“Huh,” I say. “This was up for four seconds? Who pulled it down?”
“Unknown. Sauron’s Eye, if I had to guess.”
“Who?”
“Sauron’s Eye,” Gary says. “The spider in the middle of the web, right? The all-seeing queen of the panopticon.”
“The what?”
He looks at me like I’ve just admitted that I do not, in fact, know my ass from a hole in the wall.
“Ever noticed those glass-eyeball-looking things you see on street signs and rooftops and traffic lights? Or the little four-prop helicopters that are always buzzing around? Or the things that look like big bugs hanging off the sides of buildings in the crappier parts of town?”
I give him my best don’t-push-it glare.
“I know what a security camera is, Gary. What’s your point?”
He sighs.
“My point is that those aren’t just cameras, or drones, or crawlers. They’re the eyes of the panopticon. Every single spy eye in North America is networked or tapped, Anders. They all feed into NatSec’s network.”
I sometimes have problems telling when Gary’s yanking my chain. This is one of those times. I stare at him for a long moment. He stares back, and then rolls his eyes.
“Look,” he says. “Believe me or don’t, but it’s true. NatSec can tap every cell signal in the world, and every peeper from Mexico City to Nunavut. Every bit of that data gets parsed and sifted by Sauron’s Eye.”
“You make it sound like it’s a person.”
He nods.
“Kind of. She’s the avatar who runs NatSec’s security nets. Folks in my line of work have the same relationship to her that field mice have to a hawk.”
I lean forward and rest my forehead on my hands. This conversation is making my head hurt.
“So with all that’s going on,” I say finally, “you think NatSec is wasting time and effort chasing down conspiracy theorists?”
He shrugs.
“I doubt they’d put any manpower to it, but a few sniffer avatars? Sure. Do you have any idea what their budget was last year?”
He has a point.
“So how widely did this disseminate?”
“Again, unknown. It was downlinked just under a million times in the four seconds it was up. The redactors would have pulled it back off of any servers they could find, but a lot of them were probably beyond their reach.”
“Like yours.”
He grins.
“Right.”
His right eyeball starts twitching. It still bothers me to watch him download. Human eyes weren’t meant to move independently. It’s creepy enough when a lizard does it.
“So,” he says finally. “Are you buying what he’s selling?”
I shake my head.
“Not sure. That stuff about the UnAltered bothers me. He’s clearly got an ax to grind. On the other hand, it’s hard to argue with the logic, and the bit about the kill switch is the first plausible explanation I’ve heard for what happened yesterday.”
Gary nods.
“It sounds reasonable, but how would you implement something like that? I know how to do a kill switch in software. I’ve designed enough of them myself. I guess I could even see how you could build a kill switch into implanted devices—neural implants for sure, and probably others as well. But how do you build a kill switch into someone’s genes?”
I think about that for a minute, but he’s right. You could presumably cut DNA such that your product has a shortened life span, but to get a geographically localized group to just shut down like that?
“Possible it was actually just those with biomechanical implants that died?”
He shakes his head.
“Not if the NatSec chatter we intercepted yesterday was anywhere close to accurate. The percentage of people with serious implants is still only in the thirties. Actually, even throwing in all the genetically modified only gets you to maybe forty or forty-five percent.”
“Even with the minor mods? The Pretties and whatnot?”
“You mean like the cave ladies and their mouse-man boyfriends? Yeah, I was including them. You wouldn’t think it from our social circle, but the majority of the population is still plain old Homo sap.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and rub my temples with one hand. The headache is not getting better.
“But Hagerstown is pretty much a bedroom community for Bethesda by now, right? And BrainBump had their headquarters there. Their rate of Engineered and Augmented has to be higher than the general population.”
“Maybe,” Gary says. “But not anywhere close to ninety percent.”
“So where does that leave us?”
He laces his fingers behind his head, kicks up the footrest and leans back. “Not sure. I actually like the kill-switch idea. Maybe NatSec just exaggerated the kill rate. We need to think a little more about how you could pull it off, though. Let me check in with my friends, and see what they think.”
He closes his eyes. I’m about to get up when the wallscreen pings. It’s a direct connection request from Doug.
“Connect,” I say. The screen flips to a close-up of Doug’s face, with what looks like an industrial clean room in the background.
“Hey,” he says. “Have you had a chance to look at those documents I sent over yet?”
I shake my head.
“I’ve been a bit preoccupied. You may not have noticed, but some crazy stuff happened yesterday.”
He scowls, which is a pretty scary thing through the hardware that covers half his face.
“I’m aware. That’s kind of why I need you to move up your timelines. Waiting until after your finals or whatever is not going to cut it at this point.”
I have a sudden premonition that Elise might not be the only one in this house who ought to be worried about NatSec.
“Doug?” I say. “Is there something you want to tell me about those documents?”
“No,” he says. “There’s something I want you to tell me about those documents. Specifically, what’s in them. Like you said you would, remember?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I remember. But I’m a little curious about why this is suddenly so urgent. I’m especially curious as to whether having these documents in my possession is going to get a NatSec crowbar dropped on my house.”
“No,” he says. “Definitely not. Definitely probably not. Anyway, you’ve already got them, so if a crowbar’s on its way, you should probably let me know what’s in the documents before it gets there.”
“Thanks, Doug. Your concern for me is overwhelming. I’ll tell you what: I’ll try to get a look at them tonight.”
He scowls even harder, and a servo over his left ear gives out a high-pitched whine.
“Is that the best you can do?”
“That’s the best I can do.”
His face relaxes, and he lets out a theatrical sigh.
“All right then. Check in tomorrow?”
“Will do. Disconnect.”
“What was that about?” asks Terry. She’s standing in the hallway, with half a sausage link in one hand and a wad of bacon in the other.
“That was Doug,” I say. “He’s bugging me for deliverables on some work I promised him.”
“Is that who you were going to meet when you left my place yesterday morning?”
“That’s the one.”
“He sounds like a real humanitarian.”
I roll my eyes.
“Ah, Doug’s okay. He just tends to focus on his own needs. Pretty much to the exclusion of everyone else’s, actually.”
“And that’s okay because . . .”
I’m trying to come up with a good answer for that when Elise pokes her head into the room and says, “What’s a crowbar?”
I look at Terry. She shrugs.
“I don’t know either,” she says. “I mean, I know what an actual crowbar is, but I’m thinking that’s not what you and Doug were talking about.”
I glance over at Gary. His right eye is open now, watching us.
“You want to cover this one?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says. “A crowbar is what Sauron’s Eye gives bad girls and boys for Christmas.”
“Uh . . .” Terry says.
“Crowbars are KEWs,” I say, and wing a balled-up sock at Gary’s head. He sits up, picks the sock up off the floor and throws it back at me. It misses me by at least three feet. I’m pretty sure Gary didn’t play a lot of ball sports as a kid.
“KEWs?” Elise says. “Still not helping.”
“Kinetic Energy Weapons,” I say. “They’re basically bowling balls, with little rocket motors attached to them. NatSec keeps a few hundred of them in low Earth orbit at any given time.”
“Right,” Gary says. “Then when someone annoys them—for example, by conducting totally legitimate and perfectly legal research into their passcode-generation algorithms—their little rocket motors de-orbit them onto that person’s house.”
“You speaking from experience?” Terry asks.
“Nah,” Gary says. “I told you, I work in data entry.”
“I don’t get it,” says Elise. “What’s so bad about dropping a bowling ball on someone’s house?”
I snicker. Terry catches me, and shoots me a look that borders on terrifying. That brow ridge definitely has its uses, intimidation-wise.
“Energy is mass times velocity squared,” Gary says, “and a crowbar comes in at seven klicks per second. That means a ten-kilo weapon has about four hundred ninety megajoules to give up when it lands on you.”
“And that’s . . .”
“In terms of energy equivalents, just a bit more than a hundred kilos of TNT,” I say. “How much of that gets converted to explosive force depends on a bunch of stuff, like impact angle and the density and hardness of whatever it lands on, but it’s pretty safe to say that in most cases you’d rather not be in the neighborhood when one of these things drops.”
“I dunno,” Gary says. “If you’re on NatSec’s shit list, there are a lot of worse things that can happen to you than eating a crowbar.”
“I’m still not following,” Elise says. “I mean, I didn’t think they were even allowed to use armed drones on Americans. If this is really a thing, wouldn’t I have heard something about it?”
“Oh, Elise,” Gary says. “You sweet, sweet child. You remember that gas leak outside San Antonio a few weeks ago?”
Elise looks at me, then back at Gary.
“You’re saying . . .”
Gary taps his nose with one finger.
“Gas leaks don’t really leave craters,” I say.
Elise looks like she might be sick.
“There you go,” Gary says. “Welcome to the real world.”
“Gary thinks we’re humping right now, doesn’t he?”
I nod. Terry’s head is resting on my chest. I can just see the tiny beads of sweat forming on her forehead. It’s after noon now, and the sun is slanting through my bedroom window. I’ve got a class to teach at three, and I thought a nap might do me some good. Doesn’t seem to be in the cards, though.
“We could be, you know.”
I nod again. She’s been pretty clear on that point.
“Just putting it out there. Could have last night, too. Not so much the night before, though.”
I wrap my arm around her shoulders and brush the hair back from her face. She looks up at me, smiles, and pulls my arm tighter.
“Gary’s kind of a tool, isn’t he?”
I laugh.
“You just have to get used to him,” I say. “He spends most of his time on the nets. He doesn’t always remember how to act out here.”
She looks down, sighs, rests a hand on my stomach. Her breathing slows and her head slides a little farther down my chest, searching for a softer spot. I close my eyes. I’m just drifting off when she says, “I know you’re too pretty for me.”
I pull her closer and stroke her hair. “It’s okay,” she says. Her voice is heavy, and I’m not sure she’s awake. Her hand slides lower, stops just above my waist. I breathe in, breathe out. Through the floor, I can hear Gary laughing.
6. TERRY
I wake up alone, soaking wet and panting. The afternoon sun pouring through Anders’ window has turned the room into a sweat lodge. Apparently, the excellent climate control is only for Gary’s parts of the house. I’d been dreaming of Elise. She was standing silent in the center of the road, with her back to me and her head bowed to her chest. The sun was setting beyond her, and I could just hear the low buzz of the bomber as it cleared the horizon. I broke into a run. Elise shrank to a dot and disappeared. I looked up to see the bomb drifting down under a fat red parachute. The sky flashed white, and the air was on fire.
No wonder I was dreaming of being incinerated. It must be a hundred degrees in this room. I sit up, push my hair back with one hand, and wipe my face dry with Anders’ top sheet. Five seconds later, I might as well not have bothered. I need another shower. I need a functioning air conditioner. I need a change of clothes.
I need to go home.
Gary is sprawled across the sofa when I come down the stairs. One eye turns to focus on me. The other is vibrating back and forth so quickly that I wonder if he’s shorted out.
“Good morning, princess,” he says. “Anders says he’ll ping you when he gets out of class. Your sister says she’s going with Tariq, and she’ll let you know where they decide to hole up. Tariq says he thinks we’re all idiots who will believe that he outwitted NatSec on a three-wheeled golf cart. Can I get you anything?”
“No, thanks,” I say. “I was just leaving.”
“Excellent.” He closes his eyes. I can see them both twitching together under his eyelids now. “It was great meeting you. I’m glad your sister turned out to be not dead. Have a blessed day.”
I’ve gone maybe ten steps when I realize that I should have asked Gary for a gallon jug of water before I left. Between what I sweated out into Anders’ sheets and what’s coming out of me now, I’m gonna wind up shriveled up like a slug in salt before I make it home.
Of all the things that my brainless gene cutter gifted me with, I think the ice-age metabolism is the one I like least. I guess for some people there might be an advantage to being comfortable wearing a bikini in a snowstorm, but I live in Baltimore. It hasn’t snowed here since Obama was in the White House, and being outside in the summer for me is like being one of the guests of honor at a crab feast.
Fortunately, there’s a Jolly Pirate right there at the end of the block. While I wouldn’t eat one of their doughnuts on a bet, I’m guessing their bottled water is probably okay. The door dings as I enter. The air inside is at least twenty degrees cooler than outside, and I’m thinking maybe I’ll hang around until my core temperature drops back into the nineties when the kid at the cash register slaps his palm on the counter and says “Hey! No!”
I look around. We’re the only ones in the store. He’s looking right at me, and pointing at the door. He’s a scrawny little thing, with a shaved head and a wispy brown goatee. The Jolly Pirate uniform makes him look like he’s dressed up in his father’s clothes for Halloween.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “You’re not talking to me, are you?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m talking to you.” His voice cracks, and his lower lip is trembling. “No Altered. You need to go.”
I stare at him. He grits his teeth and stares back. I walk slowly to the drink cooler by the counter. I have no idea what’s happening right now, but I am thirsty, and I am going to get a bottle of water. I open the case, and take my ti
me making a selection as the cold air flows across my legs. I choose a liter bottle of Appalachian Sweet, let the door swing closed, and set the bottle on the counter.
It sits there between us for a solid thirty seconds.
Finally, I pick up the bottle and tap it against the reader, then tap my phone for payment. A receipt pops up on my screen. I discard it.
And then he hits me.
I duck my chin, and his fist smacks into the top of my head. The snap of his hand breaking rattles all the way down my spine. I stagger a half step back from the counter and look up. He’s holding his right hand up in front of his face. The index and middle fingers have an extra bend between the knuckles and the wrist. His eyes are anime-wide, and a high-pitched whistle is coming from his nose.
As God is my witness, I will never understand how people like this drove people like me to extinction.
“Thank you,” I say. “You’ve been incredibly helpful.” I turn to the door.
“We won’t forget Hagerstown,” he croaks, as my hand touches the crash bar.
“Neither will I,” I say without pausing. “My sister was there.”
I stand on the corner outside for a few minutes, drinking my water and trying to decide what just happened. The clerk was obviously upset about something, even before his hand got smashed, but I can’t figure out what. I finish the water in one long pull. I’d kind of like another. I toss the bottle into the recycling bin by the entrance, and touch two fingers to the top of my head. There’s a little bump there, but nothing to get upset about. I pull the door open, and step back into the Jolly Pirate. The clerk is over by the drink fountain, trying to fill up a plastic bag with ice using only his left hand. It isn’t going well.
“Sorry to bother you again,” I say. “But I’d like some more water. Also, would you mind explaining why you just assaulted me?”
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