Smartystan

At the book signing, the crowd swelled. A steady din of voices made a raucous sound which reverberated off the walls. Everyone, it seemed, became especially entranced at the man sitting at the booth, signing digital books. All smiles with veneers which contrasted his brown skin, Hector Vergara posed for photographs and kept that million watt smile plastered on his face.

Then, a man pulled out a knife and ran straight for Vergara. The assailant sliced into Vergara’s left arm and stabbed his right eye. Blood spurted forth like a wellspring. Police and paramedics, all synths, arrived on the scene. Vergara still had enough strength to say that he wanted only humans to aid him. The synths threw up their hands and called for human personnel. All the while, he lost more and more blood. Once the first responders had arrived (or is it second responders?), the leader of the ACA was still conscious but still shaken up, clearly.

As the synth doctors stitched together his arm and performed surgery on his eye, he once again asked for human doctors but they could not be found for him. He gritted his white teeth. As he recovered in one of the intensive care units, his wife Valencia stood at the door. Her tear-stained face looked devastated, even through her symmetrical bone structure and light brown skin.

“Hi,” she mentioned. Vergara had been asleep for a few hours. When he woke, he saw her. Pain still ravaged his body and mind. Every movement spelled anguish for the ACA leader. It felt like he had been hit by a delivery truck in his mind, but knew the soft touch of his lady would assuage such thoughts.

“Val’, it’s on the news, isn’t it?”

“More people knew about this incident than I and knew ahead of time, also,” Valencia reported. Ironically, she delivered the news on the Internet and didn’t get word about her husband’s assault until about an hour later.

“I’m just glad you’re here,” Vergara said. He still had bandages on his arm and a black band over his eye.

“It’s going to be a rough road ahead,” Valencia admonished. “But I’ll be right by your side,” she assured him. “I’m going to keep the ACA aware of any changes that might arise. I’ll continue to be the one who makes the decisions business-wise. There’s little to no reason why we have to keep up the facade that everything is alright. It’s obviously not. We were warned almost thirty years ago about this precise event. The best news is that the radical didn’t know how to kill you with a knife.”

“Exactly. I’m feeling much better now with this morphine drip. I know what you’re saying. Everyone at the Association should be told the tale of my life almost snatched away from me,” he struggled to speak.

“You rest now. I’ll take care of the rest.”

“Val?”

“Yes, darling?”

“Thank you.”

“Love you dear.”

“I love you, too.”

While Vergara recovered, Valencia worked. She studied the digital balance sheets in real time. She hired a team of accountants to replace the others, humans for humans. The synths were thought of as examples of man going beyond the limits and achieving something that was above average. This would not do for the ave guard. Valencia arranged for security to be beefed up and for various members to step up and deliver speeches to the throngs of supporters and subscribers to their virtual faith.

In all of the time it took for her to go through the documents on the computer, she found ease and comfort in knowing that she would be able to relay messages to her husband and that she could be counted on to keep the ACA an engine for the mediocre. She felt an abundance of blessed responsibility. It appeared to her that she could continue down this path as a permanent fixture in the movement. The thought of relinquishing her reign as a reporter on a major television network enchanted her. She bit into an apple with her legs crossed. She peered out the window. Though Vergara had been in this reduced state, Valencia knew he’d pull through with her assistance.

“Okay, so these numbers right here don’t add up and the money looks funny in the light,” Valencia told the chief financial officer, Hurrel Dewberry.

“If we look at the total figures for the amount coming in now due to the incident, we’re going to have to continue to keep the pace once the jefe is back on his feet. We’ll be able to string together any sort of sales from his books which have skyrocketed.” Dewberry was a medium sized man with gray at the temples and in his beard. He was fifty-two-years-old. Valencia stood at forty. Her light green eyes twinkled in the afternoon sun as the duo prepared for expense accounts and other money matters.

“Bossman knows everything. He knows where the codes are to the safes, the passwords, everything. We have to get him while he’s awake so that we can go further into the matrix of various ideas and the outline for the Association,” Dewberry stated.

“I know. I can get him to talk after he’s well rested. He should have more vigor in him now, anyway,” she said.

“If we can get him to tell us what exactly he was going to say at his next event, we’d be in good standing to know exactly what it means,” Dewberry observed.

“Of course. That should be our focal point. In knowing that, we’ll unlock the door to his mind and maybe just let it creak open a little,” she retorted.

The pair began arranging for another book tour, this time a tentative title of Attacks: The Assault on the Body. That remained the patented refrain for the ACA. They didn’t consider the mind to be too much of a fixture. Not when it came to having deference for the brain. This only empowered Valencia.