by Estes, Danny
“Simply put, I was in the Global Rift Supply and Demand cafeteria in Calaway when FBFC crashed the building in force. Those of us on the first five floors held no chance of escape as the alarms didn’t go off. Covering all exits to the cafeteria, they carded and ordered us all in chairs. After two hours of watching people come and go, including those who worked there, I was approached and told I could go.” Jill started the shower and said as if it was an afterthought, “I guess the fake ID I always carry around saved my butt.” Then looking at Randolph with a smile she said, “That’s how I knew you said zippo about me, for if you had, I’d be in one of their cells as you were.” Jill came back to the door and tiptoed to kiss Randolph’s lips lightly before she closed the door to the bathroom. “Now relax awhile as I take my shower.”
For a few moments, Randolph looked at the door in some bafflement. He chewed the last bit of the bar and sat down on the bed opposite the one with a full-blown wedding dress laid out, awaiting its engagement. But why? She risked a lot to get me out, postponing a wedding to a man she has to care deeply about when she’d been in the clear and could have been a continent over when I got the needle, starting a new life. So why risk it? Randolph continued to puzzle the matter over, hurt she could drop their relationship and find a whole new life in so short a time. If she was afraid I’d give her up, she could have just as easily taken care of me in the patrol car and saved herself the added headache of my face being plastered over every video screen.
He was still puzzling over the matter when Jill opened the bathroom door, letting the steamy air out, with a towel wrapped around her midsection and using another to dry her short hair.
“Your turn, mister, and please take a little longer than I did—you reek of several days laying face-down in a sewer.”
“Jill, why don’t you go ahead and take off with your honey. I’m indebted to you for saving my life, but there’s no reason you need risk getting caught because of me.”
Jill wiped off her arms and legs before sitting down next to the dress. “Look, I can’t leave you here. If the FBFC catches you this time, you’ll tell them everything about me sooner or later, and don’t think they can’t get it out of you. I’ve seen some of the equipment they use and those were only the legal items. Besides, as I’ve already killed the snitches in our subsidiary office before getting you out, there's no place I can go where they wouldn’t find me.”
“That was reason forty-two why you shouldn’t have sprung me,” Randolph put in.
To this Jill looked pensive. “Would you quit dwelling on reasons why I should’ve let them give you the needle? The deed is done. Now you can kiss my feet if you feel obligated to for saving your life, but I’d rather you took a shower instead.” Jill twirled her towel while he pondered, then snapped it on his leg.
“Ow! Jill, come on, that hurts.”
“It’ll hurt a lot more if I aim it a little higher,” she threatened.
After he was washed and dressed in imitation Harmanii formal wear, Jill pushed Randolph out to the car wearing the white dress and a shawl over her hair for protection. Once on the road Randolph decided to gather more information on this event he was being dragged to. “So, is the groom’s family going to be there?”
“That would be rather awkward, considering they think he’s dead.”
“Oh, so what is he, your new partner?” Randolph asked, a bit testy.
“Relatively new, but we’ve spent enough time together for me to become attached, especially my other half.”
Jill turned to give Randolph a smile, and he finally saw the obvious in her eyes and yelled, “NO, you’re not talking about me?”
“Oh be still, Randolph,” Jill said, patting his leg. “You’ll get used to me if you haven’t already.”
“That’s not the point. I’m not the marring type! My career choice renders marriage a liability!” Randolph responded in shock and with a bit of convection.
With a sigh of unusual patience, Jill said, “Randolph, were getting married under an assumed name, so it’s not as if it’s permanent. The hotel I booked us into is really for lovers only, it’s an exclusive place where only those with a marriage license showing them to be just married or their on their anniversary, my sign in, and with the added advantage of no children allowed.” She smiled to this last. “It’ll be a couples’ playground. Besides, the FBFC would never think to look for you there.”
“But you said…?” Randolph sputtered, somewhat confused with his own feelings.
“And I meant it. I like you Randolph, and my other half has fallen in love with you. And as we’re both wanted for murder, whether you committed one or not, I’ve considered it and thought why not? Besides, I promised my other self if she allowed me a stint in the military, I’d settle down later and have a family like she wants.”
Randolph looked skyward and sought patience of his own while he wished for more time to think things through as he tried to explain himself better. “Jill, I like you a lot too, but you don’t want me—I get antsy if I’m in one place too long.”
Jill gave Randolph a sideways look. “Listen, can’t you at least give this a try? Being a homebody will be new for me as well. If it doesn't work out after a year we can go our separate ways.”
“Okay, for the sake of argument suppose we do? Where would we live? What would we do for credits to run a normal life? And on top of the other adjustments, we’d have to sever all ties to everything we know, have our looks readjusted, and become absolutely boring people like an ordinary person, because the FBFC have long memories.”
“Well, I hadn’t thought out everything, of course, but I was more or less considering going native in Africa. There are still parts that use no technology, so we’d simply fall of the grid.”
“Uh huh, right, and what about me? Being that totally unplugged IS a death sentence for me. My whole life revolves around the information system.”
Jill shrugged. “I haven’t a clue. As I said, I’m winging it. If after our stay in the honeymoon hotel we haven’t decided on a direction, I have some hard credits to get us to a cheap motel where we can shack up for a month.”
“I take it your partners did all the planning,” Randolph remarked dryly.
“Not all of it,” Jill answered. “I’ve always planned out the bigger aspects of a job, whether in the corps or at the company. As for the smaller details, that I left up to my lieutenant, or in your case, my partner.”
“Great…okay, say I do go along with this. I’m not about to cut myself off from the world.” Allowed to think on this, Randolph considered some other possibilities. “I, too, have a stash of emergency credits and with it I could set up a shop and solve our money problem. However, I’m still concerned about this marriage thing. Couldn’t we post pone this till a later date?”
“Look, Randolph, we need a place to lay low for a while and I haven’t had a vacation since the corps. I want to have some fun, lie on a beach, and feel the spray of the ocean and the hot sun on my skin. I want to dance the night away and not worry I could be called out to die the next morning. But most of all, I want to feel what it’s like to be just a plain simple woman. Could you not argue and give me this? I promise if things don’t work out I’ll leave.”
As Randolph listened to Jill’s checked emotions, he knew it had taken her total control to have admitted all that. But a fake marriage to a murderess rankled Randolph’s code of ethics and had him balking on the whole idea. Regardless of his feelings though, her notion was right about the FBFC; they would never consider searching in a private resort meant exclusively for romantic getaways.
The wedding chapel was a simple affair, white steeple roof, plain cheap wood-looking plastic doors and colored windows depicting worshipers at prayer. All this make-up was really meant for youngsters in love with few credits or any common sense, poor folks trying to get tax breaks or those like Randolph and Jill, who needed the license without scrutiny or blood tests, which in their case would light up a few vide
o screens. They gave their I do’s and two hundred and fifty credits, as was required, to the bored preacher so his volunteer staff could print up a five-credit hard chip of proof. It wasn’t long till the two newlyweds were flying over the Island of Jewlopo, a small span of land out in the ocean that used to be one of the many islands of Jamaica till it was bought out right by a resort hotel conglomerate moving out of the over-populated and rundown gambling cities in Indies, a state now owned by the remaining full-blooded Indian nations.
The craft settled down in the middle of the island so every space of beach property could be exploited. The fugitives were greeted with fake smiles and insincere welcomes all the way to their overpriced room, which looked out over the island and not the ocean, as that was another three hundred credits extra a night. However, Randolph thought, looking about with a calculating eye, if you ignore the obvious insincerity's and over priced drinks, meals and gift shops, the place is as advertised. Warm to hot weather, clean beaches with miles of sand, sun, and ocean. As for activities to lose yourself in, everything is designed around their theme of couples getting acquainted or reacquainted. Including the lax dress code I witnessed when checking in. Seeing couples walking around, even indoors, without clothes, some of whom really shouldn’t, while others fit into my wish some people should be forbidden to wear tight-fitting clothing. Randolph shrugged off the image with a shiver. He unpacked as Jill sat down in a round chair big enough for two and flipped the video channels to see what other amenities the place had to offer.
Their first day on the island, Randolph had to admit, was very enjoyable. Jill had let her softer side out and after only a few hours, and Randolph felt as if she were just another average woman. She giggled, laughed, played coy and all the while held onto his arm with true affection, something he’d never experienced with a woman. By mid-afternoon, Randolph could truthfully say he was pleasantly surprised. Although he’d already had a taste of her softer side back at Global Rift Supply and Demand in Calaway, this was the first time she was out the whole day long. The following day turned out quite differently, as it was Jill’s tougher side’s turn to enjoy the local festivities. However, because she was constantly looking for danger or an alternate meaning in anything said or done by the staff or couples they came across, she acted and sounded like a nervous virgin, finding it hard to appear normal because of her training.
“I’m sorry if I’m such a burden, Tom,” she confessed, using his marriage license name as they stood in line for the parasol ride. “I normally withdraw for activities like this, as my other side is so much better in dealing with the normality of civilian living.”
“In other words, you never let your hair down and tried to enjoy the small pleasures in life?”
“Not true,” Jill defended herself. “I can drink any man under the table and bluff with the best of them at poker.”
“I see; so any activities usually associated with the males need to challenge and over come, besides making a fool of themselves,” Randolph remarked. Considering this after her acknowledgment, he inquired, “Perhaps this part of you is better suited as a man. Have you considered dating another woman?” Randolph looked down into her eyes.
Jill looked up into his eyes with such disgust, Randolph thought for a moment she might hit him, but all she did was say in total conviction, “No Tom, I LIKE men. I’d rather be around men then women, and as for sex, there’s no substitute for wrapping myself around the hardness of a man’s body…even your body,” she added with a smile.
Still looking for a way out of her marriage proposal, even though it would be very hard to say goodbye, Randolph asked, “Have you ever even tried sleeping with another woman?”
“Tom, drop it!” Jill snapped, becoming more like the military Jill he knew. Then subsiding after a bit, possible trying to apologize for her gruffness, she asked, “Tell you what, why don’t we try the tables after this, then later I’ll show you what I mean.”
“As much as I’d enjoy the tables, it’s the one place we need to avoid.” Leaning closer to her ear so as no one could over hear him, Randolph whispered, “We’d be photographed the instant we walked in, run through the works and before we even made it to a table, they’d know who I am.”
Jill pulled away skeptically, receiving a shrug and look of regret from Randolph as he answered her unasked question.
“Before I knew any better, I used what I knew about their random number computer systems, knowing full well computers are nothing but precise, as long as they’ve been programmed sufficiently.”
To this Jill looked forward, frowning, and said with a sigh, “And they won’t let me in on my own.”
“A good thing too,” Randolph hinted. Jill gave him a grimace, understanding what might happen if she were video graphed.
Afterward, the two chose other activities which ended with them both in their hotel room enjoying the extras which enhanced that night’s intimacy, something they both had already done last night, save Jill was more submissive with her softer side out.
Chapter Fourteen
At the end of their two weeks within the paradise of adult pleasurable sins, Randolph used some of their dwindling credits to find and rent out a cheap office and hotel on the main island of Jamaica, to work up new credentials and unshakable identities. But to make them survive a total investigation even by the FBFC, he knew both of them needed facial changes in order to fool the matching programs into discarding their videos without notifying their operators.
This then was the tricky part as Randolph also knew these programs considered any facial video down to a low sixty percent match good enough to present to its human controller. But even knowing plastic surgery to be a necessary evil, this time Randolph truly felt a face change was a real shame, as he’d gotten to like how he looked with the long face, short stubby nose and cropped blond hair. Oh well, he sighed, it comes with the territory. I just hope Jill will be as understanding. After hooking up a hard line to the local net, Randolph typed in a simple ID program any small corporation would have to investigate the seventeen passports he’d lifted during their first three days on the pleasure island and set aside any thoughts of surgery till he’d paid back Mr. Hilden. This little mission he’d already discussed with Jill in some length, assuring her they’d have the credits to disappear afterward, but for the moment they only needed passable IDs to get them off the island and back on the mainland without setting off any alarms. “Simple enough to do, as long as I do it by the numbers,” he’d assured Jill.
Randolph typed out the last of the code to set the program its task but before he hit enter, he heard Jill shift in her chair next to the white office wall and file cabinet. Today she chose to wear an outfit that best showed off her all-over body tan she’d received, with her legs crossed like any lady so no one could look up between her purple mini skirt covered thighs to the dark green bikini underneath.
With a glance her way, seeing the soft and affectionate look in her eyes, Randolph knew the softer side of Jill was out, watching him with interest. Seeing he’d taken notice of her, Jill smiled lightly and said with feeling, “You look quite handsome in that pin-striped suit, John. You’ve good fashion sense when you wish to use it.”
Randolph spared Jill another glance, now quite sure her softer side was out, because only that personality called him John. Mildly annoyed with her presence, as he needed no distractions, Randolph let his fingers work over the two keyboards to the two computer systems he was using to verify and correct any mistakes he might make.
“Are you too busy to tell me what you’re doing, love?”
Still confused with Jill’s use of that particular endearment, Randolph kept his voice natural. “At present, I’m checking my programs. Debugging as I see errors in my test runs. As these are simple programs, I’m peeling off tracer programs which attach themselves to mine, looking for government watchdogs, search and destroy viruses, advertiser spiders and security programs that gather up information on computer users. A
nd while I’m doing that, I’m learning the current sophistication of possible threats, like the one I’m mutating to worm through the firewalls to the information I’ll need to get us set up with new passports and ID cards.” After a couple more key strokes, Randolph picked up his coffee and noticed the look on Jill’s face. “I take it you’re not following me?”
“Sorry, love, but I lost you at tracer programs,” Jill admitted, taking a sip of her diet soda.
Randolph scratched his ear to the usage of the L word and suggested, “This will take awhile. Why don’t you go out to the beach and finish up your tan?”
“I’d rather sit here and watch you.” Jill kicked off her native beach sandals and folded up her legs beside her in the chair, as it was larger than most he’d gotten from a used furniture store.
“All right, but what say you go out and get us a bite to eat?” Randolph ventured, to get her out from underfoot while he concentrated on an especially tricky problem.
Apparently Jill caught his hint. She unfolded her tan legs in getting up and stretched out her hand. “All right, I’ll leave for a bit, but I’ll need some hard credits for food and something to gain my attention.”
Randolph opened the top drawer and handed over a hundred-credit chip, which she slipped it into her bikini cup underneath her purple, tie-dyed half shirt. She threw Randolph a kiss before walking out the office door.
As Jill walked away, Randolph watched her slender feminine form and the easy way she moved, still not believing within that innocent-looking average-minded woman lurked a cold-blooded military-trained killer with an IQ at least 20 points higher. With a shake of his head and a rub to his neck, Randolph banished thought of the packaging encompassing the two entities and took a deep breath before he put himself back to work.
By the end of the second day, Randolph had peeled away all he needed from the captured leech and watchdogs his simple programs brought into the trap. Using their information, he tapped into the city’s registry and reviewed passport records, IDs, and devastated counties from natural disasters. When he discovered a natural volcano and following earth quakes had wiped out a Scandinavian county’s records, Randolph began an in-depth task of working up solid identities. Thus spending the next couple of weeks on all possible angles any agent could uncover, he pieced together two unshakable identity cards with an eleven-year background that could be traced back to that county’s disaster, eleven years ago. Standard procedures for ID checks rolled back ten years. Randolph had to smile briefly, knowing if further investigation were applied, they would hit that dead-end. To further guaranty untraceable backgrounds, Randolph made Jill and himself both orphans, having their parents killed in the border wars some fifteen years prior to the volcano’s eruption, rendering a check on their parents impossible, since neither of them were ever claimed by any relatives. In fact, the only flaw in his deception was their DNA. Neither held Scandinavian DNA, but who was to say their parents weren’t there on business or vacation?