Zombie

Threegood wears a small, heart-shaped locket instead of a tie with his three piece suit. I’ve never asked him about it, because it’s not my place to ask too many questions. I don’t ask him about his name either, but for a different reason. See, my own name – that’s Prophet – my own name is also strange, and I don’t know how I got it. I’ve just always had it. What if I asked Threegood about his name, and he didn’t know either? I don’t want him to feel stupid like I am.

Threegood runs a successful record company and a top-secret research facility for the Pan-American Military. I keep his household and do his gardening. He is tall and big and has a square jaw and cold, pale blue eyes. I’ve never liked his eyes – I think the word is “unsettling” – but he treats me real good, as good as someone like me could expect. He says he likes me because I am humble.

“Servants” is a plural word, so there are eight beds in the servants’ quarters, but there is only one of me. Every morning I mow and water the lawn. It’s a big lawn. Threegood says “a lawn stands for order and discipline. A poorly maintained lawn is an indication of a weak character.” We don’t have any neighbours, but if we had, they’d be very impressed at how strong Threegood is. In the afternoons, I clean the house. It’s a big house. Other than the servants’ quarters, it has a library, a den, a foyer, an office, a gallery, a dining room, a kitchen, and four bedrooms, including Threegood’s. The other three bedrooms are never used, but I clean them anyway.

Threegood’s library is full of books about smart things that I don’t understand, like “parapsychology” and “neuro-linguistic programming”. Some of them even use words I’ve never seen before. Like this one: “Radio Free Albemuth”. I have a very good memory for words, even though I have trouble with meanings, and I’m certain I’ve never seen that word anywhere else.

All the books are well-thumbed, but I have never seen him read.

---

Threegood is in a strange mood tonight. He wants to talk to me about something important. “Hypnosis has the potential for some interesting military applications,” he is saying. “For example, it would be very convenient to convince your enemy that he’s already dead. But classical hypnosis has some unfortunate limitations. The first is that it only works on certain suggestible people. Second, it has to come from a trusted source, and third, you can’t hypnotize people to do anything they don’t want to do. That breaks the trust. Fourth, conventional hypnosis is easy to notice, and once the enemy catches on they can employ effective countermeasures.”

I nod politely, although I don’t really understand any of this, or what it has to do with me.

“Now, the first limitation can be circumvented, because there’s a stronger form of hypnosis: group pressure. Even the most bullheaded individual will eventually believe that two plus two is five, if everyone around him believes it. So you start by hypnotizing all the suggestible people. They form a sparse network, but once you control them, you can make them congregate around less suggestible targets. They push out all other social competition, and eventually the target also falls under your spell. In that way you can slowly but steadily grow your army of hypnotic agents. It’s a delicate operation, but it’s feasible, and it just gets easier as it progresses.

“It’s also logistically intensive, but artificial intelligence has come a long way. You can put a computer in charge, and between consumer data mining, predictive heuristics and a bit of good old-fashioned surveillance, it can orchestrate the whole thing for you.

“Once you reach a critical mass, it’s a simple matter of issuing a command word, and the rest of the population will fall under your complete control. And if any stragglers somehow remain” – he smiles a cold blue smile – “that’s where more conventional weaponry comes in handy.”

“That sounds very good, Mr Threegood,” I say, but I’m not sure it does.

---

Whenever I mow the lawn, I listen to music on the EarPeace that Threegood gave me. Mine is the EarPeace 5, which is very much better than the EarPeace 4. The EarPeace is the invention that made Threegood’s record company famous. It does a lot of things, but the main thing it does is that when you want to hear music, it plays the kind of music you want to hear, and when you don’t want to hear music, it’s silent. Actually, Threegood told me that it still plays music at those times, but it’s so quiet you can’t hear it. I think “subliminal” is the word.

There are three little humps in a row on the lawn, and somehow the beats of the music always match them when I ride over them on the mower. I wonder how it does that.

---

“We’ll tackle the fourth limitation next,” he continues. “Traditional hypnosis is very obvious, but there are other ways to induce trance and issue hypnotic suggestions. Rhythmic synchrony between unconnected events, for example, will put suggestible individuals in a receptive state. For commands, you can disguise words by breaking them up and hiding them in larger phrases, with, say, an imperceptible increase in volume. Hide the same word repeatedly in this way, and over time, the target will acquire it as a command word. And yet it’s completely undetectable.

“That much the military is aware of, and in fact my lab has built a prototype AI that can do all of it. Acquire suggestible agents, orchestrate their activities to acquire non-suggestible targets, and do it all subliminally, so there’s no chance of detection. Our tests on elementary school children have been very successful. But children are very trusting, which bypasses the second limitation, and we haven’t yet breached the third.

“But it can be breached. If you’re already in a position of trust, you can begin to shift the target’s desires and inhibitions. Take violence, for example. Gradual exposure, not to violence itself, but to the feeling of what it’s like to commit violence, can eventually disinhibit people to actually do it. And the truth is, trust is easy to establish. Just give the target what they want, again and again, until they come to take it for granted. Then you can start shifting their desires in slow and subtle ways.”

I don’t follow any of this, but it’s all beginning to sound terrible.

“Essentially, all the military is lacking is an appropriate vector. Some way to reach the majority of a target population as a trusted source on a long-term basis. Something that can hide hypnotic suggestions in plain sight. Something, in fact, very much like the EarPeace.” And he taps his ear and grins a cold blue grin.

I sense it’s my turn to speak, but I don’t know what to say. “Well, I sure hope they find one, Mr Threegood,” I manage.

And suddenly Threegood’s eyes are full of fury and contempt. “You imbecile!” he rages. “You didn’t understand a word of it. Of course you don’t understand. But I can make you understand, Mister Prophet. I will show you. Look!” And he opens the heart-shaped locket on his chest.

It is empty. No – it is less than empty, like the eyes of a murdered child. A terrible, screaming less-than-emptiness. I begin to panic, but suddenly I am Threegood, and I understand it all, all, all. I understand the three empty bedrooms and the three humps on the lawn. I understand what Albemuth means. I am standing atop a mountain of human corpses, and as they were in life, they are all beneath me. And I am Lord of Earth, unchallenged and unconquerable, and my will is sacred writ.

And then the locket clicks shut, and I am not Threegood anymore. I am just me. My hand is trembling as I reach up, disengage the bio-clamp, and remove my EarPeace.

“Wise decision,” says Threegood with a bitter, cold blue smile.

---

It’s the last time we speak. I avoid crossing his path, and he does nothing to force the issue. Three days later he is arrested. I understand a lot more words now, though I wish I didn’t. Words like “demiurge” and “omnipotent”. Even so, I don’t want to be interviewed, so I pretend to be a deaf-mute until the police go away.

I follow the news on a decrepit tablet from the thirties. Threegood has been charged with theft of military equipment and classified documents. He declines legal counsel, and does not seek bail. Soon more charges start to pile on. Connections to Liberian drug cartels. Human trafficking in the Mideast Bloc. A string of unsolved murders from twenty years ago. As the list grows, I begin to wonder if any man could even have the time to commit so many atrocities. But on the other hand, surely the allegations can’t all be false?

By the week’s end, his case is receiving almost continuous coverage on every major news channel, and not even the news anchors can contain their outrage. He is the subject of every talk show, every podcast, every op ed.

And then the day of his preliminary hearing arrives.

When he enters the courtroom, the assembly jeers and bellows at him like ravenous bears. They shake their fists and stamp their feet. But he is still smiling his cold blue smile. Without waiting to be summoned, he strides toward the stand, and an eerie hush falls over the room. There is a triumphant fire in his eyes.

He leans toward the microphone, and says one single, cold, blue word: “Zombie.”

And then the broadcast ends.

---

Within a week, Threegood is gone. Not dead, not missing, but gone as if he never was. No trace of him on the Net, no mention of his name. The news doesn’t run anymore, and soon the Net itself slows to a trickle and finally stops – still functional, but frozen in a final snapshot of the human species. I keep to my duties, except that eventually I stop mowing the lawn. It never seems to need it anymore.

After a few months, the house is running out of food, so I decide to venture into town. Alongside the final stretch of road are sixty-three fresh, unmarked graves, spaced at regular intervals. The graves are a triumphant proclamation: only sixty-three, out of millions.

To each other they are completely indifferent, but the people in town are real good to me. Too good, in fact, and even gooder than that. I am picked up on the outskirts of the city by a limousine with several very young and beautiful women in the back. The driver insists he was just passing by and saw I needed a lift. The women are very friendly and they touch me a lot. At the supermart I am greeted warmly, and several other shoppers insist on collecting my groceries for me. The cashier informs me I am the lucky millionth customer, and all my items will be free of charge. Outside, the limo driver offers me a ride home, and the women plead with me a bit, but I decline. Even under the weight of all the groceries, I would rather walk.

None of them have heard of Threegood.

Soon they start showing up at the house, in groups of several dozen, and doing all my chores for me. I wish they wouldn’t. I try to politely dissuade them, but they say “Oh no, I insist! It’s no trouble at all. Just happy to help.” And they smile their empty smiles at me with cold, blue eyes.