Thomas jumped in, “Well, you were a chemical engineer before, so I’m assuming that jumping into plants isn’t so bad. I don’t have an engineering background. I didn’t even go to college. So trying to be a farm automation engineer is just way beyond my comfort level.”
“See what I mean,” Debbie said. “You guys risk your lives to live here but you’re afraid of these little things.”
Roy grinned. “I know what you mean. You are afraid that you’ll push the wrong button and equipment will be destroyed and the whole thing will come crashing down, and the authorities will come looking for you. That’s how I felt too. But the equipment has lots of safeguards. Somebody logged in remotely can’t destroy it, even if they were trying to. And you have AI software to help you. If you make a dumb decision, the AI will bring up a bunch of statistics and say ‘Are you sure you want to do this, ma’am?’ and you can just cancel out. I did that a lot at first.”
Alex asked, “So are you a botanist now?”
“I’m a pretty good botanist now, I think. Even Cynthia agrees when I give her reports. Of course, I’ve been doing the job for several years.”
Debbie blurted out, “And Thomas will be a great farm automation engineer. Maybe not the first couple weeks, but after that, and for as long as he stays.”
Thomas looked at her. “Do you know how long I’ll be here? I was thinking it might be a short visit.”
“I talked to Tito last night. You’ll be here six months at least,” she said.
“Six months?” Thomas said.
“Try not to feel so bad about being in Jasper. We don’t bite,” she joked, grinning.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean that. I just thought I was leaving sooner.”
“Me too,” Debbie replied. “But life gives us surprises. Boys, let’s leave Roy alone here to get some work done. Thanks, Roy.”
“No problem, Debbie. Any time.” He put his goggles back on.
“ARRIVING AT DESTINATION in three minutes,” the navigation system said.
Julia’s heart was racing. It had all been leading to this moment in time. Forty-five years of her life, countless short romances, but Thomas was the first man to really win her heart, soul and mind. And she was about to see him for the first time.
Even in 2075, the idea sounded ridiculous: falling so deeply in love and risking your life for someone before meeting them in person. Tito had tried to talk her out of it, and she couldn’t argue with the rationality. But a human is more than just a reasoning robot. The emotions can cause us so many problems but they also make life worth living. Thomas consumed her thoughts. She hoped and dreamed of getting him to safety and living a long life together.
Computers don’t have hopes and dreams.
Julia embraced her humanity. She would hug Thomas today in real life for the first time, after thousands of embraces in VR. Both were real experiences, but today the experience would be something more profound.
She had spent the last hour trying to clean herself up. She checked her hair and makeup in the mirror. Not too bad for a two-day driving trip.
But a long way from the Julia in Resort World.
She was who she was, and Thomas knew it. It was enough. Whenever they wanted to have Resort World, that was available to them. They could visit each other in young bodies and also grow old together.
She looked out the window and saw Debbie standing at the door, waving to her. She wanted to open the door and leap out while it moved on the gravel road, but she controlled herself. She waved back and smiled ear to ear.
“Come inside,” Debbie said, as she hugged Julia. “I have someone who really wants to see you.”
“I’m so ready,” she replied.
Debbie opened the door and Julia rushed in. She and Thomas embraced immediately while Alex and Debbie stood aside.
“We’ll be in the kitchen and leave you two alone,” Debbie said, and Alex followed her out of the room.
“I can’t believe it,” Julia said.
“Let me look at you,” Thomas said, pulling her apart from him. “You are even more beautiful than in Resort World.” He began kissing her cheek, and she moved her face so that their lips met. She grabbed the back of his head and ran her hands through his hair. He reciprocated, putting his right hand on the back of her head as he caressed her lower back with his left.
“I’m so happy,” he said.
“You taste better than you do in Resort World,” she said.
He laughed. “There’s no taste in Resort World. Debbie gave me some mints before you got here.”
“Debbie thinks of everything.”
He held her in his arms and looked into her brown eyes. “Ella piensa en todo,” he said.
“Muy bien,” she replied. “Very good. Have you been practicing Spanish while you waited for me?”
“Si,” he said.
“I love that,” she said.
They kissed again before Julia stopped them. “We should probably go find Debbie. I feel a little rude just making out in her house right after I walked in.”
“You’re right,” he said. “Let me show you the place. It’s amazing.”
50
SUSAN WAS BACK in San Diego on a video conference with Stephanie. Since the meeting in DC between Stephanie and Margaret, everything had been going to plan.
Stephanie had agreed to assist in the drone search and had given Susan access to multiple systems throughout the city of Nashville and state of Tennessee. They had found 100 possible UR sites and had narrowed it down to ten worth pursuing. They had drones flying all over the state as well as the neighboring states looking for likely UR locations.
What Susan still couldn’t understand was Margaret’s motivation on the search. Hadn’t she wanted to help this person escape? Hadn’t she setup the maintenance schedule allowing for the escape? If she wanted him to escape, why make his life harder?
Why was Margaret so motivated to hunt this guy down?
“So who can I bring into the mission?” Stephanie was asking. There was a list of five possible candidates and a summary of each person’s profile on the screen.
“I’d prefer to keep a small group. How many do you think?”
“Well, I obviously won’t tell them anything about the larger mission. All they will know is that we are trying to get better intelligence on UR sites in Tennessee. If it were up to me, I’d use all five people on the screen. I narrowed them down from a list of everybody I’ve worked with in the last two years.”
Susan moved her hand and selected four names on the screen. Check boxes came up next to each. “Let’s use these four. This woman isn’t an employee. I’d rather not work with an independent agent for this mission.”
“She is one of my best research detectives and doesn’t mind traveling anywhere. No family. She is willing to do dirty work that some of the agents won’t touch.”
“Can you add her to the force?”
“I don’t have the budget.”
“OK, well, send me her details and past background checks. I’ll run a security check on my end. If she’s cleared, then you can use her. But none of the five can know what the others are doing. Nobody can know about the bigger mission.”
“Understood, Susan. I’ll meet with each individually and give them very specific tasks and regions across the state. They’ll use the video footage we are getting from the drone launches and follow-up on places that seem suspicious.”
“Good plan.”
“You know, I didn’t want to say this in the meeting at the Pentagon.”
“Say what?” Susan asked.
Stephanie hesitated.
“Tell me,” Susan said. “You can speak freely.”
“I didn’t want to say it to the Secretary of Defense, but we are really relaxed about prosecuting these underground railroad sites here in Tennessee. There are a lot of people in the small towns that know each other. Our view has been that if the UR folks stay to themselves and don’t make waves, then we won’t come af
ter them. It just seems easier to keep the peace.”
“Tennessee isn’t unique. California is the same way. So is the whole country.”
“Oh, what a relief! I was so worried to tell you that,” Stephanie said.
“Well, you should stop worrying about what to tell me. I’m not the Secretary of Defense. I need to know as many details as possible to make good decisions. Please don’t be afraid to tell me anything.”
“OK, ma’am. You should know this too. The five people I picked were chosen because they are true-believers in the cause. They are ready to break some heads. They are detectives who complain constantly about how we don’t crack down on the illegals.”
“I noticed that from the profiles.”
“One question. Where are we gonna put people when we arrest them? The jails and the grid camps don’t have space for all the men at UR sites. Will we build new sites?”
“We aren’t arresting anyone yet,” Susan replied.
“Well, if we go to their sites and don’t arrest them, won’t they get spooked and leave?”
“Stephanie, I’m going to tell you something Top Secret. This is classified information, as we discussed at the Pentagon. Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I spoke with Margaret just before I called you. The mission is simple and no one will be arrested. We will first figure out the most likely site which has the man who escaped. There may be one or two sites. We want your agents, whether it is one person helping you or five, to narrow down the locations using whatever means necessary. Maybe it is drones, maybe they know people on the inside, maybe they go somewhere and crack some heads. We want to figure out the most likely site, and then we are sending in armed drones to kill the man.”
Stephanie gasped. “I don’t know anything about that, Susan.”
“That’s why I’m telling you.”
“But… but.. Can we do that? I mean, is it legal? I don’t know if any of my agents would be willing to kill anyone.”
“We won’t do it, Stephanie. Your combat drones will get hacked into. Maybe as many as six of them. Hackers will fly them to the one or two sites and they will find and shoot the suspect. They will then return the drones back to your headquarters. If everything goes as it should, no one will find out. If anything goes wrong, then you will lead an investigation on how the systems got hacked into. Ultimately, we will help you find a man in a grid camp who is responsible, and that person will be prosecuted. You and the Nashville Police Department will be clear and the NSA will never be brought into it.”
“I don’t know about this, Susan.”
“Stephanie, this is what we discussed at the Pentagon. Your help will be invaluable and you will be rewarded for it. This man is a criminal.”
“Right, I know he is a criminal, but I don’t remember us discussing these details back in DC.”
“The details aren’t important. When we do black ops, there are often unseemly activities involved. We do it for the good of the country. I thought you understood what the term ‘black ops’ meant.”
Stephanie gulped and bit her lip. “I understand. Will there be more fatalities than just the one?”
“There will likely be others.”
“What happens when the people in the UR start talking to the local police about what happened or go to the media?”
“Why would they do that? If they go to the police, they admit their own guilt. If they go to the media, they will bring coverage to their site. Everyone would have to be relocated. Why are you asking? Do you think we should take out the entire site?”
“No, no, of course not. We shouldn’t have any more fatalities than the minimum required.”
“I agree, and there is one other thing that we’ll need to discuss on that topic.”
“OK. What is it?”
“Someone will need to go to the UR site after the attack. Someone will need to take an account of any fatalities and dispose of the bodies. Someone will need to interview any of the people there and get their statements and provide contact information.”
Stephanie looked stunned again. “Who is that someone?”
“I was thinking it would be two someones. You and me,” Susan replied.
“Do I have a choice?” Stephanie asked.
“I don’t,” Susan said. “Are we in this together? The deal we discussed in DC is still on the table. Secretary Lane takes care of those who help her.”
Stephanie hesitated and took a few breaths. “Yes, Susan. We are a team.”
51
SOFIA WAS THE co-captain of a small spaceship orbiting the planet Earth. Sitting next to her, the captain Brice, was a boy of 16 that she had met last week and had been hanging out with every night since.
It had been over a month since Samitha had taught her how to hack into the grid camp worlds, and she had lost all inhibitions. Since her mother was working constantly, Sofia could play almost every night without interruption.
“So, do you want to investigate the real Mars or go visit one of those fake galaxies?” Brice asked.
“Do you ever stop with wanting to visit Mars? Mars is boring,” she replied. Brice knew her as Sonny, since she was following Samitha’s rule of always pretending to be a boy.
“I think it is cool what’s happening on Mars. Why don’t we visit it just once and see the progress they’re making? Aren’t you tired of fighting in fake space battles and looking at fake planets and fake aliens?”
“Listen, we can do it this once if you’ll shut up about it,” she said.
Sofia had spent a lot of nights in Dragon World playing as the Elf and going on missions with Samitha, but last week she had decided to branch out and try something new. She didn’t tell Samitha about it, because they had a fight. Sofia was sort of sick of how Samitha talked about other people.
Like how she calls me a “Doof” behind my back. Totally not cool.
Even Sofia’s mom had said that it never hurts to have more friends. So, here she was, with Brice on a Tuesday night, exploring the Solar System.
“Awesome! Mars, here we come,” he said.
He put on the super thrusters, which made the ship go light speed.
Brice told her, “It will take six minutes to get there at light speed.”
“I don’t want to sit here that long,” she replied. “Put it on a faster speed.”
“I can’t do it,” Brice replied. “This simulation we selected forces us to use the laws of physics. We can’t travel faster than light speed. What we see on Mars will be what is really there - no aliens or SciFi movie crap.”
“You mean, no fun stuff,” she teased.
“Hey, Sonny. Since we have a few minutes here, let me ask you something.”
“OK.”
“You told me you were 16, like me, right?”
“Yeah,” Sofia lied.
She had decided to play with the big boys and had signed in as a sixteen year old last week.
“And you said you were in a camp in San Diego, right?”
“Yeah.”
“OK. Weird. Cause I was talking to my mom last night and she said that you must be lying about your age because all of the sixteen-year-old boys in California are all here at Alcatraz.”
“I don’t understand. You were talking to your mom?”
“Yeah. My mom is in the camp with me. Is your mom not with you?”
“But I didn’t think women could be in a camp.”
“That’s weird that you say that too. I figured you would know better, if you are really sixteen.”
“Well, maybe I’m not as smart as you. What are you talking about?”
“OK. Maybe I shouldn’t say this. I mean, it’s basic stuff that you should know.”
“What is?”
“What I’m about to tell you, Jeez!”
“Well, tell me already,” she replied.
What is going on here? Am I busted? Has he figured out that I’m a girl?
“A long time ago, like bef
ore I was born, the government told mothers that they weren’t allowed to have boys any more.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if they had a child, it had to be a girl. They had to go to the doctor and make sure it was a girl. But some women didn’t obey the law.”
“Your mom?”
“Yeah, my mom was one. Duh! Obviously, your mom too.”
Oh yeah. Crap.
“Yeah, obviously. Duh!”
“So you know this stuff then? They passed all these laws where men couldn’t be around women. When I was six years old, I took a bus trip with my mom to Alcatraz. The police forced us all to come here. It’s a place for mothers and kids.”
“That’s where you are now?”
“Yeah. All of the boys our age were taken to the camps when they passed that stupid law. But since most of us were little, we had mothers who disagreed with the law and refused to give us up. So they sent us all with our mothers to Alcatraz.”
“Where is that?” Sofia asked.
“It’s an island off the coast of San Francisco. They used to have really bad criminals here. They re-built it as a grid camp. It’s pretty cool.”
“Is it kids from all over the US?”
“No, just the families in California. That’s why my mom said you would be here with us if you are really sixteen. I mean, unless you went to a camp without your mom.”
Sofia swallowed but her throat was dry. It was now or never. She didn’t want to keep lying to her friend.
“OK, well, Brice, promise you won’t get mad, but I kind of lied about my age.”
“I knew it. How old are you?”
“12.”
“What? I thought you were older. Like 20 or something.”
“Why?”
“Well, you have a deep voice and you’re really smart, like you had a lot of school.”
Crap, I set the voice adjustment software too deep.
Escape The Grid: Volume 1 Page 23