by Paula Guran
She checked the size of the demon in the machine’s storage bank and tried not to blanch. “Christopher, can you verify this?”
He sidled up to her while Clark continued his financial and investment speculations.
“That’s a bigger allocation than usual,” he said.
“Let me see,” Sam said, bouncing over like an enthusiastic puppy. “Wow.”
“Wow what?” Clark asked. “Is the machine really broken?”
“It’s not broken,” Elsa said, with a pointed look at Christopher.
“Let’s take a look at your other AXB,” he said, and steered the annoying man away.
Elsa double-checked the cables and triple-checked the storage unit, but Sam’s work seemed okay. She initiated the transfer and watched as the demon slowly disappeared. She wondered what havoc it had wreaked in the tampon lady’s life, or what it might have done if it had been left to board the plane. No one could officially say it, of course, but it was widely believed that the Brazilian jet that had recently gone down over the Atlantic had been due to a Class A. The sooner this demon was locked up, the better. At twenty-five per cent the download began to slow. At forty per cent, she realized the creature was fighting the transfer.
“Sam, you’re going to need power from the backup unit.”
He was at her side instantly. “What? Nah. This one can handle it.”
“If the download slows too much, we’ll have a breach,” she said.
Sam shook his head. “It won’t. See, it’s holding steady—”
The AXB began to shriek. Elsa tried an emergency abort, which should have sucked the demon right back up the pipeline into the backscatter machine. Instead, the storage unit jumped a foot into the air and emitted a spray of sparks. The terminal lights all flickered, and the warning sound turned into a whooping alarm.
“Oh, shit,” said Christopher as he dashed back.
“That shouldn’t have happened!” Sam protested.
Everyone was turning to stare at her. Elsa ignored them. Although normal vision was useless, she instinctively glanced upwards. Where had it gone? Whirling over their heads, unseen and menacing? Racing down toward the gates to attach itself to a sleepy kid, a flight attendant, a pilot?
Damn it, they were going to have re-screen everyone who had passed through recently and was still at a gate.
And screen themselves.
And file a half-dozen reports.
It was the first Class A she’d ever let escape.
She didn’t get back to her hotel until nearly dawn. The front desk clerk let her extend her reservation. Elsa crashed hard on her pillows, waking near noon to a series of upset voicemails from her bosses in Philadelphia. Leftover pizza in the mini-fridge filled her growling stomach. After three conference calls and two aspirin, she changed into her bathing suit and went down to the outdoor pool. The weather was sunny and warm, and six or seven other guests were also swimming. Elsa ignored them. She wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone.
A friendly voice said, “Hey! It’s Elsa Lancaster.”
Elsa turned in surprise. Lisa-Marie was stretched out on a beige lounge chair. She was wearing the same green bikini she’d been wearing in Columbus four months before and looked just as fabulously pretty. She lifted up her oversized sunglasses and gave Elsa a grin.
“Small world,” Lisa-Marie said.
Elsa felt off-balance. In both a good way – the day suddenly seemed a lot less crappy – but in a suspicious way as well. How small was the world, really?
“What brings you here?” Elsa asked cautiously.
Lisa-Marie waved her right hand toward the horizon. “Mom and Dad had a hankering for Disney World. I thought I booked us into a hotel over in Kissimmee, but I guess I clicked the wrong button. At least there’s a shuttle bus. I had to leave them there, or one more trip through ‘It’s a Small World’ would have made me commit hari-kiri.”
Elsa relaxed. “I don’t do theme parks.”
“Smart woman,” Lisa-Marie replied. “So what do you do when you have a day off in Orlando?”
“What makes you think I have a day off?” Elsa asked.
“Because check-out was hours ago, and you’re in the pool, and you said you don’t do theme parks.” Lisa-Marie leaned forward, filling out her bikini top even more. Suntan lotion glistened on her skin. “Don’t you want to spend a few hours playing tourist with me?”
Elsa had nothing to do until the Class A showed up again at the airport or she got her next assignment. She had the feeling that Philadelphia would punish her a little for this, maybe keep her cooling her heels for another day or two.
“I’d love to play with you,” she replied.
They lounged by the pool, went for ice cream at Downtown Disney, and then walked around the lake and shops there while canned music played in the perfectly trimmed flowerbeds. Every now and then Lisa-Marie’s parents called from the Magic Kingdom with updates on how much fun they’d just had in the Haunted Mansion or Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and Lisa-Marie would roll her eyes and grin. Elsa’s own folks never left suburban Chicago. Certainly they wouldn’t be walking around a theme park all day.
“They probably rented electric wheelchairs,” Lisa-Marie mused. “Last time, Dad slammed right into a Mickey Mouse who was signing autographs.”
They had a seafood dinner at a restaurant built to look like a steamboat, and afterward drank hot chocolate at a small table in the Godiva shop. Shoppers streamed in and out of the Disney Store next door. Elsa was feeling a bit like Snow White herself. She’d immensely enjoyed the day, and the way Lisa-Marie smiled at her, and her sense of humor about just about everything. But it couldn’t last. Like coaches turning back into pumpkins, Elsa had to return to her normal life.
Knowledge of that couldn’t keep her from wanting to lean across the table and kiss Lisa-Marie. Just once for memory’s sake, to see if those lips tasted as sweet as they looked.
They talked and talked and talked. Once their cups were empty Lisa-Marie said, “Be right back,” and dashed off to the bathroom. Her phone buzzed as soon as she was out of sight. Elsa thought Lisa-Marie’s parents would worry if she didn’t pick up, so she scooped up the smartphone. But there was no call. Instead, it was a message and her own name was the subject line. That was odd. After further investigation she realized her name was attached to several messages, and documents were attached as well.
Her hotel itinerary for here in Orlando
Her hotel itinerary for her last job, back in Atlanta.
Her hotel itinerary for the job before that, in Roanoke.
Shivers went down her back and left her feeling ice cold. Quickly Elsa dropped the phone, left the shop, and walked toward the nearest exit. She felt like she was thinking perfectly clearly, but also like she was moving through unseen bales of thick cotton. Dimly she heard Lisa-Marie calling after her.
“Elsa, wait!” Lisa-Marie was calling out. “I can explain!”
A long line of yellow cabs was idling in the parking lot. Elsa slid into the back seat of the first one and muttered her hotel’s name. The driver, an elderly man with a shiny bald head, was pulling out when the other passenger door opened and Lisa-Marie climbed in.
“Hey!” protested the driver.
Elsa ordered, “Get out.”
“I can explain,” Lisa-Marie said breathlessly. “Everything. I’m not some stalker following you around the country.”
“That’s exactly what you are,” Elsa retorted.
The driver was eyeing both of them in the rear-view mirror. “Keep going?”
“No,” Elsa said.
“Yes,” Lisa-Marie told him. “Elsa, I know you’re upset. But it’s not what you think—”
“That you have my hotel reservations on your phone?” Elsa said, glaring at her. “That today wasn’t a coincidence? That your parents probably aren’t even at the park, are they? Who’s been calling you?”
Lisa-Marie grimaced. “My secretary.”
The ca
bbie turned, but the Cirque de Soleil show was letting out and the lane was jammed with cabs and vans. Exasperated, Elsa reached for the door handle.
Quickly Lisa-Marie said, “I’m a lawyer working on a class action suit against the Department of Homeland Security and their routine violations of civil rights, especially electronic privacy issues and unreasonable searches. Your company is the only one that services backscatter machines and we need technical information. My firm asked me to contact you, to see if you could help us.”
“Help you?” Elsa demanded. Anger boiled up in her head and heart. “Why? Do I look like someone who wants to be unemployed? I have a security clearance—”
Too late she shut her mouth.
Lisa-Marie asked, “Why does a technician need a security clearance? Why is it that the TSA went ahead and implemented this technology, as unproven and dangerous as it might be? At first we thought: back-room politics. Pork spending. Everyone knows that a real terrorist these days wouldn’t go through security – there’s a half-dozen easier ways, from the food service people to the plane cleaners. So there’s got to be some other reason for all this security theater, all this ridiculous pretense we can prepare for everything. Some reason why millions of passengers a year have to take off their shoes, why little kids get frisked, and why the TSA constantly lies about what the technology is or does. And you know what it is, don’t you?”
“I don’t know anything,” Elsa said, squeezing the bridge of her nose. “Other than the fact that you lied to me and tricked me and made me think—well, that doesn’t matter, because it wasn’t true.”
Lisa-Marie touched Elsa’s leg. The expression on her face seemed almost as distraught as Elsa felt. “It was true. I’m not that good an actress. As much as I care about my job, I care about you, too. Do you know that they’re starting to identify possible cancer clusters around TSA agents? Tell me you wear a dosimeter to measure radiation.”
“I’m not worried about radiation,” Elsa retorted. “I’m worried about lawyers who try to use me so they can win some frivolous lawsuit!”
“It’s not frivolous!” Lisa-Marie insisted. “Backscatter and other screening machines could pose more dangers to the public than we’ve ever seen. I was supposed to ask you about your job, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to ruin what we’ve got started here. Tell me you don’t feel the same way.”
The taxi inched forward. They were still stuck in the damned parking lot, and might be for an hour. The cabbie was watching them in the rear-view mirror with unabashed interest. Elsa glared at him until he dropped his gaze and started fiddling with his meter.
“I don’t feel anything,” Elsa said. “How could I?”
She tossed a ten dollar bill over the divider and slid out of the cab. Lisa-Marie followed, but it was easy to lose her in the crowd pouring from the theater. Elsa kept moving and kept her gaze down. She seemed surrounded by lovers walking hand in hand, laughing and kissing, all these happy people, while she suffered the hollow, queasy feeling of being humiliated.
When her phone rang with a text message she nearly threw it in the lake, but the number was Christopher’s. The Class A had been caught again at the Orlando airport. Where should he pick her up?
Elsa squared her shoulders, wiped her face dry and went back to work.
A Freedom of Information lawsuit filed today against the Department of Homeland Transportation alleges that images of thousands of people entering federal courthouse have been saved and stored without consent or awareness. The backscatter technology involved is the same used in airport screening lanes. A separate lawsuit alleges that the zones around these machines can expose the population to radiation that exceeds the “general public dose limit”. – WJCT, Jacksonville FL.
Norfolk. Hartford. Manchester. Albany. Elsa figured that Lisa-Marie had tracked her so easily because she preferred one particular hotel chain, so she started mixing up her choices. She kept away from any that had swimming pools. Her back started to ache from so many hours in airplane seats, and her clothes began to get depressingly tight, so she doubled the workouts she did in her room. In Boston she tripped over an ottoman while doing lunges and had to use crutches for three days.
Elsa knew she should have reported Lisa-Marie to DHS but she didn’t really want to call down that kind of scrutiny on her. Once the government started keeping files, it kept on collecting information. Better to just forget the whole thing. Elsa didn’t answer emails or calls from people she didn’t know, she ate alone in her room each night, and she went to bed resolutely not thinking about long dark hair, a heart-shaped face and lovely dimples.
The last part would have been easier if she didn’t turn on the news one night to see Lisa-Marie on TV, being interviewed about electronic privacy. She looked smart and professional in a black business suit, her eyes hidden behind glasses. Like Superman masquerading as Clark Kent, Elsa thought uncomfortably. Fighting for what seemed like civil rights, but only because she didn’t know what danger America really was in.
“More people need to realize what information is being collected without their knowledge,” Lisa-Marie was saying. “We need to understand more about these machines.”
Elsa turned off the TV.
An AXB machine in Newark alerted with a Class A. Christopher picked her up at a Holiday Inn parking lot with a new technician named Alice. “Andrew’s out on disability,” Christopher said tightly when Elsa asked about him.
“What for?” Elsa asked.
Christopher turned the van toward the terminal. “Stomach cancer.”
“It’s not job-related,” Elsa said, though she wasn’t sure if she was asking a question or not.
Christopher said, “Probably not.”
“We’re not exposed to enough,” Elsa insisted. “You know the specs.”
“I know what they tell us,” he replied.
Alice popped her head up from the back seat of the van. She was short and dark-haired, with a pixie cut and purple eyeshadow. “Are we there yet? This is my first big one.”
Elsa sat back in her seat. Christopher said nothing.
The B1 security checkpoint was closed by the time they arrived. Their TSA contact was a big ex-football player named Tyrone Graham who sat in a plastic chair, arms folded, and glared at them for making him work overtime. Elsa ignored him. She had a hard time locating the Class A image. She realized that someone on the local staff had been moving around images in direct violation of protocol – storing groups of them in a local folder instead of keeping everything in one place.
She opened a sub-folder. Over a hundred images had been saved there. Woman, all of them, their faces blurred but their curvy bodies in clear view. Another folder had children, all of them standing with their arms raised over their heads in the same way as the adults.
“Ew,” Alice said. “Someone’s a creep, huh? I thought operators weren’t supposed to set up their little peep shows.”
“They’re not supposed to.” Elsa angrily deleted the folders. She would report the incident, but didn’t know if anything would come of it. Philadelphia was good at collecting information and not very good at passing it down. Meanwhile whoever had been hoarding images would just start all over again, with plenty of material passing by every day.
She tried to focus on the task in front of her. When the Class A image popped up, it was attached to the image of an overweight man with a prosthetic knee. Like that long-ago one in Columbus, this demon had a head perched above the spread-open wings. The head was round and small, tilted slightly as if quizzically looking at the scanner. Some kind of circle hung around it, like a ring around Saturn.
“What is that?” Christopher asked curiously.
“I don’t know,” Elsa said. Her heart thumped faster in her chest and her palms turned sweaty.
Alice snapped her chewing gum. “Looks like a halo. Pretty funny.”
Elsa met Christopher’s gaze. If you believed in demons, then why not their opposites? For a moment he looked li
ke he wanted to say something, but then his gaze slid across the empty security lanes to their TSA guy.
“Let’s do it and get out of here,” he said.
Elsa couldn’t help herself. “What if some of them are protecting people, not hurting them? What if everything we’ve been told is wrong?”
“It’s not,” Christopher said tightly. “It’s not, because then you would lose your job. Do you understand me? You would lose your job and your income, and anything more would violate your security clearance, and how do you feel about a home visit from federal agents with guns? Because I, myself, would not like that at all.”
Alice snapped her chewing gum again.
Elsa’s fingers trembled as she started the download. She watched the creature slowly fade down the pipeline, its head tilted thoughtfully, its halo and wings disappearing into nothingness.
Later that night, Elsa herself disappeared.
“I didn’t know,” she said, standing in the drenching rain outside of Lisa-Marie’s front door. “I didn’t know any of it.”
Lisa-Marie was dressed only in a white bathrobe. It was just after dawn. Her hair was messy and her face creased from the pillow. “You’re soaked. Come in.”
Elsa shook her head. She didn’t deserve to be warm and dry yet. “I want to help find out what’s really going on. I want people to know the truth and what the government is doing. But I don’t know how, and I don’t know who to trust. What do you do when you don’t even know if you’re standing on solid ground anymore?”
Thunder rolled in the sky over their heads. The rain came down harder, but Elsa was beyond feeling cold.
“You come to someone who cares about you.” Lisa-Marie stepped out into the rain with her arms open and Elsa buried her head against her shoulder. “You come to me, and we’ll find out the truth together.”
One Saturday Night, with Angel
Peter M. Ball