At World's End
S-Michael
Chapter the Fourth
Thesis on Unity
When they flew home, they did so first-class. It seemed that Browne thought they had earned it. Rei headed home, and the others went directly to bed. Shinji almost headed towards Misato's room before correcting himself. After all, they didn't want Asuka to know about them. Still, as he slept on his mat, he couldn't help but miss the softness of Misato's bed…the warmth of Misato's body…
Anyway, the next morning, his classmates, as well as random people in the street, were looking at him with awe. Shinji supposed that it was better than having a knife held at his throat, as had happened so recently (and yet so long ago), but it still made him uncomfortable.
"Hey, Shinji, I hear you started a war," Kensuke said.
"What?" Shinji asked, shocked.
"Yeah. After you invaded Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia and some others declared war on the UN in retaliation, joining with their ally. They blitzkrieged Iraq, Kuwait, and Qatar," he told Shinji. Shinji's head spun. War? Real, honest-to-god, human-on-human war???
"Hey, Shinji, are you alright?" Toji asked, wheeling up to him. Yeah, because that was what Shinji needed: to see his missing leg and be reminded of how he had done that to him. Alright, so it was Unit 01 being controlled by the dummy plug, but, well, it still made him feel guilty.
"I'm fine," Shinji lied. War? As in, pre-Second Impact war? As in, that year of madness that followed Second Impact, war?
"Hey, Shinji, could you wheel me to class?" Toji asked.
"Sure," Shinji drove him down the hall.
"It's not your fault, Shinji," Toji whispered.
"I wasn't thinking about that," Shinji protested.
"You're a terrible liar, Shinji," Toji said.
Shinji survived the school day, but didn't retain any knowledge from it. He hurried home, hoping for a few precious moments alone with Misato before Asuka showed up.
"I've been waiting for you, Shinji," Misato said.
"Yeah?" Shinji asked.
"Asuka won't be home until later. I've arranged it," Misato said.
"Yeah?" Shinji thought he knew where this was going.
"We need to talk. About…Pakistan."
"Oh," Shinji had been wrong.
"Shinji…I am so sorry."
"It's no big deal," Shinji said, with an it's-no-big-deal shrug.
"Yes, it is a 'big deal,' Shinji! It is a very big deal. I fucking raped you," Misato said.
"I could have said no," Shinji said.
"Could you have? You never stand up for yourself, Shinji! You always give in, in spite of what you may want. What do you want, Shinji?" Misato demanded. The words were somehow familiar.
"I don't know, Misato," Shinji said.
"Damn it, boy, don't do this to me! Shinji, I have to know that you are capable of asserting yourself at least enough to tell me 'no' every once in a while. If you're not, then how am I to know that any of this is you? Any time we go out, any time we have sex, it could all be me. This entire relationship could be a lie, for all I know! I can't do that, Shinji! Every time you say that you 'belong to me' like you're some sort of possession, every time you do my chores without being asked, or serve me breakfast in bed, it makes me feel like the worst kind of pedo scum, the worst kind of abuser."
"What are you saying Misato?" Shinji asked.
"I'm saying that this isn't going to work. I want it to, more than anything, but if you can't say no, then it doesn't mean anything when you say yes. If you don't talk back to me right now, it's over. When someone can't say no, it's rape, and I'm not going to be a rapist. Fucking stand up for yourself, Shinji! What the fuck!? Now, Shinji; I'm about to walk out the proverbial door. The future of this relationship depends on you standing up for yourself, for once. Five. Four. Thr—"
"You want me to talk back? How's this: fuck that shit!" Shinji surprised himself by shouting this. "I want you to tell me what to do! I want to be yours, and yes, 'like a possession or something'! I want you to take me whenever you want me, even if the price of that is that there will be some scary instances like the one in Pakistan! I want you to control me, because I trust you not to abuse me, not to intentionally hurt me. Is it normal? Hell no. Is it healthy? I sincerely doubt it, but how about you deal with your own issues before playing therapist to mine? Don't think I haven't noticed that it's easier for you to fuck me than to hold me. I love you, I trust you, and this is what I want. This is exactly what I want, and in an eerie amount of detail, as a matter of fact. However guilty your conscience feels at the ease at which you can make me do things, imagine how guilty you'd feel cutting my legs out from under me, leaving me alone again in this hellish world?" Shinji's throat hurt after that (ironically assertive) rant.
Misato walked over to him and hugged him. "That's all I needed to hear, Shinji" she said, patting his back gently and rocking back and forth.
"Don't make me do that again," Shinji whispered.
"Alright. But you've got to tell me 'no' sometimes," Misato said.
"I'll try," Shinji said.
"How is it that you can trust me so much—me, or any other human being?"
It's easier than trusting myself. "I don't know."
Asuka walked in. "Did I just miss a Kodak moment?"
Misato and Shinji disentangled themselves. "You, ah, kind of had to be there," Misato said, a bit lamely. She and Shinji realized that they had both been crying, and they wiped their eyes. An embarrassing position to be caught in, but it could have been a lot worse…a lot worse.
"Whaever," Asuka said, brushing it aside. "Turn on the news. They're talking about Unification because of this war we started. I mean, really talking."
"Unification?" Shinji asked. He remembered, that after the wars that proceeded Second Impact, there was talk of replacing the UN with some sort of world government. It hadn't happened, but the UN had been reinstated, with more power, and had been slowly growing in strength ever since. There were some people who grumbled that if things kept going the way they were, soon the UN would be a world government in all but name.
Asuka flipped the television on, and the Prime Minister of Japan was speaking. "The ambassador had my full support and approval when he ordered HALO to destroy the angel, and I am told the American ambassador had the approval of his president when he seconded it. Does it adhere to the niceties of UN regulations? No. But how could we sit around being polite when humanity itself is at stake? Some of you are going to ask, well, if the Taliban wants to deplete its military resources, what business is it of ours? The fact of it is, we may not have had the luxury of sitting around and watching Afghanistan try and solve the situation themselves. Look at the records of the previous angels: Israfel had the ability to split itself into two equal halves. Sahaquiel could split pieces of itself from the main body and drop them from orbit as weapons. Some other angels, such as Ireul, were constantly changing themselves. In short, there was a real possibility that the longer we waited, the more likely that the angel would turn into something we couldn't handle. Now, are there any questions?"
-
The thing about any crime is not getting caught, and the thing about not getting caught is, with the exception of corporate crime, there is only a limited amount of ways that you can go about it. Why was corporate crime different? Well, if you murder someone, there was a body. If you rob a bank, there's an empty vault. With corporate crime, however, if you're not greedy and you're not stupid, no one calls the cops because no one knows anything illegal has happened. Well, alright, then; how does one get away with robbing a bank? It was a story of two parts. First, you have to get away with the crime in and of itself, obviously. Then was the part about not getting caught spending the money. If you were patient and absolutely certain you didn't leave any trace that could lead the police back to you, you could simply wait for the statute of limitations to run out. Few people were that patient and none that perfect, though. Option two was leave the country before anyone traced the crime to you. One would not want to make a habit of this, however, so if one were to do it, the ideal would be to do it once and be set for life from the gains of that one crime. One had to weigh the pros and cons of this, as there was a helluva lot of risk involved here. And it will all fall apart unless you can fool the authorities long enough to escape the nation. Alright: how does one get away with murder? There is only three ways. One, you make sure that there isn't enough evidence to prosecute you with. Browne did not think that he would ever have reason to murder anybody, but if he did, he'd probably shoot them in the back of the head in a dark alley with a stolen gun. Minimal contact. Minimal chance of leaving DNA evidence behind. He'd probably still be a suspect, being that if he were to murder anybody, he'd have a damn good reason to do so, but, hopefully they'd never have enough to prosecute. Another way was to make sure there was no body, no evidence of a body. Browne didn't even know where to begin with this, and it seemed that one would have to deal with more than was possible to keep track of in order to make it work. When, in his gruesome mental exercise, he considered this option, the best he could think of was to boil the flesh in a soup and feed it to the homeless (he grimaced to consider it), or to somehow get access to a crematorium. Then, of course, there was the option of framing someone else. This was the best way of getting away with murder. If the case remained open, one lived with the constant fear that some new technology or technique would come along and lead the investigation towards oneself. If they prosecute someone else, then the case is closed. Game over. But Browne could never let someone else suffer for what he did. Wait a second: we're suspending disbelief enough to entertain the possibility of you committing premeditated murder, but the framing someone else for it is where we cross the line? Yeah, that was a point. Of course, the best place to commit a murder was in the middle of a war zone. Who would notice one more body? Just blame the enemy. What all of this had in common was that it all depended on deception. That was the key to crime: deception. Deception, because if you were caught, bad things would happen to you, and quite frankly, you probably deserve those bad things to happen to you.
Operation Advocate, short for Operation Devil's Advocate, was a crime. There were no laws against what they were doing, but that was because no one had ever tried to do it before. (It wasn't as grandiose as SEELE's plot, the Human Instrumentality Project, the Third Impact, but then, what was?) After SEELE, the people had no tolerance for big, evil, international conspiracies, thank you very much. So, the key was deception. But how did one make people not notice when you hijack the world and take it for a test drive?
Browne dialed the number.
"Hello?" asked Jose Valaskas.
"It's Browne."
"I take it you didn't call just to say hello, since you're using this line."
"Do you want me to go to the UN? This seems pretty important," Browne said.
"No. Stay with the NERV remnants. They are absolutely essential to Advocate. Besides, you've always hated the machinations of the political world."
"I'm the best asset you have," Browne said.
"Which is why you're with the Evas. Besides, you have your confidence persona, your nice-guy persona, even your charismatic leader persona, but they take a lot out of you to put up. Your true self is still the fragile, shy kid you were before Second Impact." It was true. Browne was able to operate because of a type of self-hypnotism. "Just keep track of the things on your end, okay?" By which he of course meant keep track of the people.
"It's just…well, without angels or anything, it's kind of boring on this end. Especially when watching the world fall apart all around us."
"Patience, old friend. Patience. Advocate is far from over. Just getting started, as a matter of fact."
"Speaking of which, how are those modifications to Santiago 2 coming along."
"We just finished yesterday. The Evas can be hooked right up into the city's power grid. But there's no GeoFront under the city, so if any angels get that far, we're all screwed."
"The city, you mean? Not HALO?"
"Of course. I thought reading people was your specialty, old friend."
"I had a brain fart. It happens sometimes. Well, I'll see you."
"Wait…"
"What?"
"When this is all over, we'll open a bottle of wine," Valaskas said.
"Thanks, but I'm more of a vodka-and-Coke type myself."
"Yuk! That's fucking disgusting, man. See you." Valaskas hung up. So did Browne. He sighed through his nose, and then went out the door of his room. Well, alright. He was supposed to keep track of these people, how did he do that? He could always try actually visiting them, oh horror of horrors. Browne closed his eyes and centered himself. He could have been the world's best actor, as when he created a persona, he literally created a persona. When he had talked to Misato and Shinji his first day here, he had used a different persona on each of them, each persona designed especially to get them to trust him, and to talk. It had worked better with Shinji than with Misato, but then, Shinji was a lot liked the real Browne (but on the other hand, he doubted that Shinji would ever get involved with Advocate), so it was easier for Browne to understand and manipulate his subconscious.
Browne did not believe in mysticism, but he believed that he had acquired the skill to influence the subconscious of other people. It wasn't a psychic thing. Human beings are just constantly giving off millions of signals, and the subtlety of body language, a person's scent, a certain pitch to the voice, all of these things fed information to the subconscious as surely as speaking fed information to the conscious. His strategy was to create a persona so as to feed all of the right signals into the person he was trying to influence. It worked remarkably well.
A new persona, he told himself, using his own brand of self-hypnosis. I am the new boss. A friendly guy, likable, but not too intimidating. Unless I have to be, but I won't because we're off-duty. Just coming around to see what's up. Trying to build a nonhostile work environment for my subordinates. Yup. That's me.
Well, where to start? How about the place he had started last time? Yeah, that made about as much sense as anything. Besides, he hadn't really talked to Asuka yet. It felt like a loose end (though, of course, interrogating her about Tabris would be a moot point; she hadn't even met him). To Misato's place he went, hailing a cab. He didn't actually have a license to drive in Japan, having been here all of a week (not including the time in Pakistan), and, quite frankly, did not look forward to getting one. That would require going to the DMV, and bureaucrats are evil.
Browne knocked on the door. Shinji opened. "Oh. I mean, hi, why are you here?"
"Getting to know my subordinates better, solidifying ties of friendship. You know. The usual stuff," Browne said, smiling. "So, can I come in?" he called to Misato.
Misato sighed through her nose. "Fine. Beer's in the fridge; help yourself."
"No, thanks," Browne said, coming in.
"Teetotaler?"
"No. I just can't stand the taste. Besides, beer is for pussies. When I drink, it's for real," Browne said. "I see that you're watching the PM's speech." He shook out his hair. "Interesting world we live in, eh?"
"Hey, Mr. Browne, I hope you don't mind me asking, but…how do you get your hair to look like that?" Asuka asked. "Is there something that I can do to mine, or is it natural?"
Browne snorted. "Natural? Hell, no. You wouldn't believe how much effort I have to put into my hair. I spend a half hour in the shower every morning, just shampooing, rinsing, and dying. That's right, dying; only thirty, and I'm already almost completely grey. Man, their ain't no justice. Of course, premature aging is a common ailment with my generation. That year after Second Impact was stressful. Your generation will never truly understand what we went through. I hope."
"Well, at least you're not going bald," Asuka said, keeping the subject to something cheerier than the end of the world.
"Tell that to my shower drain," Browne said. "So you kids okay with this whole starting a war thing?"
"Oh, I'm fine," Asuka said. "I've always hated those Taliban. Thought we should have invaded them a long time ago, in my opinion."
Shinji became physically more drawn into himself, hunching his shoulders, crossing his arms, and slouching. Misato put her hand on his shoulder, and he looked into her eyes. "It's not your fault, you know. We had to get the angel before it became too much for us to handle, like the PM said. If the Afghanis just hadn't been so stubborn…"
Yes. If the Afghanis hadn't been so stubborn. Problem was, stubbornness was a basic human trait. Humanity had such potential, if they would just do away with all of this bullshit, the old hatreds, the religions, the separatism, the idiocy. But that train of thought was a sidetrack. As he talked to them, what Browne was noticing was the way they were physically reacting to one another. He had noticed something when he was interrogating these people, but had written it off as his mind playing perverted tricks on him. In Pakistan, too, he had noticed something sometimes between the two of them, and now the way they were acting, but not even that: subtle hints in the way they were acting led him to think that something was happening between these two. Something sexual.
Shinji relaxed and tensed up both at the same time, whenever Misato touched him, and when he looked at her, a growing portion of his gaze was awed. This suggested, and many other signals confirmed, that he was in love with her, and slowly but surely getting more expressive about it. If he was getting more expressive, then she hadn't told him off yet. Of course, it could just be that Misato hadn't noticed. After all, he could hardly get much less expressive. Still, he didn't think that this was it. From Misato's signals, he guessed that she had romantic feelings for him, too, and also that part of her was disgusted with herself for those feelings. Browne wondered: are they secret lovers, do they not consciously realize that they have feelings for each other, or am I just reading too much into it? After all, it could just be that he identified with Shinji, and found Misato attractive…
Asuka knew something was going on. She didn't know what, but she was jealous. Browne did not think that it was a sexual jealousy; simply, she was aware that the other two members of her "family" were excluding her from something.
Browne's satellite phone rang. "Hello? What, already? We only just returned to Tokyo 3. Well, where is it? Alright, we'll be there."
"What is it?" Misato asked. They all knew aleady, just from listening to his portion of the conversation, but you have to go through the song and dance of things.
"We're shipping out again. There's another angel."