When they could not see her, they started opening dumpsters, first surprising the same other escapee, then finding her in the fourth dumpster they’d tried. They had her throw on the clothes they’d brought, which added about twenty pounds with the padding, and gave her the old boots she’d worn with the gait-changing inserts. One of Doug’s planned safe houses was inside Tennyson II, so within ten minutes, they had her inside and in a hot bath. Tamara had stayed with her that night, holding Michi in bed until she fell asleep.
For the next week, both of her friends tried to see her as often as they could. They brought food and more importantly, news. Michi was cut off from the outside world: no net, no vids, no holos. Doug didn’t want there to be any trace of her in the city.
At first, Michi wanted to know about the attack. Doug had access to the corporate records, and the intra-company memos reported that 622 “rebels” were killed, 813 captured. Of the captured, five had died in captivity. Details of the attack were sketchy, but it seemed that Derrick, one of the first two jacks who had first awaken her after her capture, had the basics correct (other than the number of casualties). The Marines, with help from corporate security and spies within the NIP, were well aware of the coming attack. The river commando force had been captured as they entered the water. The day “patrols” that had gone out were actually assault forces, and they had quickly captured the forward command center and the gun position. Finally, the Marine assault force and supporting arms had broken up the attack and killed, captured, or scattered her fighters. Not one Marine had even been wounded.
In retrospect, to think they had a chance against prepared Marines was a ridiculous notion. Michi had thought in her heart, they could win, and in defeating that one Marine company, that would force the Federation to leave the planet.
The results sickened her, especially the knowledge that they had essentially been doing the Federation’s bidding by attacking. They had been drawn out, tricked into attacking a defensible position, and then broken. With the main armed force gone, the Marines were no longer needed, and they were taken away for their next devil’s mission.
Michi wanted to know if there had been any reaction, any protesting the failed attack. There had been almost nothing, Doug and Tamara told her. If the company had expected a crushing defeat to also crush the population, then they had been correct. The people had been cowed. Even the WRP, while not disbanded, had closed shop until things had stabilized.
It looked like the company had won.
Oh, Michi and her two friends played scenarios in their minds, from simple things such as jumping another jack to fanciful plans such as enlisting the Brotherhood to invade and set thing right. Nothing was either possible or would make an impact.
Their conversations shifted from striking back to smuggling Michi off the planet and to some non-Federation world. That would be difficult, though. The jail break had been big news, and Michi was prominently displayed and declared “high importance” and with a large reward, a target for anyone wanting to cash in. Security had been tightened, and bounty hunters tracked down any trace of her.
One other aspect of the jailbreak was that the company now knew someone had a backdoor into their system. It was only a matter of time until they tracked the breach down, and Doug was getting more and more nervous. Ironically, it was Doug’s own division that was part of the team trying to find the breach.
Michi turned back over to her back, holding out her right arm. Her hand itched horribly, and even though she knew that was a good sign, she was tempted to rip the chamber off and throw it away. She resisted, though: it would be hard for her to walk into a clinic for any treatment.
She finally got up out of bed and made herself some instant noodles
God, I’m getting sick of these, she thought.
She finished them, then crawled back into bed, where she still was four hours later when Doug came in the door. She caught the slight frown of disapproval from him as he saw her, but at least he didn’t nag like Tamara did.
He handed her a hotpack. It was Italian! That was the best thing that had happened today. She popped the activator, waited ten seconds, then unzipped the top, letting the aromas of amatriciana waft through the room.
She had never realized how dependent she had been on fabricators. But with Doug vetoing any power usage in the room, fabricators were out, and she could only eat prepared food and takeout. The pasta smelled wonderful and tasted even better.
In a better mood, she started chatting with Doug. He’d been working on finding her a way off-planet, but with the heightened security, he couldn’t spend much time on it yet. And that was also why he could only come over during his lunch break. No more virtual work days. He had to physically be there.
Michi peeled open the hotpack and licked the remaining sauce. “This was great! I’m getting so that I would even eat raw bases, and let my stomach fabricate them,” she said with a laugh.
“Oh, I’m sure Tammy could get you some Blue-99 if you really wanted,” Doug said with a laugh.
He had been calling her Tammy ever since Michi got out, but she couldn’t tell if their relationship had changed,
“I think I was close enough to the damn stuff on my own,” she said bitterly. “You know, even with it being a trap, if we could have just made in into the algae banks, we might have been able to win. The Marines might be the best around, but that can make people too confident. By selecting that area for us to attack,” and she realized now that the company-slash-Federation had maneuvered things for just that end, “they left an Achilles heel. The company couldn’t risk losing all that base, and they would have had to negotiate. Maybe we should have forgotten the attack and just snuck in and planted explosives. It couldn’t have been a worse outcome.”
“They’ve got pretty serious security around the farm. That’s their most valuable base, and certainly their most vulnerable in those hydro-glass tubes,” Doug said. “In order to affect them, you’d have to get them some other way. Disease, maybe. Or corruption. But then the problem would be delivery. They wouldn’t let someone in a white lab coat just walk in and inject the farm with a virus, you know. A contagion is one thing, but without a vector, it would just be like all our other plans, stupid games of fantasy.”
Michi checked the pack for any last traces of sauce. She was only half-listening to Doug, who, quite frankly, tended to go off on technological soliloquies that Michi had neither the background nor inclination to follow. But then she stopped. Something he had just said registered.
“We have a vector,” she said.
“What vector?” Doug asked, already getting up to go back to work.
“Tamara!”
Chapter 38
“No, that wouldn’t work,” Doug protested.
Michi took the last piece of pizza. The three of them had been up for hours arguing, and the pizza was cold, but Italian twice in one day was a treat.
“Why not?” Tamara asked.
“The viral screens. The company is not stupid, and even without the acts of man, nature can intject a virus as it so wills. So, each bank of tubes has a virus screen at the CO2 generators. Besides, what would you do? Just show up and walk down the rows? You think your little access badge is going to make them let you destroy the algae? Anyway, even if you did, all that would be is revenge, like I said before. We’d have no leverage.”
“And I told you, at this stage, revenge would be good enough for me,” Michi said before downing the last bit of crust.
“But that is why the programming would be a better option. We can threaten to destroy their entire strain. They would have to listen, then. And best of all, it can be injected into the matrix at the organics lab.”
“I swear, I still don’t understand how it could work. How can computer programming affect a growing organism?” Michi asked with Tamara nodding in agreement.
“I’ve tried to explain it. Let me reword it. Uh . . . OK, you know that Blue-99 is a genetically modified product, on
e owned by the company, right?” When both girls nodded, he went on. “So, in some ways, the algae is just a programmed matrix that sort of sits on top of the original DNA. The matrix sends signals to the DNA to do what the company wants it to do. As long as the programming functions correctly, the algae’s DNA follows the instructions, making Blue-99. If that programming were modified to, let’s say, activate the cells suicide switch, then all the algae would die. So, all we have to do is input a worm that will change the programming.”
“It sort of makes sense, but you said it might not work,” Tamara told him.
“In theory, it will work. But in reality, we need the worm that will change the programming as we want it to. That’s the hard part.”
“So, the simple question is, can you do it?”
“I don’t know, to be honest. I might be able to, but we wouldn’t know until we try it. And we might only have one shot at it,” he admitted.
“How long to know if you can pull this off?”
“Probably in a week or so. I would know at least if I can’t do it. I wouldn’t know for sure if I can until we send the worm on its way. Then there is the timing. Tammy would have to infect the programming while I still have my backdoor, and I don’t know how long that will be. They are closing in, and all my evasion techniques are only delaying the inevitable.”
“A week? Well, I don’t totally understand, but I’ve got to trust you, Doug. Let’s do it.”
Chapter 39
Six days later, Doug and Michi were back at Tamara’s and his condo. Michi had already taken off the regen chamber from her hand and put on her costumes. Her finger was not totally healed, but there wasn’t anything to be done about that. There was nothing for her to do yet, so she had to just sit with Doug and watch.
They waited nervously, watching the time. Tamara would be at the lab at any minute, and they might have to act quickly. Doug had four disposable PAs, and one was on now, a specified AI moving his backdoor around the system at inhuman speeds. The problem was that the company AIs were rapidly closing off areas in the system, leaving fewer and fewer areas in which the backdoor could find refuge. It was only a matter of time until it was surrounded with nowhere to go. At that moment, Doug would be locked out of the system.
“Come on, Tamara, come on,” Michi implored.
She was more nervous now than before the attack on the Marines. They were so close, and they might have the means to finally hit back at the company where it would hurt them.
Even if they destroyed Blue-99, however, the company would recover. It could license out another algae from a competitor while trying to rush one of their own research strains to the market. That would take time, though, and quite a bit of funds. More importantly, it was sending a message that Propitious Interstellar could not be trusted to deliver. In the galactic marketplace, that message could cost the company more than the mere destruction of the algae.
“Shit!” Doug said looking at the PA monitoring the backdoor. “That was too close!”
Michi didn’t ask for an explanation. “Too close” was not “it’s over,” so she let it be.
“She’s running out of time!” he said.
Tamara had been given the worm in a small optical drive, one like any other used throughout the planet. The lab, like all others in the company, was shielded, against transmissions, so a wireless transfer was impossible. There was no wireless inside. It would have to be an old-fashion optical read. She would have given up her PA as always, but with her clearance and position, they hoped she would not be searched. If she was and they found the drive, she was to feign forgetfulness and just abort the mission, picking up the drive from security as she left.
Doug had given her the location of the three computers in the lab that would work for their purposes. All she had to do was to hold the drive in front of a reader, even if for a split second. Doug would have probably less than five seconds to send the worm to the three Blue-99 farms on the planet as well as the secured foundation library in the vaults. If he were too slow, the worm would get booted by the lab security AIs.
Doug wasn’t sure the worm would even work. He’s cobbled it together from a number of programs, even getting one of his co-workers to complete a tricky part of the programming. He’d had to think about that, but the string was beyond him, and his co-worker didn’t seem to think about what that string could be used for. He programmed the string in 30 minutes, and then was off on his next project, his curiosity un-piqued.
“I can’t take this!” Michi yelled, just as Doug shouted out, “She’s in!”
He pushed the “send” on his control PA just as the backdoor PA flashed red. That was the signal that his backdoor had been finally been cornered and destroyed.
“What happened?” Michi shouted, pulling on Doug’s arm. “Did you get it out?”
“I don’t know! I think so, but I can’t check now. Look, it says here it went out,” he said, pointing to his PA.
“But did the worms get there, and are they working?”
“I don’t know, Michi, I just don’t know,” he said, slumping down in his chair. “What do you want to do?”
Michi thought for a few moments. She didn’t know if she could get off-planet, and she was not going to live the rest of her life hidden in an apartment. She had to trust that the worm was delivered and that it worked.
“I’m going through with it,” she said with certainty.
“You sure?”
“Damn diddy well, I’m sure,” she said.
“OK, you’ve got the code?” he asked.
Michi pointed to the side of her head. “Right here.”
“It won’t take long, so you’d better go. I’ll leave right after you,” he said.
Michi didn’t know where Doug was going, nor did she ask. What she didn’t know, she couldn’t give up.
He picked up the disposable PA that the code Michi had memorized would reach. Depending on what message he received, he’d either have the worm extract itself or allow the suicide switches to be thrown. The switches would already be cocked, so-to-speak, so if his PA was cut off, there would be no turning back. Every Blue-99 algae cell on the planet would be destroyed and the matrix hopelessly corrupted.
Michi strapped on the pistol belt. She didn’t have a weapon and wouldn’t be carrying one even if she had, but they had decided that the more she looked like the Michiko MacCailín of the camcording, the better. She was not trying to hide, and she wanted attention.
Doug looked around the condo. “I’m going to miss this place,” he said.
“Don’t worry. You’ll be back. We’ll be back.”
Michi leaned over and kissed Doug on the cheek before turning and walking to the door.
“Gokigenyou, Michiko, and God be with you,” Doug said after her.
Michi smiled for a moment. Doug didn’t speak Japanese, but he’d searched for the right thing to say, a version of “good luck.” She wiped the smile from her face, walked to the elevator, and pushed the button. As the door opened, she saw one of the ladies from the 23rd floor was already on. Michi didn’t know her name, but she’d seen her out and about. The lady raised her eyebrows at Michi, but if she seemed surprised at seeing the Michiko MacCailín, in full regalia, she showed no sign of it.
They arrived at the lobby and walked to the front door. Michi held it open for the lady, who calmly thanked her before heading off to the right, probably to the small tea shop on the corner. Michi turned toward the left, toward the Propitious Interstellar headquarters, leaving the sidewalk and taking the middle of the street. Within moments, people spotted her and stared. A few paced her along the sidewalk, those few growing in a bigger group as more people joined. Whether they were there as some sort of honor guard or to try and cash in on the reward, Michi didn’t know, nor did she care. Either would serve her purpose.
She’d gone only three blocks before two jacks showed up, running toward her.
“Stop there!” one of them shouted. “You’re
coming with us!”
They grabbed her, pulling her arms in back of her.
Michi didn’t resist, but she shouted out, “I am giving myself up to Propitious Interstellar Fabrication. I demand a meeting with the board. If my demands are not met, the entire stock of Blue-99 will be destroyed!”
“What?” asked the jack who was about to ziptie her hands. “What are you talking about?”
“Just as I said. You want to take me in. Fine. Get your reward. But take me into company headquarters. You will still be the heroes. If you do not, and what I am saying is true, then you’ll wish you’d never been born,” she said quietly but with as much conviction as possible.
“Bullshit!” the jack said. “Destroy Blue-99? No blooming way.”
“If I’m lying, then what do you have to lose? Present me as a prize to the CEO himself. Get noticed. If I am right,” and Michi desperately hoped she was right and the worm had gotten through, “then you are still heroes. Either way you win.”
“What’s she saying about Blue-99?” a voice called out from the crowd.
Many, if not most of the people there probably worked for the company, and anything that damaged one of the main products would affect them all. The two jacks paused to look at each other.
“It wouldn’t hurt now, would it?” one asked the other.
“I, uh, well I don’t see how it would. Like she says, we still get the reward either way. Let’s take her to headquarters and let them sort it all out.” He turned to Michi and said, “You got your wish, but you better not try anything, you hear?”
“Lead on,” Michi said.
Galaxia Page 87