Freedom TM

called a flash mob to tear him to pieces. I was just wondering because I know you were there when it happened.”
    “When what happened?”
    “When The Major killed Roy Merritt.” Sledge pointed across the street. “If you get a chance before you leave, check out our monument in Redstone Park.”
    Loki kept his gaze on Sledge. “Something else happened that day.”
    “What?”
    “I destroyed the Daemon task force.”
    Sledge looked uneasy. “I’m not sure that accomplished what you thought it would.”
    Loki turned away and motioned with a gloved hand. The rear door to the trailer opened, slamming down a ramp onto the gravel drive. There was a dull roar within the trailer and in a few moments, several razorbacks smeared with brownish bloodstains, dented and bullet-pocked, drove off the rear ramp.
    Sledge got the hint and yelled over the roar. “We don’t have any spares, so we’ll have to fabricate parts. We’ll let you know when it’s done.”
    “I don’t see anywhere to eat on your grid.”
    “We’re not a full-service community yet, but there are places out by the highway.”
    “Not really a holon, then, is it?”
    “We’re working on it.”
    Loki looked Sledge up and down then clomped up the trailer ramp. He mounted his Ducati Streetfighter motorcycle and roared out of there.
    Asshole.
    He accelerated down the county road, south toward its junction with the interstate. Loki noticed the park that Sledge must have been referring to. Even though it was a small thing—a village green with a circular flagstone path, a flagpole, and a statue—it still stopped Loki in his tracks. The statue was that of a man—but it was engulfed in writhing flames. Not chiseled flames, either, but rippling orange flames that guttered and surged twenty feet into the air.
    It took several moments for Loki to realize they had to be D-Space flames. He made a gesture and turned off his HUD contact lenses, and sure enough, the flames disappeared, leaving the ten-foot-tall stone statue cold and inert. Loki turned his HUD display back on and the flames returned. He drove off the county road, onto the grass, and pulled his bike up to the base of the statue.
    The words “Roy Merritt” were carved into its pedestal base. He looked up to see Merritt posed on one knee, one arm across his leg, the other bracing himself on the ground, as though he were readying himself to get back up from a severe blow.
    Loki leaned under the shadow of the statue to look into the eyes of that massive head. The brow was determined. The jaw firmly set—showing his resolve to endure. It was a fair likeness of the man he remembered—but who had grown larger than life since his death. Now it
literally was
a chiseled jaw, but there was also Roy’s Roman nose, his short hair, and, of course, his burns. They appeared as a texture pattern running down his muscular neck and down the sinewy forearms. He was depicted in tactical gear—ready for action.
    Solid granite. Loki marveled that this was one of the first publicmonuments for this new darknet community. He’d seen the cult of Merritt growing steadily with each passing month. He thought the funeral might have been the high-water mark of the hero worship, but he was seeing real-life graffiti, and more Order of Merritt factions being founded.
    Roy Merritt had been Loki’s enemy, but unlike The Major, Merritt was a worthy opponent—resourceful, personally courageous, and honest. Loki felt a twinge of anguish at the memory of Merritt dying before his eyes. They called him the Burning Man because he’d survived the death trap Sobol’s house had become—and he did it all on video. Video that had since been seen by just about everyone on the darknet. Merritt had seemed invincible.
    But he was a man too idealistic for this world. No wonder his own side shot him in the back.
    Loki wondered what it must be like to be so universally loved and admired. He circled around again and looked up into that great, stone face, wrapped in D-Space flames, burning him for all eternity, as though he were damned. It was an odd conceit for the angelic hero to appear tortured by eternal flames. Perhaps he was all the more powerful a symbol because of it.
    Loki noticed that there was also a D-Space video display just beneath the carved name on the pedestal. People in the real world wouldn’t be able to see it, of course, but darknet operatives could. It showed only a still photograph of Merritt from what looked to be