Page 70 of The Midnight Lock (Lincoln Rhyme 14)

“I don’t take any other jobs.” Arnie nodded quickly.

“I gotta talk to my associate here.”

Arnie looked around.

“The driver,” Douglass snapped. “The food truck.”

“Oh. Yeah, okay. You know, I had an idea. I’ll get a white van. That’s the most common color. What do you think?”

“It’s a fine idea. Now leave.”

After Arnie left, Douglass told the food truck driver that he’d done a good job with the sandwich and asked for a Cuban coffee.

Douglass sipped the coffee and thanked the driver, who also handed over an envelope—the results of some espionage work. Money changed hands. Smells wafted from the truck. As much as he loved food, he was a terrible cook and was, at the moment, between wives (he was good at getting married but not so great atstayingthat way).

“What’s the bestseller today?”

“Creole-grilled tofu, I’d say.”

“Make me one and wrap it up. I’ll have it for dinner.”

37

Back in the womb of my workshop.

A change of clothes, some peanut butter cheese crackers, some decaf coffee.

I’m looking over the knives I’ve acquired—Annabelle’s and Carrie’s. They’re of a functional design, nothing fancy. Carrie’s is the sharpest. I have their panties too. One pair blue, one pair pink. But I’m less interested in them than the blades.

The knives and the garments are sitting on a table beside my workbench. There are also two copies of theDaily Herald; they both still have page 3 intact.

That is one very troubled newspaper.

I feel the weight of my own knife, the beautiful construction of brass, in my pocket.

I content mod for a bit. I peruse a video of a woman who’s lip-synching a top 40 song. She’s good. The autobot has sent it to me not for any violent or sexual issue, but because she’s violating the copyright law. She doesn’t have a blanket ASCAP or BMI license,which would give her the rights to “sing” the tune. However, I will leave it up for a few days. I have spotted a mole on her neck that I believe is cancerous. I don’t want to go to too much trouble, so I simply log on like any other person and leave a comment that she ought to have it checked out.

My mother died of that disease.

I watch some more vids and play God for a bit.

Delete …

Sign in …

Let stand …

We content moderators spend hours upon hours looking for vids that violate either the law or that famous “community standard,” which is quite the odd phrase, since there must be a billion distinct communities in cyberspace, ranging from ethereally noble to disgustingly depraved. The company sends us guidelines, but basically community standards are what I decide they are.

I say I play God, and I do. Often posters, desperate for likes and shares, fling up buckets of content that I have to loose my lightning bolt of judgment upon.

I’ve seen hundreds of executions, suicide attempts, rapes, child beatings and molestations, people shooting up and OD’ing, survivalists giving step-by-step instructions about bomb making, animals hurt, racial invective, calls to revolution, facts cited by politicians and pundits and bumpkins that even I—smart but hardly an expert—know are blatantly false.

Hours upon hours.

There is no end in sight.

My company, ViewNow, is smaller than YouTube and not owned by one of the mega-tech outfits, but it’s not insignificant. Over two hundred hours of videos are uploaded every minute, and each day millions of people watch four billion videos. If you watched everyvideo that was available on ViewNow today, it would take thousands of years of nonstop viewing to see everything.