Backland: Insecurity (Book #2)

by Jeff Shelnutt

  Kyle instinctively extended his palm for confirmation of his personal data chip.

  “They also want a real, old-fashioned signature,” Steve added sheepishly

  “Really?” Kyle asked, taking the small clipboard and pen Steve had dug out from somewhere and was dangling before him.

  Steve shrugged and smiled. “Orders are orders.”

  Kyle grunted as a he jotted down his name and the date, trying to remember the last time he’d had to put his John Hancock on anything.

  “That’ll do it,” Steve glanced over the handwriting—rather nostalgically, Kyle thought. “See you around,” he said, saluting, a goofy habit of his.

  “Yeah, sure…Thanks,” Kyle mumbled, already tearing open the envelope. Unfolding the letter he read the scrawled penciled text written on DOCT letterhead:

  Mr. Bennett, ACPr - 0013,

  Your presence is required at 14:30 in Sector 6, extension 15.

  Office of the Director

  Kyle wondered at the message. Sector 6 was primarily composed of military application research.

  Glancing in his peripheral at his mental desktop display, he noted he still had almost two hours. It was time to seize the moment—come what may.

  *****

  Reaching the cafeteria, Kyle didn’t break stride as the door slid noiselessly into the wall and he stepped through. A cacophony of conversations drew him out of his mental cogitations. Several heads turned briefly to see who’d just come in, and turned back to their plates just as quickly. He habitually made his way to the food line and was intercepted by Hank.

  “Kyle! You made it out of your cave for a meal I see,” his friend jibed.

  “Yeah,” Kyle grinned, feeling surprisingly relaxed. “I decided I needed to awake from my hibernated state and smell the…,” he paused and sniffed the air, “the pizza? Is that what’s on the menu today?”

  “It’s not bad. You should try it. They got real olives and onions—even pepperoni,” Hank added eagerly.

  Kyle tried to be friendly, which was easy to do with Hank. “Where have they been getting these shipments of fresh produce recently?” he asked. Hank would know. Security was his department. “I thought the westward route was still being blocked by insurgents.”

  “Nope. They got ‘em cleared out on Monday. Those guys were good. You gotta’ give it to ‘em—even for being a buncha’ hicks. Kept jamming the drone signals somehow. We couldn’t get one within fifty yards before they’d have it spinning in a circle and crashing to the ground.”

  “Not even the creepers?”

  “They had the creepers running into trees,” Hank laughed. “Somebody’s got some real tech skills among ‘em to be able to crack our codes.”

  “But we eventually got it figured out?”

  “Yeah, one of your guys did. Don’t ask me how. You should know.”

  Kyle should’ve known. “I don’t always have the time to check up on what the bunch next door is up to,” he lightly deflected.

  “I guess not. You’re pretty busy figuring out how to keep making money for the guys at the top of this little venture.”

  “Yeah,” Kyle agreed. “And by the way,” he added, “those guys pay your salary.”

  “You got that right,” Hank agreed, laughing. “I’ll let you eat, buddy.” Poised to go back to his seat, he suddenly followed with, “Oh yeah, you’ll be at the game tonight, right”

  The game. That was certainly not on Kyle’s agenda “Oh, yeah. Save me a seat, huh?”

  “Yeah right. You better get there early,” Hank finished with a sarcastic snort before walking off.

  It was pizza for lunch and it was good. Kyle chewed slowly, relishing the ingredients he hadn’t tasted in ages as he scanned the faces in the cafeteria. He usually ate by himself in his office. He’d have something sent down for him. The prospect of why he was here once again filled him with giddiness even as it flung at him a vague feeling of dread he was reluctant to contemplate.

  2

  Lloyd must’ve been in his seventies. He was on the kitchen staff. He walked with a limp and his skin had those geriatric blotchy spots. People handed Lloyd their empty trays when they finished eating for him to dump the remains in the garbage. The idea that Lloyd had an answer Kyle needed for questions he hadn’t yet fully formed was absurd.

  Lloyd smoked a pipe. Kyle had noticed him many times through a window sitting outside on a small balcony. This was fascinating. Nobody Kyle knew smoked. The practice was a quaint custom from the past. He didn’t even know how someone went about obtaining tobacco. He was pretty sure smoking was illegal and tobacco contraband. He guessed no one cared if some old sub smoked on his break as long as he did his job.

  But really, what did he have to worry about? It was only a conversation—one that he hadn’t even had yet. Talking was no crime. It was nothing but words. Yes, Kyle thought, but words express ideas. He was beginning to fathom the power of an abstraction suddenly given substance by the very act of articulating it.

  As a sub, Lloyd didn’t have a neuro-chip. Kyle even wondered if he used an ACAD. They were standard issue to everyone within the Free Zone. Each device was synced with the personal palm chip of its owner. Indeed, it was a criminal offense to lose one’s ACAD and not report it. For the subs, an ACAD was the only way to interface.

  What it was that Kyle expected Lloyd to know, he wasn’t sure. But Lloyd had a memory—a memory all his own, untarnished by neuro-tech. Talking to him had become more than just a of point keen interest—it was bordering on obsession.

  Finishing his pizza, Kyle lingered long over the remainder of his soda. Steeling his nerves and forcing himself to act, he stood, and began to make his way toward the window. Lloyd barely glanced at him, receiving his tray that held an empty plate, remains of some crust and a wadded up napkin. As he swung around toward the trash can behind him, Kyle opened his mouth and out came, “…Uh.”

  Lloyd paused and gave him an impatient look.

  Kyle froze. This should not be this difficult. “I’d like to talk with you, that is, if you have a chance…sometime,” he sputtered.

  Lloyd’s expression passed from complacency to surprise to confusion in a second. “How’s that, son?” he asked.

  “Umm, you know,” Kyle searched for the words, “talk about how things used to be, when you were younger.”

  Lloyd’s confusion melted into something between anger and fearful suspicion. “I don’t know what you want, son, but you got the wrong guy.”

  Kyle understood. An A-class had probably never stooped to even greet him and now here he was essentially asking him for his life story. No wonder he thought he was being mocked, or set up. “No, really, I just want to talk. You’re not in trouble. Nobody put me up to this. But if you don’t want to…”

  Lloyd must’ve detected sincerity in Kyle’s voice. “Alright. I’m on break in fifteen. You wanna talk, meet me at the dumpster behind the kitchen.”

  He glared at Kyle for a few seconds, turned, and limped to the trash can where he deposited what was left of Kyle’s lunch.

  *****

  Kyle sat back down to wait. The caf was slowly emptying out as employees began to return to their afternoon shifts. Instead of a nauseating expectancy, much to his surprise, he felt at peace. He tried not to think, but merely allowed the time to crawl toward its goal.

  Walking through the kitchen in order to get to the balcony brought him several wary stares from the staff, not accustomed to seeing an A-class in their domain. Lloyd was where Kyle had noticed him through the window sitting numerous times before, on an overturned plastic milk crate, smoking his pipe. Kyle eased the door open and walked out. The balcony’s awning offered shade and a comforting breeze stirred in their midst.

  Standing directly in front of him, Kyle hesitated, unsure of how to proceed. Lloyd shifted his gaze up to him and nodded toward another milk crate. “Have a seat, son.”

  Kyle flipped a crate over, sat down and…well, he felt stupid. He’d secure
d his meeting. It had taken every bit of the courage he could muster. Maybe idiocy was a better word for it than courage. He hadn’t planned for what should happen next, though the move was his. Lloyd, on the other hand, appeared unconcerned about the whole matter. Now that Kyle was on his stomping ground, on his terms, he seemed to have become a different person than the shuffling gray-hair who took trays at the caf window.

  “So you wanna hear about the ole’ days, huh?”

  Kyle started at Lloyd’s voice. He gulped, sat up a little straighter and said, “I guess I do.”

  Lloyd took a few steady puffs and exhaled a pleasantly spicy-smelling cloud of smoke out of the side of his mouth. He fixed Kyle with a stare, one eye nearly squinted shut. “Why?”

  Kyle cleared his throat. “Honestly,” he confessed, “I don’t know.”

  “I do,” retorted Lloyd matter-of-factly.

  What an arrogant statement, Kyle thought, annoyed. He suddenly wanted to leave, to put an end to this meeting. A wave of revulsion for this sad old man cascaded over him. He could still go back. Nothing had happened. He could laugh it off, pass of the meeting as a joke to his friends.

  Seemingly reading his thoughts from his face, Lloyd said, “Alright, son. I know when I’m being played.” He began making the effort to rise.

  “No. Wait,” Kyle exclaimed.

  Lloyd paused, glared at him, and settled back down on his crate with a grunt. He peered down into his pipe and said, “I got eight minutes before my break’s up.” Pulling a tamper out of his coverall pocket, he proceeded to tamp down the ash in the bowl.

  Kyle took a deep breath. “I’m interested how people lived—before…well, before the war.” There it was. It was out before he had time to consciously make the decision to say it.

  “That’s best forgotten,” Lloyd muttered.

  “I mean,” Kyle began again, attempting to reword his statement. “I just thought you might talk about what you remember—the changes that took place.”

  “There were changes alright,” Lloyd admitted. “But that’s not what you’re really interested in.”

  The remark was a slap. “What is it, then, that I want to know?” Kyle returned in a haughtier tone than he intended.

  “You want to know if it was better.”

  “If what was better?” Kyle fired back, bewildered.

  “Life.” Lloyd let the word drop heavily. “Perhaps we might’ve all been better off to have left things as they were.”

  “No,” Kyle insisted. “You’re putting words in my mouth. That’s not what I meant.”

  “Sure it is, son. That’s what all of you want to know, when it gets right down to it.”

  Kyle was on the verge of regretting this meeting. He couldn’t discern if it was anger or fear he was feeling as this codger presumed to tell him his own intentions. As if he knew anything about what was best for the country and everyone in it. He was a sub, after all. He was probably past mandatory working age, anyhow.

  Kyle tightened his face into a serious expression in an attempt to regain his composure. “You can believe what you want about my motives,” he began. “I just figured you’d feel honored to have someone ask.”

  Kyle meant it as a jeer and Lloyd knew it. But the old man saw a certain promise in him, a quality he hadn’t observed in someone his age in a long time. Beneath the act—and not very far under the surface—was an innocent simplicity to his inquiries.

  Kyle wasn’t the first to try to talk with him, though he, like all the others, probably believed he was. “What was the fight for?” Lloyd flatly asked.

  “Well…” Kyle stammered, not prepared to be the one answering questions. “We had to save the Republic,” he offered.

  “From what?” Lloyd immediately shot back, pulling his pipe from his mouth and jutting the stem at him for emphasis.

  “Uh…,” Kyle licked his lips nervously. He wasn’t comfortable with this line of questioning. “From the terrorists.”

  “And what would they have done with the Republic, had they won?”

  “Destroyed it…” Kyle stopped suddenly. Lloyd was grinning at him, a grin short of several teeth. “What?” Kyle demanded, exasperated.

  “Maybe you hadn’t been outta the Free Zone lately, but by that standard I’d say they succeeded.”

  “That’s treason!” Kyle fired back, almost shouting.

  Lloyd held up his hand. “Whoa, son. We’re just talkin’,” he followed soothingly. “I’m simply asking if we accomplished our objective?”

  Kyle was quickly realizing that Lloyd was a sharper tack than he’d given him credit for. The careful chat he’d initially hoped for was evolving into a slippery dialogue upon which he was on the verge of losing his footing. “Victory brought stability and reestablished the rule of law,” he stated firmly.

  “Nice answer. But what does it mean?”

  “It means we’re safe.”

  “That’s it?”

  “No, it also means we’re content.”

  “You mean comfortable,” Lloyd said. “Contentment and comfort don’t necessarily run on parallel lines.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  Lloyd struck a match and lit his pipe again, looking thoughtfully at Kyle for several seconds while he puffed. “Comfort only has to do with your emotions. It comes and goes. It’s elusive. Contentment is a matter of what’s up here.” He tapped his head with his finger. “Nothing can take it away from you. Only you can choose to give it up.”

  “You mean freedom,” Kyle responded.

  Lloyd considered this. “Yes, I do. But define what you mean by freedom.”

  “Living without fear.”

  “You’re safe in prison,” Lloyd retorted with a laugh. “But you’re certainly not free. Look beyond environment.”

  “You’re talking about a free mind.”

  Lloyd nodded.

  “Ideologies,” Kyle muttered.

  “No, essence,” Lloyd insisted.

  “Of course every man is free to think his own thoughts.”

  “Or so you all say. The problem is you only allow yourself to think within the boundaries set for you by society.”

  “Society’s parameters are safeguards,” Kyle said, sounding more like he was trying to convince himself.

  “Only safeguards to your comfort.”

  “You asked if the war accomplished its objective,” Kyle reminded him. Lloyd inclined his head for him to go on. “But you’ve directed this conversation toward the individual. The war, society even, is a collective issue.”

  Lloyd rubbed the gray stubble on his cheek with his palm before answering. “Society is only the sum of its parts. Once you lose sight of that, once you dehumanize the man on the street and view him like an interchangeable part in a factory, a person may very well be comfortable in the space he’s allowed to occupy. And he’ll certainly enjoy a sense of security. But in the final tally, he’s expendable. And the state will only use him for as long as he’s useful to it.”

  Lloyd had finished the last part as he struggled to his feet and began making his way toward the kitchen. Knocking the ash out of his pipe on the way, he stuck it in his pocket. With his hand on the door handle, he paused, saying over his shoulder, “It’s been good talkin’ to you, son. You know where to find me.”

  With that he left Kyle sitting alone, gazing wonderingly at the door as it closed behind him.

  *****

  Kyle pulled himself to his feet. Blasted drones, he muttered mentally. They were too quiet. How did he know one would be there when he turned around? Before he could face it, a sweet generic female voice chimed, “Please identify yourself.”

  The safety drone was a perfect black cylinder, a foot in diameter. Hovering at eye level beyond the rail of the balcony wall, it was ten feet from him and some three hundred feet above the pavement below. This was a routine ID check. They occurred frequently to all citizens out of doors.

  Kyle mechanically rattled off, “Kyle Bennett, ACPr-0013,” thoug
h the voice print was merely a confirmatory request. The drone didn’t need him to say anything. It had already done a full facial recognition and wirelessly uplinked with his palm chip.

  “Thank you, Mr. Bennett,” the floating sphere responded merrily. It then hesitated, processing information, Kyle realized, as it hummed within. “Don’t move,” it commanded suddenly in a much less friendly tone.

  His blood congealing, he forgot to breathe.

  “All clear,” the female voice pleasantly resumed.

  Kyle exhaled in relief.

  “This particular location is not one you have ever frequented,” the drone added in admonition. “Watch your step, Mr. Bennett. A fall from this height would be fatal.”

  He nodded as he tried to smile.

  “Have a pleasant afternoon. Your security is my priority,” the sphere chirped. It then dropped noiselessly into space.

  Kyle peered over the wall to watch it fall. About five floors down it halted at another balcony, no doubt to insure another citizen’s safety.

  3

  Kyle approached the receptionist in Sector 6. She, like all receptionists at ATS, was hired to sit at a desk in a visible spot and look pretty. Kyle knew from experience she probably didn’t have much in the way of what could politely be called mental aptitude. If she did, she would’ve most certainly been profiled from pre-school and streamlined into a job that required sufficiently greater amounts of gray matter.

  He gave her his name and told her he had an appointment. She smiled and stared blankly up at him. Though finding her eyes empty enough, he was still amazed when she suddenly appeared to zone out even further. But he realized she was only checking the appointment schedule via neural-interface.

  The receptionist suddenly awoke from her zombie stare and exclaimed with over-done zest, “Yes. Here we are. Kyle Bennett!”

  Give me a “K” for Kyle! he thought as he nodded and grinned his approval at her abilities.