

Windows still worked, anyhow—he could see. He pulled out his cell phone to see if he could find out how long the outage would last. But the screen stayed blank when he thumbed the ON button. “Crap!” he said again, this time with feeling. Hadn’t he charged the stupid thing last night? He knew damn well he had.

So how come it wasn’t working, then? A rising tide of profanity from desks all over the office told him his wasn’t the only dead cell, either—not even close. The station was unusual in still having landlines. It had them for the same reason it had emergency lights and backup generators: to keep it going if something went kaflooie.

When Razmara picked up the landline on his desk, all he got was silence. Come to think of it, the emergency lights hadn’t come on this time. The backup generators weren’t generating, either. For all he knew, they’d degenerated since the last time anybody bothered to inspect them.

Stas Kyriades ambled over to his desk. “I don’t like it that everything electric is out,” the sergeant said.