No Harm Can Come to a Good Man. James Smythe
them who to discuss God (capital G) and religion with, and who is likely to want to talk about artillery instead of textbooks. There are lists of the names of their wives, husbands and children. One of them has lost a child, just as Laurence has; this is common ground. All of them will know everything about him; their own research just levels the playing field. Lies are pointless now, because information doesn’t die like it used to. It all sits there on some server, waiting for somebody to discover it and mine it and crosscheck it and use it. Used to be in politics that you could tell a different story to two different moneymen and they’d both buy it. Now, Amit’s rule is that you should stick to the truth, or whatever version of it is most palatable. You only work with what you’ve got. Laurence’s life is available to the world already. Everybody can read the words from the eulogy he delivered at Sean’s funeral; that’s nothing but material now.
His email pings. It’s ClearVista. The whole thing is automated: no people sitting back and watching this, making it work. That was the tech that they were instigating when he finally left working for them. For whatever reason, that stuff always used to creep him out. The email is labeled Your Laurence Walker Results: there’s something disquietingly possessive about it. Laurence opens the email.
Thank you for your contract with ClearVista, the world’s foremost predictions and statistics company, it reads. Your package [LW008] has been completed and the contract fulfilled. Please find the initial results attached. Further emails with package enhancements will follow. Thank you for using ClearVista.
The numbers don’t lie.
Attached to the email is a glossily produced PDF file, little more than a glorified spreadsheet holding a series of almost incomprehensible posits and answers. There are questions asked at the top, about Laurence’s virtues and skills, things that are ambiguous but useful.
Is LAURENCE WALKER a good man: 96% chance of occurrence.
Does LAURENCE WALKER care about his country? 93% chance of occurrence.
Will LAURENCE WALKER remain faithful in his marriage? 93% chance of occurrence.
Is LAURENCE WALKER a good father? 82% chance of occurrence.
The list goes on and on. Amit scrolls down quickly, scanning the results for anything anomalous. It’s all good; all stronger than Homme’s. The percentages break Laurence down to predicted emotional responses – and the voting public is more likely to believe that than the words of a man standing on a stage. This will all help back up what they already know about him.
Can LAURENCE WALKER overcome grief? 07% chance of occurrence.
Will LAURENCE WALKER ever commit drug abuse? 28% chance of occurrence.
Will LAURENCE WALKER ever commit sexual abuse? 01% chance of occurrence.
They are all results that work. The Grief one might hurt them, but Amit has an answer for that: nobody ever recovers from the death of a child. It would be worse if it said that he would, he spins, because that would suggest a lack of heart, of basic human empathy. He hears the words from speeches in his head, taking the data and turning it into a portrait of a man who will do his best to honor the memory of his dead son, but who is driven and dedicated to running his country first and foremost. And, if they have to play dirty, there’s the sexual abuse question. Homme had a 3.4% percent chance of committing sexual abuse, which his people spun as a number so small as to be insignificant. Laurence scored better. Amit doesn’t ever want to have to use that – not in the way that some of the dirty political games in the past might have done – but he knows that some of the blogs will run with it themselves. That’s the thing: it paints Homme in a worse light just by virtue of its existence. Nothing wrong with that.
Is LAURENCE WALKER likely to suffer from an emotional or mental breakdown? 51% chance of occurrence.
That’s harder, Amit thinks. That’s a tough one. It’s on the wrong side of the fence, irritatingly; this will mean countermeasures, therapists and counselors on call to make sure that nothing goes wrong. It’s fixable, that’s the thing; an arbitrary number based on his situation. Who wouldn’t suffer that risk? So they’ll address that. A strong Vice President will be the key. Somebody that the country feels comfortable with if they were forced to step up, even though nobody will ever say that. Not Homme, no matter what happens.
He scrolls through the rest of the document, to the section headed POLITICS, and he runs through the likely outcomes of Laurence’s voting habits. Who he will be likely to want as his political advisors, who he will want in key governmental roles, where he will side on certain issues. And, at this quick glance, the report syncs with the discussions that they’ve already had. Hundreds of answers booted out from thousands of questions, using Laurence’s past voting habits, the past results of votes, all to predict a path forwards. The report says that Laurence is liable to be fair to the oil companies, which is good – and slightly unexpected; Amit copies the line and pastes it into a new document, to use over the next few meetings. This is all ammunition. He keeps going, scrolling through page after page of the document, reading everything, trying to take it all in, and then he sees the final two questions, in their own boxed-out section at the very end of the file, printed larger, the answers to the very reasons that they got the survey done in the first place.
He doesn’t parse them the first time. He reads them, over and over.
If LAURENCE WALKER runs for the role of DEMOCRATIC PARTY NOMINEE: 00% chance of success.
If LAURENCE WALKER runs for the role of PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES: 00% chance of success.
‘What the fuck?’ Amit says. The man next to him tuts at the language, and Amit mutters an apology. He shuts the file and reopens it, but the results are the same. He pulls his phone from his pocket and turns it on.
‘Hey,’ the man next to him says, ‘you can’t do that!’
‘It’s fine,’ Amit says.
‘We’re on a plane, asshole.’
Amit looks around and sees one of the cabin crew staring at them down the aisle, looking at what’s going on. He can’t have his phone confiscated, so he switches it off.
‘Happy now?’ he asks. The man rolls his eyes, smug at his win. Amit goes back to the laptop and opens the email. He hits reply and writes to them, as quickly as he can.
There’s a problem with the results issued. See final two questions. Please address IMMEDIATELY, or we will be forced to take legal action. He hits the screen’s keyboard so hard it stings the tips of his fingers.
‘What’s wrong?’ Laurence asks. Amit looks across at his boss who is sleepy-eyed, rubbing his face.
‘Nothing,’ Amit says. He thinks about telling him – no lies, no secrets, that’s how this works – but he knows that this will be corrected. When it is, this will be something to laugh about. He doesn’t know, right now, how Laurence will react to it. ‘Somebody is wrong on the Internet,’ Amit says. He can hear the shakiness in his own voice, the lie coming through. Laurence smiles.
‘There’s always somebody wrong on the Internet,’ he says. ‘I’m going to try and get another half hour of shut-eye.’
‘Do it.’ Amit shuts the laptop. ‘Me too.’ Both men shut their eyes, but Amit clutches his phone in his hands. As soon as they land, as soon as they can get to the hotel, he’ll be calling ClearVista; and he’ll be getting angry, speaking to somebody directly, sorting this out.
He shuts his eyes and he sees the final results, the numbers flashing behind his eyelids as if they’re afterimages of the sun.
Deanna drives down to the stretch of shops that calls itself the town center. She could walk this easily – their house is at the end of a long stretch that calls itself Main Street, but it has no actual competition for that title, with almost all of the town’s houses either sitting on it