As the crowd cheered, he thundered over them, “And I’m better than ever!”
When the cheers subsided, he continued. “Some of you might have heard that I was down for a minute. That I closed my eyes and took a nap.” He put his hands together and held them up to his head, closing his eyes and resting his head against his hands, pretending he was asleep. The crowd laughed.
“And it was a heck of a nap I assure, you,” he said, in a conspiratorial aside. “I woke up feeling ten times better, smarter and more powerful. If you ever get a chance to take a nap like I just did, I urge you to do so, because I feel great!”
Cheers.
“I know some of our brothers and sisters here at the convention are still under the weather, with this bug going around. And I want to wish them to get well soon, so they can enjoy the rest of this convention and resume the important work of Humans for Humanity.”
More cheers.
“Now, speaking of illness, some people out there are trying to make a big deal out of the fact that I took a sick day, to try to score political points. As if I am the first person ever, the only person ever, to be indisposed for a few minutes. As if no one else ever slept or, or sought a few minutes of solitude in the bathroom, am I right?”
Laughs.
“The only difference is that after this nap, after this momentary interruption, I woke up with a fully upgraded operating system,” he said, tapping his Wellplant. “Faster, smarter, better informed.” Tap, tap, tap. They were the exact same words Chris Bembry had used to describe his upgrade. Maybe the phrase was from an ad or a brochure.
He smiled, then laughed at his own private joke. “There are people out there. Over there.” He waved his fingers at us and raised his voice in a mimicky whine. “How could you ever be president with an implant in your head?”
The crowd laughed and cheered and turned to look at us, making it clear, if it wasn’t already, that he was talking about E4E. He shook his head and said, “Simpletons.” Then he looked over again, and just for a moment, he seemed to be looking right at me. I knew it was ridiculous. He was too far away, and I was hidden in a crowd, but for that second, he seemed to be staring me right in the eye. Then he looked away.
“These are complicated times,” he continued. “We face challenges of a complexity our forefathers could never have imagined. So…if you ask me, the better question is: How could you not? How could you vote for someone to hold the highest office in the world, to perform the most demanding job in the history of mankind, without the aid of the most powerful tool humanity has ever known? Across the world, government officials and captains of industry, leaders of every type, have invested in the future by investing in Wellplant. Because it makes them smarter. It makes them faster. It makes them better.”
The crowd clapped, or half of them did, but they didn’t cheer. As I watched them, it seemed like the only ones clapping were the Plants. The others seemed restless. I guess waiting for him to get on with the chimera bashing.
“H4H!” someone yelled out, prompting broader cheers from the H4H side and loud boos from the pro-chimera side.
“Yes, yes,” he said, pacing the stage again and nodding his head. “H4H. Enough about me and my Wellplants—although I will tell you, they’re a lifesaver!”
A smattering of laughs drifted across the crowd, mostly from the Plants, as far as I could tell. A few of them close to the edge of the H4H rally area peered over at me; a handful of blank faces with Wellplants turning and looking me in the eye, much like Wells himself had done. I was about to elbow Rex and tell him, but then I thought I recognized one of them: a pale, pinched face, under a short buzz cut. Then he smiled, and I elbowed Rex hard, pointing.
“Ow!” Rex said, grabbing his ribs.
“That’s Stan,” I said. “Stan Grainger. Right there!”
“Where?” he said, trying to follow my finger. But by the time he looked, Stan had turned around and disappeared into the rival crowd.
“This has been an incredible week,” Wells started up again. “The first annual Humans for Humanity National Convention. You…have made it amazing. The speakers, the panels, getting to meet so many of you. Probably the best week of my life. Truly. But it was also a terrible week.” He nodded sadly. “I would like to take a moment to right now, to remember the friends we lost this week in the tragic bombing at the Seaport Museum.”
He bowed his head as a hush fell over the entire street, both sides falling silent. After a few seconds, he looked up. “I would also like to take a moment to remember who was responsible for that cowardly attack.” Once again, his eyes found me.
“That responsibility lies, not just with the terrorists who planted the bomb, who detonated it,” he said, still staring at me, “but also with those who sympathize with them, who give them comfort or shelter or support.”
Maybe he isn’t really looking at me, I thought. Maybe there was a camera behind me, or a teleprompter somewhere in front of me. Maybe that’s where he was really looking. But then, seemingly all at once, all of the heads with Wellplants in them turned around, and all of them stared directly at me. This time, there was no doubt. And even under the hot, noonday sun, goose bumps rose on my arms.
Rex looked around, then down at me. “What the hell is going on?”
I shook my head and whispered, “I don’t know.”
“These people are every bit as guilty, every bit as responsible,” Wells said, his voice rising to a thunderous crescendo. “They must be stopped. They will be stopped, and they will suffer the consequences of their actions!”
Some of the other H4Hers seemed to notice that Howard Wells and his fellow Plants were looking at something. They turned, too, trying to figure out what it was.
Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw something arc up into the sky from the H4H crowd, a ball of foil from a hot dog or something. As it descended, I realized it was coming right for me, but there was no room to move out of the way. I put up my arms to fend it off, but at the last second, Rex reached up and caught it in midair, earning cheers from the pro-chimera folks around us.
Then another ball of trash rose up into the air, from the other end of the H4H enclosure. Once again, it arced through the air, right at me. I caught this one, but there were no cheers this time. I think the people around us knew something strange was happening.
I locked eyes with a guy wearing a Wellplant standing in the H4H enclosure, maybe fifty feet away. He smiled as he threw an apple core, which missed me only because I ducked.
Rex put his head next to mine and said, “Let’s get out of here.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
As we turned and started pushing through the crowd, I saw another trash missile sailing through the air. Then two more, from different directions. All three of them headed directly at me. The accuracy was astonishing.
Before they landed, several more rose up, then several more after that. With Rex pushing ahead of me, and trash raining down, people got out of our way. As we moved across the enclosure, the debris being thrown followed our every step, matching our movements, finding us even as we zigzagged through the crowd.
The remains of a sandwich hit the back of my head, and something similar bounced off my shoulder. A plastic bottle hit my arm.