by Suzanne Weyn
“How horrible,” Kayla said, repulsed that anyone would be so cruel.
“That night I used acid to remove my code and I headed up here. I hung out around Lake Placid like we agreed, hoping you or Mfumbe would show up. But you didn’t come.”
“We were headed there, but we didn’t make it,” Kayla explained. “The police grabbed Mfumbe for shoplifting and that’s the last time I saw him.”
“I’ll try to get to Lake Placid to see if he shows.”
Kayla gripped his arm gratefully. “That would be great. I’d go to Lake Placid myself, but the Globalofficers are looking for me.”
“I heard. I’m sorry about your mother.”
“Thanks.”
“Once I got to Lake Placid, I began to hear people talk about the different groups in the mountains. It didn’t take me long to hook up with this group and I’ve been happy up here ever since.”
“Are you trying to contact aliens?” Kayla asked skeptically.
“We’re trying to attract good to help us,” he answered. “We don’t care where the goodness comes from. If it’s aliens who respond, fine.”
“She’s searching for Eutonah,” the woman told him.
August smiled, nodding. “Your old friend Eutonah. Do you know where she is?”
“No.”
“Whiteface Mountain.”
“There’s such a place?” she asked.
August nodded. “It’s about a day’s walk from here.”
It all suddenly made sense. “That’s what she meant!” Kayla realized. “Remember the white face. I didn’t know it was the name of a mountain.”
“Back when you mentioned it, I didn’t know, either. It was once a ski resort, but there’s no resort there anymore … just in case you were thinking of taking the chairlift up.”
It took Kayla a day to walk to the base of Whiteface Mountain. August had given her a trail map and it helped her to negotiate her way around the thick underbrush and shrubs. She had to make her way along the shore of a wide, shimmering lake before she could begin to climb.
In places the path disappeared altogether, but the map helped her estimate where she should be in relation to the lake. After a while, she veered away from the lake and came out to a meadow and a more obvious path.
Her long walk north with Mfumbe had strengthened her endurance. Her feet had grown tough and accustomed to walking. Still, she needed to stop every few miles to regain her strength. She paused and leaned against a boulder as she looked at the dirt trail ahead of her. It was surrounded on either side by tall grass dotted with flowers. The sun warmed her cheeks.
Closing her eyes, she listened to the hum of insects. She was changing, something inside was different. Having been spun out of the world she knew, she’d landed in a different world. In this world she was one living creature among many living things, not the only kind of creature in an environment of steel and glass.
Here in the woods she’d come to feel more at one with her space than she’d ever felt in her old life. There was energy in the trees, the earth, and even in the boulder she leaned on. She was aware of it these days as never before. Even when she’d lived in the cabin with Mfumbe, she hadn’t been open to this feeling like she was now.
Feeling reenergized, she continued on along the narrow dirt trail through the meadow until it once again led her into the dense pine forest. The weather had grown warmer, but the coolness emanating from the thick carpet of pine needles on the forest floor still caused a chill. August had located a poncho for her and she took it from her pack and put it on.
As she hiked, she thought of Mfumbe. Was he still in jail? They couldn’t keep him long just for stealing a box of Adlevenol. But had his parents come for him and taken him home? Could they force him to get tattooed?
If he was able to, she knew he’d come back and ask around for Eutonah, knowing that Kayla would also try to locate her. They’d agreed to meet in Lake Placid, but now it was too risky. Would he remember what Eutonah had said about the white face? Would August be able to find him in Lake Placid? She had no doubt that if there was any way possible, Mfumbe would try to get to her. If he didn’t, she would have to go find him. Before this, she had never known it was possible to have this kind of closeness with another person. What an unexpected gift to have received in the middle of all this misery!
August had told her that, once she started to hike the mountain, it would take only two or three hours to reach the tree line. That was where the trees grew scrubby and mostly stopped growing. From that point on, there would be only boulders to climb.
After two hours, the forest was still thick, with no sign that she would soon come above the tree line. Here and there, orange-pink light filtered through the trees, but, for the most part, the forest had become deeply shadowed.
Just ahead of her, someone moved on the trail. Her heart raced with hopeful anticipation. “Mfumbe?” she called.
He waved with a wide sweep of his arm and she ran toward him. But as she neared the figure, she skidded to a stop.
It was Zekeal, and this time he was no vision.
“Kayla!” he called, coming toward her. “I finally found you.”
He was the last person she wanted to see. He’d come to bring her back to Tattoo Gen. Why else would he be here? She bolted into the woods, running as fast as she was able in the increasing darkness. He raced right behind her, closing the gap quickly. Crashing through underbrush, he leaped and caught her shoulder, pulling her to the ground with him as he fell.
Kayla kicked at him, struggling. “Get off me.”
He threw himself on top of her, using his weight to pin her. “Stop! I’ve been looking for you ever since I arrived in Lake Placid. You never showed, so I asked around for Eutonah, figuring you’d head there. Someone finally told me. I should have known all along, the white face.”
“I should never have told you that,” she said.
“Listen to me. I never lied to you. I said I wasn’t sure we could live without the bar code. I admitted my doubts all along.”
She turned her face from him. “You were spying for Tattoo Gen all along.”
“Only toward the end. I wanted to convince you all to get coded for your own sakes. You were ruining your lives.”
“Why couldn’t you be honest with me?”
“You were so against the bar code, so stubborn about it. I thought you’d be upset, that you’d dump me.”
“I don’t believe you,” she jeered. “You and Nedra wanted to be big shots with Tattoo Gen — that’s all there ever was to it. You tricked me and used me because you thought I was naive and would believe anything you said. Let me sit up.”
“Only if you promise not to run. It’s taken me too long to find you,” he said, lifting himself off her.
Slowly, she sat up, eyeing him warily.
“These resistors have the wrong idea, Kayla,” he said, sitting beside her. “Don’t waste your time with them. They can’t win.”
“It’s better than being a slave to Global-1,” she cried heatedly.
“How is it better?” he argued. “Do you really want to be a prisoner of these mountains, unable to leave, forced to rough it in the woods? You’re an artist, Kayla. What are you going to do up here in the forest for the rest of your life?”
“Live!” Kayla shouted. “Like a person, not a robot — like a free person.”
“No, you won’t,” he insisted. “You’ll rot up here. Come back with me. Get the tattoo. With the tattoo, you can paint and sell your work. You don’t have to go to art school for that. The bar code can’t take away your creativity.”
He made it sound so sane, so reasonable. He stroked her hair. “Your beautiful hair. What did you do to it? It doesn’t matter. Everything can be all right again, Kayla. I won’t let you go this time.”
Zekeal was still so handsome, so hard to resist.
But he wasn’t Mfumbe. He wasn’t someone who would stand up for a principle even if it wasn’t in his own best
interest. He wasn’t Mfumbe, who would never desert her, who would do anything for her. He wasn’t the person she loved from the deepest place in her heart.
“You don’t believe any of what you’re saying,” she said. “You’re not being sensible, you’ve just given up.”
“Zekeal!” A woman hurried up the path, carrying a bright flashlight.
Kayla turned sharply toward the sound of her voice.
It was Nedra.
“You’re with her!” Kayla whispered sharply. Everything came back to her in a cascade of bitter feeling. He’d lied to her about all of it — about Nedra, about the bar code. He’d betrayed them all, and he was doing it again. “Nothing about you has changed. You’re still a liar like you always were.”
“Zekeal! Where are you?” Nedra called in the dark. “I think I’ve found her. She left footprints.”
“I don’t care about her,” Zekeal whispered urgently. “Now that I’ve found you again, I only want —”
Kayla wouldn’t listen anymore. The two of them had come here to bring her back. Was there a reward for her return?
“Zekeal!” Nedra called again, louder this time. He looked toward her and Kayla shot to her feet and bolted past him, up the path.
“Kayla!” he shouted, jumping up and running after her.
She ran wildly, darting off the path. She paid no attention to direction as she scrambled over fallen trees and splashed through streams until her heart felt like it might explode. Finally, she slowed to a jog to regain her breath and slow her heart.
Several yards behind her the beam of Zekeal’s flashlight careened off the trees as he searched for her in the dim light.
She stood, panting, not daring to move for fear of attracting his attention. This was a contest of wills she couldn’t afford to lose. There was no way she’d let him take her back and she would never be Nedra’s captive.
Several feet ahead, she heard some creature hurry away. Turning toward the sound, she saw a small cave.
She crouched low and moved stealthily to the mouth of the cave. With a quick check over her shoulder, she wriggled inside, lying flat. She knew her feet would probably have been visible in the daylight, but there was not enough room to bend her knees and pull them inside. She was grateful now for the dark — and that she had never been claustrophobic.
The cave smelled of mossy earth and the musky odor of whatever animal had inhabited it last. Dirt fell from the cave wall. She shut her eyes and spit out what fell into her mouth.
Reopening her eyes, she peered down the length of her body and out the cave opening. Zekeal moved around outside. He had stopped and, from his jerky movements, she could tell he was checking frantically for her in all directions. After about five minutes, Nedra joined him. “You let her get away,” she accused him, her face demonic in the upswept light.
“No! I swear! She just disappeared.”
“Keep looking. If I bring her in and get her tattooed, they’ll definitely give me the council chief spot. It’ll be good for you, too.”
He nodded and together they hurried off into the woods, still searching. Kayla hoped that the cave was not inhabited. She didn’t want to risk leaving right away, knowing Nedra and Zekeal were nearby.
She listened to the crickets chirp, along with the buzz of other insects. Lightning bugs flashed in the dark outside the cave and an owl hooted. The muscles of her calves ached and her feet throbbed. The threat of imminent danger — the adrenaline charge — was soon overcome by exhaustion and she slept.
In the middle of the night, she was abruptly awakened. She sat up, smacking her head on the upper rocks of the cave. A man’s hand was wrapped around her ankle and he had begun to pull her out of the cave. “No!” she shouted, clutching at the dirt and rock at the side of the cave to no avail.
She found herself lying at the feet of a very tall man. It wasn’t Zekeal or Mfumbe; she could see that much by the large shape of his silhouette. He shined a flashlight beam on her face, blinding her.
“Yes, that’s her,” a female voice from behind him spoke.
Eutonah stepped into the light. She wrapped Kayla in a warm embrace. “I knew you were near. I could sense it. But when you failed to arrive, we came out to find you.”
Kayla’s knees buckled with relief, but she caught herself on Eutonah’s arm. “We’re almost at tree line,” Eutonah told her. “Can you manage a short climb?”
“Yes. I think so. Is my friend Mfumbe with you?”
“Not yet, but I feel a strong energy directed toward us. Perhaps he is coming soon. Have faith. Tomorrow we will work on contacting him.”
Eutonah and her group were sure-footed, even in the dark. Whenever Kayla stumbled, the large man who had pulled her from the cave steadied her with a strong hand.
They emerged from the forest to the tree line, where the plants were squat and scrubby. The moonlight made a clear path for them. A square three-story building loomed at the top of the mountain. Moonlight bounced off its many plate glass windows. “It’s the old restaurant that skiers used when this was a ski resort,” Eutonah told her. “It was boarded up and forgotten once they closed down the slope.”
“Why did they close it?”
“It was taken over as a government headquarters and private slope for government families. Then Global-1 opened another headquarters in Hawaii and this one fell into disuse.” Eutonah smiled. “Now we use it, free of charge.”
Kayla followed the group through a glass door and into a vast, open space. “Our group eats together in the cafeteria, cooks in the kitchen,” Eutonah explained, gesturing toward a cafeteria on her right. “We gather in the main room, and sleep in rooms we’ve sectioned off for ourselves. It’s perfect for us.”
July 21, 2025
To: (AT)cybercafe1700globalnet.planet
From: Thefutureglobalnet.com
Amber! Are you there?
I finally have access to a computer again. I didn’t even know it was here until I walked into this room just now and found it.
The last two weeks have been the most amazing of my entire life. Each day I work with our leader, Eutonah, and everyone else here on expanding our psychic abilities. We start each day with meditation in the main room. Then Eutonah assigns us to a group. She says I have a natural ability for telepathy and sensing the future, so I’m concentrating on that. I think she’s right and I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. Until she explained it all to me I honestly thought I was going insane. Now it explains why I was seeing Eutonah, then Zekeal. It explains why I saw a picture of Mfumbe on my sketch pad the other day.
Eutonah has been explaining such fascinating things to me. According to her and the others, Global-1 has changed the path of evolution. By cloning only the healthiest people — and making it hard for others to survive — Global-1 has stopped the course of natural human evolution.
But something unexpected has happened. People everywhere have begun developing heightened psychic ability. Many of them are here in the mountains because those are the people resisting the tattoo. Eutonah’s theory is that psychic abilities are rising because people have been shut out of society as it exists.
When these people are forced out of normal ways of behaving, they find new ones. This is called adapting. Our ancient apelike ancestors adapted to a change in their physical environment. Maybe it was the Ice Age or being forced from the jungles out onto the savannas. But something made them change. They began standing on two feet to see farther and their brains grew larger because they needed to use more brainpower to survive in a harsher environment.
In the same way, we’ve had our social environment changed and we’re adapting. Adapting in an exciting way. There’s a man here who can move things with his mind. There are about fifteen women who can heal just by laying their hands on someone. This ability interests me most of all because if we are going to be shut out of medical care and killed in hospitals when we are old, then we will need healers. With people who can heal available, we won’t
be slaves of the insurance companies or Global-1.
After my telepathy practice today, I’ll go to a class on healing with local herbs. After that, I’ll learn about what plants are safe to eat around here. Eutonah says I will learn about hands-on healing when I’m ready.
In classes I’m focusing all my concentration on finding Mfumbe. I envision him at home, with his parents. I bet they came and got him out of jail and took him home with them.
I’m sure he’ll try to find me. There are no phones here, so I can’t call him. I could e-mail him now but I’m afraid his parents might report what they know to Global-1 or Tattoo Gen, or who knows who.
I just looked at the clock. It’s time for me to go to my class right now. I hope this e-mail gets to you. I love and I miss you. I hope you’re okay.
G2G,
K.
“It’s all about energy,” Eutonah told Kayla. They sat out by the edge of the mountain’s tree line. It was the same place where Kayla had first “met” Eutonah. The woman had invited her out to talk about their work together.
“We are all part of an energy field,” she said. “That’s why religious figures and philosophers of all persuasions continually refer to the fact that we are all one. The whole world is one, because even the plants and animals join us on one energy continuum. Some people are more conscious of this and can control the flow of their own energy. Those people have been called holy people, swamis, medicine people, healers, saints, shamans.”
“I should tell you that I’ve been having visions of people all converging on a walled city,” Kayla said. It was hard to admit this, because she feared it revealed her emerging insanity. “There’s mental illness in my family. I’m afraid this means it’s starting in me.”