Chapter 14: Steamboat Willie

In a bar just barely clean enough to avoid being called a dive, Big Mike spotted an unusual sight. The first thing he noticed was the bottle. It was a bright neon blue that stuck out in the darkness as if the glass had been imbued with some fluorescent material. The next thing he noticed was Carson's glum expression and lack of drinking companions.

"As I live and breathe," said Big Mike, "Carson Wilford with a bottle of top shelf. I guess you finally made it."

Carson stared up at him miserably and took a sip from his cup before answering. "I've recently come into some money. Figured now was a good time to spend it."

"That's not the Carson I know," said Mike. "You finally sell that pawn shop?"

"It's the pawn shop that made me the money," said Carson.

Big Mike eyed him skeptically. The pawn shop had barely ever kept food on Carson's table, and the man had asked him for loans more times than Big Mike could count.

"You start fencing stolen goods or something?" asked Big Mike, only half joking.

"I started listening to the radio," said Carson simply. Big Mike knew exactly what he meant. Intrigued, he sat down.

"Can I have a taste?"

Surprisingly, Carson didn't hesitate to slide him the bottle. The old Carson would have been stingy with his penny beer, much less the most expensive bottle in the bar. Big Mike didn't have a glass, but he took a swig directly from the bottle.

"Damn that's good," said Big Mike after a long sigh.

"It's all I've got now," said Carson. "Just me and this bottle."

"What's wrong, your wife leave you?"

Big Mike giggled at his own joke, knowing well that Carson had never courted a woman for longer than a few weeks before it fell apart.

"I had a good thing going," said Carson. "I can't believe how blind I was before. I was always fixing for that one expensive flip that would make back all of my money, but I didn't know how to get it, so I would just buy everything. Once I started listening to the music I started turning everyone down. I only bought the real cash cow items that would flip for three times their price. It was obvious what was junk and what wasn't."

"Ah, so you cheated."

"It's not cheating," insisted Carson with annoyance, "everyone else could have tuned in too if they wanted to, they just didn't. Their loss."

"So why the long face?"

"It's been a week since they've been on the radio. I think they might be gone for good. That's what people are saying at least."

"People are dumb," said Big Mike. "A friend told me they're still on in Richter City."

"I guess that's good news, but it still doesn't matter to me. It's a four day drive to Richter City and I don't even have an automobile. By the time I got back, the music would have worn off."

Big Mike started to smile. His smile grew until he roughly resembled a shark. "You know my friend is actually from Richter City… and we keep in contact by mail."

Carson looked on dumbly as Big Mike produced a letter envelope from his jacket pocket. It took him a full three seconds before he put it together.

"Is that?"

Big Mike nodded. "It sure is."

"Lemme see!"

Big Mike withdrew the envelope and held it close to his chest. "What are you willing to pay for it?"

Carson seemed to transform into a completely different person, his slumped shoulders now arched forward in fiendish craving. "Aw come on man, don't be that way!"

"You're in the business of buying valuable junk, right? How much is it worth it to you?"

Carson produced every bill he had in his wallet. It was a surprising sum for a person who usually had only spare change. Big Mike shook his head.

"Hold on," said Carson. "Stay right here. Don't move an inch. I'm gonna run home and get my savings."

Big Mike leaned back in his chair. He looked at the letter with satisfaction and hummed a tune to himself. Then he looked around at the other patrons, stood up, and shouted to them.

"Drinks are on me tonight!"

As the hollering and cheering reached a fever pitch, Big Mike took another drink and basked in the glow of it all. Life was good.

Donald and the director stood in the corner of the room with their hands behind their backs. The director was smiling. Donald wished he could share in the man's enthusiasm. According to the director, it had been a productive couple of months. George sat at one end of the long table, with the agents all on one end and the test administrators on the other. Occasionally, George would rise, walk to one of the agents, and critique his technique, before returning to his seat. The room was abuzz with chatter as the agents analyzed and guessed secrets of all types with varying degrees of accuracy.

"They'll be ready for the field soon," said the director proudly.

"If you say so," mumbled Donald.

"You don't think they're ready?"

"You haven't seen what they're capable of. What she's capable of."

"It's no matter," said the director. "We've got the numbers and the resources. This team is just the beginning."

Donald sighed. "That's what you said about the R&D team."

The director pursed his lips. "The physicists will crack the code in time, but I'll admit, I was hoping your friend here would be more helpful in that regard."

"If we can't capture them alive, then that means no more music. No more music, and this team becomes completely worthless."

The director crossed his arms. "We still win if they die. No more music, no more threats to the regime. It's not the best endgame, but it's an acceptable outcome."

"I think you underestimate how upset people will be if the music vanishes entirely. There might be another war."

"A war we're well equipped to win."

Donald stepped forward towards the table and called time. The agents stood, and the proctors left the room.

"Time for combat training."

George winced, but took his position on the other side of the table. The agents remained standing, and folded their hands behind their backs, rapt at attention. It had taken over a month to convince George to teach the team how to withstand sensory attacks. Donald had suspected from the start that George knew more than he let on.

"I don't know how she did it, I swear," George had professed unconvincingly.

"Then figure it out. If she learned how to do it, so can you."

"It's complicated. I wouldn't even know where to start."

Donald had frowned, remembering the pain of having his every sense overwhelmed. "I think you're forgetting the stakes here. You've got a week to figure something out, or Sophie's new apartment is gonna be a prison cell."

Donald didn't take pleasure in threatening George, and he knew George burned with anger every time he did it, but he also knew that George was lying. He knew well how to defend against Minnie's attack. He probably knew how to do it himself. If the regime had access to that power, their victory was almost certain.

Donald realized that for the first time, he desperately wanted the regime to win. He had never cared before, doing his job with his head down, and assuming that part was a given. The regime always wins. That was the lesson of his brother's death. The regime was an instrument of senseless violence, but its supremacy was the only constant. Meeting George and Mickey had changed all that. If the regime lost, Donald was sure to be killed by a mob or sentenced to a Whiteglove firing squad, but that wasn't what worried him. What worried him was the possibility that life had meaning. That was a possibility too painful to bear, and so the regime had to win, at any cost.

George stood across from the agents and began his attack. He composed a symphony of chaos and swept it wide over a hundred ballrooms. The attack was mostly the same each time for any given person, but variations in the state of the fourth dimension meant he had to tailor it slightly. He had thought of much more creative ways to attack the senses, like baiting the victim into overcompensating for the noise, and then rapidly switching the attack's frequency, but he kept that to himself. Silently, he hoped that Minnie had thought of that attack too. It might buy her a few precious seconds.

The agents were hardened and basically immune by this point. The attack barely managed to cover their eyes and ears with a thin layer of static before they corrected for it. Their skin tingled and their mouths filled with a faint aftertaste, but otherwise they were unaffected. After a few seconds, the next stage of the test began. Donald passed the agent on the end a slip of paper with a poem written on it. The agent blinked a pattern on a few slices to the next agent, who passed the message seamlessly down the line. The final agent transcribed the poem perfectly on another scrap of paper. The director nodded in satisfaction and the test concluded.

The training continued for another hour or so, which included an awkwardly given lecture from George. In months of teaching, he hadn't gotten any better at it. Donald supervised the whole process and then left in a hurry. He wasn't eager to get home so much as he was eager to leave work. The one thing that had given him joy was now the source of his discomfort.

"Hey wait up," called George, hurrying out the building after him.

"What is it?" asked Donald unenthusiastically.

"Let's get a drink."

"You don't drink," reminded Donald.

"I do with you," said George. "Come on, it'll be fun."

Donald highly doubted that, but begrudgingly agreed. George didn't know any bars, but Donald found them a close one and they drove to it. The two men sipped beers in silence until George finally broke through the awkwardness.

"You haven't been yourself recently. It's… worrying."

"Why?" asked Donald, originally intending to deny that anything was wrong, but lacking the energy.

"Why is it worrying?"

"Why do you care?"

George frowned. He actually hadn't considered the question. Why did he care? He had no reason to like Donald, and plenty of reasons to hate him. He was a murderer, a tool of an oppressive state, and he was personally holding George and his wife hostage. Maybe it was Gothenburg syndrome. The more he thought about it, the more he came to the realization that he wasn't afraid of Donald, he was afraid for him. It was pity.

"Because we're friends," said George at last. "I care about your well being."

"You shouldn't," said Donald. "We're colleagues at best. It's not your problem."

"I'm making it my problem," said George with an uncharacteristic boldness. "What's wrong?"

Donald sighed and glared at his beer. "The world is changing. And none of it makes sense."

"So change with it."

"It's not that simple. We're either going to win this conflict and agents like me will be out of a job, or we're going to lose and I'll be dead. Even if I started learning now, I'd never get as good as the new agents we're training."

George paused a moment, furrowing his brow. "I thought you believed in predestination."

"What?"

"You told me once that you believed in destiny, but that it was all a big joke. If that's true, then why does any of this matter? You don't have control over it anyway."

Donald shifted uncomfortably and coughed. "It's different now."

"Is it?" asked George. "Or are you different?"

Donald bit his lip and avoided George's gaze. He felt the same as he had when he was talking to an imprisoned Mickey. Like he was the one behind bars.

"What do you want from me?" spat Donald.

"I want to help you."

"Well you can't," said Donald. "There's nothing you can do."

"I don't believe that. I can offer you another option."

"If you're going to ask me to join the Whitegloves I'm afraid I'm going to have to put you under arrest," said Donald, only half sarcastically.

"Run away," said George.

Donald was speechless. He stared blankly until George elaborated.

"Leave the country. Live somewhere else and leave it all behind. Make a new life free of all this."

"I can't," said Donald. "There are so many reasons I can't."

"Like what?"

"The regime will find me. No matter where I run, they can find me. Especially now that you've trained a team to do exactly that."

"Maybe they won't care. Or maybe we'll lose and the regime won't exist," said George, strategically using the word "we."

"How can you be so damn optimistic about things? This is not going to end with me riding off into the sunset. The Whitegloves want me dead as much as the regime would if I deserted. If the world ever needed me, it doesn't anymore. I blew any chance I had at being a good person."

George was taken aback. It was the first time Donald had ever acknowledged the existence of good people.

"I… think you're a good person," said George slowly.

Donald looked George in the eyes for the first time since the conversation began. It was an angry look, with a piercing star that accused George of being a miserable liar. To his surprise, George looked earnest. Donald desperately tried to find any hint of untruthfulness in George's eyes, but found none. No person who knew what Donald had done would say such a thing, but it couldn't be ignorance. George wasn't an idiot. He knew what Donald was. He just didn't care. Donald fought back tears.

He pulled out a wad of cash and left it on the table as he stood.

"We'll see if you say that when this is all over," said Donald brusquely.

George stood up as well. "Wait," he called, as Donald stormed from the bar. "You're my ride."

"You're not blind anymore. Walk home," spat Donald callously.

Two blocks away from the checkpoint, a group of Whiteglove soldiers huddled together in a ditch. It was the third time this week they had tried to take the radio tower in Brierre. One of the soldiers smoked nervously. Another checked and cleaned his rifle as if he hadn't spent the last ten minutes doing it. A third soldier kept his eyes locked on the portable radio he had removed from his back and set on the ground. His look seemed to will it to give the order and free him from the torture of a holding pattern. Minnie grimaced as she surveyed the situation from a thousand angles.

"They're not going to win," she said to the war room.

Mama crossed her arms. "It's not about that. It's about creating pressure. If we kill enough regime soldiers here, they might request reinforcements, and a better target might open up."

"Might," repeated Minnie. "We don't know for sure. What I do know is that these men are going to die."

Mickey tried to look for evidence to suggest otherwise, but found nothing. The tower was well guarded, and the angles of attack weren't great. He kept looking, and kept silent.

"This is the best target we have," said Mama. "You told me our priority was getting you on the air. If that's true, you'll give the order."

Minnie gritted her teeth and nursed a growing headache. The men in the room eyed her with anticipation. She sighed and nodded. A high ranking Whiteglove picked up his radio transmitter and spoke.

"Victor two two, you are cleared to engage. Move in."

The three attack groups closed in and started to fire as soon as they were in range. Regime soldiers started to panic as the checkpoint guards started to drop, and in the chaos they fell back to the perimeter around the radio tower building. The Whitegloves moved in, firing as they ran. Minnie winced as one caught a sniper bullet to the head, but his comrades kept advancing.

"What's happening?" asked Mama. "Talk to me."

"They're past the outer perimeter," explained Mickey. "It's going well so far."

Minnie was surprised to find that he was right. The Whitegloves were well trained and accurate with their shots, each one pausing to aim before firing. The regime forces outnumbered them, but in their current state of disarray, it didn't matter. The bulk of the regime forces had begun retreating only to be flanked by the two attack groups on the other side. Minnie breathed a sigh of relief as the last regime soldier retreated inside the building.

"All they've got to do is storm the building now," said Mickey.

"Tell them to hold," said Minnie.

"Why?" asked Mama.

"The regime soldiers are setting up a kill zone in the lobby," said Mickey. "It would be better to go in through the windows with smoke."

Minnie did a quick check to see if there were any reinforcements on the way and cursed when she noticed it. She couldn't believe it had slipped her notice, but she was so caught up in the battle that she hadn't seen it take off from a nearby airfield.

"Give the order to retreat!" screamed Minnie. "Get them out of there!"

"What is it?" asked Mama.

Minnie started to explain, but it was too late. A military plane swooped low and unleashed a barrage of machine gun fire that carved through street signs, windows, and Whiteglove troops. Most of the men panicked and tried unsuccessfully to find cover before the plane's next approach. It swung around and fired again, and two of the attack groups were lost. The third group got their bearings and charged through the main lobby of the radio building.

Minnie started to cry as the situation unfolded outside of her control. The Whiteglove general continued to scream orders to retreat into the transmitter, but only dead bodies listened. The final attack group was met with a stream of gunfire from the soldiers who had set up a barricade of tables and desks inside the lobby. The crossfire cut the last man down, and Minnie stormed from the room.

Mickey followed her, as did Mama at a distance. The others stayed in the war room. Mickey didn't know what to say. He felt the same as she did, but he wanted to keep his composure. All he could do was put an arm around her.

"We're not going to win this," Minnie said softly.

"That's not true," said Mickey. "We just need a little more time."

Mama stood within earshot and frowned.

"We've barely got more than a million people who have used the music," said Minnie.

"We'll need fifty times that to hold an election."

"Maybe we don't need half the population," said Mickey. "Maybe we can do it with fewer than that."

"I agree," said Mama. "We should lower our standards. Let's try to get another million and then hold the election as planned."

Minnie whirled around and looked Mickey straight in the eyes. "Tell me honestly. Do you think less than two percent of the population is enough to cause a revolution?"

Mickey frowned. He couldn't lie. "No."

"Then we're losing," said Minnie. "And we need to address that."

"We're doing everything we can," said Mama. "Letters, radio, telegrams, even street musicians. Given enough time, we can get to fifty million."

"We don't have enough time," said Minnie. "The regime has captured and killed thousands of our agents in the last month alone. We're running out of options. If we continue like this, every Whiteglove in the country will be dead in a month or two."

"Then we'll get more," said Mama coldly. "You told me you can see how many people support the regime and how many don't. Did those numbers change since you last told me?"

"No," said Minnie.

"Ten percent," said Mama, shaking her head. "Only ten percent of the people actually want the regime in power. If that's true, starting a revolution and getting new soldiers should be easy."

"It should be," said Mickey. "But it won't. People are scared. If we want them to revolt, they have to feel like the tide is turning. No one wants to join the losing side."

Mama frowned. "If you've got any suggestions how we can be the winning side, I'm all ears."

"We need towers," said Minnie, "but the military approach isn't working. Could we build one?"

"That won't work," said Mama. "It would be incredibly easy for the regime to triangulate its position. They'd bomb it after one transmission."

Mickey's eyes widened. "What about a ship?"

"What about it?"

"Could you mount a radio tower to a steamship?"

"Sure," said Mama, "but you'll be disappointed in the result. The tower can't be as tall as it could be on land, and at sea level it'll have a lot less range than the ones on mountains. I'd be surprised if you get more than a twenty kilometer range."

"Maybe that's all we need," said Mickey.

"What do you mean?" asked Minnie.

"Most of the country's population lives in coastal cities. If we sail the ship close enough to the cities, we could reach a lot of people."

"This is a bad idea," said Mama. "You get that close to the coast and the regime ships will blow you out of the water."

"I'm not so sure," said Minnie. "They want to capture us alive. If we make it clear we're on the ship I don't think they'll risk killing us."

Mama scoffed in disbelief. "You want to tell them your position? What makes you think they won't send marines to capture you alive?"

"They'd have to get on the ship first," said Minnie. "And even if they did, I can disable them with a sensory attack."

"I won't agree to this," said Mama. "It's suicide."

"With all due respect, it's not your decision," said Mickey. "Without Minnie, there is no music. She gets the final say."

Mama sighed. "Then teach someone else how to make the damn music! That's what you want, isn't it? To spread it to everyone?"

"It's not that easy," said Minnie.

"Why not?"

"I can only teach it to someone with a doctorate level understanding of both music theory and mathematics. And even to teach someone like that, it would take about six months to a year. We don't have that kind of time."

"But you have enough time to wait for me to build you a radio ship?"

"How long will it take?" asked Mickey. "You already have a steamship big enough, I assume. It's just a question of building a tower on it."

"If we rush it? About a month."

Mickey looked at Minnie questioningly. She nodded. "I'd rather take a risk and have a chance of winning than bleed out slowly," she said softly.

"It's decided, then," said Mickey.

Mama shook her head. "We'll keep trying to capture towers in the meantime. But I want it on record that this is the worst idea I've ever heard."

A month later, the boat was ready. Minnie and Mickey stood in the harbor and marveled at it. It was larger than they had expected. The tower was welded to the edge of the steam ship and stretched upwards like some kind of grotesque mast. Thick electrical cables led from the massive steam engine to the base of the tower, which was enclosed in four walls and a roof. Inside the room was a microphone and a record player.

Mama came up behind them and sighed, but it was a satisfied sigh. "You wouldn't believe how much work went into this. We had to offset the extra top weight with the biggest keel you've ever seen. And it still might capsize if you try to sail it through a storm."

"It's perfect," said Minnie.

"Where'd you get the ship?" asked Mickey, still marveling at how large it was.

"One of our assets in the navy faked some decommissioning papers. They're phasing out steamships anyway, so no one thought twice about it. This here was the RNS William McCharney."

"I think it needs a new name now that it's ours," said Minnie.

Mickey thought for a moment and smiled. "Willie. Steamboat Willie."