Alternative Apocalypse

by Debora Godfrey

  Sliding my hand through the bars, I stab in the code, my finger quivering with fear between each jab. I retract the phalanx. The panel goes dark as the bars click and release the lock. I slide past the heavy metal gate, shutting it firmly behind me. Shutting me in. The panel flickers to life and resumes its lazy blinking. I march down the corridor, my boots slapping against the ground like the tick of a clock.

  Just after dinner, Jack showed up at our door. It wasn’t unusual for someone to show up looking to have something repaired, or a piece of tech scavenged or salvaged. But Jack had never visited.

  He shoved his tablet at me and scowled. “Get this fixed, jinx.”

  I stood, arms folded and shoulders hunched like a cornered cat.

  “What is this?” Uncle Niimi said, still haggard, fisting sleep from his eyes as he trudged to the door, shrugging deeper into the blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

  “This is her fault,” Jack said. Again, he thrust the tablet at me like a knife, like unwanted news, like truth.

  I looked down to find it flashing and humming in my hand. The screen warmed and welcomed me.

  “What did you do?” Jack said.

  “Nothing,” I said and shoved the tablet into his belly.

  Jack swiped the screen, releasing the keyboard. “You’ve bypassed my security.”

  “Goodnight, Jack,” Uncle Niimi said, and shuffled back to bed, pulling his blanket tighter around his shoulders against a cold that wasn’t in the room.

  Jack didn’t move from the doorway, but watched Uncle Niimi disappear into his room. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Mind your business,” I said.

  Jack leaned toward me. “I thought you only messed up tech but that’s not all, is it.” He stared down at his tablet. “I could use your help.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Could earn some change. A bit of coin in your pocket?”

  I scanned Jack and didn’t like the specs. “No.”

  I jog along the corridor, and scan the ceiling, noting the stilled cameras attached every few paces, winking red eye shut and blind. Their disability will not be noticed during the maintenance, if he parsed the data correctly. I slip on my gloves and reach behind to touch the quiet neuro-link against the skin at the base of my skull. My body needs only the slightest excuse to shuck it, so I must stay calm. With my other hand, I pat my jacket and feel for the thin rectangle of his jump drive; a pebble in my pocket.

  Earlier, Uncle Niimi had waved away my reminder to contact the med-boards as if it were a bothersome crow. His dismissal had disturbed me. Almost as much as Jack’s stares that pressed on me and made it hard to breathe.

  “How’s your uncle?” Jack asked. “Did he get in contact with the med-boards?”

  “How did you…?”

  Jack smirked. I wanted to rip his lips off.

  “Want to know what they said?”

  I couldn’t help myself. My body leaned toward him and my gaze slid to his tablet. I saw my uncle’s name followed by a long list of words that seemed in another language, then numbers and percentages and a single-word tally. Rejected. “That isn’t real.”

  “You wanna bet? Was an easy hack.” He smirked and shrugged. “Data-hoarders screwed you over.”

  “What?”

  Jack rolled his eyes, which only made me want to gouge them out.

  “They fish the internet and gather all the information on you. Crunch it, filter it down and sell it. Can tell what you want. What you’re gonna want. The stream shows how the money flows.”

  “How?”

  “Predictive Algorithms. Where do you think all those forms you fill out end up? Well, maybe not you, but regular folk. It takes all the information collected about you, all the information you feed it, gobbles it up, and spits you out. Marketing-cons. Money-seers. Med-boards are all about them too.”

  “And because of that, Uncle Niimi can’t get medical aid?”

  Jack nodded.

  “Can you change that?”

  Jack leaned back in his chair, arms folded, smug as sunrise.

  I hear the soft whir of a camera rotating and focusing its lens. I press myself against the wall and turn off my light. I tug my hood lower around my face. Did I trip an alarm? Is it motion activated?

  The camera stops. I stare into the darkness almost daring it to move again. I take in two quick breaths as I slip one hand out of a glove. Hugging the shadows, I slide forward keeping my face down. The camera mount shifts in its socket. Searching? Running my hand along the wall, I reach for a tingle to trace the tech. I slide my finger along it and send out a pulse. The whir of the camera dips to nothing and the lens sags to face the ground.

  The tablets littering my bed winked off and on. Each powered up to the factory default screen, yet all the files and folders lay open on the desktop. I let go of my breath and wiped the sweat from the back of my neck. I lay back on my bed as the ache at my temples throbbed.

  “What are you doing?” Uncle Niimi asked, standing in the doorway.

  “Nothing,” I said, covertly sliding my blanket over the tablets.

  Uncle Niimi glared at them. “Whose are these?”

  “Jack’s.”

  “All of these?”

  “They’re nothing. Junk. Garbage.”

  “Alasie, I don’t want you hanging out with Jack.”

  “What? Why?”

  “His stats read all wrong. He’s trouble. He’ll get you in trouble. Get rid of this.”

  “You have tech you work on. That you scavenge—”

  “Enough, Alasie. I came in here to give you these.” Uncle Niimi pulled out a pair of gloves, fine mesh and smooth polymer so flimsy they wafted in the paltry breeze. “Maggie made these for you. For when you work on the computers. Maybe you won’t have your...” He hesitated. “Troubles.”

  I slipped on the gloves, the fine threads of the alloy catching on my callus. The gloves were soft and pliable, but seemed durable. I dragged one tablet closer, swiped it to the homepage and pulled up the virtual keyboard and a fresh document. I began to type and marvelled that there was not one flicker or glitch.

  I glanced over the edge of the tablet to where Uncle Niimi leaned against the doorway, his breath a labour. “Did you contact the med-boards?”

  “I’ve got my appointment all lined up.”

  I didn’t have Jack’s skills to infiltrate the data and see for myself. But I trusted what he said more than my Uncle’s shifting gaze. More than the cough he tried to swallow and hide behind his hastily turned back and raised hand.

  A few more steps in the dark. In the silence. I turn on my flashlight and glance at my watch. My caution cost me time. I see the door ahead. I run, my hand reaching out, my body feeling the surge build. I press my hand near the handle of the door and grunt as I let my nerves loose in a focused pulse. I hear a click. The door opens.

  I bundled Jack’s tech into a bag and slogged them up to his apartment. I released them at his feet. “There. I’ve done what you told me. Now. Set an appointment for my uncle.”

  “I can’t.”

  My hands closed into fists. “But that’s the deal.” I felt heat rise up from my core. My skin shimmered as light rippled from me. The power died; the fridge chugged down, the hum of the heating whispered out, the digital readouts faded. The lights in the corridor winked out one at a time. The hall sank into darkness, eaten up by silence.

  “You idiot,” Jack said, pulling me inside and slamming his front door shut.

  Beyond the door lies the server room, a small installation for the outlying areas; an insignificant hub, a nothing node for those riding the edge of the grid. The floor tiles however, are white and spotless. I remove my muddy boots and slip them into the plastic bag wadded into my pocket. The row of servers reminds me of home. The lights along its surface twinkle like the condo windows, our lives framed in each square. Each panel a door into a universe.

  I swing the shoe bag onto my back as I slide my foot across the f
loor. I stand at the terminal, insert the jump drive and reboot the system. The screen goes black and then green as he said it would. Lines of white code flow across the display and the page scrolls down. Then it stops. The code pulses. It turns red. My heart jumps into my throat as a bell chimes far too insistently to be anything but an alarm.

  A half an hour later, the black-out still gripped the tower in its fist. Most of the Enclave had emptied into the commons. Concern and curiosity coloured their grumbles until they were as dark as the tower. The grey block of glass and concrete gone cold and dead had not a light in one window. Outside in the courtyard, technicians—tools in hand—ran to the machinery stables to check the power grid.

  Jack appeared beside me. “Hurry.” He grabbed my hand and dragged me toward the scraggily-brambled field that surrounded the town. He pointed to a spot just above the horizon. “They sent a surveillance drone to check out the blackout.” The drone skimmed the contour of the rocky ground growing larger as it sailed toward us. “You’ve got to disable it.”

  Panic ran through me like electricity. It felt enough to power the Enclave. “How?”

  “Figure it out, Alasie, because if you don’t, they’ll zero-in on you as the disruptor.”

  I focused my mind on the flying drone, reaching out to touch it, through the metallic shell, past the wires and into the aether at its core, winding it down until it lay tame on the ground.

  The pinging increases in tempo. My heart beats so hard I can barely breathe. I am grateful for my gloves, otherwise I would have shorted out the entire system. I press my gloved index and middle finger to the neuro-link making sure it has full contact. I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. “Jack,” I say, hating the quiver in my voice. “Jack. There’s an alarm beeping on the computer.”

  “No big.” I can practically hear his shrug, his annoying, smug, shrug. So easy to shrug from his safe distance, in the silence of his no-alarm-pinging bunker. “You have to ghost through to reset the temporary password.”

  “What password.”

  “Just use password. That’s not too hard is it?”

  The morning after the black-out, officials came rolling through the tunnel. The two uniformed investigators marched through the main entrance of the Enclave scanning the area with snooping eyes that no one could meet with a steady gaze. Hope lived briefly when they asked to see my uncle, but they saw him at the machinery stables not our apartment.

  Uncle Niimi leaned against his counter, a counter clear of clutter. Unusual, but not because of the visitors. He was too sick to work.

  “It looks clean enough,” one official said to the other, lowering his scanner. They nodded and turned to leave.

  “Is that it?” I asked. “My uncle needs medical aid.”

  The second official stared at his tablet and nodded slowly. “That request has already been processed and assessed. Based on data-speculations, deemed not a constructive use of resources.” He swiped the page closed and slid the tablet into his breast pocket. “Perhaps if time wasn’t being wasted sending us out here, there would be available resources. You should remind your guiding committee of that when we ask for their cooperation.”

  “We are cooperating,” Uncle Niimi said, but so low, I think I was the only one to hear.

  I scowl as I remove one of my gloves. I spread my hand out and feel the energy before me. I press against it. At first it resists me, but then my virtual hand passes right through. The beeping stops. The screen shimmers. The letters and numbers of the code smear across the screen like wet ink. They fade and leave behind a blinking cursor.

  My hands hang over the keyboard. I can almost see Jack, tapping his finger or marching around the bunker, rolling his eyes and groaning in frustration as I hesitate. Desperation had set me on this path so far from home but after all this, what guarantees did I have from Jack? Would cooperation get what I want from shrugging, smug Jack? I slip on my glove, type in my temporary password and hit enter.

  The officials rolled out of town as night fell, before the Tunnel linking our home and the city closed. It felt as if everyone in The Enclave finally took a breath. Jack had avoided it all, hiding with the dead drone. I didn’t think secrets were possible in the Enclave, all of us living in each other’s lives, but Jack had found an abandoned bunker from before the ‘Reconstruction’. There, he had hacked inside the drone, laying out all of its innards, all of its secrets, like a dissected creature.

  “They came looking for this, you know,” Jack said, gesturing toward the bits and pieces left of the drone. “That’s all they care about. That and your EMP that made the blackout.”

  “EMP?”

  “Electro-magnetic pulse. You really are a simp.”

  “Maybe I should have told them you had the drone. Maybe then they would have helped Uncle Niimi.”

  “Don’t be stupid. Now, let’s get to work.”

  The data lays open like a book.

  “Alasie, I can’t access it,” Jack says, in his bossiest tone. “Did you forget how to spell password?”

  “I didn’t forget.”

  I swim through the data stream, riding the wave, taking me to places I never knew, into secrets I shouldn’t know. I see names and attached to these, numbers, links in a heavy chain reaching around and through all the people here and out toward others who live in enclaves of their own. I target my uncle’s name, and find it easily.

  All the details of our lives are laid out like a finished puzzle. Account numbers tally our past efforts. Medical paragraphs predict our future. My uncle’s future is dismal and decided because of a probability factor which dooms him now. Unless I do something.

  Uncle Niimi’s cough kept me awake even after it became a quieter wheeze, my worry growing to a nagging pain in the pit of my stomach. I slipped out of the Enclave during curfew, sleeping the electronic locks until I passed through and ghosting the surveillance waves until I wouldn’t even be a blip. I subverted the restrictions on Jack’s bunker, far more complex than anything the Enclave had to offer. Owning a bit of Jack’s swagger, I sat down and waited in his chair.

  Jack opened the door and jerked back in surprise. “What? How?”

  “I’m ready. Now can we hack into my uncle’s data-specs?”

  Jack shook his head. “Not from here.” He pointed at a drawer.

  I tried it but it was locked. I pressed my hand against it, sent out a pulse and the mag-lock released. Inside lay a jump drive, grey, dull and worn, and obviously very old.

  I move the cursor until it lies beside the word Rejected. I try to change the entry but it won’t let me. I have unlocked the door and walked into the room but I can’t affect anything in it.

  “Alasie,” Jack said. “You screwed up the password. I can’t get in.”

  “Jack, I can see my uncle’s records. Tell me what to do.”

  “Alasie, what’s the password?”

  “No. Tell me what to do. Tell me or I’m closing it down and walking out of here.”

  “Are you crazy? We’ve come all this way and you’re going to pull this crap? Listen you freak—”

  I ignore the rest. Beside my uncle’s name is mine, but I don’t want to look. I don’t want to know what future has been mapped out for me, the tally of me and all my potential determined by data crunches that hurt as much as they sound. I don’t want any sentences to proclaim my fate. Why should they know? I don’t even know what I’ll do next.

  I see another name and follow that line of code. The verdict on Jack’s future is just as grim as my uncle’s but for completely different reasons. There are graphs and reports, data dissected and rinsed through predictive algorithms. He is condemned for crimes of the future before he can commit them, before he can make another choice.

  I grip the jump-drive through my pocket. “What do you want, Jack?”

  “I want access. Now, stop messing around.”

  “I can see it all Jack. I can see your future.”

  “Listen, Alasie. They wan
t to keep me down in the Enclave when I should be in the advanced stream. They won’t let me in. So, fine. I’ll buy my own way. We shave these coins and we’ll both have what we want.”

  Maybe Jack was who they said. But maybe Jack was who they decided he’d be. They put all their notes on the board, drew their graphs and came up with the total that Jack would be. Maybe he was the one that was jinxed.

  “They’ll say it’s you, Jack. Because all the data says it’s what you’ll do.”

  “Do you want the money for your uncle or not?”

  “The money isn’t the issue,” I say, seeing clearly through the data stream.

  The algorithm crunch crouches like a dam, stemming the tide, sifting through the data. I travel against the current and find the source. It’s a muddy mess, fouled by faulty logic based on decades of prejudice, poured into a filter encrypted with cheats for some and scams for others. I glance at my watch. Time is running out. I can’t clear this debris hidden behind the code. I can’t reprogram it. I can’t fix it for my uncle. But maybe if there are enough ripples, I can break the dam. I take off my gloves.

  I lay my hands out toward the servers and plunge in. Rivers of my energy flow through the system; wearing away barriers, winding through locks, flushing the system clean. I feel light-headed; little bits of me dribbling out, droplets of me falling onto wires that sing and jingle, chiming out the truth to everyone.

  Weeks later, I sit at my desk and stare out the window as my finger scrolls lazily down the webpage. My gloves lay nearby just in case, but I have not had to use them. My control is my glove.

  Uncle Niimi is in the city under treatment, the med-boards unable to turn him away when the information waved out of the data hoard and into everyone’s awareness. Of course he still had to wait. The hospitals became overloaded with all the other patients, either denied or delayed treatment and now vindicated. The manipulated data crunching of med-aid had the most immediate response; riots, revolts and demonstrations. The knowledge united people who never knew they had a common cause. The newsfeeds said the affect would be felt for years to come.