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DARWIN'S GAME
By Wayne Webb
Epilogue
(12 months after the first episode)
The case was still officially open, but it was
headed the way of the Zodiac killer, no one had any real hope of
cracking the case without new information. Agent Levy held out for a
few weeks on the investigation, but despite his dramatic tearing of
his resignation, he eventually came to his senses and moved from the
bureau to private consulting for a law and order lobby group and
think tank that had him spending half his year in Washington, and the
other half with his family. Despite the travel out of town he
actually spent more time with his family than less, because when he
was in town he was home at normal hours and had less stress impacting
on his mood and his sleep patterns. He played with his schedule to
get quality time with his kids, sporting teams and school outings all
got a look in for once, and then when he was out of town he and they
really did miss each other, which made coming home again even more
enjoyable.
There was a flurry of activity after the body
of John Vargas was found swinging in the Bella Vista, but it was a
sharp drop off in the weeks that followed as no new leads came in and
it was understood that the Game, such as it was, could be declared
over and done. There was plenty of conjecture about the reasons why,
the message it was trying to send and the person or persons behind
it, but the story was starved of oxygen once it reached it's end.
There were new scandals, new crimes and new villains to parade on the
evening news, but the caveat for the more heinous crimes was often
tacked on that the more vicious of criminals, the more depraved and
indifferently guilty someone was, the suggested was inevitable that
they'd be a Player in “Series 2”.
Occasionally there would be a follow up article
or a conspiracy theory that would grab peoples attention for a short
period, but it was never based on anything new to generate leads or
ideas. Darwin was a ghost, he had made sure of that and all the clues
left behind, all the physical evidence that could be culled all lead
to a cloud, a wide range of data in an unusable format. They chased
their tails on the evidence and the trails, knowing that it would
lead to nothing concrete, waiting out the media demanding action on
the Darwin case, either calling for his capture or awarding him a
medal, it only really depending on the left or right bias of the
commentator and the way the wind was blowing that day.
A few details were left out of the media, not
really in the public interest and it would only serve to inflame
debate about the Game when most of the people in the FBI wanted the
story to die, be forgotten and never come up again. There was no
chance of that of course, but relegated to occasional catch ups and
reminders, mostly to criminal types, that the Bogeyman Darwin was
still out there and justice was being served one way or another. The
Game made it's way from the front and center story, to a regular
segment on progress, to a mention every other day, to the final
resting place as a story and anecdote to trot out when big Law And
Order issues arose.
Facts Alone were now a thriving and in demand
media service, not just the portal for news with a decent income they
had once been. They had dropped substantial numbers since the hey day
of the Game installments but they had retained millions of active
subscribers who kept coming back, increasing their reach and
influence in the media. Blake Harrison had sole executive authority
at the company these days, but he was handing over to more managers
and directors while retaining the spiritual guidance required to keep
them on purpose, on message that there was no message. Jacob Edgerton
had retired to Italy, a fact that was not lost on Agent Levy when he
heard this after leaving the Bureau for good, but ultimately he knew
that he had to let go of the case in order to get on with his life.
Copycats erupted in a spate of crimes in
themselves where people tried, usually with fatal results for
themselves, to capture and try out the Darwin Game Theory on the
people they wanted to see get some justice. After the half dozen or
so people that ended up in prison themselves or beaten, and in some
cases, killed by the people they sought to get to play the game they
set up, the copycats stopped trying. They were hard lessons and most
people just chalked the failures up to stupidity in general and a
underestimation and lazy attitude for exactly what Darwin achieved
and what was required to pull of the Game the way that he (or they)
did.
Dan Levy was re-sold on the idea of his
resigning again when one particular fact came to light, once that
never made it to the media and was a closely guarded secret that only
a small number of people ever had access to. John Vargas's body,
swinging on the hook in the Bella Vista Motel was hung there by
someone other than John himself. The initial check even before the
Post Mortem revealed that the body was not showing signs of of death
by hanging, no bulging eyes, tongue or discoloration where it should
be showing blood pooling. The body was cold and stiff, which
initially made people assume that he had killed himself as soon as it
was known he was being hunted.
However a full examination found
crystallization patterns and tissue damage that came from being
frozen and in order for the body to have been frozen for as long as
it was required to have those symptoms form, it meant only one
thing. John Vargas had been killed before the vote had ended. His
actual cause of death was unclear to the Medical Examiner, the
toxicity screens showed no chemicals that would indicate poison or
lethal injection the same as Simpson was shown to have died from.
There were no wounds, no lesions and no physical evidence except the
markings from the hanging which they swore were all received post
mortem.
That meant one of three things in Agent Levy's
mind, either:
A) Darwin never intended the vote to be a truly
public decision and all the voting that was on those sites was
manipulated to show the results he wanted all along, so he killed
Simpson and killed Vargas and then froze the body to move when the
'voting period' was done.
OR
B) Darwin anticipated correctly how the voting
would have gone, at some stage during the process or before it even
started. Then he just delivered on the result with the prediction he
made come true with the body when he was ready, not needing to rush
he froze the body and timed the revelation for his own agenda and
schedule.
OR
C) He killed both men and froze both bodies,
waiting for the vote to end and staging the winner as a suicide when
the decision was finally made by the public. Then removed both from
cold storage to set one up with the final destination at the end of
the rope in a seedy motel in Redwood City.
Dan Levy did not know which of these scenarios
was most likely and staring at the amount of work required to prove
or disprove these ideas, knowing that the outcome of the
investigation was unlikely to change, he gave up at that point and
rewrote his letter of resignation for the fourth time. This time
though he followed it through and delivered it in person.
There was no argument.
It was one year to the day after the first
episode had been delivered to the offices of Facts Alone that he was
sitting at his new desk in his corner office overlooking the bay, all
the way to Alcatraz Island . He had danishes and coffee sent to him
from his new favorite cafe in the ground floor level of the building
next door to his and this came in a cardboard box with a copy of the
Chronicle a back up danish for the late coffee break he would take.
The box was placed on his desk by his assistant
and he was walking out of the office when Dan picked up the paper bag
with the pastry in it and called him to stop.
“Where did this come from?”
“Where did what come from?”
“This Disc?” Dan was looking at a disc in a
sleeve and on it was printed in a very familiar font.
Series 2
Dan quickly put the disc into the laptop and
was checking to see if this was for real or a joke at his expense.
The Scene faded in and twelve new faces popped
onto the screen and paraded across his laptop and had Dan reaching
for his phone, half in panic and half excited by the prospect that he
had been targeted to get the new episodes.
Blake Hilliard answered his phone almost
instantly.
“I got one too, and I can't get hold of
Jacob.”
“Have you looked at it yet?” The video was
still playing on Dan's laptop, it was just beginning to get
interesting.
“I have it on now. Are they who I think they
are?” Blake knew they were, but it seemed to hard to believe so he
need someone else to say it.
“I counted three former dictators or leaders,
at least five corporate presidents and the rest I don't recognize,
but the names sound... oh yeah that guy is from the chemical company,
you know the one in …. anyway I don't know them all just yet. It's
not the same as before though, all of these people, they didn't kill
that many personally, or some of them didn't, but they are
responsible in some way...” Dan started.
“... for tens of thousands of deaths. Yes I
know.” Blake finished his sentence.
“Are you going to put it out there?” Former
Agent Dan Levy was smiling as he asked.
“What do you think?”
The End
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