Sleep State Interrupt

by Ted Weber

  “Sorry,” she said in a quieter voice. “Pardon my French, as my new best friend Betty Battleaxe says.”

  “Waylee’s had a lot to drink,” Pel said. More likely, her hypomania’s peaking.

  Waylee slapped the back of Sunshine’s seat. “President Al admitted he’s a corrupt son of a bitch and MediaCorp pulls the strings. We’ve got it all on video.”

  Sunshine didn’t share her excitement. “Those people make me sick.”

  Waylee tugged Pel’s jacket.

  “What is it?”

  “President Al said MediaCorp’s developing neural interfaces. Can they do that, hook your brain up directly to the Comnet?”

  He laughed. “That’s decades away, even if it’s possible at all. I mean, we’ve come a long way with artificial limbs and eyes and whatnot, but they can’t replicate reality or read your thoughts. The brain’s just too complicated.”

  Waylee sat back. “Well that’s good to know.”

  Pel turned to Sunshine. “So Shakti said you have an optic line?”

  She nodded. “High capacity. So we can connect to the rest of the world and share our experiences.”

  Waylee raised her voice again. “That’s fucking perfect. You’re perfect, all of you.” She turned to Pel. “Remind me to make sweet love to Shakti when we get there.”

  “I will not,” Pel said. She was joking, of course. Waylee had never been interested in women, nor shown any sign she’d cheat on him.

  Maybe we should get married when this is all over. His family didn’t like Waylee yet, but at least they’d given up trying to get him back with Audrey. He’d have to buy a ring, maybe not up to Greg and Estelle’s standards, but something nice.

  Pel massaged Waylee’s hand, warming his fingers with hers. “I love you.”

  She turned and kissed him. “Love you too. Thanks for making this possible.”

  They exited the interstate onto State Road 5, then drove south past dark forests and fields.

  “We’re still in Maryland?” Waylee asked.

  “It’s not all developed yet,” Sunshine said. “Just most of it.”

  Several turns later, they arrived at an LED-illuminated sign labeled “Welcome to Friendship Farm.” Underneath, “An intentional community.” “Here we are,” Peter said.

  An unpaved road took them past fields, solar panels, wooden buildings, and silos. They parked in front of a well-lit two-story house with mismatched wings. Smaller houses nestled among bare trees beyond. Someone strummed a guitar inside the main building.

  The front door opened into a big living room full of people. It smelled like stewed tomatoes and incense. Shakti, her wide face beaming, hugged Waylee, then Pel. “It’s a good thing you ignored my skepticism,” she told Waylee. “I’m so in awe of you.”

  Dingo smacked fists with them. Charles did the same. Over two dozen others greeted them, ranging from ancients to infants. Everyone wanted to know everything.

  “Can we trust all these people?” Pel whispered to Shakti.

  “Of course. They think you’re heroes. That’s why all the kids are up past their bedtimes.”

  He didn’t feel like a hero. They still had a lot more work to do.

  Waylee pulled the clips out of her bun and shook her hair into chaos. “Got anything to drink here?”

  “We make wine and mead,” a thirtyish woman said.

  “And grow the best pot in Maryland,” a brown-bearded man said, putting aside a guitar.

  Dingo threw up a fist. “Break that shit out.”

  Pel began unhooking the micro-cameras from his suit and Waylee’s dress. He’d start with the ghost snares tomorrow.

  The brown-bearded man shooed a group of kids off a solid-looking wall bench, removed the seat cover, and tapped numbers on a keypad. “A lot of folk prefer them synthdrugs, but this is better for you. All natural, 100% organic.” He lifted back the seat and pulled out a large glass canister half filled with green and orange buds.

  Waylee settled into a chair with a bottle labeled “Friendship Farm 100% Organic Mead.” Bongs passed around the room, bypassing the kids.

  Charles leaned toward Pel. “I saw this huge rat before you got here. Shit, I thought the ones in B’more were big, they ain’t got nothin’ on this one.”

  Pel kept working, but Peter spoke. “We don’t have any rats here, just mice.”

  “Weren’t no mouse. Thing was size of a cat. Ran under the front porch.”

  Peter laughed. “That’s a possum, son. He lives there.” Others joined the laughter.

  Waylee struggled to her feet. “I just want to thank you all for putting us up. We’re going to make history.”

  The thirtyish woman frowned. “How long will you be here?”

  Peter spoke at the same time. “No one can know Friendship Farm’s involved.”

  Waylee thrust up her mead bottle and bounced the top against her forehead. “Our secret.”

  Ignoring a familiar half embarrassment, half pride in his girlfriend, Pel plugged one of the micro-cameras into an interface. “Let’s take a look at the video.” He switched on the room’s outdated wall screen.

  Video and audio quality were as good as the practice runs. Pel forwarded past the dull parts, and paused when his audience burst into discussion or howls of outrage, which was often.

  Between the two cameras, they had twelve hours of footage. Way too much for one sitting. The residents with kids drifted away first, then others followed. Pel ended the show after a couple of hours, too tired to stay up any longer.

  “So now what?” Dingo said.

  “Tomorrow we start working on the comlink signals.” He turned to Charles. “And getting on the MediaCorp feed.”

  Charles looked away and said, “Gotta sleep.”

  Had he had even thought about how to get their video on the air? They hadn’t talked about it.

  They also hadn’t really talked about their future prospects. They couldn’t stay long at the farm, or anywhere else he could think of. They might be hunted the rest of their lives, especially if Homeland identified them as Greg and Estelle. Hunted until they were caught or dropped dead from the stress.

  Sunshine led Pel and Waylee upstairs to a small wallpapered room with two single beds, an upholstered chair, and a wooden dresser. “Good night.”

  Waylee pushed the beds together, strutted over to him, and ran a hand down his shirt and into his pants.

  “It’s almost dawn, Waylee.”

  “Estelle. You’re gonna fuck me ‘til I’m sore, President Al. I know you want to.” She unbuckled his belt and removed it. “And then I’m gonna punish you for being bad.” She snapped the belt with a crack.

  20

  January 1

  Afternoon

  Shakti

  Digesting a late lunch, Shakti sat in a wicker egg chair in the main house’s spacious sun room. Rain pattered against the glass roof panes. Dingo lay in a Brazilian hammock, smoking pungent Friendship’s Finest from a pipe.

  “It’s the middle of winter,” she said. “It used to snow this time of year.”

  Dingo glanced over and shrugged.

  Shakti closed her eyes, the symphony of raindrops calming her spirit. She’d known Sunshine and most of the others at Friendship Farm long enough to trust them. Since Maryland legalized marijuana a few years back, they’d planted twenty acres of designer strains. They traded for most of their needs, creating a virtual currency, and donated most of their dollar income to the People’s Party and its associated charities. The party’s state coordinating council and committees met at the farm occasionally. She always attended those meetings and stayed the night. A chance to get away from The Gritty City. And get high as the jet stream.

  She opened her eyes again. Maybe they could stay here permanently. She’d have to buy more clothes. “This would be such a great place to live. Maybe it’s a blessing we’ve been exiled from Baltimore.”

  Dingo sat up, his never-combed hair squished on one side. “Do I look like
a mother fuckin’ farmer? I’m thinking New York or Montreal.”

  Why were they even a couple? The boy’s so damn selfish. “Well g’long t’ New York or Montreal, see’s I care, but I nah go with you!” Her skin flushed; she’d shouted and slipped into Guyanese.

  Dingo’s eyes widened for a second. He emptied the pipe ashes into a small bowl on an adjacent pub table. “Whatever, do what you want. I’m not gonna tell you what to do, but no way am I living someplace where the idea of fun is watching plants grow and weaving underwear from corn husks. This is the 21st century A.D., not B.C.”

  Was he making fun of her? “This is the real world right here, not your concrete monstrosities. New York, Montreal.” She spat. “How long would all those city people last without farms, forests, and oceans puttin’ food in their mouths and oxygen in their lungs? Humans, we’s a part of nature, part of the whole, and when you forget that, you tapin’ dirty socks over your eyes and stumblin’ around like a damn fool, stompin’ all over the garden that keeps you alive, and then walkin’ off the nearest cliff.”

  Dingo flinched. “Damn, girl. I’m just sayin’, this ain’t my thing.”

  “Why can’t you try something new for once? Your feet are too small, that’s your problem.” He wasn’t a BetterWorld addict like Kiyoko and Charles, but he wasn’t far above.

  Waylee and Pel entered the room, hand in hand. They’d been even louder than usual last night until Shakti got up and banged on their door and told them there were kids in nearby houses.

  “There you are,” Waylee said. She looked more like herself, wearing jeans and a music festival T-shirt, and her jewelry back in. Without his beard, Pel still looked like a stranger.

  Shakti abandoned the wicker chair and hugged her friend and hero, the agitation with Dingo under control. “Slept all day?” The sun was already sinking toward the horizon.

  “Needed it.” Waylee withdrew from the hug. “Got a lot to do now. Do you mind helping me ditch the blonde hair?”

  “Sure. What’ll it be?”

  “Orange and red waves, like fire.”

  Dingo plopped out of the hammock. “So when are we getting this footage out?”

  “I have to edit it,” Waylee said, “and Pel and Charles have to analyze the comlink data.”

  “Which’ll take a while,” Pel said.

  “And we gotta stick around here in the meantime?” Dingo said. “Shakti and I should take off. You don’t need us anymore.”

  “I’m staying,” Shakti said. “Dingo, don’t go.” He made life interesting, helped her forget the world was dying, helped keep her sane.

  Waylee stared at Dingo. “Where are you going?”

  Dingo shrugged.

  “Then you’re not in a hurry. Let’s talk to Charles and work out a timeline.”

  Waylee

  Waylee led Shakti and Pel into the adjacent living room. They found Charles at a desk in a small alcove. His fingers flew across the glassy touch pad and virtual keyboard of an interface unit, one of several in the house. It looked like the Genki-san in the band house but with a big popup screen attached. Thick headphones covered Charles’s ears, and a microphone perched in front of his mouth.

  The screen showed a familiar pink-haired girl sitting on a low bed, surrounded by hanging silks. Her sister.

  “Hey, it’s Kiyoko!” Shakti said. “Can she see us?”

  Charles didn’t respond.

  Waylee tapped on his shoulder.

  He pulled off the headphones. His face knotted with irritation. “What?”

  “Can Kiyoko see us?” Waylee said. What’s up with the décor? “Where is she?”

  Charles pointed to a piece of black electrical tape on the monitor. “First thing I did when I got here was tape over all the cameras. I customed the firewalls to keep other hackers out, but best to keep the tape on while we’re here.”

  “How’s she doing? This is BetterWorld, right?”

  “Yeah, but your peeps got no immersion unit, not even goggles,” he said. He turned to Pel. “You shouldn’t have traded your gaming gear away.”

  Pel huffed. “No choice. Those ghost snares were expensive, and Kiyoko’s BetterWorld credits didn’t cover everything.”

  Waylee pointed at the screen. “So are you almost done here?”

  “We’re trying to decide when to broadcast Waylee’s mashup,” Pel said.

  “Just figure it out. I’m busy here.” Charles put the headphones back on.

  Pel’s face contorted, as if he might go postal on the boy.

  Waylee touched his arm. “We can talk to him later. It’ll take me days to put the video together.”

  The door to the dining hall was open. She walked over and peeked inside. The long tables were unoccupied, but conversation and chopping noises leaked from the adjoining kitchen.

  She closed the door for privacy and returned to Pel, Shakti, and Dingo. “I’m going to assume Charles can get us onto MediaCorp. We need a feed with maximum viewership.”

  “Super Bowl’s coming up,” Dingo said.

  Waylee almost jumped out of her shoes. “When is it?”

  “Month from now,” Pel said. “February 4th. Miami Dolphins vs. New York Giants. It’s being held in Atlanta.”

  “At last your sports trivia comes in handy.” Waylee bounded over to another interface unit and powered it on. She opened a search program and spoke, “Number of super bowl viewers.”

  She followed a link. 210 million viewers last year, two-thirds of them Americans. The most watched event in U.S. history, well over the critical mass she needed.

  She kept digging. Pundits expected this year’s Super Bowl to be even bigger.

  * * *

  Pelopidas

  Charles was still on the Comnet when Pel returned from dinner. He was losing weight, whether from healthier food or skimpier portions, but skipping meals altogether might make him sick.

  Charles turned and removed his headphones. “When are we bailing the country?”

  “Another message from Kiyoko?”

  “Gotta admit, freedom beats jail.”

  “We’re okay for now,” Pel said. “We’ve still got a lot to do.”

  His lips pinched together.

  “You know, there’s still plenty of food left in the kitchen. I can make you a plate.”

  Charles shrugged. Then his eyebrows raised. “Can I help with the decryption?”

  “Sure, but getting into MediaCorp should be your top priority. You’re the only one who knows how to do it.”

  He looked away. “I’ve got god powers on BetterWorld now. I had passwords to some other MediaCorp sites, but most of them don’t work anymore.”

  Hard to stay ahead in this game. “They must have identified all the people you owned and cancelled their access.”

  “Yeah. All their avatars were deleted too. Good thing is, some of the backdoors I set up still work. Rest, I think the computers were wiped. And we can still get on the central intranet, no problem there.”

  “Watch for traps.”

  “I’m real careful now. But check this out.” Charles led him to the Comnet interface he’d been using. “A hundred gigabits per second, yo.”

  “Not bad for a farm.” Although they had a profitable crop.

  Charles brought up a long discussion thread on one of the restricted Collective forums. Their owning of the BetterWorld programmers had been voted “Op of the Year.” Speculation varied about who was behind it, but one Collectivista wrote, “the vampire bot technique is classic Dr. Doom. The BetterWorld exploiter who hoaxed MediaCorp, busted out of prison, and laughed at Authority on his way to freedom. If it’s you, Dr. Doom, hats off to you.”

  Pel smacked fists with him. “You, sir, are a legend in the making.” It means Homeland will up the search, though.

  Pel loaded the data from the ghost snares onto Big Red, the home-built supercomputer he’d brought from the band house. The data was too sensitive for the Comnet, no matter how secure his cloud partitions might be
. Then he inserted the memory wafer with the decryption software and copied the files.

  Sure, they’d recorded some interesting video at the gala, but the comlinks were the real treasure. If they cracked the signals, they should be able to access messages, documents, even spy on the users through their cameras and microphones. The whole world could learn the elite’s most embarrassing secrets.

  Pel started the decryption program, which loaded a Pandora Productions banner on the top. He pointed to the first data file and hit the “Visualize raw data” tab. A three dimensional graph of peaks and troughs appeared. “Those are digital 1s and 0s leaking from comlink processors. The higher the peak, the stronger the signal. When I figure out how to sync the timestamp on this data with the video timestamp, the strongest signals will correspond to the people closest to me.”

  Charles nodded.

  “The hard part will be deciphering all these signals. There’ll be more than one from each comlink. I’ve been researching it, though. The comlink displays have characteristic frequencies. We can read what shows up on the screen.”

  “They aren’t shielded?”

  “They are, but not perfectly. Our ghost snares could pick up the tiniest traces. And there’s the net transmissions, which are strong but encoded.”

  Charles rolled his eyes. “Everyone knows that.”

  “But one of the faint signals will come from the processor’s encryption calculations, and we can use that to identify the key, decipher all the Comnet transmissions, and even impersonate the owner.”

  Charles threw him a bro fist. “Hoist the Jolly Roger.”

  Pel explored the software options. One tab tested different cryptographic algorithms to identify the comlink’s key. He could also adjust the parameters to determine target frequencies, adjust the signal to noise ratios, discriminate between different sources, and a lot more. But mostly you had to write scripts, and none of it was intuitive.

  He scrolled through the documentation. It was full of matrix algebra, differential equations, and obscure terms like “Kronecker delta function.” Without an electrical engineering degree, how the hell would he make sense of it?