Chapter 21

“Watch her every move. Superconductor. (Superconductor)

She can manipulate reactions. (Superconductor)

Watch her every move. Superconductor. (Superconductor)

Pin the donkeys on her tail. Fantasy for sale.

That’s entertainment!”

-Rush, “Superconductor“

Leonard Whyte CBE looked at his phone and swore at it. More specifically, he swore at the stock ticker on the phone that showed Whyte Telecom had dropped one-hundred and twelve points today already and showed no signs of stopping. Whyte Computers and Whyte Electronics were following it down the drain as well. He watched the numbers plummet as his business empire was; very legally, with every “i” dotted and every “t” crossed, being taken down by Troilus Equals.

Whyte had found the video of the “hacker group’s” statement to the media. The hacker’s voice was on a scrambler, which they’d been certain to point out was a Whyte Electronics model, and his or her face was obscured by an oversized full-head Halloween mask that hung down and completely obscured the person on the video’s identity.

Whyte immediately recognized which famous celebrity the mask was meant to caricature. It was a goofy novelty head mask of Contessa Helena de San Finzione. The person he was pretty damn fucking sure was Contessa Helena de San Finzione herself under the mask prattled some screed about how Leonard Whyte CBE; she made certain to spell out each initial, shared the hackers’ dream of a utopia free of all technology except Whyte Brand products, or why would he create the devices that were allowing them to disable the communications of the good people of Seattle so easily? She started talking about how the superiority of the Whyte Phone over the lesser brands was undeniable, and Leonard could hear her suppressed giggle when she gave a “Whyte Power” at the end of that part of the speech.

There were other bits of “Heil Leonard” diatribe, mostly crediting him with being on the crackpot side of every STRANGERS issue, which was why the hackers were sabotaging the conference for the glory of technology’s new Fuhrer. He could see her almost cracking up again when she started talking about “the purity of each circuit in the Whyte master phones.”

He caught a slip in her grammar that La Contessa never would have made, and realized he was wrong. That under the scrambler, it was more likely an Italian woman affecting an American; specifically, Alaskan accent. It wasn’t the first time that Miss Parker had stung him, but Leonard couldn’t help feeling a bit more stung by the fact that Rita Delvecchio was not only taking a role in his downfall as well, but was improvising much better on the video than she did in person. She had Helen’s mannerisms down well enough to convince him until that point that it was La Contessa under the mask, since she wasn’t comically exaggerating them, like she did on her show. So, of course, it would be absurd to think that she had anything to do with it, because La Contessa was on the other side of the planet, on television, at STRANGERS, when the video hit the media. The woman couldn’t be two places at once, after all. It was the perfect alibi, and worst of all, it was fucking clever, was what it was.

He pounded the glass coffee table, making a fist-shaped crack in the glass. Whyte looked up at the eight men in body armor, carrying AK-47s. He turned to the sign-language interpreter.

“Tell them that I would appreciate it...” He waited for the man to start signing. “No. GREATLY appreciate it; if one of them would be so kind as to KILL THAT FUCKING CUNT!!!”

The interpreter hesitated. Whyte grabbed a .45 automatic pistol from the coffee table and pointed it at the man.

“Christ, if YOU can’t hear me either, I want my money back.” He made mocking sign gestures with his free hand. “TELL THEM TO KILL ... THAT ... FUCKING ... CUNT!!!”

He followed instructions.

Hey, Susan here. We’d finished our shopping spree and returned to the Hotel de Società Finzione, where three bellhops were needed to bring up all our bags. Mander insisted on carrying his own tuxedo that Helen had bought for him. Apparently, these Auctions are black tie only. He also had a new Rolex to go with it.

Martin LeGrasse, Prefect of La Policia, had arrived from San Finzione to oversee the investigation. Helen informed him that she knew who was responsible and that they were being dealt with, and that the video footage had me on it, so it was Classified. She told him that since there was nothing for him to really investigate, he should enjoy a little vacation at one of the other luxury suites. He went to see if one was available, as other STRANGERS delegates were also staying at Helen’s hotel. Most had checked out after the attack yesterday, so there were. He remembered me. Apparently, our first meeting was still being talked about amongst the cops.

We turned on news channels to see what the word on Helen was. It turned out there were a lot of them. The thing she did at the Whyte store had been picked up by the major networks, especially after it caused another huge drop in Whyte Telecom’s stocks. A stock that had opened that morning at 218 per share closed at around five dollars a share. The other Whyte companies had followed suit, and Troy had been ready to strike at home.

“So, Troy has made...” Helen took a drag of her cigarette as she calculated. “Hundreds of millions today. A billion or more isn’t beyond the realm of possibility.”

“I don’t ask Troy about his money.” I replied, sitting on one of the couches in the suite. “So, I don’t know how much he’s got; but even with all of it, I don’t think he has enough to take Whyte down by himself.”

“Susan,” Helen said, looking at me. “Julie trusts that man with all that she is. And so do I. But I trust him with even more than my body, mind, and soul,” She held up the credit card she’d been using all day. “When you accept the invitation, the ‘Welcome to our Club’ box that they send you contains two of these. I trust Troilus Equals with my other card.”

“So, if it dropped down to five a share, Troy just made...” I thought, tried to figure out the math, and how many shares he would have bought. (Troy’s explained “shorting a stock” to me before. Because, you know, you can’t stop him from doing that kind of thing.) “Metric fucktons of money.”

“Slightly fewer fucktons than you think.” Julie replied. She’d called Troy about the drone strike as soon as we’d heard. “Just for Leonard, Troy bought back at eight dollars, eighty-eight cents, and one-eighth.” She grinned.

“But the house is ok, too?” Helen asked her. “You know I’ll pay for any damage.”

“And you know we wouldn’t let you. Troy says there’s drone bits on the roof. He was going to try to pressure-hose them off when it stops raining. And that actually sounds kind of like a fun thing to do, like that carnival game where you shoot the squirt gun into the clown’s mouth to pop the balloon. So I told him to wait for me; but once it’s dry, if you want to send an Ultimado on a dangerous covert mission up a ladder to get the ones we can’t hose off, that should take care of it.”

Helen nodded.

“Hopefully, it happens before I leave.” Helen replied. “Because you’re right, that does sound like a blast.”

“Well,” I said. “A blast IS how it happened.” I pretended to snuggle an invisible poodle. “Yes, it will, Precious, it will get da hose.”

They got a laugh at that. We turned back to the news, which had apparently chosen “Con-Hel” for Helen’s annoying media nickname. Footage showed Con-Hel giving the press their makeovers, that “plucking the olive out of her tits” video was replayed for what must have been the tenth time that I’d seen, and I’d only been checking the news every now and then, when we could get a signal while shopping. Then her triumphant march across the mall, a sea of irate former Whyte Telecom customers following her to Consumer Salvation. La Contessa buying out the Apple Store and sitting at a table, handing out iPhones and iPads to the crowd, autographing the boxes, letting people’s first pic on their new phones be a selfie with her, and generally being delighted to meet everyone.

Con-Hel walking up to two parents with a cute little girl and giving the girl a dolly, then over to the toy store where she told the kids “Star Wars aisle; you pick, I’m buying! Two figures, and one vehicle or accessory or one figure and a lightsaber each.” Her turning to the camera with a smile and telling it “I’ll bend on that limit a little.” Then turning back to the kids, walking over to the peg of Stormtroopers, and clearing it out before moving to the battle droids.

“Hey, I just thought of something here. No point getting a Han if you don’t have a Boba Fett for him to fight. So, tell ya what: I’m going to buy all the bad guys myself, and everyone gets one, so you don’t have to waste one of your picks on one of them. I’ll put them in a garbage bag and we’ll draw them at random. So, you might get a Stormtrooper, you might get Darth Maul, but FREE VILLAINS TODAY!!!”

The kids cheered. The press cheered. I was starting to feel nauseous at seeing it all again through a camera lens, and reached for the remote. Helen grinned at that.

“You see?” She said as I changed the channel. “That’s what I want every living room in the world doing right now. Being sick of watching that rich bitch toss money around to people who aren’t them and switching over to Wheel of Fortune.” She had a thought that made her laugh. “With any luck, I’ll be an answer on Wheel, too! By the late news, only the conspiracy nuts will still be watching, listening for any word on ‘Con-Hel.’ Ugh! My skin crawls just saying that! I won’t be saying it anymore.”

“Good.” I replied. “Sue was just telling me some of the things she’ll do if any of us start using it.”

Helen gestured for the remote and I tossed it to her. She changed it to the local news.

“First or second commercial break after the local news is when they’ll start airing the tease for the 10:00 or 11:00 news. That’s when I’ll get my first glimpse of what I’m up against here.”

“You do this stuff all the time, don’t you?” I asked. “Playing the media like this. Using them as your unwitting pawns.”

“Unwitting pawns really are the best kind of pawns to have, Susan. The witting kind usually want money or something.” She looked over at Mander. “But that doesn’t mean we like them any less.” When she looked away, he smiled a little at that.

“Oh, I wasn’t saying it was wrong, Helen. They play us every day, so why not? But won’t they know? Even if everybody changes the channel, aren’t the press going to know? Won’t people in the newsrooms watch it and have questions?”

“Yes, they will.” Helen replied. “And if the public doesn’t care, do you know where they’ll ask those questions, Susan? In the Press Room at Castle Finzione. Or one-on-one interviews, talk show pre-interviews. Places where I can make them forget all their silly questions and destroy all that nutty ‘proof’ and worthless ‘evidence’ they’ve got. What were they thinking, reporting on this shit? Were they going to prove vampires are real next? And they’ll laugh it off and remember being that foolish when the new guy says he’s got ‘the real dirt’ on me. You’ve seen reporters sneak questions like those into live interviews. What happens right after that?”

“You end the interview.” I said, being aware of some of her games’ rules. “You ‘get offended’ and storm out. The press out of San Finzione start reporting about how ‘hurt’ you were that this long after Vincenzo’s passing; forever does he reign in our hearts, you still have to hear the same ‘peasant gossip’ you’ve had to hear since the day he brought you home to the castle two years before the world lost him. And to bring it up again; when he’s not here to defend himself or his Contessa, is as much an insult to his memory as it is to you. If they don’t apologize, Società Finzione pulls their ads from the show and threatens to pull them from the entire network. At that point, they either kiss your ass or go on to host another ‘anti-you’ conspiracy podcast. It’s about three or four months before another gets brave enough to try it again.”