Escape The Grid: Volume 1

by Patrick F. Kelly

  No one raised their hand.

  “OK. Great. Well, let’s start with what we will do in history class together. When we learn history, we’ll learn by being there in VR with the real life people who made the history. We’ll go to the places they lived and see the world as they saw it.”

  “Miss Woods,” one of the girls raised her hand.

  “Yes…. Karen?” Miss Woods read the name from the desk.

  “Will we be in VR with real people, like the camp men, when we do the lessons? Because my mom said that playing with them online was dangerous.”

  Sofia sighed. What a stupid question, she thought.

  Of course the VR people would be simulated algorithms and not real people. The teacher just meant that they would simulate the real people from history.

  Karen wouldn’t be much of a challenge for the top ten.

  “That is an excellent question, Karen. Thank you. Class, Karen has made a great point. Who here, please raise your hands, thinks that we have to be careful of camp men when going online?”

  Every hand shot up. Sofia was getting bored.

  “You are correct. We have to be very careful. And not just from camp men, but from almost all men. 100 years ago, this wasn’t true, but today in 2075, women have to be especially careful of men. Class, what is the role of men in society?”

  This was an answer all girls had recited every morning in elementary school as part of the pledge of allegiance. Sofia knew it by heart, just like the other girls. It was like a nursery school rhyme. “Men are for the grid. Where they support and play. If you are a kid, from camps you stay away.”

  “That’s right. As we’ll learn in our history class, men freely chose to go onto the grid. Once they were there, the world became safer for all of us. And now, men and women peacefully and productively coexist. So, back to the sixth grade agenda…”

  “Song has a man at her house,” one of the girls said suddenly and pointed to the Chinese girl in the corner of the room.

  Now this is interesting, Sofia thought.

  “Daisy, don’t make an accusation like that,” Miss Woods said sternly.

  “But it’s true. I saw him at her house,” Daisy said. “He came with them from China.”

  All of the girls stared at Song. She was blushing and visibly embarrassed. Could it be true? Sofia had never seen a man.

  “Song, I’m sorry for what Daisy said,” Miss Woods began.

  “My dad is very nice. He not hurt anybody,” Song said.

  Miss Woods had a look of panic. Sofia perked up at the intrigue of it all. She watched as Miss Woods walked over to Song and whispered something in her ear, and then walked her to the door. “We will be right back, students,” Miss Woods announced as she left the room with Song.

  The door hardly shut when all of the girls were gabbing hysterically. Could it be true? A man, a Chinese man, in San Diego? Several girls gathered around Daisy who was talking loudly enough for Sofia to hear.

  “My mom didn’t believe me at first,” Daisy was saying. “But after I described him, she started to believe it.”

  “What was he like?” one girl asked. “Why didn’t you call the police?” another girl inquired.

  “My mom didn’t want to tell the police. I don’t know why. She said their family isn’t any of our business. But the teachers always told us to report any men we see. And what he looked like was scary. He had short hair and I saw him in a corner of the room, trying to hide.”

  “How did you find him?”

  “I went looking for the bathroom but opened up the wrong door or something and there he was.”

  “Did he try to kill you?”

  “No. He stayed in the corner. I started screaming and Song’s mom came in and took me away. She told me that it was Song’s aunt. That her aunt had short hair and looked like a man, but it wasn’t. It was a man. And then I asked Song about it later, about her dad, and she said that her dad was really nice and wouldn’t hurt anybody. So I knew that it was really her dad. They smuggled him in or something.”

  “What’s going to happen to Song?” one of the girls asked.

  Sofia pondered the question but stayed quiet.

  4

  LINDA THOUGHT, “He’s gonna love this,” as she clicked to connect. The name in her contact list was “Joey Bag-a-donuts,” which she had affectionately called him for over 40 years. It was late at night and Joey was taking his sweet time to answer the call.

  “Linda, whachu got for me, hon? I hope it’s good, ‘cause you interrupted Joey’s free time.” Joey’s thick Italian / New Jersey accent always put Linda in a good mood.

  “I don’t even want to ask what happens during Joey’s free time,” she said. “Trust me – this is good. Remember we were talking about getting some attention from senior executive types.”

  There was a pause. Joey was stuffing something in his mouth and trying to chew it quickly. Or maybe he was chewing on what she just said.

  “You’ve got my full attention,” he finally said.

  She smiled. “I thought I might. But this is too hot for the wires. I’ll meet ya at our place. I’m on the way and should arrive in an hour?”

  “See you there,” Joey replied.

  Linda punched the button that ended the call and looked out the window. This was the most exciting news of their lives or the dumbest thing they had ever done.

  LINDA AND JOEY’S PLACE WAS AN OLD DINER next to an run-down motel in rural Virginia, 60 miles southwest of Washington DC. Joey and Linda had been meeting there for the last twenty years. They liked it because it was off the grid. All of the cook and wait staff were automated or robotic, using older model equipment without surveillance links that the NSA could easily tap.

  Dixieville, Virginia. A small town considered the armpit of society by the rich and powerful in DC. The perfect location for Joey and Linda since no one in DC would ever set foot in it. Joey owned both the diner and motel, or at least had owned them before the Female Protection Act. Linda owned them now, based on a handshake agreement stronger than any bullshit law passed by Congress.

  Joey was presumed to be living in Italy, running with the European mafia. But Joey “Bag-a-donuts” was DC mafia, underground, and selling real males to powerful women for exotic nights. He also dabbled in arms dealing. Linda was the front; she was the primary contact of DC’s rich and powerful when they needed black market action. Joey had the underground contacts and kept the engine running, finding ways to bring in fresh blood and store them securely.

  He was waiting on Linda when she walked in. The diner was closed, but Joey and Linda were always authorized for entry. She walked to the front door, did a quick eye scan causing the door to open, and proceeded directly to his table.

  “You look happy,” he said. “I ordered you a coffee.”

  She smiled. “Thanks. I’m happy all right. This is the big one!”

  “Lay it on me. Cabinet level? Surely not cabinet level.”

  Linda was excited. Her hands were shaking. She wanted to tell him. She couldn’t wait to tell him. “How about the Secretary of Defense? How’d ya like them apples?”

  “No way. Get da fuck outa here.”

  “I’m serious, Joey. Her name is Margaret Lane.”

  “I know her name, Linda. You tink I don’t know the name of the fuckin’ secretary of defense of the fuckin’ United States.” He snort-laughed and then continued, “This is the mother lode. Far more than what I expected you to say.”

  They had been talking about this for so long and planning it for over eight years, working their way up from low level operators to agents with degrees from Harvard to representatives, senators and undersecretaries. They had established a reputation of full discretion and had gone twenty years without a single incident: no felonies, no arrests, and most importantly - no allegations being lodged against their clients.

  “Joey, let me tell ya what I did. I got this call from Adrian two days ago. She says to me, she says, I got a new client w
ho needs the VIP treatment. I says ‘Of course. You know that’s what I provide.’ She says to me, ‘Linda, you’re not hearing me. I’m talking three times more VIP treatment than you’ve ever done. If your normal service is a 5, then you raise it to a 15. The client’ll need things you’ve never done. Security steps far higher than what you’re used to. It’ll cost you three times more, but my client will pay five times your normal rate.”

  “Holy shit,” Joey said.

  “Exactly. And it goes on like that, talking about all the steps we have to take for security and how it will go down and what her type of man is – really specific. And she still hasn’t told me who it is. So I jump in and say ‘Adrian – is this for the president?’ And she laughs about thirty seconds. But then I get a little pissed and say ‘Well who else would need this level of security?’ and she says ‘You’re not far off. I shouldn’t have laughed.’ And she still wouldn’t tell me until we met at a Starbucks near the capital and she lays it on me.”

  “Margaret Fuckin’ Lane.”

  “Margaret Lane. And she wants a tall blonde guy, 25-ish, with blue eyes, cultured and well spoken.”

  “Are you kidding me with dis? Cultured?”

  “Five times the normal rate, Joey. And I didn’t tell you the best part. Service every week.”

  “Every week? Jesus, Linda. For how long?”

  “Adrian said she had been using somebody else for years. The heat got turned up on them or something. She wasn’t sure what happened, maybe the guy had been killed even. Whatever, she’s our client now.”

  “If I can find a guy with this profile,” Joey looked challenged and a little ruffled.

  “I thought you would be turning cart wheels right now.”

  “Hold on a second. Let me take a breath here. It’s a lot to process. I’m turning cartwheels – I mean, in my mind I’m turning fuckin’ cartwheels. Let’s think about dis list. 25, tall, blonde, with blue eyes – dat part is easy. Cultured and well-spoken? Where am I gonna find dat? I mean, we can hack into some camps in the mid west and find tall blonde guys, but none a dese camp guys have any culture except game playing. Dese fuckers almost never speak to real people. Imagine I find a guy, 25, and he’s been in a camp for 10 years. What’s he doing online? Resort World. Bangin’ chicks on the beach, riding in fast boats or jumping out of airplanes. Who am I gonna find that’s learnin’ about different cultures or practicing his conversational skills? Any kid I find in a camp has spent 10 years living in a concrete cube talking to avatars.”

  “Should I call it off?” Linda asked, knowing the answer before she finished the sentence.

  “Fuck no! Just let me t’ink a second. I’ll start looking for Cassanova as soon as we finish coffee. I’ll find some guy close enough, break him out, and then get him into some kind of ‘finishing school’ out here on the reservation. How long do I have?”

  “We haven’t set a date yet. How much time do you need?”

  “The earliest I could do it is three weeks. We can get him more cultured every week, but the first visit won’t be some great conversation. Don’t expect Mark Twain or Ben Franklin to be sittin’ at her table.”

  “I can sell that.” Linda pounded her coffee and they nodded at each other. She got up and walked out, knowing that Joey would be on the grid within five minutes finding Mr. Right.

  5

  THOMAS WAS SITTING in one of his meditation areas. His talk with Elvis had motivated him to get off the bed and walk a few feet over to his VR area. He was now suspended in the air with his legs crossed, his senses absorbing the virtual landscape.

  The site was a patch of luscious green grass no more than ten feet square, and it overlooked multiple strange rock formations. It was a peaceful place that spurred his imagination.

  The stone structures, including the one he was sitting on, went thousands of feet into the air, so high that clouds floated below. The rocks had narrow, cylindrical support systems, like a mountain in a Dr. Seuss book. Each had an hourglass figure, with a broad bottom area and a large plateau on top, held in the middle by a tiny set of rock piles. Only on the grid could such an impossible formation keep its structural integrity.

  Behind Thomas was a floating dojo which housed his small collection of meditation tidbits: books, audio sequences, magical mats, and the like. He had been accumulating these furiously over the last few years.

  To his right, floating in mid air above the clouds, was a pickup location for flying whales. Several whales were flying in the distance, carrying people to the tops of different rock formations. If he wanted, he could ride a whale back to Bikini Island.

  In front of him, there was a solitary bent dogwood tree with red leaves. Fully in bloom, its burgundy red contrasted beautifully with the green grass. Four of its branches held small Japanese lanterns, all illuminated.

  In front of him was a rickety old wooden bridge, held with multiple long ropes and crossing over to another rock formation, perhaps a quarter-mile in the distance. There were two wooden stakes buried at the edge of the green grass, and the ropes and bridge were attached securely to them. It was a bridge that you knew would hold but only because the laws of physics didn’t apply to it. Something about its essence said that physics weren’t physics anymore, as if you were traveling with Einstein at the speed of light and the laws of the universe were no longer the same.

  Across the bridge, if one were courageous enough to traverse it, was a community of houses on stilts. One of the houses, a pretty purple one near the bridge, was where Thomas and Julia shared a bed from time to time.

  As Thomas sat on the grass, listening to relaxing music, he found himself thinking about fruit. He looked at the clouds and the flying whales, and he thought about fruit and life outside the grid camp. He meditated on Elvis’ advice to “do something worth remembering.”

  Thomas had held lots of jobs on the grid the last twenty years, starting with support calls for an IRS hotline, helping women deal with tax issues. But his most recent work had been with the department of agriculture. For the last two years, he had been a Level Eight Fruit Quality Inspector.

  Something about the experience of working on the farm had changed Thomas. He felt this amazing presence of a living being – this beautiful peach – and it stirred his soul. The farm, the trees, the gardens, the vines, all growing together and producing. Each tree served its purpose, part of a larger system, beautifully efficient and productive. But the magic was in its taste.

  Who cares about the scientific theories of nature? Just taste a ripe Georgia peach and you fall in love.

  One weird thing about all of the VR technology was that eating and drinking was never perfected. You could see, hear and feel in VR just like in the real world. You could walk, feel the wind blowing on your face, and feel heat and cold sensations. Even smelling could work if you had the equipment and bought the expensive chemical refills. However, the sensation of taste continued to be a luxury of real life.

  After working on the peach farm, Thomas had contacted one of the agency ladies at the department of agriculture. She was several levels above him: an overseer for the fruit quality division. He pleaded with her to get fresh fruit deliveries. After multiple conversations, she had agreed to provide some seasonal fruit once per month to his mailbox, a slot in the wall of his studio.

  As he remembered that first fruit delivery, he noticed the rickety bridge sway in front of him. He looked ahead, and saw Julia walking toward him, perhaps a hundred yards in the distance.

  “Hey, sweetie,” she yelled, waving.

  He stood up and waved back.

  “Meditating?” she asked. Her voice carried strongly against the wind at the high altitude.

  “I just finished,” he yelled back.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” she was about 30 yards away now, walking at a brisk pace.

  “I was just thinking about fruit.”

  “Fruit?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I lived almost twenty years without fruit.”
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  A whale flew over her head carrying a couple guys dressed as Thor and Batman. The Thor avatar screamed something demeaning at her, which she ignored.

  Those guys need to find their own girl, Thomas thought jealously.

  “How could you go so long without eating fruit?” she asked, stepping onto his plateau now and its green grass. She kissed him on both cheeks.

  “I don’t know,” he replied.

  “But you eat it now?”

  “Yes, I have fruit now. Thank God. Where did you come from?”

  “I was visiting our little apartment over there,” she said. “You have time for a quickie?”

  Thomas smiled. He glanced at her curvy blue dress and let his eyes absorb her beauty. “Think the bridge will hold us?”

  “If it doesn’t, you can fall to the ocean like you did this morning,” she joked. “Why did you leave us?”

  “I needed some time to think,” he said. “Come on. How fast do you think we can cross this bridge?”

  6

  THE NEXT MORNING, the real-life Julia sat at a round table in a sparsely furnished office building on the outskirts of Havana, Cuba. She spoke with her work colleague, Tito.

  “I think Thomas is ready to approach about extraction,” she said.

  Tito listened to her while he sipped his morning coffee. “Julia, why would we want to risk it?”

  “He has spent twenty years working for the US government in a variety of roles. He knows so many of their support systems, from the IRS to Energy to Agriculture.”

  “So he would be better suited as an inside guy, in that case. Keep him working on operations but get him ready for the big launch.”