The Skill Conspiracy

by Pete Gustin

  “You okay, Alden?” Annie asked as we did our about-face to start following the man’s directions.

  “Yeah. No. I don’t know,” I replied, sounding a little despondent even to my own ears.

  Before getting here, Annie and I had been riding different subway lines for the better part of two hours, just basically trying to obscure our path, and at the same time, trying to get as far away from the scene at the mall as possible. There was a lot I actually wanted to talk about, but I couldn’t exactly bring up any of it while we were sitting on a crowded subway car.

  I guess I just kind of kept thinking about the guy in that Mag Car—the one I’d forced into the bottom of the helicopter, not to mention the people in the helicopter. But the look on the guy’s face in the car really stuck with me. It seemed to me, at the very last instant, just as he realized what was about to happen, he somehow didn’t look surprised like you might have expected him to. Instead, he actually looked hurt. I mean like, sad. As if he was looking right into my eyes and asking, “Why? Why are you doing this to me?”

  Seemed like everywhere I went lately I was leaving victims in my wake. I knew exposing the conspiracy over the STU technology was important. I also knew that if I stopped running that both Annie and I would end up dead, but I needed to make a more conscious decision not to let anyone else get hurt along the way. I knew that was going to be tough, especially since Annie and I were in this together. As much as I wanted to get through this as cleanly as possible, I knew that if it came down to someone else or me and Annie, I’d have to pick us, and especially her, every single time.

  “Here it is,” Annie said triumphantly as we finally found our way to what most definitely looked like a bus terminal.

  We made our way through the crowd and approached, thank God, another English-speaking ticket agent.

  “Hello there,” Annie said, both by way of introduction and indicating that we did not speak Spanish.

  “Hello,” the female ticket agent wearing a bow tie replied.

  “We’re looking to get to Bogota,” Annie said.

  We obviously wanted to get to the Space Elevator, which was actually just south of Bogota, but again, we were trying to drop as few bread crumbs as we could.

  “Long trip,” Ms. Bow Tie replied.

  “How long?” Annie asked.

  “Just over nine hundred kilometers.”

  “How many miles is that?” I asked at the same moment Annie asked, “How long will that take?” which was admittedly the better question.

  Ms. Bow Tie ignored my math problem of a question and responded directly to Annie, “Fourteen hours, with two stops.”

  Annie rolled her eyes, and I felt my eyebrows climb up on my forehead, but we bought our two tickets and found a couple of seats to plant our butts in and wait for the bus to arrive.

  After flying a private jet, sailing a high-end speed-boat, and driving a Mag SUV, this bus was going to be a step down of epic proportions, but Annie and I agreed that letting someone else handle the driving would be nice. It was still early in the day, but I had a feeling that both of us were going to need some rest.

  “It’s here,” Annie said, nudging me in the shoulder.

  Wow, I must have already dozed off. I opened my eyes and followed Annie the crowded few steps across the little waiting area and got in line to wait for the bus.

  “Blah blah. Blah blah blah,” a short, little older man wearing khaki pants and a tucked-in short-sleeved plaid shirt was saying to some people waiting in the line in front of us. “Blah blah blah,” he continued saying when he got to us, but seeing the complete and total lack of understanding in my eyes, he tried another tactic. “Going to do some sightseeing in Bogota?”

  “No,” I said at the same moment Annie replied, “Yes.”

  I gotta stop doing that.

  Mr. Plaid looked back and forth between us quizzically, then handed a pamphlet to Annie.

  “The two cathedrals I would most recommend are the Salt Cathedral and the

  Metropolitan Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception.”

  “The what?” I asked. He’d said it all in English, but that last name came out so fast I had no idea what he was saying.

  “It’s in Bolevar Square,” he replied, not bothering to repeat the name. “Big Church. Muy grande, and lots of other connecting tours meet at the square.”

  “Like what?” Annie asked.

  “Do the Cathedral first,” the little man replied. “You’ll find out.”

  Annie handed me the brochure about the Salt Cathedral, which was half in Spanish and half in English, and was all about a place that was a literal representation of its name—a Salt Cathedral built right into a salt mine. A quick little glance at the map of the place made it look like it was pretty far north of Bogota, so I just stuck it in my back pocket, being extraordinarily careful not to expose the handgun I still had tucked into my waistband. I looked over Annie’s shoulder to see what her brochure was all about, and she was smiling.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  She pointed to a little blurb on the English side of the brochure. I looked to see right below a little ad for a zip line tour, and above one for a cocoa-tasting room, there was a picture of a sleek black conversion van labeled “Space Shuttle.”

  “Nice,” I said with a smile of my own, assuming that the cleverly named Space Shuttle Van would take you right to the Space Elevator.

  “Yeah,” Annie agreed. “Finally, something easy.”

  The little man seemed annoyed that we were looking at anything on his pamphlet besides the cathedrals and decided to move on to the couple behind us without another word.

  We made our way up into the bus and found a couple of seats near the back. About ten minutes later we got underway, and after no time at all, I found myself falling in and out of sleep. I say “in and out” because as much as I just wanted to close my eyes and pass right out, I kept getting jarred awake by one of a myriad bumps in the road. I’m sure the bus we were on must have had shocks at one point or another. Then again, maybe not. Either way, you’d never know it because every time we hit a bump, I’d feel the sensation travel through the bus, up my spine, and right into my skull. The constant up and down of The Runner was heaven compared to this bus, but at least the bus was taking us where we needed to go, and neither of us had to do the driving.

  Two scheduled food stops, four unscheduled bathroom breaks after the little toilet on the bus broke, and a full thirteen hours later, I saw a sign for Bogota as the bus merged into what I could only assume was its very own lane smack dab in the middle of the highway.

  “Ha,” I laughed. “Who needs a Mag Car here?”

  Annie was asleep, since it was just a few minutes before midnight, so, I was the only one that got a little chuckle out of that, I guess.

  “Blah blah blah blah blah,” the bus driver said over the speakers built into the bus, followed by, “Please gather your belongings. We will be arriving at our destination in ten minutes.”

  Since we had no actual belongings, all I had to do was double- and triple-check the gun I had tucked in my pants, wake Annie up, get off the bus, and begin our search for a place to rest for the night.

  31

  Thanks to the information on the little pamphlet Mr. Plaid had given us back at the bus terminal, we knew that there was a Space Shuttle Van that would take us directly to the Space Elevator from that big cathedral he was trying to get us to visit. Finding the cathedral was easy. It was pretty much right on the opposite side of the street from where the bus had dropped us off.

  From there, we found the closest hotel, checked in, and flopped down on the single king-sized bed, thrilled to be on something that wasn’t trying to clack my teeth together until they turned to dust. I rested for just a few minutes, then sat up, logged into my PCD, and set about trying to book a couple of tickets for us on the Space Elevator.

  Quantity – 2

  Number of Days – 1

  Total P
rice - $500,000

  I found it slightly alarming how much money you could burn through when you were trying to save the world from an evil corporation and advance the welfare of humanity as a whole. On the bright side, though, our tickets on the Space Elevator did come with a “free” ride on the Space Shuttle Van that would come directly to us at either 7:30, 7:45, or 8:00 in the morning.

  How generous of them.

  Now, though, it was a little bit past midnight, and neither Annie nor I were very tired. I mean, we’d basically just spent the entire day sleeping, or trying to sleep, on a bus, but we did have to get an early start the following day, so we both took showers, climbed into the bed, and set our alarms for a dawn wake-up.

  I was apparently more tired than I thought, because the next thing I knew, my alarm clock was waking me up, and sunlight was streaming through our one window, which neither of us had pulled the shades on the night before. We got dressed, and instead of hitting up the free continental breakfast at the hotel, we put on our Shadez and went out in search of a nice, quiet little place to have breakfast. On the way, we passed right by the gigantic Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Bolevar Square, which, unlike last night, seemed to be open and accepting visitors, but we decided not to linger when we overheard one British-sounding tourist telling his companion that all of the other massive buildings on the other side of the square were actually courthouses. True, it was extremely unlikely that some court official was going to come running out of one of the buildings in order to slap handcuffs on us, but for the first time in my otherwise very law-abiding life, I was starting to feel a little bit antsy when it came to anything that had to do with the law.

  A few blocks away from the cathedral and the courthouses, we found a little breakfast place that had just opened up, as we were amongst the first few people to get a little table in their outside seating area. The street was quiet, the menu had more than just four things on it, it didn’t stick to the table, and even had a reverse side printed entirely in English. This place had it all over the Beer Shack on Vaca Key and Flower Lady’s place up in Cuba. I enjoyed some eggs and sausage with salsa, Annie enjoyed something slightly less greasy, and when we were all done, I shot a message to our Space Shuttle Van driver and told him that we were no longer at the hotel but instead were at this cafe.

  “Can you please connect me via tether?” came the request from our driver.

  Still unable to do so, of course, I just sent him the address of the restaurant as it was printed on the back of our menu. Knowing full well I’d never be able to sneak a handgun onto the Space Elevator, I excused myself from the table, making a show of asking our waiter where the bathroom was. Instead of hitting the head, though, I continued through to the back of the building, where I exited through the rear door, did a quick check for any security cameras, ejected the final two rounds from the gun, and tossed the pistol into a large dumpster that smelled like it was full of last night’s unserved food. As much as I really didn’t want to end up smelling like hot garbage, I had to hide the gun at least a little bit. I couldn’t just leave it sitting on top of the pile like that, so, I leaned into the container ever so slightly and shoved a couple of bags around until the gun fell between the cracks and disappeared out of sight.

  “Crap,” I said out loud, noticing that I, of course, did get some brown sploogy stuff right at belly-button level on both my black T-shirt and the whiteish button-down Annie and I had bought from that little old lady in that tiny town. Of course, I couldn’t just get it on one or the other shirt, I had to get it on both of them.

  So, with two shirts smeared in gloop, I reentered the restaurant, this time actually heading to the bathroom for real, where I used some hand soap and scrubbed furiously at both of my shirts until the brown was gone, replaced by a much larger and thankfully far less smelly wet spot. I did my best to dry it with some of those crappy brown paper towels you get in restrooms and then took a moment to go and flush the two bullets I’d ejected from the gun down the toilet. Finally, after taking about three times longer than I had intended, I returned to Annie at our little table.

  “What the—?” Annie started to ask but cut herself off as she had spotted the giant wet spot on my shirt.

  “I-I, uh . . .” What was I going to say? “It’ll dry,” was all I could muster.

  Annie sat there sipping her coffee while I fanned my shirt with a little drink menu until the Space Shuttle Van finally arrived. It was a big, black, shiny conversion van decorated on the side facing us with scenes from the galaxy as viewed from outer space. When the driver’s side door opened, I was half expecting the driver to be wearing some sort of space suit or other such themed nonsense, but instead, he wore a simple black suit, white shirt, and black tie. He stepped out, looked right at me, then continued scanning the area, obviously not even considering the possibility that the man with the wet shirt and his dressed down girlfriend could possibly be the two people who had just dropped half a million dollars on a trip aboard the Space Elevator.

  “Hi,” I called to him.

  “Hello,” he said back politely, but kept looking around.

  I was about to tell him my name but actually forgot once again what identity I was currently using. I took my PCD out of my pocket to look but Annie beat me to the punch.

  “Hello,” she said. “I’m Marianna. This is Sebastian.”

  Right, Sebastian—Bash.

  “Oh,” the man said, jerking his head back in our direction.

  There was a pause, during which I was expecting Annie to come up with one of her highly fanciful yet totally believable stories to explain our decidedly un-rich-person appearances, but when she didn’t offer anything up, I gave her a what-the-heck kind of gesture.

  She leaned in and said quietly, “Real rich people would never explain themselves to their chauffeur.”

  I chuckled, stood up, and walked toward the vehicle.

  “Mr. Rojas?” the man said, holding his own PCD in his left hand.

  It was my cue to call up my ticket to the Space Elevator and thus confirm my identity. That done, he repeated the procedure with Ms. Ortiz, also known as Annie. Satisfied, but still a little perplexed, he asked me, “Where will we need to go to pick up your luggage, Mr. Rojas?”

  “No luggage,” I replied.

  “We’re just going up for the day so Sebastian can take a spacewalk. It’s a little belated birthday gift from me to him,” Annie replied with more excellent than usual diction and a nice wide smile.

  “Ah, very good then,” the man replied. “My name is Antonio, please step in.”

  He opened one of the doors of the van to reveal an interior just as luxurious as the private airplane we’d jumped out of or the speedboat we’d managed to get blown up, but instead of being all white, blue, and silver, the interior of the shuttle was all black with gold accents. We took our seats on two overstuffed plush leather chairs, whereupon Antonio offered us mimosas.

  “Please,” Annie replied, as I nodded my head, indicating I’d love to have one as well.

  After he’d given us our mimosas, with spill-proof cups, of course, Antonio closed the door, then got in up front and made ready to start our little trip to the Space Elevator.

  “Would you like to view any of the informational videos we have on board about the Space Elevator?” Antonio asked from his driver’s seat. “All of them are in full visual 3D and look quite spectacular.”

  “Sure,” Annie replied.

  I almost said, “no” because I figured we’d kind of seen everything there was to see about the Space Elevator in any number of other videos I’d called up lately, but we really did have nothing else to do for the next forty-five minutes of the ride, and Annie always did seem to enjoy the scenic visual 3D shows.

  Antonio pressed some controls up front, and a blackout divider between where he was and where we were slid into place. After that, the windows in our part of the van went from transparent, to translucent to fully black opaque. As the interior l
ights dimmed, a 3D screen folded down from the ceiling and activated, bathing the entire interior of the van in a scene from outer space.

  “Cool,” I said, realizing that I had said “cool” about forty times in the past few days. Hey, despite some of the obvious pitfalls and drawbacks of our current flight from the law, we really had been seeing and experiencing a lot of very cool stuff. I think Annie might have felt the same way because when I looked over to see how she was doing, she had a big smile on her face.

  “Hola,” a voice from the speakers in the van said. “Blah blah blah blah blah—” Then it cut off abruptly.

  “Sorry,” came Antonio’s voice over the speakers.

  Annie and I exchanged quick confused looks until the space scene disappeared for a moment then reset.

  “Hello,” came a new voice from the speakers. “And welcome to your space adventure.”

  I sipped my mimosa as the video played, not really paying a whole heck of a lot of attention to it until the part about the STU-assisted spacewalk. There it was, just sitting there, so real in 3D I could almost touch it. I still only had a vague outline of a possibility of a plan in my mind as to how I was going to be able to get my hands on that little chipset, but I’d need to start figuring it out for real very soon.

  Half an hour later the video ended. Ten minutes after that, Antonio told us we’d be pulling up to the facility shortly.

  “How long is the ride?” I asked Annie as we stepped out of the car and thanked Antonio.

  “What ride?” she asked.

  “On the elevator.”

  “Weren’t you watching the video?”

  “No, not really,” I admitted.

  Annie shook her head at me and said, “Three hours.”

  “Oh my God, what?”

  “How long did you think it was going to take to get all the way into outer space?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “But I feel like all I’ve done for two days is sit on my butt.”