“What happened to him?” Hector inserted himself into the blanket a shivering Cadence wrapped around herself.
“Went to Thailand, India, or something.” Truby fearlessly climbed back up the rock pile. “That’s why we fight for the truth. If one person wakes up like he woke me up, it’s worth it.”
Coyotes howled from atop a distant lonely ridge.
“I’m pretty sure that was a nocturnal creature. Yeah.” Cadence looked around warily.
Zedd folded himself into the community blanket on the other side of Cadence. “Maybe he’s behind the legendary Hatchett Report!”
A swarm of panicked bats lifted in flight. A moment later the ground rumbled, quickly subsiding to everyone’s relief. The rock pile Truby stood upon folded upon itself. She fell to the ground wincing painfully.
Cadence helped her up. “What’s the Hatchett Report?”
Truby turned away feigning the wind knocked out of her to avoid replying.
Hector filled in the dead air. “Well... it was supposed to be some darknet rogue news outlet started after the web was hijacked. Others say it was a government sponsored cover putting out counterintelligence to throw chaos into off-grid communities.” Hector hesitated. “Something really bad happened.”
“What?”
When they turned to Truby for an answer, she could only stare back into Hector’s dark eyes brimming on the near side of . . . Was that contempt?
Lungs burning from the nighttime sprint, Truby struggled with the locks to her Inn room that resisted her demand. She punched the outside of the jammed-up door, hurting her hand. What was more painful was the return of the ringing inside her head—and the memories. She bent over, her hands over her ears.
Hector’s final words wouldn’t stop looping in her brain, “They posted something that got a lot of innocent people, including children killed. I don’t know really.”
Images filled Truby’s mind like shrapnel tearing into unprotected flesh.
2018 :: Zurich, Switzerland — Thomas stood proudly alongside the other families in the audience applauding the three children onstage. He winked at Hemmy who winked back, her cute little nose wrinkling like a bunny.
They were in the Center for the Performing Arts at Einstein’s School for Gifted Children. Hemmy’s Alpha generation was becoming known as humanity’s first-wave of super-conscious children. At the tender age of eight, Hemmy had been recognized by the Global Security Council as one of “Today’s Geniuses, Tomorrow’s Leaders.” The other two children selected were Payton Finley, also eight, and Starzl, only six years old. The two girls, in growth spurts, nearly dwarfed the boy.
Teachers and GSC personnel flanked the children. Also present were General Goddard Frohm, Major Terrance Young, and other military personnel.
Thomas stopped to check and adjust his smartwatch. His Australian wife, Claire, nudged him, whispering, “It can wait.”
He lifted his hands over his head to cheer Hemmy. Unbeknownst to Claire, he was secretly recording the ceremony even though it was forbidden. All parents had been required to sign nondisclosure agreements for the classified portion of the evening. He hated deceiving Claire.
Hemmy sweetly waved back.
Outside the school, during the intermission, Thomas spoke into his smartwatch, “Classified global water superstructure confirmed. Do not post the files I sent earlier. I repeat; files are evidentiary only. Run the pending draft of my online report immediately.”
CHAPTER 29
It was nearly dawn the next morning after the earthquake, two days since DupliCity’s opening ceremony. Truby was pulling an all-nighter in front of her computer.
Scrolling in and out of a video still, “Gotcha!”
She smiled as she added another red circle to the image of New Las Vegas buildings collapsing. Someone had done shoddy work, maybe on purpose even. At least she’d had the foresight to protect herself with a backdoor in case she needed it. Truby froze at the sound of voices outside her room, craning her head to listen. Was this going to be another ambush?
Either they were still high and didn’t realize how obnoxious they were, or they intentionally wanted her to hear.
“She’s acting really weird.”
“Let her sleep it off,” said the female voice.
“Hey, I’m just here to lend moral support.”
Truby threw open the door mid-argument. “To whom are you lending moral support, Hector?” Truby asked suspiciously.
Nobody moved.
Zedd finally pushed a shoulder past Hector, putting an arm around Cadence that Hector knocked off. “We’re going to the Grand Reservoir and Vegas to find out what’s really going on.”
Truby didn’t know what to say. She had more questions than answers. She mutely stepped aside to invite them in for an explanation. The ground shook out another small aftershock.
The three took a step backward, shaking their head.
Pete, still wrapped in his bedroll, slipped into Truby’s room, “Going to get spooked this far into the game? I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
Twenty minutes later Pete smiled sardonically as Zedd, Cadence, and Hector’s mouths gaped.
“You think they faked it,” repeated Cadence.
“That is screwball buki, man.”
“No wonder PNN’s not running video of Vegas a million times a day like they do when there’s a disaster.” Hector rubbed his chin before punching his fist into his other palm. “Oh, man, I knew the government pretty much tells you what they want you to hear, but Jesus! Why would they launch the thing just to destroy it a day later? Or fake it?”
His curved brown hand on the door knob to leave, Pete paused for the answer.
Despite her best efforts not to, Truby still connected with Pete’s penetrating gaze. “I honestly don’t know the answer to that.”
“The light can be blinding at first to one stepping out of the dark.” Pete abruptly closed the door behind him.
“Who’s they? China?” Cadence’s mind swirled. “Terrorists, foreign or domestic?”
BioIDs sounded. “Attention! The Global Security Council continues to issue a Priority One International Global State of Emergency.”
Hector discreetly tucked his wrist with BioID under his armpit, arms crossed over his chest.
Truby noticed.
“Citizens are to limit water consumption to your zone’s authorized ration.”
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Zedd gave his BioID the bird. “Only one way to find out.”
___
Truby bolted out of bed. “Daddy’s here.”
Staring at her front door deadbolts, she slowly came to consciousness. She’d been sleepwalking. Truby pulled back the heavy drapes, now blitzed by sunlight. From its position in the sky, she had only been asleep a couple of hours since telling her pre-dawn visitors to get a few hours in before the day and their work kicked into high gear. In her remaining grogginess, she heard a few distant pops, then a few more.
Truby quickly dressed, yanking open her door
to slam it closed again. The bright light made her teeth hurt.
“They work better in the dark, Pete,” remarked Truby dryly.
Pete ignored her. Wearing his water goggles, he prepared two more bottle rockets. “I discovered these in an old work shed on my morning walk.”
He seemed to be enjoying his discovery. About to light the fuses, Truby stopped him. Her BioID had pinged softly reminding her surveillance drones were scheduled to pass overhead. They did so as usual, except she noticed the craft were lower to the ground.
Truby scrutinized the beautiful sky and surrounding scenery. If one could blot out yesterday’s events, things seemed pretty normal around Old Faithful Inn, except for the new Old Faithful. A few delivery drones had even passed Truby when she’d left her room to investigate the noise. She hadn’t heard from Young, and that was a good thing. If only she could blot out all but her best memories and start fresh.
Pete gleef
ully set off a few more rockets like a kid in a pyrotechnics store. Pivoting on her heel to leave him to his fun, Truby nearly tripped over a striking young girl with long, dark windswept hair. She couldn’t have been more than seven years old.
Wearing a hydration rucksack, the girl gazed upon Truby with piercing indigo eyes in a familiar way that unnerved her.
“Hello,” she said confidently, “We’re here for Old Faithful.”
Truby slowly lifted her eyes. Not far behind was a small crowd of transient off-gridders traveling with household accouterments and unfettered smiles. She was so astonished to see “other” people, Truby was momentarily speechless.
Who were these people and where did they come from?
Pete set off his last rocket before sauntering over to inspect the girl’s walking stick. Truby hadn’t even noticed it until then.
Pete removed his goggles. Leaning on his own walking stick, he gingerly eased himself down onto one knee. “Tupelo. Nice,” was all he said.
Then, he stood, offering the child the most welcoming smile Truby had ever seen him produce. “Come with me, Princess Rose. You’re just in time! How’s your mother these days?”
CHAPTER 30
Cadence sat on an oversized pillow meditating in front of the static GSC Global State of Emergency notice on the media screen.
Looking morose, Hector played a 3D video game on his computer amidst dirty dishes scattered everywhere.
Truby entered the room and slammed her fist on the bar top. “Why are you sitting around? Zedd, find out who those people—”
“He’s gone,” Cadence informed Truby, one eye opening. “Without us.”
“Zero,” Hector mumbled.
“Gone where?” Truby was not happy with pretty much everything and everyone at the moment. “Can we track him?”
A paper airplane note made from Inn stationery poked Truby in the abdomen before hitting the floor. She picked it up and unfolded it. “Going to kick some buki,” she read.
That blew her theory about her Inn-mates to pieces, at least Zedd. She looked over at the paper map on the wall with the pushpins marking the locations of the earthquakes. “Hector.”
Begrudgingly, he set down his game controller. “Yeah, I already tried.”
Suddenly, Truby had an idea. She swiftly leapt over the bar and left the Inn.
___
Truby inched a toe toward an artificial tree on the Inn grounds before yanking it back. The painful memory of how she accidently discovered she was effectively laser-fence imprisoned was still in the forefront of her memory.
Was that why Hector hid his BioID? How was Zedd able to leave?
She inched her hand forward. It was only a theory, but she had to find out if the earthquake had knocked out any of the security measures in place. Eyes squeezed tightly closed and cringing, she squealed like a child about to receive a tetanus shot.
Zap! A Taser-like jolt sent her off her feet and onto her back.
2018 :: Mumbai, India — Thomas picked out a small sterling silver Ganesha elephant charm out of the hundreds of trinkets laying on the Indian outdoor market table. “Look, Hemmy.”
“How funny! Can I keep it?”
Thomas paid the merchant. He bent down on one knee, reaching inside his shirt to pull out a similar elephant pendant on a long chain. “Ganesha is the remover of obstacles. What the intellect cannot know, Ganesha knows.” He folded it in her small hand. “You may be one of the smartest people in the world, but never be afraid to admit you don’t know all the answers. Ganesha will help you. Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
Hemmy examined the small elephant. She gave her father a reassuring kiss, “Yes, Daddy.”
When Truby came to, Rose was stroking her hair. “Hemmy?”
“Are you alright, um... Miss?” asked Rose.
___
At Pete’s invitation, the off-gridders set up camp on the Old Faithful Inn grounds. Truby made her way through the small site curious why they had come to see Old Faithful. She was curious about other things, too.
The camp was mostly empty. Pete was having the time of his life entertaining his guests by shooting 20th-century fireworks rockets into the 21st-century night sky. The crowd “oohed” and “ahhed” just like when she was a kid enjoying a hometown Fourth of July celebration. Pete had assured her the recent rain alleviated any fire concerns.
She returned to Pete near the rock pile overlooking the small valley. “Didn’t you tell them there’s room at the Inn?”
“Yes, but they prefer to be under an open star-filled canopy. Once one tastes true freedom, the dark is no longer appealing.”
Truby didn’t let on she always felt the full force of Pete’s zingers. It was if he could see her soul.
She wistfully watched Rose’s innocent delight at such a thing as simple as bottle rockets. “She’s beautiful.”
Pete lit the fuses of half a dozen bottle rockets all at once. “Princess Rose and I go way back,” was all he said.
Hector and Cadence breathlessly ran in to meet up with Truby and Pete.
“Zedd, he’s totally disappeared,” said Cadence.
“Or something...” Hector added without elaborating.
CHAPTER 31
Americas Sector M2-11A :: Southern Nevada
Zedd ran a parched tongue across dry lips. His flying car’s crash landing had not been all that shocking. He just had hoped it would have been closer to home. Piece of junk! Never mind the vehicle had been taken out of service a decade ago. They assign him to work at a remote location and expect him not to go stir crazy?
Maybe Thor was actually good for something after all. Zedd and Hector hadn’t exactly hit it off when they met first met. The fact that Cadence preferred Hector over him was just one more thorn in his side. To say he was feeling a little pissed off right now was an understatement. He finally smirked a little at the idea that Truby thought he’d gone to New Las Vegas.
He tried not to make a sound as he crept toward the pink behind of a lone donkey grazing on desert scrub. Patches of fur missing, the scruffy beast seemed to be his best, if not Zedd’s only option at the moment. The animal’s ears rotated slightly, detecting movement. The thing must have belonged to someone at one time for it hadn’t minded being talked to as she nibbled.
“Aren’t you a pretty girl with your special pink... ness glowing like radioactive waste. I’m sure it would like a little rub.”
Out of edibles, the donkey took a step forward, then two. So did Zedd. In his left hand behind his back was a makeshift rope made from old jumper cables someone had discarded in the trunk of the flying vehicle that had been abandoned in a park service shed. Now he knew why.
“Maybe a scratch behind the ears, you foul–”
The mottled donkey curled its lip, braying before casually bounding away in victory.
“No, I didn’t mean it! Wait!” Zedd yelled. “Jij idioot!”
Adding one failed donkey-jacking to his growing list of accomplishments, he sauntered back to the disabled vehicle to give it a good swift kick. Leaning against the machine, he looked around for shade. The car would eventually provide shade but not this time of day. Sitting in it was almost intolerable. He calculated it was around noon and he was somewhere south of New Las Vegas—way south.
A pair of unmanned solar surveillance gliders glinted in their approach.
Zedd leaped into the air waving his arms. “Ja! Hulp! Help me!”
The two planes maintained their speed and course for a distance beyond Zedd before the right one broke away to arc wide.
“Yes!” Suddenly the image of the drugged cowboy being carried away in a strait jacket filled his mind. “Um, maybe I shouldn’t have done that?”
He frantically collected free-roaming tumble-weeds, yanking at ones still anchored to the ground. Zedd grabbed anything loose to throw on the car, rocks, sand, dirt, anything that would disguise the silver vehicle. At least it wasn’t red, he chided. Realizing his effort as inadequa
te, he searched the uneven landscape for Plan B.
Above, the glider slowed to stall speed, passing low over the site. CLUNK. A heavy vibration and the lightly-constructed craft shuddered as it spiraled around the man below.
Zedd readied himself, hand cocked with a second large rock, but, it wasn’t necessary. The glider skidded roughly to a stop across the untamed land a quarter mile away. Wasting no time, Zedd quickly seized a dusty toolbox from the back of the trunk.
___
The second day after the earthquake, the world seemed surreal and unbelievable. Truby crouched down in the daytime dark of her Inn room slinking through query strings for the one that would free her from the shackles of her BioID. If Hector couldn’t find Zedd, the options were he was dead, or he had found a way to illegally deactivate his BioID.
Pages of technical documents, specs, and images studied, she still couldn’t see a way to disable her BioID without alerting the entire United States Government and its military. She pounded her fist on the desk in anger and frustration.
When Truby perused the darknet, she felt... greasy. Though governments around the world began to require internet service providers restrict access to the darknet after the U.S. passed the People for a Neutral Net of 2021, it was still heavily used by governmental agencies and the military for backchannel communications and data storage. Of course, hackers delighted in seeking out and breaking into access points.
Decentralized applications allowing peer to peer connections were popular for a while until PNN started showing gruesome images of one app creator after another mysteriously dying in car or plane crashes.
Truby’s head hurt. The migraines, and worst of all, the nightmares, occurring dayside now were back. She was weighed down by the immense guilt of her past and the possibility the present had used the past against her to force her complicity in something she would have given her life to prevent.
If Cadence only knew, she thought.
With Zedd’s disappearance, the list of implications was growing in her mind along with a conclusion that nothing and no one, not even the woman that looked back at her in the mirror, could be trusted.
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