The Voting Machine

The King and the Ass

When I woke up, Juan Ricardo was holding two of the metal headbands from the work room. He had decorated them like headdresses for a costume play. One was shaped like a crown with pointed tips of tin foil. The other had two, floppy brown leather strips like a pair of donkey ears. He mumbled something in Spanish and his men took the headdresses. They fitted the crown on Luke's head and gave me the donkey ears.

"Mejo vivir cinco anos como rey, que cincuenta como buey," he said. "'Better to live five years as a king than fifty years as an ass.'

"I want to tell you both a little story," he said, circling me and Luke. "Since you seem to have such a strong brotherhood, I've chosen a tale of two brothers. They were twins who lived in a village in Sinaloa long, long ago, before the revolutions and chaos of the modern world. Back then it was a place of magic, a place where tradition created its own separate reality. In this village, they had a custom. When every boy reached manhood on his 18th birthday he was given choice about his future. He could choose to live as king and he'd be blessed with power for five more years of life. Or he could choose to be an ass and he would get fifty years of servitude.

"So one day our two brothers turned eighteen. And one chose the life of El Rey, because in his heart he knew that it was his nature to take what he wanted and compel others to serve him. The second brother chose the life of El Buey, because he had always been a humble and self-sacrificing. He was one who valued brotherhood and companionship over victories Even as a young boy playing kick ball in the street he never wanted to win the game, he only wanted to keep playing.

"So the brothers made their choices: one grew strong, tall and handsome with a crown on his head. The other one actually shrank. Then he sprouted donkey ears and began to walk on four legs. Through the magic and tradition of that village, they were quickly transformed into completely different creatures. Growing up they'd been brothers of the same flesh and blood, who ate the same food, slept in the same quarters and received the same treatment from their family and the others in the village. But now their brotherhood was gone and they were no longer equals. The ass now served the king and lived underneath him.

"One day the king set out to leave the village to find more things that he could conquer. He took his brother and rode him like the ass that he was, journeying through the valleys and across deserts for many years. The magic of this village was so powerful it sustained them over distant lands. The king was a happy man. He had no regrets about the choices he made, including the fact he treated his brother like the beast that he'd become. He knew that the world was a rough place and some have to be on the top while some serve on the bottom. That was the natural order. And what about the brother who became the ass? After laboring for five years as an animal, he could not even reflect on his own life, because an ass is they type of animal who doesn't have a mind to comprehend joy and sadness. An ass only exists to serve the master.

"In the fifth year of their wanderings, the king was killed in a fight with another king who tried to steal his crown. As he felt the rival's knife thrust into his heart, El Rey reflected on the many pleasures and victories of his life. They gave him such great satisfaction as he drew his final breath while his brother the ass felt the slightest sorrow, reaching back to the feelings he once had when he was human. His master was gone now and there was no one to tell him what to do. But the ass had chosen a life of fifty years. So he had forty-five more years to go. And so for decades he roamed alone across the barren sands of Sonora and Chihuahua with no feeling or purpose. In learning to serve his master he lost the ability to think for himself. With his master was gone there was no one to serve and no reason to live."

Juan Ricardo drew a remote device from his pocket and leaned over my chair.

"So I end my story with a question, Temo McCarthy" he said, bearing down on me. "Who died first? The king or the ass?"

I was frozen, staring at his remote, staring at the button under his thumb. I could feel the metal hand band tight around my shaven scalp under the donkey ears.

"Choose one," he said. "Who died first?"

He pressed the button. I felt the stinging sensation across my scalp. Then the pain rippled outward, like hot, thick liquid flowing under my skin. The vibration buzzed in my ears.

I screamed at the top of my lungs.

"Who died first?"

He pressed the button again. The voltage surged through my skull. My heart was beating faster, racing like a locomotive that ran off the tracks. The buzzing grew louder.

He took his finger off the button and the current stopped.

"This is your last chance, Temo. Gina told you something. She told you how to unmask Shiro. What is the secret?"

I gasped for breath.

Scattered memories of Gina flashed through my mind. I remembered the first day she called me in an alley behind the restaurant where I worked as a dishwasher. She was calling me from Passion. She was trying to collect on my dead parents' overdue credit card bills.

"I know you don't owe me, Mr. McCarthy. I know you must hate me. You have every right to. Nobody deserves what you been through. I hate myself for calling you this way, picking through your past. But I have to do it. I don't have a choice."

"Of course you have a choice. Nobody's making you call me. Nobody's holding a gun to your head."

"Yes, they are."

"Excuse me?"

"We all got somebody holding a gun to our head, Mr. McCarthy. I got my own overdue balance I am running away from. I got my own demons chasing me, and I got to find a way to beat them. This is the only life I got. I am going to make something of it. Me calling you on this phone. This here's a job. It's the best job I can get. It's my only way out. Everybody needs a way out. Don't you need a way out, Mr. McCarthy?"

What could I give him to stop the pain?

The shocks started again.

My bones ached. My veins and arteries felt like they were going to burst.

The humming grew louder.

"What did she tell you, Temo?" Juan Ricardo shouted.

My whole body was about to short circuit.

The humming grew louder and louder.

Then I realized the sound wasn't from the shock waves rippling through the inside of my body. The sound was coming from the outside. It was the song I'd heard before in Las Vegas. The same mechanical humming. The steel ghost of Santa Muerte bearing down from the sky. The blue bird.

"Las Dronas!"

The explosion rocked the whole building, crashing through the walls, knocking us to the ground in a cloud of debris, shattering the chairs that imprisoned us. When the haze cleared we were free from our ropes. Juan Ricardo's henchmen were dead and their boss had disappeared.