The Intruder

by Greg Krehbiel

  The Intruder

  By Greg Krehbiel

  Crowhill Publishing

  http://crowhill.net

  Copyright 2012 Greg Krehbiel

  The Intruder

  by Greg Krehbiel

  Chapter 1

  His whole body tensed when he heard the noise of someone approaching on the forest path. He turned his head to listen. It was only one person. So the target was alone, just as planned.

  He waited until the footsteps approached the bend, 20 yards ahead, and then he walked confidently toward his victim. His chest felt constricted. He fought the urge to quicken his pace by concentrating on a steady rhythm of strides against the dirt path. His heart raced, confusing his count. Only a few seconds and the two men would pass. His right hand twitched, eager to reach for his knife, but he resisted the temptation.

  It was definitely the right man. He walked casually, suspecting nothing.

  Weatherstone was a tall man, and trim, but not muscular or fit. The man with the knife looked down and took a deep, calming breath. It would be all too easy. A part of him wanted to cry out and make it a fair fight. But Weatherstone didn't deserve it.

  His mouth went dry.

  He glanced up and noticed that Weatherstone was watching the path. The man with the knife grew grim. Few people looked into his eyes these days.

  Five steps, maybe less.

  "Hi Jeremy," Weatherstone said. His words were more jarring than a gun shot.

  Three steps. Don't speak to me.

  "I'm so sorry about what happened to Amy."

  The attacker's lip curled into a smile. Perfect last words.

  One step.

  He grabbed his hunting knife. Before Weatherstone could react he thrust his left fist into the man's windpipe, preventing a scream. As the right arm coiled for a strike the left slipped around Weatherstone's neck, grabbed his shoulder and twisted his body, making a clean target of his lower lung.

  A sharp thrust buried the five-inch blade. Weatherstone's body tensed and was motionless in shock, then struggled vainly against Jeremy's powerful arms.

  It was eerily quiet and death took longer than expected. The slight sound of air escaping through a constricted throat, the shuffle of feet against dirt, the gurgle of air rushing past the knife blade into a pierced lung hardly disturbed the peaceful woods.

  Weatherstone continued to struggle, but an iron grip fastened around his mouth. The killer looked into frightened eyes, which seemed to fill all his vision, and then the collage of images began again, just as it always did: the gavel came down in the council courtroom. A mother cried at the verdict. A rush of sights and sensations filled his head. The knife, the bloody body of Weatherstone, the sticky, warm feeling on his hand, the bubbly sound as air rushed into the punctured lung, the dead body in the field, Weatherstone's twitching eye, the knife as he wiped it clean on Weatherstone's pants, another man's eye, twitching, Amy, the knife.

  Jeremy sat up suddenly in the train, accidentally bumping the person in the seat next to him. It was a long moment before he realized where he was. The dreams were too real.

  "I'm sorry," Jeremy said. "I must have dozed off."

  "I'd stay awake, now," the man said. "We're pulling into Washington in a few minutes."

  "Thanks," Jeremy said.

  He sat up and gazed out of the plate-glass window at the unfamiliar skyline of Washington, D.C. The Advocate had insisted that he come here to see Dr. Berry. She was, he said, the best in the business, and it was important for someone of Jeremy's age to have a skilled physician install the implant.

  The train slowed to a stop. As the other passengers got ready to leave, Jeremy slipped his wedding band off and put it on the third finger of his right hand, and as he did he wondered if that meant the same thing in Society as it did back home.

  It wasn't the kind of question you asked a stranger on a train.

  * * *

  Jeremy almost gawked at the physician's office. Nothing in the Community had looked like this. The walls were of carved, rich, dark wood, decorated with a kind of living art. They were small pieces, usually nestled in an alcove, or a small recess built into the wall, and each was alive with color and motion. One seemed to be an impressionist representation of a ballerina, performing her dance in a fantastic landscape out of some fairy tale. If he watched it for more than a moment, he could hear the symphony she was enacting. But if he looked away, the sound was gone.

  The corner of a book shelf held a miniature string quartet, playing a tune Jeremy vaguely recognized, while the base of a world-shaped lamp seemed to be supported by a comical representation of Atlas, who struggled under his burden. But these were only the ones he liked. Most of art seemed to be a three-dimensional, moving version of what they called "non-representational art" back in school. There were swirling, rippling daggers of green, orange and brown, that resembled nothing more than autumn maple leaves caught in a tornado. And then there was the blue-green, viscous goo, that lapped its slimy waves against a jagged collection of amber crystals.

  Everywhere he looked there were new wonders. And yet, the art was normal and home-like compared to the people. They looked normal enough at first glance, until he noticed the eyes. Everyone in the room looked preoccupied, and as he discreetly studied them, he noticed that they shared a blank, dumb stare. They seemed to look off into nowhere with their right eye, while their left twitched and moved rapidly, following some invisible target.

  What are they seeing?

  Jeremy's few interactions with people from Society had so far reinforced his impression that they weren't all there. Back in the Community, people gave you their whole attention. They looked at you when you spoke, and you could tell that they were listening. The people in Society seemed in a constant state of distraction.

  "Jeremy Mitchell?" a man asked. Jeremy looked up and signaled with his hand.

  "Come this way, please," the smiling man said, and gestured for him to go through the door.

  The contrast between the waiting room and the office area couldn't have been sharper. Everything in the corridor that wasn't gleaming metal was perfectly, brilliantly white. He wondered how they kept the room so immaculate, but then he noticed a small machine slowly working its way across the ceiling.

  A cleaning robot, he thought. He had already seen some of the Society robots. They had none in the Community, but when he visited the Advocate to discuss his plans to transfer his citizenship, he had to take a ride in a robotic shuttle.

  "Go in this room, take off all your clothes and put on this gown," the young man said, handing Jeremy a green, neatly folded garment. Jeremy assumed the man was a nurse. "I'll be back in a minute to give you a basic physical exam before the doctor arrives."

  The examination room was the same brilliant white as the hallway. Jeremy took off the clothes he had purchased from the Advocate the day before and set them on a table in the center of the room. They made a surprisingly small heap -- less than his favorite wool shirt would have, back home. Like almost everything else, Society's fabric technology was way ahead of the simple Community manufacture. His new shirt and pants, tan and blue, respectively, felt more like a swim suit than clothes, but they had managed to keep him warm in the chilly morning air.

  The green gown the nurse had given him was likewise thin and insubstantial, as if it had been woven of spider's web, but when he tried to tear a corner, his strong fingers could do no harm.

  Something like jealousy welled up in his soul. They couldn't do everything right, after all. There had to be a hidden weakness in this inhuman, technological beehive.

  In the corner of the examination room he saw a narrow, unremarkable stall. He wouldn't have recognized it except that a similar compartment in his hotel room had the same style
of control panel. It was a shower, and he wondered whether he was supposed to use it before the nurse returned to examine him.

  Why not, it only takes a minute, he thought, and stepped in. He closed his eyes while the stall filled with a thick, moist vapor that seemed to seep into his skin.

  When his entire body felt dripping wet and deliciously warm, a sudden cool blast of some misty substance came down from above, followed by another blast of warm water, which slowly washed his body clear of the cleansing agent. The liquids were followed by a stream of warm, dry air that dried him more thoroughly than he could have done with a towel.

  He had only just wrapped himself in the fairy-threaded gown when the nurse reappeared. He pointed to Jeremy's clothes.

  "You can run those through the launderer if you want," he said, opening a door under the table as he spoke.

  He'd only worn them for a day. Did they really need to be cleaned so soon?

  "I just toss them in?" Jeremy asked. "What about the ..." he paused. He was going to ask about the things in his pocket, but he realized there was nothing there. The Advocate had taken his thumb print, which served for identification until he was registered with an implant. With that provisional account he had set him up with the monetary exchange. Jeremy had insisted on some pocket change -- a few brightly colored coins -- but they weren't necessary, and he had left them in the hotel room. Pocket knives, a necessity for his agricultural life in the Community, were considered uncouth in Society so he had left that in the hotel room as well.

  He realized that he had nothing. Just these ephemeral clothes. So he shrugged and tossed them, along with the slight, light-weight shoes, into the launderer.

  The nurse asked Jeremy to stand behind a six-foot tall, transparent screen. Jeremy could see through it just as if he was looking out a window, but as the man looked at Jeremy, he seemed to be seeing more than the green gown.

  "What is that thing?" Jeremy asked.

  "It's a scanner," the young man explained as he worked, adjusting a few knobs on the edges of the screen as he looked up and down, focusing mostly on Jeremy's stomach. "It allows me to see your bones and internal organs, measure your vital signs, check your muscular development and the efficiency of your nervous system."

  "So does this mean I won't have to turn my head and cough?" Jeremy asked with a smile.

  The man looked confused for a moment, and then laughed.

  "Oh, yes," he said, looking straight down at Jeremy's pelvic region, "we don't do it that way anymore. You're perfectly healthy," he said, pushing the screen away and pointing to a chair. Jeremy sat down.

  "The doctor will be with you in a moment. You can get dressed as soon as your clothes are done. They should only be a minute." He turned to leave, but just then there was a voice from under the central table.

  The clothes are clean. Would like them pressed?

  The nurse shook his head.

  "No," Jeremy said, and the door to the launderer suddenly fell open, revealing a neatly folded shirt and pants, and a clean pair of shoes.

  I've got a lot to get used to, he thought as he dressed.

  * * *

  "Hi, Jeremy, I'm doctor Berry," said a tall, attractive woman in her early forties who breezed into the room as if she owned the place. "Dr. Jenkins' report says you're in perfect health, except for a small amount of sun damage to your skin, but we can fix that very easily," she said with a reassuring smile.

  So he was a doctor, not a nurse, Jeremy thought.

  "I did a lot of work outside in the Community. We wore sun protection, but I guess it wasn't enough."

  "You'll be fine," she said, with a doctor's down-to-business air. "You also have a slight enlargement in the occipital region of your brain. There's nothing wrong with that," she quickly added, "it's just unusual."

  "And since you have a clean bill of health, we can install the implant today and start you out with the basic audio function," Dr. Berry continued, taking a large, shiny, hand-held instrument from a drawer in the central table. "This is the basic communications implant," she said as she dropped a pea-sized ball into the steel instrument in her hand. "In Society, a child is fitted with this at the age of one."

  Jeremy reflexively raised a hand, signaling her to slow down.

  "Can I ask a few questions about the implant, doctor?" he asked.

  "Absolutely," Dr. Berry said, lowering the threatening instrument into her lap. "What do you want to know?"

  "These implants," he began, "they connect to my brain, right?"

  "That's right."

  "And there is some kind of interface that allows them to send thoughts into my brain, and it can read my thoughts too?"

  "Not quite," the doctor explained. "They give you a kind of input, different from anything you've experienced. You don't feel like someone else is in your head with you, if you're worried about that. It's more like one of your senses -- like a second kind of hearing -- and when we turn on the visual functions, like a second kind of seeing."

  Jeremy considered that for a moment. "But how do you know? You've had the implants since you were a child, haven't you?"

  "Yes," she said, "but I've done most of my work with people who come in from the outside, or get the implants late in life for some reason, so I know what you can expect to experience."

  "Is that why the Advocate recommended that I see you?" Jeremy asked.

  "Possibly," she said. "I'm also a damned good doctor." She smiled, and Jeremy began to relax. Dr. Berry's confidence put him at ease.

  "The chief reason he sent you to me is that there can be complications when you receive the implant as an adult. I've dealt with those cases before, so I can keep you out of trouble. But that's for me to worry about. Let me run you through the usual process and I think you'll understand," she continued. "You get the communications implant at age one. That's pretty much so your parents can call you for dinner. It's almost like a second ear and a second mouth. It allows you to send and receive audio messages over the hole."

  "The 'hole' is Society's communications system?" he asked.

  "Yes. Although 'hole' is somewhat of a slang term. It's also called the net, or the CR, for 'communications relay.' Everything is interconnected by land lines, electro-magnetic transmissions ... you name it."

  Jeremy couldn't name anything. The concept was completely out of his depth. In the Community, only the doctor, the schools and a few engineers had computers, and they had no communications system with the outside world. He knew a little about them from his basic science education, but he was sure Society had things beyond his wildest guesses.

  "You said, 'everything.' So, if somebody wanted to," Jeremy asked, "he could find out that I just cleaned my clothes in that launderer?"

  "Conceptually, yes. When I said everything, I really meant it. At least all electronic devices. But there's not much need for a launderer to have complete access to the hole," she explained. "And maybe I should explain that. Getting an implant doesn't mean that everybody has access to you at all times. You can turn off the communications relay -- input, output or both -- and you can filter who can reach you. It's not only rude to send unsolicited messages, it's difficult to do, since most people set their implants to ignore them. And you don't have to answer calls, anyway. People can't find you or contact you unless you let them."

  "The implant is installed in early childhood," she continued, "but it isn't activated right away. It takes time for a child to learn to use it, so it's turned on in stages. It's not completely turned on until puberty, or thereabouts.

  "Until the visual implant is activated, kids learn how to use the hole through terminals, and when the visual functions are turned on they have very restricted use. Their hole communications are supervised by their parents so they can monitor what the kids are doing, and decide when to give them unrestricted access.

  "You can see the implant desktop because of a connection with the optic nerve. It looks like a semi-transparent tablet floating in the air," she said
, and Jeremy noticed that her eyes suddenly took on that faraway look he'd noticed in the others in the waiting room. She looked back in his direction with her right eye while her left eye wandered slightly. "By sending the right commands -- that's something you'll learn to do -- I can call up anything I want.

  "Watch this," she said, and she smiled as her eye wiggled slightly. A moment later Dr. Jenkins' voice came over a speaker somewhere in the room.

  "Yes, Dr. Berry?" he said.

  "Dr. Jenkins," Dr. Berry said aloud, "would you please bring me a portable workstation?"

  "Right away, doctor," came the reply.

  Jeremy smiled and shook his head. "So you were able to call him without even saying a word? And did he hear your call, or see it on his visual display?"

  "That's a perceptive question," Dr. Berry said. "I sent a pro forma 'call' to Dr. Jenkins. It said, 'call Dr. Berry on the intercom immediately.' That message traveled through the hole to Dr. Jenkins' address. How he retrieved the message would depend on how he had his relay set. It could have been on audio, on visual, or he could have been offline, in which case it would have gone into his mailbox, and it wouldn't have been a very impressive demonstration for you."

  Jeremy was beginning to grasp the concepts, but he was certain there was much more to know. What if there's another Dr. Jenkins? he wondered. How does the hole know which person to send the message to? As Jeremy was thinking, Dr. Jenkins entered the room with a dark gray object, about the size of one of the world atlases he used to study when he was a boy in school, but as thin as a piece of cardboard.

  "Hi, Jeremy," he said. "How's it going?"

  "Just fine, doc," he replied.

  "Good," Dr. Jenkins replied. "Stop by and see me before you leave, okay?"

  "Sure," Jeremy said, but he wondered what Dr. Jenkins wanted. The Advocate, who served as the intermediary and legal representative between the Community and Society -- both to make sure the Community was in compliance with all applicable laws, and to represent the Community's interests if they were threatened -- had warned Jeremy to be very cautious. Some of the people in Society might try to take advantage of him, he had said, and others might be unnaturally curious about people from the Community. "Remember the stories about country bumpkins buying the Brooklyn Bridge," he had advised. "You're the country bumpkin."