by Suzanne Weyn
“I don’t know, but he stopped at one particular code profile and began to read it. He only got to read it for a few seconds before the screen went black. Some security blocker must have kicked in.”
“Did you ask what he was doing?”
Mrs. Reed nodded. “But he wouldn’t talk about it. We had a big fight over it. We were still angry and not speaking the day he cut … I need to lie down.” She stood up unsteadily. “If the hospital calls, tell them I’ll be there soon.”
Kayla trailed her to the bottom of the stairs. “Don’t walk away,” she begged as her mother went up. “Tell me! Why do you think the bar code killed him?”
No reply came, just the sound of the bedroom door closing.
Kayla stopped at her locker for books and found a piece of peppermint gum taped to it. She knew who had put it there and it amazed her that a person she hardly knew at all had seen her pain. She glanced around to see if Mfumbe was near, but he wasn’t.
Amber appeared at her side and smiled the too-bright smile she always wore lately. “How are you doing today?” she asked.
“Not bad.”
“Not bad is good, right?” As they walked down the hall, Amber pulled some papers from her oversized silver bag. “These are for you,” she said, handing them to Kayla.
Kayla peered down at them, not understanding. She shot Amber a quizzical look.
“They’re applications for your bar code,” Amber said. “I knew you wouldn’t get them on your own. Your birthday is in three weeks. You have to file now. You can thank me now or thank me later. Either way, you’ll thank me.”
Kayla thrust the papers back at Amber. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m not getting it.”
“Not getting it?” Amber shouted incredulously. “You can be as paranoid and suspicious as you like about it, but you have to realize that there’s nothing you can do without a ’too! Nothing! For one thing, they don’t give out any other kind of license anymore. No ’too, no license.”
“That can’t be true. They have to give another form of license other than one that’s in a bar code,” Kayla argued. “There’s no law that says you have to get a bar code. Are you telling me that every single person who drives a car has a bar code tattoo?”
“Yes! Well, I don’t know that for sure, but every driver I know has one. Good luck trying to get your hands on a license without it,” Amber huffed. “You’ll be like some kind of mutant freak. How are you going to pay for stuff?”
“I’ll get an e-card.”
Amber scoffed with a snort. “Yeah, like someone will really give an e-card to a seventeen-year-old. Plus it’s such a higher level of difficulty to use one anymore. Salespeople get all banged out with you if you try. My grandmother tried to use hers the other day and it took so long, the other customers practically ran us out of the store.” She shoved the application papers back at Kayla. “Take these. You’ll need them.”
“Thanks, but I don’t want them,” Kayla insisted, folding her arms and refusing to accept the applications. “My neighbor works for the post office. He told me that something’s weird about the bar code. People are trying to take their ’toos off.”
“Which one of those guys told you that?”
“Gene.”
“That guy’s a first-level flake,” Amber said, rolling her eyes. “You would listen to him?”
“I know he’s odd, but he’s training to work the bar code machine. He’s got access to classified information.”
“I bet he’s lying,” Amber said. “He’s just trying to make himself look more important than he is.”
As they rounded a corner, Kayla saw Mfumbe standing with a group of other seniors. His back was turned and he didn’t notice her.
Amber pulled Kayla abruptly into a doorway. “If you don’t get coded, you’re going to wind up like” — she pointed at Mfumbe and his friends — “like them!”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“Listen, I know you haven’t really been paying attention to … well, to anything these last couple of weeks — and I completely understand — but how could you have missed them?”
“I talked to Mfumbe Taylor once.”
Amber’s face twisted in an expression of surprised disapproval. “Well, all I know about him is that he’s a super brain. I guess he’s okay. He aced that Jeopardy thing and all. I have no idea how he got mixed up with those others.”
Kayla checked out Mfumbe’s friends. They were all seniors, too. She knew who some of them were but had never really spoken to any of them.
Allyson Minor was one of those kids always hanging around in the science lab. Blond hair frizzled around her round face as if it were electrified by excess brain waves. She always wore baggy clothes — Kayla assumed it was to hide her weight.
Nedra Harris’s short bright red hair was cut down to about a quarter-inch. It looked good on her because she was so slim and had such a delicate-featured face. A silver ring pierced her right eyebrow and she wore her angry attitude as though it were a matter of style.
The short heavyset guy with the dyed neon-orange hair was August Sanchez. He never said much in class, so Kayla didn’t have much sense of what he was about. He was always dressed in khaki clothing that made her think of military uniforms. She knew he was a member of the Techno Club, which brought equipment into the classrooms.
Then Kayla focused on the one student she had never seen before. Her eyes widened as she surveyed his golden-brown eyes, thick brown hair, and high cheekbones. He was some exotic mix of ethnicities that she couldn’t place. He smiled when he spoke to Nedra, and Kayla felt a sudden desperate desire to have him smile like that at her.
“He’s out of this sphere, isn’t he?” Amber noted.
“Totally final level,” Kayla agreed. “Where did he come from?”
“Don’t know. His name is Zekeal something. He just got here three weeks ago. When he showed up, this little clique sprung up around him. He’s cute but I wouldn’t go near him. He’s involved with the same loser’s deal as the rest of them.”
“What deal is that?” Kayla asked.
“They’re involved with some kind of campaign to get rid of bar code tattoos,” Amber told her. “In fact, I think he’s the head loser. He was the one who got them all going about it in the first place.”
Now Kayla was completely interested.
She’d have to find out more about Zekeal….
Mfumbe turned and smiled when he noticed Kayla. “Will you sign our petition?” he asked.
Amber whispered fiercely in Kayla’s ear, “No! Tell him no!”
“What’s it about?” Kayla asked, pulling free of Amber’s grip. Mfumbe presented her with a handheld computer notebook with a short list of names that had been signed with the special pen attached to it.
“We’re working with a senator named David Young on a campaign called Decode,” Zekeal said, coming alongside Mfumbe. “Young wants serious curbs put on the bar code. He’s working to pass laws that control where and when it can be used.”
“Like on highways,” Mfumbe added. “He’s trying to pass a law prohibiting states from making bar codes a requirement at all tolls.”
Amber came up behind Kayla. “What’s wrong with that?” she challenged.
“Because the government could track your every move,” Zekeal replied.
“If you haven’t done anything wrong, who cares?”
“It’s the principle of it,” Mfumbe argued. “Our civil liberties have been shrinking ever since the turn of the last century. We lost a lot of civil rights because people became convinced it was the only way to stay safe. We’ve been losing more freedoms and rights ever since.”
“I don’t feel like that. I can do whatever I want,” Amber argued back. “There are no freedoms I miss having. I haven’t broken any laws, so I don’t care who knows what about me. I have nothing to hide.”
“You should have the freedom to travel without having your every move monitored by the government,” Mfu
mbe replied. “Don’t you agree to that?”
“I still say that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about,” Amber insisted. “Only criminals and terrorists need to worry about that.”
“What if the British had been able to track George Washington during the revolution?” Mfumbe said. “Or what if slavers knew where runaways were on the Underground Railroad?”
“That’s so over,” Amber scoffed. “This is the twenty-first century.”
“Maybe, but maybe it still applies. Besides, wouldn’t you like to know what’s in the bar code?” Mfumbe insisted. “What if there’s stuff coded in there that isn’t true?”
Amber waved him off dismissively. “You’re so paranoid. I’m sure if something like that happened, you could find someone to call and have it fixed.” She turned to Kayla. “We have to get to class.”
“You go ahead,” Kayla replied. “I want to hear more about this.”
Amber shot Kayla an insistent look. “Kayla!” she urged.
“I’ll be right there.”
Amber rolled her eyes and hurried off down the hall.
“Your friend thinks you’re making a big mistake,” Mfumbe commented.
“Yeah, she’s pretty banged out that I’m talking to you,” Kayla said with a quick laugh. “She thinks you guys are crazy and dangerous.”
“She’s got a lot of company,” Zekeal said.
“Thanks for the gum,” she said quietly to Mfumbe.
He nodded. “How are you doing?”
“Been better.” She wanted to get off this topic quickly. “Tell me more about Decode,” she said.
“Zekeal’s our Decode expert,” Mfumbe said.
“All Senator Young is saying is that there should always be an alternative to the bar code. That way you’re free to get the stupid tattoo or not get it,” Zekeal told her. “It’s simple, really.”
Kayla reached for the petition and signed.
“Okay — an independent thinker!” Zekeal cheered.
Nedra appeared at his side and ran her hand along his arm. “I have to get to my locker. Are you coming?”
“Yeah, sure,” he replied. Nedra tugged and he let her pull him away.
August and Allyson joined Mfumbe and Kayla. Allyson handed Kayla a magazine. “Check our ’zine, KnotU2,” she offered. “It’ll tell you about Decode.”
“That’s the name of our website, too,” August added. He pushed some buttons on his small computer and the website opened just as the final morning tone sounded.
“Astral,” Kayla said, impressed with the wildly colorful graphics. “I’ll check it out on my computer later.”
Kayla hurried to her class and slid into her seat just as her World Literature teacher was about to shut the door. Their assignment was to open the e-readers built into their desks and finish reading an article in the Tribune E-Journal. Instead, she folded the ’zine over her e-reader screen, flattened it, and began to read.
KnotU2
be more than a cog in the machinery
First Your Food — Then Your Soul
By Allyson Minor
You all know Global-1 — the worldwide corporate superpower that has been unofficially controlling just about everything from behind the scenes since 2011. You know them because their name is on everything from your cereal box to the high-speed bus you ride to school.
It’s even on our country’s leader. Our current president, billionaire Loudon Waters, was one of the founding members of Global-1. It’s clear that he’s only concerned about increasing Global-1’s fortune and power. He couldn’t care less about our liberties or freedoms. All he and his “advisers” care about is maintaining global domination to secure their obscene wealth.
If you think I’m paranoid, consider this: Global-1 already owns all the food in the world.
No kidding.
The entire world! All the food!
Way back in the 1990s, biotech companies began splicing different genes into already existing plants. They created some new plants. They changed the flavor, taste, and shape of others. They made some crops drought resistant, or able to repel bugs and immune to weed killers. They called these new plants GMOs — genetically modified organisms. They took out patents on everything they created, which meant they owned these new creations.
Oh, and they did one other very interesting thing: They created seeds that don’t regenerate new crops. These were called “terminator seeds.” For centuries, farmers had been growing new plants from the seeds they got for free from their harvest. But their crops weren’t as bright, big, and high yielding as the biotech crops. If they wanted to compete, they needed biotech seeds — seeds that they had to buy new every year. And eventually those biotech seeds mixed with the other seeds, so the biotech companies began to claim ownership of those, too.
During this time, a company owned by Global-1 began to quietly buy up all the smaller biotech corporations. Now there is only one biotech company in the entire world, AgroGlobal.
Face it: Any group that controls the world’s food controls the world.
AgroGlobal owns all the food. If they decide not to sell seed to a certain group or nation, they can do that. Any group who defies AgroGlobal can last just one growing season before they begin to starve.
They control you, too. They know everything about you — where you’ve been, what you’ve bought, what your doctor prescribed for you, what books and magazines you read. And more. Much more.
Global-1 knows. They invented the tattoo and introduced it in Europe, then Asia, now here. When you get the bar code tattooed on your wrist, you might as well be a plant, because you’re about to be gobbled up by Global-1.
The Bar Code Can Be Useful
By Mfumbe Taylor
Read Your Bible
By Nedra Harris
In the King James version of the Bible, Revelation 13:16–18 warns about the Antichrist and his evil plan:
And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
The three limit posts that are in lined bar codes correspond to the numbers 6-6-6. They are the three limit posts that guide the scanner. The two at the edges are named guard bars and the central one is the central pattern. Special studies have shown that these three limit posts indeed show the image of 666.
And here’s something else to think about — the bar code tattoo was first introduced in the United Federation of Europe by Global-1, on June 16, 2016 — 6-16-16 or 61616. Think carefully before you get tattooed.
Decode Now — Support Dave Young!
By Zekeal Morrelle
Is there a way to fight the tyranny of the bar code, or is it hopeless? It’s not hopeless, and there is a way.
Join Senator David Young, the junior senator from Massachusetts, in his Decode Campaign. Join now!
Decode is a group working to defy the tyranny of the bar code tattoo. They propose a set of new laws that will guarantee us the right to privacy: The Young Amendments.
Our society used credit cards and, now, e-cards. All our movements and purchases have been tracked by these codes for so long that we don’t even care anymore. But with the bar code we’re being expected to wear all our information on our bodies. At least back a few years ago, there was some choice. Until 2020, you could still pay with cash. There were token lanes on the highways (and although there still are, who knows how long that will last? The transit authority — run by Global-1 — is campaigning hard to eliminate them). At one time you could choose not to have a credit card. Your medical records were still between you and your doctor.
Much about you could be discovered through a credit card or e-card, it’s true. But with the bar code, our last shre
ds of privacy are being destroyed. Dave Young is trying to make sure this doesn’t happen. Support The Young Amendments. Contact [email protected].
“There’s more to this bar code thing than what we talk about in the ’zine,” Mfumbe told Kayla after class that afternoon. She’d been on her way to lunch when she saw him standing by the cafeteria door trying to distribute the ’zine.
“What more do you think there is?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Not sure. But the articles that come out of Young’s office are scary. It’s like he’s trying to tell us we have to take this really seriously, without coming out and saying exactly why.” A student passed by and he thrust the ’zine in front of her. “Decode, now!” he urged her.
She grabbed the ’zine without even looking at him and stuffed it in her bag as she walked on.
Zekeal came alongside them with a stack of the ’zines in his arms. “How’s it going?” he asked Mfumbe as he smiled at Kayla.
“Kids aren’t exactly lining up for them,” Mfumbe reported.
“That’s okay,” Zekeal assured him. “The movement is just beginning; it’ll pick up speed as people become more informed.”
Four guys from the varsity football team came out of the cafeteria, laughing and pushing one another playfully. Their bar code tattoos flashed beneath their varsity sweaters as they horsed around. When they caught sight of Zekeal and Mfumbe, their eyes narrowed.
A tall blond guy, Tod Myers, stepped forward. “I thought we told you freaks to put the little magazine away,” he said.
Mfumbe thrust a copy toward him. “You might find it interesting. Even if you already have the tattoo, you can choose alternate forms of payment and ID — it’s not too late.”
Tod and his three teammates formed a semicircle in front of Kayla, Zekeal, and Mfumbe.
“Get lost, we have the right to express our opinions,” Zekeal defied them. “This is still America. At least the last time I checked.”
Kayla folded her arms, unwilling to leave or let them know she was scared. Mfumbe and Zekeal also stood firm.